"Buying a company that generates wealth is different than poker, where no wealth is made."
Day trading a company because you think it will go up based on your market knowledge and trends is ABSOLUTELY no different than putting an opponent on one pair based on betting patterns and physical tells and then shoving your chips in on an open-ended straight flush draw with two over cards (i.e. you hold J-10 and the 9 and 8 is on the board, 71% chance of winning the hand based on 21 out of 47 remaining cards to improve with two cards to draw). You are making an educated guess based on incomplete information and relying and math to back you up. Of course the market tends to go up over time....doesn't mean it will today, or this week for that matter. You may have just tried to day trade on the next ENRON.
Risking something of value to gain something of value is gambling, no matter what you call it. The fact that one is a felony and the other is perfectly OK is what makes this law rediculous.
"This is a discussion about politics... not religion."
No, this is a discusiion about politics in Utah, which invariable involves religion whether the minority who beleives in seperation of church and state likes it or not. Just look at every bill Sen. Chris Buttars has sponsored and gotten through if you have any doubts. There are only two parties in Utah, LDS hardliners and Democrats....they just call themselves Republicans because it's convenient.
Also remember this is the same state that gives Bush a 60% approval rating even though the rest of the country is in the 40% range.
"I doubt it. I dunno the torque specs but last I looked the electric motors in a hybrid only provided ~40-50 hp peak. I sincerely doubt they have enough torque to trivially spin the tires."
They do...quite easily. I painfully gave up my stick shift for the Prius because I do care both about the environment, and my pocket book. Sure enough, any small hill after a stop sign or red light and I will usually spin my tires for a split second before moving out due to my usual urge to floor it when I'm in a hurry.
And yes, before the tree huggers flame me, driving the prius like that is somewhat self defeating, but you're just going to have to let me take my time letting go of my clutch popping days.
"But, if you want to change the way China operates and not beeing seen as a supporter of China and it's oppressive politics, you have to stay away and then work towards change in the Chinese system...."
OK. Normally completely ignorant posts on/. get filtered to my/dev/null, but this is just right out slander to Google and boarder line racist toward the Chinese by failing to try to understand how things work there.
You only need to know one word to survive in China today and that word is guanxi. It basically translates to connections, but it can get far more complicated. The bottom line is that you can't do squat in China without some kind of connections to get you past the corruption and red tape of the post Mao government. What that means, Mr armchair ethics expert, is that if you want to make a positive change in China, YOU HAVE TO GO THERE. And rule #1 "When in Rome..." applies here far more than it does in Italy. Google is not going to make the worlds information available to Chinese Peasants by waiting in Mountain View for something to change in China. Google needs to be there, on the ground, making regional officials look good and helping the Chinese economy to gain the political capital they need to START influencing the way things work in China.
The Chinese are a very proud and fiercely competitive society that realizes the things that have been wrong and are taking slow and deliberate steps to make things better. However, pointing out how screwed up we may think they are is about like trying to pick up a girl in a bar by starting with how badly she dresses. Or maybe the dating reference is more foreign to this crowd than Chinese politics, so lets say trying to get a geek to fix your computer by requiring him to bathe first.
Google is not doing evil by walking into China and "doing as the Chinese do." It's simply the only way to get there. It's kind of like the King of Thailand. If you want to go over there and start bad mouthing him in public about the regional violence, wide spread poverty, and uncontrolled sex trade...be my guest. Just don't be suprised when the local police turn their heads as the people arround you beat you within an inch of your life. You don't question the King in Thailand because thats the local rules. You don't help spread information the Chinese consider to be counter-revolutionary because that's the law in China. I'm glad Google is walking in there today because the day that the PRC declares freedom of speach, there certainly aren't going to be any Chinese companies ready to provide it at the press of a button.
Don't hold your breath on that. After spending seven years studying Japanese just to speak it conversationally, I can tell you flat out that there will never be on the fly translations between Japanese and English. Why you ask? Because the languages and cultures behind the languages are so drastically different, you often have to listen to several sentences before you can organize the correct context for words in the other language. Not to mention occasionally having to add material in the translated output to explain why a certain sequence of words means something.
For example, go watch Memiors of a Geisha and note that Chiyo keeps calling Mameha "oneesan" (Oh-Nay-San) which literally and figuratively translates to big sister. They are not related, and it is not an afectionate reference that someone might make in English to an older woman who provides protection and guidance. The term actually holds a special meaning in the Japanese world of Hostessing (both Geisha and less formal such as snack bars) that I would find difficult to even explain in English. Good luck IBM.
