Instead of blocking cell signals, just go up to the dolt and politely ask them to step outside to continue their conversation, or to keep it toned down a bit. That is how you handle anyone who is rude in any way.
If you choose to look at pr0n anyway, don't download anything. After all, how reputable could the site you're looking at be if they serve up pr0n?
Run as a Standard user, not as an Administrator, even if you are the owner and sole user of the machine. Create a separate Administrator account into which you can log in order to do administrative tasks.
Let's just concentrate on developing more efficient ways of turning salt water into fresh water.
This might not seem like such an important thing to do, but it is. There are nations in the world (even modern nations) that suffer from a constant shortage of water. They could benefit from an easily renewable source of fresh water and would pay dearly for better technology to achieve this.
There's no money to be made in turning alcohol into water.
I think this is a highly unethical business practice which must be stopped. It is somewhat akin to companies in China producing brand-name knock-offs that so closely resemble the original product that they can only be described as counterfeit.
The best thing to do is to take a few minutes of your time and send a short, concise, and polite letter to:
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Attn: Customer Service
702 S.W. 8th Street
Bentonville, AR 72716
Believe me, they will notice your letter and do something about it.
This whole RIAA mess is very unfortunate. Instead of realizing the vast potential offered by the existence of the Internet and related technologies, they go around suing their own customers or potential customers.
Look at the combination of the iPod, iTunes, and the related online music store. Three billion songs sold and counting?! And that's just ONE online music store.
I'm sure that instead of playing the new lottery and suing its own customers, the RIAA could have teamed up with some innovative companies like Apple to develop new marketing schemes to take advantage of the Internet. They could have developed an entire market for new products. Buy the songs online, and once you've bought 90% of the songs on an album, you get the remainder for free. Sell older or generally unpopular or unknown music for less, or even give some of it away for free (perhaps bundled with the sale of other music or products) in the hopes that people will hear it, like it, and start buying it. Put together an Amazon-style system where "other customers who bought X also bought Y." Or give a large chunk of the music selection away for free and make money on related merchandising. Or send subscribers a free random song (it could be from ANY artist or album) every week so they'll like it and start buying stuff from that artist. Or put together an RIAA-approved P2P system where people earn points for distributing "allowed" content from entry-level artists (or even popular bands) so that those distributing the music would actually help generate a larger market for other songs from those artists. For the really popular artists, hold release of some of their songs until a certain number of sales of other songs has taken place. For example, five of their new song titles would need to sell 10,000,000 each in order for five other new songs to be released to the public for free (and prior to that, nobody outside of the band would ever hear those songs). Or instead of 10,000,000 copies, say they'd need to sell $10,000,000 worth of those five first songs, eBay auction style. If it's a popular band, some people might bid hundreds for one copy of a song, not because they couldn't get it elsewhere for less but because they'd want to expedite release of more music. The possibilities are endless but a zillion business opportunities exist, instead of suing your own customers.
I downloaded the STIX zipball and glanced through some of the character sets included therein. The fonts are very attractive and I think that within a short time of delivery, many technical publications will adopt them. It is only a shame that this project has suffered so many long delays. It's almost like waiting for Sarge to get released.
This company obviously has a serious problem with physical security. I don't know what kind of data they host, but obviously someone is willing to get violent in order to get their hands on it.
One possible solution involves building a steel- and concrete-reinforced bunker, akin to a very secure bank vault, several levels underground. It should be designed such that even if someone managed to dig underground from an adjacent property, they would be met with several feet of thick concrete, followed by twelve-inch-thick hardened steel. This would exist on all four sides, as well as on the top and bottom of the bunker.
On the inside, entry would require entering through several stages of reinforced doors to access an elevator to the bunker below. Following that, one would need to enter via a vault door very similar to the one at a bank vault. This vault door would open only by providing a passphrase and three forms of biometric identification, including a retinal scan, a hand scan, and a voice scan, in addition to a mechanical combination. Those guarding the building would NOT be authorized by the system to gain entry, so that intruders would be unable to gain access by threatening or beating them. This fact would be posted prominently at the entrance to the complex.
