I was wondering when the intellectual property attacks would come. It's really the only place open source is vulnerable. I'm really just surprised it took this long.
Any takers on a pool for how long before our good buddies at Microsoft start some legal action?
Can you imagine if there were thirty different ways to lay bricks?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but what makes you think there aren't? Are you an expert at brick laying? I suspect the answer is no. I'm not trying to insult you. I've just learned the hard way that it is dangerous to claim something is easy that you don't really understand.
Harder than anything else in the physical world
Again, I would caution you to be careful about such claims. I'll concur that programming is really, really hard to do well. Lord knows I've tried. But is it the hardest thing in the world? My guess is no. I've done a bunch of programming and other engineering and you know what? The technical stuff is hard but no where near as hard as the people stuff. Trying to manage a team of people towards some productive goal is usually the hardest part of my job. And I'm not even particularly introverted or shy. The phrase "herding cats" comes to mind...
Or if you want a more technical example, how about medicine? The human body is an unbelievably complex entity which we understand far less about than we do digital computers. Do you think programming is harder than medicine? At least you have 30 ways to solve a problem. There are diseases for which we don't even have names, much less a cure. Be glad that your job gives you so many ways to help solve your customer's problems. Doctors often don't have that luxury.
Anyway the point is that there are a lot of activities that are really challenging. Please don't assume that just because what you do is hard, that everything else must be easy. It just ain't so.
Not just the $2 million budget, they also get write off the trademark and other service they will provide to the non profit organization.
Maybe. IANAA (I Am Not A Accountant) but trademark is an intangible asset, so unless it has been valued through some sort of asset sale (such as a corporation purchase), it most likely would not be a tax write off. The only case I can think of related to this was the purchase of Netscape, but Mozilla was not really the trademark that was valuable at that time. It might have some book value but probably not much. So basically, I doubt they will get any sort of tax write off from a trademark. Possible, but unlikely.
You are correct though that there will be some interesting tax avoidance opportunties for AOL (and other companies) now that it is a non-profit.
This is better than trying to make us believe that first they save the whales, then go for profitability..
Umm you do realise this is a "non-profit organization" right? While they certainly need money for the organization to survive, profits don't fit into the equation. At most they might save money so they don't have to beg as much later.
Huge improvement in look over the old one. Nice to see Mozilla presenting a reasonably professional face.
On a more serious note, I wonder if the foundation will be able to raise enough money for an endowment one day. That would be the ideal funding position to be in. Anyone know if this is a goal of the foundation?
Wouldnt the new Apple G5's with dual 2 ghz cpus crush it?
I used to use an SGI Octane SSE on a daily basis for some engineering simulation work. Heavy number crunching and 3D graphics using QUEST and some other software. My Octane had a 250Mhz MIPS processor and 768meg of RAM. Doesn't sound like much but for graphics horsepower it was essentially the equal of the dual processor 1Ghz pentium that sat across the aisle running the same applications. For pure number crunching (no graphics) the pentium was significantly faster but if there was a lot of graphics or disk I/O involved, the Octane did just fine.
Not to mention that I had the Octane crash precisely once in nearly 4 years. (had a board burn out, Octanes don't have the best cooling system and are slightly prone to overheating) Compare that with the almost weekly crashes of the Windows machine. When your job depends on 1-2 day analysis runs, you want a machine that is very reliable.
Anyway, to get to my point, no I wouldn't necessarily expect the G5 to run laps around the SGI machine. It might be faster, but probably not by a lot when you push them to the limit. Unfortunately for SGI, relatively few people actually need the features that set their machines apart. SGI makes great stuff (albeit very pricey) but it's for a very niche market.
I understand your point, but disagree strongly that is is not much more risky than going long. When you go long, you can not loose one penny more than you put in. That is is, strict maximum of 100% loss. When you sell short, loss is only limited by realistic market prices for the stock to rise to, which could be pretty high if they did win this lawsuit and a multi-billion dollar judgement.
I would reiterate my point that the chances of a stock rising unexpectedly to some absurd level is generally pretty low. If you believe in efficient markets (and I do with some reservations) the market has a tendency to price in this sort of information. I don't mean to imply big jumps aren't possible, they obviously are, but that there are lots of people looking at the same information. Large investors (not us) who are looking at IBM undoubtably are examining the merits of the case and adjusting their positions based on the expected outcomes. Could SCO win and drive the price up? Sure. More likely they will lose and go out of business. Alert investors will factor these possibilities into their investment decisions.
As for the the direct risk, you can only lose 100% on a long investment if you did not purchase on margin. If we're going to compare apples to apples, we should compare purchasing short versus purchasing long on margin because that is a more accurate comparison. If you purchase long on margin, you can lose quite a bit more than 100% of your investment. Short selling does carry some additional risk over long on margin because on the whole stocks tend to rise over time but in shorter time frames the difference is small. Theoretically you can lose more in a short sale but realistically any additional risk from shorting over long on margin is small.
