I (and my usual opponents - who I rate fairly strong) frequently play defensively. If there is a triple square close but I can't reach it I will place a word to foul it up for the others, even if I could have scored more elsewhere. OTOH my mother plays for long words (not necessarily high scoring) and gets trounced.
Your "strong players" would soon get trounced here too. It's like claiming that a strong football [soccer] player is one who just gives the ball a big kick up the field and uses no tactics.
A Beemer for Apple? No, Beemers are not a triumph of style over engineering. I once dismantled a Mac to see if there was anything worth salvaging, but found it was made out of crap assembled with once-only barbed bits that looked designed to be banged together by monkeys.
Apple are more like one of those quirky electric cars that look like a translucent folding space helmet, owned by a slight guy in pink trousers banging on in a falsetto voice about "style".
Microsoft are a Ford minivan, driven by a PHB who knows squit about how it works and droning on about "walking the talk", "leveraging enriched experience" and "hitting the ground running".
Linux is an armoured car with all the rivets showing co-driven by Scottie and a beatnik, arguing about how the owner's handbook should be phrased.
Simple way of calculating how fast an overtaking driver is going.
As he passes start counting slowly to ten. Mentally note the spot he has then reached. At that moment start counting from 1 again until you reach the same spot. Multiply the number you reach by 10. That is the percentage by which he is going faster than you.
Of course it does not reduce the footprint - ie the size taken up on the road. It's been a long time since car wheels stuck out beyond the bodywork (except racing cars).
"easier to part" ? You mean the dealer's spare parts department can stock fewer wheels? I'm pretty certain that the dealers for my 4 wheel car don't normally stock any wheels, although they could order one from the factory. I've owned cars a long time and never needed to buy a replacement wheel.
"gyro chip is like $2... added to a PCB that already has enough computing power to do that and check your email. Sounds a lot cheaper than the parts and *assembly labor* for adding a third wheel"
No. For an application like this you would need a very high integrity industrial grade system. I see those in my job as a nuclear engineer. Forget about consumer prices.
And that costly "assembly labor" you worry about - have you ever seen a modern car production line at work?
You and others keep making this point, but he is no more sitting in his basement than you or I are, posting to/.
In fact this is the guys job. He is a Maths postgraduate doing research. Like engineers, car mechanics, accountants and even fashion designers, that involves some time not being out looking for a GF. You think he should spend 100% of his time chasing them?
As for your rule about meeting a lot of women, I agree, and that is precisely what comes out of his calculation as well. It's like throwing dice, that is his point. I agree his numbers are too pessimistic. But why do you say nobody actually does it? I did (but the number "possible" in my case was not that huge, about 100).
In fact I did a similar calc some time ago but based on evidence from being in a dating club. I calculated I had a 1 in 400 chance of scoring if I approached an atractive girl at random. I adjusted my strategy accordingly and in fact did well. What's was wrong with giving the matter some thought (which led to the calculation)?
I don't see doing a Drake equation causes not finding a GF - as long as you are not daft enough to tell them they might figure in your calculations. Same as it would be unwise for an avid football supporter to tell a girl he was that. But not finding a GF might cause you to do do the Drake equation project - that's the other way round.
You seem to live in a different part of the world from most of the rest of us. Or even on a different planet. Did you miss all that about MS charging PC makers full retail price for Windows unless the maker installed Windows on every PC they made?
It would be helpful if you could give us some pointers to where bare PCs with mainstream hardware could be bought in the UK.
The only way I know to get a bare PC is to build it yourself, and that's what I do. MS would like to take a tribute even from the likes of me though - on the assumption that I pirate their crap.
Linux is free, so unless Microsoft are charging a negative price for Windows, that's not really relevant here. To beat out a cheaper rival like Linux, Windows has to be a superior product
Does it not occur to you that Windows might be sold to the schools at a positive price but the idea is sold to the higher officials who make the decisions at a smaller but more focussed negative price?