Inside the vault, the equipment proper would be rack-mounted in heavy duty locked steel enclosures.
Obviously, all of these measures would need to be combined with a thorough and comprehensive system of electronic and software security, which would protect the system from malcontents connecting through a network as well as to monitor physical and electronic intrusion.
Once installed in this manner, it would clearly become difficult for a group of thieves to break into such a vault and steal equipment before the arrival of police on the scene.
Let's look at this from a logical perspective for a moment:
According to This_Is_My_Happening, there are four settings for Automatic Updates:
Automatic (downloads and installs updates automatically)
Download but not install (downloads automatically, but you choose when to install)
Notify but not download (notifies you of updates, but doesnt download)
Turn off Automatic Updates
Now if I understand correctly, those who selected the second or third option above were surprised by an update that was downloaded and installed, contrary to their selected setting. I don't know if I understand correctly, but if I do, then this is what I have to say about it:
If it is possible for Microsoft to install updates contrary to your selected setting, then this means that Windows Update code basically had a backdoor installed in it from the beginning. This backdoor was, then, designed so that if a certain "install anyway" bit was set in an update, the update would install regardless of your setting.
I am mentioning this because I haven't noticed anyone else mentioning it.
If the above is the case, then I leave it to the Slashdot community to determine whether the presence of such code is an ethical business decision or not.
Now, I would like to offer the solution to problems like this. Please bear with me while I tell a long story, to properly set the stage.
My.sig says that Microsoft released Windows Vista, so I got a Mac. Truth is, I didn't use Windows before (I used some flavor of Linux, BSD, and the Mac, except for the Windoze computers I administer at work and it's not my fault that those were chosen) but one day, a friend of mine brought over a machine he just bought with Windows Vista on it. He said he couldn't get it to do anything so we made a deal that if I fix his computer, he'll fix my busted bicycle. I turned on the machine, and within minutes, I was practically rolling on the floor, my stomach hurting from laughter.
Windows Vista is a joke.
Everything is so slow, obfuscated, and complicated that I don't know how anyone with less than a Ph. D. in Windows Vista can figure out how to move a file from one place to another. At least there are fancy shmancy time- and resource-wasting graphics all over the system, speaking of which, everything is so slow that after every button you push, you should lean back in your chair and relax for a minute or two before the computer is ready to accept the next keystroke or mouse click. Not to mention that every other click of the mouse causes the screen to turn black and a window pops up to ask, "Did you really just click the mouse over there?"
Solution? I did two things: I installed Ubuntu 6.06-LTS (Long-Term Support) on his machine, and I went to one of Apple's retail stores and bought another Mac for myself. Did I mention that Apple also has fancy shmancy graphics all over the system? Just that on a Mac, these graphics make the system easier to use, not harder like in Windows. They fit in to the computing environment and serve to show you what is going on, rather than to waste your time with annoying and slow eye candy. And on a Mac, the graphics and animation don't slow anything down!
I don't understand why Microsoft, a company with probably 500 times the resources available to Apple, can't do 1/500th of what Apple can do on a computer with 500 times the resources available to a Mac. Oh, by the way, I was at one of Apple's stores today. The iPod section was completely crowded, with entire families cramming around the iPod display table to play with the new models. The iPhone section was also completely crowded, again with entire families squeezing in. And the laptop and desktop computer sections were, you guessed it, also crowded as are the other two sections.
So, as I've been trying to say for a few paragraphs, the solution to avoiding the extremely problematic Windows software is to move away from the Microsoft platform. Either get a Mac, or learn Linux or *BSD. Especially now when so many people are doing it and these platforms (especially the Mac) are gaining some really, really serious acceptance.
Darl Gates: It is the year 2023. Microsloth Doors PW has just been released, after 8 years of delays, and without any of the features slated for release in PW, except for additional eye candy, as if the eye candy in prior versions, like Doors Chello, Doors F4, Doors Vista, Doors XP, and prior versions were not enough. It requires at least one Intel Core 16 Millennial processor with 1024 cores minimum, 16TB of RAM, and minimum flashdrive capacity of 64TB to install. Feature highlights include slightly improved performance over a DOS-based 486 SX when performing similar tasks such as word processing. Also of note is the improved security center, which upon detecting a network connection, displays the message, "Microsloth Doors PW has detected a network connection. Please wait while Doors downloads the latest viruses." Heck, why fool ourselves? We may as well admit it.
