That's not how it works. Nobody is in a position to "dictate" such a thing. Ever heard of capitalism ? Here's how it works:
A number of different, independent vendors offer products for sale.
A number of different, independent, buyers choose among the offerings according to which offer they perceive as fulfilling their need the best. They do so according to criteria of their own choice, common criteria are price, quality, functionality, status, whatever properties the offering has or is perceived to have.
Vendors, offcourse, want the highest possible profit. They get that by maximising the product of sales and profit-pro-sale. (yes I'm simplifying, a lot even, this is Slashdot, not Econ 101)
So, roughly speaking, halving your profit-pro-item only makes sense if that means more than double sales. With many products this is the case. If you are buying petrol at $2.30 and selling it at $2.50, you'll over time probably sell more than twice the amount from the guy across the street that is also buying at $2.30, but reselling at $2.70 -- people will choose largely on the basis of price.
If you're selling womens clothing, or haircuts though, it appears that lowering the price has *less* of an influence on your market-share than with mens clothing or haircuts. This is *SOLELY* the result of buying-decisions made by *FEMALES*. (ok, occasionally a male buys female clothing, but it's rare enough to not make any difference for the market as a whole).
Thus my statement: clothes for women are (commonly) more expensive because women will pay more. Only women themselves can, collectively, change this. I don't think they will, so I think the difference will persist. But that's *their* choice, not "societys".
The actions of men are almost completely irrelevant when it comes to the setting of prices for women clothing.
I always wondered about that. With digital stuff, the copy is (normally) precisely as good as the original.
Somehow producers of movies, music and games have come up with the idea of making people copy the stuff less by making the copy *SUPERIOR* to the original.
If you use copies you can;
Listen to music on your choice of players. Take a backup of the expensive game you bougth. Burn a new copy of the kid-game after the children messed up one. Watch movies on your laptop -- even if you don't use Microsoft Windows. Play games without having to insert the original DVD all the time. (which is a hassle, and risks scratching the disc sooner or later) Be certain that your movies and music will still play 50 years from now. None of this generally works if you stay with originals.
Yeah. But nevertheless, essentially the only reason it costs more is that women will pay more.
Put differently, males are -more- likely to go for the cheaper hairdresser while women are more likely to choose a hairdresser based on different criteria, and to assign less importance to price.
Lowering prices only makes sense if that means more customers. For males that is -more- the case than for females. Same goes for clothing, though the difference is smaller there.
So, the TVs in that test use 6.9W baseline, plus 0.12W for every square inch. (well, not really square-inch, the things ain't quadratic, still, they're all 16:9 so the numbers are comparable regardless. Actually these numbers are pro 0.9 square inch or thereabouts)
If we assume this display uses the same 6.9W baseline, then there's 38.1W left, which gives 0.31W for every square inch. Not quite triple current displays, aproximately 2.5 times the current norm.
So, I guess my original comment stays: How, exactly, do you come to marketing a new display that uses 2.5 times as much power as the current norm as "low power" ?
Possible. Even likely. The power is probably equivalent to a constant plus a certain power pro square-inch. But the overhead is known to be small.
There are tiny tvs that use *very* little power, as in less than 10W. So this means the fixed baseline-overhead is less than 10W. (or could be less than 10W with efficient electronics anyway)
In any case, this doesn't change my argument in the sligthest. A 11inch flat-screen TV using 45W can not be described as "low power", because that is *more* than the average 11inch TV currently available actually uses. Infact, the biggest problem with that argument is that it's pretty hard to find that tiny TVs at all.
Languages come into being because people live in isolation from oneanother. 50.000 people living on an island can very well have and maintain a separate language indefinitely. Add international television, cheap travel and the internet, and it becomes harder, but still possible. (Iceland has ~300K native speakers, yet is in no great danger of disappearing anytime soon)
Put the same count of people in a much larger population though, and it'll be extinct in 3 generations. It's quite logical really. If 300K people with some separate language where to live in say NY, then either they live isolated, and only marry their own etc, or they mix and mingle, in which case 90% will marry someone who doesn't know that language, and has no real reason to learn it. Guess what language their kids will speak ?
