The reason you don't understand what's wrong with saying something is ten times thinner is that you believe that you can apply the rules of math to formulate proper English. Natural languages are not nearly as amenable to logical analysis as is the realm of math.
Why do you call someone who corrects poor writing a "dick"? If Person A wrote crappy code and Person B called him on it would you also call Person B a dick?
Why does making a simple typo mean that someone correcting an egregious error in writing should "watch [his] ass." If only people who write perfectly can offer corrections, then nobody will be qualifed to offer corrections. Or would you prefer that nobody ever corrects anyone else's writing so that we can all just wallow in our mistakes and never improve?
This weird locution is becoming increasingly common. I wish I knew where it came from.
I'm fully expecting to see a box of something on the supermarket shelf that's half the size of the regular box with bold lettering on its front declaring "NOW! TWICE AS SMALL!"
"Certified pre-owned" is not merely a euphemism for "used". In order to sell a car with that moniker the manufacturer requires the dealer to check the car against an extensive checklist of possible defects and problems and to correct them if necessary. As a result, the dealer can offer the car with a manufacturer-backed warranty.
New car dealers generally sell used cars of various makes but can only offer "certified pre-owned" cars of the make the dealer sells new. So a Ford dealer may sell used Chevrolets, Saabs and Toyotas but the only "certified pre-owned" used cars it will sell will be Fords.
Companies pay pay Google to place (very brief) ads in search results of particular words. Google News uses much more enticing excerpts from news sites that a user must click on if he or she wants to read the full article excerpted. The link clicked on goes directly to the news site's (ad-laden, revenue-generating) page.
Newspapers have a problem with this? Google should comply with any news source that wants to be excluded from Google News. And then have their salepeople call on them and see if they want to buy Google Adwords on the Google News page.
Increasing grade inflation over the past thirty or forty years is a big part (and a symptom) of the problem. When I read papers that have earned grades in the B+ to A+ range these days my blood runs cold.
A lot of kids who graduate from college these days wouldn't have ever gotten off the short bus back in the day.
"Duplication of such music computer files does not meet the definition of stealing."
RTFA. Duplicating a file for backup purpose is perfectly acceptable. The article mentions "piracy," which is the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted work.
Research has shown that Slashdot editors now may need to post an article at least three times before it makes a strong enough impression to keep them from posting it again.
"But the industry, wanting to wring the maximum profit out of the consumer, remains fixated on piracy."
Wow man that's terrible. Just like those greedy bastards who have bricks and mortar stores go after shoplifters.
Look, the industry's attempts to combat piracy have been ill-advised and ineffectual. Sony's use of a rootkit, for example, was downright unethical; it's a "solution" they should have rejected. They knew or should have known it would damage their customers' computers.
However, to condemn an entire industry because they're concerned about people stealing from them shows a level of moral retardation just as grave as Sony's.
For years and years I've been reading about all of this supposed "dark fiber"--fiber optic lines that were laid during the Internet boom but never lit up because the demand just wasn't there. If the demand for bandwidth is growing so much isn't it time to light it up? Or has it already been lit up? Or was it just an urban legend?
I'll be right back, I gotta take the poodle out of the microwave.
My whole point is that to make it work, Apple would have to create certification regime that is much stricter than Microsoft's. Remember the days when IBM-compatibles (even the term sounds quaint now) would brag that they could run Lotus 1-2-3 and Flight Simulator? That was an ad hoc market-driven standard that largely worked. Machines that couldn't pass that test eventually died off.
For Apple, licensing with a strict certification standard would be a win-win situation. If companies did succeed in meeting it, Apple would make a bundle in licensing fees and expand the market for the Mac OS. If many companies provided an inferior "end to end experience" then that would permit Apple to continue to charge a certain premium for "genuine Apple" machines.
Absurdly tiny. They're probably looking at only in IE, which renders text quite a bit larger by default than either Firefox or Opera. I know we can change the type size in our browsers ourselves but they should have a font size change button like the Sacramento Bee and many other sites do. (The tool bar with the font button on it appears on the left once you get to an article. Unfortunately The Bee does require registration. Try registrationsucks/cantcatchme as an ID/pwd pair.)
Microsoft never sold a PC in its life and its market capitalization is four times that of Apple. When is Apple going to wake up and realize they could grow a lot bigger if they got over their obsession with selling high-margin computers and licensed an even higher margin OS to PC makers. It didn't work the first time they tried it because they did it half-assed.
Without stooping to Microsoft's business practices it could still be "first among (un)equals" in hardware for the Mac platform just as Microsoft has the lead in office suites and certain other apps on the Windows plaform. IBM screwed up by letting MSFT control the OS. Apple could BE the Microsoft of the Mac OS world. They've already avoided many of MSFTs biggest mistakes (the Registry, DLL hell). They could enforce stringent standards to keep the Mac's much vaunted integration of hardware and software. How? Not just in the licensing terms but those companies whose hardware doesn't toe the line, will be unable to attract market share.
There's no need or reason to license the iPod stuff except for compatible equpment (like automakers who pay the iPod tax to make their car audio equipment iPod compaptible.) Apple can keep that as its private preserve.
