Re:what every library needs is...
on
Libraries Are 31337
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· Score: 5, Interesting
A library is not just a place to get free books. There may be a time in the future where libraries will check out electronic books, unfortunately with some sort of DRM, in the same way that they now provide patrons with access to research databases and online articles, but I do not see it as a priority. The most important part of a library is to have a number of librarians with a range of degrees and experience so they can help patrons find the information they need.
As a casual reader of books, I appreciate when a book is at the library. If a book is not at the library, I can generally ask a library to hold it for me when it comes back. The value of a library is that it has a range of free books, not that it has every book you want every time you want it.
As a researcher, books are not so critical. Most information in books is old, and there is generally some redundancy among books, so one can generally come up with an appropriate book at a well stocked library. The real information for research is in journals, which are generally not allowed to circulate, and can be copied for a minimal fee.
So yes, digital books might make the library nicer, but not to the degree that you assert. The library is about freedom of information, and the freedom to acquire information, and it fulfills that duty quite well. Free books are a part of that mandate, and possible the most visible part of that mandate, but not important to the degree you assert.
The reason that people do not think of think of libraries in a positive light is because they take them for granted. People just assume that they have a right to free help to get the information they need, and then be protected when the government comes to interrogate a librarian about a patrons reading practices. By making such suggestion: People in this community have only recently (in the last five to ten years) started to wake up and realize that technology is not a limiting factor anymore, the legal system is. Librarians probably knew this all along and have not been worried about becoming redundant.
you validate the concept that a library is nothing but a storage of books, and total ignore the underlying principle present in out modern libraries. You minimize the importance of a library and insult the degreed and highly trained proffesional necessary to make such institutions possible.
Absolutely. Libraries are confusing enough to the average person without complicating the issues with arbitrary names.
A library is a library, and even people who never have been in one know enough to know that they can go to the library for a book, or ask a referenece librarian a question.
I taught at a community college where the bozos called thier library some whacky name, probably to gain a bit of validity. Confusing as hell.
I guess I am not sure whether you are talking about the WTO or the group of bribe hungry, gift hungry, work-phobic people we call the U.S. congress, accountable only to corporation who can afford 100K dinners. Not to mention U.S. presidents who are not popularly elected, but rather chosen by popularly elected electors.
I agree that the WTO is problematic, but it was approved by duly elected governments. It is, in effect, the treaty you wish each country to sign. As much as I hate to admit, the purpose of the WTO is probably sound. Instead of trying to develop a process or treaty to negotiate each international problem, a general process is set up that can handle most problems. On the balance, it is likely a good thing.
If there is really a problem of the WTO, it is the fault of or duly elected officials, who negotiate the deals, and not the WTO, which is just a bureaucracy following the rules they are given.
I agree with your point of bad drivers driving badly no matter what. However, the issue is not always establishing a baseline of acceptable safety, but is often clouded with social norms.
For instance, using a semi-automotive example, when the current U.S. president was stopped for drunk driving many years ago, it was not a big deal, and people old enough to remember that time knew it was not a big deal. Sure people died, sure it was easily prevented, but going out and getting blasted then driving home was considered necessary. The laws were very lax. And, as you say, good drivers generally made it home without becoming murderers.
The same hold true for cell phones, televisions,and computers. A car is relatively high stress environment where split second life threatening decision must be made with little warning. There is no reason that anything that delays those decisions or makes them harder to carry out should be part of a car. However, we now a bunch of huge cars that have bad response time, bad handling, and bad impact absorption cluttering our roads. People mistake their cars for living rooms and put televisions, VCRs, game stations, and full computers in them with the deluded idea that they are safely at home. For those that can 'handle' it, there is no problem. For the others, who knows.
Let me backtrack and say I am not opposed to simple computing devices, radios, phones, and even other devices under certain conditions. I do not think we should expect excessive safety at the cost of comfort of availability. However, I would like to see regulation and penalties that acknowledge the threat exists. I would also like social norms that say it not ok to arbitrarily endager other people lives.
The fact that Microsoft is ok proves the point. MS stock has remained high, and therefore can remain a viable company.
The problem that has been developing, and has been more or less identified as a problem for the past 3 to 5 years, is that a publicly traded company no longer manufactures and sells products, but manufactures press releases and sells stock. The important capital equipment is no longer machines, but, as has been shown by Nike and most other multi-national corporations, savvy marketing departments.