Subcultures have languages too, of sorts. But they're different, because they tend not to drift so far apart due to the constant interaction with the larger language they're part of.
If I ask you if you're able to grok the specs on HDMI, you'll likely understand me. Neither of our parents would be likely to get anything out of that at all. Yet our subculture language is likely to stay compatible with english, since we all communicate regularily with non-subculture-members that use english.
Slang is mostly about new *words*, not so much about new structures and grammar.
Lossage. Grok. ASCII. Automagically. Avatar. Back door. Banner. Big iron. Bit rot. FIFO. Stack. Heap. Easter Egg.
Your grandmother won't (well, is unlikely to anyway) understand half of those. The half she may think she understands, will mean something different to her, compared to your understanding. Still, it's not as if you're unable to speak fluently with your grandmother.
Worse, if stored like that, that database would be any spammers wet dream.
Okay, so you could eliminate the risk of "losing" the database with gazillions of valid email-adresses by not storing
user@domain host
But instead storing sha1sum(user@domain + host) that way you'd only be able to tell if a user is in the database or not, but you wouldn't be able to list all users in the db.
45W from an 11inch display is not, by a long shot, low-power. If that scales linearily with screen real-estate, then that is equivalent to 600W for a 40 inch (the current top-seller size), which is aproximately 3 times the power used by an average flat-screen TV of that size sold currently.
Yeah. That's the logical end-result. As the bar needed for C gets higher and higher, beating that bar by 15% to get B or 30% to get A will get harder and harder. I think that it'll become hard enough that the price-premium for A will cause people to start settling for B sooner than that though.
But yeah, you're rigth. Maths and physics guarantee we can't stay in the current situation, with the stores filled with 95% A and B products for ever.
We can for a while though, the average fridge changes relatively slowly since most people keep their fridges for like a decade or more.
I'm not nessecarily sure all the people really care all that much about the environment, truth be told.
It's more a case of, with a large choice of different fridges in the store, some marked with an "A", some with "B", and onwards down to "F", in large friendly letters, and general knowledge what this means. What are you gonna choose ? It's not as if a fridge rated "A" is in general very much more expensive than one rated "B" or "C". And the sligthly higher price is an easy sell for the salesmen -- first it gives people a warm fuzzy feeling to be "doing the rigth thing" when that can be done at no great expense or inconvenience, and secondly, it's easy for the salesman to (correctly) argue that the extra $100 to buy the thing will be more than made up for in lower electricity-bills.
That's just because there's no limit to the number of pages a web-encyclopedia can have. If you *removed* the M:TG pages, this wouldn't somehow magically make those pages on east-european weightlifters appear.
I agree it's a bad thing that some notable topics that aren't popular with techie types are under-covered. But I don't see a problem at all with "over-coverage" of trivialities that *are* popular with techie types. Who cares ? What is the *disadvantage* of having a page on every M:TG card ?
Yeah. But when the computer draws less than max from the power-supply, the power-supply will draw less than max from mains too.
There is no physical law saying that a supply capable of 550W, but actually delivering 200W needs to draw more power than a supply capable of 250W which is also actually delivering 200W.
What matters is not the max capacity.
What matters is the efficiency of the supply -- at the typical load.
Or a milde variant of the same: Giving a clear grade and mandate displaying the grade prominently.
Already the case in most of Europe if you buy a dishwasher, fridge, washer, drier or lots of other household-appliances.
There's a grade for energy-efficiency, where the average for that kind of appliance is a "C" whereas an appliance that uses 30% less than average would earn an A, and an appliance that wastes 30% more energy than average earns an "F".
The stuff has been a huge success -- to the point where appliances that don't rate atleast a "B" are just not marketable at all.
The standard gets stricter automatically: As more and more people buy the energy-efficient appliances, the *average* efficiency improves, so the energy-usage for a "C" gets adjusted accordingly.
Works like a charm.
Some appliances have more than one grade, they grade efficiency on more than one scale. A dishwasher may have a note on it saying:
Energy consumption: A Water consumption: B Wash effectiveness: A Drying effectiveness: A
So, I don't see why a modern TV couldn't be sold with; "Energy consumption: A", "Standby consumption: B".