Ultimately in both cases, your loses will be limited by your broker's willingness to lend you credit. No question that could lead to substantial losses for the purchaser. Is short selling more risky? You bet. I agree completely that it is. But I would disagree that it is substantially more risky than buying long on margin. Done sensibly, either can be a sound investment strategy. However most people should probably avoid purchasing on margin, so from that standpoint, your arguement that shorting is risky definitely holds water.
Keep in mind that shorting a stock without either ordering your broker to sell if the share goes too much up or buying options to guarantee you a way out is VERY RISKY. A short sale without any protective measures essentially exposes you to an UNLIMITED potential loss, instead of "just" the risk of losing the original investment as with long orders.
While that is technically true, it does perhaps overstate the risk of shorting a stock somewhat. After all, to lose unlimited money, the stock would have to rise to infinity! I haven't seen too many stocks do that recently.:-) You also would get nailed with a margin call long before "unlimited" loses could occur. (though not before potentially losing a bundle) Here is a pretty decent primer on shorting stocks. (albeit from the silly perspective of a day-trader)
Point is that, yes, shorting stocks is risky and you can lose a bundle doing it, but it isn't really much more risky than going long on a stock. It even can be a tool to help mitigate risk if used properly.
What does Microsoft think it has going to counter that sort of incredible power?
Just playing devil's advocate (you did ask) but presuming they can get search accuracy within spitting distance of Google, their big advantage is Windows and Internet Explorer. (Yes I know, illegal bundling, monopoly, yadda, yadda... Who here thinks MS won't tie something into Windows if they can?) They could tie all sorts of interesting search functions into Windows and Office. Why fire up the web browser if you can search without it?
I agree that it's unlikely MS will supplant Google but never underestimate a monopoly with $40+billion in the bank. Most people get to Google through Microsoft software. That's a perfect opportunity for MS to put itself in the middle. Not easy but definitely possible.
The reason umpires don't want these machines on the field is that they make a KILLING doing their job.
And they deserve it too. Being a good official is really, really, really hard. I know first hand because I've been an official (different sport but same deal) for a number of years. Major league officials show as much skill as the athletes do. I know because I've been a division 1 college athlete (yes a few of us read slashdot believe it or not) and an official too.
It is damn hard to know all the rules of a game, have them on instant recall, apply them to the situation at hand, and do so correctly and without pissing anyone off. If you do your job right, no one notices you and if you do get noticed you get screamed at, usually by some halfwit who has never picked up a rule book in their life.
It annoys the hell out of me when I see some twit complaining about officials "trying to determine the outcome". Let me get out the cluebat. NO official I have ever met (and that is a LOT of officials) would ever try to determine the outcome of a game. We really don't care who wins. We just want to have a fair contest and really prefer it when one team kicks the crap out the other. Less chance of anyone getting their panties in a bunch over a *game*. If you don't take my word for it, read anything by Ron Luciano and you might get the idea. The only thing any official wants is for the game to get over with as quickly and fairly as possible. That's it.
As for the measuring equipment being used. As an official I don't really have a problem with it being used as an evaluation tool. Most officials would welcome a tool to make them better at their job. I would however have a problem with it being used in a game I was officiating. No official wants to be second guessed because it undermines our ability to keep control of a game. People start becoming unnecessarily rough, unsportsmanlike, and generally begin to behave like cretins when they think they have a right to question the judgement of the officials. (This isn't a supposition of mine, I've seen it happen countless times)
Now there are problems when the officials in some sports (basketball is notorious for this) start calling the game differently depending on the situation instead of how the rulebook specifies. That's a problem. But most officials at a high level do a very good job at what is a very difficult job. If they get paid well to do it, believe me, they've earned it.
It could be due to a small market share I suppose, but Apple has paid the price for leadership again and again by innovating and then everyone else jumping on board.
Not really. Remember Apple only has a small (5%) market share in computers to begin with and their wireless gear generally is only sold to people who have Macs. And not everyone who has a Mac uses the wireless so the population is even smaller. It's not really surprising they wouldn't be near the top given how popular 802.11b has become.
Plus Apple doesn't make their own wireless gear. They OEM it from others. Lucent at one point (still?) was the maker of some of their stuff if I recall. They were innovative in using it but they never really were the technology innovators here. They were just smart enough to realize that it was useful ahead of almost everyone else.
Development isn't the biggest cost
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Ageism in IT?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Ask any experienced programmer where the biggest costs lies, and they'll tell you it's fixing (or worst, working around) the crap left from rushed or ill-informed decisions made earlier.
And that experienced programmer would be wrong. Or at least need to clarify his statement. Fixing broken code is indeed expensive but it isn't the biggest cost of software. It might be the biggest cost of development, but it isn't the biggest cost a software company faces.
The biggest costs of software are in sales, marketing and support. You don't have to take my word for it. Look at the 10-K of any (profitable) software firm. Depending on the firm, 10-25% of expenses are in development and the rest is primarily sales, marketing and support. (the exact mix varies depending on the company) Any publicly traded company's financial statements will tell you, in general, that most of their money does not go into development.