This means that if your product is stock, then as long as the stock remains relatively stable with respect to the overall market your product is doing well. To help keep you primary product, your stock, stable it is useful to have stable sales of some sort of ancillary product that your marketing department can then use to promote your primary product, stock. Most dot coms had wonderful marketing but no real sales, so, eventually, the stock became worthless or was never bought at all. Enron had sales, but when investigated, proved to be fraudulent, which wasn't a problem in itself, but nobody wants to deal with a dishonest agent. M$ has sales, cash reserves, and an excellent marketing department, so it makes lots of money. This does, not, however mean that it is fundamentally different from Enron or a dot com.
The thing to remember is that Enron set up a complex financial structure based on it's stock. True, there were many people robbing the company of millions of dollars, and there was gross accounting fraud, but the thing that brought the company down was the stock. If the stock price had not fallen and triggered certain payment which then waterfalled into audits and investigations, it may have been years before we would have known how corrupt the organization, and on reflection, the industry was.
And the same is true of M$. Stock is a profit center. M$ pays in stock options instead of cash, thus saving not only the cash but also fabricating a profit by not reporting the cost of disbursing the stock option. Also, M$ saves a lot of money in taxes by deducting the stock options from it's revenue. M$ strikes deals with traders and directs M$ employees to use those brokers to trade options. The brokers make a lot of money not only on the trades but also on the loans. There was an article a year or two ago detailing the complex stock transactions, and questioned whether M$ would be profitable without using stock as a profit center. As long the stock remains high, we expect M$ to be a successful company.
So no, the fact that M$ is making money means very little. If it is padding it books with past and future profits to meet analyst expectations, if it is using stock as a profit center, if is neglecting it's customers to meet short term investor expectation, then it has all the same problems as any other doomed company, and, if it cannot handle the web of deceit, will fall.
The issue of needsing more movie theaters patrons and other revenue to pay for the more expensive movies is directly related to people staying home.
For instance, I used to go to movies a lot. I used to have a main stream movie theaters close to me. That theater is now closed and I have to go much farther to another theater where i have to pay for parking, where they have several concesion stands but even on busy weekends they only have one open, usually with only two staff, to serve the entire 30 screens, and where they clean up the during the credits. And don't get me started on the five minutes of unrelated product commericals. I never had these problems at my old theater.
Going to a movie is no longer a pleasent experience, and it has nothing to do with cell phones, or people talking, or babies. It has to do with the number of screens and the number of seats that is necceary to show a main stream movie. Movie going should not be something that has to be scheduled, planned, and carried out in a careful operation. It is supposed to be fun.
So, I mostly go to the occasional art flick where I can drop in, buy a ticket, and enjoy the show without having the experience ruined by excessive lines, cleaning staff, or overt commercials.
And, in time, I may get a home theater, and more DVDs. Of course, if the DVDs continue to become increasing draconian, I may just abandon the whole movie going expereince
It has been a while since I have done low level programming, but if memory serves, I think you are missing a vital point.
I recall something called packed register math. I think we had some capability, perhaps manual, on older 8 bit, perhaps motorola processors, and I am pretty sure it is an important feature on modern chips. Briefly, packing registers allows the developer to fill the registers with independent bytes, words, or perhaps nibbles, and then run commands that will process the registers as independent quantities. For instance, two 64 bit registers could each be packed with 8 numbers, and then told to add those registers in one operation, keeping each set of number distinct. This, BTW, can save a great deal of time.
Anyway, as i said it has been a long time since I have done this. However, the PowerPC's ability to do direct register math would certainly make good use of larger registers. One could add 4 2-byte number simultaneously. While it is true that one seldom has to deal with precisions necessary to use 64 bits, it is quite often that one has several 16 bit number that need to be treated equally.
I think it will be possible. First, the movie needs only be 70-80 minutes long. Second, the current format, as others have noted, is a nearly independent first act that sets up the motivation for the second and third act. The situation in the first act may or may not be resolved. In a feature length film, they wil have time to more fully develop and conclude the motivation, and still have time to have a complete story.
A good analogy would be Beavis and Butthead. Each epi-choad of B&B had around 5 minutes of action. The movie was apparently developed by stringing together nearly independent, slightly expanded, episodes with several 'glue' scenes that essential comprised the overall plot. It was amazingly effective.
Apple is in the bussiness of providing features, usability, and connectivity that will help the consumer. On the Apple ][, for instance, the consumer was largely programers, so the features were programmer oriented with features such as easily accesible slots, built in basic, shape tables, etc. I myself slot mounted Eprom burner and just kept the cover off.
With the Apple///, they started targeting non-technical users. They included larger amounts of RAM and mass storage(512K, 3 floppies, HD) able to run large applications(for the time). This continued with the Mac, which became a closed platfrom, with a relitively fixed GUI, aimed at consumer who wanted a tool to do general work. Developers complained.
This is related to DRM because DRM is not about helping the user, but of helping the content developer. Apple has no reason to want to make the computer harder to use to satisfy the needs of parties that aren't even customers.
