is that an API does not break "unwritten" conventions like always returning true even when the operation was unsuccessful
Most POSIX APIs return true on error and false on failure. The idea is that this lets you write if (something()) { error_handler(); }. I've no idea why they thought this made more sense than if (!something()), but judging by the rest of UNIX I suspect that they had to type their code in morse with one hand while fighting a tiger with the other, so every character saved could mean the difference between life and death...
I was under the impression that this was so that you could return an error code on error. It makes sense in that there are few values that evaluate false, just as there are few necessary variations on "function executed successfully", but there are many ways to screw something up.
Moralizing is what is one of the things I like about scifi. They take ideas that have been pounded into our heads since birth, change a few irrelevant details, and allow you to see the issue with new eyes.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
·
· Score: 1
Let's not ignore that, as the article points out, there's a loophole method of getting money from these investments in the form of loans using them as collateral.
Don't these loans need to be paid back at some point? They're going to have to either sell their shares, or earn money from somewhere else, to pay that loan. When that happens, they have to pay tax.
I was wondering that too. How do these loans get paid back?
Not a tax lawyer, but if you die with excessive loans, don't they get repaid out of your family's inheritance, before taxes?
A minute of talk time consumes about 200kB per minute full duplex for typical mobile phone quality. Let's add 100% packet overhead and another 100% for better quality, so we end up with 800kB per minute. Then a gigabyte is 1250 minutes with excellent quality, or about 3000 minutes at normal quality. Do you really think anyone is going to wonder how many minutes they get out of their data plan when loading a typical web page is equivalent to 5 minutes of talk time? SMS makes this even clearer: Do you worry about the number of instant messages you can send with your data allowance? No, you know that it's "enough".
That's my point. Some people don't use their phone for web, ever. Why should they want to do this math? For many of them, they just want a straight and simple answer, even if it actually gives them less service. I can understand, for example, that a well-compressed data stream* will use a variable bit-rate compression, that if combined with efficient background noise reduction could result in conversations using a highly variable amount of data, based on how much of it is noise and how much is silence. Still, many of the people in my community would rather hear "you're getting 450 minutes of talk time" than "you're getting 2.5gb of data usage and your typical conversation uses anywhere from 64-128kps, meaning that you are getting 650-325 minutes", or the more likely advertising response of "you're getting up to 700 minutes"
Of course, I do live in a conservative community.
* And I don't know if common voip solutions do this
"Minutes" is an antiquated concept. It's all data. VoIP is here to stay.
People still would prefer to know how much of the final product they are getting, rather than something that can be used to estimate the quantity of the final product. If your primary use for a cell phone is conversation (mine is not), then you don't request 1gb worth of usage. You want to know how much talk time is available. Just as someone at a restaurant wouldn't want to request $3 worth of hamburger, or chicken measured by the amount of feed needed to produce that quantity of meat.
They cried, because in a tightly controlled country with government media, the loss of your leader is like losing a family member. It's like losing the person the entire country, and you yourself, relied on. They cried because they were at a loss as to what to do. It's losing the person running the country, the only person capable of doing so (or so they believed), and having certainty replaced by uncertainty. If you're a believer, it's like losing your prophet.
That might not have been the situation for everyone, but for a big percentage of the population, it was entirely genuine.
Interesting. Simply knowing that there is one guy in charge, who could lead you to prosperity, or run your country into the ground, one who might have you arrested tomorrow, simply because he does not like your attitude, and that, under this guy, things are running smoothly. Now, he's dead and some stranger has that power. Considering how worked up people get about Presidential elections in the US, I could see how this uncertainty alone would make for a stressful situation.
Just because the cost of crude went up, that doesn't mean that the gas station paid any more for the gas that I am pumping into my car. There is no reason the gas prices AT THE PUMP should change unless the station actually pays more for the delivery.
In the free market, there are few rules about how prices "should" be determined. I honestly would not want to see my suggestion in place. I was being facetious, but the point was that it was a form of passive-aggressive gouging. If you really need 10 gallons of gas, the price of the last gallon will be more than the price of the first. When you're finished pumping, the price slowly lowers back down to what's advertised on the sign. Sure, you can drive on to the next gas station, or switch to a different pump every couple of minutes, but if the pumps are busy, or you have somewhere to be, or it's just too cold/rainy to fool with, you would be willing to pay extra to just get your gas and go.
How about if the price increases as you pump. All three windows (price per gallon, total price, and gallons pumped) could all increase at the same time.
