That is exactly my point when I say the extra $400 are gotten from the dummies fraudulently. The "go-with-the-flow" folk just sign up with AT&T and live happily forever after, exactly like the "go-with-the-flow" folk buys the $1.90 package that is more expensive than the $2 package. The definition of "product makeup" is: "making the consumer pay more for something that has less value, fraudulently, by (a) making it believe that it is really paying less or (b) making it believe that the price is really one when it ends up being other". The script for Apple employees even includes saying that it's "illegal" to unlock your iPhone (so you have no other "legal" option but use AT&T). But the ads and Apple website don't say "iPhone for a total of $2000, $400 upfront and $50/month for two years" -- it says "iPhone for $400". And lots of consumers (the homo medium AKA Joe Sikspak) fall for it, configuring the fraud.
OT: I hated the policy of stating prices w/o taxes: in Florida, my iPhone costed $440 or so... down here, the prices must include all taxes in advertising.
Not really. If you talk with a lot of "pirates" honestly (that is, not when they're in panic mode trying to justify themselves), what you'll hear (sometimes in nicer words) is "Anyone would be a retard to buy something they can get for free". The main difference, is when you see someone with 250 PS2 games. Well, obviously they wouldn't have bought that many...but its fairly safe to expect they would have been somewhere around the usual attach rate of the console if they hadn't. Like I said. Someone who pirated 20 games wouldn't have bought 20 games. You need to compute the ratio and make estimations. "Hey, which DS games do you have?" "Oh, too many to count, I use an R4. Used to buy douzans of games, but then I discovered R4s!". Thats just an example of a recent conversation I had with someone...and the guy is single, no car, with an income in the 6 digits. And thats fairly common (though an extreme case). It seems to me that you know a lot of dishonest people, period.
I live in an underdeveloped country. Minimum wage here is $200/month. What I can say to you is, about the people that buy "pirated" stuff here:
1. People that buy a PS2 here (yes, not a PS3) wouldn't buy the console if they had not access to pirate games. They could not affort the price console+games.
corollaries to 1: they wouldn't buy the non-pirated games, nor they would buy the console.
2. People I know that buy pirated movies, in general, pay the $2.50 for the pirate version because: (a) they can't pay the $20 for the original version and (b) they can't pay the $10/person it costs to go to a theatre and (c) then don't think it's worth to pay the $1 it costs to rent the movie if for $2.50 they can have it to watch whenever they want.
corollaries to 2: they wouldn't buy the movie; they _might_ rent 2.5 times less movies, for a total loss of sales of ( 1 / 2.5 ) / 500 =.0008 movies/"pirate" (the person would have 2.5 times less money to rent the movie, each copy of the movie serves 500 people in the rental shop -- YMMV, but my video-club has 500 people and many movies have just one copy)
3. People I know that use pirated computer programs could not afford them at all, at best they would use OSS/FS or bundled-with-the-computer software.
4. People I know that buy "rip-off/fake" branded merchandise (adidas, DG, Nike, etc) cannot afford the "real thing".
Every person I know that can afford buying CDs, DVDs, console games, etc BUYS them (including myself -- owner of a PSP and 4 games) (and there is a less-than-pure-honesty social explanation, too... it's a status symbol here to have the "originals" and not the "fakes")....
Apple employees in Apple stores say to you when you buy an iPhone (at least, they said it to me): "You HAVE to activate the iPhone with a 2-year contract with AT&T".
That is the name we give here to fraudulently making the consumer think the product is cheaper (or has a greater value) than it's being paid. One example is making a package that has 180g of cookies (and sell it for, say, $1.90) at the same size of the package that has 200g ($2.00). The consumer is tricked to buy the "cheaper" package because (s)he evaluates only the general size of the packages and the price, without seeing that the other one is actually 5% cheaper.
That is what Apple is doing with the iPhone: dummies buy the iPhone, activate it with AT&T and spend $800 in a product that Apple advertises as costing $400.
They can't have their cake and eat it, too. Scenario A:
* Comcast does not look at what I'm doing, so if I'm doing something wrong they did not see it. Scenario B:
* Comcast looks at what I'm doing, so if I'm doing something wrong they are _assumed_ to know what I did.