This whole discussion is a laughable display of naivity. These decisions are not simply made on the merits and cost of Linux vs Windows. Even in the West this does not happen.
From what I read.. most European cars do it [speedometer reads high] to some degree, as a "safety feature". Even though the roads are rated for a speed, it will encourage drivers of their cars to drive a little slower, and make it appear that the cars are safer
It's not for safety reasons directly, but for legal reasons. In the UK it is illegal to have a speedo that reads under (so the driver cannot use that as an excuse for speeding). They can however read 10% over. The car makers don't want to get sued by owners for getting caught speeding, so they calibrate the speedo for the extreme circumstance of new and over-inflated tyres, then allow more margin as well.
Of course, people who have concerns about the radiation involved with nuclear power aren't worried about radiation released during normal operations,.... They're worried about accidents, sabotage, leakage, and WMD proliferation, which are all ways that the containment could fail.
That's not true. They are worried about normal operation as well.
I Googled for the dating club I was in and it does not seem to exist any more. It was some years ago, and I was in South London
Not clear whether you dont like the girls you meet, or they don't like you, or you just dont meet any. My point was that you cannot tell on paper or from a database who you are going to click with. It is like trying to throw a treble six with three dice. Don't waste time trying to work out the dynamics, just make as many throws as possible.
My dating club worked by you writing letters to any girls who's description you liked. Over about 4 years I sent about 1200 letters (more or less standardised), met 120 girls, dated about 12 more than twice (note the factors of 10) and might have settled with four of them. The second date seemed to be the first reall make-or-break point.
In those same four years, in fact in ten years around those four years, outside the dating club I met JUST FOUR girls (none of whom I saw again). There is no way I'd have found anyone without the dating club.
In my local paper today (provincial city) there are two pages of lonely hearts ads, and the women actually outnumber the men, even in the 20's age group. They did not have those pages in my day.
Be prepared to consider single mums. One of the tragic consequences of women's lib is that many young girls think it's OK to have babies by any gigilos who come along (not you or me by the sound of it) and then live afterwards with the children for company without men. By their mid to late 20's they find the downside : they are often impoverished, lonely, unable to control the children alone, and in particular cannot get out
to socialise and maybe meet a nice guy to settle with after all.
There is a whole sub-stratum of society of these single mums. I know of several even in my small circle. They are trapped at home, celebate, and nursing the notion that "all men are the same". This accounts for much of the disparity in the numbers of women to men in the social and dating social scene - because the gigilos are still out there.
Those single mums are there for the taking, but just make allowances for the kids - you may need to pay for the baby-sitter.
Sounds like you are easily satisfied, sticking with school friends. Lucky old you. I went to an all-boys secondary school, and an all-male college, but judging by the fact that the girls in the primary school classified me in the shites group it would have made no difference if I had been in co-ed.
I was approached by one of those dating services 6 years ago... and went in..... They told me how nice it was to have a 'nice guy' come in
I expect they say that to all the guys.
if there truly were more women than men in this service, it's only because...
If they told you women out-numbered men you should have asked for an age breakdown. Any surplus of women in that type of bureaux are in the 50+ age group. Been there.
Maybe people should just stop dating and learn how to experience life and just get out and do things. My friends that try the hardest to meet someone are the ones that are the least successful at it.
But that's not what you did, is it? You sent an e-Mail from your PC (in Ma's basement? Sorry, just joking!). Just "getting out" didn't work for me either. You go out - what do you see? A street with a few drunks (male), some muggers (male) and old ladies carrying shopping. So you go in a bar and what do you see? A few old geezers (male) getting drunk, and if you are really lucky a 50 yo tart drunk already. Then what?
So next you spend a few months swatting up on photography/literature/archery/whatever, enough to join a club. But find the only females in it are some 50+yo wives of the old male fogies who form most of the membership.
So then you spend $500 to attend evening classes on Italian/Art/History but find any women are 40+ and happily married.
So then you go to a singles bar or dance hall. Getting warmer, because at least you can (frustratingly) see some pretty girls, but any I approached told me to f#*k off because any such girl can recognise a geek at 1000 yards. Or think they can.
