I mean really. Who's buying the iPad for the high quality camera and microphone.
And for the extra $300, you can buy a digital tape recorder and a digital camera, and have enough left over for dinner. I'm sure there's a site that can help you find those (except for dinner).
I have a fruit stand. Someone comes to me to buy apples. I sell them a bag off apples. But, when they open the bag, it contains a note that reads:
Consumer: By consumption of this product, you agree to the following terms:
1. There are no guarantees that this is really an apple. It may be a pear, a peach, or something I found in the trash. 2. This may not be safe to eat. I didn't poison this, or inject it with heroin, but if any of that stuff happens to be there, it isn't my responsibility. 3. No refunds. You agreed to pay for the apple, or whatever is in this bag. You can't take it back. 4. If you decide to sue, you can't. 5. If some hippy judge says you can, then we get to choose the jurisdiction. 6. We reserve the right to take this apple back, at any time we want, and replace it with something else. 7. You agree not to do anything interesting with this. That includes baking, converting it into a bong, pipe, or other recreational device, or throwing it in a manner that we may disapprove of. 8. By opening this bag, you have agreed not to communicate any information about the contents of the bag, or the transaction without my approval. 9. You did not purchase an apple product. You have paid for an apple delivery service, contained on a non-product medium. This loophole allows me to circumvent many consumer protections that apply to products, and services.
That statement (the summary, not yours) was too big a clusterfuck for me to process.
How to tell if you are entitled to a pension plan:
How much money does the President make?
What percent of your schools recruitment comes from out of state students?
Are you a janitor, a teacher, a recruiter? Oh, never mind, those things don't factor in.
Largely for state schools it's coming from reduced income from the states general budget. Somewhere along the line we bought into both "everyone needs a college degree" and "government shouldn't do anything"
In both cases, it's just an attempt to pass the responsibility. Employers don't want to train people, so they require 4 years of college and three years of on the job experience for an entry level position. Politicians get elected by promising tax cuts, no matter what. The least powerful person in the equation is the kid who just needs a job, and he'll be the one paying the bill.
Since both of them take radically different views of advanced technologies, people might argue over which is more realistic. I have seen people who take it far beyond that, but my big fanboy moment came from "Farscape", when they reveal that first contact had pretty much made earth more violent. Countries saw technologies that could destroy entire continents and began to fight over who could, and (considering the post 9/11 world) who could not have access to those technologies. Compare this to the star trek view, in which we see Vulcans and say "Holy crap, we gotta create a utopia, and fast!". I think it is fun to argue over which series has a more accurate portrayal of how events would turn out.
Ultimately, some of the most trivial debates are about human nature.
Of course being able to strangle someone over a view screen from 500,000 miles away is a nice weapon, too. It won't win the war, but it sure makes peace negotiations more fun.
And for some people, it means complaining that their taxes are too low while somehow forgetting they have the option of paying more if they want to.
By that logic, nobody should ever complain about welfare. Why should someone complain if his social security payment is too high, his food stamps are too generous, or his medicare covers too much, when he can always just pay the difference in additional taxes?
Every socialist imposition on an unhampered market imposes the will of a privileged class on everyone. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that these impositions will inevitably be used for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. Moreover, each imposition necessarily leads to more of them.
Fire departments. Please explain the following statement:
Fire departments impose the will of a privileged class on everyone. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that fire departments will inevitably be used for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. Moreover, fire departments necessarily leads to more impositions.
Or maybe you can admit that the government can do things that are not Orwellian atrocities.
But to you that rejection is evidence that people are too stupid to buy what you think they should buy.
Exactly! That's why businesses don't work on the honor system. If cars were given out on the honor system the auto industry would collapse. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that these companies need money to stay in business, but you'd have to be an idiot to assume that people will put society's best interests above their own to a large enough extent.
But, somehow, you assume that if a real environmental threat were to occur that people would gladly pay extra...That we would have no problem paying $7 per gallon of gas if the evidence for global warming were just a little more reliable, that businesses would give up competitive advantages, and that we would all come together as a society to solve the problem.
That's not how it works. Real environmental threats do exist, and companies are paying scientists to tell us otherwise, just as tobacco companies paid scientists to say that smoking is safe. They find it cheaper to buy a politician than a solution, and they put their own interests first. Reality seems to disagree with you.
To me, software engineering is like solving a puzzle. You may want to create "puzzle pieces", or bring Lego blocks, and label each one with either a system or a function and explain that this, like math and engineering is really just an advanced form of what we do with puzzles or Lego blocks. Sometimes it means connecting pieces together, and sometimes it means creating new things from scratch.
I am a firm believer that, if I try to take X from someone, and get caught, I need to do far more than "return X". It's not about revenge, but about making this kind of behavior unprofitable enough so that the losses exceed the gains. I didn't buy the game, but if I bought something there, and didn't get EXACTLY what I paid for, including the game, the box, the manual,. and everything else that the manufacturer had wanted me, the customer, to have, then I would feel that they had cheated me.
