Try it, call the police up sometime and report that your car was broken into... or your house... they may show up sometime in the next 12 to 48hrs... maybe... in my city you get to file a report over the phone to an answering machine. Then try calling them and telling them you've got an once of pot. You'll have 3 squad cars in your driveway in under 5 minutes. Welcome to American indeed.
Reminds me of a humorous story many of you are probably familiar with:
Going to bed the other night, I noticed people in my shed stealing things. I phoned the police but was told no one was in the area to help. They said they would send someone over as soon as possible. I hung up. A minute later I rang again. 'Hello,' I said, 'I called you a minute ago because there were people in my shed. You don't have to hurry now, because I've shot them.' Within minutes there were half a dozen police cars in the area, plus helicopters and an armed response unit. They caught the burglars red-handed. One of the officers said: 'I thought you said you'd shot them.' To which I replied: 'I thought you said there was no one available.'
Or maybe if you were the judge in this case, you'd side with the guy who according to Google has connections to the local mafia. Wouldn't want to wake up next to a proverbial horse's head.
"Living standard" is kind of an oxymoron. The whole point of having a standard is so that authors have something to target, and developers know what is necessary to be standards compliant. A constantly evolving standard creates a moving target, which I believe is actually counter-productive.
Well sure, if we could actually observe the weather on this planet and confirm or refine our speculations, that would be great. Unfortunately, the technology to do so is well beyond our means at this point. By the time we actually are able to directly observe this planet, our weather models will probably be much more refined as well.
I'm reminded of the planet discovered over a year ago that was tidally locked to its star, which created a habitable zone circling the planet where the light from the star would hit it at an oblong angle, creating a zone of essentially perpetual twilight where life could form. We had quite a few ideas already for what the environment on this planet must be like, until further measurements of the star system revealed that the "planet" was really just minor errors in the calculations of the star's wobble, and there wasn't even a planet there to begin with.
This article isn't "just knowledge for knowledge's sake." Indeed, it seems to be purely speculation for speculation's sake. I'm actually very concerned by the line in the summary, "With patience and cunning, more than you might think," because that really implies we know a lot more about what we're talking about than we actually do. I'll just be happy when the weather forecaster on TV can accurately tell me the weather for the next week.
Someone has already tagged Razor-Qt as 'a KDE ripoff.'
And KDE is just a Windows ripoff. So really, Razor-Qt is just another Windows look-alike. That was actually one of the things I liked about KDE, the interface was so familiar to what I already knew, it made transitioning easier.
Yeah. I've heard of a similar, albeit more primitive, concept called "self-checkout lane" - that never took off, either.
I'm assuming that was sarcastic. If not, the rest of this doesn't make as much sense.
Self checkout lanes still typically have a person at the end monitoring a few lanes, and some scales you have to put everything on after you scan it.
As I understand, these still require a random audit, which isn't too hard to defeat still. For one, it's unlikely to require audits close together, so just keep an eye on things and then jump on the line that just had an audit.
Assuming the audit system is actually random, there's no way you can guarantee that two audits won't come up back-to-back either. Are you really willing to take that chance?
Alternately you can bury the thing you want to steal underneath a bunch of other stuff in the cart.
Now you're assuming they haven't been trained to pull items from random depths in the cart, as much of a pain as that might sometimes be.
Avoid a line that has the rare diligent auditor.
Self-checkout lanes where I live tend to be the cashiers that are more observant and reliable than the average cashier. I'd assume with a system like this, they'd tend to be even more so.
Lastly if you get caught just watch the process and as they go to scan a stolen item say something like "Wait, that's not supposed to be in there. I thought I put that back on the shelf."
Yeah, I'm sure he's heard that one before too. The guys manning these stations aren't likely to be that naive.
OTOH, that doesn't make this a show stopper. With higher custom satisfaction (which hopefully translates to a higher repeat sale rate) and reduced total cashier payroll this can still work to a net profit if the additional shrink isn't too severe.
People actually determined to shoplift are still more likely to just stuff the item in their jacket, where the auditor is unlikely to check anyway.
If you could sell me a 20 year old DVD player I would buy it in an instant for $1000 especially since the first DVD player was introduced in 1997. Hell I would demand all of Phillips income for the past 14 years.
DVD was launched in 1997.
Ok... but that's not the question he was asking. He said would you pay $1000 for a DVD player that was guaranteed to last 20 years from NOW, not would you buy a 20 year OLD DVD player that still worked. And the answer any sane person would give is "no" simply because in 20 years, DVD isn't likely to be relevant anymore. By then, everyone will have moved on to Bluray++.
