> No word yet on whether he's consulting with George Lucas on how to > totally destroy the origin and essence of a classic story.
Yes, because, as everyone who has taken a high-school level literature class knows, it goes Homer's Odyssey -> Beowulf -> Romeo and Juliet -> War and Peace -> TMNT. All true classics with which ought not be fucked.*
Bay is right. Fans need to chill. The rights-holders sold him the rights and he is free to do with them as he pleases. Considering that for 99% of people, their first exposure was the crappy '80s weekday-afternoon cartoon and not the comic (which was originally meant to be a parody in the first place) this really isn't that big of a deal.
The good news is, Vanilla Ice is back in show biz these days so maybe they can get him for this installment too.
* personally I'd stick Robocop in there too but I'm not trying to piss anyone off here.
> I confess to buying a couple of copies of Encarta, > looking through them and seeing that they were okay
Wow, you paid for it and used it? At the other end of the spectrum, I have a few copies that came with various PCs or Office or something, and they're all still in their original shrink-wrap.
> I was in Chili's a couple of nights ago and was waiting on my > girlfriend to show up when inspiration struck... In about 10 > minutes, I had made the changes to my source code, compiled > the app and tested it right there at the table.
What did you do for the remaining 80 minutes it took her to show up?;-)
If Server A has 90% uptime and Server B has 99% uptime, that does not mean that Server B is up 10x more than Server A, even though Server A is down 10x more than Server B. In fact, Server B is only 10% better than Server A. Or, 1/10 as bad.*
So, while the old clock may drift 100x more than this new one in a certain amount of time, or this new one might last 100x longer before drifting a certain amount (or whatever--the.au article is total puff and I don't care enough to look at the source), it is almost certainly not 100x more accurate. At best, it's 1/100th as inaccurate.
* The difference between 36 days of downtime per year versus 4 days might be the difference between "useful" and "completely worthless", making Server B 100x better, but that's not what we're measuring here.
Pi will always be around because it relates to the diameter, which is easily measurable by actual humans in actual circumstances.
If there's a big circle on the floor, you can measure the diameter with a tape measure and one other person: stand on opposite sides of the circle, one end of the tape stays in one spot, and the other end gets moved back and forth until its length is as long as possible. The widest part of the circle == the diameter.
You can determine "the widest part of the circle" with simple physical measurements. Measuring the radius only requires a way to accurately determine where the center is, which is a non-trivial exercise. (Compared to the above.) Or you could measure the diameter and then divide by 2, but "measure the diameter" will always be one less step than "determine the radius."
> Surprisingly, the headline is more accurate than the story.
More accurate than the submission, you mean. TFA (I'm new here) actually addresses that point:
This type of compromising attempts are called 'Social Engineering' and has nothing to do with 'hacking' or 'espionage', a SHAPE spokesperson said in a statement.
During this time, [Steve] Jobs experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life."
I just got back from a trip to SF and noticed signs in the airport that said something totally vague, like "Some stuff here may cause cancer." Um, what stuff? How bad is the risk? Should I leave? Will I be exposed by breathing the air or touching surfaces? Would wearing shoes and gloves protect me? Should I be wearing Nomex, Kevlar, or a biohazard suit? Gas mask? Where else should I go? Should I assume that anywhere without those signs is 100% safe? What if I was in a cancer-causing area and some jackass took the signs down? Then I'd be screwed, right?
... when copyrights expired in a reasonable amount of time, the public domain existed, it was legal to do this kind of stuff after a film had been out for few years?
Like I said, it's a common thing (I've done it and I've seen many other people do it) to be sitting with a kid in your lap, and it's nice to capture a decent-quality still when you can see yourselves in the viewfinder (aka "the screen") rather than turning it around and hoping for the best.
And as for the name--there was never an "iMac 2." The names are going iPad, iPad 2, iPad... again. What will the next be--iPad 2^2? 3? 4?
It is NOT the iPad 3. It is simply "The new iPad" I guess, eventually, it'll be just "the iPad", which is still weird: iPad, iPad 2... iPad again. So, what will the next be--"iPad 2" again? 2^2? 3? 4?
This is exactly what everyone predicted, and I'm fine with that. I'm just a hair disappointed that the front camera is still VGA. Even if FaceTime is bandwidth-limited or someting, it'd be nice to take pictures of, say, yourself and your kids in greater than 0.3MP.
Oh, and the name--iPad, iPad 2, The new iPad.:-( Reminds me of my file versioning system: index.html, index-old.html, index-new.html, index-newer.html, index-newest.html, index-final.html, index-absolutely-final.html, index-final-i-swear-to-god-i-mean-it-this-time.html...