"X plus a coupon" is a start, but it doesn't fix everything.
Or we could just provide a "security" mode. MS Office just makes a feature that says "no macros or flash of any kind in anything that gets opened". They may already have it, but it is hidden in a dialog box that takes twelve clicks to get to, and will be moved to a different location once Office 2011.5 comes out.Anyway, my big innovation is (wait for it)...
Put it on the ribbon.
That's right! Don't hide the "prevent me from fucking over the entire company because i don't need a motherfucking punch the monkey banner in the middle of our Q3 finances" button. Put it where people, (even your dimwitted bosses boss who would be on welfare if he weren't related to the CEO), can find it.
Troy isn't the main SL developer, he is one of two main developers. SL's original developer is still there, and it's pretty likely Fermilab will find a potential replacement for Troy from their pool of Linux talent.
Right. Garfunkle's still there. They just lost Simon.
During the SCO case, Microsoft was touting that Windows provides "indemnification" against law suits. My memory is quite hazy, but that's where I first heard that term. Apparently, one of the advantages of closed source is that you can legally CYA better than with open source. In fact I wrote a paper discussing the possibility of a company intentionally contributing their own code to a competing open source project so that they would have the option to sue if the project got too big. (IANAL, btw)
I was always under the impression that patents were intended for inventions, formulas/equations, and processes.
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Now, IANAL, and this could be a misinterpretation, but it sounds like "process" is just another word for "algorithm". Either way, you do have to ask, "why is it that we don't see new software as "digital inventions" if they do something that no previous software has done"? I shouldn't be able to patent an app that can accurately determine your life expectancy by scanning your palm, but I can patent a custom-made PC that contains that app? Why is that?
And just wanted to mention that militant atheists make passionate rants that may offend people. The world would be a wonderful place if the worst thing a militant theist ever did was write a screed about why he feels that people with other beliefs are being irrational.
The problem there, is, if my wife and I don't want to have another child, should we be celibate? We don't want another child, ever. Should we lie next to each other every night for the rest of out lives and never have sex again? Or are we sinning by not pumping out a litter?
I don't know if I can do it justice (not a scientist), but imagine that you have a group of species x, living in a mountain range. Some, which we will call subspecies Y are separated and wander off into the desert. Life is difficult for Y, but those with a lower metabolism may fare better in the heat, with limited amounts of water. One of them has a mutation that makes him a little bit darker than the rest, and might protect him from the sun. In time, this mutation spreads through the population. In time, one has a mutation that makes him retain water. This spreads through the population. Keep this up over a few thousand years, and you will find that there is never a point at which they "jumped species". In fact, there was never a point at which one was radically different from the rest of the village. Instead, each mutation would be a small change that would pull the village in one direction or another, over time. But, if you were to reintroduce species X with subspecies Y, there will be a point at which they simply are no longer biologically compatible. This is called speciation.
So, Lucy may have been a member of a village that was an early descendant of man, but every organism that reproduces in a species that doesn't go extinct is a missing link between its' ancestors and its descendents. Lucy was only special in that we didn't have any fossils from "our" ancestry from that time period. As for racist arguments, it is impossible to objectively state where one species ends and another begins, but the ability of produce interracial children is a hint that African Americans are just as human as the rest of us.
Having had "physical labor" jobs and "thinking" jobs I find I need much more breaks when doing "thinking" jobs. I also require more sleep. Back in the days of physical labor I could work 12-14 hour days, get 4-5 hours of sleep and be back on my feet no problem. I'm capable of having 10-12 hour days doing work that requires a lot of mental focus but that's not something I can sustain for more than about a week. And after that I need a bit of a recovery period before I'm back to normal.
Is that the nature of the job, or because you were younger then?
The Republican party did not ally itself with the "bible-thumpers". The Republican party is the most logical place for them.
Why is that? You have a group that wants to use the government to enforce it's religious taboos on society, and they turn to the party that loves "liberty"?
I'll admit that my understanding of history is bad, but it makes a little more sense to say that it is a cultural thing. That in the sixties, with the civil rights act, when the country played musical chairs, politically, the solid south went from being solidly democrat to solidly republican. When the South crossed the party line, they took their social views with them, but were a little more open to the GOP's economic views.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean really. Who's buying the iPad for the high quality camera and microphone.
And for the extra $300, you can buy a digital tape recorder and a digital camera, and have enough left over for dinner. I'm sure there's a site that can help you find those (except for dinner).