The point (I believe) he's trying to make is that there's a trade-off between durable technology and price. If people were willing to pay massive amounts of money for technology that lasted 20 years, companies would be making them. But since people count on technology being obsolete after relatively short periods of time, they'd rather pay $100 for a player that will last 5 years that can be tossed out when upgrades come along or cheaply replaced if they should break.
When you're building something designed to go as far into space as it can before breaking down, cheap, fragile technology just isn't an option. A lot of money was put into making sure Voyager would be as durable as possible, because when it breaks down, there's no going out there to replace it.
Many social experiments Google ran have failed -buzz and wave comes to mind first- and yet they still keep pushing. People don't go to Google for interacting. Google means business, Facebook and Twitter do not.
This also reminds me of Microsoft's efforts to force themselves into others' more lucrative turfs and looking pathetic in the process.
You mean like when Microsoft pushed into consoles? I'll grant you the original Xbox wasn't that strong, but you'll be hard pressed to find a gamer that doesn't have an Xbox 360. Maybe Microsoft isn't as pathetic as you think.
Google should just stick to being Google instead of immitating others.
If Google just sticks to what they're doing, they'll just stagnate and ultimately fall behind. Trying to enter other markets is how these companies grow themselves. Sure there's going to be failures, but you can't have success if you're not even trying.
They are also doing the bonus adjustments wrong. It should be the other way around: If successful extra +25%, otherwise, regular bonus. After all success means (apparently for them) entrance to another market.
Ok, what exactly does the word "bonus" mean to you? If it was just a given that you were going to get a bonus, why not just include it in the regular salary? While I'll grant you that a bonus should be tied directly into the success of the product you're working on, I don't know what Google's internal structure is like. It's possible that everyone actually does have some stake in the success of the +1 feature.
A friend was heading home on an empty highway late one night after work, hadn't had anything to drink, was doing the speed limit, and obeying all traffic laws. He got pulled over.
Why? After determining my friend was free to go, the officer said there's plenty of drivers who know they're just above the legal limit (recently revised downward here, to a blood alcohol level of 0.05%, so quite a few women can't even have a single drink now) and do everything to avoid suspicion by being the best possible driver.
The officer, though good humoured, declined my friend's request to get a ticket for driving the speed limit.
So... he got pulled over for driving too perfectly? Isn't it illegal for an officer to pull you over without a single valid reason? And no, suspicion you might be driving drunk because you're driving perfectly isn't a valid reason. This is exactly the kind of stuff that makes me distrust all officers, when you can't even have the peace of mind that you won't be pulled over even if you're doing nothing wrong. I'd be talking to a lawyer if that ever happened to me.
As a side note, that also removes all pretenses that such a low limit is to deter drunk driving. If people just over that limit are still able to drive well enough to "avoid suspicion", are they really too drunk to drive? Or is it just all about the money at this point?
Uh, yeah. You obviously have no idea how the zodiac symbols were really decided. On the day you were born the Sun is sitting in the middle of a constellation. That was how it was determined. You are also ignoring the fact that not only do the zodiac symbols rotate slowly through the calender, because of the exact same second rotational axis, so do the seasons. In 11,500 years, Dec. 21 will be midsummer in the northern hemisphere. I don't know how you'd think it has anything to do with seasons, anyway. Leave it to the superstitious to ignore any actual facts or history.
Uh, yeah. You obviously have no idea how the zodiac symbols were really decided. Western astrology has always used the tropical zodiac which is based on the four seasons, instead of the sidereal zodiac which is based on the location of the sun in the various constellations. I don't know how you'd think it doesn't have anything to do with seasons anyway, I've known that since at least middle school. Leave it to the self-righteous to ignore any actual facts or history.
What does "taking a slash" mean? Public urination? If so, then no, not even the most absurdly conservative jurisdictions would classify that as a sex offender.
Strangely enough, the first (and so far only) time I played through Bioshock was with a wrench-build. (Ever since Half Life 1 and System Shock 2 I've been a very strict ammo conservationist.)
And in truth, the final boss was a breeze for me with nothing but the wrench. I had a much easier and quicker time killing him than my roommate with his arsenal of weapons.
The only thing I would ever bust out an actual weapon for was the Big Daddies, they're considerably harder to smack down with the wrench. (Though I did that once too, for kicks, I think I had to use 3 First Aid Kits though.)
