If the ISPs in the UK had sold broadband as a speed upgrade I'd still be on dial-up too. The fact is lots of internet users don't need to download things quickly. 56k is more than adequate for email, it's practically overkill for SSH and it's bearable for light web surfing. There really isn't any reason to upgrade if that's all you do. Even the "always on" factor is really just a speed advantage.
The reason I bought into broadband was primarily reliability and the fact that it doesn't tie up your phone line. Having a second line in the UK is actually pretty unusual so anyone calling when you're dialled up gets an engaged tone. It's really reliability that killed dial-up for me though. I live a fair distance from my telephone exchange and rarely got a continual connection for more than an hour at a time. Consequently broadband was a necessity.
If you live in an area with reliable connections and a cheap second line then dial up is perfectly alright. Why pay more to upgrade to something you don't need? That's just throwing money away.
The insurgency tactics being used in Iraq require access to things like plastic explosives and knowledge of bomb making. Those aren't available under your 2nd amendment rights, and if you tried to get them Homeland Security would come a-knocking. If the Iraqi insurgents were using the sort of guns available to American citizens they'd have lost a long time ago. Your government isn't daft - they give you just enough to make you think you have some power.
Mind you, I'm British, I know I have no power over my government. They're probably watching me on a CCTV camera somewhere as I type this.
I'm sure these bugs will be fixed eventually... but I'm also pretty sure Microsoft wasn't too worried about launching Hotmail without Firefox support.
How long they take to fix it depends on whether they feel people are more likely to change their browser to fix a problem accessing their email, or change to a different email provider. While it's a great deal easier to change to a compatible browser it's not a foregone conclusion that people will necessarily take that route, especially if they're trying Firefox because they're dissatisfied with IE - if they're already trying to defect from the MSFT camp then a problem with Hotmail on FF3 will drive them further away.
A huge construction project that would take place in during a recession/depression.. is this going to be this generation's Hoover Dam?
Well, apart from the fact a dam is actually useful, and a train between two holiday resorts during a time when people have no money to spend on holidays is all kinds of pointless.
As an RSS reader, sure. Mostly it's just the obvious news feeds from the likes of the BBC and Engadget, but additionally I have a couple of other less usual ones - one is a box for the latest posts on a forum I moderate, and the other is a script that takes any interesting activity (code errors, spikes in CPU usage, etc) in the logs for the servers I maintain code on and pipes them to my sidebar (and soon a sideshow-enabled display:) ). Admittedly emails would work just as well (better perhaps, I have a tendency to cover the sidebar with IDE stuff) but it's a fun thing to have, and clients are always impressed by it.
The problem is that all banana plants around today are sterile. The only way to cultivate new plants is by cuttings (taking a small section of an existing plant and growing it into a big plant). Consequently there is no way to introduce new variations. If all the varieties around today become susceptible to disease then that's it, they're gone. For those of us in the west that's just one less choice in the supermarket, but there are vast swathes of the world where the banana is the staple carbohydrate source for millions of people. It'd be like the west no longer having anything to make flour for bread, and having no alternative. Anyone who thinks this isn't a huge problem is wrong.
This is brilliant. $600k isn't a lot to some people, yet there's a tiny sliver of a chance that the guy is on to something. So he gets funding from a private institution who will be absolutely minted in the very unlikely circumstance that he's right. The odd $600k wouldn't even scratch the surface for more traditional avenues of research where the numbers are into the billions, so there's no real loss either.
Plus, the chances of me getting a backer for my "buttered toast and cat" turbine are much improved. Fantastic.
The company you're at is too big. Simple as that. If you want people to recognise your individual input you need to work for a smaller company where people have the time to get to know you as an individual rather than just one of their hundreds of colleagues.
There are disadvantages to this mind you. If everyone recognises each others input then if you screw up you'll find it hard to pass the buck (technically this is also an advantage because noone else can either). Typically your job will pay a little less and not be as secure either, though in the current economic climate noone is all that well paid or safe. You'll also find it's always you working late at a small company simply because there's noone else to do it.
I work (well, 'play' would be closer..:) ) for a company with two other employees. We all know precisely who did what and who should get the credit. I love it.
The other advantage of working for a tiny company is that everyone can have a really impressive title. I'm "Head of Production". It impresses all the girls.
That doesn't betray understanding, that betrays a wider knowledge og history. If Powerset is merely understanding the words in the search question it should figure out that:
"Why did" - Looking for a reason for something "Germany" - first comparitor "attack" - that's the thing "Russia" - second comparitor
There's no way to know you meant WWII from the question... you need a large data set before you can start to see which topics are most important given the terms. Powerset doesn't actually have a large data set - wikipedia is a huge number of very small sets of data. If you gave Powerset access to 10,000 sites about WWII rather than just a few dozen pages (articles) if might fair better. Not saying it would, I've no idea, I'm just suggesting that it might.
He went back to the analogy of pharmaceuticals: 'I think if you invent drugs, you should be able to charge for them,' he said, adding with a shrug: 'That may seem radical."
