Sooner or later, Dell will either conform with consumer demand, or they will lose market share. Yes, Microsoft will continue to put up obstacles, but there's still enough competition in the hardware market that they can't control things forever. If you want evidence of this, take a look at the recent results of HP's choice to support Debian.
Anyway, I don't blame them for deleting a troll post.
Personally, I have no use for either Perl or PowerShell, and I think both of them have serious problems.
For particular applications, yes. Perl's a poor choice for writing an OS kernel, and Java's not a great choice for a simple command-line text processing tool. Both Java and Perl are good for web development, though it's easier to find web developers familiar with Java. No language is a perfect fit for every job. For many applications, Perl is a great tool.
I'm disappointed at the thoughtlessness of some of these schemes. Reducing the amount of energy that enters our atmosphere? Those can't be serious proposals by intelligent people. Amazing that they've made Slashdot more than once. Some of the others are interesting, but still involve experimenting with our critical life-support systems which we don't understand yet.
Let me spell this out, for those of you who like the idea of giant orbiting dust clouds, or pumping sulfur into the atmosphere, or trillions of sunshades in space,
A) The cause of the problem is a dramatic increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases.
B) The most significant means of removing these gases from our atmosphere is PHOTOSYNTHESIS.
C) Photosynthesis requires solar energy, and lots of it.
D) Photosynthesis also provides atmospheric oxygen and food
E) DURRRRR!
Ask around -- ask colleges you're interested in, ask your high school -- what you want is something that will be legal for tests.
Then, find the best TI that you can guarantee will be allowed pretty much everywhere -- or better, get your parents to buy it; it's for education, right?
Yes! Agree 100%. The TI-83+ features are the most that were allowed in my calculus tests (3 years ago). The prof allowed older/less featureful calculators if you wanted to use them, but anything with more features wasn't allowed. And there was a lot of help provided specifically for using the TI-83+, which was often a big timesaver.
You have the potential of losing email anywhere you store it
What do you mean? Outlook's local storage mechanism is great -- a binary database format that's almost never closed while the PC is running. It's almost like they designed it to be as difficult as possible to back up reliably. This of course proves how reliable the underlying system has to be in order to never ever lose your data. 'Cause nobody ever loses their locally stored Outlook data. Right? So who needs Gmail? Right? Right?
An individual has no negotiating leverage other than the threat of lawsuit, especially after the services have been provided. Insurance companies have serious buying power, individuals have none by comparison. After the procedure has been performed, it's not like an individual has the option of buying the services from a competing hospital.
This would be like making it illegal to negotiate on new car prices. Sure the car dealer has a high MSRP, but you're a fool to pay it. Our insurance system has it's problems, but hospitals and doctors being free to negotiate prices isn't one of them.
Your analogy sucks. New car dealers negotiate with EVERYBODY, not just the poor and the self-employed. And there's that little detail about people being educated about the fact that they CAN haggle... not to mention that you're not likely to die if you don't get that new car.
The problem is, if the election is just slightly shifted, there's no recount and so nobody knows what happened. You can always randomly manually count 1-5% of the ballots, but that may or may not expose any fraud or error. Plus, as shown in Hacking Democracy, sometimes "random" means "somebody chooses".
These problems predated electronic voting. I didn't say optical scans are THE PERFECT SOLUTION. But I think they are a whole lot better than any other system available today. All the problems that optical scan systems have also exist with paper only ballots, and touchscreen systems are far worse because there's no way to verify what really happened after the fact.
We need them because the law says everyone must be able to vote without human assistance.
Shenanigans. That's not the law where I live. If there's not supposed to be any human assistance, why does my optical scan ballot have spots for two witnesses to sign next to an illiterate's "X", ?
I think we should switch to optical scan ballots EVERYWHERE. Yes, the "voter filled in both candidates" problem still exists, but do we really want people that stupid influencing our political decisions anyway? If they invalidate their own ballot and don't even notice, screw 'em, that vote doesn't count. It's not like the 'hanging chad' thing where a reasonable attentive voter might not notice their ballot is invalidated.
With optical scan systems, there's always a paper trail that one can go back to. Yes, the scanning systems and vote tabulating systems are still vulnerable to attack, but at least it's POSSIBLE to do an accurate manual recount if it becomes necessary.
Why do we need a voice recognition machine that disabled people can use? That's why we have POLL WORKERS, so someone can help a disabled voter. Illiterate voters? Um... how did they vote before there were voice recognition systems? They have to either trust a poll worker or trust the voice recognition system, and if I was illiterate I think I'd rather trust a poll worker.
This is really the only question you need to answer. The job market shouldn't be a big factor in your decision making.
If you find computers fascinating, you will easily learn everything you need to know to land a good job, with or without a CS degree. You will also find getting the degree a very worthwhile and even fun pursuit.
If not, don't bother. Even if you make it through the degree program, if you're not interested in computers you will quickly get sick of any job you find.