(of which I am proud owner) That if everyone waits for the $400, 10-inch, 64GB-flash model, Asus will drop the product line... and there will be none.
Re:So when do we get its successor?
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I used to be involved with Berlin. Berlin was re-renamed back to Fresco and has been dead since 2003/2004. So is the Y Window System (that also produced some beautiful alpha-stage things). But the code is out there:-)
Re:So when do we get its successor?
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Even porting only Qt4 (so your new operating environment could run KDE4.0 apps but not Gnome apps) would take a whole team of programmers some years. That said, Y and Berlin _do_ exist, and are very pretty... why don't take a shot at it?
Pointing out data is not trolling, it is just facts. Right now, there is no free lunch with energy, if you are discussing trapped heat. If you add excess heat-from any source at all, including nuclear, plus "trap" it more, you will get global warming to a larger degree than what would have been normal without any anthropocentric additions. Uranium in the ground gradually decays and gives off the heat, that isn't the issue really, the issue is the rapidity by which the heat is released and then trapped compared to normal human society evolution. Natural decay=zillions of years, whereas inside a fission reactor than down to the consumer = a few years = rapid rise in global temps if done on a huge scale. And it scales quite literally, one for one. Nuclear fission power is an anthropocentric addition to global warming. that huge amount of heat is *released*, that's all a reactor does is get "hot", we use turbines to make electricity and transfer that energy around, but it all gets back to just transferring the heat around. Just reality. Same with burning biomatter, whether dug up out of the ground, pumped out, or grown on the surface. The biological stuff on the surface though is a lot closer-not perfect but a lot closer- to being neutral in heat addition and the "trapping" effect with the gases compared to coal or oil or nuclear fission plants. Solar thermal is probably about the same level as purposefully grown biofuels.
I repeat, no free lunch, and a massive addition of hundreds or thousands more nuke plants around the world will, without any doubt whatsoever, add to global warming in a significant degree, unless one suspends the laws of thermodynamics somehow, which I don't think is all that possible. And the faster it happens, the faster the warming happens, the less chance humans have of adapting to it in a non chaotic or socially destructive way. I have never seen such idiotic moderation in all my life. You are completely correct: human society un-traps chemical/nuclear energy currently stored in biofuels/nukefuels, transforms it into electricity, then into heat, that goes into the atmosphere... it's quite simple, especially if our atmosphere is _already_ full of greenhouse-effect gases, so the heat we release _stays_ in the atmosphere instead of dissipating into space.
The class of people that has (like me...) x | x < 50kUSD in stock-bound money and take _no_ part in the decision-making in a stance like this is _very_ different from the class of people that take part in said decision-making (and typically has x | x > 10MUSD in stock-bound money).
(meaning no insult at all, loved your phrase)
I think Jobs and Gates are about equally evil; the big difference is that Jobs packages it better and that Gates is more successful. Jobs and Gates are about equally evil, the difference being that Jobs packages it better and Gates sells more of it.
Depends on the operating system. With some UNIX flavours (HURD being the notable exception) there is a hard limit to the length of parameters you can pass to a process. This is imposed by the kernel, not the shell. In your example, xargs would hit this limit. Nope. 'xargs' breaks the input in pieces manageable by the command-line.
1. Actually, I never used a pro installation of any unix-like OS that didn't have perl (5.001 at least) installed.
2. No it didn't. Actually, yes, it did... until Audrey Tang came with Pugs, revitalized the whole discussion, and now it's really going (actually, this announcement is telling something like "yes! it's moving! and not just in Haskell anymore!")
3. Yes and no. Actually, the idea of perl6 is: if you want glue, use perl6 (more Huffman-encoded than ever [things you do more often are smaller]) and if you want cement, also you _can_ (but nobody forces you to) use perl6.
4. About Python: I actually have more difficulty reading the verboseness of some python system than reading the terseness of some perl programs. I find that, to me (and I don't force anyone to agree), smaller == easier to understand as a whole.