She said: "An easy analogy is a car park with a sign that says you are bound to a given contract if you enter into that car park. Anybody can enter, but you have to accept the terms, and the signal of you accepting those terms is when you enter. You have to do something positive to accept the terms - you have to act."
That lawyer obviously reads Slashdot, she went straight for the largely irrelevant car analogy.
"She said that there are two ways in which the commission can get involved in a product safety issue. One is by discovering the problem on their own, either through consumer complaints or their own research, the other is by the company notifying them of an issue.
In this case Nintendo contacted the commission and asked to fast track the solution, which involved offering to replace about 2 million Wii remote safety straps.
Because Nintendo self-reported the issue, the commission will not do its own investigation unless new issues crop up with the new strap."
So the Commision is only getting involved because Nintendo asked them to.
I've been a store clerk, and signature verification has nothing whatsoever to do with laziness. Clerks in your average grocery store aren't trained in handwriting recognition, so having them check your signature against the credit card is pointless. Consumers today are moving more towards wanting convienence over security. I had several customers that said they shouldn't even have to sign something for purchases under $50, citing the policy of the local CVS. People want to be able to just swipe&go. And why not, what with all the "no liability" credit cards out there. So if you want to blame the lack of signature verification on something, blame it on the average consumer.
Either you're misunderstanding his tone, or I'm misunderstanding your tone. This is the way I read the post:
"LOL. At first I thought you were making a reference to the movie 'Real Genius', but then I realized that the name of the guy in that movie was Laslow, and then I remembered my Psychology courses...."
From the Wikipedia:
NCsoft has reported that Lineage had at one point more than four million subscribers, most of them in Korea... Only World of Warcraft, with over 6 million active users, has a larger user base.
Re:Nothing came of the decreased bandwidth proposa
on
802.11g... It's Official
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
It was my understanding that the 10-20 Mbps number we were hearing was actual throughput, not theoretical maximum. The maximum never changed from 54 Mbps, but when you throw in protocol and error correction overhead, the number actually drops somewhere between 10-20. Just like 802.11b claims 11 Mbps, but the actual throughput is closer to 4-5 Mbps.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd, uh, like to think I've got a valid basis for challenging that claim...
Try it, call the police up sometime and report that your car was broken into... or your house... they may show up sometime in the next 12 to 48hrs... maybe... in my city you get to file a report over the phone to an answering machine. Then try calling them and telling them you've got an once of pot. You'll have 3 squad cars in your driveway in under 5 minutes. Welcome to American indeed.
Reminds me of a humorous story many of you are probably familiar with:
Going to bed the other night, I noticed people in my shed stealing things.
I phoned the police but was told no one was in the area to help. They said they would send someone over as soon as possible.
I hung up. A minute later I rang again. 'Hello,' I said, 'I called you a minute ago because there were people in my shed. You don't have to hurry now, because I've shot them.'
Within minutes there were half a dozen police cars in the area, plus helicopters and an armed response unit. They caught the burglars red-handed.
One of the officers said: 'I thought you said you'd shot them.'
To which I replied: 'I thought you said there was no one available.'
Or maybe if you were the judge in this case, you'd side with the guy who according to Google has connections to the local mafia. Wouldn't want to wake up next to a proverbial horse's head.
"Living standard" is kind of an oxymoron. The whole point of having a standard is so that authors have something to target, and developers know what is necessary to be standards compliant. A constantly evolving standard creates a moving target, which I believe is actually counter-productive.
Well sure, if we could actually observe the weather on this planet and confirm or refine our speculations, that would be great. Unfortunately, the technology to do so is well beyond our means at this point. By the time we actually are able to directly observe this planet, our weather models will probably be much more refined as well.
I'm reminded of the planet discovered over a year ago that was tidally locked to its star, which created a habitable zone circling the planet where the light from the star would hit it at an oblong angle, creating a zone of essentially perpetual twilight where life could form. We had quite a few ideas already for what the environment on this planet must be like, until further measurements of the star system revealed that the "planet" was really just minor errors in the calculations of the star's wobble, and there wasn't even a planet there to begin with.
This article isn't "just knowledge for knowledge's sake." Indeed, it seems to be purely speculation for speculation's sake. I'm actually very concerned by the line in the summary, "With patience and cunning, more than you might think," because that really implies we know a lot more about what we're talking about than we actually do. I'll just be happy when the weather forecaster on TV can accurately tell me the weather for the next week.