This is why I think it is incredibly short sighted of companies to nickel and dime their development teams. Sure for a bootstrap operation it might be tight, but for an established firm, development is not where the costs are. (That's not an excuse however to get stupid with spending like a lot of dotcoms did) Development is typically just 15% of cost and it is what can actually differentiate your product. Cutting money on development is typically the last place you want to do it.
Good thing you pointed that out. I'm sure I wouldn't have known that damage depends on more than kinetic energy. Ten years of engineering doesn't appear to have taught me anything.
I think a lot of folks are missing the point in the value proposition of tablet PC's. Handwriting recognition is nice but as many have noted, keyboards are faster and more practical outside of specialty needs. Handwriting isn't a good reason to buy a tablet PC for most folks. But anyone who has to do sketching or write mathematical formulas with any regularity (students anyone?) should find tablet PCs to be much more valuable.
I would have loved to have one of these as an engineering undergrad. I hated taking notes on paper. But being able to sketch and write equations in addition to typing would have been a real value. Who cares if it can read handwriting or not? Drawing and math is where these are valuable.
England has weather that's quite unlikely to kill you.
Unless of course you find a winter season that lasts from September to June a bit too depressing and kill yourself.
I had a roommate back when I was an undergrad who was from near Birmingham. Everytime we'd have a rainy, cold, gloomy, miserable day he'd get homesick. None of us quite understood why you'd miss that but hey, it's home right? You get used to it I guess. Being from near Cleveland, I don't think it's winter unless there is two feet of lake effect snow on the ground.
Anyway England is a nice place but it needs a roof.
The failure rate is expected
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Shuttle Politics
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Is grounding the shuttle fleet for the next ten years a good idea? Well, I don't have all the facts but the failure rate does suggest that the programme does need to be more closely examined.
There are two critical factors that determine the reliability of the shuttle. The first is the number of "mission critical" systems, which is simply the number of systems that there is no backup for and if they go bad a disaster occurs. (Fuel tanks, boosters, heat tiles, etc) The second is the reliability of those mission critical systems.
As I recall there is somewhere around 20 mission critical parts. These parts are designed to have a reliability of 0.999. That means individually we should expect any one of these parts to fail 1 out of every 1,000 uses. They were not designed to be more reliable for cost reasons. Getting more "9s" of reliability is exponentially expensive. But the important factor to remember is that the probability of failure is additive so while the chance of a single part failure is quite low, the collective chance of a system failure is significantly far from zero:
Chance of failure = (1-0.999) * 20 = 0.02 = 2%
This means there is a roughly 2% chance of each shuttle mission failing catastrophically. After 113 missions the number of shuttles we should expect to see blow up is
2.26 = (1-0.999)* 20 * 113
Note this does not mean that we will see 2.26 shuttle failures. Rather it means that on average we should expect to see one blow up roughly every 50-60 missions. We might see the next 3 blow up, or we might not see one blow up for 150 missions, but over the long run we will lose one roughly every 50-60 missions.
There are two ways to improve this. Have fewer mission critical systems or design the systems we have for better reliability. The first means getting a new launch system because the shuttle design can't be dramatically altered at this point. The second means a much more expensive shuttle, which congress is unwilling to fund.
I find it very ironic that congress blames NASA for explosions that were virtually assured by the budget congress gave NASA for the shuttle program. (Please note: whether you think NASA and/or the shuttle program is a good investment or not is irrelevant to the point I just made) My point is that once you fix a budget and a design, the system's reliability is fairly deterministic. The expected failure rate of shuttles was known at the time the program was started. Congress blaming NASA exclusively for the explosion is ignorant at best and hypocritical at worst. If fault must be assigned (and I don't think it really needs to be) Congress is probably more at fault than anyone else in this case. My $0.02 anyway.
1. The file itself is not DRM-encumbered. iTunes places the restrictions on burning, streaming, etc. They are not built into the file in any way. There are plenty of other tools you can use to manipulate the files, because...
Cool. Glad to hear it but the service is still encumbered. I'd rather not waste my time working around any restrictions Apple imposes. $0.99 for anything less than CD quality is a rip off as far as I'm concerned. (note, that's my opinion, yours may vary) Not to mention that the amount of music offered is, shall we say sparce?
2. AAC is a standard compressed format: http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpeg 4aac/stan dard.html
There are plenty of so called "standards". Doesn't mean anyone uses them or that they are relevant. Apparently I should have said "widely used industry standard" so people would get my point instead of pedantically pointing out that this is a codefied standard. So is DVD-Audio but it also isn't relevant for most of us.
So,yes I'm aware that it's a part of mpeg4. So what? There are almost no portable players, most of the audio out there (including my entire *legal* music library) is in MP3, and there is currently little software to manipulate these files. Could that be changed? Sure. Should it? Can't think of a reason to bother. There aren't any benefits to the format that make me want to rush out and convert all my MP3s or deal with another format.