I will say, as nicely as possible, that I'm pretty sure you're still wrong.
> However, there is an expense in maintaining retail space in the middle of a city.
OK, so they won't need retail space, but they'll still need a lot of square footage to store all the food. And they need to be somewhat near their customers, no matter what, because the further away they are, the more they'll have to drive.
> There is an expense to issuing mail coupons.
So, instead of having a coupon for $2 off a $10 item, you'd rather pay $10 and get "free" delivery? Advertising will always be needed, and with advertising will come coupons.
> There is an expense to having check out baggers in the store.
Guess what? The boxes with every single individual order will still need to be packed, until we get to the point where robots can move and pack tomatoes, eggs, and bread without crushing them.
> There is an expense to having the managers.
Those box-packers will need managers.
> there is an expense to send trucks to the store and unload goods.
How do you think all the food will get to the individual distribution centers in the first place? Costs will go down some if there are more warehouse-type things and fewer stores, but still--those are bulk deliveries to a handful of end nodes, compared to tens of thousands of residential deliveries.
> I am hoping that by eliminating all of that there is enough savings to pay > for the cost of having a truck deliver to the door directly.
Doubtful, for the reasons described above.
The reason Amazon can swallow the cost of shipping on $25+ orders is because UPS already has a huge infrastructure in place and because they're shipping non-perishable items. A book or a hard drive can safely sit on your doorstep in the sun for an afternoon. A box of fruits, vegetables, bread, meat, milk, and ice cream? Not so much.
Plus food delivery has other downsides. Either a) they need to have boxes with ice packs in them (adding expense) or b) they have to deliver at a time when someone is home. So guess what? 80% of customers will want their food around 6-8pm during the week. Which leads to this: you can either hit the store on your way home and unpack as soon as you walk in the door, then go on about your evening, or you can come home from work and kind of idle for an hour or two, not getting into anything too intensive, because at any moment you'll need to hop up and start putting your food away.
I'm not saying there's no chance that food delivery can be made to work, and that no one would want it... but it's extremely unlikely to happen now at a price people are willing to pay. Even if some problems get solved, new problems will be introduced. If you want today's prices and free delivery, than just plain ain't gonna happen.
I figure that, for any field, 1% of people are just into it for the sake of doing it, 9% are willing to learn it to achieve a result and/or are naturally talented, and 90% just don't care. I'm willing to bet that the author isn't that into cooking or the mechanical condition of his car or music or politics. And every six months, someone in this 1% posts to Slashdot because they're worried that not enough young kids are into programming or engineering or whatever.
Take food, for example. Some people are really into it, and love learning about and working with all the subtle interactions that happen when you mix different ingredients--"optimizing" the experience, in programmer parlance. A few more care enough about food to put some effort into what they cook because they want to have a meal that's healthy and/or delicious. And most don't care--they're happy enough to eat whatever fills the void and tastes decent.
As a kid, I learned some programming and had something of a knack for it, but I just didn't care enough to pursue it. Later in life, the Web came along, and all of a sudden there were a lot of (to me) interesting things that could be done with computers so I got into it. I'm not interested in creating an algorithm to find square roots faster but I have written my own little things to pull info from Amazon and IMDB for my book and movie collections.
It's good that everyone has different skills and desires because most programmers, as smart as they think they are, a only so-so writers and horrible designers.:-)
> At the end of the week, I know if you're getting the job done. > I don't care how or when you're getting it done, so long as > you're getting it done.
But... if you're getting all your work done in 20 hours, you could be doing twice as much in 40!
Why call it "cord cutting" when all you're doing is trading one cord (and, in many cases, one set of fees) for another?
Bonus question: how long do you think content providers will let you get shows "for free" (or cheap) before raising rates elsewhere to make up the difference?
... it's really a clever hack. ("Hack" as in "clever workaround", not "ZOMGbreaking and entering!!!11") RTFA (not paywalled at the moment) and click on the infographic to see what they did.
Slashdot Mirror
> No word yet on whether he's consulting with George Lucas on how to
> totally destroy the origin and essence of a classic story.
Yes, because, as everyone who has taken a high-school level literature class knows, it goes Homer's Odyssey -> Beowulf -> Romeo and Juliet -> War and Peace -> TMNT. All true classics with which ought not be fucked.*
Bay is right. Fans need to chill. The rights-holders sold him the rights and he is free to do with them as he pleases. Considering that for 99% of people, their first exposure was the crappy '80s weekday-afternoon cartoon and not the comic (which was originally meant to be a parody in the first place) this really isn't that big of a deal.