Someone has already tagged Razor-Qt as 'a KDE ripoff.'
And KDE is just a Windows ripoff. So really, Razor-Qt is just another Windows look-alike. That was actually one of the things I liked about KDE, the interface was so familiar to what I already knew, it made transitioning easier.
Yeah. I've heard of a similar, albeit more primitive, concept called "self-checkout lane" - that never took off, either.
I'm assuming that was sarcastic. If not, the rest of this doesn't make as much sense.
Self checkout lanes still typically have a person at the end monitoring a few lanes, and some scales you have to put everything on after you scan it.
As I understand, these still require a random audit, which isn't too hard to defeat still. For one, it's unlikely to require audits close together, so just keep an eye on things and then jump on the line that just had an audit.
Assuming the audit system is actually random, there's no way you can guarantee that two audits won't come up back-to-back either. Are you really willing to take that chance?
Alternately you can bury the thing you want to steal underneath a bunch of other stuff in the cart.
Now you're assuming they haven't been trained to pull items from random depths in the cart, as much of a pain as that might sometimes be.
Avoid a line that has the rare diligent auditor.
Self-checkout lanes where I live tend to be the cashiers that are more observant and reliable than the average cashier. I'd assume with a system like this, they'd tend to be even more so.
Lastly if you get caught just watch the process and as they go to scan a stolen item say something like "Wait, that's not supposed to be in there. I thought I put that back on the shelf."
Yeah, I'm sure he's heard that one before too. The guys manning these stations aren't likely to be that naive.
OTOH, that doesn't make this a show stopper. With higher custom satisfaction (which hopefully translates to a higher repeat sale rate) and reduced total cashier payroll this can still work to a net profit if the additional shrink isn't too severe.
People actually determined to shoplift are still more likely to just stuff the item in their jacket, where the auditor is unlikely to check anyway.
If you could sell me a 20 year old DVD player I would buy it in an instant for $1000 especially since the first DVD player was introduced in 1997. Hell I would demand all of Phillips income for the past 14 years.
DVD was launched in 1997.
Ok... but that's not the question he was asking. He said would you pay $1000 for a DVD player that was guaranteed to last 20 years from NOW, not would you buy a 20 year OLD DVD player that still worked. And the answer any sane person would give is "no" simply because in 20 years, DVD isn't likely to be relevant anymore. By then, everyone will have moved on to Bluray++.
The point (I believe) he's trying to make is that there's a trade-off between durable technology and price. If people were willing to pay massive amounts of money for technology that lasted 20 years, companies would be making them. But since people count on technology being obsolete after relatively short periods of time, they'd rather pay $100 for a player that will last 5 years that can be tossed out when upgrades come along or cheaply replaced if they should break.
When you're building something designed to go as far into space as it can before breaking down, cheap, fragile technology just isn't an option. A lot of money was put into making sure Voyager would be as durable as possible, because when it breaks down, there's no going out there to replace it.
Many social experiments Google ran have failed -buzz and wave comes to mind first- and yet they still keep pushing. People don't go to Google for interacting. Google means business, Facebook and Twitter do not.
This also reminds me of Microsoft's efforts to force themselves into others' more lucrative turfs and looking pathetic in the process.
You mean like when Microsoft pushed into consoles? I'll grant you the original Xbox wasn't that strong, but you'll be hard pressed to find a gamer that doesn't have an Xbox 360. Maybe Microsoft isn't as pathetic as you think.
Google should just stick to being Google instead of immitating others.
If Google just sticks to what they're doing, they'll just stagnate and ultimately fall behind. Trying to enter other markets is how these companies grow themselves. Sure there's going to be failures, but you can't have success if you're not even trying.
They are also doing the bonus adjustments wrong. It should be the other way around: If successful extra +25%, otherwise, regular bonus. After all success means (apparently for them) entrance to another market.
Ok, what exactly does the word "bonus" mean to you? If it was just a given that you were going to get a bonus, why not just include it in the regular salary? While I'll grant you that a bonus should be tied directly into the success of the product you're working on, I don't know what Google's internal structure is like. It's possible that everyone actually does have some stake in the success of the +1 feature.
A friend was heading home on an empty highway late one night after work, hadn't had anything to drink, was doing the speed limit, and obeying all traffic laws. He got pulled over.
