2. The lanugae is not truely Turning complete. Which could have been fixed by taking some more time and making the language more complete.
On what basis do you make this claim? Turing (note spelling) completeness can be achieved in very simple languages (for example: Iota) and judging by the Cg language spec. I can't see any reason to doubt that Cg is.
Was there something specific you were thinking of?
"Good old Steve" is in reference to the litigation-happy days when Jobs was CEO of Apple in the 80's, suing Microsoft, Adobe, and everyone else who displeased him.
Unfortunately that's factually incorrect. Apple sued Microsoft in 1988, four years after Steve was kicked out of Apple. In fact he was sued by Apple the year after he left in 1985: see this. So the Apple-Microsoft suit had nothing to do with Mr. Jobs. Whatever his faults he doesn't seem to be particularly litigous.
One of the...ahem... interesting things Bill says is: "We're also working with others throughout the industry to improve Internet protocols to stop email that could propagate misleading information or malicious code that falsely appears to be from trusted senders." (emphasis added)
Bob Cringley has written a couple of good articles on eactly this, the second related directly to Palladium. Check them out.
Cringley also has an article on the consequences of Palladium not working.
Am I the only one who thinks that this should be an *entirely* obvious step that should be taken immediately?
I'm sure there are many users who share your wish. Sadly it is hard to see how this makes sense for Apple. They make their money from selling hardware. It is conceiveable they could transition to making their money from selling operating systems - though only Microsoft has ever really built a significant revenue stream in this business. But managing the transition would be almost impossibly hard.
It is almost unimaginable that a public company could turn to its shareholders and say: we have a sustainable business that makes about $1 billion a year and isn't under threat. We're going to throw that away and go into this other business, with Microsoft as our main competitor, and we might be profitable again in a decade.
It just isn't going to happen.
What Apple will do, IMHO, is start selling Macs with Intel-compatible CPUs in them. Mac OS X would only run on those Apple machines, not on an off-the-shelf PC box.
This makes perfect sense, given that Intel's economies of scale and the competition from AMD means their CPUs are faster and cheaper than PowerPC. Apple can still make its money off hardware and the value of its industrial design.
Okay, can someone clear this up for me... according to the JPEG FAQ: "JPEG (pronounced "jay-peg") is a standardized image compression mechanism. JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the original name of the committee that wrote the standard."
The JPE group is a sub-committee of the ISO organization, see here. They claim that: "... a basic version of the many features of this standard, in association with a file format placed into the public domain by C-Cube Microsystems (JFIF) is what most people think of as JPEG."
So if the ISO experts group wrote the standard, how come it could be patented by this company? Is C-Cube somehow a part of or associated with Forgent? Surely placing the algorithm in the public domain is at least prior art that will invalidate this patent?
I wouldn't put it at the caffeine allowing you to do more mental work, but that heavy consumers of caffeine tend to drink lots of caffeinated beverages because their brains are already busy and they need to stay perked up.
Another interesting and plausible theory. As is so often the case, we need a proper controlled study to distinguish the correlation from the cause and effect.
Yeah, but unfortunately, it'll never ship by default unless APPLE makes it themselves. (Apple typically exhibits serious Not Invented Here syndrome, IMHO)
Take a look at this list. Okay it refers to an earlier version of QuickTime, but of the 22 video codecs, 18 are not invented by Apple. Most are open standards (JPEG, RGB, GIF, MPEG), one is even a Microsoft standard.
Interesting. I've seen studies suggesting that increased brain activity throughout life also correlates with lower incidences of Alzheimers. People who read a lot, do crosswords, basically stay mentall active seem less likely to develop this disease.
I wonder if what is actually happening is the caffeine allows you to do more mental work, which in turn reduces your risk of Alzheimers.
Pure speculation, of course, but it would be interesting if someone could do the experiement to try to validate this theory.
Making OSX seem strong makes Microsoft look less like a monopoly, without actually having to take on the real competition publicly (read real competition as "BSD, Linux, (and maybe OpenBeOS someday)") which would make the public actually aware of these options.
What makes you think Mac OS X isn't "real competition" for Microsoft? If Apple is successful with its stated aim of moving from 5% to 10% market share it will gain those extra users mainly from Microsoft. This looks like real competition to me. It would be good to see more competition in the OS marketplace but OS X looks like the real thing to me.