Even if most of the market is Palladium, I think that Apple will continue to supply products to the 5% of the market that is willing to pay for quality.
I disagree. IMHO, the purpose of such a brief is to review the appropriate law and scientific research in an effort to support a position. This is not objective science. This is not objective journalism. This is using available facts to create a plausible argument that will lead to a desired reality.
As such, they have a few psychologist that can describe how we believe the mind works, and judge the quality of the research. They have a few sociologist that can describe how we believe we interact with each other and insure that the research follows proper protocols. They also have people who study how people acquire and consume content. At least a face value it seems ok to me.
What spoiled children we have now. Twenty years ago there was only one arcade game. It involved moving a dot on a screen to run away from something, block something or blow something up.
How many games do you need as an excuse to get out your parents house and hang with your friends.
The state of Texas has approximately 21 million people. Using you estimate for land area, that is about 31 people per square kilometer, which, incidentally, is also about the density of the U.S.
This is interesting because Texas, unlike Tokyo, may be more or less self-sufficient. Texas has a lot of land to produce food, energy, consumer and commercial goods, not to mention golf courses every twenty miles that cost no where near the hundreds of dollars typical in Japan
The world population density appears to be 14 people per square kilometer. This is about 1/2 the density of Texas, but that does not mean that world population can double without negative effect. Not all land area is equal in its carrying capacity. Certainly, if you tired to put everyone in the world into Texas, the most likely result would be that we just shoot each other until we are back down to 30 people per square kilometer
too much energy for large data center
on
Itanium Problems
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· Score: 2, Interesting
According to the article Intel is not primarily concerned with selling a few machine to number crunchers, although this is where the Itanium is clearly most useful. Rather, they wish to sell hundreds of machines to large data centers.
Allegedly large data centers such as Google are sensitive to power consumption. Of course we are not just taking about the power consumption of the processor. We are also taking about the power needed to keep the boxes cool as well as the power that is needed run the air conditioner to cool the data room at about a 20% efficiency. What this means is that several watts of energy must be used to cool each watt used by the computer equipment.
I agree that Itanium may have misjudged the market for this chip. If AMD can produce a chip that is almost as good, but much more efficient, it may well be more economical to buy three AMD based machines instead of two Intel based machines. This becomes even more possible as a box becomes a single disposable commodity component in a very large networked array. Much like the auto industry, it may be practical to build inefficient cars when energy prices are low, but it is nevertheless a risky venture.
But of course shrink wrap viral licences that do not allow the license owner to resell the license, transfer the license to other hardware, or allow the company that sold you the license to root your machine at will, are perfectly valid. Go figure.
I guess the hallmark of Ask Slahdot is the answer you get has little to do with the question. For example, many people have said 'counter sue' in response to the question of 'when do you need a lawyer?' This of course is silly. Although the Klez virus can spoof the from address, there is nothing I have read that says it always does. Although it may be possible to prove the email did not come from you, why bother. You are just playing on the CEO fields by the CEO rules. You obviously don't have a lawyer, and are not familiar with the rules. Take the better advice. Explain the situation, and hope the CEO gets a clue.
If you just give programmers a few examples and tell them to validate input, you will certainly get insecure code. This is not necessarily due to laziness or inexperience, but to lack of standardized code. If there are 20 different ways to validate the same type of input, there is little hope of anything working.
For instance, retrieving and parsing a URL is basic task that should have one and only one low-level function. It should check for valid information, throw away invalid information, and deliver a clean set of data that the programmer can use. If programmer does not use this function, that is negligence. If the function was never developed, then the project manager should be sacked.
This goes for everything. Requests to databases should have a standard layer to validate that the data is as expected. The functions to calculate hashes should be in one place.
The ludicrous fact is that these things do not exist because people people feel they need to create an optimized version for each application. Well, then why do we buy multi gigahertz machines if not to make our lives easier? If a web server or compiler results in a slow web page, then replace the technology instead of sacrificing security.
In think we are so used to M$ lying and stealing, we don't know what to do when they are relatively direct.
This article states the simple truth. Linux does many things better than MS. MS cannot compete on price, or even on functionality, at this time. MS may be able to develop technologies to compete, but it's past method of undercutting the competition into bankruptcy will not work.
Given this set of facts, they are asking for help. And they will get it, beyond a few personal friends. A lot of people make a lot of money off MS products. MS products are designed to be simple enough and just reliable enough to be used in business and allow average people to administer and program them. All people who make money of MS and whose skills are not easily transferable to other technologies will fight hard to keep their income. It is a good strategy to create a grass roots effort. MS is trying to get a little time to catch up.