So that's why I joined a dating club. I have a background of good qualifications, good job, and naval officer training. But I quickly found that trying to match characteristics on paper was a waste of time - girls I met "similar" to me hated me. So, running out of "equivalent" girls in the club lists to contact I started contacting any that just met basic criteria of under my own age (24 then) and under my own height. I then in particular started meeting poorer, "working class" girls.
WOW!! That was different! Because working class girls do not have the qualifications and maybe not the brains, they tend to play their sexuality more. I might be wrong but it seems to me that they need bigger bra cup sizes too. In fact, one of the first I met, and dated for 6 months, had actually been a Bunny Girl in the London Playboy club (but left on her 1st day!). To think I had expected to find only prunes! Some of these girls seemed flattered to have a boyfriend "out of their league", who had a good job and who treated them as a "proper lady". That's something which the ones who told me to f#*k off at the dance hall never gave themselves the chance to find out.
But seriously, what I found was that many of these poorer girls, whom I would never have been matched with by computer criteria, were quite intelligent but had lacked opportunity. Some I just "clicked" with, for no obvious reason, being very different people in fact.
The best strategy for success is deliberately to meet as many as possible without worrying about any but basic criteria, until you find the one you really hit it off with. As I did.
Why would anyone think that paying by the mile would reduce the amount I'm driving?
I don't go on long jaunts around the town just for the hell of it
But a lot of people do. I know a guy, a pensioner, who drives right across town (Bristol. UK) and back every morning in the rush hour to buy a loaf of bread from a particular baker's shop - out of loyaly. He thinks it's OK because he "only has Nissan Micra". Out in the countryside (around where I work), I estimate that about a third of the traffic during the day is pensioners driving out from Bristol to visit garden centres. Go into one of these and you will find they are not buying garden stuff, but are all in the cafeteria drinking tea or coffee.
So pretty much what this would do is either be a savings for me--because it'd be less than my buffet style policy--or it'd be more expensive for me. I'm guessing that the majority of people, myself included, would fall into the latter category.
You may have a point. I commuted by train once and saw an insurance advert on the station that if you had a railway season ticket they would give you "cheaper" car insurance because you must drive less. I enquired, but the quote I got back was twice what I already paid. I guess the company assumed that people with season tickets tended to be richer so would tolerate paying more.
1) He never took home an outrageous salary like many of his CEO counterparts.
Funny he got so rich then. Actually, we weren't born yesterday - the salary of these guys is hardly relevant. Income != Salary. Most of the income of company owners is in profits taken and share values.
2) He built a company and from the get go gave each employee the chance to get options and shares.
What has the income of these qualified professional people got to do with "The Poor"
3) He built a market for third parties.
He did not build it, it arose. The policy of an open PC with open APIs was IBM's (to which MS was originally contracted). Not even IBM invented that approach anyway, it already existed with CP/M for example. MS has till now kicked any third party in the head if it became too much of a rival (eg Netscape, Novell, even IBM in the software field).
4) He brought down the price of software. Before Microsoft people were charging a fortune for software.... For example ever look at the price list of say Oracle, IBM or many other vendors? Sun used to charge outrageous fees.
Oracle, IBM, Sun ?.. You are comparing MS with professional software. MS's professional software costs a lot too. I happen to have a 1990 catalogue for CP/M software (I keep these things to debunk people like you). 19 GBP (~$25?) for Locoscript word processor, 28 GBP for Masterfile databas; I leave you to adjust for subsequent inflation but it's about a factor of three here in UK.
... when all is said and done Microsoft and Bill Gates will not look like the villain that many like to portray
Sorry, they've blown it. They are on record as law-breaking monopolists who lean on governments, contemptuously disregard the orders of the European Government, play dirty tricks that exploit their near monopoly, and brazenly corrupt the processes of the International Standards Organisation in their own favour. Just as a few examples.