Ok, so that may be. Perhaps because it's obvious though. There are two ways of being confident. One is being it without really knowing what you're doing, which means deluding yourself or plain-out lying. That's a bad idea for several reasons, I guess if you want to do it, take up acting is the best advice.
The other though, is just plain knowing what you're doing. It's not hard at all being confident about something when you actually have a clue. This is the problem for some nerds; they aren't really used to flirting, so it's hard for them to do it confidently. How do you come across as if you know what you're doing, when infact you don't ?
It's not hard: Change the game. Play a game you know how to play, or if you don't think you know how to play any games that would appeal to girls, learn. It's something nerds are supposed to do well, rigth ?
Knowing how to repair computers is unlikely to help much. You may do it confidently, but it's not interesting to most people, female or not.
So, learn how to do something else well. Learn to take good photos (not snapshots!). Learn to dance well. Learn to cook well. None of these are hard in the sligthest, furthermore you don't need to know it *all*, only a part. You don't need to be a professional cook, but if you damn well know how to make a delicious lasagne, it's not hard to do so confidently. Girls that don't care for lasagne ain't worth having anyway *grin*.
If you really know how to do -nothing- that interests a particular girl, why the hell should she then be interested in you ? Girls are just as diverse as males so it doesn't much matter what you know, someone is likely to find it interesting regardless. It's just, there's a lot more girls that fancy a well-made romantic dinner than a smoothly-running computer.
You cannot abuse power that you do not have. A lot of actions that are perfectly legal for a normal company are unlawful if performed by someone in posession of market-dominance.
So, yes, I agree: Let's force the complete de-bundling of all operating-systems that have more than oh say 40% market-share.
AI actually has two problems, one is being clever. The other is modeling human limitations.
Sure, you want the AI to be clever in the ways that humans are clever. But you *also* want it to be weak in the ways that humans are.
It is trivially easy to aim and fire a perfect headshot in 0.05 seconds, but impossible for a human being. You want the opponents to have realistic limitations.
It is trivially easy for an AI to give detailed instructions simultaneously to 50 different troops. A human commander cannot (he can give the *same* order to all 50 at once, but he can't give 50 soldiers 50 different orders in 0.1 second)
Good AI should miss, should sometimes not notice somethint which it'd be possible to notice. Should sometimes miss more in high-stress situations because it is nervous. etc etc etc.
Granted adding these restrictions tend to be easier than making the AI clever in the first place. It still has to be done though.
There's unemployment-insurance in Norway too, but it's.... uhm... 'different' from in the states.
First, everyone qualifies, aslong as they've been employed for more than 6 weeks before being fired.
Second, you can get it for up to 2 years, not 6 months.
Third, you always qualify if you're fired, *except* in the narrow exception where you're fired for a criminal activity for which you are convicted.
Fourth, you can lose it if you, for example, refuse to take a job offered (in that case you're 'picky' not 'unemployed') but even then on the first occurence it's 8 weeks without before it's reinstated. (if you repeat refusing jobs though, you'll be barred permanently)
Assuming you qualify the payments are aproximately 2/3rds of your average pay for the year prior to termination, with a cap around $6000/month (so even if you earned substantially more than this before getting fired, that won't qualify you for a higher insurance.)
Oh, and as to the size of our paychecks, I don't think "much smaller than most places" covers it.
USA: GDP PPP per capita: $44.100
Norway: GDP PPP per capita: $46.100
These are 2006 numbers, since then the difference has grown in our favour. Back then we where 5th in the world, currently we're 4th, only surpassed by Luxemburg, Bermuda and Jersey all of which have substantial populations of super-rich tax-refugees. In Norway that's not the case (infact probably the other way around: the average Norwegian earns *more* than indicated because some ultra-rich will have an official tax-refugee on somewhere like Jersey)
What is however true is that some stuff are more expensive here. Mostly this is stuff that is work-intensive, and the higher prices is a simple reflection of the fact that the minimum wage is a lot higher. The burger-flippers in Norway earn double what they do in USA, so it follows that the burgers cost more too.
