It is. And you don't have to be connected all the time. Really not. When I go backpacking, I might bring a tiny dumb-phone, but it'll be turned *off* and stored in some pocket inside the backpack, it's there for when I return to civilization and for the unlikely scenario where it's useful for solving some crisis. (I don't -depend- on it working, but *if* it does, it can be significant advantage in certain scenarios)
And here's the thing. Even if you go totally off-grid for a week, the world keeps on ticking. The world, somehow, gets on without you. And you, get on without the world.
Hell, I like to stash my watch too, you don't need it. The time to eat, is when you're hungry. The time to find rest, is when it's evening or you're tired. The time to get up, is when you're rested.
Yeah, they are. But the thing is, a *huge* fraction of top sites use either statistics, or ads, or integrate into FB or some such.
Thus *slashdot* cannot just like that see if you visit Ebay or not.
But, for example, Facebook sees every visit you make on every site that has one of them Facebook "your friends who like this" thingamajiggies. And Google sees all the sites you vist that use analytics. The same for dozens of ad-networks etc etc.
"eventually" yes, but it's still the case that one of the many reasons that a slight inflation is preferable, is that it makes it less tempting to hoard money.
With inflation even if you don't spend the money, you do atleast let someone borrow it (perhaps you put it in the bank) to get interest to cover inflation.
Another advantage is that it makes wage-adjustments easier. It's hell of a big problem to set someones salary DOWN, all hell typically breaks loose. A lot easier if *everyones* salaries fall by 2-3% a year. For psychological reasons, people find it a lot easier to accept: "I did NOT get a raise this time" rather than: "this year, my salary was *cut*"
Fair enough, but it's not as if it's less convenient paying by card here, infact Norwegians pay by card a whole lot MORE than Americans, partly as a result of convenience.
It's not a hassle to do: "insert, enter-pin, wait ~2s, withdraw" a card. In fact paying by card is significantly faster than paying cash here since the latter typically involves giving change etc.
Online, it's *slightly* more of a hassle, but still no biggie. What happens there (since I can't prove physical posession of the card online), is that that's replaced by physical posession of my phone.
I enter the card-number, get a SMS with a one-time-pin and enter that in a separate field. That way someone knowing all my card-details still can't use that information to buy stuff online with the card, because they'd -also- have to steal my physical phone (or atleast intercept a SMS sent to it) which significantly raises the bar.
Two-factor is the way to go. (for example posession + knowledge) American credit-cards are one-factor. (knowledge)
Why don't american payment-systems have any security ?
Why are credit-cards still set up so that anyone you've ever paid to with the card, has all the info they need to charge the card. (card-number and expiration-date)
It's stupid, and it's useless.
When I pay by card in a restaurant here, I do it by inserting a chip-card into a (often hand-held) terminal. The terminal does challenge-response to validate the card, and requires a 4-digit pin in addition.
Thus the waiter, even if he saw you enter the pin, would still *also* need to steal the physical card to be in business. It's not a perfect system, but helluvalot better than "mothers maiden name" bullshit.
It baffles me. Why not add some actual security ? It's not new, and it's not hard. So why not ?
It's not that hard to do. If you don't love your brake-pads you can test it yourself, simply push both brake AND gas-pedal to the metal. It'll be easy to reduce speed, and a bit-harder but still reasonable to cause a full-stop.
Automatic transmissions make it harder though, because they'll downshift as speed is reduced, thus upping the torque on the wheels.
Stopping a manual car that is in a high gear, by braking-with-full-throttle is embarassingly easy - even WITHOUT brake-assist working.
True. But if you release a large count of planes, and they spread out to some degree, it's not unreasonable that *some* of them would be above-average-lucky.
Thus your guesstimate is good for the average plane, but I'd be unsurprised if releasing a 1000 resulted in a handful that did significantly better.
The problem with that is that it sidesteps any and all worker-protection laws completely, particularily in areas an times with high unemployment.