"...So, I am here to finally tell the moms of the world: you can trash the default operating system, replace it with Linux, and have the full power and reach of your computer, finally, in your hands..."
But this is a bad thing. Many people don't want "the full power and reach of your computer". They want to email their friends, surf the web, do a little word processing, play MP3s, take the red-eye out of their digital photos. Giving them the full power of the computer doesn't give them any of this. They want a machine that does a few things well, not one that makes eveything possible.
These applications are of course made possible because underneath is the full power of the computer. But most users only care about a few specific applications. Linux is a very, very good OS if you care about accessing the core features of the computer; having real control over it. It isn't (yet) the best choice if you want to do just a few things well, partly because it doesn't yet have the range of applications and partly because it still doesn't have a consumer UI.
A consumer UI is not just about how easy it is to do some things (some of the Linux desktops like KDE are getting closer to this goal). Its also about not being able to do some things. A good consumer OS should do a lot of the underlying information management that Linux exposes. Consumers don't want to have to understand the implications of - for example - a UNIX-style filesystem layout in order to get their work done.
With proper branching in your source repository, you can isolate different areas of change, and thus keep build breakages limited to subsets of developers.
Agreed, and we know that their SCCS was broken in this respect.
With regards to isolating who broke a build, that would require a clean build for each and every checkin, which just isn't practical in terms of hardware resources. A more practical solution is to grab tip, build, if fail -> indicate all checkins since last green build. This gives you a bigger culprit set, but it's MUCH cheaper in terms of hardware.
Again going back to the article, we're talking about their daily builds, which will be clean. The compilers will spit out failure information that can be easily traced back to the culprit.
This is how many large (i.e. OS-sized) projects work - regular clean builds, usually once per day, with auto emailing of break information to those responsible. One group I worked in also required you donate some chocolate to a central "fund" available to all the engineers when you broke the build. A fun way of encouraging people to compile against clean sources before checking in.
I would think this would lead to a situation where CYA would become a way of life.
I don't think so - he's talking about buiuld brreaks (i.e. code that won't compile). These are automatically detected and the culprit is auto emailed. Under source code control there is nowhere to hide from this because you know whose code broke the build.
The only CYA you can do is not check in broken code. This is a good thing:-)
After reading the article a couple of times trying to get past the poor Japanese->English translation I was left wondering if the actualt research makes any distinction between types of game. I would expect a game like Tetris would require very different brain activity from Quake, which in turn would be very different than that used to play EverQuest.
A category like "video games" is so broad it may be meaningless. It will be interesting to see what the research actually says, rather than the press release about it.
In source-code escrow, the vendor promises to provide the source-code to the customer if the vendor goes out of business.
The problem is that bankruptcy courts often overturn source-code escrow clauses, because the source code turns out to be the firm's only salable asset.
Sorry to follow this a little off-topic, but this is interesting as I'm currently working with a commercial third party and we have a source-code escrow clause exactly of the sort you mention. Can you cite any specific cases where these have been overturned? I ask not because I disbelieve you but because it would be good to have case law to show my management so we can evaluate the risk of this happening to us (we're not confident of the future stability of the third party).
The acting is week, the story is lame and it's pretty much on par with Charmed.
Actually I think its your "analysis" that is weak...
Buffy is one of the more interesting series on TV at the moment. It deals smartly with its characters, is often very well written and the acting is usually good and can be terrific. Sarah Michelle Gellar is a very good actress: if you tried watching some of her quieter, subtler moments you'd see some of the best screen acting currently being done.
The show is clever because it takes a dumb premise and uses it to talk about the real world. Its use of fantasy as a metaphor for the real problems that people face growing up and (now) moving out into the real world is smart and usually very well executed.
Are there weak episodes? Absolutely. Is it a shame that Joss Whedon is doing so many series that his shows are starting to suffer? No doubt. Is all the acting up to snuff? No - Michelle Trachtenberg seems to be the Scrappy Doo of BtVS.
But overall its a smart, funny well produced series that shows how TV can be non-obvious, thoughtful and entertaining.
If you truly compare it to Charmed which is at best a warmed-over Buffy rip-off written and produced by network hacks, then I'd advise you give up that dream of becoming a professional TV critic and start practicing "would you like fries with that" line...