The good news is, Vanilla Ice is back in show biz these days so maybe they can get him for this installment too.
* personally I'd stick Robocop in there too but I'm not trying to piss anyone off here.
My main problem with the iPad is it doesn't automatically close HTML tags and it hides the 'Preview' button on Slashdot. ;-)
Elsevier sold Harcourt about 5 years ago.
OMG! Now we know who "Anonymous Coward" is on Slashdot! It's Dan Bricklin! Man, he sure posts a lot...
(Sorry, Mr. Bricklin, but I couldn't resist the joke. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance.)
> I confess to buying a couple of copies of Encarta,
> looking through them and seeing that they were okay
Wow, you paid for it and used it? At the other end of the spectrum, I have a few copies that came with various PCs or Office or something, and they're all still in their original shrink-wrap.
> Why would you have anything but a clear conscience in
> downloading a movie you've already purchased?
I wouldn't, but the **AA might, and they have more money for lawyers and the law (bad as it is) on their side.
> I was in Chili's a couple of nights ago and was waiting on my
> girlfriend to show up when inspiration struck... In about 10
> minutes, I had made the changes to my source code, compiled
> the app and tested it right there at the table.
What did you do for the remaining 80 minutes it took her to show up? ;-)
Students, mathematicians, engineers, etc., are free to do as they wish--but don't expect tau to gain traction among the general population.
If Server A has 90% uptime and Server B has 99% uptime, that does not mean that Server B is up 10x more than Server A, even though Server A is down 10x more than Server B. In fact, Server B is only 10% better than Server A. Or, 1/10 as bad.*
So, while the old clock may drift 100x more than this new one in a certain amount of time, or this new one might last 100x longer before drifting a certain amount (or whatever--the .au article is total puff and I don't care enough to look at the source), it is almost certainly not 100x more accurate. At best, it's 1/100th as inaccurate.
* The difference between 36 days of downtime per year versus 4 days might be the difference between "useful" and "completely worthless", making Server B 100x better, but that's not what we're measuring here.
Pi will always be around because it relates to the diameter, which is easily measurable by actual humans in actual circumstances.
If there's a big circle on the floor, you can measure the diameter with a tape measure and one other person: stand on opposite sides of the circle, one end of the tape stays in one spot, and the other end gets moved back and forth until its length is as long as possible. The widest part of the circle == the diameter.
You can determine "the widest part of the circle" with simple physical measurements. Measuring the radius only requires a way to accurately determine where the center is, which is a non-trivial exercise. (Compared to the above.) Or you could measure the diameter and then divide by 2, but "measure the diameter" will always be one less step than "determine the radius."
> Surprisingly, the headline is more accurate than the story.
More accurate than the submission, you mean. TFA (I'm new here) actually addresses that point:
This type of compromising attempts are called 'Social Engineering' and has nothing to do with 'hacking' or 'espionage', a SHAPE spokesperson said in a statement.
Nice, it's not often I get to bust out this old gem:
User: What do I do with this attachment?
Admin: You uudecode it.
User: I I I decode it?
During this time, [Steve] Jobs experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
I just got back from a trip to SF and noticed signs in the airport that said something totally vague, like "Some stuff here may cause cancer." Um, what stuff? How bad is the risk? Should I leave? Will I be exposed by breathing the air or touching surfaces? Would wearing shoes and gloves protect me? Should I be wearing Nomex, Kevlar, or a biohazard suit? Gas mask? Where else should I go? Should I assume that anywhere without those signs is 100% safe? What if I was in a cancer-causing area and some jackass took the signs down? Then I'd be screwed, right?
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
... when copyrights expired in a reasonable amount of time, the public domain existed, it was legal to do this kind of stuff after a film had been out for few years?
Me either, but I gather it was pretty cool.
Die Hard 2 was not a documentary. Every pistol Glock makes has about a POUND of metal, not counting ammo.
Like I said, it's a common thing (I've done it and I've seen many other people do it) to be sitting with a kid in your lap, and it's nice to capture a decent-quality still when you can see yourselves in the viewfinder (aka "the screen") rather than turning it around and hoping for the best.
And as for the name--there was never an "iMac 2." The names are going iPad, iPad 2, iPad... again. What will the next be--iPad 2^2? 3? 4?
It is NOT the iPad 3. It is simply "The new iPad" I guess, eventually, it'll be just "the iPad", which is still weird: iPad, iPad 2... iPad again. So, what will the next be--"iPad 2" again? 2^2? 3? 4?