To have a gear or cam designed to break under mechanical overload is stupid. The proper way to provide a mechanical weak point is to use a shear pin. This is a plain cotter pin in an accessible drive shaft coupling, or in the hub of that gearwheel, that will shear under overload. It may be mild steel, or even aluminium in a light mechanism. Such a part is much cheaper to replace than a gearwheel, and can even be made by the user with basic workshop facilities rather than having to go back to the manufacturer.
Shear pins are common in machine tools for example, and are the mechanical equivalent of a fuse, which answers your point about electronics.
BTW, I note Mr AC that you do not have the same sort of courage in your convictions that you're saying the activists should have - IE, associating your identity with your beliefs.
Hello again, I am the AC to which you are replying. I can log in as myself this time beause I am at home now. I posted my previous comment from work, where we are not allowed to log into discussion sites. It's as simple as that - another example of the fact that not everything needs a sinister explanation.
The APT could not tilt into the path of another train. Its whole tilt motion envelope fell within the envelope of a non-tilting train; or in other words, within the loading gauge. True, if the tilt failed the train would have to slow to the speed of a non-tilting train, not for any technical reason but for passenger comfort or so as not to alarm the passengers. This would not be a huge problem - the tilt system would be pretty reliable and even if it did fail the train would only need to slow on the sharper curves.
As for causing sea-sickness, this depends on the tilting algorithm. When the APT came out little was known about passenger response and the APT was given a very simple algorithm that aimed for zero lateral g in the passenger saloon. Later knowledge, particularly aquired by FIAT with their Penulino development, made great improvements such as leaving a proportion of the centrifugal force uncorrected by tilt, and also better handling of the transitions. Given any programmable tilt control system (such as the APT had) such tuning could have been applied retrospectively.
As it was, the APT on its first publicity run made a bunch of press hack vomit their whisky-and-soda, leading to the bad press that caused the myth that the APT was some kind of total disaster, a myth that Mrs Thatcher seized upon as an excuse to can the project, and a myth which quite a few Slashdotters seem to have bought too.
Yes, Mitnick did time - he got a severe sentence, including solitary. It was out of proportion to his crime because his was an early instance of cracking (the swallow before the summer) and he was made a scapegoat. Also, the press paid great interest partly because of the fascinating story of his pursuit and capture, which the authorities treated as a mission deserving all their energy.
Looking back now, you can't help wondering why all the fuss. Mitnick did pry around some academic, corporate and military related systems but always maintained he did no damage. He certainly seemed to act out of curiosity and as a challenge rather than with malice. He has yet to write his account of the episode.
What Mitnik did pales into insignificance compared with what goes on now - spammers acting with apparent impunity, crackers installing and controlling bots in their tens of thousands, market researchers planting spyware, and even previously respected household names like Sony pushing Trojans onto the unsuspecting public. Activities which seriously threaten the continued viablity of the internet as a medium.
Company directors can be sent to jail, as Mitnik was. However I doubt it will happen because the legal authorities and the public are now punch drunk with misbehaviour in the IT field. They were sharp and keen against Mitnik but now they are weary and cannot be bothered to pursue the wrong-doers.
It is much easier for the authorities to dismiss this case with "Oh well, surely Sony couldn't have meant any harm, could they?"
They know that if they announce it publically they are going to be subjected to endless publicity, phone interviews, and other calls from M$, consultants, equivalent organisations for advice (if public sector), politicians - like Munich, Newham and Massachusetts were/are. Every instance now becomes a political and marketing football. They prefer a peaceful life.
Be aware that Schofield is a Microsoft shill
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But presumably in future the free Windows you get by default with your laptop will be the adware version. You would probably have to pay a supplement for the non-adware version. In your case therefore (and mine) you should opt for the adware version and then erase it to make way for Linux (or whatever)
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I (and my usual opponents - who I rate fairly strong) frequently play defensively. If there is a triple square close but I can't reach it I will place a word to foul it up for the others, even if I could have scored more elsewhere. OTOH my mother plays for long words (not necessarily high scoring) and gets trounced.