Steve Jobs: It is the year 2023. Mac OS 11.3 Coyote is available for immediate release. The transition from our Darwin-based OS underpinnings to our Plan 9 based system which we announced six months ago is now complete, making Coyote the world's most advanced operating system once again. Existing UNIX-based applications will continue to run under our improved Rosetta environment, and the original Classic environment is back, making Mac OS 11 the only OS to seamlessly integrate the UNIX, Plan 9, Carbon, Cocoa, Java, BlackTea, and Classic environments. Our implementation of Grokcode is now complete, making Coyote the only OS in the world that can convert single-threaded applications into massively multithreaded code on the fly, taking full advantage of all cores. Some new announcements. Our newest Mac lineup takes advantage of Intel's newest Core Millennial architecture, integrating 4 chips with 4096 cores each, for a total of 16384 cores in our base model MacBooks. This year, iPhone sales have captured 87% of the cellular phone market. We are shooting for 90% by the end of 2025. And this year marks the first year that Macs outsell Windows PCs 2 to 1, capturing 68% of the market, up from 62% last year.
The reason you should NOT install pirated copies of Losedows is that by doing so, you're overpaying by one million dollars per copy.
Every product under the Losedows product family is priced much too high for any market. Losedows is an extremely defective piece of software and even if Microsloth paid each user $1,000,000.00 per copy to install it, meaning the price is essentially -$1,000,000.00 (note the negative sign), it would still be too high a price to pay to put up with this garbage.
In other words, there is NO EXCUSE: DO NOT PIRATE LOSEDOWS!!! YOU'RE BEING RIPPED OFF!!!
Ok, let me guess. Darl Ballmer is going to start filing lawsuits against users of all sorts of FOSS software, claiming they violate 235 of Microsoft's patents. When it gets to court, the world FOSS community will bring reams and reams of proof that these patents should be dissolved due to prior art or other reasons. Microsoft will bring an index card full of proof that these are innovative technologies that Microsoft invented. The case will go through all sorts of legal wrangling the likes of which can be found in Charles Dickens' classic, Bleak House, and 100 years from now, the case will simply evaporate because Microsoft won't exist anymore.
In case you haven't heard of it, Bleak House is the story of a rich dude who dies and leaves behind a will that has some kind of legal problems in it. The case goes to trial and lasts two whole generations. In the end, the only ones who profit from the whole darn thing are the lawyers. The law is concerned only with the law.
Someone seriously needs to pass legislation making it illegal to use a cellphone while talking.
Why not instead make legislation that says, in general, that you may not perform any activities while driving that make you a danger to others on the road. If someone can yack and drive with no trouble, let them. If someone else is all over the road, they should know better or get a ticket the next time a cop sees them driving like crazy while yacking.
No need to go from one extreme (scientific accuracy) to the other (stupidified for the non-expert). Instead, leave all the scientific knowledge, but explain the stuff that a non-expert won't understand a little better.
For example, a Wikipedia article I recently read about logic included all sorts of logic symbols in logical formulas and explained all sorts of concepts about logic. Trouble was, I couldn't understand what anything was about because I didn't know the meaning of the different symbols. I don't even know how to punch those symbols into Google to find out. All it would take is a simple succinct one-sentence explanation of each symbol somewhere in the article, without changing anything else, and I would have grokked it in no time flat.
Well the answer is simple enough. They should compensate him. I think a million dollars a day sounds about fair. $12M to the kid who was wrongfully jailed.
This reminds me of Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia, which we had a copy of back in the Win 3.1 days. At the time, we didn't have Internet access, and even if we had, forget about video, audio, or anything more complicated than HTML with a GIF image or two. So the encyclopedia on CD-ROM seemed so futuristic. Not only could you read the article, but there were embedded sounds and videos, and I seem to recall that in many areas of the encyclopedia, there were explanations by Patrick Stewart, who acted as a sort of teacher or host, like you would have in a documentary.