This reminds me of the American auto industry years ago. They built crap cars that Americans were forced to buy. A superior product was introduced, and instead of meeting the Compton head on, protectionist legislation was introduced to protect the American autoworker. Of course, the end result is that we know have reliable affordable cars, but a lot of auto workers and auto mechanics were put out of work on the way.
Many of these proposals are good, however they require the cooperation of the same ISP who are currently cutting deals with spammers to increase their falling revenue. Likewise, cutting off open relays is also a good idea, but the whiners come back and complain that they did nothing wrong.
The fact is I get junk mail, phone calls, and email. These cost me almost no money directly. It costs the phone company, post office, and ISP money. The phone company and post office are remunerated through charging higher fees. I assume, due to the lack of concern from ISPs that they are also remunerated for their costs.
Don't believe me, let's look at the facts. I get a spam message with a forged Hotmail or Yahoo address. I send a note to this effect. I receive a reply saying that the address if forged and there is nothing they can do. I look up the address of the spammers site and send a note to everyone all the up to NetSol or RIPE. I invariably get a not back saying that the registrars are only responsible for the registration and not the content.
As always, the truth is found by following the money. If spam was a real money losing issue, such as music piracy, the industry would be all over it. However, all we get are public relation solutions such as spam filter and denial or responsibility. I think the truth is obvious. There is way too much money to be made with spam on all levels to let it go.
I often wonder if there were a more significant separation between church and state here in the U.S., these sorts of things might be solved. After all, a church is charges citizens, and without the aid of wiley accounts, pay no money on the profits. Churches already get special exemptions to discriminate, promote hatred, and create distrust in a community. Given that so much of what churches do is so UnAmerican, why should the get to interfere with U.S. elections or benefit from our copyright laws?
I may not be completely serious here, but the issue remains. I see Tax Exempt Religious Organizations abusing their status way too often. If they need Intellectual Property Protection, let them pay taxes!
Chimera also has a limited GUI to set preferences, but the preferences may still be there.
Many of the preferences are listed on customization page. To edit preferences, quit the browser, edit your prefs.js file, save it, and restart the browser. Using these preferences, I can set pop up, cookie, window permissions, and other options.
I will agree with critics that say the average user, and even the average programmer, is not capable of reading through the examples and manually setting preferences. But those who can are freed from slow and viral browsers.
Librarians exist to help patrons find information. If the relatioship is reversed, the libraries should be staffed with NSA agenst. A librarian is a highly professional, highly skilled position. Information protection is serious matter. Librarians can get into serious trouble, including termination, for release of lending records to anyone other than the patron. I think this policy is critical in a Democracy, as it protects the citizens right to the free access of information. This fact in drummed into every librarian.
If lending records are released it create a serious breech of our freedoms. In particular, how will the records be interpreted? If I regularly check out books on a certain faith, will I be categorized as that faith? If I check out books on chemistry, will I be building a bomb? If I read too much Tom Clancy, will I be a spy? It is this sort of thing that makes me wonder if the Germans comparison of out president to Hitler may not be as far off as we first imagine. We already know that dark colored people with accents cannot drive through the south without being accused of terrorism. I do not see how violating patron confidentiality will help anything.
The saddest thing is that Laura Bush is a Librarian. The fact that such a thing could happen with her husband in office makes me wonder if there are any ethics at all in that house.
OK, once again, the Atkins diet works because in America we eat a highly processed diet consisting mostly of protein and simple carbohydrates. This diet, which is devoid of whole grains, whole fruits, and fresh vegetables, tend to provide calories without proportional nutrition. Therefore, we have to eat excessive calories to achieve the proper nutrition.
For instance, Burger King(McDonalds does not seem to have full nutritional information on the web), serves a Whopper, Big Drink, and Big Fries, at about 1400 calories, or about 70% and of a 2000 calories diet, while it only provides 50% protein, 14% of vitamin A, 30% of Vitamin C, and 25% calcium. If we get rid of the excess simple carbohydrates, i.e. sugar and fries, we have a much more balanced situation.
I honestly believe that Atkins is no worse than a diet of fast food and TV dinners, and may in fact be better. My worry is that people who eat a balanced diet, but are overweight, will switch to Atkins in the belief that it is a better diet. As I said before, the best diet I have seen, and the best results I have seen, is the diabetes diet, which is based on a balanced diet of protien, compelx carbohydrates, and excersise.
Not to get into a flame war, but you statement is biased and unsupported. At best you are very misinformed, at worst you are a dittohead.
First, many people are ignorant. Stupidity is not the same as ignorance. You are may ignorant, but not stupid. How does ignorance relate to poverty? An example occurred in my city last year. A black high school student at a school in a poor area of town applied for a scholarship. It is generally accepted that she had a very good chance to receive the scholarship. However, she did not have access to a typewriter, so the application had to be hand printed. Because the application was hand printed, the school counselor did not submit the application. The parents should have known to find a typewriter, but they were ignorant of the consequences.
