Seriously. Perhaps it is just a fantasy I've held since I was younger, but I would have thought the military would have developed their own systems, designed to survive Armageddon. The thought of a military officer touting an Apple iPad into battle is a little...strange; I mean, they are cargo aircraft, but still. All we need are some Hal-branded headphones, and Twitter-enabled position locators, and the image shall be complete.
Yeah, right. Because even with frequency-hopping and encryption, it's really hard to know where they are. You know, typically in marked vehicles, wearing blue uniforms, driving along predetermined paths...yeah, real hard to find. And undercover cops, of course, because even in plain dress, they're the guys with shaved heads who look like they bench-press Mac trucks. Plus, since so much of their job is based on intimidation tactics, it's kind of hard for them to hide their facial expressions (they let it slip, every time)...so even if they're just walking around in a crowd, it's not hard to spot them.
And I'm sure both criminals who are listening in on the police scanner, you know, the ones who have the time & premeditation to actually do that, for the supervillainry style crimes that require the area to be clear before they perform their illicit actions, will have trouble finding the funds to defeat this change.
Lastly, if you're going to rob a bank, who teh f*ck wants to hear about their car being eyeballed by some of the police ("Hey Bob, they have our license number, what are we going to do now" "Really? Damn, that destroys our entire plan")? You already know they're looking for you. Instead, you should throw out some powerful radio jammers to pollute the area with white noise. Hell, if you're creative, load the local area with powerful jammers, and strap one to your car. It's hard to box a car in when your 'enemy' can't coordinate its attack (driving and using hand signals...yeah; and that's if they can see each other long enough to communicate that, while you're hitting the brakes / heading in another direction). And nail the GPS signal as well ("Robbery at the corner of Frankford & Stover" -> "My GPS isn't working, where is that?")...and setup a decent diversion before you even try to rob the bank...something with incendiary explosives on the other side of town, and human lives (you don't have to kill anyone, mind you, you just need to tie up their hands for a bit). Make it so the PDs for the next three counties over need to all drop what they're doing to deal with it, and it would be considered politically indefensible / inhumane for them to be anywhere else for the next 5 days. Hell, if you're going to do it in a large city, you might as well spec in the FBI, which is a slightly different animal; however, the cost of tying up the FBI's hands typically isn't worth it. It's just not possible to secure enough wealth from any successful heist I can dream of that would satisfy having to put half the country to a flame to keep them occupied (or bribing a senator to require their presence for some budgetary discussion). Seriously, if Manhattan's buildings were converted to gold / platinum / silver / what have you bricks, it still wouldn't be enough to cover the costs. And logistically speaking, it would be a nightmare to move that many bricks, even with proper notice.
But seriously, who robs a bank these days? Between dye-packs and silent alarm systems...and the occasional off-duty police officer who can actually shoot to save his life...not enough money to make it worth it. And the paper is still (theoretically) traceable. Go rob a bank with physical metal deposits, or maybe Fort Knox. Gotta have something that can be melted down into a slightly less traceable version.
Or, if you want to live abroad, you can try the corporate espionage angle, and swipe some servers from a defense contractor. All from the chapter of "Foreign powers can be your friend" -> "How to become a super-villain in twelve easy steps." ^_^
Lies. We can never have enough CPUs, as long as you are speaking about cores or sockets on a motherboard. We could have CPUs with 10,000 cores on them, taking 512-bit words, and it still wouldn't be enough.
And Intel graphics are never sufficient. I have yet to encounter anyone who has gone 6 months with an actual machine with an integrated Intel graphics chip-set, and not have them hunger for something better. It's the same old sad story every time -> "I just like to browse the internet and do email, I don't need anything fancy." "Yes, you do." "Well, the model I was looking at is $200 cheaper than the one you recommended." "That's because I'm speccing in your need for decent video performance 3 months from now, when you discover gaming / Photoshop / Aero Glass / CAD / whatever." "You know what? I'm going to get the cheaper one. I don't need the video performance."
3 months later: "Dude, I was trying to play WoW on my computer, and it's really slow!" "Do go on." "Yeah man, they pushed out a new patch, and even with the details turned all the way down, the machine lags." "Really. I wouldn't have imagined that." "So, can you help me purchase a good video card?" *facepalms*
Or alternatively: "Yeah, I saw my friend with a Mac, and it does everything really well. I think I'll buy one, because, you know, everything just works." "Only one of your applications actually runs on that operating system." "Yeah, I think I'll manage. I want to get away from this Microsoft stuff."