The rerun of Once More With Feeling is defintely worth catching, but be warned that this is a cut down episode. The full length episode is 8 minutes longer than the standard "1 hour" slot, and it was announced at the time of the original showing that future airings would be of a much shorter version without the additional 8 minutes of footage.
I believe you'll have to wait for the Season 6 DVD to be published before you can see the full episode again.
Acusing someone of criminal activity without just cause is, itself a felony.
I don't see how Time Warner have done that, at least in the case of the nastygram. They are saying that connecting an unsecured wireless AP to their network makes it possible for people to use the service to perform criminal acts. They haven't accused the user of any criminal activity.
Skipping over, for a moment, what those acts might be and which ones are really criminal... this seems like a reasonable enough position to take. If you or Time Warner knowingly provide the means for someone else to perform a criminal act, you can be held partly responsible for that act. This may well be a risk that you as an individual are prepared to take, but Time Warner who service millions of accounts are in a very different position. There is a huge potential liability here, and they are trying to guard against that. This isn't so unreasonable, especially if it is part of the contract you signed with them (i.e. their Terms of Service).
Does this mean I am happy that Time Warner are doing this? No.
Should we have enough competition in the broadband market that you can find a better supplier than Time Warner? Yes.
Are Time Warner committing a felony, or even doing something that is shady? I don't think so. Of course, IANAL.
Why do we jump to have the government certify our electronic devices, standards, and protocols? Why can't we merely rely on the private sector to develop sound products?
The private sector has a really poor track record of developing independent standards by which products can be compared. One of the main purposes of a business is to develop competitive advantage over its rivals, this is counter to the notion of having universal standards against which your products are measured.
This is (IMHO) a great example of where the government can provide a useful service to citizens that the private sector is unlikely to generate. A standard certification means that I can compare and contrast products from different manufacturers. I don't have to takes Manufactuer X's claim of "superior security protocols" at face value, I can see whether it meets certain well-defined criteria.
Its this kind of oversight that ensures that something like a true free market can operate. A true free market requires consumers to have excellent/perfect information with which to compare products. Private enterprise is incented to stifle the flow of such information - see recent attempts by companies to use copyright law prevent the publication of independent reviews of their products. We need a government - which ideally is free from commercial biases - to provide enough regulation and guidance to enable a true free market to operate.
Why don't we fight for LESS government and LESS government intervention...
If you don't believe there are lots of people doing exactly this you are very much misinformed. If you believe we should all fight for such things you don't understand people and you don't understand democracy.
Of course, only Microsoft is losing money on the X-Box, but the myth that all console makers routinely sell their hardware at a loss is pervasive. It just ain't so.
Okay, I'll bite. Do you have any evidence to back up this assertion? I'd like to believe you, but just stating it is hardly compelling. Any articles you can point us to? Recent financial statements from Sony or Sega that show this to be true?
It may be a myth, but it certainly makes sense (its a variant of the razor-blades business strategy) especially in a market that is so competitive. It clearly used to be true, at least back in the days of 8-bit consoles, so why should we believe it is not true now? To debunk the myth you'll need to present some evidence.
Re:Lots of twisty turny bills all the same
on
Greenbacks No More
·
· Score: 1
I dunno, maybe I like all my cash to fit in a standard wallet?
Gues what, as long as none of them were larger than the current bill, they still would. See, lateral thinking is your friend:-)
Lots of twisty turny bills all the same
on
Greenbacks No More
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Apparently, with both size and color the same, foreigners have a hard time differenciating between the bills.I still haven't gotten used to the larger pictures
As one of those "foreigners" who now lives in the US, I've often wondered how blind people operate here? All the bills are the same size. If you can't see what's written on the bill, how do you know if you've just offered a $1 bill or a $100 bill to the checkout clerk? How can you check your change?
Its not just the blind. Imagine being able to put your hand in your pocket and know how much cash you have just by feel. That's cool. No more standing on a dark street corner in the bad part of town counting through notes to know if you have enough for a beer/cab home/meal/whatever.
Virtually every other country has different sizes for notes of different amount. This seems like such an obvious and useful thing, I'm amazed that the US hasn't adopted it? Is this the ultimate Not Invented Here syndrome?
