$125 is close to the median household income in the US. In other words, it's enough to sustain an average family for one day, covering taxes, food, mortgage, petrol, other non-essential stuff, and then some change to the bank. All for a silly number (more precisely a record over an international database) that won't take much more than a phone call, and in some cases just by clicking a few buttons online - it probably doesn't even directly cost them cash, as many governments use tax money to help sustain the system.
Then it's not the only cost to publish a book. You'd probably need to pay up front for marketing, distribution; other middle-men such as retail would at least take a cut from the final sales. It's like a store taking $1 per day just for the privilege to let a book to sit on a shelf in an obscure position. Looks cheap but it makes many paper-back books less than worthless to the author in a few days. If an author pays $125 for such triviality like an ISBN and it's "cheap", then I guess bankruptcy is also cheap. So it's got to be expensive.
The only way they could charge even $25 per number is because they have some kind of absolute power of granting ISBNs, and take advantage of the information asymmetry against "naive authors". The ridiculous $125 price tag, on the other hand, is probably more of a way to make $25 look cheap, as a common marketing technique.
Particles at "negative" temperature like to give up energy. Then there's this explanation: "Temperature measures the willingness of an object to give up energy". This is contradictory.
I think most of the confusion is caused by this horribly nonsensical naming
Jevons Paradox
One would actually see a higher consumption of batteries, and even energy.
If this plan is intended to save energy, I prefer finding something that's really renewable, or cutting the nonsense of measuring economy by growth.
I don't think he believes in what he says. It's sweet talk so he could bait and switch.
I recall from the The God Delusion videos some of his interviews with religious people. He went into a school and interviewed the students, and some other time he talked to an Islamic male. The pupils said stupid things (not inadequate for their age and knowledge), and the muslim basically embarrassed himself.
He didn't talk much about his own opinions in the interviews, and tried hard not to collide with the interviewees. It's a basic aspect of interviews, but it becomes ugly when he presented a one sided story on TV and gave some strong criticisms afterwards. The school was nice to let him in and fool around (and I guess he was also nice when he negotiated), but he returned the favor with utter rudeness. He did not pick on the most "professional" religious quacks, and approached those who can't hold a debate. He appears nice and to lure people who would embarrass themselves. Arguably it was because this style benefits the broadcast company, but someone of his eloquence, displayed manner and general thoughtfulness would have known what he was getting into.
I'm actually on his side about religion, but I think he's playing it dirty.
It's actually because of the researcher's Australian upbringing. Quoted from here:
Growing up in Adelaide, Australia, Cheok had often played with the chickens kept by his grandfather, so he decided to focus on poultry (rule one). He built haptic jackets for the chickens himself (rule two), embedding them with vibrating elements. Tinkering taught him just how difficult it is to produce a gentle, humanlike touch. “The system develops as you build it,” Cheok says. “I see research as iterative—you’re learning from what you’re making.”
It worked out for Steve Jobs because all what was valued is his personal success, and a lot of people were queuing up to be screwed by him.
This won't work with a struggling small company, or some other industry, that couldn't afford a pool of talented people to mistreat. It won't always work for the pedagogical example ("Via Negativa") because there's a societal cost - of wasted talent as mentioned above - other than seeing a brilliant student rolling out.
At least he must have been quite nice to Wozniak.
Niches, in aggregation, is a very large part of the world.
For every person that exists, there is something he likes that most others don't. It could be beer, software, or medicine, and so on. Even if you look at a big, profitable generic category like smart-phones, and among only the big players, there is still a considerable variation of products (except for Apple).
Now Android has its market share because hardware come in many forms that appeal to certain different niches. Crudely you say it's low-end and high-end. Then you can talk about screen-size, processor speed, style. Now it could come to external SD card support, removable batteries.
If you divide the 100% by the number of smart phones you will get a very small number (I won't count properly, but I know HTC has produced 30+ Android phones - much, much more if you include other OS's and brands). A lot of phones don't even hit this small number. Some are simply unsuccessful, but many people simply don't buy a lot of the best-selling phones.
Then there are tens of thousands of software in app-stores. Everyone only cares about some of them, but all these apps are used by somebody, and a sizable proportion is being used constant.