3 days later: "Could you install Office on my Mac for me?" "No." "Come on. Here's my discs and..." "These discs are for a Windows computer." "But the guy at the Apple store told me the Mac could run Windows..." "Yes, if you use Boot Camp, and obtain a licensed copy of Windows, sure. Same as any other computer." "So, I can't run Office on my Mac?" "No, no. You can, you just need to shell out some more money for the Mac version. Good luck with that." "Well, can you still install it for me? After I get the discs?" "No. I do not do Macs. I do not own one, I do not want one, and I do not want to learn about Apple's products." - a slight lie, as the first machine I dicked around with was an Apple. Still, it is a loophole that allows the Windows / Linux techs to feign lack of knowledge, and allows us to (thank God) finally emerge from tech support hell for these kinds of people. Let the geniuses at the Apple store deal with them for a while, as we have for the past two decades...as we all know what it inevitably devolves into...midnight phone calls, requests to drive to far away places (using your own gas and time), and a fair amount of disrespect. I just need to put my fingers in my ears, and hum, for several more years, while they tell me that because their MacBook is having trouble renewing its DHCP address when it resumes from hibernation mode, it must be a problem with my network.
But back on topic. We can never have enough CPUs, never enough cores on those CPUs, never enough CPU sockets (even on consumer grade stuff), never enough RAM (I just want a motherboard with 16 RAM slots per CPU), and yes, we can never have enough hard disk space. Or x16 slots...if I can't fit a dozen two-slot video cards into a single motherboard, we haven't gone far enough. Or enough cache. And no, I don't care that cache performance theoretically deteriorates as the size increases. It's up there with being too healthy, or being too wealthy, or too alive, or too free.
Still far too high to upgrade; I can wait out the year with the storage space I currently have.
I am not going to pay ~$175 for 'Intellipower' / 5900 RPM 2 TB drives, when I have a few 7200 RPM 1.5 TB drives already installed (which I picked up for ~$120 / drive at the time). Perhaps when I see some 7200 RPM 3 TB drives for a nicer price, I might be moved to upgrade. However, as it stands, I've already figured that this year will not have the price offering I want...so, I'll wait until next year when 7200 RPM 4 TB (or possibly something better) drives are probably in vogue.
Let's see here...3 1.5 TB hard drives, a 240 GB SSD drive, and a Blu-Ray burner, with a top bookshelf just filled with spindles of various recording media I rarely even use...and I think, with all 7 or so virtual machines on the one drive...I might be using perhaps 50% of my total available space? And I really need to do some spring cleaning on those drives...so, outside of perhaps one, read one, special project I might be doing this year that would require more space than I currently have available...yeah, I think I can wait.
Plus, the Seagate CEO's offhanded remarks about having the customers up against a wall (reading between the lines, of course)...are rather vexing.
CCNA, MCP, A+ -> these are all entry level certs. CCIE, MCSE (isn't this one replaced now?), RHCE, Server+ (a few others) -> highest level certs, typically, from that company.
A CCIE should be able to rebuild a f*cked comms room in very little time. A MCSE should be able to get your Windows stuff together right quick, and a RHCE ditto for linux.
Which college? I've run into the theory of networking != networking at my own (in times past). Nothing like walking graduated CS majors through basic router settings over the phone; even worse is attempting to explain to them that wireless networking really isn't a good idea. You wouldn't imagine the amount of screaming you hear when trying to convince someone that running a little fiber is really in their best long term interest (->but we have wireless!).
There were so many Novell Netware questions, it was ridiculous. A fair portion of the MCSE NT 4.0 track detailed getting NT to play nice in heterogeneous environments, especially when NT was in the minority (in terms of deployment). I remember leaving one exam thinking that if I ever encountered a Citrix-based environment, I'd spray it down with gasoline and set it on fire.
Yes, that's why Google threw themselves in front of SOPA / PIPA.
It's not for lack of lobbyist dollars, it's simply that those companies who will have their quarterly returns so greatly impacted are completely unaware of it. If their Chairman / CEOs were aware of the probable damage the entertainment industry was going to do to their bottom line, they would advise their lobbyist to perpetually terminate any legislation coming out of that sector for the next century. But like all things, it will only be after these companies begin to bleed red that they're realize where their revenues went.