Ahh...you fortunate souls in Topeka, at least your leaders are honest about violating the seperation between Church and State. Here in Utah, the current Bill (SB 96) distinctly avoids any use of words relating to Religion, Creation, or Intelligent Design. It also fails to identify by name any of the "other theories" that the teachers are supposed to indicate that exist.
Next thing you know Orin Hatch will be pushing a bill to put the words "In Someone We Trust" on our money and swear up and down this solves the religion problem because it doesn't say "God".
Ant DECENT slashdotter watches Myth Busters, and anyone who watches Myth Busters knows that the toilet seat actually is the cleanest place in your home. I don't even clean my garage twice a year. Ergo, cleaning the toilet seat twice a year already exceeds published parameters. Duh!
So now I have to pull my rail pass out instead of just waiving my wallet or walking near the turn style...doesn't that defeat the point of the RFID objects you have inside your wallet.
Why not just avoid getting the objects if you don't want to use them?
Since you fail to actually justify any of your comments with explanation (likely indicating that you aren't capable of it), I will simply respond with this.
I drive, because I have sufficient reason to drive vs walk, run, bike, public trans, etc...
Since purchasing the Prius, my driving habits have not changed, but my monthly expenditure on gas has reduced by almost 75%. Since gas prices haven't dropped by that much, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it must mean I'm burning less gas.
But then again, maybe your elves are sneaking gas into my tank and then burying the waste in your back yard. At least, that's what it sounded like you said.
The sad thing is that arguing with angry idiots like you who don't know what they are talking about is still more entertaining than cable.
"The current line of hybrids are designed to make people happy by giving them the impression that they are achieving reduced fuel use and emmissions over some other system."
Wrong Wrong Wrong and Wrong!
It would be really nice to see someone make an argument against a Prius who has ACTUALLY DRIVEN one which you quite obviously have not.
All the marketing hype and perceived value to a Prius has always been centered on city traffic. You can crunch all the numbers you want on emmisions and functioning of the Prius system, but the simple fact is this: I have 1 train crossing and 4 traffic lights that I go through every day on my drive to work. Every one that I end up stopping at, the Prius gasoline engine TURNS OFF. So typically, I spend 2 to 3 minutes of my average 10 minute drive not poluting at all. Unless you are going to argue that the Prius is 20% to 30% more poluting than the rest of cars out there when it is running, then you have no argument.
Also, a very simple engineering fact is that the amount of polution released in the atmosphere is directly related to the amount of fuel that is combusted. The Prius must meet Federal and State emmissions standards even when the Gasoline engine is the only power source actively propelling the vehicle. So if you take a vehicle that meets the same emmissions requirements and has similar weight and drag numbers and run it side by side in a highway scenario where the electric motor is aiding acceleration, the Prius is doing the exact same amount of work as the other vehicle, but is combusing less fuel because some of the energy contributing to the work is coming from a battery. Thus the Prius will be expelling less waste (pollution) than the other vehicle. Even if that difference is less than 1%, it's still better than nothing.
I'd agree with you here except for one minor little detail, RTI doesn't have a product that needs protecting. It's not like they filed the patent to ensure BigCorp wouldn't steal the idea and beat them to market. They are basically running an electronic protection racket that would make the Mafia proud. I mean seriously, the only thing Google will get from licensing their patent is protection from being sued. RTI doesn't make any money on their idea unless someone else needs to use it. It's straight up, clear cut extortion. I too am waiting to see Google take this one all the way to the Supreme Court.
"If you make an application using a GPL library your application is a derrived work, which means it is also GPL."
Uhh....not even close.
If I use Qt to build a UI for my application, I can licence my app however I darn well please. I only need to include the GPL as an additional license for the Qt portion of my app. An application to balance my check book is not in any way, shape, or form derrived from Qt. However, if I take Qt and add some bells and whistles to it and then package it as "Qt Plus Bells and Whistles", then that must be GPL because it is in fact a derrived work.
"its on a pair of sunglasses - ok its great for outdoors when its sunny, but if you either wear glasses, or spend a good deal of time indoors, or out at night, you can't really use them"
I first saw these in Vegas playing Poker at the Bellagio. These are an awesome idea for card players, although the 6 hour battery life won't survive any of my typical playing sessions. For those of you who don't play poker, Texas Hold'em is a lot like Sid Mier's Civilization...it's easy to sit there and say I just want to play 3 more turns and then find yourself saying the same thing 4 hours later.