Yeah, but if you crash on the highway, you and your kids might die. If an asteroid hits the earth, millions or billions could die. So on a personal level, driving is more dangerous, but we're talking about the survival of the species here. It's not something to ignore.
You make a good point, although an asteroid impact is certainly not a guaranteed holocaust event. A good example is the 1908 Tunguska hit which is mentioned in the original article. This is believed to be about the same size as the one that missed us June 14th. It caused no known deaths and relatively little damage. Most asteroids are small and are much more likely to fall relatively harmlessly into an ocean than hit a populated area.
So the chances of a large asteroid hitting earth and causing wide-spread death and destruction are really pretty small. Not negligable. Not something we should ignore, but also not something to panic about.
If you want to worry about global death events, worry about India-Pakistan, not giant killer asteroids from space.
The earth is 12,000km in diameter (approximately). The asteriod is 120m in diameter and passed within 120,000km of earth. Working in just two dimensions because that's how the earth will appear as a target to the passing asteroid, then:
1) "surface area" of the earth is:
A = pi * r^2 = 3.14 * 6,000^2 = 110,000,000 square kilometers
2) The area within the 120,000km radius is:
A = pi * r^2 = 3.14 * 60,000^2 = 11,000,000,000 square kilometers
3) The area of the asteroid is in practice infinitesimal compared with either of these measurements.
So to some approximation, the chances of the asteroid hitting earth if it travels within 120,000 km of the planet is:
110,000,000/11,000,000,000 = 0.01 = 1%
This is certainly not a zero probability, but it is still pretty small.
Of course this ignores a lot of factors, including the Earth's gravity well and the relative vectors of the two objects. A real calculation would reveal different probabilities.
But even when one of these asteroids passes this close - which is only known to have happened 6 times since we've been able to record these events (about 50 years?) - there is still only about a 1 in 100 chance it will hit the planet.
I'm going to be worrying a lot more about travelling on the highway than I am about asteroid collisions.
Slashdot Mirror
2. The lanugae is not truely Turning complete. Which could have been fixed by taking some more time and making the language more complete.
On what basis do you make this claim? Turing (note spelling) completeness can be achieved in very simple languages (for example: Iota) and judging by the Cg language spec. I can't see any reason to doubt that Cg is.
Was there something specific you were thinking of?
"Good old Steve" is in reference to the litigation-happy days when Jobs was CEO of Apple in the 80's, suing Microsoft, Adobe, and everyone else who displeased him.
Unfortunately that's factually incorrect. Apple sued Microsoft in 1988, four years after Steve was kicked out of Apple. In fact he was sued by Apple the year after he left in 1985: see this. So the Apple-Microsoft suit had nothing to do with Mr. Jobs. Whatever his faults he doesn't seem to be particularly litigous.
One of the ...ahem... interesting things Bill says is: "We're also working with others throughout the industry to improve Internet protocols to stop email that could propagate misleading information or malicious code that falsely appears to be from trusted senders." (emphasis added)
Bob Cringley has written a couple of good articles on eactly this, the second related directly to Palladium. Check them out.
Cringley also has an article on the consequences of Palladium not working.
Am I the only one who thinks that this should be an *entirely* obvious step that should be taken immediately?
I'm sure there are many users who share your wish. Sadly it is hard to see how this makes sense for Apple. They make their money from selling hardware. It is conceiveable they could transition to making their money from selling operating systems - though only Microsoft has ever really built a significant revenue stream in this business. But managing the transition would be almost impossibly hard.
It is almost unimaginable that a public company could turn to its shareholders and say: we have a sustainable business that makes about $1 billion a year and isn't under threat. We're going to throw that away and go into this other business, with Microsoft as our main competitor, and we might be profitable again in a decade.
It just isn't going to happen.
What Apple will do, IMHO, is start selling Macs with Intel-compatible CPUs in them. Mac OS X would only run on those Apple machines, not on an off-the-shelf PC box.
This makes perfect sense, given that Intel's economies of scale and the competition from AMD means their CPUs are faster and cheaper than PowerPC. Apple can still make its money off hardware and the value of its industrial design.
Okay, can someone clear this up for me... according to the JPEG FAQ: "JPEG (pronounced "jay-peg") is a standardized image compression mechanism. JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the original name of the committee that wrote the standard."