Yes, and your point is? The technology industry is why the entertainment industry is even as strong as it is today.
Take away their cameras, their lighting, their ability to reproduce their films a thousand times with very little if no degradation, and the maximum audience size for a performance is at most around a thousand (as many as you can pack in a large theater for a single night). If the MPAA is so desperate to put their collective heads in front of that cannon, by all means, let them -> we can make pretend that technology doesn't work for a week, and see how much money they hemorrhage. No TV broadcasts, no radio, no internet, no electric lighting...
They could just do something similar to what the movie industry pulled a long time ago (in order to nerf Edison's patents): move someplace where their actions are not illegal. Let's be honest, whichever country ends up with that many pirates (programmers, etc.) is going to bank. And not just a little, as these people tend to be some of the more skilled in the industry (they will make it rain). Fortunately, the vast majority of countries are not joining in (just yet) on this global witch-hunt, so such measures are (for now) unnecessary. However, if and when it should happen, I project that the countries involved in said persecutions will experience a brain drain that will set them back only a century or so.
That'll happen. The general rule when it comes to taxes is to know who, exactly, by name (first and last), a possible tax will screw over. If you do not know who, then it's you who is being screwed over.
The problem with Target-exclusive items is that if we consider the track record for most large stores of this type, we find that exclusive products tend to be bad jokes. Over-priced, made with parts obtained for knock-down prices, with the store's logo emblazed on the device with letters so large that the neighbors can see where you bought one. What more, the average American consumer (yes, I used the word consumer here), cares only for the item for the lowest price: if it will do the job, even horribly slowly while smoke pours out the back of it, but is priced for less than the cost of a value meal, that's the one they will buy.
On the other hand, I prefer to buy things that are built to survive re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, but then I'm probably crazy. If I've learned one thing from around my house, if it isn't encased in a steel shell and weighs 30 pounds, it will either be destroyed or stolen. ^_^
Hmm. Barnes & Noble is changing...I was fine with the integration with Starbucks, but the part where they nuked a section of their store to fill shelves with children's toys...this is in addition to the children's section that was already there. Precious shelf-space, which could have held a hideous amount of books, now filled with giant plastic toys in large boxes. I imagine someone got a promotion out of this decision.
Since I fall into the Technology (I have a zoo right now, complements of O'Reilly publishing) / Manga / Science Fiction crowd, I get a little annoyed when my favorite sections are displaced for what amounts to an encroachment from Toys R Us. And it's not like those sections aren't obscenely profitable, as the staff I've spoken with likened them to their bread and butter. And it may just be me, but it appears they aren't stocking inventory as heavily for those sections as they did before...making Amazon look better in comparison.
Well, it was that, or nuking the moon, so...the human race is silly.
The difference last time is that we were competing with a juggernaut who had one-upped us in the technology realm (hence the sudden shift in educational focus, from teaching the populace superstitions to science, because some of the people upstairs had grown suddenly worried that the Big Red Bear might want to give them all a huge hug -> it was more an act of desperation, likened to handing out military grade weapons to anyone over the age of 12 to try and keep the country around for a little longer).
Remember, it was the arrival of Sputnik that spurred the US into action -> something about another country being able to position things in high places (like, I don't know, weapons...) was seen as a "Bad Thing."
Now we have a similar "problem." The US likes its citizens to try and outdo each other in the arena of "who can be the dumbest person alive while still retaining enough brain cells to breathe without a ventilator." Putting too much effort into work is seen as more dangerous than not completing the work at all. And the way to success is seen as through luck, connections, or riding someone else's coattails; when a company goes IPO, and its value shoots through the roof, people do not regret not working there (and getting in on some stock options), but on not investing in that IPO before it went public: people do not say "OMG, I could have worked at Google, and made billions, what did I do?"; instead, they scream about not getting in on that stock the day the IPO went public (so they could flip it a few hours later, to other Suckas), or not sitting on that stock (if they sold out early). It's a race to the bottom, intellectually speaking. Contrast this with most Asian cultures, where if you aren't at the top of your class, you bust your balls to get there. Look up the meaning of the phrase "cram school" if you want to understand more.