I'm also well aware that record labels are unwilling to release their stuff in CD-Audio quality. That doesn't mean I should just say "oh what the heck" and cave in. When they provide what I want for the price I want, then I might buy. If this service provides what you want, then great, please use it. But I know I'm not the only one who feels the way I do.
Oh, and of course the company isn't going to pay for the bandwidth. Why do you think they charge us in the first place? Not altruism. Part of the cost is the cost of the service. That cost would be passed to us. Simple economics 101. However not all the costs are variable costs so as the service scales up, the cost per unit delivered should fall in time.
Sorry Apple. I'm not willing to put up with this sort of restrictions on use. I am not willing to comprimise on this. I will pay for music that is a master quality copy (read CD-Audio or better) without additional technology restrictions on use. Anything less is of little value to me, especially not some random DRM encumbered format that no one uses. I don't care if it is "better" sounding than MP3, it still isn't good.
$0.99 a track is a bit steep IMO even for a master track but for a DRM encumbered, non-standard compressed format it simply is not good value for my money. DRM with a crappy format moves the decimal point on what I'm willing to pay at least one digit to the left.
Go out and buy any one of a hundred multi-button USB mice and plug it into a Mac. The scrollwheel and contextual-menu buttons are supported out-of-the-box in OS X in all apps. Just because Apple don't ship a multi-button mouse does not mean that Apple don't support them.
Yeah they work great. This is exactly what I did for my mother-in-law, who is the biggest technophobe who will never understand computers you can imagine, and she thinks the second button and scroll wheel are great. And that is exactly why Macs should have a second button. It ain't complicated, the rest of the world seems to deal with them fine, and they have clearly obvious benefits for usability. Frankly having just the one button makes Macs harder to use which is ironic considering their legendary ease of use elsewhere.
Actually the biggest problem to me is that I don't want to lug a separate mouse around with a laptop. Powerbooks only have one button next to their trackpad and you can't expand it. (and I'm not a fan of trackpads to begin with) I'm not about to start lugging around an extra piece of hardware for something that should have been built in to start with. This is the only thing about the Mac laptops I do not like and cannot get around. One button just isn't enough to do some things efficiently and I've been a Mac user (not exclusively) for about 15 years.
Almost everyone I've ever talked with who's gotten laser eye surgury has been disappointed with the results.
As someone who had LASIK, I can tell you that I am ecstatic with the results. I have essentially 20/20 vision in both eyes and do not need to wear glasses for anything. That makes it worth every penny. Yes my eyes were a bit dry afterwards, but that had as much to do with staring at computer screens for 8+ hours daily than the surgery. When I was off work my eyes were fine.
Now that said, it isn't for everyone. If you are comfortable with glasses and don't have a compelling reason to have the surgery besides annoyance, you might not want it. It is a risk after all. In my case I'm an athlete (yes they do exist on slashdot) so it was valuable to me to not have to wear glasses.
Anyway I'm thrilled with the results but recommend that anyone thinking of getting the surgery research it very carefully. It's not something to be taken lightly and I'm glad I didn't.
At least, from what you wrote, it sounds like you're making this mistake. I could be misunderstanding what you mean.
You're misunderstanding what I mean, or rather you are reinforcing what I was trying (perhaps badly) to say. You're absolutely correct that this doesn't mean that every fiftieth shuttle will blow up. The chance of any given shuttle blowing up remains around 2%. The fiftieth crew has just as good a chance of surviving as the first. But on average we should expect to lose roughly 1 out of every 50 shuttles we send up.
This could mean that we lose the next 5 shuttles too. Unlikely but possible. A gambler's fallacy is assuming that the next shuttle will blow up because it is "due". I wasn't saying anything of the sort. I was saying that the shuttle is merely operating at close to its designed reliability. The fact that we lost one around this time should not be entirely surprising. The good folks at NASA work really hard to make sure that the crews are safe but even NASA can't escape the laws of probability in the long run.
I'm going from memory here but there are about 20 mission critical parts on the shuttle. If any one of these fails, there is no backup and a disaster will occur. Now remember, the shuttle is designed to a cost and the parts have something like 0.9999 reliability. Designing in more reliability would mean more cost so that wasn't going to happen. That means there is a roughly a 2% chance of catastrophic failure on any given mission. There have been 113 mission so the number of expected failures we should see is 2.26 (=(1-0.9999)* 113)).
This doesn't mean any given mission will fail, but we can be quite sure that we will lose one regularly no matter how careful NASA is. Thus because the shuttle was designed for a given level of reliability, we should expect to lose one roughly every 50 flights. Challenger was mission STS-51. Losing the Columbia should not surprise anyone. We should have expected to lose a shuttle around this time. Tragic but not surprising.
Slashdot Mirror
I was wondering when the intellectual property attacks would come. It's really the only place open source is vulnerable. I'm really just surprised it took this long.