Not to mention that, as big a fan as I am of Kevin Smith, if it took him $30,000 to make Clerks (plus licensing and distribution fees), and $60 million to make some other movie, then should the part going to Hollywood be less for Clerks than it is for the movie that cost 200 times as much to make?
IP was never about the idea that a person can own an intangible concept. It was about the use of social engineering to make the production of those concepts profitable. (Yes, the founding fathers were socialists. They created the post office and policies whose only purpose was to further the arts and sciences). So, yes, the unauthorized use of a song (I.E., copying, stealing, whatever you want to cal it) is probably more like sneaking into an amusement park. You aren't technically stealing the cost of admission, because you may not have paid to get in, but you are still threatening their business model, and should be required to pay, even if there are plenty of seats to go around.
As for the amount, that is negotiable, but I can agree with GP that the cost should be more than just the cost of the product.
You mean, we can't point to people that hold strong oppinions despite lack of evidence and tell they are similar?
In fact, the people of the Church of X are way more rational. They have no evidence, and won't ever. Making your belif despite conclusive evidence is quite more insane.
I say that as a supporter of climate change (or of those who believe it is happening). But I am saying that it is bad for either side because A). Nobody is ever convinced by the comparison and B). It seems hypocritical to say "don't make that comparison about my inability to meet your impossibly high level of evidence, but it's ok for me to compare it to your inability to meet the perfectly reasonable standard my side has set in some other area". By the time you finish arguing about when and where the analogy is appropriate, you will have accomplished nothing.
But yes, I can agree with your point. I just think there is too much subjective wiggle-room for it to be useful in communicating a point to those who disagree with you.
Does it make less sense to you than, say, religion? The two things seem pretty similar to me.
Maybe it's just me, but the next time I see some conspiracy theorist, denialist, or anybody else who has strong opinions on a controversial topic who makes a post along the lines of:
All followers of the church of x! Your pope (famous person who talks about x) has ordered that you pay indulgences in the form of (something related to x that costs money). And anyone who questions the ultimate truth of x is a heretic who shall be burned at the stake.
I may strangle someone. Not because I am part of the church of whatever x is, but because my tolerance for such deuchebaggery has dropped below the "gonna have to choke a bitch" mark. You haven't crossed that line yet, but you seem to have spotted it and shouted "hey, what's over there?"
I did a search on some IP addresses assigned to overseas US military facilities. Let's just say it turns out US soldiers like transsexuals and big girls. And possibly big transsexual girls.
The military: fighting for our right to spank it to almost any kind of porn we like. I say "you can have your fat transvestite porn, if you want, soldier. You've earned it!"
Sorry, I posted before reading your post. I had the exact same analogy, except that the murderer was seen in a taxi six months ago. You are in that same taxi, today. Therefore, you must be the murderer.
So their point is if IPs change, and it is hard to figure out who broke the law, law enforcement might as well just give up?
I'm all for sharing of information and media freely. Hell! I pirate the shit out of everything, but this is the worst argument for it I have ever heard.
The argument is equivalent to: A murderer used many cars during his escape, since it is hard to pinpoint which one is his we should give up.
How about
People ride cabs all the time. I know, you saw the criminal get in that cab, six months ago. That doesn't mean that whoever is in that cab right now is the criminal
Hairyfeet mentioned that price!=quality, but I want to mention that meritline isn't the only retailer selling cheap shit from China. It's getting hard to find anything that isn't cheap shit from china, regardless of price. As for the high end stuff, well, monster cables probably don't flake off, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting what you paid for.
So you have an e-book version that (thanks to DRM) you can guarantee will get sold to every single student who takes a class using it, plus you save the 15% on production costs. You can probably sell it for 1/3 of the amount you sell the dead tree version for, undercut used book prices, and still make more than you used to. On top of that, if you can get most students to use the e-book instead of the physical book, you can slow down your release cycle (since you no longer have to worry as much about students cutting into your profits by buying used) and save still more money.
I see where we differ, I was thinking no better for students. Yes, the publishers will make a killing and on top of that students will need to cash out for an iPad with no option of doing it on the cheap. If three people can use a $50 book through used sales it's not better for them than each paying $20 for a DRM'd version.
Interesting, but there are some differences:
A. The first customer will probably pay $50 for a new book (or $150 in my wife's case), and then have the option to sell back for $15. B. The bookstore will mark the book up to $35, keep $20 in profit, and sell it to customer #2. C. Customer #2 will sell the book back to the bookstore for $10 or $15. The bookstore will make their profit, and a third customer will come along. D. Either the third customer will sell the book back and the bookstore will end up throwing it in the clearance bin, losing money on the book, or the third customer will not have the option to sell back. (assuming that the book is used only 3 times).
