An alternative business model would be to charge by the hour for seating and give the coffee away (or sell it for a nominal charge). Even without wireless, that's what the better coffee shops are really about anyway: People go there primarily to hang out, not to get a good deal on coffee.
Whether customers will accept that (even if the cost works out to be the same) is another question, however...
I wonder, given a population distributed geographically exactly as it is now, and starting from scratch, how we would go about designing a maximally efficient transportation system? Would we connect everybody with paved roads and require them all to buy automobiles (resulting in something resembling what we have now in the US), or would the solution look different?
This is a big legacy transition problem. We're comparing the cost of cars vs. rail in a place with an immense infrastructure designed for the former, and very little for the latter. How good could a mass transit system be, if this weren't the case?
I've never understood why that raises so much ire.
Well, of course it raises ire because it goes against the collective wisdom that billions of marketing dollars are trying to convey to us: That cost equals quality, you get what you pay for, and responsible corporate citizens will treat you in a fair and ethical manner. Not everyone realizes that this is all a load of crap.
There's a good deal of classical cognitive dissonance going on, too. Nobody wants to hear that the fancy $4 bottle of water they're drinking is just somebody else's tap water. They paid four bucks for it, so you'd better believe it's going to be good!
...he subscribes to the Everybody's Like Me fallacy. That is, he believes every computer user is enough of a hacker to compile and run all the software they will ever need.
My dog lacks the skills to survive in the wild, and so she happily submits to all of the restrictions that I impose on her life. She can't even pee unless I'm willing to get off my ass and take her outside. The tyrrany is about as absolute as tyrrany gets. If she could talk to you, though, she would probably say that this is just fine, and there's no need to change things.
Sometimes the hardest part about freeing the oppressed is convincing them that they are indeed oppressed. If all they know is life as it is and always has been, they'd rather just live that life -- where things are predictable and their habits get them by -- than to face the shock of having to reinvent themselves.
What RMS is saying is this: You don't have to put up with this crap. There are alternatives. But he shouldn't stop saying it just because only a small percentage of people are willing to wander beyond the fences at any given time. It's still important for the others to know the option is always there.
Linuxers wonder how people can think Windows is so good
My experience with Windows users is that they don't necessarily think Windows is "so good". Rather, they use it because (a) it's what they know, (b) it came with the computer they bought, (c) it's what their friends use, or (d) all of the above.
My GF uses Windows and will continue doing so despite all of the grief she has to put up with from malware, crapware, nagware, viruses, etc. She comes over to my place, uses my Linux machine, and absolutely loves it, but gets irritable and defensive if I suggest that she could install it on her own machine, too. Dell gave her Windows with her computer, and maybe running Linux would break it or cause it to explode... or something.
Essentially it shows that the price of software is not a major reason behind piracy.
Sometimes - maybe most of the time - not even the desire to use the software is a major reason behind piracy. The people doing most of the downloading are simply hoarding, and most of the stuff that they grab ends up in a stack of DVDs along with hundreds of gigabytes of other stuff that will never see the light of day.
This kind of piracy is economically irrelevant. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
How terrifying is the thought that news could be turned 100% into opinion piece blathering with no actual research.
Or even more terrifying: The news will consist solely of stories sponsored by whatever monied interests that want to pay for them. Stories on climate change brought to you by the petroleum industry, stories on nutrition sponsored by fast food, etc. etc.
Why would any major company agree to such arrangements?
Why indeed. Just the other day I was talking to a guy who works for a large company that forbids any use whatsoever of open source software, on the grounds that it would somehow leave them exposed to some kind of legal repercussions. One can only wonder if any of their lawyers and managers have even looked at the EULA crap they actually do agreed to, or where their odd misconceptions of FOSS alternatives came from.
I thought that "Darwinism" was a term thought up by the religious anti-evolution side.
Ideas are easier to attack when they can be pinned to a particular individual, and the attacks made ad hominem. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's a tactic most often used by conservatives. For example, I find it difficult to discuss global warming with conservatives without veering into a debate on the merits of Al Gore and whether he invented the Internet. Similarly, debates on other matters have been "settled" with assertions that Michael Moore is undeniably fat and doesn't dress nicely.