Any takers on a pool for how long before our good buddies at Microsoft start some legal action?
Can you imagine if there were thirty different ways to lay bricks?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but what makes you think there aren't? Are you an expert at brick laying? I suspect the answer is no. I'm not trying to insult you. I've just learned the hard way that it is dangerous to claim something is easy that you don't really understand.
Harder than anything else in the physical world
Again, I would caution you to be careful about such claims. I'll concur that programming is really, really hard to do well. Lord knows I've tried. But is it the hardest thing in the world? My guess is no. I've done a bunch of programming and other engineering and you know what? The technical stuff is hard but no where near as hard as the people stuff. Trying to manage a team of people towards some productive goal is usually the hardest part of my job. And I'm not even particularly introverted or shy. The phrase "herding cats" comes to mind...
Or if you want a more technical example, how about medicine? The human body is an unbelievably complex entity which we understand far less about than we do digital computers. Do you think programming is harder than medicine? At least you have 30 ways to solve a problem. There are diseases for which we don't even have names, much less a cure. Be glad that your job gives you so many ways to help solve your customer's problems. Doctors often don't have that luxury.
Anyway the point is that there are a lot of activities that are really challenging. Please don't assume that just because what you do is hard, that everything else must be easy. It just ain't so.
Not just the $2 million budget, they also get write off the trademark and other service they will provide to the non profit organization.
Maybe. IANAA (I Am Not A Accountant) but trademark is an intangible asset, so unless it has been valued through some sort of asset sale (such as a corporation purchase), it most likely would not be a tax write off. The only case I can think of related to this was the purchase of Netscape, but Mozilla was not really the trademark that was valuable at that time. It might have some book value but probably not much. So basically, I doubt they will get any sort of tax write off from a trademark. Possible, but unlikely.
You are correct though that there will be some interesting tax avoidance opportunties for AOL (and other companies) now that it is a non-profit.
This is better than trying to make us believe that first they save the whales, then go for profitability..
Umm you do realise this is a "non-profit organization" right? While they certainly need money for the organization to survive, profits don't fit into the equation. At most they might save money so they don't have to beg as much later.
Huge improvement in look over the old one. Nice to see Mozilla presenting a reasonably professional face.
On a more serious note, I wonder if the foundation will be able to raise enough money for an endowment one day. That would be the ideal funding position to be in. Anyone know if this is a goal of the foundation?
Wouldnt the new Apple G5's with dual 2 ghz cpus crush it?
I used to use an SGI Octane SSE on a daily basis for some engineering simulation work. Heavy number crunching and 3D graphics using QUEST and some other software. My Octane had a 250Mhz MIPS processor and 768meg of RAM. Doesn't sound like much but for graphics horsepower it was essentially the equal of the dual processor 1Ghz pentium that sat across the aisle running the same applications. For pure number crunching (no graphics) the pentium was significantly faster but if there was a lot of graphics or disk I/O involved, the Octane did just fine.
Not to mention that I had the Octane crash precisely once in nearly 4 years. (had a board burn out, Octanes don't have the best cooling system and are slightly prone to overheating) Compare that with the almost weekly crashes of the Windows machine. When your job depends on 1-2 day analysis runs, you want a machine that is very reliable.
Anyway, to get to my point, no I wouldn't necessarily expect the G5 to run laps around the SGI machine. It might be faster, but probably not by a lot when you push them to the limit. Unfortunately for SGI, relatively few people actually need the features that set their machines apart. SGI makes great stuff (albeit very pricey) but it's for a very niche market.
I understand your point, but disagree strongly that is is not much more risky than going long. When you go long, you can not loose one penny more than you put in. That is is, strict maximum of 100% loss. When you sell short, loss is only limited by realistic market prices for the stock to rise to, which could be pretty high if they did win this lawsuit and a multi-billion dollar judgement.
I would reiterate my point that the chances of a stock rising unexpectedly to some absurd level is generally pretty low. If you believe in efficient markets (and I do with some reservations) the market has a tendency to price in this sort of information. I don't mean to imply big jumps aren't possible, they obviously are, but that there are lots of people looking at the same information. Large investors (not us) who are looking at IBM undoubtably are examining the merits of the case and adjusting their positions based on the expected outcomes. Could SCO win and drive the price up? Sure. More likely they will lose and go out of business. Alert investors will factor these possibilities into their investment decisions.
As for the the direct risk, you can only lose 100% on a long investment if you did not purchase on margin. If we're going to compare apples to apples, we should compare purchasing short versus purchasing long on margin because that is a more accurate comparison. If you purchase long on margin, you can lose quite a bit more than 100% of your investment. Short selling does carry some additional risk over long on margin because on the whole stocks tend to rise over time but in shorter time frames the difference is small. Theoretically you can lose more in a short sale but realistically any additional risk from shorting over long on margin is small.