"but rather their own panic coupled with gravity."
How many times must you geeks be told? Gravity has never killed anyone in the history of mankind. It's the drastic change in momentum caused by the earth stopping their free fall. And if you paid attention to frames of reference in Relativity, you would know that the ground in fact accelerated upward and collided with them.
Seriously folks, it's no wonder that the legislature is ramming through laws to protect companies from these lawsuits. I mean really....there are places in this world where people will sell their daughters into the sex slave market so they can afford to get one kid through high school....and here we are whining that our iPod Nanos get scratches on them too easily. Am I the only one who thinks this is totally messed up?!?
"The problem here is obvious. Infrastructure needs upgrading, and the U.S. having a relatively low population density makes this much more expensive. Somebody has to pay those costs, and fairly enough those who actually use the new infrastructure pay the costs."
You get the good with the bad. While everyone here is complaining about the poor quality of broadband, I don't see anyone piping up to pay the phone company $700 to have a phone line installed in your house. Yet that is exactly what folks in Japan do. So, we are basically a victem of our own greed to have cheap phone access for everyone. I personally haven't had a land line many years, but I remember the hook up fee being somewhere around the $20 range. You get what you pay for.
(Side note that you also don't see too many people in Japan paying their phone bill late, cause you get nailed with the $700 line lease charge again if they cut you off)
There also needs to be some value added to drive the demand. I use Comcast now only because it sucks the least of all my options. In Japan I chose Yahoo BB because for about $32 a month I got 12MBit ADSL with all my phone calls VOIP to the US for about $0.03/min. As long as you're staying in one place for a while, that $700 line lease charge washes out over time making it more than worth the cost for the service.
Don't even get me started about the gap in the cell phone market.
"So to sum up, China has not "owned" Tibet any time in the last 1500 years except for the last 50, and has had absolutely no control that was granted by the people of Tibet. That makes China an occupying, illegitimate, oppressive power in Tibet."
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong and Wrong!
You might as well argue that half the "American Territories" in the Pacific are occupied and oppressed. When the current Chinese government took power, Tibet was in far worse straights under the rule of the Kuomintang who basically practiced a form of government somewhere between feudalism, nepotism, and the Mafia. Like most of China, the people pf Tibet were enchanted with the communist ideals and the nearly complete reduction in corruption and abuse. And for the first few years, until Mao's campaigns started and religion was squashed (that's the part that really pissed off the Tibetans), life was pretty good. Since then, there has been a constant butting of heads primarily driven by the Tibetan's deep religious culture and the communist drive to remove any possible authority that could conflict with the party (sorry God, Mao wanted the throne to himself).
China is at a very tricky turning point in that its citizens now have easy access to outside information and ideas that used to be easy to control. The peasants are better off in the current market economy than they were at the extremes of Mao's commune structure, but they are largely getting dis-satisfied with the gap in wealth. China is faced with either having to free their people socially, allowing Tibet to seccede, or to fight another bloody and unpopular war with the region to re-assert their "rightful authority".
In a nutshell, Tibet was happy to join and support the current Chinese government, they didn't stay happy, all past attempts to resolve the problem were brutal and wrong, and it's still messed up.
In a side note relevant to the article, the US was a backer of the Kuomintang government because of the whole, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" B.S. Nevermind that foot binding, slavery of women, and violent nepotism were the halmarks of these guys. So basically, the US supported the really bad government simply because they weren't communist. The Kuomintang still lost the country and fled to Taiwan which was the only territory they could hold against the communists. Chiang Kai Shek (head of the Kuomintang) eventually died and Western ideas finally moved them from brutal oppression to an open market society that was accepting of democracy. The people of Taiwan have every right to be proud of their acomplishments and desire independance, but the history is not that simple.
I wonder what's wrong with your local radio stations. We have pretty good stations here in Salt Lake and just about everyone I know listens to the radio when they drive or as background music for card games and BBQ's. Maybe it's just my demographic, but I'm just too busy to constantly keep refreshing my music in the car and I really can't think of a better source than radio to be exposed to new music.
Plus I think that when all the students who "rip" music or download it illegally get into the real world and realize how wonderful all the free time you had being a student was, they rapidly switch back to just having the wife (or husband) pick it up at Walmart for $15. It's really not that expensive and it gives your significant other something to do.