It's infact NOT okay to fire people over race, over sex, over age, over religion, over a host of other things that are irrelevant to the performance of a worker. We have actual *laws* decided by democratically elected politicians which state in clear terms, that these actions are not okay.
These laws, are completely moot if combined with totally at-will employment. Because in that case, you still can't say: "We're overstaffed, and so we need to get rid of someone - you're fired because you're black" - but that's scant comfort if instead the boss *can* just point at the black guy and say "you're fired" (no reason given or required)
Add the fact that every year half of the knowledge you had is just become useless and...
If that's the case for you, then frankly, either you don't know much, or else you're doing it wrong. (i.e. constantly jumping on the latest fad, and having few or no skills in the underlying fundamentals)
Most of what you need to know about any of these, is literally decades old. Even programming-languages, which are a lot more faddish than fundamentals of programming, don't have a turnover-rate of 50% a year.
Most of the languages popular 5 years ago, still are. And several languages popular a decade ago, also still are. Java. C. C++. PHP. Python. (and swapping one language for a different one with similar fundamentals, is a simple thing to learn - if you are a guru C++ developer, learning Java should be pretty simple. And if you're a guru Python-programmer, you should be able to adapt to Ruby with no big problems.)
That's not what they mean. What they mean is, the browser itself, including plugins, should never freeze the UI for periods longer than 50ms. Currently you get situations where something is happening, say there's a tiny java-applet in one tab, and the entire UI is unresponsive for seconds on end. This is completely inacceptible.
They're not talking of the situation where Firefox doesn't get CPU due to -other- stuff going on with the machine, that's an entirely distinct case, and not one I've heard any plans for changing.
Some statements are easily verifiable. For example, if you have, been convicted of a violent crime or not is a cold hard fact. That makes it a lot easier to defend against.
Many or most claims made by angry ex-partners are about behaviour from the personal sphere though, where it's essentially word-against-word.
In large parts of the world, including USA and Europe, women are on the average -more- educated than men. As for kids, that's entirely unrelated. It's true that having kids cost money, and typically lowers income. (how much, depends on the jurisdiction - remember that *every* first-world country except USA has paid maternity-leave for everyone, here in Norway you get 80% of your former salary for slightly over a year at home with the baby - that means you basically lose very little income (though costs DO increase))
We've got 3 kids, the oldest being 6, yet despite it, I'm much better off financially than I could ever hope to be if I was single.
There isn't one "future of computing", there are many. You won't see stacks of tablets acting as webservers. You won't see programmers inputting C-code by tapping a on-screen-keyboard on a tablet.
You *will* see a proliferation of different form-factors intended for different purposes. Sometimes 2 distinct form-factors may merge into one product, and sometimes one multi-function device can split into two (or more) special-purpose devices.
A tablet is a special-purpose device optimised for consumption of information. It's good for browsing, reading, watching, playing. But it sucks for creating. Which is okay, since we've got OTHER form-factors that are good for creating.
Oh cut the crap. You're just saying that making choices means making choices. That is, whenever you do A, that always means not doing not-A.
Most couples are both *better* off financially than singles. Especially the childless. For the fairly simple reason that 2 people don't have double costs, but -do- have (aproximately) double earning-potential.
You've got a choice. If you don't trust the dollar to have value - don't hold (significant amounts of) dollars.
Instead, buy something you expect will have value - or a combination of several such things for added insurance against one of them collapsing.
Think a kilo of gold will buy as much in the future as it will today ? Hold gold. Think that land will have value ? Buy land. Think that IBM is going to be a valuable company in the future ? Buy IBM. Think that the Yen is going to be worth something ? Hold Yens.
Yes, there's no guarantees. Everything that has value today COULD in principle, be worth a lot less in the medium future. (official ownership of a piece of land, for example, isn't worth squat if there isn't a functioning state that enforces respect for that ownership)
Welcome to the real world. Everything is a gamble. The only thing that is certain, is death (and possibly taxes).