The idea of a virtual teacher who could deliver vast amounts of information from an online database over the Internet and do so in a humanlike way, is very cool.
...that you should never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon loaded with tapes?! And that was in the 70's or 80's, I think.
Imagine today, filling up a semi with double-layer DVDs, with all the data on them compressed using modern compression schemes?! If the semi can go 60 mph, and the internal dimensions of its trailer are 41' by 8' by 9' (meaning you can fit 23 exabytes on the truck, assuming the data on a DVD are compressed with a 1.75 mean compression factor), your data is moving at a speed of 25080.60713 exabyte-inches per second. This is pretty fast. Of course, the detailed computations made to come up with this figure do not take into consideration the time it would take you to purchase the above DVDs, compress and burn the data to all of them, and then load the above truck with them. If this is one of those "how long is eternity" problems (like the one in Bless Me Ultima where a bird has to transport a mountain from one side of the world to the other, holding only one granule of sand in its beak at a time, with a round trip time of 12 weeks... and when it finishes, that's only the first day of eternity) and you have to walk to the store to buy the DVDs, and you're only allowed to buy one at a time.... then you'll realize that you're better off ordering DSL.
Let's run the United States right into the ground. And let's do it by making it impossible for businesses to operate here. After all, that's where all the economic power comes from. So we'll do that by creating such a monstrocity of laws and regulations affecting businesses, and the larger and more successful the business, the more cumbersome, expensive, and downright unfair the regulations should be. If it becomes a public company, the pinnacle of achievement for many businesses, then we should turn every financial action of the company into an investigation for accounting irregularities. In the meantime, there should be no tarriffs on imports anymore, and we should encourage companies to outsource, or outright move, to China. And by doing all of the above, we'll successfully run the United States right into the ground.
Yes, let's scrap all these stupid voting systems. What's wrong with filling out your ballot in a booth, sealing it in an envelope, and then walking up to a box with a slot in the top and dropping it in? It worked fine for Iraq's elections. I'm sure this is how it was done here for 200 years too. What sort of advantage do we get by spending millions on buggy technologically advanced voting systems that everyone seems to question so much?
Slashdot Mirror
Instead of blocking cell signals, just go up to the dolt and politely ask them to step outside to continue their conversation, or to keep it toned down a bit. That is how you handle anyone who is rude in any way.
NBC Chief yadda yadda yadda. He's an idiot. Comes from upbringing. Parents are probably idiots too.
If Walmart's own employees are confusing the two, then it's probably too similar.
The solution to this problem is simple:
Let's just concentrate on developing more efficient ways of turning salt water into fresh water.
This might not seem like such an important thing to do, but it is. There are nations in the world (even modern nations) that suffer from a constant shortage of water. They could benefit from an easily renewable source of fresh water and would pay dearly for better technology to achieve this.
There's no money to be made in turning alcohol into water.
I think this is a highly unethical business practice which must be stopped. It is somewhat akin to companies in China producing brand-name knock-offs that so closely resemble the original product that they can only be described as counterfeit.
The best thing to do is to take a few minutes of your time and send a short, concise, and polite letter to:
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Attn: Customer Service
702 S.W. 8th Street
Bentonville, AR 72716
Believe me, they will notice your letter and do something about it.
Look at the combination of the iPod, iTunes, and the related online music store. Three billion songs sold and counting?! And that's just ONE online music store.