Well, niches are exactly why Facebook and Google want as much data from you as possible. In hindsight their business models should actually encourage all sorts of niches, because a big problem getting in a niche market is not knowing how to find the right customers. They are more likely to seek help from these data-mining advertisers, and they also pay more per click. Niches, both in terms of demand and supply, is probably essential to their business. The problem you state is in the unimaginative that only try to mimic the success of well-known big players.
And nothing anyone said defending the Wikipedia math pages contradicts my initial claim that you shouldn't link those pages to explain math, especially to a bunch of non-mathemeticians on Slashdot.
Nobody's really disputing that. You kept reiterating that Wikipedia Math articles are written by jerks. They're most unhappy about that. To support your point, you basically compared the Wikipedia article to a webpage that's simple enough to suit curious junior high pupils, but it is not up to your own opinion whether one shall cater Wikipedia to this level of pedagogy.
It is wrong to say something's absolutely bad just because something else is better (for a different purpose). For example, I can easily find other people who can talk much more politely in a discussion; does that make you a jerk?
Cells in your body copy themselves and die, everyday. Lucky for your argument, at least most brain cells don't get replaced over one's lifetime. I'd be satisfied if my consciousness is also transferred, which is not something that can be verified in debate.
No offense, but I can claim with high confidence that you'll lose your programming job if you force yourself to use something like the iPad. That was the point. Once these "modern amenities" come out there's no going back.
No. They denied all responsibility and wrongdoing, while failing to acknowledge evidence represented against their claim. In the best case they did not care to investigate properly, worse they are lying out of their teeth. If you believe Steven Mann's story, it should tell you that even McDonald's France is run by dumb idiots. There is no guarantee they will properly regulate and monitor the restaurants about customer treatment until a number of other people fall victim to these various idiots in other locations. But indeed, it's not a PR nightmare, because most don't care, for now.
Most of the raw food got through an industrial process. Modern farming is already both agricultural and industrial I suggest you plant and grind your own wheat.
It's a valid point to raise, and it is up to you to argue against it. Drawing an analogy contains an argument, and he disputes the validity of the argument. In this whole post you made no further justification on how his opinion doesn't trump your hypothesis of "historical lock-in", and you probably never stopped for half a second to reflect. Even if GP was pedantic, his post is harmless compared to your attitude.
All the babbling aside, the point is, for example, you can let a bunch of kids learn the dvorak keyboard, and once one of them start to touch-type, there is little reason to switch to qwerty - they can type on a standard qwerty keyboard whenever the key-mapping is supported. On the other hand, if you learn Esperanto, you can only talk to others who learn Esperanto, and you still need English.
I don't think qwerty will ever be "replaced" by dvorak. That is indeed mostly due to inertia. However, the most valuable thing about of analogies come when you think beyond them. GP mentioned dvorak, but you should put in some more imagination - when there is a problem with the analogy, that's often because a counter-example lies beyond your preconceptions.
Chinese input methods basically use schemes that convert keystroke sequences on typical (English) keyboards to Chinese characters. Many, many different input methods coexist to the day, and there are some main players that couldn't kill each other just yet. They even have different keyboard layouts. Phonetic-based methods are the most prevalent, but non-phonetic based methods usually have their own merits, some have large user-bases, and people will keep teaching it and clinging on it forever.
At least leave some room that different keyboard layouts could prevail in different contexts; for one thing, dumb phones don't use qwerty. It is possible that most iPad users find some non-qwerty layout better for typing, as inertia don't work for them - they already stare and poke their index fingers at their PC keyboards. Even we have to keep an eye on the iPad keyboard because our fingers somehow become fatter than usual. Moreover, unlike the traditional keyboard that comes as hardware, a software keyboard is easy to replace or switch. I think we shouldn't be too stubborn on this topic.
Slashdot Mirror
$125 is close to the median household income in the US
median household income per day
$125 is close to the median household income in the US. In other words, it's enough to sustain an average family for one day, covering taxes, food, mortgage, petrol, other non-essential stuff, and then some change to the bank. All for a silly number (more precisely a record over an international database) that won't take much more than a phone call, and in some cases just by clicking a few buttons online - it probably doesn't even directly cost them cash, as many governments use tax money to help sustain the system.