The thing is, only nerds care how a certain functionality is realised behind the scenes.
Thunderbird is a locally installed program that lets me read and/or write email. Gmail is a web-program that lets me do the same thing.
Why should a user care about the distinction ? Think from the perspective of what he wants to do: "I want to see if I've got any emails". An app is defined by functionality, not by implementation.
If something is a web-page or a locally installed program is to the end-user almost as irrelevant as if it's written in C++ or Java - he doesn't care.
When I said "almost", it's because the user *does* care about availability - if a program works only with a network-link, then that's relevant to the user. (but checking email works only with a link ANYWAY)
If you read the article, the main problem mentioned wasn't GPS over papermaps, as such. But rather a general lack of respect for the conditions.
It's just plain idiotic to plan to go off the main-roads in death valley (I'd argue even ON the main-roads) without bringing ample drinking-water, for example. It's not *difficult* to toss a 10-gallon can of water into the trunk for such a trip. And not doing it, is equally stupid with papermaps or gps.
You don't really need, or have use of, GPS for long-distance driving between largish cities. Because you do that by following the main roads anyway, and those are both very visible on any map (even a poor-scale one), generally well-signed, have good phone-coverage and frequent traffic -- all of which contributes to making GPS fairly useless.
GPS is, on the other hand, enormously useful for the last ~20 miles in a large city. You can't possibly miss "Berlin" with or without a GPS, but it's a lot easier to find a specific address in Berlin with one - particularily if you're alone in the car, because reading the map and driving at once is tricky with a papermap. (also, if the gps dies, it's harmless)
GPS is also both enormously useful - and very dangerous - in conditions that make navigation difficult. Useful because if and when it works, it is much superior to the alternatives (tried navigating by compass and papermap in a white-out in the mountains, or in thick fog at sea?) - but dangerous because it can fail, either by dying outright, or worse, by giving wrong results. (for example when there's reflections from nearby vertical surfaces) Thinking you know precisely where you are, but actually being somewhere else, can be deadly both at sea and in the mountains.
There are no "good" sets - the average return is low enough that even playing rarely played numbers, has an expected return below unity.
Also, the risk (in the mathemathical sense: expected deviation from the expected return) is huge.
What are those numbers ? This weeks winning ones ? If by good you mean "likely to win", then all numbers are precisely equally good. I merely pointed out that if by "Good" you mean "likely to get a large prize IF they do win", then playing rarely played numbers, is a superior strategy. (but still inferior to not playing at all!)
You do get a tiny bit of control by getting to pick your own 6/49 numbers.
It's true that your pickings do not influence the odds of winning. But since the prize-pot is shared between the winners, and certain numbers are played more commonly than others, your pickings does influence the average size of any win.
In short, your expected return will be higher (but still negative) if you pick numbers that are seldom picked. This basically means many high numbers, because a very common pattern of picking numbers is using birthdays. Someone born 25/7 with a kid born 10/3 will cross 3,7,10 and 25. Since there's only 12 months and no month has more than 31 days, the numbers in the 32-46 range gets picked more seldom.
Similarily, numbers surrounded by much myth and superstition, gets picked often. The dumbest possible numbers to play are 3, 7 and 12.
It always is - until the point where somebody sues them.
Anyone can ALWAYS say: "we don't cover that".
At which point your options are: a) accept it. b) sue them.
There's not really a realistic third option in most cases. Well, you can stop buying from them offcourse, but that doesn't force them to honor their warranty.
Slashdot Mirror
It is. And you don't have to be connected all the time. Really not. When I go backpacking, I might bring a tiny dumb-phone, but it'll be turned *off* and stored in some pocket inside the backpack, it's there for when I return to civilization and for the unlikely scenario where it's useful for solving some crisis. (I don't -depend- on it working, but *if* it does, it can be significant advantage in certain scenarios)
And here's the thing. Even if you go totally off-grid for a week, the world keeps on ticking. The world, somehow, gets on without you. And you, get on without the world.