Of course, the other side of it is that commercials try so bleeding hard to be obnoxiously annoying that I often change the channel. What ever happened to the days of a 15 second commercial that said, "come down and mention you heard about us on KSUX and we'll give you $100 off"? Why do all the commercials have to sound like a bad spoof of a worse 90's pop tune, or a 3am scripted infomercial.
Osaka-ben?, Kansai-ben to omota ke do...demo, boku wa Osaka ni konakatta no de.
And for the rest of slashdot, all you have to do is go to nttdocomo.com and look at their phone line to get the reality slap in the face that the robot probably CAN carry a meaningful conversation (in Nihongo, Kansai-ben, or probably even Hougen [Okinawan dialect]). Hell, I bet it could even make out my rapidly degenerating Japanese skills (as evidenced by the poor grammar used above).
Or maybe this is a legitimate cry for help from EDS who duped the US Navy into thinking they could actually outsource IT on the exact scale that the poster is talking about. Mind you, no one has ever provided ubiquitous support for an organization as large as the Department of the Navy, but they somehow convinced congress that they could do it for $6B dollars.
Just so you know. Most of us out in South East Asia refer to NMCI (Navy-Marine Corps Intranet) as the Not Mission Capable Intranet.
"I hate to burst your bubble here, but ALL dbms's are slightly different from eachother, this is largly because the SQL spec leaves room for these kind of things."
I hate to burst your bubble, but the differences have nothing to do with a poorly designed spec. They have everything to do with companies either being too lazy, or too stubborn to adjust to and adhere to the specs. Even M$, who created the ODBC standard fails to adhere 100% to it in both Access and MS SQL.
In their defense however, DBMS's have often evolved far faster than the specs could keep up resulting in dozens of different ways to do something the specs didn't originally cover. However, my forgiveness ends right where the spec catches up and then the dbms developers fail to add compatibility to their product. The fear that compatibility will leave room open for customers to migrate to a competing product is exactly why the USA is about 2 to 3 years behind in technology right now. Go to NTT Docomo's website and look at their newest line of phones and you will note two very distinct trends:
#1 The lowest model blows away all US phones.
#2 They all share the same baseline standard design...which forces them to compete in the non-standard areas...which rewards the consumer with a consistant design and interface and innovation.
Wake me up when companies (or even OSS project managers) in the US stop screwing their customers with proprietary interfaces designed to lock in their customer base. I really don't measure a product's worth by the number of users it has....otherwise I'd still be using IE.
My wakeup call to this came from living in Okinawa, Japan which gets hit by 3 to 6 Katrina force storms every year. Everything on the island is built from solid concrete with bars across all the windows.
The locals actually had huge Typhoon sales at their shopping malls and threw big parties since they didn't have to work.
The rare deaths that occur during the storms are far more often related to people deserving Darwin awards than actual "victems" of the storms.
You find me a city, anywhere in the US, much less in a small burb like Ginowan, that you can get 50MBit ADSL w/VOIP phone service for between $30 and $40 a month.
Don't bother trying, because you can't. What you can do is write your respresentative a letter and complain about why America is just watching the rest of the world blow by us in technology.
Like so many "NEW" technology moves that the media and govenrment trumpet, this is yet another event of the US trailing woefully behind other countries. I had Yahoo's VOIP servive in Japan (along with their 12MBit DSL service) over 3 years ago.
It's not new. They've been doing it very successfully for years. The only news here is that Americans keep putting up with being so far behind other countries in technology.
"Hybrids were beginning to become popular before the recent gas cost increases. And they will continue to remain popular even after Iraqi/Alaskan/etc. oil starts flowing into the US in the near future. In this case, your feelings/opinions are not based on fact."
Unfortunately, neither are yours. You can ad all the extra crude oil imports you want from Alaska, Iraq, or even find a way to produce it magically out of thin air. It's a lack of refinery capacity that is causing crude oil inventories to rise, and gasoline inventories to fall. If you combine the falling inventories with current political instability, you end up with all the makings for a shift in the supply curve because it's quite obvious that Americans are not going to ease demand right now. Until supply of refined gasoline is increased, or demand is decreased, prices will continue to rise making the Return On Invenstment for a Hybrid more and more realistic.
Slashdot Mirror
"Buying a company that generates wealth is different than poker, where no wealth is made."