So end-effect is that if you're *rich* in the USA, you're materially better off there than you would be in Norway. If you're average it's pretty comparable, if you're in a simple or unskilled work, you'll be a lot better off here. I don't think you easily get $20+/hour for flipping burgers in the USA, I could be mistaken.
Really ? Where in Europe would that be then ? And can you show any correlation between worker-protection and reluctance to hiring ?
Norway has among the strictest worker-protection laws in existance. At the same time we've got the lowest unemployment in Europe, as far as I know anyway. Currently at something like 1.8% and falling.
Half of those people are in reality unable to work more than unemployed, and most of the other half is between-jobs, real long-term (6month+) unemployment among people who are really interested and able to work is essentially zero.
I also don't agree that it's anything like marrying after first date. It's common to be on probation for 3 months, though the legal maximum is 6 months. In that period your employer can fire you with 2 weeks notice, without even having to state a reason. (if he is stupid enough to state one anyway though, it must be a valid one) I don't see the big problem there.
Hiring someone who has worked full-time for you for half a year is hardly like "after first date".
Sure, you can legally fire workers for any number of reasons, including not being able to finance their pay anymore.
Being unwilling to accept not being paid what was agreed is however *not* a valid reason. Sure, he can say we need to cut paychecks in half, starting 3 months from now (3 months notice is normal, though if you've worked for a short period for that employer it can be shorter), and anyone who can't live with that needs to quit. But that's a quite different thing, it still leaves you 3 months at your current pay-level to search for a new job, for example.
But demanding that you give up pay already earned in exchange for keeping your job (for one more month anyway) amounts to blackmail -- that money is legally *yours* already, you already *did* that work, so you kept your part of the deal. Now it's time for the company to keep their part of the deal -- namely to pay you what was agreed upon.
The highest possible tax-rate is something around 45%, the average tax-rate is comparable to American. It's sort of hard to compare, because if you compare "tax" to "tax" it'll appear to be higher here, but that is because we include medical insurance, age-pension, and similar in tax, whereas in USA medical and other stuff like that is paid for separately from your tax as such.
What matters though, is what portion of the amount that your employer pays do you actually get.
Our tax-system *is* more progressive than yours. Which means that poor people pay substantially *less* taxes than in the USA whereas rich people pay more. Personally I find that fair, despite being among the richer ones, but that's in any case a different debate.
Dunno about USA, I'm guessing worker-protection laws are lax ?
In Norway there's no particular reason not to work for a company that is in danger of collapsing. There is mandatory insurance for outstanding pay for everyone that is not part of management for a period of up to 3 months.
There is also an exception from normal bankruptcy law for nonpaid wages. Normally if you file to have a company bankrupted, there's an associated fee. That is to discourage annoyance-filings and bankruptcies over details (they owe us $120, it's two days past due, let's file for their bankruptcy to get their attention kind of thinking), if you're owed wages though, the fee is waived.
So, in effect, if your paycheck is 1 day late, you can file for having the employer liquidated. You can do so at -zero- cost to yourself, and unpaid wages are priority one in the assets, paid before debts etc.
And even if there is nothing of value in the company, so the company won't be able to cover the debts, the insurance kicks in, you're guaranteed pay -- aslong as you didn't let the late paycheck slide for more than 3 months. In other words, when your *third* paycheck is late, it's time to get active, or accept the risk you'll never see that money.
If the company neglected to pay for wage-insurance, you *still* get the money, the only difference, from your POV is that in this case the officers of the company gets criminal charges slapped additionally.
True, if the encryption/signing is implemented correctly, there's little hope that it'll be cracked anytime soon.
But there's another avenue for attack. Given that a wii-game is capable of creating, verifying and signing its own savefiles, this means that the encryption-keys are also stored either in the wii-console or in the game-software.
So, it's just a matter of extracting them.
Once you know *both* the method of encryption and signing, *AND* are in posession of the relevant keys, the rest really is a walk in the park.
Commodity hardware ain't terribly good at hiding encryption-keys from the owners of the hardware which can take it all apart, insert logic-probes and generally mess around with the hardware at will.