Hell, I like to stash my watch too, you don't need it. The time to eat, is when you're hungry. The time to find rest, is when it's evening or you're tired. The time to get up, is when you're rested.
Yeah, they are. But the thing is, a *huge* fraction of top sites use either statistics, or ads, or integrate into FB or some such.
Thus *slashdot* cannot just like that see if you visit Ebay or not.
But, for example, Facebook sees every visit you make on every site that has one of them Facebook "your friends who like this" thingamajiggies. And Google sees all the sites you vist that use analytics. The same for dozens of ad-networks etc etc.
"eventually" yes, but it's still the case that one of the many reasons that a slight inflation is preferable, is that it makes it less tempting to hoard money.
With inflation even if you don't spend the money, you do atleast let someone borrow it (perhaps you put it in the bank) to get interest to cover inflation.
Another advantage is that it makes wage-adjustments easier. It's hell of a big problem to set someones salary DOWN, all hell typically breaks loose. A lot easier if *everyones* salaries fall by 2-3% a year. For psychological reasons, people find it a lot easier to accept: "I did NOT get a raise this time" rather than: "this year, my salary was *cut*"
Fair enough, but it's not as if it's less convenient paying by card here, infact Norwegians pay by card a whole lot MORE than Americans, partly as a result of convenience.
It's not a hassle to do: "insert, enter-pin, wait ~2s, withdraw" a card. In fact paying by card is significantly faster than paying cash here since the latter typically involves giving change etc.
Online, it's *slightly* more of a hassle, but still no biggie. What happens there (since I can't prove physical posession of the card online), is that that's replaced by physical posession of my phone.
I enter the card-number, get a SMS with a one-time-pin and enter that in a separate field. That way someone knowing all my card-details still can't use that information to buy stuff online with the card, because they'd -also- have to steal my physical phone (or atleast intercept a SMS sent to it) which significantly raises the bar.
Two-factor is the way to go. (for example posession + knowledge) American credit-cards are one-factor. (knowledge)
Why don't american payment-systems have any security ?
Why are credit-cards still set up so that anyone you've ever paid to with the card, has all the info they need to charge the card. (card-number and expiration-date)
It's stupid, and it's useless.
When I pay by card in a restaurant here, I do it by inserting a chip-card into a (often hand-held) terminal. The terminal does challenge-response to validate the card, and requires a 4-digit pin in addition.
Thus the waiter, even if he saw you enter the pin, would still *also* need to steal the physical card to be in business. It's not a perfect system, but helluvalot better than "mothers maiden name" bullshit.
It baffles me. Why not add some actual security ? It's not new, and it's not hard. So why not ?
It's not that hard to do. If you don't love your brake-pads you can test it yourself, simply push both brake AND gas-pedal to the metal. It'll be easy to reduce speed, and a bit-harder but still reasonable to cause a full-stop.
Automatic transmissions make it harder though, because they'll downshift as speed is reduced, thus upping the torque on the wheels.
Stopping a manual car that is in a high gear, by braking-with-full-throttle is embarassingly easy - even WITHOUT brake-assist working.
True. But if you release a large count of planes, and they spread out to some degree, it's not unreasonable that *some* of them would be above-average-lucky.
Thus your guesstimate is good for the average plane, but I'd be unsurprised if releasing a 1000 resulted in a handful that did significantly better.
The problem with that is that it sidesteps any and all worker-protection laws completely, particularily in areas an times with high unemployment.
It's infact NOT okay to fire people over race, over sex, over age, over religion, over a host of other things that are irrelevant to the performance of a worker. We have actual *laws* decided by democratically elected politicians which state in clear terms, that these actions are not okay.