I'm sure that instead of playing the new lottery and suing its own customers, the RIAA could have teamed up with some innovative companies like Apple to develop new marketing schemes to take advantage of the Internet. They could have developed an entire market for new products. Buy the songs online, and once you've bought 90% of the songs on an album, you get the remainder for free. Sell older or generally unpopular or unknown music for less, or even give some of it away for free (perhaps bundled with the sale of other music or products) in the hopes that people will hear it, like it, and start buying it. Put together an Amazon-style system where "other customers who bought X also bought Y." Or give a large chunk of the music selection away for free and make money on related merchandising. Or send subscribers a free random song (it could be from ANY artist or album) every week so they'll like it and start buying stuff from that artist. Or put together an RIAA-approved P2P system where people earn points for distributing "allowed" content from entry-level artists (or even popular bands) so that those distributing the music would actually help generate a larger market for other songs from those artists. For the really popular artists, hold release of some of their songs until a certain number of sales of other songs has taken place. For example, five of their new song titles would need to sell 10,000,000 each in order for five other new songs to be released to the public for free (and prior to that, nobody outside of the band would ever hear those songs). Or instead of 10,000,000 copies, say they'd need to sell $10,000,000 worth of those five first songs, eBay auction style. If it's a popular band, some people might bid hundreds for one copy of a song, not because they couldn't get it elsewhere for less but because they'd want to expedite release of more music. The possibilities are endless but a zillion business opportunities exist, instead of suing your own customers.
I downloaded the STIX zipball and glanced through some of the character sets included therein. The fonts are very attractive and I think that within a short time of delivery, many technical publications will adopt them. It is only a shame that this project has suffered so many long delays. It's almost like waiting for Sarge to get released.
One possible solution involves building a steel- and concrete-reinforced bunker, akin to a very secure bank vault, several levels underground. It should be designed such that even if someone managed to dig underground from an adjacent property, they would be met with several feet of thick concrete, followed by twelve-inch-thick hardened steel. This would exist on all four sides, as well as on the top and bottom of the bunker.
On the inside, entry would require entering through several stages of reinforced doors to access an elevator to the bunker below. Following that, one would need to enter via a vault door very similar to the one at a bank vault. This vault door would open only by providing a passphrase and three forms of biometric identification, including a retinal scan, a hand scan, and a voice scan, in addition to a mechanical combination. Those guarding the building would NOT be authorized by the system to gain entry, so that intruders would be unable to gain access by threatening or beating them. This fact would be posted prominently at the entrance to the complex.
Inside the vault, the equipment proper would be rack-mounted in heavy duty locked steel enclosures.
Obviously, all of these measures would need to be combined with a thorough and comprehensive system of electronic and software security, which would protect the system from malcontents connecting through a network as well as to monitor physical and electronic intrusion.
Once installed in this manner, it would clearly become difficult for a group of thieves to break into such a vault and steal equipment before the arrival of police on the scene.
Let's look at this from a logical perspective for a moment:
According to This_Is_My_Happening, there are four settings for Automatic Updates:
Now if I understand correctly, those who selected the second or third option above were surprised by an update that was downloaded and installed, contrary to their selected setting. I don't know if I understand correctly, but if I do, then this is what I have to say about it:
If it is possible for Microsoft to install updates contrary to your selected setting, then this means that Windows Update code basically had a backdoor installed in it from the beginning. This backdoor was, then, designed so that if a certain "install anyway" bit was set in an update, the update would install regardless of your setting.
I am mentioning this because I haven't noticed anyone else mentioning it.
If the above is the case, then I leave it to the Slashdot community to determine whether the presence of such code is an ethical business decision or not.
Now, I would like to offer the solution to problems like this. Please bear with me while I tell a long story, to properly set the stage.
My .sig says that Microsoft released Windows Vista, so I got a Mac. Truth is, I didn't use Windows before (I used some flavor of Linux, BSD, and the Mac, except for the Windoze computers I administer at work and it's not my fault that those were chosen) but one day, a friend of mine brought over a machine he just bought with Windows Vista on it. He said he couldn't get it to do anything so we made a deal that if I fix his computer, he'll fix my busted bicycle. I turned on the machine, and within minutes, I was practically rolling on the floor, my stomach hurting from laughter.
Windows Vista is a joke.
Everything is so slow, obfuscated, and complicated that I don't know how anyone with less than a Ph. D. in Windows Vista can figure out how to move a file from one place to another. At least there are fancy shmancy time- and resource-wasting graphics all over the system, speaking of which, everything is so slow that after every button you push, you should lean back in your chair and relax for a minute or two before the computer is ready to accept the next keystroke or mouse click. Not to mention that every other click of the mouse causes the screen to turn black and a window pops up to ask, "Did you really just click the mouse over there?"