Day trading a company because you think it will go up based on your market knowledge and trends is ABSOLUTELY no different than putting an opponent on one pair based on betting patterns and physical tells and then shoving your chips in on an open-ended straight flush draw with two over cards (i.e. you hold J-10 and the 9 and 8 is on the board, 71% chance of winning the hand based on 21 out of 47 remaining cards to improve with two cards to draw). You are making an educated guess based on incomplete information and relying and math to back you up. Of course the market tends to go up over time....doesn't mean it will today, or this week for that matter. You may have just tried to day trade on the next ENRON.
Risking something of value to gain something of value is gambling, no matter what you call it. The fact that one is a felony and the other is perfectly OK is what makes this law rediculous.
"This is a discussion about politics... not religion."
No, this is a discusiion about politics in Utah, which invariable involves religion whether the minority who beleives in seperation of church and state likes it or not. Just look at every bill Sen. Chris Buttars has sponsored and gotten through if you have any doubts. There are only two parties in Utah, LDS hardliners and Democrats....they just call themselves Republicans because it's convenient.
Also remember this is the same state that gives Bush a 60% approval rating even though the rest of the country is in the 40% range.
"I doubt it. I dunno the torque specs but last I looked the electric motors in a hybrid only provided ~40-50 hp peak. I sincerely doubt they have enough torque to trivially spin the tires."
They do...quite easily. I painfully gave up my stick shift for the Prius because I do care both about the environment, and my pocket book. Sure enough, any small hill after a stop sign or red light and I will usually spin my tires for a split second before moving out due to my usual urge to floor it when I'm in a hurry.
And yes, before the tree huggers flame me, driving the prius like that is somewhat self defeating, but you're just going to have to let me take my time letting go of my clutch popping days.
"But, if you want to change the way China operates and not beeing seen as a supporter of China and it's oppressive politics, you have to stay away and then work towards change in the Chinese system...."
/. get filtered to my /dev/null, but this is just right out slander to Google and boarder line racist toward the Chinese by failing to try to understand how things work there.
OK. Normally completely ignorant posts on
You only need to know one word to survive in China today and that word is guanxi. It basically translates to connections, but it can get far more complicated. The bottom line is that you can't do squat in China without some kind of connections to get you past the corruption and red tape of the post Mao government. What that means, Mr armchair ethics expert, is that if you want to make a positive change in China, YOU HAVE TO GO THERE. And rule #1 "When in Rome..." applies here far more than it does in Italy. Google is not going to make the worlds information available to Chinese Peasants by waiting in Mountain View for something to change in China. Google needs to be there, on the ground, making regional officials look good and helping the Chinese economy to gain the political capital they need to START influencing the way things work in China.
The Chinese are a very proud and fiercely competitive society that realizes the things that have been wrong and are taking slow and deliberate steps to make things better. However, pointing out how screwed up we may think they are is about like trying to pick up a girl in a bar by starting with how badly she dresses. Or maybe the dating reference is more foreign to this crowd than Chinese politics, so lets say trying to get a geek to fix your computer by requiring him to bathe first.
Google is not doing evil by walking into China and "doing as the Chinese do." It's simply the only way to get there. It's kind of like the King of Thailand. If you want to go over there and start bad mouthing him in public about the regional violence, wide spread poverty, and uncontrolled sex trade...be my guest. Just don't be suprised when the local police turn their heads as the people arround you beat you within an inch of your life. You don't question the King in Thailand because thats the local rules. You don't help spread information the Chinese consider to be counter-revolutionary because that's the law in China. I'm glad Google is walking in there today because the day that the PRC declares freedom of speach, there certainly aren't going to be any Chinese companies ready to provide it at the press of a button.
Don't hold your breath on that. After spending seven years studying Japanese just to speak it conversationally, I can tell you flat out that there will never be on the fly translations between Japanese and English. Why you ask? Because the languages and cultures behind the languages are so drastically different, you often have to listen to several sentences before you can organize the correct context for words in the other language. Not to mention occasionally having to add material in the translated output to explain why a certain sequence of words means something.
For example, go watch Memiors of a Geisha and note that Chiyo keeps calling Mameha "oneesan" (Oh-Nay-San) which literally and figuratively translates to big sister. They are not related, and it is not an afectionate reference that someone might make in English to an older woman who provides protection and guidance. The term actually holds a special meaning in the Japanese world of Hostessing (both Geisha and less formal such as snack bars) that I would find difficult to even explain in English. Good luck IBM.