Ultimately in both cases, your loses will be limited by your broker's willingness to lend you credit. No question that could lead to substantial losses for the purchaser. Is short selling more risky? You bet. I agree completely that it is. But I would disagree that it is substantially more risky than buying long on margin. Done sensibly, either can be a sound investment strategy. However most people should probably avoid purchasing on margin, so from that standpoint, your arguement that shorting is risky definitely holds water.
Keep in mind that shorting a stock without either ordering your broker to sell if the share goes too much up or buying options to guarantee you a way out is VERY RISKY. A short sale without any protective measures essentially exposes you to an UNLIMITED potential loss, instead of "just" the risk of losing the original investment as with long orders.
:-) You also would get nailed with a margin call long before "unlimited" loses could occur. (though not before potentially losing a bundle) Here is a pretty decent primer on shorting stocks. (albeit from the silly perspective of a day-trader)
While that is technically true, it does perhaps overstate the risk of shorting a stock somewhat. After all, to lose unlimited money, the stock would have to rise to infinity! I haven't seen too many stocks do that recently.
Point is that, yes, shorting stocks is risky and you can lose a bundle doing it, but it isn't really much more risky than going long on a stock. It even can be a tool to help mitigate risk if used properly.
What does Microsoft think it has going to counter that sort of incredible power?
Just playing devil's advocate (you did ask) but presuming they can get search accuracy within spitting distance of Google, their big advantage is Windows and Internet Explorer. (Yes I know, illegal bundling, monopoly, yadda, yadda... Who here thinks MS won't tie something into Windows if they can?) They could tie all sorts of interesting search functions into Windows and Office. Why fire up the web browser if you can search without it?
I agree that it's unlikely MS will supplant Google but never underestimate a monopoly with $40+billion in the bank. Most people get to Google through Microsoft software. That's a perfect opportunity for MS to put itself in the middle. Not easy but definitely possible.
The reason umpires don't want these machines on the field is that they make a KILLING doing their job.
And they deserve it too. Being a good official is really, really, really hard. I know first hand because I've been an official (different sport but same deal) for a number of years. Major league officials show as much skill as the athletes do. I know because I've been a division 1 college athlete (yes a few of us read slashdot believe it or not) and an official too.
It is damn hard to know all the rules of a game, have them on instant recall, apply them to the situation at hand, and do so correctly and without pissing anyone off. If you do your job right, no one notices you and if you do get noticed you get screamed at, usually by some halfwit who has never picked up a rule book in their life.
It annoys the hell out of me when I see some twit complaining about officials "trying to determine the outcome". Let me get out the cluebat. NO official I have ever met (and that is a LOT of officials) would ever try to determine the outcome of a game. We really don't care who wins. We just want to have a fair contest and really prefer it when one team kicks the crap out the other. Less chance of anyone getting their panties in a bunch over a *game*. If you don't take my word for it, read anything by Ron Luciano and you might get the idea. The only thing any official wants is for the game to get over with as quickly and fairly as possible. That's it.
As for the measuring equipment being used. As an official I don't really have a problem with it being used as an evaluation tool. Most officials would welcome a tool to make them better at their job. I would however have a problem with it being used in a game I was officiating. No official wants to be second guessed because it undermines our ability to keep control of a game. People start becoming unnecessarily rough, unsportsmanlike, and generally begin to behave like cretins when they think they have a right to question the judgement of the officials. (This isn't a supposition of mine, I've seen it happen countless times)
Now there are problems when the officials in some sports (basketball is notorious for this) start calling the game differently depending on the situation instead of how the rulebook specifies. That's a problem. But most officials at a high level do a very good job at what is a very difficult job. If they get paid well to do it, believe me, they've earned it.
It could be due to a small market share I suppose, but Apple has paid the price for leadership again and again by innovating and then everyone else jumping on board.
Not really. Remember Apple only has a small (5%) market share in computers to begin with and their wireless gear generally is only sold to people who have Macs. And not everyone who has a Mac uses the wireless so the population is even smaller. It's not really surprising they wouldn't be near the top given how popular 802.11b has become.
Plus Apple doesn't make their own wireless gear. They OEM it from others. Lucent at one point (still?) was the maker of some of their stuff if I recall. They were innovative in using it but they never really were the technology innovators here. They were just smart enough to realize that it was useful ahead of almost everyone else.
Ask any experienced programmer where the biggest costs lies, and they'll tell you it's fixing (or worst, working around) the crap left from rushed or ill-informed decisions made earlier.
And that experienced programmer would be wrong. Or at least need to clarify his statement. Fixing broken code is indeed expensive but it isn't the biggest cost of software. It might be the biggest cost of development, but it isn't the biggest cost a software company faces.
The biggest costs of software are in sales, marketing and support. You don't have to take my word for it. Look at the 10-K of any (profitable) software firm. Depending on the firm, 10-25% of expenses are in development and the rest is primarily sales, marketing and support. (the exact mix varies depending on the company) Any publicly traded company's financial statements will tell you, in general, that most of their money does not go into development.