Solution? I did two things: I installed Ubuntu 6.06-LTS (Long-Term Support) on his machine, and I went to one of Apple's retail stores and bought another Mac for myself. Did I mention that Apple also has fancy shmancy graphics all over the system? Just that on a Mac, these graphics make the system easier to use, not harder like in Windows. They fit in to the computing environment and serve to show you what is going on, rather than to waste your time with annoying and slow eye candy. And on a Mac, the graphics and animation don't slow anything down!
I don't understand why Microsoft, a company with probably 500 times the resources available to Apple, can't do 1/500th of what Apple can do on a computer with 500 times the resources available to a Mac. Oh, by the way, I was at one of Apple's stores today. The iPod section was completely crowded, with entire families cramming around the iPod display table to play with the new models. The iPhone section was also completely crowded, again with entire families squeezing in. And the laptop and desktop computer sections were, you guessed it, also crowded as are the other two sections.
So, as I've been trying to say for a few paragraphs, the solution to avoiding the extremely problematic Windows software is to move away from the Microsoft platform. Either get a Mac, or learn Linux or *BSD. Especially now when so many people are doing it and these platforms (especially the Mac) are gaining some really, really serious acceptance.
NANNY NANNY BOO BOO!!
Darl Gates: It is the year 2023. Microsloth Doors PW has just been released, after 8 years of delays, and without any of the features slated for release in PW, except for additional eye candy, as if the eye candy in prior versions, like Doors Chello, Doors F4, Doors Vista, Doors XP, and prior versions were not enough. It requires at least one Intel Core 16 Millennial processor with 1024 cores minimum, 16TB of RAM, and minimum flashdrive capacity of 64TB to install. Feature highlights include slightly improved performance over a DOS-based 486 SX when performing similar tasks such as word processing. Also of note is the improved security center, which upon detecting a network connection, displays the message, "Microsloth Doors PW has detected a network connection. Please wait while Doors downloads the latest viruses." Heck, why fool ourselves? We may as well admit it.
Steve Jobs: It is the year 2023. Mac OS 11.3 Coyote is available for immediate release. The transition from our Darwin-based OS underpinnings to our Plan 9 based system which we announced six months ago is now complete, making Coyote the world's most advanced operating system once again. Existing UNIX-based applications will continue to run under our improved Rosetta environment, and the original Classic environment is back, making Mac OS 11 the only OS to seamlessly integrate the UNIX, Plan 9, Carbon, Cocoa, Java, BlackTea, and Classic environments. Our implementation of Grokcode is now complete, making Coyote the only OS in the world that can convert single-threaded applications into massively multithreaded code on the fly, taking full advantage of all cores. Some new announcements. Our newest Mac lineup takes advantage of Intel's newest Core Millennial architecture, integrating 4 chips with 4096 cores each, for a total of 16384 cores in our base model MacBooks. This year, iPhone sales have captured 87% of the cellular phone market. We are shooting for 90% by the end of 2025. And this year marks the first year that Macs outsell Windows PCs 2 to 1, capturing 68% of the market, up from 62% last year.
It's not Windows. It's Losedows.
The reason you should NOT install pirated copies of Losedows is that by doing so, you're overpaying by one million dollars per copy.
Every product under the Losedows product family is priced much too high for any market. Losedows is an extremely defective piece of software and even if Microsloth paid each user $1,000,000.00 per copy to install it, meaning the price is essentially -$1,000,000.00 (note the negative sign), it would still be too high a price to pay to put up with this garbage.
In other words, there is NO EXCUSE: DO NOT PIRATE LOSEDOWS!!! YOU'RE BEING RIPPED OFF!!!
Then who did it? CowboyNeal?
Dear Darl Ballmer: Nanny nanny boo boo!