Your "strong players" would soon get trounced here too. It's like claiming that a strong football [soccer] player is one who just gives the ball a big kick up the field and uses no tactics.
A Beemer for Apple? No, Beemers are not a triumph of style over engineering. I once dismantled a Mac to see if there was anything worth salvaging, but found it was made out of crap assembled with once-only barbed bits that looked designed to be banged together by monkeys.
Apple are more like one of those quirky electric cars that look like a translucent folding space helmet, owned by a slight guy in pink trousers banging on in a falsetto voice about "style".
Microsoft are a Ford minivan, driven by a PHB who knows squit about how it works and droning on about "walking the talk", "leveraging enriched experience" and "hitting the ground running".
Linux is an armoured car with all the rivets showing co-driven by Scottie and a beatnik, arguing about how the owner's handbook should be phrased.
I don't like Beemers anyway.
Simple way of calculating how fast an overtaking driver is going. As he passes start counting slowly to ten. Mentally note the spot he has then reached. At that moment start counting from 1 again until you reach the same spot. Multiply the number you reach by 10. That is the percentage by which he is going faster than you.
"There is no reason at all why electric cars should be slow, ugly and boring or even as impractical as this thing is"
Yes there is. Someone stated it as a sort of law here a while ago. I forget his name so I'll pinch it and call it "Nuke's Law".
Nukes law : "Electric cars must be (i) Tiny, (ii) Ugly, and (iii) Quirky"
Ok, Ok, one or two exceptions.
Of course it does not reduce the footprint - ie the size taken up on the road. It's been a long time since car wheels stuck out beyond the bodywork (except racing cars).
"easier to part" ? You mean the dealer's spare parts department can stock fewer wheels? I'm pretty certain that the dealers for my 4 wheel car don't normally stock any wheels, although they could order one from the factory. I've owned cars a long time and never needed to buy a replacement wheel.
"gyro chip is like $2 ... added to a PCB that already has enough computing power to do that and check your email. Sounds a lot cheaper than the parts and *assembly labor* for adding a third wheel"
No. For an application like this you would need a very high integrity industrial grade system. I see those in my job as a nuclear engineer. Forget about consumer prices.
And that costly "assembly labor" you worry about - have you ever seen a modern car production line at work?
You and others keep making this point, but he is no more sitting in his basement than you or I are, posting to /.
In fact this is the guys job. He is a Maths postgraduate doing research. Like engineers, car mechanics, accountants and even fashion designers, that involves some time not being out looking for a GF. You think he should spend 100% of his time chasing them?
As for your rule about meeting a lot of women, I agree, and that is precisely what comes out of his calculation as well. It's like throwing dice, that is his point. I agree his numbers are too pessimistic. But why do you say nobody actually does it? I did (but the number "possible" in my case was not that huge, about 100).
In fact I did a similar calc some time ago but based on evidence from being in a dating club. I calculated I had a 1 in 400 chance of scoring if I approached an atractive girl at random. I adjusted my strategy accordingly and in fact did well. What's was wrong with giving the matter some thought (which led to the calculation)?
I don't see doing a Drake equation causes not finding a GF - as long as you are not daft enough to tell them they might figure in your calculations. Same as it would be unwise for an avid football supporter to tell a girl he was that. But not finding a GF might cause you to do do the Drake equation project - that's the other way round.
You seem to live in a different part of the world from most of the rest of us. Or even on a different planet. Did you miss all that about MS charging PC makers full retail price for Windows unless the maker installed Windows on every PC they made?
It would be helpful if you could give us some pointers to where bare PCs with mainstream hardware could be bought in the UK.
The only way I know to get a bare PC is to build it yourself, and that's what I do. MS would like to take a tribute even from the likes of me though - on the assumption that I pirate their crap.
Linux is free, so unless Microsoft are charging a negative price for Windows, that's not really relevant here. To beat out a cheaper rival like Linux, Windows has to be a superior product
Does it not occur to you that Windows might be sold to the schools at a positive price but the idea is sold to the higher officials who make the decisions at a smaller but more focussed negative price?