Slashdot Mirror
Vendors, offcourse, want the highest possible profit. They get that by maximising the product of sales and profit-pro-sale. (yes I'm simplifying, a lot even, this is Slashdot, not Econ 101)
So, roughly speaking, halving your profit-pro-item only makes sense if that means more than double sales. With many products this is the case. If you are buying petrol at $2.30 and selling it at $2.50, you'll over time probably sell more than twice the amount from the guy across the street that is also buying at $2.30, but reselling at $2.70 -- people will choose largely on the basis of price.
If you're selling womens clothing, or haircuts though, it appears that lowering the price has *less* of an influence on your market-share than with mens clothing or haircuts. This is *SOLELY* the result of buying-decisions made by *FEMALES*. (ok, occasionally a male buys female clothing, but it's rare enough to not make any difference for the market as a whole).
Thus my statement: clothes for women are (commonly) more expensive because women will pay more. Only women themselves can, collectively, change this. I don't think they will, so I think the difference will persist. But that's *their* choice, not "societys".
The actions of men are almost completely irrelevant when it comes to the setting of prices for women clothing.
I always wondered about that. With digital stuff, the copy is (normally) precisely as good as the original.
Somehow producers of movies, music and games have come up with the idea of making people copy the stuff less by making the copy *SUPERIOR* to the original.
If you use copies you can;
Listen to music on your choice of players. Take a backup of the expensive game you bougth. Burn a new copy of the kid-game after the children messed up one. Watch movies on your laptop -- even if you don't use Microsoft Windows. Play games without having to insert the original DVD all the time. (which is a hassle, and risks scratching the disc sooner or later) Be certain that your movies and music will still play 50 years from now. None of this generally works if you stay with originals.
I never got it. I never will.
Yeah. But nevertheless, essentially the only reason it costs more is that women will pay more.
Put differently, males are -more- likely to go for the cheaper hairdresser while women are more likely to choose a hairdresser based on different criteria, and to assign less importance to price.
Lowering prices only makes sense if that means more customers. For males that is -more- the case than for females. Same goes for clothing, though the difference is smaller there.
So, the TVs in that test use 6.9W baseline, plus 0.12W for every square inch. (well, not really square-inch, the things ain't quadratic, still, they're all 16:9 so the numbers are comparable regardless. Actually these numbers are pro 0.9 square inch or thereabouts)
If we assume this display uses the same 6.9W baseline, then there's 38.1W left, which gives 0.31W for every square inch. Not quite triple current displays, aproximately 2.5 times the current norm.
So, I guess my original comment stays: How, exactly, do you come to marketing a new display that uses 2.5 times as much power as the current norm as "low power" ?
Possible. Even likely. The power is probably equivalent to a constant plus a certain power pro square-inch. But the overhead is known to be small.
There are tiny tvs that use *very* little power, as in less than 10W. So this means the fixed baseline-overhead is less than 10W. (or could be less than 10W with efficient electronics anyway)
In any case, this doesn't change my argument in the sligthest. A 11inch flat-screen TV using 45W can not be described as "low power", because that is *more* than the average 11inch TV currently available actually uses. Infact, the biggest problem with that argument is that it's pretty hard to find that tiny TVs at all.
Yeah, sure.
Languages come into being because people live in isolation from oneanother. 50.000 people living on an island can very well have and maintain a separate language indefinitely. Add international television, cheap travel and the internet, and it becomes harder, but still possible. (Iceland has ~300K native speakers, yet is in no great danger of disappearing anytime soon)
Put the same count of people in a much larger population though, and it'll be extinct in 3 generations. It's quite logical really. If 300K people with some separate language where to live in say NY, then either they live isolated, and only marry their own etc, or they mix and mingle, in which case 90% will marry someone who doesn't know that language, and has no real reason to learn it. Guess what language their kids will speak ?
Subcultures have languages too, of sorts. But they're different, because they tend not to drift so far apart due to the constant interaction with the larger language they're part of.
If I ask you if you're able to grok the specs on HDMI, you'll likely understand me. Neither of our parents would be likely to get anything out of that at all. Yet our subculture language is likely to stay compatible with english, since we all communicate regularily with non-subculture-members that use english.
Slang is mostly about new *words*, not so much about new structures and grammar.