Ok, let me guess. Darl Ballmer is going to start filing lawsuits against users of all sorts of FOSS software, claiming they violate 235 of Microsoft's patents. When it gets to court, the world FOSS community will bring reams and reams of proof that these patents should be dissolved due to prior art or other reasons. Microsoft will bring an index card full of proof that these are innovative technologies that Microsoft invented. The case will go through all sorts of legal wrangling the likes of which can be found in Charles Dickens' classic, Bleak House, and 100 years from now, the case will simply evaporate because Microsoft won't exist anymore.
In case you haven't heard of it, Bleak House is the story of a rich dude who dies and leaves behind a will that has some kind of legal problems in it. The case goes to trial and lasts two whole generations. In the end, the only ones who profit from the whole darn thing are the lawyers. The law is concerned only with the law.
Someone seriously needs to pass legislation making it illegal to use a cellphone while talking.
Why not instead make legislation that says, in general, that you may not perform any activities while driving that make you a danger to others on the road. If someone can yack and drive with no trouble, let them. If someone else is all over the road, they should know better or get a ticket the next time a cop sees them driving like crazy while yacking.
No need to go from one extreme (scientific accuracy) to the other (stupidified for the non-expert). Instead, leave all the scientific knowledge, but explain the stuff that a non-expert won't understand a little better.
For example, a Wikipedia article I recently read about logic included all sorts of logic symbols in logical formulas and explained all sorts of concepts about logic. Trouble was, I couldn't understand what anything was about because I didn't know the meaning of the different symbols. I don't even know how to punch those symbols into Google to find out. All it would take is a simple succinct one-sentence explanation of each symbol somewhere in the article, without changing anything else, and I would have grokked it in no time flat.
Orale!
Well the answer is simple enough. They should compensate him. I think a million dollars a day sounds about fair. $12M to the kid who was wrongfully jailed.
Well said! I think the poster-sized ads I saw in one of Apple's retail outlets said it very succinctly: "Windows Vista? Time to get a Mac."
The idea of a virtual teacher who could deliver vast amounts of information from an online database over the Internet and do so in a humanlike way, is very cool.
...that you should never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon loaded with tapes?! And that was in the 70's or 80's, I think.
Imagine today, filling up a semi with double-layer DVDs, with all the data on them compressed using modern compression schemes?! If the semi can go 60 mph, and the internal dimensions of its trailer are 41' by 8' by 9' (meaning you can fit 23 exabytes on the truck, assuming the data on a DVD are compressed with a 1.75 mean compression factor), your data is moving at a speed of 25080.60713 exabyte-inches per second. This is pretty fast. Of course, the detailed computations made to come up with this figure do not take into consideration the time it would take you to purchase the above DVDs, compress and burn the data to all of them, and then load the above truck with them. If this is one of those "how long is eternity" problems (like the one in Bless Me Ultima where a bird has to transport a mountain from one side of the world to the other, holding only one granule of sand in its beak at a time, with a round trip time of 12 weeks... and when it finishes, that's only the first day of eternity) and you have to walk to the store to buy the DVDs, and you're only allowed to buy one at a time.... then you'll realize that you're better off ordering DSL.
Google Denies Data In Brazil Orkut Case
Good.
Let's run the United States right into the ground. And let's do it by making it impossible for businesses to operate here. After all, that's where all the economic power comes from. So we'll do that by creating such a monstrocity of laws and regulations affecting businesses, and the larger and more successful the business, the more cumbersome, expensive, and downright unfair the regulations should be. If it becomes a public company, the pinnacle of achievement for many businesses, then we should turn every financial action of the company into an investigation for accounting irregularities. In the meantime, there should be no tarriffs on imports anymore, and we should encourage companies to outsource, or outright move, to China. And by doing all of the above, we'll successfully run the United States right into the ground.
Yes, let's scrap all these stupid voting systems. What's wrong with filling out your ballot in a booth, sealing it in an envelope, and then walking up to a box with a slot in the top and dropping it in? It worked fine for Iraq's elections. I'm sure this is how it was done here for 200 years too. What sort of advantage do we get by spending millions on buggy technologically advanced voting systems that everyone seems to question so much?