This whole discussion is a laughable display of naivity. These decisions are not simply made on the merits and cost of Linux vs Windows. Even in the West this does not happen.
From what I read .. most European cars do it [speedometer reads high] to some degree, as a "safety feature". Even though the roads are rated for a speed, it will encourage drivers of their cars to drive a little slower, and make it appear that the cars are safer
It's not for safety reasons directly, but for legal reasons. In the UK it is illegal to have a speedo that reads under (so the driver cannot use that as an excuse for speeding). They can however read 10% over. The car makers don't want to get sued by owners for getting caught speeding, so they calibrate the speedo for the extreme circumstance of new and over-inflated tyres, then allow more margin as well.
I can only assume that we have an entire nation that's slowly turning gay (not that there's anything wrong with that)
Nothing against it myself either. The more men who turn gay the better. Leaves more totty for me.
"Doctors fight patient ..." ?
I for one welcome our new retired senior Metropolitan police officer overlord.
Of course, people who have concerns about the radiation involved with nuclear power aren't worried about radiation released during normal operations,.... They're worried about accidents, sabotage, leakage, and WMD proliferation, which are all ways that the containment could fail.
That's not true. They are worried about normal operation as well.
I Googled for the dating club I was in and it does not seem to exist any more. It was some years ago, and I was in South London
Not clear whether you dont like the girls you meet, or they don't like you, or you just dont meet any. My point was that you cannot tell on paper or from a database who you are going to click with. It is like trying to throw a treble six with three dice. Don't waste time trying to work out the dynamics, just make as many throws as possible.
My dating club worked by you writing letters to any girls who's description you liked. Over about 4 years I sent about 1200 letters (more or less standardised), met 120 girls, dated about 12 more than twice (note the factors of 10) and might have settled with four of them. The second date seemed to be the first reall make-or-break point.
In those same four years, in fact in ten years around those four years, outside the dating club I met JUST FOUR girls (none of whom I saw again). There is no way I'd have found anyone without the dating club.
In my local paper today (provincial city) there are two pages of lonely hearts ads, and the women actually outnumber the men, even in the 20's age group. They did not have those pages in my day.
Be prepared to consider single mums. One of the tragic consequences of women's lib is that many young girls think it's OK to have babies by any gigilos who come along (not you or me by the sound of it) and then live afterwards with the children for company without men. By their mid to late 20's they find the downside : they are often impoverished, lonely, unable to control the children alone, and in particular cannot get out to socialise and maybe meet a nice guy to settle with after all.
There is a whole sub-stratum of society of these single mums. I know of several even in my small circle. They are trapped at home, celebate, and nursing the notion that "all men are the same". This accounts for much of the disparity in the numbers of women to men in the social and dating social scene - because the gigilos are still out there.
Those single mums are there for the taking, but just make allowances for the kids - you may need to pay for the baby-sitter.
I was approached by one of those dating services 6 years ago ... and went in. .... They told me how nice it was to have a 'nice guy' come in
I expect they say that to all the guys.
if there truly were more women than men in this service, it's only because ...
If they told you women out-numbered men you should have asked for an age breakdown. Any surplus of women in that type of bureaux are in the 50+ age group. Been there.
Maybe people should just stop dating and learn how to experience life and just get out and do things. My friends that try the hardest to meet someone are the ones that are the least successful at it.
But that's not what you did, is it? You sent an e-Mail from your PC (in Ma's basement? Sorry, just joking!). Just "getting out" didn't work for me either. You go out - what do you see? A street with a few drunks (male), some muggers (male) and old ladies carrying shopping. So you go in a bar and what do you see? A few old geezers (male) getting drunk, and if you are really lucky a 50 yo tart drunk already. Then what?
So next you spend a few months swatting up on photography/literature/archery/whatever, enough to join a club. But find the only females in it are some 50+yo wives of the old male fogies who form most of the membership.
