If you add more rows you will not be able to share this spreadsheet with Microsoft Excel users, as Microsoft Excel does not support more than 65,535 rows.
Would you like to continue adding rows? [yes] [no] [ ]don't ask this again.
Since an unscrupulous dealer who doesn't care if the shit he's pushing is full of brick dust or scouring powder will receive no worse a penalty than a dealer who is fastidious about purity,
This isn't really true. The legal system won't take purity into account but the market will. A dealer who sells a higher quality product will have more repeat custom from satisfied drug users. A dealer who rips off their customers won't get repeat custom if there is any decent competition. The free market is a good thing!
Drugs will always be cut to some extent in an unregulated market as doing so increases profits, but why would a dealer chose to use something particularly nasty like brick dust or scouring powder when they could use some harmless kitchen ingredient like baking powder or icing sugar? There is no reason.
Give it a shake. If you hear movement, you have another stick of lead left. If you get silence, buy more. But you should buy lots when you buy the pencil, anyway.
A lot of mechanical pencils do indeed break their lead too easily. They're poorly designed; if the tip tube is long enough and narrow enough, and the space between the feed and the start of the tip tube short enough, the lead doesn't flex enough to snap. Also, don't press so hard. I wish more were better designed but I've used well-built pencils where breakage is not a big problem.
Given the above, I think good mechanical pencils suck a lot less than wooden pencils, which need sharpened, get unwieldly short and waste trees.
over the last two days... I had the thankless task of riding the boss's wife... her offspring... my cock... I decided to wipe everything and... scratch.
Two days later, after pulling... them one at a time... I was swearing in frustration..
Makes me want to take the next moron... and shove [it]... down his throat... stick his toothbrush up his ass...
Sounds cool and maybe pretty important, so you have my approval, as if you cared. As for Laid and Rich, concentrate on the latter, I believe there are already working algorithms, and solutions to the former should be trivial.
That's nothing, I've got fourteen, all of which run Linux.
But seriously, put your dick away, it's smaller from this angle than you might think.
I used to build my PCs but after you've cut your hands to shreds on the sharp edges of metal cases often enough, you realise that there is a value-add in pre-built machines. Corporate desktops in particular, like SFF Compaqs, are much easier to handle and upgrade, and I think they look nicer than your typical hobbiest tower machine. There are also a number of small specialists doing quality hardware, like DNUK for instance, where I got my last workstation.
If you "need" that many "machines", look at virtualisation. Do you have them all powered on at once? operating at 100% CPU? Maybe you do if you have specialist interests like simulating nuclear explosions or competing with SETI but chances are you are burning several kilowatts more than you need. Heard of global warming? Do you pay your own electricity bills?
Plus, system integration is not that interesting when you're just putting commodity parts together. The fun, for me anyway, is in the software and what you can do with it.
I don't think it's quite as biased against bricks and mortar as you suggest.
If I browse in a bookstore and find something interesting I am very likely to buy it right there and then, because I'm excited by it. I'm not thinking about how I could order it online for less because I want to read it now. I don't want to wait a few days while Amazon packs it and sends it to me, and maybe it's not in stock at Amazon and I'll have to wait a week or more.
If I am going out on the town tonight and I need new shoes I don't have the luxury of waiting while some online store delivers them to me.
Maybe there are people who plan all their purchases days or weeks in advance, but for a large number of people most small to medium purchases are done on impulse or at short notice.
For goods like cars or high-end stereo equipment which require research, trial and considerable investment, I can see more of a problem. If I can't test-drive a car, there's no way I'm going to buy it. I think I would be willing to pay 0.5 - 1% of purchase price to test-drive a car for a couple of hours, or listen to an amplifier and speaker combination to decide that I'm happy with it.
Also, Borders has found a way to make money from browsers, by having Starbucks in their stores, and caffeine-addled shoppers are more likely to spend.
The manufacturers have a big interest in making sure retail outlets survive - because people are more likely to buy something they can touch and test. Maybe manufacturers can subsidise retail stores to make them more competitive.
Finally, the advantage of purchasing online isn't just about price. I have access to a much wider choice of products from the comfort of my keyboard, I can do research on specifications and customer experiences, and I can make my purchase more quickly (and more economically) than if I have to drive to various stores to inspect there offerings. Maybe retailers can do some work here to level the playing field - like providing internet access so I can check if this wireless card works in the latest Ubuntu, or whatever. That last item is one of the biggies for me, I've walked out of stores where I might have a purchase because it's not possible to get all the information about a product from the shop floor, and shop assistants are rarely knowledgeable about their products or my needs.