Then it's not the only cost to publish a book. You'd probably need to pay up front for marketing, distribution; other middle-men such as retail would at least take a cut from the final sales. It's like a store taking $1 per day just for the privilege to let a book to sit on a shelf in an obscure position. Looks cheap but it makes many paper-back books less than worthless to the author in a few days. If an author pays $125 for such triviality like an ISBN and it's "cheap", then I guess bankruptcy is also cheap. So it's got to be expensive.
The only way they could charge even $25 per number is because they have some kind of absolute power of granting ISBNs, and take advantage of the information asymmetry against "naive authors". The ridiculous $125 price tag, on the other hand, is probably more of a way to make $25 look cheap, as a common marketing technique.
To be fair, in a different way it made Alsup a better judge than some others. I guess that's what GP is talking about.
Postdoc - postdoctoral research. It's right after a PhD, not just college. It's also meant to be a temporary job.
Particles at "negative" temperature like to give up energy. Then there's this explanation: "Temperature measures the willingness of an object to give up energy". This is contradictory.
I think most of the confusion is caused by this horribly nonsensical naming
Before ever considering other technological issues, you still need to ask the same questions for that robot.
Jevons Paradox One would actually see a higher consumption of batteries, and even energy. If this plan is intended to save energy, I prefer finding something that's really renewable, or cutting the nonsense of measuring economy by growth.
It's just because they know blocking everyone else is more difficult. They'd even attempt world domination if they believed they could.
I don't think he believes in what he says. It's sweet talk so he could bait and switch.
I recall from the The God Delusion videos some of his interviews with religious people. He went into a school and interviewed the students, and some other time he talked to an Islamic male. The pupils said stupid things (not inadequate for their age and knowledge), and the muslim basically embarrassed himself.
He didn't talk much about his own opinions in the interviews, and tried hard not to collide with the interviewees. It's a basic aspect of interviews, but it becomes ugly when he presented a one sided story on TV and gave some strong criticisms afterwards. The school was nice to let him in and fool around (and I guess he was also nice when he negotiated), but he returned the favor with utter rudeness. He did not pick on the most "professional" religious quacks, and approached those who can't hold a debate. He appears nice and to lure people who would embarrass themselves. Arguably it was because this style benefits the broadcast company, but someone of his eloquence, displayed manner and general thoughtfulness would have known what he was getting into.
I'm actually on his side about religion, but I think he's playing it dirty.
Growing up in Adelaide, Australia, Cheok had often played with the chickens kept by his grandfather, so he decided to focus on poultry (rule one). He built haptic jackets for the chickens himself (rule two), embedding them with vibrating elements. Tinkering taught him just how difficult it is to produce a gentle, humanlike touch. “The system develops as you build it,” Cheok says. “I see research as iterative—you’re learning from what you’re making.”
It worked out for Steve Jobs because all what was valued is his personal success, and a lot of people were queuing up to be screwed by him. This won't work with a struggling small company, or some other industry, that couldn't afford a pool of talented people to mistreat. It won't always work for the pedagogical example ("Via Negativa") because there's a societal cost - of wasted talent as mentioned above - other than seeing a brilliant student rolling out. At least he must have been quite nice to Wozniak.
Niches, in aggregation, is a very large part of the world.
For every person that exists, there is something he likes that most others don't. It could be beer, software, or medicine, and so on. Even if you look at a big, profitable generic category like smart-phones, and among only the big players, there is still a considerable variation of products (except for Apple).
Now Android has its market share because hardware come in many forms that appeal to certain different niches. Crudely you say it's low-end and high-end. Then you can talk about screen-size, processor speed, style. Now it could come to external SD card support, removable batteries.
If you divide the 100% by the number of smart phones you will get a very small number (I won't count properly, but I know HTC has produced 30+ Android phones - much, much more if you include other OS's and brands). A lot of phones don't even hit this small number. Some are simply unsuccessful, but many people simply don't buy a lot of the best-selling phones.
Then there are tens of thousands of software in app-stores. Everyone only cares about some of them, but all these apps are used by somebody, and a sizable proportion is being used constant.
Now don't let me talk about dumbphones...