You'll start hearing about "Newtonism" and "Einsteinism" the moment that some conservative (most likely religious) constituency realizes that modern physics challenges their worldview every bit as much as evolutionary biology. After all, Relativity is only a theory, and why should anyone listen to a guy who can't comb his hair properly?
This is the first thing I thought of when I saw this article, and I had a bet with myself that someone else would mention it, too. There aren't many shell commands more common than "mv", and the 'c' key is sitting there right next to the 'v'. Yes, you can alias your way out of this, but I found it simpler and more satisfying to just "rm/usr/bin/mc".
screams of "save the children", "terrorists" and "global warming" drive legislators to write, and pass, the most odious, anti-liberty and outright anti-American legislation on a daily basis.
Global warming? And don't get me started about plate techtonics...
Kroll Ontrack, for instance, will be rolling out a 24/7 monitoring service for its global clients manned from a US location by professionals in early 2009.
It's a good thing that Knoll Ontrack's employees are all totally uncorruptable, unlike the felons that must work for their clients...
...it's because you're a gullible fool. When I get conned, it's because someone "took advantage of the human oxytocin-mediated attachment system". Well, who wouldn't fall for that?
All true, but the idea - as it is so often around here - is to attract attention rather than provide mere functionality. The thing is basically a weirdified RV, but nobody's going to post a story about a motor home to Slashdot, saying "Hey look! You can move it in case of a flood!"
For the land line, no tech needed other than an answering machine. You call, you leave a message, and if I know (and want to talk to) you I pick up. If you don't say anything, then you're either a spammer or it probably wasn't very important to begin with.
Bonus: No Caller ID here, so I'm not even responsible for knowing you called (and thus for returning it) if you don't leave a message.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn. I was going to offer support for half of that price until I saw this new requirement...
Someone takes it home and tries looking at it, pwnage.
Is this some kind of Windows "feature"?
Throw a bucket of cold water on it and the knob should slip right out.
Maybe so, but that solution wouldn't require the full 6 months allotted.
Trolling a little, eh? Your post is complete nonsense.
How many people want all of their traffic explicitly going through Microsoft?
On the other hand, it might be an effective way to protect users from the likes of Linux, Firefox, etc...
An alternative business model would be to charge by the hour for seating and give the coffee away (or sell it for a nominal charge). Even without wireless, that's what the better coffee shops are really about anyway: People go there primarily to hang out, not to get a good deal on coffee.
Whether customers will accept that (even if the cost works out to be the same) is another question, however...
The Earth is zipping around the sun at something like 66,000 mph (unless I screwed up my calcs). It's all I can do to hang on...
I wonder, given a population distributed geographically exactly as it is now, and starting from scratch, how we would go about designing a maximally efficient transportation system? Would we connect everybody with paved roads and require them all to buy automobiles (resulting in something resembling what we have now in the US), or would the solution look different?
This is a big legacy transition problem. We're comparing the cost of cars vs. rail in a place with an immense infrastructure designed for the former, and very little for the latter. How good could a mass transit system be, if this weren't the case?
...I'll be needing new video card, then.
I've never understood why that raises so much ire.
Well, of course it raises ire because it goes against the collective wisdom that billions of marketing dollars are trying to convey to us: That cost equals quality, you get what you pay for, and responsible corporate citizens will treat you in a fair and ethical manner. Not everyone realizes that this is all a load of crap.
There's a good deal of classical cognitive dissonance going on, too. Nobody wants to hear that the fancy $4 bottle of water they're drinking is just somebody else's tap water. They paid four bucks for it, so you'd better believe it's going to be good!
...he subscribes to the Everybody's Like Me fallacy. That is, he believes every computer user is enough of a hacker to compile and run all the software they will ever need.
My dog lacks the skills to survive in the wild, and so she happily submits to all of the restrictions that I impose on her life. She can't even pee unless I'm willing to get off my ass and take her outside. The tyrrany is about as absolute as tyrrany gets. If she could talk to you, though, she would probably say that this is just fine, and there's no need to change things.
Sometimes the hardest part about freeing the oppressed is convincing them that they are indeed oppressed. If all they know is life as it is and always has been, they'd rather just live that life -- where things are predictable and their habits get them by -- than to face the shock of having to reinvent themselves.
What RMS is saying is this: You don't have to put up with this crap. There are alternatives. But he shouldn't stop saying it just because only a small percentage of people are willing to wander beyond the fences at any given time. It's still important for the others to know the option is always there.