No, computers are not becoming like appliances. Appliances do one thing or a small set of things well. Computers - "general purpose" computers - do whatever can be done by a Turing machine. This is the problem. A toaster does not run bread, it toasts it (I nearly said a toaster does not execute bread but that's debatable). Computers execute programs and users can't know what their computers do unless they educate themselves about how they work and the programs they run.
In the 70s and 80s you could buy dedicated word processors. They were appliances. If all your computer did was word processing, I'm sure you wouldn't be too happy, because you want to install and run new exciting programs that do new things with your machine. That ability comes at the cost of understanding what you are doing or losing control of your machine.
A fair form of government funding is to ask what services they provide and what am I willing to pay for those services. If I want the service, I pay. If I don't I won't. Of course, our world is not a fair one.
Every way you turn the state is looking for a piece of the action, like a school bully stealing lunch money from smaller kids, and it's not all to the good of the taxed public.
I don't think the $1M example was quantitatively significant so no need to waste your words on that. What has the state done to deserve it's cut of a baby-sitting fee in which it contributed no value? I admit it helps create the "environment" for trade - cash and regulations - but is it really worth your proposed 30% share?
Where is the competition in government, when as a consumer of their services I have no voice if I disagree with the polled majority? Democracy is not a free market.
OK... it's just possible that I shouldn't have tried to be pedantic at this late at night.
The true pedant does not try. The faithful give up body and soul to the invisible powers of pedantry, which work through the believer, animating his fingers and mouth, as necessary, irresistibly. The force cannot be contained!
Main Entry: die Pronunciation: 'dI Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural dice/'dIs/; or dies/'dIz/ Etymology: Middle English dee, from Anglo-French dé 1 plural dice : a small cube marked on each face with from one to six spots and used usually in pairs in various games and in gambling by being shaken and thrown to come to rest at random on a flat surface -- often used figuratively in expressions concerning chance or the irrevocability of a course of action
You're wrong about us being "hugely malnourished" if we don't eat meat, as I can attest, knowing several healthy vegetarians - one of whom has been vegetarian from birth - and having myself been a strong, healthy vegetarian for the last ten years.
Maybe the Koreans don't have the vegetable crops to support human life but that's a different point.
IBM filed more patent applications than any other company with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2005 to once again lead the annual ranking put out by the U.S. Department of Commerce office.
The company filed for 2,941 patents in 2005, which is down from 3,248 applications in 2004 but still well ahead of second-ranked Canon, which filed 1,828 applications,
Assuming the figures don't change too much annually, the average cost of an IBM patent is about $1.5M per patent. And IBM is a hardware company. I'm confident if you looked at software patents alone, that figure would be a lot less.
Sorry, can't tell whether your story is about the incompetent admin and his DNS "hack" or the Groupwise server which loses all your mail when it gets full. Either way it's good, though.
Sentience, by its very existance, infers a desire to maintain existance, either of the self or of offspring.
I really don't see how sentience "infers" any such desire. I think you meant "confers" or perhaps "implies", but in fact, it's you who infers this, and you do so erroneously. Sentience does not imply anything other than having consciousness or awareness. The drive to survival is an instinct owing it's existence to the principles elucidated by Darwin. He had nothing to say about sentience, that I'm aware of.
Your ideas about morals also seem confused, though perhaps less so. Many "moral" values derive from the genetic survival instinct - killing a fellow human is perceived as generally wrong, because they share a majority of our DNA. If we encountered sentient extra terrestrials, we might feel an intellectual distaste for killing them as we can relate to them as sentient beings, and this would affect our moral standpoint, but if I encountered ET and a human in mortal combat, I'm pretty sure the standard human instinct would be to help the human.
That machines with a drive to survival would seek to possess land and "wealth" seems probable to me, as they would surely need the ability to obtain fuel and spare parts.
However, I do agree with your main point - leaving mankind to find a better spot is a good choice.
I don't see how, a typical "advanced expert" would not be looking at a job with a "lowly" title, and would know their market value from previous jobs. Also if you apply for a job or are headhunted, you look at the job description and the rate, you don't just accept the first thing that comes along.
Of course I'm sure agencies do create non-existant jobs with low salaries so that the real jobs with slightly higher - but lower than market value - salaries appear attractive. Job seekers just need to be confident enough to hold out for a decent rate.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because you don't know how to do it doesn't mean it's not a huge advantage for those of us who do.
user inserts rows
Warning!
If you add more rows you will not be able to share this spreadsheet with Microsoft Excel users, as Microsoft Excel does not support more than 65,535 rows.
Would you like to continue adding rows? [yes] [no] [ ]don't ask this again.