In this scenario, the local bookstore makes money*, and the customer randomly gets screwed with an occasional requirement to buy a new copy of a book at a heavily inflated price. In the DRM model, everybody pays the same price, Apple gets $6 of your $20 textbook purchase, the publisher gets the remaining $14, and the local college bookstore goes out of business because everybody gets their textbooks from iTunes or The Pirate Bay**.
* I don't know how much profit total, since you have to factor in overhead ** Encouraging book manufacturers to provide automated online extras, like test software, that are conveniently located "in the cloud", and require each student to have a serial number to access.
There have already been trials. You give the treatment to one group of at-risk individuals and a placebo to another group. You make sure that they understand that they aren't to rely on this as a cure/certain protection. Then you follow them over the years and see what the infection rate is. If 30% of the control group is infected with HIV at the end and only 5% of the treatment group is infected, you've got a good result. If they are both about the same, your treatment doesn't work.
Isn't it also acceptable under some circumstances to give one group the experimental treatment and to give another an existing treatment, and to measure how this experimental treatment works compared to existing alternatives?
There's only one sure-fire way to be sure you won't contract HIV / AIDS sexually: Be spectacular in bed.
If you are a a Gold Medal-winning bedroom gymnast, your partner will never need to sleep around for satisfaction! Everyone's a winner.
And don't forget to practice! practice! practice! Have sex with anybody and everybody, so that you can develop your skills to the fullest. Then, once you are having port-star quality sex with actual porn stars, they will love you enough to never have sex with anybody else!
You've framed the question wrong. How about this one: "Should the rest of us be mandated to take your garbage if you don't sort it properly?" That is your X, therefore by your own logic, the answer is No. You don't want to sort your garbage? Then you figure out what to do with it, it isn't going in the public landfill.
Nice. You just turned this into a victory for privatization.
Slashdot Mirror
> Ben and Teller
Penn and Teller maybe?
I've seen it many times. I like to sit down with a big bowl of Penn & Jerry's ice cream and watch their inciteful documentaries.
is that an API does not break "unwritten" conventions like always returning true even when the operation was unsuccessful
Most POSIX APIs return true on error and false on failure. The idea is that this lets you write if (something()) { error_handler(); }. I've no idea why they thought this made more sense than if (!something()), but judging by the rest of UNIX I suspect that they had to type their code in morse with one hand while fighting a tiger with the other, so every character saved could mean the difference between life and death...
I was under the impression that this was so that you could return an error code on error. It makes sense in that there are few values that evaluate false, just as there are few necessary variations on "function executed successfully", but there are many ways to screw something up.
Moralizing is what is one of the things I like about scifi. They take ideas that have been pounded into our heads since birth, change a few irrelevant details, and allow you to see the issue with new eyes.
Let's not ignore that, as the article points out, there's a loophole method of getting money from these investments in the form of loans using them as collateral.
Don't these loans need to be paid back at some point? They're going to have to either sell their shares, or earn money from somewhere else, to pay that loan. When that happens, they have to pay tax.
I was wondering that too. How do these loans get paid back?
Not a tax lawyer, but if you die with excessive loans, don't they get repaid out of your family's inheritance, before taxes?
A minute of talk time consumes about 200kB per minute full duplex for typical mobile phone quality. Let's add 100% packet overhead and another 100% for better quality, so we end up with 800kB per minute. Then a gigabyte is 1250 minutes with excellent quality, or about 3000 minutes at normal quality. Do you really think anyone is going to wonder how many minutes they get out of their data plan when loading a typical web page is equivalent to 5 minutes of talk time? SMS makes this even clearer: Do you worry about the number of instant messages you can send with your data allowance? No, you know that it's "enough".
That's my point. Some people don't use their phone for web, ever. Why should they want to do this math? For many of them, they just want a straight and simple answer, even if it actually gives them less service. I can understand, for example, that a well-compressed data stream* will use a variable bit-rate compression, that if combined with efficient background noise reduction could result in conversations using a highly variable amount of data, based on how much of it is noise and how much is silence. Still, many of the people in my community would rather hear "you're getting 450 minutes of talk time" than "you're getting 2.5gb of data usage and your typical conversation uses anywhere from 64-128kps, meaning that you are getting 650-325 minutes", or the more likely advertising response of "you're getting up to 700 minutes"
Of course, I do live in a conservative community.
* And I don't know if common voip solutions do this
"Minutes" is an antiquated concept. It's all data. VoIP is here to stay.