Once again Apple is "failing up." Their great sales and innovative products hide the fact that they could do much, much, better if they revamped their business model by copy the best aspects of Microsoft's model.
That's another reason for Microsoft's tremendous success. They're not ashamed to copy things that work. Apple is to suffused with a snobby not-invented-here attitude.
Oh man! This is the very lifeblood of American politics! When President Reagan called for a "line-item veto" politicians screamed bloody murder.
Tacking bills on to other bills creates all sorts of interesting problems.
Senator A proposes a bill that would increase benefits for disabled veterans. Senator B tacks on a bill to that one that finances a monument to himself in his home district. Senator C votes against the (now combined) bill because it's a waste of money. Senator D can then claim that Senator B "voted against increased benefits for disabled veterans."
I installed Nokia's software for backing up the phone numbers in my 6800 phone to my hard drive via USB. The program also allows you to download games and ringtones into your phone. Imagine my disgust when I saw that the program wanted to load every time I started my machine. There was really no way to completely exit it. It also insisted on putting an icon in my system tray that couldn't be removed.
ATTENTION NOKIA: YOUR PROGRAM IS FOR MY FREAKING PHONE YOU SELF-OBSESSED MORONS!!! Why the hell should it take up valuable resources and screen real estate ALL the time? Sheesh.
For what's it worth, these are the same guys who lost a $125 million Mars probe because they failed to do a conversion from imperial to metric units of measure. (Who in science and engineering still uses imperial anyway?) D'oh!
It's really not up to Fox. The advertisers call the shots. Broadcast TV is a mass medium. It's about as far away from targeting as you can get. Cars, beer, medicine, laundry detergents, soft drinks--stuff you can advertise to many millions of people at a time. "[V]iewers that tune in faithfully every week" are of no significance. A pair of eyeballs is a pair of eyeballs. The more pairs that tune in, the more you can charge per commercial spot. And the more profitable the show.
Something like golf attracts people who are much more affluent than most people so advertisers will pay a premium for a smaller audience. But cartoon shows aren't like that.
I'm just guessing but maybe they were awarded $2.8 billion in "compensatory" damages plus "punitive" damages. Punitive damagages are frequently trebled as a way to send the wrongdoer a message.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason you don't understand what's wrong with saying something is ten times thinner is that you believe that you can apply the rules of math to formulate proper English. Natural languages are not nearly as amenable to logical analysis as is the realm of math.
RTFP. It wasn't my post.
Why do you call someone who corrects poor writing a "dick"? If Person A wrote crappy code and Person B called him on it would you also call Person B a dick?
Why does making a simple typo mean that someone correcting an egregious error in writing should "watch [his] ass." If only people who write perfectly can offer corrections, then nobody will be qualifed to offer corrections. Or would you prefer that nobody ever corrects anyone else's writing so that we can all just wallow in our mistakes and never improve?
This weird locution is becoming increasingly common. I wish I knew where it came from.
I'm fully expecting to see a box of something on the supermarket shelf that's half the size of the regular box with bold lettering on its front declaring "NOW! TWICE AS SMALL!"
"Certified pre-owned" is not merely a euphemism for "used". In order to sell a car with that moniker the manufacturer requires the dealer to check the car against an extensive checklist of possible defects and problems and to correct them if necessary. As a result, the dealer can offer the car with a manufacturer-backed warranty.
New car dealers generally sell used cars of various makes but can only offer "certified pre-owned" cars of the make the dealer sells new. So a Ford dealer may sell used Chevrolets, Saabs and Toyotas but the only "certified pre-owned" used cars it will sell will be Fords.
Companies pay pay Google to place (very brief) ads in search results of particular words. Google News uses much more enticing excerpts from news sites that a user must click on if he or she wants to read the full article excerpted. The link clicked on goes directly to the news site's (ad-laden, revenue-generating) page.
Newspapers have a problem with this? Google should comply with any news source that wants to be excluded from Google News. And then have their salepeople call on them and see if they want to buy Google Adwords on the Google News page.
It's in my journal. Nice to see it finally run.
Increasing grade inflation over the past thirty or forty years is a big part (and a symptom) of the problem. When I read papers that have earned grades in the B+ to A+ range these days my blood runs cold.
A lot of kids who graduate from college these days wouldn't have ever gotten off the short bus back in the day.
"Duplication of such music computer files does not meet the definition of stealing."
RTFA. Duplicating a file for backup purpose is perfectly acceptable. The article mentions "piracy," which is the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted work.
Research has shown that Slashdot editors now may need to post an article at least three times before it makes a strong enough impression to keep them from posting it again.
They wanted to get James Doohan to play Scotty until Leonard Nimoy told them, "He's dead Jim."
(For those who don't get it "He's dead Jim" is supposedly the most frequently used line of dialog in the original series.)
"But the industry, wanting to wring the maximum profit out of the consumer, remains fixated on piracy."
Wow man that's terrible. Just like those greedy bastards who have bricks and mortar stores go after shoplifters.