I'm a tree-hugging, religion-hating, free software-supporting atheist, but the reason why I don't use Perl is not that Larry Wall is a Christian. It's that I want to keep my sanity. Well, as you are: 1. Hugging trees; 2. Hating people that think differently than you; and 3. Disregarding that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, I would say it's too late for that.
DISCLAIMERS: a) I'm an agnostic. My will is strong: I refuse to have blind faith in the existence of a deity, but I also refuse to have blind faith in its non-existence; b) I'm a Perl programmer; c) This post was meant to be funny. Please, laugh. Or not.
Actually,/.ers (nerds in general) don't run from women. They get paralyzed and aphasic or disphasic (sometimes they drool, too). Yeah, I was a hardcore nerd type 'till I got a girlfriend at the age of 15. Then I went into softcore-nerd-with-girlfriend, then class-clown in college, heavy-drinker during my undergrad, then a short ladies-man phase, followed by my marriage and now in the shut-up-kids-and-let-pop-post-at-slashdot phase (posted this in my jammies):-)
(at least for some of them) That is the problem: if you put springs on your shoes, you will run faster, but you will bust your knees faster too. This guy apparently has mechanical knees -- which can be easily user-serviced in case of wear and tear. I would like to see someone trying to do a meniscectomy to itself.
I've been working in development for more then 20 years now (since I was 17 -- and I am going 38 this year) and I never, ever, found anyone in the trade that can be considered "sane" by any, less strict possible, definition.
1. there are 49 Democrat U. S. Senators, 49 Republican, 1 Independent/Democrat (WTF is that?) and 1 Independent [both independents caucuses with Democrats, whatever the F that means]. 2. there are 232 Democrat U. S. Representatives, 199 Republican, and 4 seats on the USHoR are vacated.
So, no, there are only effectively two parties in the USofA.
Using the Brasilian example my fellow countryman morcego brought us, in our House of Representatives equivalent (Câmara dos Deputados), we do have 509 representatives thus divided: PMDB = 91, PT = 82, DEM = 60, PSDB = 61, PP = 42, PTB = 20, PR = 35, PSB = 28, PDT = 23, PPS = 16, PCdoB = 13, PV = 13, PSC = 7, PAN = 5, PMN = 5, PTC = 3, PHS = 3, PTdoB = 1, PRB = 1, for a total of eighteen effective parties.
Disclaimer: I have an 8yo boy (L) and a 2yo girl (R) and I consider myself a nice parent.
That said, if I tell L (for whatever reason) that his computer privileges are suspended by one week, I am quite sure he will refrain from using any of the five computers we have at home, and that he will not use it at school or at some friend's house (only other place he goes besides school and extracurricular activities). That is because we do have a relationship of trust that _both_ of us treasure, and I intend to keep it that way.
Even so, sometimes I overlook what he is doing -- via proxy logs, packet sniffing or any other means I think will be effective -- as a way to help him keeping himself out of trouble (altough he has a good notion of internet survival -- not entering home address at websites and stuff like that) and as a way to detect any intervention-needing situation (the "Talk" about flowers and birds, for instance...) And he _knows_ I do that. It's not a secret. I explained to him in no uncertain terms that it is for his protection.
if the Milky Way is the 18-wheeler, the gas cloud is the baby, our solar system can be a (still alive) bug in the windshield. That is to say, if the baby hits the windshield in the right place, our descendents can be in for a big "splat".
Slashdot Mirror
That is exactly my point when I say the extra $400 are gotten from the dummies fraudulently. The "go-with-the-flow" folk just sign up with AT&T and live happily forever after, exactly like the "go-with-the-flow" folk buys the $1.90 package that is more expensive than the $2 package. The definition of "product makeup" is: "making the consumer pay more for something that has less value, fraudulently, by (a) making it believe that it is really paying less or (b) making it believe that the price is really one when it ends up being other". The script for Apple employees even includes saying that it's "illegal" to unlock your iPhone (so you have no other "legal" option but use AT&T). But the ads and Apple website don't say "iPhone for a total of $2000, $400 upfront and $50/month for two years" -- it says "iPhone for $400". And lots of consumers (the homo medium AKA Joe Sikspak) fall for it, configuring the fraud.