The JPE group is a sub-committee of the ISO organization, see here. They claim that: "... a basic version of the many features of this standard, in association with a file format placed into the public domain by C-Cube Microsystems (JFIF) is what most people think of as JPEG."
So if the ISO experts group wrote the standard, how come it could be patented by this company? Is C-Cube somehow a part of or associated with Forgent? Surely placing the algorithm in the public domain is at least prior art that will invalidate this patent?
What am I missing here?
I wouldn't put it at the caffeine allowing you to do more mental work, but that heavy consumers of caffeine tend to drink lots of caffeinated beverages because their brains are already busy and they need to stay perked up.
Another interesting and plausible theory. As is so often the case, we need a proper controlled study to distinguish the correlation from the cause and effect.
Yeah, but unfortunately, it'll never ship by default unless APPLE makes it themselves. (Apple typically exhibits serious Not Invented Here syndrome, IMHO)
Take a look at this list. Okay it refers to an earlier version of QuickTime, but of the 22 video codecs, 18 are not invented by Apple. Most are open standards (JPEG, RGB, GIF, MPEG), one is even a Microsoft standard.
NIH? I don't think so.
Would it have been SOOOOO hard to build in a Vorbis decoder from xiph.org's BSD-licensed reference decorder? HUH? WOULD IT?
No, it would be easy. Apple publish the full QuickTime APIs. Go to it.
Interesting. I've seen studies suggesting that increased brain activity throughout life also correlates with lower incidences of Alzheimers. People who read a lot, do crosswords, basically stay mentall active seem less likely to develop this disease.
I wonder if what is actually happening is the caffeine allows you to do more mental work, which in turn reduces your risk of Alzheimers.
Pure speculation, of course, but it would be interesting if someone could do the experiement to try to validate this theory.
Making OSX seem strong makes Microsoft look less like a monopoly, without actually having to take on the real competition publicly (read real competition as "BSD, Linux, (and maybe OpenBeOS someday)") which would make the public actually aware of these options.
What makes you think Mac OS X isn't "real competition" for Microsoft? If Apple is successful with its stated aim of moving from 5% to 10% market share it will gain those extra users mainly from Microsoft. This looks like real competition to me. It would be good to see more competition in the OS marketplace but OS X looks like the real thing to me.
"...So, I am here to finally tell the moms of the world: you can trash the default operating system, replace it with Linux, and have the full power and reach of your computer, finally, in your hands..."
But this is a bad thing. Many people don't want "the full power and reach of your computer". They want to email their friends, surf the web, do a little word processing, play MP3s, take the red-eye out of their digital photos. Giving them the full power of the computer doesn't give them any of this. They want a machine that does a few things well, not one that makes eveything possible.
These applications are of course made possible because underneath is the full power of the computer. But most users only care about a few specific applications. Linux is a very, very good OS if you care about accessing the core features of the computer; having real control over it. It isn't (yet) the best choice if you want to do just a few things well, partly because it doesn't yet have the range of applications and partly because it still doesn't have a consumer UI.
A consumer UI is not just about how easy it is to do some things (some of the Linux desktops like KDE are getting closer to this goal). Its also about not being able to do some things. A good consumer OS should do a lot of the underlying information management that Linux exposes. Consumers don't want to have to understand the implications of - for example - a UNIX-style filesystem layout in order to get their work done.
there are Google interfaces in the following languages:
Afrikaans...
Tagalog
Ummm... Tagalog is a real language - its spoken mainly in the Philipines.
With proper branching in your source repository, you can isolate different areas of change, and thus keep build breakages limited to subsets of developers.
Agreed, and we know that their SCCS was broken in this respect.
With regards to isolating who broke a build, that would require a clean build for each and every checkin, which just isn't practical in terms of hardware resources. A more practical solution is to grab tip, build, if fail -> indicate all checkins since last green build. This gives you a bigger culprit set, but it's MUCH cheaper in terms of hardware.
Again going back to the article, we're talking about their daily builds, which will be clean. The compilers will spit out failure information that can be easily traced back to the culprit.
This is how many large (i.e. OS-sized) projects work - regular clean builds, usually once per day, with auto emailing of break information to those responsible. One group I worked in also required you donate some chocolate to a central "fund" available to all the engineers when you broke the build. A fun way of encouraging people to compile against clean sources before checking in.