Linuxers wonder how people can think Windows is so good
My experience with Windows users is that they don't necessarily think Windows is "so good". Rather, they use it because (a) it's what they know, (b) it came with the computer they bought, (c) it's what their friends use, or (d) all of the above.
My GF uses Windows and will continue doing so despite all of the grief she has to put up with from malware, crapware, nagware, viruses, etc. She comes over to my place, uses my Linux machine, and absolutely loves it, but gets irritable and defensive if I suggest that she could install it on her own machine, too. Dell gave her Windows with her computer, and maybe running Linux would break it or cause it to explode... or something.
That would be useful. And if there was one on mastering head, I'd buy it for the GF...
It's worthless to a professional.
Oops - Sounds like someone just dropped some major dollarage on PS!
Essentially it shows that the price of software is not a major reason behind piracy.
Sometimes - maybe most of the time - not even the desire to use the software is a major reason behind piracy. The people doing most of the downloading are simply hoarding, and most of the stuff that they grab ends up in a stack of DVDs along with hundreds of gigabytes of other stuff that will never see the light of day.
This kind of piracy is economically irrelevant. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
How terrifying is the thought that news could be turned 100% into opinion piece blathering with no actual research.
Or even more terrifying: The news will consist solely of stories sponsored by whatever monied interests that want to pay for them. Stories on climate change brought to you by the petroleum industry, stories on nutrition sponsored by fast food, etc. etc.
We're already halfway there.
Why would any major company agree to such arrangements?
Why indeed. Just the other day I was talking to a guy who works for a large company that forbids any use whatsoever of open source software, on the grounds that it would somehow leave them exposed to some kind of legal repercussions. One can only wonder if any of their lawyers and managers have even looked at the EULA crap they actually do agreed to, or where their odd misconceptions of FOSS alternatives came from.
I thought that "Darwinism" was a term thought up by the religious anti-evolution side.
Ideas are easier to attack when they can be pinned to a particular individual, and the attacks made ad hominem. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's a tactic most often used by conservatives. For example, I find it difficult to discuss global warming with conservatives without veering into a debate on the merits of Al Gore and whether he invented the Internet. Similarly, debates on other matters have been "settled" with assertions that Michael Moore is undeniably fat and doesn't dress nicely.
You'll start hearing about "Newtonism" and "Einsteinism" the moment that some conservative (most likely religious) constituency realizes that modern physics challenges their worldview every bit as much as evolutionary biology. After all, Relativity is only a theory, and why should anyone listen to a guy who can't comb his hair properly?
But don't listen to me - I didn't shave today...
...To mistype "mv".
This is the first thing I thought of when I saw this article, and I had a bet with myself that someone else would mention it, too. There aren't many shell commands more common than "mv", and the 'c' key is sitting there right next to the 'v'. Yes, you can alias your way out of this, but I found it simpler and more satisfying to just "rm /usr/bin/mc".
screams of "save the children", "terrorists" and "global warming" drive legislators to write, and pass, the most odious, anti-liberty and outright anti-American legislation on a daily basis.
Global warming? And don't get me started about plate techtonics...
Kroll Ontrack, for instance, will be rolling out a 24/7 monitoring service for its global clients manned from a US location by professionals in early 2009.
It's a good thing that Knoll Ontrack's employees are all totally uncorruptable, unlike the felons that must work for their clients...
...it's because you're a gullible fool. When I get conned, it's because someone "took advantage of the human oxytocin-mediated attachment system". Well, who wouldn't fall for that?
Get to go to another planet (boyhood dream) AND get away from the three centuries of built up corruption? Deal.
That promise expires as soon as you get more than two people there, so enjoy it while it lasts...
All true, but the idea - as it is so often around here - is to attract attention rather than provide mere functionality. The thing is basically a weirdified RV, but nobody's going to post a story about a motor home to Slashdot, saying "Hey look! You can move it in case of a flood!"
For the land line, no tech needed other than an answering machine. You call, you leave a message, and if I know (and want to talk to) you I pick up. If you don't say anything, then you're either a spammer or it probably wasn't very important to begin with.
Bonus: No Caller ID here, so I'm not even responsible for knowing you called (and thus for returning it) if you don't leave a message.