Consider this: when my brother wishes to "feel intelligent," he watches Jersey Shore, makes fun of the people on the screen for their intellectual inferiority, and feels that much better about himself. When I want to "feel intelligent," I load up a MIT lecture on the Fundamentals of Engineering, and feel better if I can actually understand what they are doing (run some equations through my head, etc.). One path focuses on finding someone who is less intelligent that yourself (benefits: you do not have to do anything to feel superior), another on finding someone more intelligent than yourself (benefits: you understand the inner workings of a jet engine). Guess which one Americans tend to prefer...?
Right now, the US is now in the situation that the USSR was in: if we send our economy into overdrive, like we did last time, to try and deal with the Chinese, the US will crack like an egg. No one, of course, wants to hear that -> "Why yes, sir, we can hit the turbo button again, and surely it will carry us ahead!" is something every sycophant will say, because they don't have the balls to point out the cracks in the US's superstructure. We can't afford a space race right now, trying to pursue one won't bring the US out of its recession, and the attempt will sink us (which I guess is fine for the people upstairs, as their private jets will carry them to their chateaus in other countries where they can try running a country again; as for the rest of us, this place will be hell). The Chinese economy appears, despite the bad advice they've received, to be in a healthier position that our own; an economic war is not advised.
Hmm. Perhaps a flag on a different table, yes, that could work.
And the casting ToString() then parsing it is just a reflex, I guess. Getting things in and out of a DataTable requires, in my experience, casting to a data type, and casting to a string, then parsing it tends to work for everything (hence the reflex).
Make it so the first comment to any new post has to be from a named account.
My really bad C# pseudo-code:
DataTable c = "SELECT Count[Comments] FROM [Posts] WHERE [POST] = '" + currentarticle + "'";
if(Long.Parse(c[0][0].ToString()) 1 && UserID == "Anonymous Coward") { return "Please login with a named account to comment on this post, or wait until someone else with a named account posts a comment."; }
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously. Perhaps it is just a fantasy I've held since I was younger, but I would have thought the military would have developed their own systems, designed to survive Armageddon. The thought of a military officer touting an Apple iPad into battle is a little...strange; I mean, they are cargo aircraft, but still. All we need are some Hal-branded headphones, and Twitter-enabled position locators, and the image shall be complete.
Yeah, right. Because even with frequency-hopping and encryption, it's really hard to know where they are. You know, typically in marked vehicles, wearing blue uniforms, driving along predetermined paths...yeah, real hard to find. And undercover cops, of course, because even in plain dress, they're the guys with shaved heads who look like they bench-press Mac trucks. Plus, since so much of their job is based on intimidation tactics, it's kind of hard for them to hide their facial expressions (they let it slip, every time)...so even if they're just walking around in a crowd, it's not hard to spot them.
And I'm sure both criminals who are listening in on the police scanner, you know, the ones who have the time & premeditation to actually do that, for the supervillainry style crimes that require the area to be clear before they perform their illicit actions, will have trouble finding the funds to defeat this change.
Lastly, if you're going to rob a bank, who teh f*ck wants to hear about their car being eyeballed by some of the police ("Hey Bob, they have our license number, what are we going to do now" "Really? Damn, that destroys our entire plan")? You already know they're looking for you. Instead, you should throw out some powerful radio jammers to pollute the area with white noise. Hell, if you're creative, load the local area with powerful jammers, and strap one to your car. It's hard to box a car in when your 'enemy' can't coordinate its attack (driving and using hand signals...yeah; and that's if they can see each other long enough to communicate that, while you're hitting the brakes / heading in another direction). And nail the GPS signal as well ("Robbery at the corner of Frankford & Stover" -> "My GPS isn't working, where is that?")...and setup a decent diversion before you even try to rob the bank...something with incendiary explosives on the other side of town, and human lives (you don't have to kill anyone, mind you, you just need to tie up their hands for a bit). Make it so the PDs for the next three counties over need to all drop what they're doing to deal with it, and it would be considered politically indefensible / inhumane for them to be anywhere else for the next 5 days. Hell, if you're going to do it in a large city, you might as well spec in the FBI, which is a slightly different animal; however, the cost of tying up the FBI's hands typically isn't worth it. It's just not possible to secure enough wealth from any successful heist I can dream of that would satisfy having to put half the country to a flame to keep them occupied (or bribing a senator to require their presence for some budgetary discussion). Seriously, if Manhattan's buildings were converted to gold / platinum / silver / what have you bricks, it still wouldn't be enough to cover the costs. And logistically speaking, it would be a nightmare to move that many bricks, even with proper notice.