I would think this would lead to a situation where CYA would become a way of life.
:-)
I don't think so - he's talking about buiuld brreaks (i.e. code that won't compile). These are automatically detected and the culprit is auto emailed. Under source code control there is nowhere to hide from this because you know whose code broke the build.
The only CYA you can do is not check in broken code. This is a good thing
Runtime errors don't stop 5000 team members.
After reading the article a couple of times trying to get past the poor Japanese->English translation I was left wondering if the actualt research makes any distinction between types of game. I would expect a game like Tetris would require very different brain activity from Quake, which in turn would be very different than that used to play EverQuest.
A category like "video games" is so broad it may be meaningless. It will be interesting to see what the research actually says, rather than the press release about it.
In source-code escrow, the vendor promises to provide the source-code to the customer if the vendor goes out of business.
The problem is that bankruptcy courts often overturn source-code escrow clauses, because the source code turns out to be the firm's only salable asset.
Sorry to follow this a little off-topic, but this is interesting as I'm currently working with a commercial third party and we have a source-code escrow clause exactly of the sort you mention. Can you cite any specific cases where these have been overturned? I ask not because I disbelieve you but because it would be good to have case law to show my management so we can evaluate the risk of this happening to us (we're not confident of the future stability of the third party).
The acting is week, the story is lame and it's pretty much on par with Charmed.
Actually I think its your "analysis" that is weak...
Buffy is one of the more interesting series on TV at the moment. It deals smartly with its characters, is often very well written and the acting is usually good and can be terrific. Sarah Michelle Gellar is a very good actress: if you tried watching some of her quieter, subtler moments you'd see some of the best screen acting currently being done.
The show is clever because it takes a dumb premise and uses it to talk about the real world. Its use of fantasy as a metaphor for the real problems that people face growing up and (now) moving out into the real world is smart and usually very well executed.
Are there weak episodes? Absolutely. Is it a shame that Joss Whedon is doing so many series that his shows are starting to suffer? No doubt. Is all the acting up to snuff? No - Michelle Trachtenberg seems to be the Scrappy Doo of BtVS.
But overall its a smart, funny well produced series that shows how TV can be non-obvious, thoughtful and entertaining.
If you truly compare it to Charmed which is at best a warmed-over Buffy rip-off written and produced by network hacks, then I'd advise you give up that dream of becoming a professional TV critic and start practicing "would you like fries with that" line...
The rerun of Once More With Feeling is defintely worth catching, but be warned that this is a cut down episode. The full length episode is 8 minutes longer than the standard "1 hour" slot, and it was announced at the time of the original showing that future airings would be of a much shorter version without the additional 8 minutes of footage.
I believe you'll have to wait for the Season 6 DVD to be published before you can see the full episode again.
Acusing someone of criminal activity without just cause is, itself a felony.
I don't see how Time Warner have done that, at least in the case of the nastygram. They are saying that connecting an unsecured wireless AP to their network makes it possible for people to use the service to perform criminal acts. They haven't accused the user of any criminal activity.
Skipping over, for a moment, what those acts might be and which ones are really criminal... this seems like a reasonable enough position to take. If you or Time Warner knowingly provide the means for someone else to perform a criminal act, you can be held partly responsible for that act. This may well be a risk that you as an individual are prepared to take, but Time Warner who service millions of accounts are in a very different position. There is a huge potential liability here, and they are trying to guard against that. This isn't so unreasonable, especially if it is part of the contract you signed with them (i.e. their Terms of Service).
Does this mean I am happy that Time Warner are doing this? No.
Should we have enough competition in the broadband market that you can find a better supplier than Time Warner? Yes.
Are Time Warner committing a felony, or even doing something that is shady? I don't think so. Of course, IANAL.
Why do we jump to have the government certify our electronic devices, standards, and protocols? Why can't we merely rely on the private sector to develop sound products?
The private sector has a really poor track record of developing independent standards by which products can be compared. One of the main purposes of a business is to develop competitive advantage over its rivals, this is counter to the notion of having universal standards against which your products are measured.