Well, niches are exactly why Facebook and Google want as much data from you as possible. In hindsight their business models should actually encourage all sorts of niches, because a big problem getting in a niche market is not knowing how to find the right customers. They are more likely to seek help from these data-mining advertisers, and they also pay more per click. Niches, both in terms of demand and supply, is probably essential to their business. The problem you state is in the unimaginative that only try to mimic the success of well-known big players.
Tell me, how does the dissolvability of this new tech make it ideal for surveillance?
Clearing evidence of surveillance? For sidestepping the need for warrants.
1) American't honestly think they are special.
Yes, yes, yes! They can't!
And nothing anyone said defending the Wikipedia math pages contradicts my initial claim that you shouldn't link those pages to explain math, especially to a bunch of non-mathemeticians on Slashdot.
Nobody's really disputing that. You kept reiterating that Wikipedia Math articles are written by jerks. They're most unhappy about that. To support your point, you basically compared the Wikipedia article to a webpage that's simple enough to suit curious junior high pupils, but it is not up to your own opinion whether one shall cater Wikipedia to this level of pedagogy. It is wrong to say something's absolutely bad just because something else is better (for a different purpose). For example, I can easily find other people who can talk much more politely in a discussion; does that make you a jerk?
Cells in your body copy themselves and die, everyday. Lucky for your argument, at least most brain cells don't get replaced over one's lifetime. I'd be satisfied if my consciousness is also transferred, which is not something that can be verified in debate.
Made an unintended moderation. Posting to revert.
No offense, but I can claim with high confidence that you'll lose your programming job if you force yourself to use something like the iPad. That was the point. Once these "modern amenities" come out there's no going back.
Just because time feels slower when you suffer.
Actually, I should have said GGP, which is GGGP to this post.
Because GP proclaimed to have problems due to being a woman.
No. They denied all responsibility and wrongdoing, while failing to acknowledge evidence represented against their claim. In the best case they did not care to investigate properly, worse they are lying out of their teeth. If you believe Steven Mann's story, it should tell you that even McDonald's France is run by dumb idiots. There is no guarantee they will properly regulate and monitor the restaurants about customer treatment until a number of other people fall victim to these various idiots in other locations. But indeed, it's not a PR nightmare, because most don't care, for now.
Most of the raw food got through an industrial process. Modern farming is already both agricultural and industrial I suggest you plant and grind your own wheat.
It's a valid point to raise, and it is up to you to argue against it. Drawing an analogy contains an argument, and he disputes the validity of the argument. In this whole post you made no further justification on how his opinion doesn't trump your hypothesis of "historical lock-in", and you probably never stopped for half a second to reflect. Even if GP was pedantic, his post is harmless compared to your attitude.
All the babbling aside, the point is, for example, you can let a bunch of kids learn the dvorak keyboard, and once one of them start to touch-type, there is little reason to switch to qwerty - they can type on a standard qwerty keyboard whenever the key-mapping is supported. On the other hand, if you learn Esperanto, you can only talk to others who learn Esperanto, and you still need English.
I don't think qwerty will ever be "replaced" by dvorak. That is indeed mostly due to inertia. However, the most valuable thing about of analogies come when you think beyond them. GP mentioned dvorak, but you should put in some more imagination - when there is a problem with the analogy, that's often because a counter-example lies beyond your preconceptions.
Chinese input methods basically use schemes that convert keystroke sequences on typical (English) keyboards to Chinese characters. Many, many different input methods coexist to the day, and there are some main players that couldn't kill each other just yet. They even have different keyboard layouts. Phonetic-based methods are the most prevalent, but non-phonetic based methods usually have their own merits, some have large user-bases, and people will keep teaching it and clinging on it forever.
At least leave some room that different keyboard layouts could prevail in different contexts; for one thing, dumb phones don't use qwerty. It is possible that most iPad users find some non-qwerty layout better for typing, as inertia don't work for them - they already stare and poke their index fingers at their PC keyboards. Even we have to keep an eye on the iPad keyboard because our fingers somehow become fatter than usual. Moreover, unlike the traditional keyboard that comes as hardware, a software keyboard is easy to replace or switch. I think we shouldn't be too stubborn on this topic.