Ahh...you fortunate souls in Topeka, at least your leaders are honest about violating the seperation between Church and State. Here in Utah, the current Bill (SB 96) distinctly avoids any use of words relating to Religion, Creation, or Intelligent Design. It also fails to identify by name any of the "other theories" that the teachers are supposed to indicate that exist.
Next thing you know Orin Hatch will be pushing a bill to put the words "In Someone We Trust" on our money and swear up and down this solves the religion problem because it doesn't say "God".
Ant DECENT slashdotter watches Myth Busters, and anyone who watches Myth Busters knows that the toilet seat actually is the cleanest place in your home. I don't even clean my garage twice a year. Ergo, cleaning the toilet seat twice a year already exceeds published parameters. Duh!
So now I have to pull my rail pass out instead of just waiving my wallet or walking near the turn style...doesn't that defeat the point of the RFID objects you have inside your wallet.
Why not just avoid getting the objects if you don't want to use them?
Since you fail to actually justify any of your comments with explanation (likely indicating that you aren't capable of it), I will simply respond with this.
I drive, because I have sufficient reason to drive vs walk, run, bike, public trans, etc...
Since purchasing the Prius, my driving habits have not changed, but my monthly expenditure on gas has reduced by almost 75%. Since gas prices haven't dropped by that much, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it must mean I'm burning less gas.
But then again, maybe your elves are sneaking gas into my tank and then burying the waste in your back yard. At least, that's what it sounded like you said.
The sad thing is that arguing with angry idiots like you who don't know what they are talking about is still more entertaining than cable.
"The current line of hybrids are designed to make people happy by giving them the impression that they are achieving reduced fuel use and emmissions over some other system."
Wrong Wrong Wrong and Wrong!
It would be really nice to see someone make an argument against a Prius who has ACTUALLY DRIVEN one which you quite obviously have not.
All the marketing hype and perceived value to a Prius has always been centered on city traffic. You can crunch all the numbers you want on emmisions and functioning of the Prius system, but the simple fact is this: I have 1 train crossing and 4 traffic lights that I go through every day on my drive to work. Every one that I end up stopping at, the Prius gasoline engine TURNS OFF. So typically, I spend 2 to 3 minutes of my average 10 minute drive not poluting at all. Unless you are going to argue that the Prius is 20% to 30% more poluting than the rest of cars out there when it is running, then you have no argument.
Also, a very simple engineering fact is that the amount of polution released in the atmosphere is directly related to the amount of fuel that is combusted. The Prius must meet Federal and State emmissions standards even when the Gasoline engine is the only power source actively propelling the vehicle. So if you take a vehicle that meets the same emmissions requirements and has similar weight and drag numbers and run it side by side in a highway scenario where the electric motor is aiding acceleration, the Prius is doing the exact same amount of work as the other vehicle, but is combusing less fuel because some of the energy contributing to the work is coming from a battery. Thus the Prius will be expelling less waste (pollution) than the other vehicle. Even if that difference is less than 1%, it's still better than nothing.
I'd agree with you here except for one minor little detail, RTI doesn't have a product that needs protecting. It's not like they filed the patent to ensure BigCorp wouldn't steal the idea and beat them to market. They are basically running an electronic protection racket that would make the Mafia proud. I mean seriously, the only thing Google will get from licensing their patent is protection from being sued. RTI doesn't make any money on their idea unless someone else needs to use it. It's straight up, clear cut extortion. I too am waiting to see Google take this one all the way to the Supreme Court.
"If you make an application using a GPL library your application is a derrived work, which means it is also GPL."
Uhh....not even close.
If I use Qt to build a UI for my application, I can licence my app however I darn well please. I only need to include the GPL as an additional license for the Qt portion of my app. An application to balance my check book is not in any way, shape, or form derrived from Qt. However, if I take Qt and add some bells and whistles to it and then package it as "Qt Plus Bells and Whistles", then that must be GPL because it is in fact a derrived work.
"its on a pair of sunglasses - ok its great for outdoors when its sunny, but if you either wear glasses, or spend a good deal of time indoors, or out at night, you can't really use them"
I first saw these in Vegas playing Poker at the Bellagio. These are an awesome idea for card players, although the 6 hour battery life won't survive any of my typical playing sessions. For those of you who don't play poker, Texas Hold'em is a lot like Sid Mier's Civilization...it's easy to sit there and say I just want to play 3 more turns and then find yourself saying the same thing 4 hours later.