But seriously, who robs a bank these days? Between dye-packs and silent alarm systems...and the occasional off-duty police officer who can actually shoot to save his life...not enough money to make it worth it. And the paper is still (theoretically) traceable. Go rob a bank with physical metal deposits, or maybe Fort Knox. Gotta have something that can be melted down into a slightly less traceable version.
Or, if you want to live abroad, you can try the corporate espionage angle, and swipe some servers from a defense contractor. All from the chapter of "Foreign powers can be your friend" -> "How to become a super-villain in twelve easy steps." ^_^
Could have been averted with a time machine and an art school diploma.
Lies. We can never have enough CPUs, as long as you are speaking about cores or sockets on a motherboard. We could have CPUs with 10,000 cores on them, taking 512-bit words, and it still wouldn't be enough.
And Intel graphics are never sufficient. I have yet to encounter anyone who has gone 6 months with an actual machine with an integrated Intel graphics chip-set, and not have them hunger for something better.
It's the same old sad story every time ->
"I just like to browse the internet and do email, I don't need anything fancy."
"Yes, you do."
"Well, the model I was looking at is $200 cheaper than the one you recommended."
"That's because I'm speccing in your need for decent video performance 3 months from now, when you discover gaming / Photoshop / Aero Glass / CAD / whatever."
"You know what? I'm going to get the cheaper one. I don't need the video performance."
3 months later:
"Dude, I was trying to play WoW on my computer, and it's really slow!"
"Do go on."
"Yeah man, they pushed out a new patch, and even with the details turned all the way down, the machine lags."
"Really. I wouldn't have imagined that."
"So, can you help me purchase a good video card?"
*facepalms*
Or alternatively:
"Yeah, I saw my friend with a Mac, and it does everything really well. I think I'll buy one, because, you know, everything just works."
"Only one of your applications actually runs on that operating system."
"Yeah, I think I'll manage. I want to get away from this Microsoft stuff."
3 days later:
"Could you install Office on my Mac for me?"
"No."
"Come on. Here's my discs and..."
"These discs are for a Windows computer."
"But the guy at the Apple store told me the Mac could run Windows..."
"Yes, if you use Boot Camp, and obtain a licensed copy of Windows, sure. Same as any other computer."
"So, I can't run Office on my Mac?"
"No, no. You can, you just need to shell out some more money for the Mac version. Good luck with that."
"Well, can you still install it for me? After I get the discs?"
"No. I do not do Macs. I do not own one, I do not want one, and I do not want to learn about Apple's products." - a slight lie, as the first machine I dicked around with was an Apple. Still, it is a loophole that allows the Windows / Linux techs to feign lack of knowledge, and allows us to (thank God) finally emerge from tech support hell for these kinds of people. Let the geniuses at the Apple store deal with them for a while, as we have for the past two decades...as we all know what it inevitably devolves into...midnight phone calls, requests to drive to far away places (using your own gas and time), and a fair amount of disrespect. I just need to put my fingers in my ears, and hum, for several more years, while they tell me that because their MacBook is having trouble renewing its DHCP address when it resumes from hibernation mode, it must be a problem with my network.
But back on topic. We can never have enough CPUs, never enough cores on those CPUs, never enough CPU sockets (even on consumer grade stuff), never enough RAM (I just want a motherboard with 16 RAM slots per CPU), and yes, we can never have enough hard disk space. Or x16 slots...if I can't fit a dozen two-slot video cards into a single motherboard, we haven't gone far enough. Or enough cache. And no, I don't care that cache performance theoretically deteriorates as the size increases. It's up there with being too healthy, or being too wealthy, or too alive, or too free.
Not recommended. Someone dies, that data is gone.
Pricewatch? The damage didn't seem too bad.
Still far too high to upgrade; I can wait out the year with the storage space I currently have.
I am not going to pay ~$175 for 'Intellipower' / 5900 RPM 2 TB drives, when I have a few 7200 RPM 1.5 TB drives already installed (which I picked up for ~$120 / drive at the time). Perhaps when I see some 7200 RPM 3 TB drives for a nicer price, I might be moved to upgrade. However, as it stands, I've already figured that this year will not have the price offering I want...so, I'll wait until next year when 7200 RPM 4 TB (or possibly something better) drives are probably in vogue.