Obviously, you've never been a college student
Analogy:
I have a fruit stand. Someone comes to me to buy apples. I sell them a bag off apples. But, when they open the bag, it contains a note that reads:
Consumer:
By consumption of this product, you agree to the following terms:
1. There are no guarantees that this is really an apple. It may be a pear, a peach, or something I found in the trash.
2. This may not be safe to eat. I didn't poison this, or inject it with heroin, but if any of that stuff happens to be there, it isn't my responsibility.
3. No refunds. You agreed to pay for the apple, or whatever is in this bag. You can't take it back.
4. If you decide to sue, you can't.
5. If some hippy judge says you can, then we get to choose the jurisdiction.
6. We reserve the right to take this apple back, at any time we want, and replace it with something else.
7. You agree not to do anything interesting with this. That includes baking, converting it into a bong, pipe, or other recreational device, or throwing it in a manner that we may disapprove of.
8. By opening this bag, you have agreed not to communicate any information about the contents of the bag, or the transaction without my approval.
9. You did not purchase an apple product. You have paid for an apple delivery service, contained on a non-product medium. This loophole allows me to circumvent many consumer protections that apply to products, and services.
Enjoy!
That statement (the summary, not yours) was too big a clusterfuck for me to process.
How to tell if you are entitled to a pension plan:
How much money does the President make?
What percent of your schools recruitment comes from out of state students?
Are you a janitor, a teacher, a recruiter? Oh, never mind, those things don't factor in.
That's because it's easy to raise private funds for buildings, but it's much harder to raise private funds for faculty salary.
Maybe if the professor was required to tattoo a donor's name on his forehead and stand in a prominent place, that would change.
Largely for state schools it's coming from reduced income from the states general budget. Somewhere along the line we bought into both "everyone needs a college degree" and "government shouldn't do anything"
In both cases, it's just an attempt to pass the responsibility. Employers don't want to train people, so they require 4 years of college and three years of on the job experience for an entry level position. Politicians get elected by promising tax cuts, no matter what. The least powerful person in the equation is the kid who just needs a job, and he'll be the one paying the bill.
Since both of them take radically different views of advanced technologies, people might argue over which is more realistic. I have seen people who take it far beyond that, but my big fanboy moment came from "Farscape", when they reveal that first contact had pretty much made earth more violent. Countries saw technologies that could destroy entire continents and began to fight over who could, and (considering the post 9/11 world) who could not have access to those technologies. Compare this to the star trek view, in which we see Vulcans and say "Holy crap, we gotta create a utopia, and fast!". I think it is fun to argue over which series has a more accurate portrayal of how events would turn out.
Ultimately, some of the most trivial debates are about human nature.
Of course being able to strangle someone over a view screen from 500,000 miles away is a nice weapon, too. It won't win the war, but it sure makes peace negotiations more fun.
And for some people, it means complaining that their taxes are too low while somehow forgetting they have the option of paying more if they want to.
By that logic, nobody should ever complain about welfare. Why should someone complain if his social security payment is too high, his food stamps are too generous, or his medicare covers too much, when he can always just pay the difference in additional taxes?
Every socialist imposition on an unhampered market imposes the will of a privileged class on everyone. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that these impositions will inevitably be used for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. Moreover, each imposition necessarily leads to more of them.
Fire departments. Please explain the following statement:
Fire departments impose the will of a privileged class on everyone. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that fire departments will inevitably be used for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. Moreover, fire departments necessarily leads to more impositions.
Or maybe you can admit that the government can do things that are not Orwellian atrocities.
But to you that rejection is evidence that people are too stupid to buy what you think they should buy.
Exactly! That's why businesses don't work on the honor system. If cars were given out on the honor system the auto industry would collapse. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that these companies need money to stay in business, but you'd have to be an idiot to assume that people will put society's best interests above their own to a large enough extent.
But, somehow, you assume that if a real environmental threat were to occur that people would gladly pay extra...That we would have no problem paying $7 per gallon of gas if the evidence for global warming were just a little more reliable, that businesses would give up competitive advantages, and that we would all come together as a society to solve the problem.
That's not how it works. Real environmental threats do exist, and companies are paying scientists to tell us otherwise, just as tobacco companies paid scientists to say that smoking is safe. They find it cheaper to buy a politician than a solution, and they put their own interests first. Reality seems to disagree with you.
To me, software engineering is like solving a puzzle. You may want to create "puzzle pieces", or bring Lego blocks, and label each one with either a system or a function and explain that this, like math and engineering is really just an advanced form of what we do with puzzles or Lego blocks. Sometimes it means connecting pieces together, and sometimes it means creating new things from scratch.
I am a firm believer that, if I try to take X from someone, and get caught, I need to do far more than "return X". It's not about revenge, but about making this kind of behavior unprofitable enough so that the losses exceed the gains. I didn't buy the game, but if I bought something there, and didn't get EXACTLY what I paid for, including the game, the box, the manual,. and everything else that the manufacturer had wanted me, the customer, to have, then I would feel that they had cheated me.