In my own life, information keeps me out of poverty even without a job. I know where to buy cheap food, I know were to buy cheap clothes, I know how to make things that I cannot afford to buy. My family knows how to play the money game to create wealth.
Second, the U.S. is a very rich country. However the wealth is very top heavy. First, though out public housing is good, it is not adequate. For instance, according to this Harvard University article, the waiting time is three to seven years in Boston. Boston housing may be a bit scarce, but it is really not much different in other major cities. In my neck of the woods, public housing has been systematically destroyed over the past 5 years.
As far as drug use is concerned, I know people who use drugs. Some of them have money, some of them don't. Some then can support $1000 a week habits legally, some can't. We see the poor crack users on TV because the rich cocaine users won't let the cameras into the country club.
Finally, I am well aware of third world countries. People are not necessarily poor. The people I know are very rich. We have cars, mansions, country houses, chauffeurs, maids, everything. What is missing is a vibrant middle class. Your most ignorant statement is we could just vote the poor out of the country. The middle class is a drain on the rich. The poor are their servants. The middle class are the stockholders that are complaining to Washington about the stick scandals that destroyed their pensions. The rich are the one complaining to Washington that their sweetheart deals and multi-million retirement pensions are being outlawed. The middle class are the union workers demanding higher wages that can cut company profits. The rich are the one create fictitious trades to keep the stock up so that their enormous compensations are justified. The poor do nothing but work, consumer, sleep and die. The poor are no threat rich, so why would the rich bother to align themselves with the middle class, the exact people who threaten the prosperity of the rich, to expel a perfectly harmless and useful group?
If you are going to make blanket statement, at least cite some real references.
Slashdot Mirror
As a casual reader of books, I appreciate when a book is at the library. If a book is not at the library, I can generally ask a library to hold it for me when it comes back. The value of a library is that it has a range of free books, not that it has every book you want every time you want it.
As a researcher, books are not so critical. Most information in books is old, and there is generally some redundancy among books, so one can generally come up with an appropriate book at a well stocked library. The real information for research is in journals, which are generally not allowed to circulate, and can be copied for a minimal fee.
So yes, digital books might make the library nicer, but not to the degree that you assert. The library is about freedom of information, and the freedom to acquire information, and it fulfills that duty quite well. Free books are a part of that mandate, and possible the most visible part of that mandate, but not important to the degree you assert.
The reason that people do not think of think of libraries in a positive light is because they take them for granted. People just assume that they have a right to free help to get the information they need, and then be protected when the government comes to interrogate a librarian about a patrons reading practices. By making such suggestion:
People in this community have only recently (in the last five to ten years) started to wake up and realize that technology is not a limiting factor anymore, the legal system is. Librarians probably knew this all along and have not been worried about becoming redundant.
you validate the concept that a library is nothing but a storage of books, and total ignore the underlying principle present in out modern libraries. You minimize the importance of a library and insult the degreed and highly trained proffesional necessary to make such institutions possible.
A library is a library, and even people who never have been in one know enough to know that they can go to the library for a book, or ask a referenece librarian a question.
I taught at a community college where the bozos called thier library some whacky name, probably to gain a bit of validity. Confusing as hell.
I agree that the WTO is problematic, but it was approved by duly elected governments. It is, in effect, the treaty you wish each country to sign. As much as I hate to admit, the purpose of the WTO is probably sound. Instead of trying to develop a process or treaty to negotiate each international problem, a general process is set up that can handle most problems. On the balance, it is likely a good thing.
If there is really a problem of the WTO, it is the fault of or duly elected officials, who negotiate the deals, and not the WTO, which is just a bureaucracy following the rules they are given.
For instance, using a semi-automotive example, when the current U.S. president was stopped for drunk driving many years ago, it was not a big deal, and people old enough to remember that time knew it was not a big deal. Sure people died, sure it was easily prevented, but going out and getting blasted then driving home was considered necessary. The laws were very lax. And, as you say, good drivers generally made it home without becoming murderers.
The same hold true for cell phones, televisions,and computers. A car is relatively high stress environment where split second life threatening decision must be made with little warning. There is no reason that anything that delays those decisions or makes them harder to carry out should be part of a car. However, we now a bunch of huge cars that have bad response time, bad handling, and bad impact absorption cluttering our roads. People mistake their cars for living rooms and put televisions, VCRs, game stations, and full computers in them with the deluded idea that they are safely at home. For those that can 'handle' it, there is no problem. For the others, who knows.