Let's see here...3 1.5 TB hard drives, a 240 GB SSD drive, and a Blu-Ray burner, with a top bookshelf just filled with spindles of various recording media I rarely even use...and I think, with all 7 or so virtual machines on the one drive...I might be using perhaps 50% of my total available space? And I really need to do some spring cleaning on those drives...so, outside of perhaps one, read one, special project I might be doing this year that would require more space than I currently have available...yeah, I think I can wait.
Plus, the Seagate CEO's offhanded remarks about having the customers up against a wall (reading between the lines, of course)...are rather vexing.
Nonsense. Some people are just called into their profession.
They were doing fine, up until that German tank business, where it all went downhill.
Still, you hear things that imply that they may have gotten their game back together since then...
Depends on the certification.
CCNA, MCP, A+ -> these are all entry level certs.
CCIE, MCSE (isn't this one replaced now?), RHCE, Server+ (a few others) -> highest level certs, typically, from that company.
A CCIE should be able to rebuild a f*cked comms room in very little time. A MCSE should be able to get your Windows stuff together right quick, and a RHCE ditto for linux.
Which college? I've run into the theory of networking != networking at my own (in times past). Nothing like walking graduated CS majors through basic router settings over the phone; even worse is attempting to explain to them that wireless networking really isn't a good idea. You wouldn't imagine the amount of screaming you hear when trying to convince someone that running a little fiber is really in their best long term interest (->but we have wireless!).
Yes, I believe some of the books included an emulator. So yes, you didn't need to touch a Cisco router for the CCNA.
However, for something like the CCIE...
Then you did something wrong.
There were so many Novell Netware questions, it was ridiculous. A fair portion of the MCSE NT 4.0 track detailed getting NT to play nice in heterogeneous environments, especially when NT was in the minority (in terms of deployment). I remember leaving one exam thinking that if I ever encountered a Citrix-based environment, I'd spray it down with gasoline and set it on fire.
And they say Morton's Fork has no modern use...
Yes, that's why Google threw themselves in front of SOPA / PIPA.
It's not for lack of lobbyist dollars, it's simply that those companies who will have their quarterly returns so greatly impacted are completely unaware of it. If their Chairman / CEOs were aware of the probable damage the entertainment industry was going to do to their bottom line, they would advise their lobbyist to perpetually terminate any legislation coming out of that sector for the next century. But like all things, it will only be after these companies begin to bleed red that they're realize where their revenues went.
Yes, and your point is? The technology industry is why the entertainment industry is even as strong as it is today.
Take away their cameras, their lighting, their ability to reproduce their films a thousand times with very little if no degradation, and the maximum audience size for a performance is at most around a thousand (as many as you can pack in a large theater for a single night). If the MPAA is so desperate to put their collective heads in front of that cannon, by all means, let them -> we can make pretend that technology doesn't work for a week, and see how much money they hemorrhage. No TV broadcasts, no radio, no internet, no electric lighting...
*shrugs*
They could just do something similar to what the movie industry pulled a long time ago (in order to nerf Edison's patents): move someplace where their actions are not illegal. Let's be honest, whichever country ends up with that many pirates (programmers, etc.) is going to bank. And not just a little, as these people tend to be some of the more skilled in the industry (they will make it rain). Fortunately, the vast majority of countries are not joining in (just yet) on this global witch-hunt, so such measures are (for now) unnecessary. However, if and when it should happen, I project that the countries involved in said persecutions will experience a brain drain that will set them back only a century or so.
So a product number is out of the question? I imagine most cellphones can do some primitive OCR.
That'll happen. The general rule when it comes to taxes is to know who, exactly, by name (first and last), a possible tax will screw over. If you do not know who, then it's you who is being screwed over.
The problem with Target-exclusive items is that if we consider the track record for most large stores of this type, we find that exclusive products tend to be bad jokes. Over-priced, made with parts obtained for knock-down prices, with the store's logo emblazed on the device with letters so large that the neighbors can see where you bought one. What more, the average American consumer (yes, I used the word consumer here), cares only for the item for the lowest price: if it will do the job, even horribly slowly while smoke pours out the back of it, but is priced for less than the cost of a value meal, that's the one they will buy.