These laws, are completely moot if combined with totally at-will employment. Because in that case, you still can't say: "We're overstaffed, and so we need to get rid of someone - you're fired because you're black" - but that's scant comfort if instead the boss *can* just point at the black guy and say "you're fired" (no reason given or required)
Add the fact that every year half of the knowledge you had is just become useless and ...
If that's the case for you, then frankly, either you don't know much, or else you're doing it wrong. (i.e. constantly jumping on the latest fad, and having few or no skills in the underlying fundamentals)
Algorithms. Program-organization. OO-principles. Functional programming. MVC. Data-structures. Relational databases. Key-value-stores. User-interface-principles.
Most of what you need to know about any of these, is literally decades old. Even programming-languages, which are a lot more faddish than fundamentals of programming, don't have a turnover-rate of 50% a year.
Most of the languages popular 5 years ago, still are. And several languages popular a decade ago, also still are. Java. C. C++. PHP. Python. (and swapping one language for a different one with similar fundamentals, is a simple thing to learn - if you are a guru C++ developer, learning Java should be pretty simple. And if you're a guru Python-programmer, you should be able to adapt to Ruby with no big problems.)
That's not what they mean. What they mean is, the browser itself, including plugins, should never freeze the UI for periods longer than 50ms. Currently you get situations where something is happening, say there's a tiny java-applet in one tab, and the entire UI is unresponsive for seconds on end. This is completely inacceptible.
They're not talking of the situation where Firefox doesn't get CPU due to -other- stuff going on with the machine, that's an entirely distinct case, and not one I've heard any plans for changing.
So, you're the opinion that USA is crazy, then ?
Just asking.
Some statements are easily verifiable. For example, if you have, been convicted of a violent crime or not is a cold hard fact. That makes it a lot easier to defend against.
Many or most claims made by angry ex-partners are about behaviour from the personal sphere though, where it's essentially word-against-word.
These can be a lot trickier dealing with.
In large parts of the world, including USA and Europe, women are on the average -more- educated than men. As for kids, that's entirely unrelated. It's true that having kids cost money, and typically lowers income. (how much, depends on the jurisdiction - remember that *every* first-world country except USA has paid maternity-leave for everyone, here in Norway you get 80% of your former salary for slightly over a year at home with the baby - that means you basically lose very little income (though costs DO increase))
We've got 3 kids, the oldest being 6, yet despite it, I'm much better off financially than I could ever hope to be if I was single.
There isn't one "future of computing", there are many. You won't see stacks of tablets acting as webservers. You won't see programmers inputting C-code by tapping a on-screen-keyboard on a tablet.
You *will* see a proliferation of different form-factors intended for different purposes. Sometimes 2 distinct form-factors may merge into one product, and sometimes one multi-function device can split into two (or more) special-purpose devices.
A tablet is a special-purpose device optimised for consumption of information. It's good for browsing, reading, watching, playing. But it sucks for creating. Which is okay, since we've got OTHER form-factors that are good for creating.
50.000 :)
Oh cut the crap. You're just saying that making choices means making choices. That is, whenever you do A, that always means not doing not-A.
Most couples are both *better* off financially than singles. Especially the childless. For the fairly simple reason that 2 people don't have double costs, but -do- have (aproximately) double earning-potential.
You've got a choice. If you don't trust the dollar to have value - don't hold (significant amounts of) dollars.
Instead, buy something you expect will have value - or a combination of several such things for added insurance against one of them collapsing.
Think a kilo of gold will buy as much in the future as it will today ? Hold gold. Think that land will have value ? Buy land. Think that IBM is going to be a valuable company in the future ? Buy IBM. Think that the Yen is going to be worth something ? Hold Yens.
Yes, there's no guarantees. Everything that has value today COULD in principle, be worth a lot less in the medium future. (official ownership of a piece of land, for example, isn't worth squat if there isn't a functioning state that enforces respect for that ownership)
Welcome to the real world. Everything is a gamble. The only thing that is certain, is death (and possibly taxes).