Let me backtrack and say I am not opposed to simple computing devices, radios, phones, and even other devices under certain conditions. I do not think we should expect excessive safety at the cost of comfort of availability. However, I would like to see regulation and penalties that acknowledge the threat exists. I would also like social norms that say it not ok to arbitrarily endager other people lives.
The problem that has been developing, and has been more or less identified as a problem for the past 3 to 5 years, is that a publicly traded company no longer manufactures and sells products, but manufactures press releases and sells stock. The important capital equipment is no longer machines, but, as has been shown by Nike and most other multi-national corporations, savvy marketing departments.
This means that if your product is stock, then as long as the stock remains relatively stable with respect to the overall market your product is doing well. To help keep you primary product, your stock, stable it is useful to have stable sales of some sort of ancillary product that your marketing department can then use to promote your primary product, stock. Most dot coms had wonderful marketing but no real sales, so, eventually, the stock became worthless or was never bought at all. Enron had sales, but when investigated, proved to be fraudulent, which wasn't a problem in itself, but nobody wants to deal with a dishonest agent. M$ has sales, cash reserves, and an excellent marketing department, so it makes lots of money. This does, not, however mean that it is fundamentally different from Enron or a dot com.
The thing to remember is that Enron set up a complex financial structure based on it's stock. True, there were many people robbing the company of millions of dollars, and there was gross accounting fraud, but the thing that brought the company down was the stock. If the stock price had not fallen and triggered certain payment which then waterfalled into audits and investigations, it may have been years before we would have known how corrupt the organization, and on reflection, the industry was.
And the same is true of M$. Stock is a profit center. M$ pays in stock options instead of cash, thus saving not only the cash but also fabricating a profit by not reporting the cost of disbursing the stock option. Also, M$ saves a lot of money in taxes by deducting the stock options from it's revenue. M$ strikes deals with traders and directs M$ employees to use those brokers to trade options. The brokers make a lot of money not only on the trades but also on the loans. There was an article a year or two ago detailing the complex stock transactions, and questioned whether M$ would be profitable without using stock as a profit center. As long the stock remains high, we expect M$ to be a successful company.
So no, the fact that M$ is making money means very little. If it is padding it books with past and future profits to meet analyst expectations, if it is using stock as a profit center, if is neglecting it's customers to meet short term investor expectation, then it has all the same problems as any other doomed company, and, if it cannot handle the web of deceit, will fall.
For instance, I used to go to movies a lot. I used to have a main stream movie theaters close to me. That theater is now closed and I have to go much farther to another theater where i have to pay for parking, where they have several concesion stands but even on busy weekends they only have one open, usually with only two staff, to serve the entire 30 screens, and where they clean up the during the credits. And don't get me started on the five minutes of unrelated product commericals. I never had these problems at my old theater.
Going to a movie is no longer a pleasent experience, and it has nothing to do with cell phones, or people talking, or babies. It has to do with the number of screens and the number of seats that is necceary to show a main stream movie. Movie going should not be something that has to be scheduled, planned, and carried out in a careful operation. It is supposed to be fun.
So, I mostly go to the occasional art flick where I can drop in, buy a ticket, and enjoy the show without having the experience ruined by excessive lines, cleaning staff, or overt commercials.
And, in time, I may get a home theater, and more DVDs. Of course, if the DVDs continue to become increasing draconian, I may just abandon the whole movie going expereince
I recall something called packed register math. I think we had some capability, perhaps manual, on older 8 bit, perhaps motorola processors, and I am pretty sure it is an important feature on modern chips. Briefly, packing registers allows the developer to fill the registers with independent bytes, words, or perhaps nibbles, and then run commands that will process the registers as independent quantities. For instance, two 64 bit registers could each be packed with 8 numbers, and then told to add those registers in one operation, keeping each set of number distinct. This, BTW, can save a great deal of time.
Anyway, as i said it has been a long time since I have done this. However, the PowerPC's ability to do direct register math would certainly make good use of larger registers. One could add 4 2-byte number simultaneously. While it is true that one seldom has to deal with precisions necessary to use 64 bits, it is quite often that one has several 16 bit number that need to be treated equally.
Please, let me die with dignity before I do any more harm.
A good analogy would be Beavis and Butthead. Each epi-choad of B&B had around 5 minutes of action. The movie was apparently developed by stringing together nearly independent, slightly expanded, episodes with several 'glue' scenes that essential comprised the overall plot. It was amazingly effective.
With the Apple ///, they started targeting non-technical users. They included larger amounts of RAM and mass storage(512K, 3 floppies, HD) able to run large applications(for the time). This continued with the Mac, which became a closed platfrom, with a relitively fixed GUI, aimed at consumer who wanted a tool to do general work. Developers complained.