On the other hand, I prefer to buy things that are built to survive re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, but then I'm probably crazy. If I've learned one thing from around my house, if it isn't encased in a steel shell and weighs 30 pounds, it will either be destroyed or stolen. ^_^
Hmm. Barnes & Noble is changing...I was fine with the integration with Starbucks, but the part where they nuked a section of their store to fill shelves with children's toys...this is in addition to the children's section that was already there. Precious shelf-space, which could have held a hideous amount of books, now filled with giant plastic toys in large boxes. I imagine someone got a promotion out of this decision.
Since I fall into the Technology (I have a zoo right now, complements of O'Reilly publishing) / Manga / Science Fiction crowd, I get a little annoyed when my favorite sections are displaced for what amounts to an encroachment from Toys R Us. And it's not like those sections aren't obscenely profitable, as the staff I've spoken with likened them to their bread and butter. And it may just be me, but it appears they aren't stocking inventory as heavily for those sections as they did before...making Amazon look better in comparison.
Well, it was that, or nuking the moon, so...the human race is silly.
The difference last time is that we were competing with a juggernaut who had one-upped us in the technology realm (hence the sudden shift in educational focus, from teaching the populace superstitions to science, because some of the people upstairs had grown suddenly worried that the Big Red Bear might want to give them all a huge hug -> it was more an act of desperation, likened to handing out military grade weapons to anyone over the age of 12 to try and keep the country around for a little longer).
Remember, it was the arrival of Sputnik that spurred the US into action -> something about another country being able to position things in high places (like, I don't know, weapons...) was seen as a "Bad Thing."
Now we have a similar "problem." The US likes its citizens to try and outdo each other in the arena of "who can be the dumbest person alive while still retaining enough brain cells to breathe without a ventilator." Putting too much effort into work is seen as more dangerous than not completing the work at all. And the way to success is seen as through luck, connections, or riding someone else's coattails; when a company goes IPO, and its value shoots through the roof, people do not regret not working there (and getting in on some stock options), but on not investing in that IPO before it went public: people do not say "OMG, I could have worked at Google, and made billions, what did I do?"; instead, they scream about not getting in on that stock the day the IPO went public (so they could flip it a few hours later, to other Suckas), or not sitting on that stock (if they sold out early). It's a race to the bottom, intellectually speaking. Contrast this with most Asian cultures, where if you aren't at the top of your class, you bust your balls to get there. Look up the meaning of the phrase "cram school" if you want to understand more.
Consider this: when my brother wishes to "feel intelligent," he watches Jersey Shore, makes fun of the people on the screen for their intellectual inferiority, and feels that much better about himself. When I want to "feel intelligent," I load up a MIT lecture on the Fundamentals of Engineering, and feel better if I can actually understand what they are doing (run some equations through my head, etc.). One path focuses on finding someone who is less intelligent that yourself (benefits: you do not have to do anything to feel superior), another on finding someone more intelligent than yourself (benefits: you understand the inner workings of a jet engine). Guess which one Americans tend to prefer...?
Right now, the US is now in the situation that the USSR was in: if we send our economy into overdrive, like we did last time, to try and deal with the Chinese, the US will crack like an egg. No one, of course, wants to hear that -> "Why yes, sir, we can hit the turbo button again, and surely it will carry us ahead!" is something every sycophant will say, because they don't have the balls to point out the cracks in the US's superstructure. We can't afford a space race right now, trying to pursue one won't bring the US out of its recession, and the attempt will sink us (which I guess is fine for the people upstairs, as their private jets will carry them to their chateaus in other countries where they can try running a country again; as for the rest of us, this place will be hell). The Chinese economy appears, despite the bad advice they've received, to be in a healthier position that our own; an economic war is not advised.
And more to that effect, "Be careful whom you buy advice from; and be patient with those who supply it."
Hmm. Perhaps a flag on a different table, yes, that could work.
And the casting ToString() then parsing it is just a reflex, I guess. Getting things in and out of a DataTable requires, in my experience, casting to a data type, and casting to a string, then parsing it tends to work for everything (hence the reflex).
Make it so the first comment to any new post has to be from a named account.
My really bad C# pseudo-code:
DataTable c = "SELECT Count[Comments] FROM [Posts] WHERE [POST] = '" + currentarticle + "'";
if(Long.Parse(c[0][0].ToString()) 1 && UserID == "Anonymous Coward")
{
return "Please login with a named account to comment on this post, or wait until someone else with a named account posts a comment.";
}
Gets the idea across, I think.