Oakley has their own answer to this.
"but rather their own panic coupled with gravity."
How many times must you geeks be told? Gravity has never killed anyone in the history of mankind. It's the drastic change in momentum caused by the earth stopping their free fall. And if you paid attention to frames of reference in Relativity, you would know that the ground in fact accelerated upward and collided with them.
Seriously folks, it's no wonder that the legislature is ramming through laws to protect companies from these lawsuits. I mean really....there are places in this world where people will sell their daughters into the sex slave market so they can afford to get one kid through high school....and here we are whining that our iPod Nanos get scratches on them too easily. Am I the only one who thinks this is totally messed up?!?
"The problem here is obvious. Infrastructure needs upgrading, and the U.S. having a relatively low population density makes this much more expensive. Somebody has to pay those costs, and fairly enough those who actually use the new infrastructure pay the costs."
You get the good with the bad. While everyone here is complaining about the poor quality of broadband, I don't see anyone piping up to pay the phone company $700 to have a phone line installed in your house. Yet that is exactly what folks in Japan do. So, we are basically a victem of our own greed to have cheap phone access for everyone. I personally haven't had a land line many years, but I remember the hook up fee being somewhere around the $20 range. You get what you pay for.
(Side note that you also don't see too many people in Japan paying their phone bill late, cause you get nailed with the $700 line lease charge again if they cut you off)
There also needs to be some value added to drive the demand. I use Comcast now only because it sucks the least of all my options. In Japan I chose Yahoo BB because for about $32 a month I got 12MBit ADSL with all my phone calls VOIP to the US for about $0.03/min. As long as you're staying in one place for a while, that $700 line lease charge washes out over time making it more than worth the cost for the service.
Don't even get me started about the gap in the cell phone market.
"So to sum up, China has not "owned" Tibet any time in the last 1500 years except for the last 50, and has had absolutely no control that was granted by the people of Tibet. That makes China an occupying, illegitimate, oppressive power in Tibet."
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong and Wrong!
You might as well argue that half the "American Territories" in the Pacific are occupied and oppressed. When the current Chinese government took power, Tibet was in far worse straights under the rule of the Kuomintang who basically practiced a form of government somewhere between feudalism, nepotism, and the Mafia. Like most of China, the people pf Tibet were enchanted with the communist ideals and the nearly complete reduction in corruption and abuse. And for the first few years, until Mao's campaigns started and religion was squashed (that's the part that really pissed off the Tibetans), life was pretty good. Since then, there has been a constant butting of heads primarily driven by the Tibetan's deep religious culture and the communist drive to remove any possible authority that could conflict with the party (sorry God, Mao wanted the throne to himself).
China is at a very tricky turning point in that its citizens now have easy access to outside information and ideas that used to be easy to control. The peasants are better off in the current market economy than they were at the extremes of Mao's commune structure, but they are largely getting dis-satisfied with the gap in wealth. China is faced with either having to free their people socially, allowing Tibet to seccede, or to fight another bloody and unpopular war with the region to re-assert their "rightful authority".
In a nutshell, Tibet was happy to join and support the current Chinese government, they didn't stay happy, all past attempts to resolve the problem were brutal and wrong, and it's still messed up.
In a side note relevant to the article, the US was a backer of the Kuomintang government because of the whole, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" B.S. Nevermind that foot binding, slavery of women, and violent nepotism were the halmarks of these guys. So basically, the US supported the really bad government simply because they weren't communist. The Kuomintang still lost the country and fled to Taiwan which was the only territory they could hold against the communists. Chiang Kai Shek (head of the Kuomintang) eventually died and Western ideas finally moved them from brutal oppression to an open market society that was accepting of democracy. The people of Taiwan have every right to be proud of their acomplishments and desire independance, but the history is not that simple.
I wonder what's wrong with your local radio stations. We have pretty good stations here in Salt Lake and just about everyone I know listens to the radio when they drive or as background music for card games and BBQ's. Maybe it's just my demographic, but I'm just too busy to constantly keep refreshing my music in the car and I really can't think of a better source than radio to be exposed to new music.
Plus I think that when all the students who "rip" music or download it illegally get into the real world and realize how wonderful all the free time you had being a student was, they rapidly switch back to just having the wife (or husband) pick it up at Walmart for $15. It's really not that expensive and it gives your significant other something to do.
