And, by the same logic, any distinction betweern intelligence and stupidity is purely arbitrary. But I think I know bicycles and stupidity when I see them.
So, basically you're arguing that any crime that is widely violated needs to be revoked and replaced with a "technical solution". You do understand the difference between technology and magic, right?
I believe the dude is a Protestant. You may have heard about a little thing called the Reformation? No? The short version is that most Christians don't believe that the Pope is anybody special.
Given a choice (which I won't have until EVs are a lot cheaper and have a lot more infrastructure) I'd certainly drive an EV. And my intuition is that you're right about big power plants being more efficient making every car carry around a little fossil-fuel plant. But not everybody agrees. I'm not taking sides on this one, I'm just pointing out the issue.
It's always seemed to me that private cars are a fundamentally inefficient way of moving people around, and will always have a huge cost, no matter how we power them. Not that people are going to give up the convenience and the privacy as long as the costs, both monetary and environmental, are bearable. But what with diminishing natural resources (not just fossil fuels, but all the non-renewables that go into making everything, including electric cars) and increasing environmental problems, the day when these costs cease to be bearable is well at hand. Sorry, Mitt.
(shrug) sometimes people push their spreadsheet way beyond what it was ever meant to do - either because they're in a hurry, or because they don't know other tools exist.
Agreed. But isn't that true of any programming tool? Or any tool of any kind?
Uh, your history is a little flaky. There were no former Nazis working on the Manhatten Project. Indeed, many key scientists on the project were refugees from the Nazis. I think you're thinking of people like Werner von Braun, who built rockets for Nazi Germany during the war and for the U.S. after the war. And none of them were "kidnapped". They were all quite glad to leave Germany, which was a bit of a mess in 1945.
Also, it's widely acknowledged that Oppenheimer was key to the whole thing. So much so that the Army (which was ultimately in charge) fought a pitched battle with the FBI (which considered him a commie) to keep him.
Computer hardware isn't that expensive to replace.
Depends on what country you're in. Buy a computer in some countries and you can expect to pay heavy import duties. But there's often an exemption for computers you bring to the country with you. And in any case, if you've had your computer for even a couple of years, it's depreciated up the wazoo, and you can get away with a very low declared value.
I never said that Californian drive more per capita. But, being the most populace state, they drive more total. And the freeways are jammed, with no room to build any more. That enhances air pollution (idling cars pollute more). Hence the need for two special formulas (I had forgotten the changeover).
I'm noticing that the top users are all rural states. That makes sense, and also explains why pollution is less of an issue in these states, since the driving is spread out over a larger area.
Incidentally, I was a Californian myself until a year ago. I'm a little surprised that my new state, Oregon, is only two slots ahead of CA. This is a very rural state. I guess all those bicyclists in Portland offset the figures.:)
TCO is based on a lot more than just hardware, which is normally a small fraction of a system's costs.
Oh, is that why they call it "total cost of ownership"? Gee, that never occurred to me!
The post-purchase costs of non-standard systems are pretty substantial. I found that out first hand when I tried to be a good Sun employee and run my internal wiki on Solaris instead of Linux. Kept running into TWiki plugins that didn't work Solaris because they depended on Perl libraries that had only been tested on Linux.
The submitter is suggesting — no, make that "claiming" — that spreadseets are dangerous because they allow "non-professionals" to program. Now, spreadsheets are the original "killer app" for PCs. Huge numbers of CP/M-based systems were sold just to run VisiCalc, and this probably had a lot to do with IBM biting the bullet and getting into the desktop computer business, with results that reverberate to this very day and the forseeable future. Alan Kay, one of the inventors of OOP and GUI, cites spreadsheets as a tool that turn ordinary users into programmers. Attack spreadsheets, and you attack the entire idea of user-centric programming. The submitter's attitude is reminiscint of the pre-Woz era, when you had to negotiate with your programming staff to do even the simplest computing and programmers were known as "High Priests of a Low Cult". There's a lot of room for sarcasm here.
More than I thought to use. I also could have been sarcastic about the assumption that "hire a pro" is a magic bullet for avoiding fuckups. Really? "Professionals" never make stupid, multimillion-dollar mistakes? Get real.
"Have somebody check your work" is the applicable lesson here. "Hire a pro and you're safe." is just bullshit.
The fact that smoking may lead to a particular set of health issues shouldn't lead you to believe that smokers are the only ones with issues.
I love the way you say something on Slashdot and get a lot of angry responses from people who disagree with something you never even said. TPP argued that discrimination is cool (which I certainly don't agree with) except when the governent does it. I pointed out that having unhealthy government employees costs taxpayers money. I didn't even say this was a bad thing!