Lossage. Grok. ASCII. Automagically. Avatar. Back door. Banner. Big iron. Bit rot. FIFO. Stack. Heap. Easter Egg.
Your grandmother won't (well, is unlikely to anyway) understand half of those. The half she may think she understands, will mean something different to her, compared to your understanding. Still, it's not as if you're unable to speak fluently with your grandmother.
Worse, if stored like that, that database would be any spammers wet dream.
Okay, so you could eliminate the risk of "losing" the database with gazillions of valid email-adresses by not storing
user@domain host
But instead storing sha1sum(user@domain + host) that way you'd only be able to tell if a user is in the database or not, but you wouldn't be able to list all users in the db.
45W from an 11inch display is not, by a long shot, low-power. If that scales linearily with screen real-estate, then that is equivalent to 600W for a 40 inch (the current top-seller size), which is aproximately 3 times the power used by an average flat-screen TV of that size sold currently.
Yeah. That's the logical end-result. As the bar needed for C gets higher and higher, beating that bar by 15% to get B or 30% to get A will get harder and harder. I think that it'll become hard enough that the price-premium for A will cause people to start settling for B sooner than that though.
But yeah, you're rigth. Maths and physics guarantee we can't stay in the current situation, with the stores filled with 95% A and B products for ever.
We can for a while though, the average fridge changes relatively slowly since most people keep their fridges for like a decade or more.
I'm not nessecarily sure all the people really care all that much about the environment, truth be told.
It's more a case of, with a large choice of different fridges in the store, some marked with an "A", some with "B", and onwards down to "F", in large friendly letters, and general knowledge what this means. What are you gonna choose ? It's not as if a fridge rated "A" is in general very much more expensive than one rated "B" or "C". And the sligthly higher price is an easy sell for the salesmen -- first it gives people a warm fuzzy feeling to be "doing the rigth thing" when that can be done at no great expense or inconvenience, and secondly, it's easy for the salesman to (correctly) argue that the extra $100 to buy the thing will be more than made up for in lower electricity-bills.
So ?
That's just because there's no limit to the number of pages a web-encyclopedia can have. If you *removed* the M:TG pages, this wouldn't somehow magically make those pages on east-european weightlifters appear.
I agree it's a bad thing that some notable topics that aren't popular with techie types are under-covered. But I don't see a problem at all with "over-coverage" of trivialities that *are* popular with techie types. Who cares ? What is the *disadvantage* of having a page on every M:TG card ?
Yeah. But when the computer draws less than max from the power-supply, the power-supply will draw less than max from mains too.
There is no physical law saying that a supply capable of 550W, but actually delivering 200W needs to draw more power than a supply capable of 250W which is also actually delivering 200W.
What matters is not the max capacity.
What matters is the efficiency of the supply -- at the typical load.
Or a milde variant of the same: Giving a clear grade and mandate displaying the grade prominently.
Already the case in most of Europe if you buy a dishwasher, fridge, washer, drier or lots of other household-appliances.
There's a grade for energy-efficiency, where the average for that kind of appliance is a "C" whereas an appliance that uses 30% less than average would earn an A, and an appliance that wastes 30% more energy than average earns an "F".
The stuff has been a huge success -- to the point where appliances that don't rate atleast a "B" are just not marketable at all.
The standard gets stricter automatically: As more and more people buy the energy-efficient appliances, the *average* efficiency improves, so the energy-usage for a "C" gets adjusted accordingly.
Works like a charm.
Some appliances have more than one grade, they grade efficiency on more than one scale. A dishwasher may have a note on it saying:
Energy consumption: A
Water consumption: B
Wash effectiveness: A
Drying effectiveness: A
So, I don't see why a modern TV couldn't be sold with; "Energy consumption: A", "Standby consumption: B".
Ok, so that may be. Perhaps because it's obvious though. There are two ways of being confident. One is being it without really knowing what you're doing, which means deluding yourself or plain-out lying. That's a bad idea for several reasons, I guess if you want to do it, take up acting is the best advice.