Of course, the other side of it is that commercials try so bleeding hard to be obnoxiously annoying that I often change the channel. What ever happened to the days of a 15 second commercial that said, "come down and mention you heard about us on KSUX and we'll give you $100 off"? Why do all the commercials have to sound like a bad spoof of a worse 90's pop tune, or a 3am scripted infomercial.
Osaka-ben?, Kansai-ben to omota ke do...demo, boku wa Osaka ni konakatta no de.
And for the rest of slashdot, all you have to do is go to nttdocomo.com and look at their phone line to get the reality slap in the face that the robot probably CAN carry a meaningful conversation (in Nihongo, Kansai-ben, or probably even Hougen [Okinawan dialect]). Hell, I bet it could even make out my rapidly degenerating Japanese skills (as evidenced by the poor grammar used above).
I miss Japan.
Or maybe this is a legitimate cry for help from EDS who duped the US Navy into thinking they could actually outsource IT on the exact scale that the poster is talking about. Mind you, no one has ever provided ubiquitous support for an organization as large as the Department of the Navy, but they somehow convinced congress that they could do it for $6B dollars.
Just so you know. Most of us out in South East Asia refer to NMCI (Navy-Marine Corps Intranet) as the Not Mission Capable Intranet.
"I hate to burst your bubble here, but ALL dbms's are slightly different from eachother, this is largly because the SQL spec leaves room for these kind of things."
I hate to burst your bubble, but the differences have nothing to do with a poorly designed spec. They have everything to do with companies either being too lazy, or too stubborn to adjust to and adhere to the specs. Even M$, who created the ODBC standard fails to adhere 100% to it in both Access and MS SQL.
In their defense however, DBMS's have often evolved far faster than the specs could keep up resulting in dozens of different ways to do something the specs didn't originally cover. However, my forgiveness ends right where the spec catches up and then the dbms developers fail to add compatibility to their product. The fear that compatibility will leave room open for customers to migrate to a competing product is exactly why the USA is about 2 to 3 years behind in technology right now. Go to NTT Docomo's website and look at their newest line of phones and you will note two very distinct trends:
#1 The lowest model blows away all US phones.
#2 They all share the same baseline standard design...which forces them to compete in the non-standard areas...which rewards the consumer with a consistant design and interface and innovation.
Wake me up when companies (or even OSS project managers) in the US stop screwing their customers with proprietary interfaces designed to lock in their customer base. I really don't measure a product's worth by the number of users it has....otherwise I'd still be using IE.
Quite right!
My wakeup call to this came from living in Okinawa, Japan which gets hit by 3 to 6 Katrina force storms every year. Everything on the island is built from solid concrete with bars across all the windows.
The locals actually had huge Typhoon sales at their shopping malls and threw big parties since they didn't have to work.
The rare deaths that occur during the storms are far more often related to people deserving Darwin awards than actual "victems" of the storms.
No We Don't!
You find me a city, anywhere in the US, much less in a small burb like Ginowan, that you can get 50MBit ADSL w/VOIP phone service for between $30 and $40 a month.
Don't bother trying, because you can't. What you can do is write your respresentative a letter and complain about why America is just watching the rest of the world blow by us in technology.
Like so many "NEW" technology moves that the media and govenrment trumpet, this is yet another event of the US trailing woefully behind other countries. I had Yahoo's VOIP servive in Japan (along with their 12MBit DSL service) over 3 years ago.
It's not new. They've been doing it very successfully for years. The only news here is that Americans keep putting up with being so far behind other countries in technology.
"Hybrids were beginning to become popular before the recent gas cost increases. And they will continue to remain popular even after Iraqi/Alaskan/etc. oil starts flowing into the US in the near future. In this case, your feelings/opinions are not based on fact."
Unfortunately, neither are yours. You can ad all the extra crude oil imports you want from Alaska, Iraq, or even find a way to produce it magically out of thin air. It's a lack of refinery capacity that is causing crude oil inventories to rise, and gasoline inventories to fall. If you combine the falling inventories with current political instability, you end up with all the makings for a shift in the supply curve because it's quite obvious that Americans are not going to ease demand right now. Until supply of refined gasoline is increased, or demand is decreased, prices will continue to rise making the Return On Invenstment for a Hybrid more and more realistic.
And apparently, You can bet on it.