So they have a patent on "syncing one particular type of data"?
This is exactly what everyone predicted, and I'm fine with that. I'm just a hair disappointed that the front camera is still VGA. Even if FaceTime is bandwidth-limited or someting, it'd be nice to take pictures of, say, yourself and your kids in greater than 0.3MP.
Oh, and the name--iPad, iPad 2, The new iPad. :-( Reminds me of my file versioning system: index.html, index-old.html, index-new.html, index-newer.html, index-newest.html, index-final.html, index-absolutely-final.html, index-final-i-swear-to-god-i-mean-it-this-time.html...
I will say, as nicely as possible, that I'm pretty sure you're still wrong.
> However, there is an expense in maintaining retail space in the middle of a city.
OK, so they won't need retail space, but they'll still need a lot of square footage to store all the food. And they need to be somewhat near their customers, no matter what, because the further away they are, the more they'll have to drive.
> There is an expense to issuing mail coupons.
So, instead of having a coupon for $2 off a $10 item, you'd rather pay $10 and get "free" delivery? Advertising will always be needed, and with advertising will come coupons.
> There is an expense to having check out baggers in the store.
Guess what? The boxes with every single individual order will still need to be packed, until we get to the point where robots can move and pack tomatoes, eggs, and bread without crushing them.
> There is an expense to having the managers.
Those box-packers will need managers.
> there is an expense to send trucks to the store and unload goods.
How do you think all the food will get to the individual distribution centers in the first place? Costs will go down some if there are more warehouse-type things and fewer stores, but still--those are bulk deliveries to a handful of end nodes, compared to tens of thousands of residential deliveries.
> I am hoping that by eliminating all of that there is enough savings to pay
> for the cost of having a truck deliver to the door directly.
Doubtful, for the reasons described above.
The reason Amazon can swallow the cost of shipping on $25+ orders is because UPS already has a huge infrastructure in place and because they're shipping non-perishable items. A book or a hard drive can safely sit on your doorstep in the sun for an afternoon. A box of fruits, vegetables, bread, meat, milk, and ice cream? Not so much.
Plus food delivery has other downsides. Either a) they need to have boxes with ice packs in them (adding expense) or b) they have to deliver at a time when someone is home. So guess what? 80% of customers will want their food around 6-8pm during the week. Which leads to this: you can either hit the store on your way home and unpack as soon as you walk in the door, then go on about your evening, or you can come home from work and kind of idle for an hour or two, not getting into anything too intensive, because at any moment you'll need to hop up and start putting your food away.
I'm not saying there's no chance that food delivery can be made to work, and that no one would want it... but it's extremely unlikely to happen now at a price people are willing to pay. Even if some problems get solved, new problems will be introduced. If you want today's prices and free delivery, than just plain ain't gonna happen.
I figure that, for any field, 1% of people are just into it for the sake of doing it, 9% are willing to learn it to achieve a result and/or are naturally talented, and 90% just don't care. I'm willing to bet that the author isn't that into cooking or the mechanical condition of his car or music or politics. And every six months, someone in this 1% posts to Slashdot because they're worried that not enough young kids are into programming or engineering or whatever.
Take food, for example. Some people are really into it, and love learning about and working with all the subtle interactions that happen when you mix different ingredients--"optimizing" the experience, in programmer parlance. A few more care enough about food to put some effort into what they cook because they want to have a meal that's healthy and/or delicious. And most don't care--they're happy enough to eat whatever fills the void and tastes decent.
As a kid, I learned some programming and had something of a knack for it, but I just didn't care enough to pursue it. Later in life, the Web came along, and all of a sudden there were a lot of (to me) interesting things that could be done with computers so I got into it. I'm not interested in creating an algorithm to find square roots faster but I have written my own little things to pull info from Amazon and IMDB for my book and movie collections.
It's good that everyone has different skills and desires because most programmers, as smart as they think they are, a only so-so writers and horrible designers. :-)
> At the end of the week, I know if you're getting the job done.
> I don't care how or when you're getting it done, so long as
> you're getting it done.
But... if you're getting all your work done in 20 hours, you could be doing twice as much in 40!
Signed,
managers everywhere
Why call it "cord cutting" when all you're doing is trading one cord (and, in many cases, one set of fees) for another?
Bonus question: how long do you think content providers will let you get shows "for free" (or cheap) before raising rates elsewhere to make up the difference?
... it's really a clever hack. ("Hack" as in "clever workaround", not "ZOMGbreaking and entering!!!11") RTFA (not paywalled at the moment) and click on the infographic to see what they did.