We depend on non-human earth organisms, and in the long term, they will depend on us to get them off-planet before the next large asteroid extinction event. We'll take Nature with us to the stars, and ensure our own survival and the survival of many other species. 'Course, we won't save them all, and until we learn enough to significantly reduce our environmental impact we will cause many more extinctions.
But I don't see how fantasizing about a fictional human-free future is useful unless you're the type to spend a lot of time worrying about the evils the human race is perpetrating and ignoring everything good that we do. In which case this type of fantasy is probably somewhat comforting and, in combination with your medications, helps reduce anxiety.
You wrote, "This is the second time I've seen this complaint about this technology- and I still don't understand it.".
The reason people are making this complaint is probably based experience with similar devices. Most windmills sold for the purpose of powering private residences are really, really loud. The one referred to in this story is probably very quiet in comparison to its competition.
Few suburban homes are in good locations to produce wind energy. Even if you're in a good location, aside from the issue of creating an eyesore in your neighborhood, your neighbors won't be too happy the next time the wind picks up and you have a 60-80 decibel buzz keeping them up all night.
Perhaps it's time you started using FireFox so that you can install the "intentional irony detector" plugin.
Yeah, I suspected intentional irony for a couple seconds, then decided it was a lot more likely to be a case of unintentional idiocy. And I'm already using Firefox.
Photosynthesis is carbon-neutral, as it's an element of the carbon cycle. In other words, any carbon that gets captured by plants go right back up when it's breathed out by foraging animals.
I suppose that's true over infinite time. From a practical viewpoint, however, animals don't eat all the carbon that gets removed from the atmosphere by plants. Most of it goes into cellulose, which most animals don't have the capacity to digest, and ends up in things like the two-by-fours in your house, or humus in the forest floor, and takes years to biodegrade. An immediate reduction in global photosynthesis would result in an immediate increase in atmospheric CO2.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, and check out this page on the other guy mentioned in the Slashdot header, Richard Lindzen. Apparently even an MIT professor has his price. http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/Lindzen.htm
It starts getting more complex when you have a wide variety of investment income sources.
Power, Scotty! I need more power!
Sooner or later, Dell will either conform with consumer demand, or they will lose market share. Yes, Microsoft will continue to put up obstacles, but there's still enough competition in the hardware market that they can't control things forever. If you want evidence of this, take a look at the recent results of HP's choice to support Debian.
Anyway, I don't blame them for deleting a troll post.
Personally, I have no use for either Perl or PowerShell, and I think both of them have serious problems.
For particular applications, yes. Perl's a poor choice for writing an OS kernel, and Java's not a great choice for a simple command-line text processing tool. Both Java and Perl are good for web development, though it's easier to find web developers familiar with Java. No language is a perfect fit for every job. For many applications, Perl is a great tool.
In a nutshell: use the right tool for the job.
I'm disappointed at the thoughtlessness of some of these schemes. Reducing the amount of energy that enters our atmosphere? Those can't be serious proposals by intelligent people. Amazing that they've made Slashdot more than once. Some of the others are interesting, but still involve experimenting with our critical life-support systems which we don't understand yet. Let me spell this out, for those of you who like the idea of giant orbiting dust clouds, or pumping sulfur into the atmosphere, or trillions of sunshades in space, A) The cause of the problem is a dramatic increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases. B) The most significant means of removing these gases from our atmosphere is PHOTOSYNTHESIS. C) Photosynthesis requires solar energy, and lots of it. D) Photosynthesis also provides atmospheric oxygen and food E) DURRRRR!
stopped criminals from defrauding the 2004 presidential campaign
He stopped them, huh? I guess all those irregularities in Ohio must have been just coincidence...
Ask around -- ask colleges you're interested in, ask your high school -- what you want is something that will be legal for tests.
Then, find the best TI that you can guarantee will be allowed pretty much everywhere -- or better, get your parents to buy it; it's for education, right?
Yes! Agree 100%. The TI-83+ features are the most that were allowed in my calculus tests (3 years ago). The prof allowed older/less featureful calculators if you wanted to use them, but anything with more features wasn't allowed. And there was a lot of help provided specifically for using the TI-83+, which was often a big timesaver.
but go into a hardware store and they'll still sell you a length of 2-by-4
Will it actually measure 2-by-4 inches, or 1.5-by-3.5? Oh, how I love Imperial measurements.
You have the potential of losing email anywhere you store it
What do you mean? Outlook's local storage mechanism is great -- a binary database format that's almost never closed while the PC is running. It's almost like they designed it to be as difficult as possible to back up reliably. This of course proves how reliable the underlying system has to be in order to never ever lose your data. 'Cause nobody ever loses their locally stored Outlook data. Right? So who needs Gmail? Right? Right?