Since an unscrupulous dealer who doesn't care if the shit he's pushing is full of brick dust or scouring powder will receive no worse a penalty than a dealer who is fastidious about purity,
This isn't really true. The legal system won't take purity into account but the market will. A dealer who sells a higher quality product will have more repeat custom from satisfied drug users. A dealer who rips off their customers won't get repeat custom if there is any decent competition. The free market is a good thing!
Drugs will always be cut to some extent in an unregulated market as doing so increases profits, but why would a dealer chose to use something particularly nasty like brick dust or scouring powder when they could use some harmless kitchen ingredient like baking powder or icing sugar? There is no reason.
It all depends if you get to watch or not.
Give it a shake. If you hear movement, you have another stick of lead left. If you get silence, buy more. But you should buy lots when you buy the pencil, anyway.
A lot of mechanical pencils do indeed break their lead too easily. They're poorly designed; if the tip tube is long enough and narrow enough, and the space between the feed and the start of the tip tube short enough, the lead doesn't flex enough to snap. Also, don't press so hard. I wish more were better designed but I've used well-built pencils where breakage is not a big problem.
Given the above, I think good mechanical pencils suck a lot less than wooden pencils, which need sharpened, get unwieldly short and waste trees.
It get's worse:
... her offspring ... my cock ... I decided to wipe everything and ... scratch.
... them one at a time ... I was swearing in frustration..
... and shove [it] ... down his throat ... stick his toothbrush up his ass...
over the last two days... I had the thankless task of riding the boss's wife
Two days later, after pulling
Makes me want to take the next moron
Sounds cool and maybe pretty important, so you have my approval, as if you cared. As for Laid and Rich, concentrate on the latter, I believe there are already working algorithms, and solutions to the former should be trivial.
I'm super-intrigued by the nature of your experiments!
I've got ten PCs myself, nine of which run Linux
That's nothing, I've got fourteen, all of which run Linux.
But seriously, put your dick away, it's smaller from this angle than you might think.
I used to build my PCs but after you've cut your hands to shreds on the sharp edges of metal cases often enough, you realise that there is a value-add in pre-built machines. Corporate desktops in particular, like SFF Compaqs, are much easier to handle and upgrade, and I think they look nicer than your typical hobbiest tower machine. There are also a number of small specialists doing quality hardware, like DNUK for instance, where I got my last workstation.
If you "need" that many "machines", look at virtualisation. Do you have them all powered on at once? operating at 100% CPU? Maybe you do if you have specialist interests like simulating nuclear explosions or competing with SETI but chances are you are burning several kilowatts more than you need. Heard of global warming? Do you pay your own electricity bills?
Plus, system integration is not that interesting when you're just putting commodity parts together. The fun, for me anyway, is in the software and what you can do with it.
I don't think it's quite as biased against bricks and mortar as you suggest.
If I browse in a bookstore and find something interesting I am very likely to buy it right there and then, because I'm excited by it. I'm not thinking about how I could order it online for less because I want to read it now. I don't want to wait a few days while Amazon packs it and sends it to me, and maybe it's not in stock at Amazon and I'll have to wait a week or more.
If I am going out on the town tonight and I need new shoes I don't have the luxury of waiting while some online store delivers them to me.
Maybe there are people who plan all their purchases days or weeks in advance, but for a large number of people most small to medium purchases are done on impulse or at short notice.
For goods like cars or high-end stereo equipment which require research, trial and considerable investment, I can see more of a problem. If I can't test-drive a car, there's no way I'm going to buy it. I think I would be willing to pay 0.5 - 1% of purchase price to test-drive a car for a couple of hours, or listen to an amplifier and speaker combination to decide that I'm happy with it.
Also, Borders has found a way to make money from browsers, by having Starbucks in their stores, and caffeine-addled shoppers are more likely to spend.
The manufacturers have a big interest in making sure retail outlets survive - because people are more likely to buy something they can touch and test. Maybe manufacturers can subsidise retail stores to make them more competitive.
Finally, the advantage of purchasing online isn't just about price. I have access to a much wider choice of products from the comfort of my keyboard, I can do research on specifications and customer experiences, and I can make my purchase more quickly (and more economically) than if I have to drive to various stores to inspect there offerings. Maybe retailers can do some work here to level the playing field - like providing internet access so I can check if this wireless card works in the latest Ubuntu, or whatever. That last item is one of the biggies for me, I've walked out of stores where I might have a purchase because it's not possible to get all the information about a product from the shop floor, and shop assistants are rarely knowledgeable about their products or my needs.
I tried a few "dodgy" words and eventually enjoyed their results for "snuff". Big green tits!
And that was a good Lucas film, too.
And you both forgot THX-1138 for goodness sake.
I believe it's usually "more cocaine!", never "less".