So then you spend $500 to attend evening classes on Italian/Art/History but find any women are 40+ and happily married.
So then you go to a singles bar or dance hall. Getting warmer, because at least you can (frustratingly) see some pretty girls, but any I approached told me to f#*k off because any such girl can recognise a geek at 1000 yards. Or think they can.
So that's why I joined a dating club. I have a background of good qualifications, good job, and naval officer training. But I quickly found that trying to match characteristics on paper was a waste of time - girls I met "similar" to me hated me. So, running out of "equivalent" girls in the club lists to contact I started contacting any that just met basic criteria of under my own age (24 then) and under my own height. I then in particular started meeting poorer, "working class" girls.
WOW!! That was different! Because working class girls do not have the qualifications and maybe not the brains, they tend to play their sexuality more. I might be wrong but it seems to me that they need bigger bra cup sizes too. In fact, one of the first I met, and dated for 6 months, had actually been a Bunny Girl in the London Playboy club (but left on her 1st day!). To think I had expected to find only prunes! Some of these girls seemed flattered to have a boyfriend "out of their league", who had a good job and who treated them as a "proper lady". That's something which the ones who told me to f#*k off at the dance hall never gave themselves the chance to find out.
But seriously, what I found was that many of these poorer girls, whom I would never have been matched with by computer criteria, were quite intelligent but had lacked opportunity. Some I just "clicked" with, for no obvious reason, being very different people in fact.
The best strategy for success is deliberately to meet as many as possible without worrying about any but basic criteria, until you find the one you really hit it off with. As I did.
Why would anyone think that paying by the mile would reduce the amount I'm driving?
I don't go on long jaunts around the town just for the hell of it
But a lot of people do. I know a guy, a pensioner, who drives right across town (Bristol. UK) and back every morning in the rush hour to buy a loaf of bread from a particular baker's shop - out of loyaly. He thinks it's OK because he "only has Nissan Micra". Out in the countryside (around where I work), I estimate that about a third of the traffic during the day is pensioners driving out from Bristol to visit garden centres. Go into one of these and you will find they are not buying garden stuff, but are all in the cafeteria drinking tea or coffee.
So pretty much what this would do is either be a savings for me--because it'd be less than my buffet style policy--or it'd be more expensive for me. I'm guessing that the majority of people, myself included, would fall into the latter category.
You may have a point. I commuted by train once and saw an insurance advert on the station that if you had a railway season ticket they would give you "cheaper" car insurance because you must drive less. I enquired, but the quote I got back was twice what I already paid. I guess the company assumed that people with season tickets tended to be richer so would tolerate paying more.
1) He never took home an outrageous salary like many of his CEO counterparts.
... For example ever look at the price list of say Oracle, IBM or many other vendors? Sun used to charge outrageous fees.
.. You are comparing MS with professional software. MS's professional software costs a lot too. I happen to have a 1990 catalogue for CP/M software (I keep these things to debunk people like you). 19 GBP (~$25?) for Locoscript word processor, 28 GBP for Masterfile databas; I leave you to adjust for subsequent inflation but it's about a factor of three here in UK.
... when all is said and done Microsoft and Bill Gates will not look like the villain that many like to portray
Funny he got so rich then. Actually, we weren't born yesterday - the salary of these guys is hardly relevant. Income != Salary. Most of the income of company owners is in profits taken and share values.
2) He built a company and from the get go gave each employee the chance to get options and shares.
What has the income of these qualified professional people got to do with "The Poor"
3) He built a market for third parties.
He did not build it, it arose. The policy of an open PC with open APIs was IBM's (to which MS was originally contracted). Not even IBM invented that approach anyway, it already existed with CP/M for example. MS has till now kicked any third party in the head if it became too much of a rival (eg Netscape, Novell, even IBM in the software field).
4) He brought down the price of software. Before Microsoft people were charging a fortune for software.
Oracle, IBM, Sun ?