The other though, is just plain knowing what you're doing. It's not hard at all being confident about something when you actually have a clue. This is the problem for some nerds; they aren't really used to flirting, so it's hard for them to do it confidently. How do you come across as if you know what you're doing, when infact you don't ?
It's not hard: Change the game. Play a game you know how to play, or if you don't think you know how to play any games that would appeal to girls, learn. It's something nerds are supposed to do well, rigth ?
Knowing how to repair computers is unlikely to help much. You may do it confidently, but it's not interesting to most people, female or not.
So, learn how to do something else well. Learn to take good photos (not snapshots!). Learn to dance well. Learn to cook well. None of these are hard in the sligthest, furthermore you don't need to know it *all*, only a part. You don't need to be a professional cook, but if you damn well know how to make a delicious lasagne, it's not hard to do so confidently. Girls that don't care for lasagne ain't worth having anyway *grin*.
If you really know how to do -nothing- that interests a particular girl, why the hell should she then be interested in you ? Girls are just as diverse as males so it doesn't much matter what you know, someone is likely to find it interesting regardless. It's just, there's a lot more girls that fancy a well-made romantic dinner than a smoothly-running computer.
For the simple reason that Windows is dominant.
You cannot abuse power that you do not have. A lot of actions that are perfectly legal for a normal company are unlawful if performed by someone in posession of market-dominance.
So, yes, I agree: Let's force the complete de-bundling of all operating-systems that have more than oh say 40% market-share.
AI actually has two problems, one is being clever. The other is modeling human limitations.
Sure, you want the AI to be clever in the ways that humans are clever. But you *also* want it to be weak in the ways that humans are.
It is trivially easy to aim and fire a perfect headshot in 0.05 seconds, but impossible for a human being. You want the opponents to have realistic limitations.
It is trivially easy for an AI to give detailed instructions simultaneously to 50 different troops. A human commander cannot (he can give the *same* order to all 50 at once, but he can't give 50 soldiers 50 different orders in 0.1 second)
Good AI should miss, should sometimes not notice somethint which it'd be possible to notice. Should sometimes miss more in high-stress situations because it is nervous. etc etc etc.
Granted adding these restrictions tend to be easier than making the AI clever in the first place. It still has to be done though.
There's unemployment-insurance in Norway too, but it's .... uhm ... 'different' from in the states.
First, everyone qualifies, aslong as they've been employed for more than 6 weeks before being fired.
Second, you can get it for up to 2 years, not 6 months.
Third, you always qualify if you're fired, *except* in the narrow exception where you're fired for a criminal activity for which you are convicted.
Fourth, you can lose it if you, for example, refuse to take a job offered (in that case you're 'picky' not 'unemployed') but even then on the first occurence it's 8 weeks without before it's reinstated. (if you repeat refusing jobs though, you'll be barred permanently)
Assuming you qualify the payments are aproximately 2/3rds of your average pay for the year prior to termination, with a cap around $6000/month (so even if you earned substantially more than this before getting fired, that won't qualify you for a higher insurance.)
Oh, and as to the size of our paychecks, I don't think "much smaller than most places" covers it.
USA: GDP PPP per capita: $44.100
Norway: GDP PPP per capita: $46.100
These are 2006 numbers, since then the difference has grown in our favour. Back then we where 5th in the world, currently we're 4th, only surpassed by Luxemburg, Bermuda and Jersey all of which have substantial populations of super-rich tax-refugees. In Norway that's not the case (infact probably the other way around: the average Norwegian earns *more* than indicated because some ultra-rich will have an official tax-refugee on somewhere like Jersey)
What is however true is that some stuff are more expensive here. Mostly this is stuff that is work-intensive, and the higher prices is a simple reflection of the fact that the minimum wage is a lot higher. The burger-flippers in Norway earn double what they do in USA, so it follows that the burgers cost more too.
So end-effect is that if you're *rich* in the USA, you're materially better off there than you would be in Norway. If you're average it's pretty comparable, if you're in a simple or unskilled work, you'll be a lot better off here. I don't think you easily get $20+/hour for flipping burgers in the USA, I could be mistaken.
That's an easy one !
Because of our hot blonde girls offcourse !
(Ok, so that's a joke, personally I went and married a german brunette that knocks the socks of any blonde I know)
Oh yeah, and the telephøne-system.