No, computers are not becoming like appliances. Appliances do one thing or a small set of things well. Computers - "general purpose" computers - do whatever can be done by a Turing machine. This is the problem. A toaster does not run bread, it toasts it (I nearly said a toaster does not execute bread but that's debatable). Computers execute programs and users can't know what their computers do unless they educate themselves about how they work and the programs they run.
In the 70s and 80s you could buy dedicated word processors. They were appliances. If all your computer did was word processing, I'm sure you wouldn't be too happy, because you want to install and run new exciting programs that do new things with your machine. That ability comes at the cost of understanding what you are doing or losing control of your machine.
A fair form of government funding is to ask what services they provide and what am I willing to pay for those services. If I want the service, I pay. If I don't I won't. Of course, our world is not a fair one.
Every way you turn the state is looking for a piece of the action, like a school bully stealing lunch money from smaller kids, and it's not all to the good of the taxed public.
I don't think the $1M example was quantitatively significant so no need to waste your words on that. What has the state done to deserve it's cut of a baby-sitting fee in which it contributed no value? I admit it helps create the "environment" for trade - cash and regulations - but is it really worth your proposed 30% share?
Where is the competition in government, when as a consumer of their services I have no voice if I disagree with the polled majority? Democracy is not a free market.
I thought it was a US/UK thing because I've never met anyone here who mangles it, I only see it on slashdot... but yes it's nice to see.
OK ... it's just possible that I shouldn't have tried to be pedantic at this late at night.
The true pedant does not try. The faithful give up body and soul to the invisible powers of pedantry, which work through the believer, animating his fingers and mouth, as necessary, irresistibly. The force cannot be contained!
You may be a pedant but you're also wrong...
/'dIs /; or dies /'dIz/
from merriam-webster:
Main Entry: die
Pronunciation: 'dI
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural dice
Etymology: Middle English dee, from Anglo-French dé
1 plural dice : a small cube marked on each face with from one to six spots and used usually in pairs in various games and in gambling by being shaken and thrown to come to rest at random on a flat surface -- often used figuratively in expressions concerning chance or the irrevocability of a course of action
It's the store they've outlawed, not the software. RTFA.
You're wrong about us being "hugely malnourished" if we don't eat meat, as I can attest, knowing several healthy vegetarians - one of whom has been vegetarian from birth - and having myself been a strong, healthy vegetarian for the last ten years.
Maybe the Koreans don't have the vegetable crops to support human life but that's a different point.
What software invention cost "billions" in R&D. I don't believe there are any.
Forbes says that:
In 2002, IBM spent $4.75 billion on research and development. That's more, in dollars, than Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems.
Infoworld says:
IBM filed more patent applications than any other company with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2005 to once again lead the annual ranking put out by the U.S. Department of Commerce office.
The company filed for 2,941 patents in 2005, which is down from 3,248 applications in 2004 but still well ahead of second-ranked Canon, which filed 1,828 applications,
Assuming the figures don't change too much annually, the average cost of an IBM patent is about $1.5M per patent. And IBM is a hardware company. I'm confident if you looked at software patents alone, that figure would be a lot less.
Sorry, can't tell whether your story is about the incompetent admin and his DNS "hack" or the Groupwise server which loses all your mail when it gets full. Either way it's good, though.
Sentience, by its very existance, infers a desire to maintain existance, either of the self or of offspring.
I really don't see how sentience "infers" any such desire. I think you meant "confers" or perhaps "implies", but in fact, it's you who infers this, and you do so erroneously. Sentience does not imply anything other than having consciousness or awareness. The drive to survival is an instinct owing it's existence to the principles elucidated by Darwin. He had nothing to say about sentience, that I'm aware of.
Your ideas about morals also seem confused, though perhaps less so. Many "moral" values derive from the genetic survival instinct - killing a fellow human is perceived as generally wrong, because they share a majority of our DNA. If we encountered sentient extra terrestrials, we might feel an intellectual distaste for killing them as we can relate to them as sentient beings, and this would affect our moral standpoint, but if I encountered ET and a human in mortal combat, I'm pretty sure the standard human instinct would be to help the human.
That machines with a drive to survival would seek to possess land and "wealth" seems probable to me, as they would surely need the ability to obtain fuel and spare parts.
However, I do agree with your main point - leaving mankind to find a better spot is a good choice.
I don't see how, a typical "advanced expert" would not be looking at a job with a "lowly" title, and would know their market value from previous jobs. Also if you apply for a job or are headhunted, you look at the job description and the rate, you don't just accept the first thing that comes along.
Of course I'm sure agencies do create non-existant jobs with low salaries so that the real jobs with slightly higher - but lower than market value - salaries appear attractive. Job seekers just need to be confident enough to hold out for a decent rate.