Me, I'd not want it any other way.
Nah. Most dollars only exist as numbers in a database somewhere too. Sure, a small fraction exists as physical bills, but that's a tiny fraction.
The thing is, only nerds care how a certain functionality is realised behind the scenes.
Thunderbird is a locally installed program that lets me read and/or write email. Gmail is a web-program that lets me do the same thing.
Why should a user care about the distinction ? Think from the perspective of what he wants to do: "I want to see if I've got any emails". An app is defined by functionality, not by implementation.
If something is a web-page or a locally installed program is to the end-user almost as irrelevant as if it's written in C++ or Java - he doesn't care.
When I said "almost", it's because the user *does* care about availability - if a program works only with a network-link, then that's relevant to the user. (but checking email works only with a link ANYWAY)
If you read the article, the main problem mentioned wasn't GPS over papermaps, as such. But rather a general lack of respect for the conditions.
It's just plain idiotic to plan to go off the main-roads in death valley (I'd argue even ON the main-roads) without bringing ample drinking-water, for example. It's not *difficult* to toss a 10-gallon can of water into the trunk for such a trip. And not doing it, is equally stupid with papermaps or gps.
You don't really need, or have use of, GPS for long-distance driving between largish cities. Because you do that by following the main roads anyway, and those are both very visible on any map (even a poor-scale one), generally well-signed, have good phone-coverage and frequent traffic -- all of which contributes to making GPS fairly useless.
GPS is, on the other hand, enormously useful for the last ~20 miles in a large city. You can't possibly miss "Berlin" with or without a GPS, but it's a lot easier to find a specific address in Berlin with one - particularily if you're alone in the car, because reading the map and driving at once is tricky with a papermap. (also, if the gps dies, it's harmless)
GPS is also both enormously useful - and very dangerous - in conditions that make navigation difficult. Useful because if and when it works, it is much superior to the alternatives (tried navigating by compass and papermap in a white-out in the mountains, or in thick fog at sea?) - but dangerous because it can fail, either by dying outright, or worse, by giving wrong results. (for example when there's reflections from nearby vertical surfaces) Thinking you know precisely where you are, but actually being somewhere else, can be deadly both at sea and in the mountains.
There are no "good" sets - the average return is low enough that even playing rarely played numbers, has an expected return below unity.
Also, the risk (in the mathemathical sense: expected deviation from the expected return) is huge.
What are those numbers ? This weeks winning ones ? If by good you mean "likely to win", then all numbers are precisely equally good. I merely pointed out that if by "Good" you mean "likely to get a large prize IF they do win", then playing rarely played numbers, is a superior strategy. (but still inferior to not playing at all!)
You do get a tiny bit of control by getting to pick your own 6/49 numbers.
It's true that your pickings do not influence the odds of winning. But since the prize-pot is shared between the winners, and certain numbers are played more commonly than others, your pickings does influence the average size of any win.
In short, your expected return will be higher (but still negative) if you pick numbers that are seldom picked. This basically means many high numbers, because a very common pattern of picking numbers is using birthdays. Someone born 25/7 with a kid born 10/3 will cross 3,7,10 and 25. Since there's only 12 months and no month has more than 31 days, the numbers in the 32-46 range gets picked more seldom.
Similarily, numbers surrounded by much myth and superstition, gets picked often. The dumbest possible numbers to play are 3, 7 and 12.
(though it's dumb to play anyway!)
It's what postal does, right. But only the tiniest fraction of goods is transported by the postal service.
It's too slow, and/or too expensive for most goods.
Try keeping a grocery-store, or a toystore, supplied with goods by way of the post, and you'll get the point quickly.
It always is - until the point where somebody sues them.
Anyone can ALWAYS say: "we don't cover that".
At which point your options are: a) accept it. b) sue them.
There's not really a realistic third option in most cases. Well, you can stop buying from them offcourse, but that doesn't force them to honor their warranty.