Really ? Where in Europe would that be then ? And can you show any correlation between worker-protection and reluctance to hiring ?
Norway has among the strictest worker-protection laws in existance. At the same time we've got the lowest unemployment in Europe, as far as I know anyway. Currently at something like 1.8% and falling.
Half of those people are in reality unable to work more than unemployed, and most of the other half is between-jobs, real long-term (6month+) unemployment among people who are really interested and able to work is essentially zero.
I also don't agree that it's anything like marrying after first date. It's common to be on probation for 3 months, though the legal maximum is 6 months. In that period your employer can fire you with 2 weeks notice, without even having to state a reason. (if he is stupid enough to state one anyway though, it must be a valid one) I don't see the big problem there.
Hiring someone who has worked full-time for you for half a year is hardly like "after first date".
That'd be illegal termination then.
Sure, you can legally fire workers for any number of reasons, including not being able to finance their pay anymore.
Being unwilling to accept not being paid what was agreed is however *not* a valid reason. Sure, he can say we need to cut paychecks in half, starting 3 months from now (3 months notice is normal, though if you've worked for a short period for that employer it can be shorter), and anyone who can't live with that needs to quit. But that's a quite different thing, it still leaves you 3 months at your current pay-level to search for a new job, for example.
But demanding that you give up pay already earned in exchange for keeping your job (for one more month anyway) amounts to blackmail -- that money is legally *yours* already, you already *did* that work, so you kept your part of the deal. Now it's time for the company to keep their part of the deal -- namely to pay you what was agreed upon.
Nope. You got that wrong, plain and simple.
The highest possible tax-rate is something around 45%, the average tax-rate is comparable to American. It's sort of hard to compare, because if you compare "tax" to "tax" it'll appear to be higher here, but that is because we include medical insurance, age-pension, and similar in tax, whereas in USA medical and other stuff like that is paid for separately from your tax as such.
What matters though, is what portion of the amount that your employer pays do you actually get.
Our tax-system *is* more progressive than yours. Which means that poor people pay substantially *less* taxes than in the USA whereas rich people pay more. Personally I find that fair, despite being among the richer ones, but that's in any case a different debate.
Dunno about USA, I'm guessing worker-protection laws are lax ?
In Norway there's no particular reason not to work for a company that is in danger of collapsing. There is mandatory insurance for outstanding pay for everyone that is not part of management for a period of up to 3 months.
There is also an exception from normal bankruptcy law for nonpaid wages. Normally if you file to have a company bankrupted, there's an associated fee. That is to discourage annoyance-filings and bankruptcies over details (they owe us $120, it's two days past due, let's file for their bankruptcy to get their attention kind of thinking), if you're owed wages though, the fee is waived.
So, in effect, if your paycheck is 1 day late, you can file for having the employer liquidated. You can do so at -zero- cost to yourself, and unpaid wages are priority one in the assets, paid before debts etc.
And even if there is nothing of value in the company, so the company won't be able to cover the debts, the insurance kicks in, you're guaranteed pay -- aslong as you didn't let the late paycheck slide for more than 3 months. In other words, when your *third* paycheck is late, it's time to get active, or accept the risk you'll never see that money.
If the company neglected to pay for wage-insurance, you *still* get the money, the only difference, from your POV is that in this case the officers of the company gets criminal charges slapped additionally.
Quite simply, no.
The S in SMP is symetry as in "several identical" parts anyway, not as in "a power of two".
A star with 5 equal arms, equally spaced, is perfectly symetrical.
True, if the encryption/signing is implemented correctly, there's little hope that it'll be cracked anytime soon.
But there's another avenue for attack. Given that a wii-game is capable of creating, verifying and signing its own savefiles, this means that the encryption-keys are also stored either in the wii-console or in the game-software.
So, it's just a matter of extracting them.
Once you know *both* the method of encryption and signing, *AND* are in posession of the relevant keys, the rest really is a walk in the park.
Commodity hardware ain't terribly good at hiding encryption-keys from the owners of the hardware which can take it all apart, insert logic-probes and generally mess around with the hardware at will.