Look, the industry's attempts to combat piracy have been ill-advised and ineffectual. Sony's use of a rootkit, for example, was downright unethical; it's a "solution" they should have rejected. They knew or should have known it would damage their customers' computers.
However, to condemn an entire industry because they're concerned about people stealing from them shows a level of moral retardation just as grave as Sony's.
For years and years I've been reading about all of this supposed "dark fiber"--fiber optic lines that were laid during the Internet boom but never lit up because the demand just wasn't there. If the demand for bandwidth is growing so much isn't it time to light it up? Or has it already been lit up? Or was it just an urban legend?
I'll be right back, I gotta take the poodle out of the microwave.
My whole point is that to make it work, Apple would have to create certification regime that is much stricter than Microsoft's. Remember the days when IBM-compatibles (even the term sounds quaint now) would brag that they could run Lotus 1-2-3 and Flight Simulator? That was an ad hoc market-driven standard that largely worked. Machines that couldn't pass that test eventually died off.
For Apple, licensing with a strict certification standard would be a win-win situation. If companies did succeed in meeting it, Apple would make a bundle in licensing fees and expand the market for the Mac OS. If many companies provided an inferior "end to end experience" then that would permit Apple to continue to charge a certain premium for "genuine Apple" machines.
Absurdly tiny. They're probably looking at only in IE, which renders text quite a bit larger by default than either Firefox or Opera. I know we can change the type size in our browsers ourselves but they should have a font size change button like the Sacramento Bee and many other sites do. (The tool bar with the font button on it appears on the left once you get to an article. Unfortunately The Bee does require registration. Try registrationsucks/cantcatchme as an ID/pwd pair.)
Microsoft never sold a PC in its life and its market capitalization is four times that of Apple. When is Apple going to wake up and realize they could grow a lot bigger if they got over their obsession with selling high-margin computers and licensed an even higher margin OS to PC makers. It didn't work the first time they tried it because they did it half-assed.
Without stooping to Microsoft's business practices it could still be "first among (un)equals" in hardware for the Mac platform just as Microsoft has the lead in office suites and certain other apps on the Windows plaform. IBM screwed up by letting MSFT control the OS. Apple could BE the Microsoft of the Mac OS world. They've already avoided many of MSFTs biggest mistakes (the Registry, DLL hell). They could enforce stringent standards to keep the Mac's much vaunted integration of hardware and software. How? Not just in the licensing terms but those companies whose hardware doesn't toe the line, will be unable to attract market share.
There's no need or reason to license the iPod stuff except for compatible equpment (like automakers who pay the iPod tax to make their car audio equipment iPod compaptible.) Apple can keep that as its private preserve.
Once again Apple is "failing up." Their great sales and innovative products hide the fact that they could do much, much, better if they revamped their business model by copy the best aspects of Microsoft's model.
That's another reason for Microsoft's tremendous success. They're not ashamed to copy things that work. Apple is to suffused with a snobby not-invented-here attitude.
Oh man! This is the very lifeblood of American politics! When President Reagan called for a "line-item veto" politicians screamed bloody murder.
Tacking bills on to other bills creates all sorts of interesting problems.
Senator A proposes a bill that would increase benefits for disabled veterans. Senator B tacks on a bill to that one that finances a monument to himself in his home district. Senator C votes against the (now combined) bill because it's a waste of money. Senator D can then claim that Senator B "voted against increased benefits for disabled veterans."
Oh yeah.
... while we're pumping our own gas?
I installed Nokia's software for backing up the phone numbers in my 6800 phone to my hard drive via USB. The program also allows you to download games and ringtones into your phone. Imagine my disgust when I saw that the program wanted to load every time I started my machine. There was really no way to completely exit it. It also insisted on putting an icon in my system tray that couldn't be removed.
ATTENTION NOKIA: YOUR PROGRAM IS FOR MY FREAKING PHONE YOU SELF-OBSESSED MORONS!!! Why the hell should it take up valuable resources and screen real estate ALL the time? Sheesh.
For what's it worth, these are the same guys who lost a $125 million Mars probe because they failed to do a conversion from imperial to metric units of measure. (Who in science and engineering still uses imperial anyway?) D'oh!
It'll be a bitch when Roomba wins it.
You have asserted that "[t]he various theories of the evolutionary process have been proven wrong time and time again."
OK. Kindly name those theories, who disproved them and in what peer-reviewed journal their work appeared.
Thank you.
It's really not up to Fox. The advertisers call the shots. Broadcast TV is a mass medium. It's about as far away from targeting as you can get. Cars, beer, medicine, laundry detergents, soft drinks--stuff you can advertise to many millions of people at a time. "[V]iewers that tune in faithfully every week" are of no significance. A pair of eyeballs is a pair of eyeballs. The more pairs that tune in, the more you can charge per commercial spot. And the more profitable the show.
Something like golf attracts people who are much more affluent than most people so advertisers will pay a premium for a smaller audience. But cartoon shows aren't like that.
I'm just guessing but maybe they were awarded $2.8 billion in "compensatory" damages plus "punitive" damages. Punitive damagages are frequently trebled as a way to send the wrongdoer a message.
There's no comparison. IT departments are end customers. Stores are resellers.