It's like people aren't even arguing with you, they're arguing with some imaginary person whose opinions vaguely resemble yours.
Hey, you were the one who said discrimination is cool, as long as the government doesn't do it. I was just pointing out that not letting the governent discriminate costs taxpayers money.
I live in California. We are paying the price for years of anti-business policies and nimbyism.
No, you're paying the price for turning the state into one big freeway. Gas in CA is more expensive because it uses a special formula, without which air in the state would be unbreathable.
What do they have to do with the price of oil? They provide electricity, which currently comes from other fossil fuels (mostly). This is an issue onto itself (assuming you're not just in denial about carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide) but the only cost issue here is that coal is too fucking cheap for the amount of damage it causes.
Why should I buy an econobox? I ain't no tree hugger! Go drill everywhere, and things will be fine. This peak oil thing is just a bunch of hippies got their panties in a twist.
(The first person to answer with "I know you're being sarcastic, but..." is our official lamer of the day.)
Anyway, this is a straw man argument. In 1942, nobody thought smoking was a big deal. Pick somebody who whose contribution to society was as major since smoking was linked to cancer in the 60s. You can't, can you? The only public figure I can think of who even smokes is Barack Obama, and he only does it when nobody (including Michelle) is looking.
And while this is intrusive and a restriction on personal freedom, it is not "health fascism". Employers aren't on some moral crusade. They're trying to control insurance costs and other health-related costs. You refuse to hire smokers, you get people who use their insurance less and miss work less.
So IBM platforms are big on the IBM cloud? Why am I supposed to be impressed by that? The measure of a platform's importance to cloud computing is its role in all vendors.
Slashdot Mirror
And, by the same logic, any distinction betweern intelligence and stupidity is purely arbitrary. But I think I know bicycles and stupidity when I see them.
So, basically you're arguing that any crime that is widely violated needs to be revoked and replaced with a "technical solution". You do understand the difference between technology and magic, right?
Yet there's fundamentally nothing different about bicycles and cars (or motorcycles if you prefer).
I think I speak for all of humanity when I say HUH?
i have no idea what the fuck your talking about because its all one big sentence with no idea what your getting at i guess your mad about something
As every Buffy fan knows, it's under a suburb in Southern California.
I believe the dude is a Protestant. You may have heard about a little thing called the Reformation? No? The short version is that most Christians don't believe that the Pope is anybody special.
Science says that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is impossible. (Some stupid argument about the weight of pasta.) Therefore science is wrong. QED.
Given a choice (which I won't have until EVs are a lot cheaper and have a lot more infrastructure) I'd certainly drive an EV. And my intuition is that you're right about big power plants being more efficient making every car carry around a little fossil-fuel plant. But not everybody agrees. I'm not taking sides on this one, I'm just pointing out the issue.
It's always seemed to me that private cars are a fundamentally inefficient way of moving people around, and will always have a huge cost, no matter how we power them. Not that people are going to give up the convenience and the privacy as long as the costs, both monetary and environmental, are bearable. But what with diminishing natural resources (not just fossil fuels, but all the non-renewables that go into making everything, including electric cars) and increasing environmental problems, the day when these costs cease to be bearable is well at hand. Sorry, Mitt.
(shrug) sometimes people push their spreadsheet way beyond what it was ever meant to do - either because they're in a hurry, or because they don't know other tools exist.
Agreed. But isn't that true of any programming tool? Or any tool of any kind?
Uh, your history is a little flaky. There were no former Nazis working on the Manhatten Project. Indeed, many key scientists on the project were refugees from the Nazis. I think you're thinking of people like Werner von Braun, who built rockets for Nazi Germany during the war and for the U.S. after the war. And none of them were "kidnapped". They were all quite glad to leave Germany, which was a bit of a mess in 1945.
Also, it's widely acknowledged that Oppenheimer was key to the whole thing. So much so that the Army (which was ultimately in charge) fought a pitched battle with the FBI (which considered him a commie) to keep him.
Computer hardware isn't that expensive to replace.
Depends on what country you're in. Buy a computer in some countries and you can expect to pay heavy import duties. But there's often an exemption for computers you bring to the country with you. And in any case, if you've had your computer for even a couple of years, it's depreciated up the wazoo, and you can get away with a very low declared value.
I never said that Californian drive more per capita. But, being the most populace state, they drive more total. And the freeways are jammed, with no room to build any more. That enhances air pollution (idling cars pollute more). Hence the need for two special formulas (I had forgotten the changeover).