"X plus a coupon" is a start, but it doesn't fix everything.
Or we could just provide a "security" mode. MS Office just makes a feature that says "no macros or flash of any kind in anything that gets opened". They may already have it, but it is hidden in a dialog box that takes twelve clicks to get to, and will be moved to a different location once Office 2011.5 comes out.Anyway, my big innovation is (wait for it)...
Put it on the ribbon.
That's right! Don't hide the "prevent me from fucking over the entire company because i don't need a motherfucking punch the monkey banner in the middle of our Q3 finances" button. Put it where people, (even your dimwitted bosses boss who would be on welfare if he weren't related to the CEO), can find it.
Troy isn't the main SL developer, he is one of two main developers. SL's original developer is still there, and it's pretty likely Fermilab will find a potential replacement for Troy from their pool of Linux talent.
Right. Garfunkle's still there. They just lost Simon.
(Or is it the other way around?)
During the SCO case, Microsoft was touting that Windows provides "indemnification" against law suits. My memory is quite hazy, but that's where I first heard that term. Apparently, one of the advantages of closed source is that you can legally CYA better than with open source. In fact I wrote a paper discussing the possibility of a company intentionally contributing their own code to a competing open source project so that they would have the option to sue if the project got too big. (IANAL, btw)
Yet another reason not to listen to people who wear wooden shoes.
I'm sorry, but we have lost the right to make fun of other people's shoes.
I was always under the impression that patents were intended for inventions, formulas/equations, and processes.
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Now, IANAL, and this could be a misinterpretation, but it sounds like "process" is just another word for "algorithm". Either way, you do have to ask, "why is it that we don't see new software as "digital inventions" if they do something that no previous software has done"? I shouldn't be able to patent an app that can accurately determine your life expectancy by scanning your palm, but I can patent a custom-made PC that contains that app? Why is that?
(Practical matters aside, of course).
And just wanted to mention that militant atheists make passionate rants that may offend people. The world would be a wonderful place if the worst thing a militant theist ever did was write a screed about why he feels that people with other beliefs are being irrational.
Probably not; "amen" is a religious expression.
Nice try. It is hebrew that means "So let it be". But thanks for playing, and good luck in 5th grade in the fall.
This from the guy who just finished complaining about "hipsters"...You may want to take a second look at your comments,
The problem there, is, if my wife and I don't want to have another child, should we be celibate? We don't want another child, ever. Should we lie next to each other every night for the rest of out lives and never have sex again? Or are we sinning by not pumping out a litter?
Apologies for throwing a link at you without having fully read it*, but here is something that may help.
* This looks like something I won't have time to read at the moment.
I don't know if I can do it justice (not a scientist), but imagine that you have a group of species x, living in a mountain range. Some, which we will call subspecies Y are separated and wander off into the desert. Life is difficult for Y, but those with a lower metabolism may fare better in the heat, with limited amounts of water. One of them has a mutation that makes him a little bit darker than the rest, and might protect him from the sun. In time, this mutation spreads through the population. In time, one has a mutation that makes him retain water. This spreads through the population. Keep this up over a few thousand years, and you will find that there is never a point at which they "jumped species". In fact, there was never a point at which one was radically different from the rest of the village. Instead, each mutation would be a small change that would pull the village in one direction or another, over time. But, if you were to reintroduce species X with subspecies Y, there will be a point at which they simply are no longer biologically compatible. This is called speciation.
So, Lucy may have been a member of a village that was an early descendant of man, but every organism that reproduces in a species that doesn't go extinct is a missing link between its' ancestors and its descendents. Lucy was only special in that we didn't have any fossils from "our" ancestry from that time period. As for racist arguments, it is impossible to objectively state where one species ends and another begins, but the ability of produce interracial children is a hint that African Americans are just as human as the rest of us.
Stem cells are people.
Corporations are people.
But somehow poor people are racoons.
Having had "physical labor" jobs and "thinking" jobs I find I need much more breaks when doing "thinking" jobs. I also require more sleep. Back in the days of physical labor I could work 12-14 hour days, get 4-5 hours of sleep and be back on my feet no problem. I'm capable of having 10-12 hour days doing work that requires a lot of mental focus but that's not something I can sustain for more than about a week. And after that I need a bit of a recovery period before I'm back to normal.
Is that the nature of the job, or because you were younger then?
The Republican party did not ally itself with the "bible-thumpers". The Republican party is the most logical place for them.
Why is that? You have a group that wants to use the government to enforce it's religious taboos on society, and they turn to the party that loves "liberty"?
I'll admit that my understanding of history is bad, but it makes a little more sense to say that it is a cultural thing. That in the sixties, with the civil rights act, when the country played musical chairs, politically, the solid south went from being solidly democrat to solidly republican. When the South crossed the party line, they took their social views with them, but were a little more open to the GOP's economic views.