Sorry, they've blown it. They are on record as law-breaking monopolists who lean on governments, contemptuously disregard the orders of the European Government, play dirty tricks that exploit their near monopoly, and brazenly corrupt the processes of the International Standards Organisation in their own favour. Just as a few examples.
To have a gear or cam designed to break under mechanical overload is stupid. The proper way to provide a mechanical weak point is to use a shear pin. This is a plain cotter pin in an accessible drive shaft coupling, or in the hub of that gearwheel, that will shear under overload. It may be mild steel, or even aluminium in a light mechanism. Such a part is much cheaper to replace than a gearwheel, and can even be made by the user with basic workshop facilities rather than having to go back to the manufacturer.
Shear pins are common in machine tools for example, and are the mechanical equivalent of a fuse, which answers your point about electronics.
BTW, I note Mr AC that you do not have the same sort of courage in your convictions that you're saying the activists should have - IE, associating your identity with your beliefs.
Hello again, I am the AC to which you are replying. I can log in as myself this time beause I am at home now. I posted my previous comment from work, where we are not allowed to log into discussion sites. It's as simple as that - another example of the fact that not everything needs a sinister explanation.
The APT could not tilt into the path of another train. Its whole tilt motion envelope fell within the envelope of a non-tilting train; or in other words, within the loading gauge. True, if the tilt failed the train would have to slow to the speed of a non-tilting train, not for any technical reason but for passenger comfort or so as not to alarm the passengers. This would not be a huge problem - the tilt system would be pretty reliable and even if it did fail the train would only need to slow on the sharper curves.
As for causing sea-sickness, this depends on the tilting algorithm. When the APT came out little was known about passenger response and the APT was given a very simple algorithm that aimed for zero lateral g in the passenger saloon. Later knowledge, particularly aquired by FIAT with their Penulino development, made great improvements such as leaving a proportion of the centrifugal force uncorrected by tilt, and also better handling of the transitions. Given any programmable tilt control system (such as the APT had) such tuning could have been applied retrospectively.
As it was, the APT on its first publicity run made a bunch of press hack vomit their whisky-and-soda, leading to the bad press that caused the myth that the APT was some kind of total disaster, a myth that Mrs Thatcher seized upon as an excuse to can the project, and a myth which quite a few Slashdotters seem to have bought too.
Yes, Mitnick did time - he got a severe sentence, including solitary. It was out of proportion to his crime because his was an early instance of cracking (the swallow before the summer) and he was made a scapegoat. Also, the press paid great interest partly because of the fascinating story of his pursuit and capture, which the authorities treated as a mission deserving all their energy.
Looking back now, you can't help wondering why all the fuss. Mitnick did pry around some academic, corporate and military related systems but always maintained he did no damage. He certainly seemed to act out of curiosity and as a challenge rather than with malice. He has yet to write his account of the episode.
What Mitnik did pales into insignificance compared with what goes on now - spammers acting with apparent impunity, crackers installing and controlling bots in their tens of thousands, market researchers planting spyware, and even previously respected household names like Sony pushing Trojans onto the unsuspecting public. Activities which seriously threaten the continued viablity of the internet as a medium.
Company directors can be sent to jail, as Mitnik was. However I doubt it will happen because the legal authorities and the public are now punch drunk with misbehaviour in the IT field. They were sharp and keen against Mitnik but now they are weary and cannot be bothered to pursue the wrong-doers.
It is much easier for the authorities to dismiss this case with "Oh well, surely Sony couldn't have meant any harm, could they?"
They know that if they announce it publically they are going to be subjected to endless publicity, phone interviews, and other calls from M$, consultants, equivalent organisations for advice (if public sector), politicians - like Munich, Newham and Massachusetts were/are. Every instance now becomes a political and marketing football. They prefer a peaceful life.
Best example I could find quickly
6 05,1127802,00.html
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3
But presumably in future the free Windows you get by default with your laptop will be the adware version. You would probably have to pay a supplement for the non-adware version. In your case therefore (and mine) you should opt for the adware version and then erase it to make way for Linux (or whatever)