This is related to DRM because DRM is not about helping the user, but of helping the content developer. Apple has no reason to want to make the computer harder to use to satisfy the needs of parties that aren't even customers.
Even if most of the market is Palladium, I think that Apple will continue to supply products to the 5% of the market that is willing to pay for quality.
As such, they have a few psychologist that can describe how we believe the mind works, and judge the quality of the research. They have a few sociologist that can describe how we believe we interact with each other and insure that the research follows proper protocols. They also have people who study how people acquire and consume content. At least a face value it seems ok to me.
How many games do you need as an excuse to get out your parents house and hang with your friends.
This is interesting because Texas, unlike Tokyo, may be more or less self-sufficient. Texas has a lot of land to produce food, energy, consumer and commercial goods, not to mention golf courses every twenty miles that cost no where near the hundreds of dollars typical in Japan
The world population density appears to be 14 people per square kilometer. This is about 1/2 the density of Texas, but that does not mean that world population can double without negative effect. Not all land area is equal in its carrying capacity. Certainly, if you tired to put everyone in the world into Texas, the most likely result would be that we just shoot each other until we are back down to 30 people per square kilometer
Allegedly large data centers such as Google are sensitive to power consumption. Of course we are not just taking about the power consumption of the processor. We are also taking about the power needed to keep the boxes cool as well as the power that is needed run the air conditioner to cool the data room at about a 20% efficiency. What this means is that several watts of energy must be used to cool each watt used by the computer equipment.
I agree that Itanium may have misjudged the market for this chip. If AMD can produce a chip that is almost as good, but much more efficient, it may well be more economical to buy three AMD based machines instead of two Intel based machines. This becomes even more possible as a box becomes a single disposable commodity component in a very large networked array. Much like the auto industry, it may be practical to build inefficient cars when energy prices are low, but it is nevertheless a risky venture.
But of course shrink wrap viral licences that do not allow the license owner to resell the license, transfer the license to other hardware, or allow the company that sold you the license to root your machine at will, are perfectly valid. Go figure.
I guess the hallmark of Ask Slahdot is the answer you get has little to do with the question. For example, many people have said 'counter sue' in response to the question of 'when do you need a lawyer?' This of course is silly. Although the Klez virus can spoof the from address, there is nothing I have read that says it always does. Although it may be possible to prove the email did not come from you, why bother. You are just playing on the CEO fields by the CEO rules. You obviously don't have a lawyer, and are not familiar with the rules. Take the better advice. Explain the situation, and hope the CEO gets a clue.
For instance, retrieving and parsing a URL is basic task that should have one and only one low-level function. It should check for valid information, throw away invalid information, and deliver a clean set of data that the programmer can use. If programmer does not use this function, that is negligence. If the function was never developed, then the project manager should be sacked.
This goes for everything. Requests to databases should have a standard layer to validate that the data is as expected. The functions to calculate hashes should be in one place.
The ludicrous fact is that these things do not exist because people people feel they need to create an optimized version for each application. Well, then why do we buy multi gigahertz machines if not to make our lives easier? If a web server or compiler results in a slow web page, then replace the technology instead of sacrificing security.
This article states the simple truth. Linux does many things better than MS. MS cannot compete on price, or even on functionality, at this time. MS may be able to develop technologies to compete, but it's past method of undercutting the competition into bankruptcy will not work.
Given this set of facts, they are asking for help. And they will get it, beyond a few personal friends. A lot of people make a lot of money off MS products. MS products are designed to be simple enough and just reliable enough to be used in business and allow average people to administer and program them. All people who make money of MS and whose skills are not easily transferable to other technologies will fight hard to keep their income. It is a good strategy to create a grass roots effort. MS is trying to get a little time to catch up.
This reminds me of the American auto industry years ago. They built crap cars that Americans were forced to buy. A superior product was introduced, and instead of meeting the Compton head on, protectionist legislation was introduced to protect the American autoworker. Of course, the end result is that we know have reliable affordable cars, but a lot of auto workers and auto mechanics were put out of work on the way.
The fact is I get junk mail, phone calls, and email. These cost me almost no money directly. It costs the phone company, post office, and ISP money. The phone company and post office are remunerated through charging higher fees. I assume, due to the lack of concern from ISPs that they are also remunerated for their costs.
Don't believe me, let's look at the facts. I get a spam message with a forged Hotmail or Yahoo address. I send a note to this effect. I receive a reply saying that the address if forged and there is nothing they can do. I look up the address of the spammers site and send a note to everyone all the up to NetSol or RIPE. I invariably get a not back saying that the registrars are only responsible for the registration and not the content.