An individual has no negotiating leverage other than the threat of lawsuit, especially after the services have been provided. Insurance companies have serious buying power, individuals have none by comparison. After the procedure has been performed, it's not like an individual has the option of buying the services from a competing hospital.
This would be like making it illegal to negotiate on new car prices. Sure the car dealer has a high MSRP, but you're a fool to pay it. Our insurance system has it's problems, but hospitals and doctors being free to negotiate prices isn't one of them. Your analogy sucks. New car dealers negotiate with EVERYBODY, not just the poor and the self-employed. And there's that little detail about people being educated about the fact that they CAN haggle... not to mention that you're not likely to die if you don't get that new car.
The problem is, if the election is just slightly shifted, there's no recount and so nobody knows what happened. You can always randomly manually count 1-5% of the ballots, but that may or may not expose any fraud or error. Plus, as shown in Hacking Democracy, sometimes "random" means "somebody chooses".
These problems predated electronic voting. I didn't say optical scans are THE PERFECT SOLUTION. But I think they are a whole lot better than any other system available today. All the problems that optical scan systems have also exist with paper only ballots, and touchscreen systems are far worse because there's no way to verify what really happened after the fact.
We need them because the law says everyone must be able to vote without human assistance.
Shenanigans. That's not the law where I live. If there's not supposed to be any human assistance, why does my optical scan ballot have spots for two witnesses to sign next to an illiterate's "X", ?
I think we should switch to optical scan ballots EVERYWHERE. Yes, the "voter filled in both candidates" problem still exists, but do we really want people that stupid influencing our political decisions anyway? If they invalidate their own ballot and don't even notice, screw 'em, that vote doesn't count. It's not like the 'hanging chad' thing where a reasonable attentive voter might not notice their ballot is invalidated.
With optical scan systems, there's always a paper trail that one can go back to. Yes, the scanning systems and vote tabulating systems are still vulnerable to attack, but at least it's POSSIBLE to do an accurate manual recount if it becomes necessary.
Why do we need a voice recognition machine that disabled people can use? That's why we have POLL WORKERS, so someone can help a disabled voter. Illiterate voters? Um... how did they vote before there were voice recognition systems? They have to either trust a poll worker or trust the voice recognition system, and if I was illiterate I think I'd rather trust a poll worker.
This is really the only question you need to answer. The job market shouldn't be a big factor in your decision making. If you find computers fascinating, you will easily learn everything you need to know to land a good job, with or without a CS degree. You will also find getting the degree a very worthwhile and even fun pursuit. If not, don't bother. Even if you make it through the degree program, if you're not interested in computers you will quickly get sick of any job you find.
We depend on non-human earth organisms, and in the long term, they will depend on us to get them off-planet before the next large asteroid extinction event. We'll take Nature with us to the stars, and ensure our own survival and the survival of many other species. 'Course, we won't save them all, and until we learn enough to significantly reduce our environmental impact we will cause many more extinctions.
But I don't see how fantasizing about a fictional human-free future is useful unless you're the type to spend a lot of time worrying about the evils the human race is perpetrating and ignoring everything good that we do. In which case this type of fantasy is probably somewhat comforting and, in combination with your medications, helps reduce anxiety.
Their function is essentially alcohol-powered, and they generally make a LOT of money.
You wrote, "This is the second time I've seen this complaint about this technology- and I still don't understand it.".
The reason people are making this complaint is probably based experience with similar devices. Most windmills sold for the purpose of powering private residences are really, really loud. The one referred to in this story is probably very quiet in comparison to its competition.
It's only the low-end models that scream like banshees. The ones that are sized appropriately for a backyard.
Few suburban homes are in good locations to produce wind energy. Even if you're in a good location, aside from the issue of creating an eyesore in your neighborhood, your neighbors won't be too happy the next time the wind picks up and you have a 60-80 decibel buzz keeping them up all night.
Perhaps it's time you started using FireFox so that you can install the "intentional irony detector" plugin.
Yeah, I suspected intentional irony for a couple seconds, then decided it was a lot more likely to be a case of unintentional idiocy. And I'm already using Firefox.
Make dupes, grammer errors and spelling errors
Pot, I'd like to introduce you to my good friend kettle. Kettle, this is pot. I believe you two have a lot in common, so play nice, OK?
But it's Genuine Microsoft FUD!
How do you know? I didn't see any pretty certificates of authenticity with embedded security features...
Photosynthesis is carbon-neutral, as it's an element of the carbon cycle. In other words, any carbon that gets captured by plants go right back up when it's breathed out by foraging animals. I suppose that's true over infinite time. From a practical viewpoint, however, animals don't eat all the carbon that gets removed from the atmosphere by plants. Most of it goes into cellulose, which most animals don't have the capacity to digest, and ends up in things like the two-by-fours in your house, or humus in the forest floor, and takes years to biodegrade. An immediate reduction in global photosynthesis would result in an immediate increase in atmospheric CO2.
The primary means of fixating atmospheric CO2...