This is why I think it is incredibly short sighted of companies to nickel and dime their development teams. Sure for a bootstrap operation it might be tight, but for an established firm, development is not where the costs are. (That's not an excuse however to get stupid with spending like a lot of dotcoms did) Development is typically just 15% of cost and it is what can actually differentiate your product. Cutting money on development is typically the last place you want to do it.
Every time I hear something on the radio that I want to replay, my hand makes the same motion I use for my PVR...
Do you drool everytime you hear a bell too?
Good thing you pointed that out. I'm sure I wouldn't have known that damage depends on more than kinetic energy. Ten years of engineering doesn't appear to have taught me anything.
Seriously dude, way to miss the joke.
Why does the old joke about "which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?" keep coming to mind?
Folks, a small weight moving fast packs a lot of punch. Even foam/feathers/pillows.
I think a lot of folks are missing the point in the value proposition of tablet PC's. Handwriting recognition is nice but as many have noted, keyboards are faster and more practical outside of specialty needs. Handwriting isn't a good reason to buy a tablet PC for most folks. But anyone who has to do sketching or write mathematical formulas with any regularity (students anyone?) should find tablet PCs to be much more valuable.
I would have loved to have one of these as an engineering undergrad. I hated taking notes on paper. But being able to sketch and write equations in addition to typing would have been a real value. Who cares if it can read handwriting or not? Drawing and math is where these are valuable.
England has weather that's quite unlikely to kill you.
Unless of course you find a winter season that lasts from September to June a bit too depressing and kill yourself.
I had a roommate back when I was an undergrad who was from near Birmingham. Everytime we'd have a rainy, cold, gloomy, miserable day he'd get homesick. None of us quite understood why you'd miss that but hey, it's home right? You get used to it I guess. Being from near Cleveland, I don't think it's winter unless there is two feet of lake effect snow on the ground.
Anyway England is a nice place but it needs a roof.
Is grounding the shuttle fleet for the next ten years a good idea? Well, I don't have all the facts but the failure rate does suggest that the programme does need to be more closely examined.
There are two critical factors that determine the reliability of the shuttle. The first is the number of "mission critical" systems, which is simply the number of systems that there is no backup for and if they go bad a disaster occurs. (Fuel tanks, boosters, heat tiles, etc) The second is the reliability of those mission critical systems.
As I recall there is somewhere around 20 mission critical parts. These parts are designed to have a reliability of 0.999. That means individually we should expect any one of these parts to fail 1 out of every 1,000 uses. They were not designed to be more reliable for cost reasons. Getting more "9s" of reliability is exponentially expensive. But the important factor to remember is that the probability of failure is additive so while the chance of a single part failure is quite low, the collective chance of a system failure is significantly far from zero:
Chance of failure = (1-0.999) * 20 = 0.02 = 2%
This means there is a roughly 2% chance of each shuttle mission failing catastrophically. After 113 missions the number of shuttles we should expect to see blow up is
2.26 = (1-0.999)* 20 * 113
Note this does not mean that we will see 2.26 shuttle failures. Rather it means that on average we should expect to see one blow up roughly every 50-60 missions. We might see the next 3 blow up, or we might not see one blow up for 150 missions, but over the long run we will lose one roughly every 50-60 missions.
There are two ways to improve this. Have fewer mission critical systems or design the systems we have for better reliability. The first means getting a new launch system because the shuttle design can't be dramatically altered at this point. The second means a much more expensive shuttle, which congress is unwilling to fund.
I find it very ironic that congress blames NASA for explosions that were virtually assured by the budget congress gave NASA for the shuttle program. (Please note: whether you think NASA and/or the shuttle program is a good investment or not is irrelevant to the point I just made) My point is that once you fix a budget and a design, the system's reliability is fairly deterministic. The expected failure rate of shuttles was known at the time the program was started. Congress blaming NASA exclusively for the explosion is ignorant at best and hypocritical at worst. If fault must be assigned (and I don't think it really needs to be) Congress is probably more at fault than anyone else in this case. My $0.02 anyway.
1. The file itself is not DRM-encumbered. iTunes places the restrictions on burning, streaming, etc. They are not built into the file in any way. There are plenty of other tools you can use to manipulate the files, because...
Cool. Glad to hear it but the service is still encumbered. I'd rather not waste my time working around any restrictions Apple imposes. $0.99 for anything less than CD quality is a rip off as far as I'm concerned. (note, that's my opinion, yours may vary) Not to mention that the amount of music offered is, shall we say sparce?
2. AAC is a standard compressed format:
http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpe
There are plenty of so called "standards". Doesn't mean anyone uses them or that they are relevant. Apparently I should have said "widely used industry standard" so people would get my point instead of pedantically pointing out that this is a codefied standard. So is DVD-Audio but it also isn't relevant for most of us.
So,yes I'm aware that it's a part of mpeg4. So what? There are almost no portable players, most of the audio out there (including my entire *legal* music library) is in MP3, and there is currently little software to manipulate these files. Could that be changed? Sure. Should it? Can't think of a reason to bother. There aren't any benefits to the format that make me want to rush out and convert all my MP3s or deal with another format.