Why? After determining my friend was free to go, the officer said there's plenty of drivers who know they're just above the legal limit (recently revised downward here, to a blood alcohol level of 0.05%, so quite a few women can't even have a single drink now) and do everything to avoid suspicion by being the best possible driver.
The officer, though good humoured, declined my friend's request to get a ticket for driving the speed limit.
So... he got pulled over for driving too perfectly? Isn't it illegal for an officer to pull you over without a single valid reason? And no, suspicion you might be driving drunk because you're driving perfectly isn't a valid reason. This is exactly the kind of stuff that makes me distrust all officers, when you can't even have the peace of mind that you won't be pulled over even if you're doing nothing wrong. I'd be talking to a lawyer if that ever happened to me.
As a side note, that also removes all pretenses that such a low limit is to deter drunk driving. If people just over that limit are still able to drive well enough to "avoid suspicion", are they really too drunk to drive? Or is it just all about the money at this point?
Social Game Maker Zynga’s Market Valuation Tops $5.5B
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39869254/Social_Game_Maker_Zynga_s_Market_Valuation_Tops_5_5B
Who's laughing now?
doesnt look like stars to me
hunter2
Uh, yeah. You obviously have no idea how the zodiac symbols were really decided. On the day you were born the Sun is sitting in the middle of a constellation. That was how it was determined. You are also ignoring the fact that not only do the zodiac symbols rotate slowly through the calender, because of the exact same second rotational axis, so do the seasons. In 11,500 years, Dec. 21 will be midsummer in the northern hemisphere. I don't know how you'd think it has anything to do with seasons, anyway. Leave it to the superstitious to ignore any actual facts or history.
Uh, yeah. You obviously have no idea how the zodiac symbols were really decided. Western astrology has always used the tropical zodiac which is based on the four seasons, instead of the sidereal zodiac which is based on the location of the sun in the various constellations. I don't know how you'd think it doesn't have anything to do with seasons anyway, I've known that since at least middle school. Leave it to the self-righteous to ignore any actual facts or history.
See also: http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/13/no-your-zodiac-sign-hasnt-changed/?hpt=C2
What does "taking a slash" mean? Public urination? If so, then no, not even the most absurdly conservative jurisdictions would classify that as a sex offender.
It would seem you are wrong: http://www.macinstruct.com/node/89
> nothing less than deci-dollars is worth striking up in coin, drop pennies, nickels and quarters
Even a dime is (exactly) a deci-dollar, and a quarter is bigger.
I should know, I need to use one every time I post my Slashdot .sig :-)
Well sure, but without pennies and nickels, how are you going to give me change for my quarter?
Strangely enough, the first (and so far only) time I played through Bioshock was with a wrench-build. (Ever since Half Life 1 and System Shock 2 I've been a very strict ammo conservationist.)
And in truth, the final boss was a breeze for me with nothing but the wrench. I had a much easier and quicker time killing him than my roommate with his arsenal of weapons.
The only thing I would ever bust out an actual weapon for was the Big Daddies, they're considerably harder to smack down with the wrench. (Though I did that once too, for kicks, I think I had to use 3 First Aid Kits though.)
"Oops" means I can fix the problem. "Oh shit" means I can't.
Wow, well if you got it off the internet it MUST be true, right?
So the Commision is only getting involved because Nintendo asked them to.
I've been a store clerk, and signature verification has nothing whatsoever to do with laziness. Clerks in your average grocery store aren't trained in handwriting recognition, so having them check your signature against the credit card is pointless. Consumers today are moving more towards wanting convienence over security. I had several customers that said they shouldn't even have to sign something for purchases under $50, citing the policy of the local CVS. People want to be able to just swipe&go. And why not, what with all the "no liability" credit cards out there. So if you want to blame the lack of signature verification on something, blame it on the average consumer.
Either you're misunderstanding his tone, or I'm misunderstanding your tone. This is the way I read the post:
"LOL. At first I thought you were making a reference to the movie 'Real Genius', but then I realized that the name of the guy in that movie was Laslow, and then I remembered my Psychology courses...."
From the Wikipedia: ... Only World of Warcraft, with over 6 million active users, has a larger user base.
NCsoft has reported that Lineage had at one point more than four million subscribers, most of them in Korea
It was my understanding that the 10-20 Mbps number we were hearing was actual throughput, not theoretical maximum. The maximum never changed from 54 Mbps, but when you throw in protocol and error correction overhead, the number actually drops somewhere between 10-20. Just like 802.11b claims 11 Mbps, but the actual throughput is closer to 4-5 Mbps.