People still would prefer to know how much of the final product they are getting, rather than something that can be used to estimate the quantity of the final product. If your primary use for a cell phone is conversation (mine is not), then you don't request 1gb worth of usage. You want to know how much talk time is available. Just as someone at a restaurant wouldn't want to request $3 worth of hamburger, or chicken measured by the amount of feed needed to produce that quantity of meat.
We need to get the DNA of these plants and reanimate them ASAP!
We would also have to make the sun 6% cooler and remove all oxygen-breathing organisms.
You are aware that sometimes the clock moves AWAY from midnight?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Doomsday_Clock_graph.svg
Yes, at the end of daylight savings time.
This is false. My parents were there.
They cried, because in a tightly controlled country with government media, the loss of your leader is like losing a family member. It's like losing the person the entire country, and you yourself, relied on. They cried because they were at a loss as to what to do. It's losing the person running the country, the only person capable of doing so (or so they believed), and having certainty replaced by uncertainty. If you're a believer, it's like losing your prophet.
That might not have been the situation for everyone, but for a big percentage of the population, it was entirely genuine.
Interesting. Simply knowing that there is one guy in charge, who could lead you to prosperity, or run your country into the ground, one who might have you arrested tomorrow, simply because he does not like your attitude, and that, under this guy, things are running smoothly. Now, he's dead and some stranger has that power. Considering how worked up people get about Presidential elections in the US, I could see how this uncertainty alone would make for a stressful situation.
Just because the cost of crude went up, that doesn't mean that the gas station paid any more for the gas that I am pumping into my car. There is no reason the gas prices AT THE PUMP should change unless the station actually pays more for the delivery.
In the free market, there are few rules about how prices "should" be determined. I honestly would not want to see my suggestion in place. I was being facetious, but the point was that it was a form of passive-aggressive gouging. If you really need 10 gallons of gas, the price of the last gallon will be more than the price of the first. When you're finished pumping, the price slowly lowers back down to what's advertised on the sign. Sure, you can drive on to the next gas station, or switch to a different pump every couple of minutes, but if the pumps are busy, or you have somewhere to be, or it's just too cold/rainy to fool with, you would be willing to pay extra to just get your gas and go.
How about if the price increases as you pump. All three windows (price per gallon, total price, and gallons pumped) could all increase at the same time.
Not to mention that, as big a fan as I am of Kevin Smith, if it took him $30,000 to make Clerks (plus licensing and distribution fees), and $60 million to make some other movie, then should the part going to Hollywood be less for Clerks than it is for the movie that cost 200 times as much to make?
IP was never about the idea that a person can own an intangible concept. It was about the use of social engineering to make the production of those concepts profitable. (Yes, the founding fathers were socialists. They created the post office and policies whose only purpose was to further the arts and sciences). So, yes, the unauthorized use of a song (I.E., copying, stealing, whatever you want to cal it) is probably more like sneaking into an amusement park. You aren't technically stealing the cost of admission, because you may not have paid to get in, but you are still threatening their business model, and should be required to pay, even if there are plenty of seats to go around.
As for the amount, that is negotiable, but I can agree with GP that the cost should be more than just the cost of the product.
You mean, we can't point to people that hold strong oppinions despite lack of evidence and tell they are similar?
In fact, the people of the Church of X are way more rational. They have no evidence, and won't ever. Making your belif despite conclusive evidence is quite more insane.
I say that as a supporter of climate change (or of those who believe it is happening). But I am saying that it is bad for either side because A). Nobody is ever convinced by the comparison and B). It seems hypocritical to say "don't make that comparison about my inability to meet your impossibly high level of evidence, but it's ok for me to compare it to your inability to meet the perfectly reasonable standard my side has set in some other area". By the time you finish arguing about when and where the analogy is appropriate, you will have accomplished nothing.
But yes, I can agree with your point. I just think there is too much subjective wiggle-room for it to be useful in communicating a point to those who disagree with you.
Does it make less sense to you than, say, religion? The two things seem pretty similar to me.
Maybe it's just me, but the next time I see some conspiracy theorist, denialist, or anybody else who has strong opinions on a controversial topic who makes a post along the lines of:
All followers of the church of x! Your pope (famous person who talks about x) has ordered that you pay indulgences in the form of (something related to x that costs money). And anyone who questions the ultimate truth of x is a heretic who shall be burned at the stake.
I may strangle someone. Not because I am part of the church of whatever x is, but because my tolerance for such deuchebaggery has dropped below the "gonna have to choke a bitch" mark. You haven't crossed that line yet, but you seem to have spotted it and shouted "hey, what's over there?"
Linus Tarvoldo!