158 billion hours is a shade over 18 million years. If you had a camera fixed to record for the past 18 million years you'd only have started in the Miocene era... it'd all look really quite modern. It'd have been a bit more grassy, but there'd be recognisable mammals like deer and wolves, birds like ducks and grouse.
If you're storming ahead in a particular market the only threats you face are potential future threats. If you dismiss them because they're not a problem for you right now you'll get a nasty surprise in a few years time when they come snapping at your heels devouring that carefully won market share.
See: IBM vs everyone; IE vs Firefox; Windows vs OSX; Windows vs Linux; Microsoft vs Google...
Is it reasonable to assume that every student will carry out their homework assignment in isolation? I don't think it is. It's not really commendable that someone took it upon themselves to go for a more organised approach to 'cheating' but I'd say that if the university wants assignments to be carried out by individuals alone they have a duty to provide invigilated exam halls rather than setting a practically unenforceable condition and kicking anyone out who they happen to find breaking it.
Thousands of other students will have broken this rule in the past sitting around a library table or a kitchen counter - why did the university let them get away with it?
The capacity isn't likely to be the reason they're choosing to lay 7TBits of extra bandwidth. They're more likely to be laying what they think they can sell + what they want for themselves + a small amount of redundancy. The physical cable isn't free so putting it a whole lot and leaving it dark is a waste of money. If you don't need it yourself and you can't sell it, why bother?
"Much of the rest of Scientology seems like reasonable psychology"... asking people to take a psychometric 'personality test' designed to lead them into buying into the idea and investing from tens of dollars for a book up to thousands of dollars for a course in the 'church' is far from what I would call reasonable.
As for that stuff about Xenu dropping neutron bombs into Earth's volcanoes from intergalactic DC-8s... that wasn't an obvious a fairy tale? What do you think it was? A documentary?
It is an issue though. PHP did exactly the same between version 4 and 5, and it crippled adoption of 5 because hosts refused to upgrade as it'd have broken too much code. It was a full 3 years or so before 5 was really considered the primary version amongst many developers and that took the announcement of 4.x support ending and the success of the GoPHP5 campaign.
Hopefully the Python team will learn from PHP's experience.
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Heaven forbid that U2 might rig their website to enable them to profit off the creative output of other people.
Slashdot Mirror
They must be taking the piss.
If the ISPs in the UK had sold broadband as a speed upgrade I'd still be on dial-up too. The fact is lots of internet users don't need to download things quickly. 56k is more than adequate for email, it's practically overkill for SSH and it's bearable for light web surfing. There really isn't any reason to upgrade if that's all you do. Even the "always on" factor is really just a speed advantage.
The reason I bought into broadband was primarily reliability and the fact that it doesn't tie up your phone line. Having a second line in the UK is actually pretty unusual so anyone calling when you're dialled up gets an engaged tone. It's really reliability that killed dial-up for me though. I live a fair distance from my telephone exchange and rarely got a continual connection for more than an hour at a time. Consequently broadband was a necessity.
If you live in an area with reliable connections and a cheap second line then dial up is perfectly alright. Why pay more to upgrade to something you don't need? That's just throwing money away.
The insurgency tactics being used in Iraq require access to things like plastic explosives and knowledge of bomb making. Those aren't available under your 2nd amendment rights, and if you tried to get them Homeland Security would come a-knocking. If the Iraqi insurgents were using the sort of guns available to American citizens they'd have lost a long time ago. Your government isn't daft - they give you just enough to make you think you have some power.
Mind you, I'm British, I know I have no power over my government. They're probably watching me on a CCTV camera somewhere as I type this.
How long they take to fix it depends on whether they feel people are more likely to change their browser to fix a problem accessing their email, or change to a different email provider. While it's a great deal easier to change to a compatible browser it's not a foregone conclusion that people will necessarily take that route, especially if they're trying Firefox because they're dissatisfied with IE - if they're already trying to defect from the MSFT camp then a problem with Hotmail on FF3 will drive them further away.
Exactly. I imagine you'd have to be a complete ***BUY CHEAP MEDS - VIAGRA 100mg * 30 ONLY $89.95*** idiot to fall for any malware trickery these days.
A huge construction project that would take place in during a recession/depression.. is this going to be this generation's Hoover Dam?
Well, apart from the fact a dam is actually useful, and a train between two holiday resorts during a time when people have no money to spend on holidays is all kinds of pointless.
As an RSS reader, sure. Mostly it's just the obvious news feeds from the likes of the BBC and Engadget, but additionally I have a couple of other less usual ones - one is a box for the latest posts on a forum I moderate, and the other is a script that takes any interesting activity (code errors, spikes in CPU usage, etc) in the logs for the servers I maintain code on and pipes them to my sidebar (and soon a sideshow-enabled display :) ). Admittedly emails would work just as well (better perhaps, I have a tendency to cover the sidebar with IDE stuff) but it's a fun thing to have, and clients are always impressed by it.
So when the grey goo comes I'll finally be able to get a dance partner? Woo!
I wonder if it puts out on the first date..