I'm noticing that the top users are all rural states. That makes sense, and also explains why pollution is less of an issue in these states, since the driving is spread out over a larger area.
Incidentally, I was a Californian myself until a year ago. I'm a little surprised that my new state, Oregon, is only two slots ahead of CA. This is a very rural state. I guess all those bicyclists in Portland offset the figures. :)
TCO is based on a lot more than just hardware, which is normally a small fraction of a system's costs.
Oh, is that why they call it "total cost of ownership"? Gee, that never occurred to me!
The post-purchase costs of non-standard systems are pretty substantial. I found that out first hand when I tried to be a good Sun employee and run my internal wiki on Solaris instead of Linux. Kept running into TWiki plugins that didn't work Solaris because they depended on Perl libraries that had only been tested on Linux.
Right, because unhealthy people magically drop dead before they have a chance to miss work or run up hospital bills.
The submitter is suggesting — no, make that "claiming" — that spreadseets are dangerous because they allow "non-professionals" to program. Now, spreadsheets are the original "killer app" for PCs. Huge numbers of CP/M-based systems were sold just to run VisiCalc, and this probably had a lot to do with IBM biting the bullet and getting into the desktop computer business, with results that reverberate to this very day and the forseeable future. Alan Kay, one of the inventors of OOP and GUI, cites spreadsheets as a tool that turn ordinary users into programmers. Attack spreadsheets, and you attack the entire idea of user-centric programming. The submitter's attitude is reminiscint of the pre-Woz era, when you had to negotiate with your programming staff to do even the simplest computing and programmers were known as "High Priests of a Low Cult". There's a lot of room for sarcasm here.
More than I thought to use. I also could have been sarcastic about the assumption that "hire a pro" is a magic bullet for avoiding fuckups. Really? "Professionals" never make stupid, multimillion-dollar mistakes? Get real.
"Have somebody check your work" is the applicable lesson here. "Hire a pro and you're safe." is just bullshit.
Get all those stupid computers off people's desks! Things were much better when you had to go to a programmer in order to get software to do anything!
And (not incidentally) it would eliiminate all the productivity that's lost to Slashdot!
The fact that smoking may lead to a particular set of health issues shouldn't lead you to believe that smokers are the only ones with issues.
I love the way you say something on Slashdot and get a lot of angry responses from people who disagree with something you never even said. TPP argued that discrimination is cool (which I certainly don't agree with) except when the governent does it. I pointed out that having unhealthy government employees costs taxpayers money. I didn't even say this was a bad thing!
It's like people aren't even arguing with you, they're arguing with some imaginary person whose opinions vaguely resemble yours.
Hey, you were the one who said discrimination is cool, as long as the government doesn't do it. I was just pointing out that not letting the governent discriminate costs taxpayers money.
The fact that Oppie's pipe actually killed him is kind of beside the point. We're arguing about rights, not health.
I live in California. We are paying the price for years of anti-business policies and nimbyism.
No, you're paying the price for turning the state into one big freeway. Gas in CA is more expensive because it uses a special formula, without which air in the state would be unbreathable.
What do they have to do with the price of oil? They provide electricity, which currently comes from other fossil fuels (mostly). This is an issue onto itself (assuming you're not just in denial about carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide) but the only cost issue here is that coal is too fucking cheap for the amount of damage it causes.
Why should I buy an econobox? I ain't no tree hugger! Go drill everywhere, and things will be fine. This peak oil thing is just a bunch of hippies got their panties in a twist.
(The first person to answer with "I know you're being sarcastic, but..." is our official lamer of the day.)
But the government belongs to EVERYBODY, so the government CAN'T engage in such discriminatory activities.
So you're fine with paying the extra taxes to pay the extra health insurance and sick days for unhealthy people? Because that's what this is about.
But have they changed so much that we'd now postpone the Manhattan project for 12 months because Oppenheimer had toked his pipe?
Ha! Things have changed so much that Oppie would never get a security clearance.
Anyway, this is a straw man argument. In 1942, nobody thought smoking was a big deal. Pick somebody who whose contribution to society was as major since smoking was linked to cancer in the 60s. You can't, can you? The only public figure I can think of who even smokes is Barack Obama, and he only does it when nobody (including Michelle) is looking.
And while this is intrusive and a restriction on personal freedom, it is not "health fascism". Employers aren't on some moral crusade. They're trying to control insurance costs and other health-related costs. You refuse to hire smokers, you get people who use their insurance less and miss work less.
So IBM platforms are big on the IBM cloud? Why am I supposed to be impressed by that? The measure of a platform's importance to cloud computing is its role in all vendors.
And that "ignorant" is rude and uncalled for.