Yes, all magic incantations end in "o", but you must put a semicolon at the end for it to work... unless its vbscript.
Then it will never work.
I think the employer is also going to see this:
I have plenty of downtime at work.
I do work-related stuff at home.
I want to get paid extra for the work-related stuff I do from home.
And interpret it as:
I put in a full 40 hours this week. Because some of it was stuff you never asked me to do, I want more money.
I did a search on some IP addresses assigned to overseas US military facilities. Let's just say it turns out US soldiers like transsexuals and big girls. And possibly big transsexual girls.
The military: fighting for our right to spank it to almost any kind of porn we like. I say "you can have your fat transvestite porn, if you want, soldier. You've earned it!"
Sorry, I posted before reading your post. I had the exact same analogy, except that the murderer was seen in a taxi six months ago. You are in that same taxi, today. Therefore, you must be the murderer.
So their point is if IPs change, and it is hard to figure out who broke the law, law enforcement might as well just give up?
I'm all for sharing of information and media freely. Hell! I pirate the shit out of everything, but this is the worst argument for it I have ever heard.
The argument is equivalent to: A murderer used many cars during his escape, since it is hard to pinpoint which one is his we should give up.
How about
People ride cabs all the time. I know, you saw the criminal get in that cab, six months ago. That doesn't mean that whoever is in that cab right now is the criminal
Hairyfeet mentioned that price!=quality, but I want to mention that meritline isn't the only retailer selling cheap shit from China. It's getting hard to find anything that isn't cheap shit from china, regardless of price. As for the high end stuff, well, monster cables probably don't flake off, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting what you paid for.
So you have an e-book version that (thanks to DRM) you can guarantee will get sold to every single student who takes a class using it, plus you save the 15% on production costs. You can probably sell it for 1/3 of the amount you sell the dead tree version for, undercut used book prices, and still make more than you used to. On top of that, if you can get most students to use the e-book instead of the physical book, you can slow down your release cycle (since you no longer have to worry as much about students cutting into your profits by buying used) and save still more money.
I see where we differ, I was thinking no better for students. Yes, the publishers will make a killing and on top of that students will need to cash out for an iPad with no option of doing it on the cheap. If three people can use a $50 book through used sales it's not better for them than each paying $20 for a DRM'd version.
Interesting, but there are some differences:
A. The first customer will probably pay $50 for a new book (or $150 in my wife's case), and then have the option to sell back for $15.
B. The bookstore will mark the book up to $35, keep $20 in profit, and sell it to customer #2.
C. Customer #2 will sell the book back to the bookstore for $10 or $15. The bookstore will make their profit, and a third customer will come along.
D. Either the third customer will sell the book back and the bookstore will end up throwing it in the clearance bin, losing money on the book, or the third customer will not have the option to sell back. (assuming that the book is used only 3 times).
In this scenario, the local bookstore makes money*, and the customer randomly gets screwed with an occasional requirement to buy a new copy of a book at a heavily inflated price. In the DRM model, everybody pays the same price, Apple gets $6 of your $20 textbook purchase, the publisher gets the remaining $14, and the local college bookstore goes out of business because everybody gets their textbooks from iTunes or The Pirate Bay**.
* I don't know how much profit total, since you have to factor in overhead
** Encouraging book manufacturers to provide automated online extras, like test software, that are conveniently located "in the cloud", and require each student to have a serial number to access.
There have already been trials. You give the treatment to one group of at-risk individuals and a placebo to another group. You make sure that they understand that they aren't to rely on this as a cure/certain protection. Then you follow them over the years and see what the infection rate is. If 30% of the control group is infected with HIV at the end and only 5% of the treatment group is infected, you've got a good result. If they are both about the same, your treatment doesn't work.
Isn't it also acceptable under some circumstances to give one group the experimental treatment and to give another an existing treatment, and to measure how this experimental treatment works compared to existing alternatives?
There's only one sure-fire way to be sure you won't contract HIV / AIDS sexually: Be spectacular in bed.
If you are a a Gold Medal-winning bedroom gymnast, your partner will never need to sleep around for satisfaction! Everyone's a winner.
And don't forget to practice! practice! practice! Have sex with anybody and everybody, so that you can develop your skills to the fullest. Then, once you are having port-star quality sex with actual porn stars, they will love you enough to never have sex with anybody else!
You've framed the question wrong. How about this one: "Should the rest of us be mandated to take your garbage if you don't sort it properly?" That is your X, therefore by your own logic, the answer is No. You don't want to sort your garbage? Then you figure out what to do with it, it isn't going in the public landfill.
Nice. You just turned this into a victory for privatization.