OT: I hated the policy of stating prices w/o taxes: in Florida, my iPhone costed $440 or so... down here, the prices must include all taxes in advertising.
I live in an underdeveloped country. Minimum wage here is $200/month. What I can say to you is, about the people that buy "pirated" stuff here:
1. People that buy a PS2 here (yes, not a PS3) wouldn't buy the console if they had not access to pirate games. They could not affort the price console+games.
corollaries to 1: they wouldn't buy the non-pirated games, nor they would buy the console.
2. People I know that buy pirated movies, in general, pay the $2.50 for the pirate version because: (a) they can't pay the $20 for the original version and (b) they can't pay the $10/person it costs to go to a theatre and (c) then don't think it's worth to pay the $1 it costs to rent the movie if for $2.50 they can have it to watch whenever they want.
corollaries to 2: they wouldn't buy the movie; they _might_ rent 2.5 times less movies, for a total loss of sales of ( 1 / 2.5 ) / 500 =
3. People I know that use pirated computer programs could not afford them at all, at best they would use OSS/FS or bundled-with-the-computer software.
4. People I know that buy "rip-off/fake" branded merchandise (adidas, DG, Nike, etc) cannot afford the "real thing".
Every person I know that can afford buying CDs, DVDs, console games, etc BUYS them (including myself -- owner of a PSP and 4 games) (and there is a less-than-pure-honesty social explanation, too... it's a status symbol here to have the "originals" and not the "fakes")....
the Lisa as "pre-Mac"... I consider it to be the "alpha-quality Mac"...
Apple employees in Apple stores say to you when you buy an iPhone (at least, they said it to me): "You HAVE to activate the iPhone with a 2-year contract with AT&T".
That is the name we give here to fraudulently making the consumer think the product is cheaper (or has a greater value) than it's being paid. One example is making a package that has 180g of cookies (and sell it for, say, $1.90) at the same size of the package that has 200g ($2.00). The consumer is tricked to buy the "cheaper" package because (s)he evaluates only the general size of the packages and the price, without seeing that the other one is actually 5% cheaper.
That is what Apple is doing with the iPhone: dummies buy the iPhone, activate it with AT&T and spend $800 in a product that Apple advertises as costing $400.
Vide the Apple I, ][, ///, ...
It's post-Mac that Apple culture became locked-down.
they want that Googlebot etc don't copy and resize and cache their copyrighted smut.
They can't have their cake and eat it, too.
Scenario A:
* Comcast does not look at what I'm doing, so if I'm doing something wrong they did not see it.
Scenario B:
* Comcast looks at what I'm doing, so if I'm doing something wrong they are _assumed_ to know what I did.
If it's an iPod with Linux installed, it will play music off an ext2 filesystem...
(of which I am proud owner)
That if everyone waits for the $400, 10-inch, 64GB-flash model, Asus will drop the product line... and there will be none.
But the code is out there
Even porting only Qt4 (so your new operating environment could run KDE4.0 apps but not Gnome apps) would take a whole team of programmers some years.
That said, Y and Berlin _do_ exist, and are very pretty... why don't take a shot at it?
I repeat, no free lunch, and a massive addition of hundreds or thousands more nuke plants around the world will, without any doubt whatsoever, add to global warming in a significant degree, unless one suspends the laws of thermodynamics somehow, which I don't think is all that possible. And the faster it happens, the faster the warming happens, the less chance humans have of adapting to it in a non chaotic or socially destructive way. I have never seen such idiotic moderation in all my life.
You are completely correct: human society un-traps chemical/nuclear energy currently stored in biofuels/nukefuels, transforms it into electricity, then into heat, that goes into the atmosphere... it's quite simple, especially if our atmosphere is _already_ full of greenhouse-effect gases, so the heat we release _stays_ in the atmosphere instead of dissipating into space.
The class of people that has (like me ...) x | x < 50kUSD in stock-bound money and take _no_ part in the decision-making in a stance like this is _very_ different from the class of people that take part in said decision-making (and typically has x | x > 10MUSD in stock-bound money).