As always, the truth is found by following the money. If spam was a real money losing issue, such as music piracy, the industry would be all over it. However, all we get are public relation solutions such as spam filter and denial or responsibility. I think the truth is obvious. There is way too much money to be made with spam on all levels to let it go.
I may not be completely serious here, but the issue remains. I see Tax Exempt Religious Organizations abusing their status way too often. If they need Intellectual Property Protection, let them pay taxes!
Many of the preferences are listed on customization page. To edit preferences, quit the browser, edit your prefs.js file, save it, and restart the browser. Using these preferences, I can set pop up, cookie, window permissions, and other options.
I will agree with critics that say the average user, and even the average programmer, is not capable of reading through the examples and manually setting preferences. But those who can are freed from slow and viral browsers.
So, is the fact that she is married and goes to church makes her less or more guilty?
If lending records are released it create a serious breech of our freedoms. In particular, how will the records be interpreted? If I regularly check out books on a certain faith, will I be categorized as that faith? If I check out books on chemistry, will I be building a bomb? If I read too much Tom Clancy, will I be a spy? It is this sort of thing that makes me wonder if the Germans comparison of out president to Hitler may not be as far off as we first imagine. We already know that dark colored people with accents cannot drive through the south without being accused of terrorism. I do not see how violating patron confidentiality will help anything.
The saddest thing is that Laura Bush is a Librarian. The fact that such a thing could happen with her husband in office makes me wonder if there are any ethics at all in that house.
For instance, Burger King(McDonalds does not seem to have full nutritional information on the web), serves a Whopper, Big Drink, and Big Fries, at about 1400 calories, or about 70% and of a 2000 calories diet, while it only provides 50% protein, 14% of vitamin A, 30% of Vitamin C, and 25% calcium. If we get rid of the excess simple carbohydrates, i.e. sugar and fries, we have a much more balanced situation.
I honestly believe that Atkins is no worse than a diet of fast food and TV dinners, and may in fact be better. My worry is that people who eat a balanced diet, but are overweight, will switch to Atkins in the belief that it is a better diet. As I said before, the best diet I have seen, and the best results I have seen, is the diabetes diet, which is based on a balanced diet of protien, compelx carbohydrates, and excersise.
First, many people are ignorant. Stupidity is not the same as ignorance. You are may ignorant, but not stupid. How does ignorance relate to poverty? An example occurred in my city last year. A black high school student at a school in a poor area of town applied for a scholarship. It is generally accepted that she had a very good chance to receive the scholarship. However, she did not have access to a typewriter, so the application had to be hand printed. Because the application was hand printed, the school counselor did not submit the application. The parents should have known to find a typewriter, but they were ignorant of the consequences.
In my own life, information keeps me out of poverty even without a job. I know where to buy cheap food, I know were to buy cheap clothes, I know how to make things that I cannot afford to buy. My family knows how to play the money game to create wealth.
Second, the U.S. is a very rich country. However the wealth is very top heavy. First, though out public housing is good, it is not adequate. For instance, according to this Harvard University article, the waiting time is three to seven years in Boston. Boston housing may be a bit scarce, but it is really not much different in other major cities. In my neck of the woods, public housing has been systematically destroyed over the past 5 years.
As far as drug use is concerned, I know people who use drugs. Some of them have money, some of them don't. Some then can support $1000 a week habits legally, some can't. We see the poor crack users on TV because the rich cocaine users won't let the cameras into the country club.
Money is not distributed equally. I am not going to get into a argument about what money is where, and how much should be where. Suffice it to say that this 1999 census report indicates that a black household earns about 62 cent for every dollar a white household earns. Some of this may be education, because a high school education earns you about 64 cent for every dollar a graduate of a 4-year college earns, but that only applies if you believe black people are stupid. It is hard to get into college if you scholarship application is discarded by your counselor.
Finally, I am well aware of third world countries. People are not necessarily poor. The people I know are very rich. We have cars, mansions, country houses, chauffeurs, maids, everything. What is missing is a vibrant middle class. Your most ignorant statement is we could just vote the poor out of the country. The middle class is a drain on the rich. The poor are their servants. The middle class are the stockholders that are complaining to Washington about the stick scandals that destroyed their pensions. The rich are the one complaining to Washington that their sweetheart deals and multi-million retirement pensions are being outlawed. The middle class are the union workers demanding higher wages that can cut company profits. The rich are the one create fictitious trades to keep the stock up so that their enormous compensations are justified. The poor do nothing but work, consumer, sleep and die. The poor are no threat rich, so why would the rich bother to align themselves with the middle class, the exact people who threaten the prosperity of the rich, to expel a perfectly harmless and useful group?
If you are going to make blanket statement, at least cite some real references.