I'm also well aware that record labels are unwilling to release their stuff in CD-Audio quality. That doesn't mean I should just say "oh what the heck" and cave in. When they provide what I want for the price I want, then I might buy. If this service provides what you want, then great, please use it. But I know I'm not the only one who feels the way I do.
Oh, and of course the company isn't going to pay for the bandwidth. Why do you think they charge us in the first place? Not altruism. Part of the cost is the cost of the service. That cost would be passed to us. Simple economics 101. However not all the costs are variable costs so as the service scales up, the cost per unit delivered should fall in time.
Sorry Apple. I'm not willing to put up with this sort of restrictions on use. I am not willing to comprimise on this. I will pay for music that is a master quality copy (read CD-Audio or better) without additional technology restrictions on use. Anything less is of little value to me, especially not some random DRM encumbered format that no one uses. I don't care if it is "better" sounding than MP3, it still isn't good.
$0.99 a track is a bit steep IMO even for a master track but for a DRM encumbered, non-standard compressed format it simply is not good value for my money. DRM with a crappy format moves the decimal point on what I'm willing to pay at least one digit to the left.
Go out and buy any one of a hundred multi-button USB mice and plug it into a Mac. The scrollwheel and contextual-menu buttons are supported out-of-the-box in OS X in all apps. Just because Apple don't ship a multi-button mouse does not mean that Apple don't support them.
Yeah they work great. This is exactly what I did for my mother-in-law, who is the biggest technophobe who will never understand computers you can imagine, and she thinks the second button and scroll wheel are great. And that is exactly why Macs should have a second button. It ain't complicated, the rest of the world seems to deal with them fine, and they have clearly obvious benefits for usability. Frankly having just the one button makes Macs harder to use which is ironic considering their legendary ease of use elsewhere.
Actually the biggest problem to me is that I don't want to lug a separate mouse around with a laptop. Powerbooks only have one button next to their trackpad and you can't expand it. (and I'm not a fan of trackpads to begin with) I'm not about to start lugging around an extra piece of hardware for something that should have been built in to start with. This is the only thing about the Mac laptops I do not like and cannot get around. One button just isn't enough to do some things efficiently and I've been a Mac user (not exclusively) for about 15 years.
Almost everyone I've ever talked with who's gotten laser eye surgury has been disappointed with the results.
As someone who had LASIK, I can tell you that I am ecstatic with the results. I have essentially 20/20 vision in both eyes and do not need to wear glasses for anything. That makes it worth every penny. Yes my eyes were a bit dry afterwards, but that had as much to do with staring at computer screens for 8+ hours daily than the surgery. When I was off work my eyes were fine.
Now that said, it isn't for everyone. If you are comfortable with glasses and don't have a compelling reason to have the surgery besides annoyance, you might not want it. It is a risk after all. In my case I'm an athlete (yes they do exist on slashdot) so it was valuable to me to not have to wear glasses.
Anyway I'm thrilled with the results but recommend that anyone thinking of getting the surgery research it very carefully. It's not something to be taken lightly and I'm glad I didn't.
At least, from what you wrote, it sounds like you're making this mistake. I could be misunderstanding what you mean.
You're misunderstanding what I mean, or rather you are reinforcing what I was trying (perhaps badly) to say. You're absolutely correct that this doesn't mean that every fiftieth shuttle will blow up. The chance of any given shuttle blowing up remains around 2%. The fiftieth crew has just as good a chance of surviving as the first. But on average we should expect to lose roughly 1 out of every 50 shuttles we send up.
This could mean that we lose the next 5 shuttles too. Unlikely but possible. A gambler's fallacy is assuming that the next shuttle will blow up because it is "due". I wasn't saying anything of the sort. I was saying that the shuttle is merely operating at close to its designed reliability. The fact that we lost one around this time should not be entirely surprising. The good folks at NASA work really hard to make sure that the crews are safe but even NASA can't escape the laws of probability in the long run.
Oops. Minor math error.
2.26 = (1-0.9999)* 20 * 113
I'm going from memory here but there are about 20 mission critical parts on the shuttle. If any one of these fails, there is no backup and a disaster will occur. Now remember, the shuttle is designed to a cost and the parts have something like 0.9999 reliability. Designing in more reliability would mean more cost so that wasn't going to happen. That means there is a roughly a 2% chance of catastrophic failure on any given mission. There have been 113 mission so the number of expected failures we should see is 2.26 (=(1-0.9999)* 113)).
This doesn't mean any given mission will fail, but we can be quite sure that we will lose one regularly no matter how careful NASA is. Thus because the shuttle was designed for a given level of reliability, we should expect to lose one roughly every 50 flights. Challenger was mission STS-51. Losing the Columbia should not surprise anyone. We should have expected to lose a shuttle around this time. Tragic but not surprising.