The problem is that all banana plants around today are sterile. The only way to cultivate new plants is by cuttings (taking a small section of an existing plant and growing it into a big plant). Consequently there is no way to introduce new variations. If all the varieties around today become susceptible to disease then that's it, they're gone. For those of us in the west that's just one less choice in the supermarket, but there are vast swathes of the world where the banana is the staple carbohydrate source for millions of people. It'd be like the west no longer having anything to make flour for bread, and having no alternative. Anyone who thinks this isn't a huge problem is wrong.
This is brilliant. $600k isn't a lot to some people, yet there's a tiny sliver of a chance that the guy is on to something. So he gets funding from a private institution who will be absolutely minted in the very unlikely circumstance that he's right. The odd $600k wouldn't even scratch the surface for more traditional avenues of research where the numbers are into the billions, so there's no real loss either.
Plus, the chances of me getting a backer for my "buttered toast and cat" turbine are much improved. Fantastic.
The company you're at is too big. Simple as that. If you want people to recognise your individual input you need to work for a smaller company where people have the time to get to know you as an individual rather than just one of their hundreds of colleagues.
:) ) for a company with two other employees. We all know precisely who did what and who should get the credit. I love it.
:(
There are disadvantages to this mind you. If everyone recognises each others input then if you screw up you'll find it hard to pass the buck (technically this is also an advantage because noone else can either). Typically your job will pay a little less and not be as secure either, though in the current economic climate noone is all that well paid or safe. You'll also find it's always you working late at a small company simply because there's noone else to do it.
I work (well, 'play' would be closer..
The other advantage of working for a tiny company is that everyone can have a really impressive title. I'm "Head of Production". It impresses all the girls.
Girls? Girls? Hey.. come back.
That doesn't betray understanding, that betrays a wider knowledge og history. If Powerset is merely understanding the words in the search question it should figure out that:
... you need a large data set before you can start to see which topics are most important given the terms. Powerset doesn't actually have a large data set - wikipedia is a huge number of very small sets of data. If you gave Powerset access to 10,000 sites about WWII rather than just a few dozen pages (articles) if might fair better. Not saying it would, I've no idea, I'm just suggesting that it might.
"Why did" - Looking for a reason for something
"Germany" - first comparitor
"attack" - that's the thing
"Russia" - second comparitor
There's no way to know you meant WWII from the question
What if you invent diseases?
Well, viruses.
Well, a platform that viruses thrive on.
This is Slashdot, so I'm going to guess "all of it".
What did I win?
158 billion hours is a shade over 18 million years. If you had a camera fixed to record for the past 18 million years you'd only have started in the Miocene era ... it'd all look really quite modern. It'd have been a bit more grassy, but there'd be recognisable mammals like deer and wolves, birds like ducks and grouse.
It sounds a like long time, but it really isn't.
If you're storming ahead in a particular market the only threats you face are potential future threats. If you dismiss them because they're not a problem for you right now you'll get a nasty surprise in a few years time when they come snapping at your heels devouring that carefully won market share.
See: IBM vs everyone; IE vs Firefox; Windows vs OSX; Windows vs Linux; Microsoft vs Google...
Is it reasonable to assume that every student will carry out their homework assignment in isolation? I don't think it is. It's not really commendable that someone took it upon themselves to go for a more organised approach to 'cheating' but I'd say that if the university wants assignments to be carried out by individuals alone they have a duty to provide invigilated exam halls rather than setting a practically unenforceable condition and kicking anyone out who they happen to find breaking it.
Thousands of other students will have broken this rule in the past sitting around a library table or a kitchen counter - why did the university let them get away with it?
I met some people many years ago through playing AD&D who are still friends today. That's testament enough to how much it's affected my life I reckon.
The capacity isn't likely to be the reason they're choosing to lay 7TBits of extra bandwidth. They're more likely to be laying what they think they can sell + what they want for themselves + a small amount of redundancy. The physical cable isn't free so putting it a whole lot and leaving it dark is a waste of money. If you don't need it yourself and you can't sell it, why bother?
"Much of the rest of Scientology seems like reasonable psychology" ... asking people to take a psychometric 'personality test' designed to lead them into buying into the idea and investing from tens of dollars for a book up to thousands of dollars for a course in the 'church' is far from what I would call reasonable.
... that wasn't an obvious a fairy tale? What do you think it was? A documentary?
As for that stuff about Xenu dropping neutron bombs into Earth's volcanoes from intergalactic DC-8s
Mario and Sonic told me this isn't true.
I don't. In fact, I suspect they might all have been usurped by the evil blood-drinking Draco-ians.
Wait, it's me isn't it?
It is an issue though. PHP did exactly the same between version 4 and 5, and it crippled adoption of 5 because hosts refused to upgrade as it'd have broken too much code. It was a full 3 years or so before 5 was really considered the primary version amongst many developers and that took the announcement of 4.x support ending and the success of the GoPHP5 campaign.
Hopefully the Python team will learn from PHP's experience.
Automotive paint isn't just used to make your car look pretty - it's also a protective coating to stop it going rusty.
Heaven forbid that U2 might rig their website to enable them to profit off the creative output of other people.