1. Actually, I never used a pro installation of any unix-like OS that didn't have perl (5.001 at least) installed.
2. No it didn't. Actually, yes, it did... until Audrey Tang came with Pugs, revitalized the whole discussion, and now it's really going (actually, this announcement is telling something like "yes! it's moving! and not just in Haskell anymore!")
3. Yes and no. Actually, the idea of perl6 is: if you want glue, use perl6 (more Huffman-encoded than ever [things you do more often are smaller]) and if you want cement, also you _can_ (but nobody forces you to) use perl6.
4. About Python: I actually have more difficulty reading the verboseness of some python system than reading the terseness of some perl programs. I find that, to me (and I don't force anyone to agree), smaller == easier to understand as a whole.
1. Hugging trees;
2. Hating people that think differently than you; and
3. Disregarding that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,
I would say it's too late for that.
DISCLAIMERS:
a) I'm an agnostic. My will is strong: I refuse to have blind faith in the existence of a deity, but I also refuse to have blind faith in its non-existence;
b) I'm a Perl programmer;
c) This post was meant to be funny. Please, laugh. Or not.
Actually, /.ers (nerds in general) don't run from women. They get paralyzed and aphasic or disphasic (sometimes they drool, too). :-)
Yeah, I was a hardcore nerd type 'till I got a girlfriend at the age of 15. Then I went into softcore-nerd-with-girlfriend, then class-clown in college, heavy-drinker during my undergrad, then a short ladies-man phase, followed by my marriage and now in the shut-up-kids-and-let-pop-post-at-slashdot phase (posted this in my jammies)
(at least for some of them)
That is the problem: if you put springs on your shoes, you will run faster, but you will bust your knees faster too. This guy apparently has mechanical knees -- which can be easily user-serviced in case of wear and tear. I would like to see someone trying to do a meniscectomy to itself.
It's LinuxBios
I've been working in development for more then 20 years now (since I was 17 -- and I am going 38 this year) and I never, ever, found anyone in the trade that can be considered "sane" by any, less strict possible, definition.
1. there are 49 Democrat U. S. Senators, 49 Republican, 1 Independent/Democrat (WTF is that?) and 1 Independent [both independents caucuses with Democrats, whatever the F that means].
2. there are 232 Democrat U. S. Representatives, 199 Republican, and 4 seats on the USHoR are vacated.
So, no, there are only effectively two parties in the USofA.
Using the Brasilian example my fellow countryman morcego brought us, in our House of Representatives equivalent (Câmara dos Deputados), we do have 509 representatives thus divided: PMDB = 91, PT = 82, DEM = 60, PSDB = 61, PP = 42, PTB = 20, PR = 35, PSB = 28, PDT = 23, PPS = 16, PCdoB = 13, PV = 13, PSC = 7, PAN = 5, PMN = 5, PTC = 3, PHS = 3, PTdoB = 1, PRB = 1, for a total of eighteen effective parties.
Disclaimer: I have an 8yo boy (L) and a 2yo girl (R) and I consider myself a nice parent.
That said, if I tell L (for whatever reason) that his computer privileges are suspended by one week, I am quite sure he will refrain from using any of the five computers we have at home, and that he will not use it at school or at some friend's house (only other place he goes besides school and extracurricular activities). That is because we do have a relationship of trust that _both_ of us treasure, and I intend to keep it that way.
Even so, sometimes I overlook what he is doing -- via proxy logs, packet sniffing or any other means I think will be effective -- as a way to help him keeping himself out of trouble (altough he has a good notion of internet survival -- not entering home address at websites and stuff like that) and as a way to detect any intervention-needing situation (the "Talk" about flowers and birds, for instance...) And he _knows_ I do that. It's not a secret. I explained to him in no uncertain terms that it is for his protection.
if the Milky Way is the 18-wheeler, the gas cloud is the baby, our solar system can be a (still alive) bug in the windshield. That is to say, if the baby hits the windshield in the right place, our descendents can be in for a big "splat".