This is (IMHO) a great example of where the government can provide a useful service to citizens that the private sector is unlikely to generate. A standard certification means that I can compare and contrast products from different manufacturers. I don't have to takes Manufactuer X's claim of "superior security protocols" at face value, I can see whether it meets certain well-defined criteria.
Its this kind of oversight that ensures that something like a true free market can operate. A true free market requires consumers to have excellent/perfect information with which to compare products. Private enterprise is incented to stifle the flow of such information - see recent attempts by companies to use copyright law prevent the publication of independent reviews of their products. We need a government - which ideally is free from commercial biases - to provide enough regulation and guidance to enable a true free market to operate.
Why don't we fight for LESS government and LESS government intervention...
If you don't believe there are lots of people doing exactly this you are very much misinformed. If you believe we should all fight for such things you don't understand people and you don't understand democracy.
Of course, only Microsoft is losing money on the X-Box, but the myth that all console makers routinely sell their hardware at a loss is pervasive. It just ain't so.
Okay, I'll bite. Do you have any evidence to back up this assertion? I'd like to believe you, but just stating it is hardly compelling. Any articles you can point us to? Recent financial statements from Sony or Sega that show this to be true?
It may be a myth, but it certainly makes sense (its a variant of the razor-blades business strategy) especially in a market that is so competitive. It clearly used to be true, at least back in the days of 8-bit consoles, so why should we believe it is not true now? To debunk the myth you'll need to present some evidence.
I dunno, maybe I like all my cash to fit in a standard wallet?
:-)
Gues what, as long as none of them were larger than the current bill, they still would. See, lateral thinking is your friend
Apparently, with both size and color the same, foreigners have a hard time differenciating between the bills.I still haven't gotten used to the larger pictures
As one of those "foreigners" who now lives in the US, I've often wondered how blind people operate here? All the bills are the same size. If you can't see what's written on the bill, how do you know if you've just offered a $1 bill or a $100 bill to the checkout clerk? How can you check your change?
Its not just the blind. Imagine being able to put your hand in your pocket and know how much cash you have just by feel. That's cool. No more standing on a dark street corner in the bad part of town counting through notes to know if you have enough for a beer/cab home/meal/whatever.
Virtually every other country has different sizes for notes of different amount. This seems like such an obvious and useful thing, I'm amazed that the US hasn't adopted it? Is this the ultimate Not Invented Here syndrome?
Yeah, but if you crash on the highway, you and your kids might die. If an asteroid hits the earth, millions or billions could die. So on a personal level, driving is more dangerous, but we're talking about the survival of the species here. It's not something to ignore.
You make a good point, although an asteroid impact is certainly not a guaranteed holocaust event. A good example is the 1908 Tunguska hit which is mentioned in the original article. This is believed to be about the same size as the one that missed us June 14th. It caused no known deaths and relatively little damage. Most asteroids are small and are much more likely to fall relatively harmlessly into an ocean than hit a populated area.
So the chances of a large asteroid hitting earth and causing wide-spread death and destruction are really pretty small. Not negligable. Not something we should ignore, but also not something to panic about.
If you want to worry about global death events, worry about India-Pakistan, not giant killer asteroids from space.
The earth is 12,000km in diameter (approximately). The asteriod is 120m in diameter and passed within 120,000km of earth. Working in just two dimensions because that's how the earth will appear as a target to the passing asteroid, then:
1) "surface area" of the earth is:
A = pi * r^2 = 3.14 * 6,000^2 = 110,000,000 square kilometers
2) The area within the 120,000km radius is:
A = pi * r^2 = 3.14 * 60,000^2 = 11,000,000,000 square kilometers
3) The area of the asteroid is in practice infinitesimal compared with either of these measurements.
So to some approximation, the chances of the asteroid hitting earth if it travels within 120,000 km of the planet is:
110,000,000/11,000,000,000 = 0.01 = 1%
This is certainly not a zero probability, but it is still pretty small.
Of course this ignores a lot of factors, including the Earth's gravity well and the relative vectors of the two objects. A real calculation would reveal different probabilities.
But even when one of these asteroids passes this close - which is only known to have happened 6 times since we've been able to record these events (about 50 years?) - there is still only about a 1 in 100 chance it will hit the planet.
I'm going to be worrying a lot more about travelling on the highway than I am about asteroid collisions.