Okay, up to here it sounded like you planned
to make a reasonable point... Do we have the
right to travel without showing ID? Yes. End
of story, right? Hmm...
are we to believe that there is, then, such
a "law"
Of course not, and if we had only that, I would
agree with you 100% (on this particular point).
From the article, howerver, the very first sentence
tells us "The U.S. Department of Justice has asked
an appellate court to keep its arguments secret
for a case in which privacy advocate John Gilmore
is challenging federal requirements to show
identification before boarding an airplane."
However, I would point out here that the law
itself we can read, just not the DoJ's reasons
for enforcing it. Subtle, but each has
entirely different (though equally chilling)
implications.
Not quite the same as "some unnamed worker".
But some form of identification, fake or not,
gives authorities a place to start in an
investigation, rather than nothing at all.
And knowing our whereabouts to sub-1-meter
resolution 24/7 would certainly help an awfully
lot of investigations as well. "Would you mind
wearing this small transmitter for the rest of
your life?"
And if you'd argue against a search, then
you might as well argue against ALL security
measures at airports.
And if people start arguing against that,
why, next thing you know, we'll need to reinstate
the fourth amendment!
Goodness! Lions and Tigers and Bears abound,
Dorothy, so you'd better keep that dainty little
ass on the path!
He should be prosecuted, to the full extent
of the law.
Yeah!
Like those terrifying little 9YO girls I have in
my neighborhood, the little thigs - Going around
drawing these no-doubt-gang-related rectangular
grids on the ground in chalk. Then they even
revel in their defacement, by doing this bizarre
little dance inside the grid.
I think we can all agree we need to put these
worthless punks behind bars, where we can pay
a decent lower-middle class income for them to
watch TV all day. But at least we'd have sidewalks
safe from that damned brightly-colored chalk!
Can't help but think this doesn't really seem
all that revolutionary of a design. With the
original iMac, they made the monitor and the
PC the same nice compact unit. This just
takes the next logical step now that flat
panel displays have come to the mainstream.
Also doesn't seem all that much of a leap from a
tablet PC... Make one a bit bigger, and add ports
for all the standard peripherals, and mount
it vertically. Poof, you have the new iMac.
I will, however, give Apple credit for doing
it first. Might not seem like a real leap
o' engineering, but I've looked forward to
exactly this form-factor. If they make it
use a wireless keyboard and optical mouse as
well... Oooh, what a wonderful thought! A
literally one-wire PC (two if you still use a
wired LAN).
Just sell it for under $1000, and I'll take
three (and here we run into the reason for
which I will probably never buy a Mac...
I'd guess a starting price of $1600-$2400,
depending on how decked out they make it).
In paper industry, some studies have shown
that departments lead by female chiefs, run
more efficiently and have less disputes among
workers.
Well, duhh!
In a "boys club" work environment, you can talk about
whatever you want - Rude, crude, offensive, and no one
cares. This occasionally may lead to a few riled tempers.
Throw some women into the mix, and everything changes.
Since we have sexual harassment laws based on the "feelings"
of the "victim", rather than the intent of the accused,
the friendly banter grinds to a halt. Suddenly, a formerly
happy work force becomes silent, bored, and frustrated.
As a side-effect, efficiency increases (less banter means
more more time to actually work), arguments decrease (what
can you argue about if you can't talk freely about anything?).
But morale? Well, no one cares about morale. Only
productivity.
And anyone who thinks I mean this as a troll or flamebait
has clearly never experienced this transition in person...
Like helplessly watching a tsunami speed toward you.
Not to say that I in any way object to working with women -
I've worked with quite a few that understood the idea of
"humor". I object, however, to the current orientation of
the sexual harassment laws. Basically, if someone bothers
to accuse you, that in itself counts as "proof" of your
"crime". That I consider intolerable.
The stuff the RIAA gets away with in the US
just wouldn't fly in Canada.
...You mean like a tax on all blank recording
media, regardless of intended use, that goes
straight into the RIAA/CRIA's pockets?
Oh, wait, we don't have that in the US. Sorry,
nevermind.
Re:Titan bet not just on life
on
Odds-on Science
·
· Score: 1
I thought the Titan bet was a great deal
until I RTFA and found out it's intelligent
life on Titan. I think I'll pass.
In that case, I'd like to bet six trillion
dollars against, with a whopping payout
of 600 million dollars. Will they take my
country as collateral?
If Titan had intellegent life, we would
have detected it by now. Single-celled life,
I might put a few bucks on just because of the
great odds, but intelligent? No way.
(and for the nit-pickers, yes, I realize
the US owes that much, rather than
having that as its value, but anyone would
recognize "six trillion", whereas no one
would get the result of some convoluted
formula involving GNP:ND ratios before
statistically-probable destabilization).
I'm not a hardware pro, but is this basically
the same as having two seperate chips, or am I
missing the point here?
Yes and no...
For most purposes, this will have the same
effect as having two CPUs. It will take up
a bit less room, probably the same amount
of power (for which two reasons, cooling
will become a huge problem in the
near future), but from outside-the-beige-box,
it will look like just having two CPUs (and
unlike Intel's pathetic "hyperthreading", will
perform like two CPUs as well).
To see why this really matters, you need
to look into the not-so-distant future, perhaps
5 years away. CPUs have started speeding up
less quickly... Perhaps Moore's law hasn't
stopped yet, but we've reached the point where,
to keep pushing it, Intel and AMD need to build
a new chip fab (a multi-BILLION dollar factory)
literally every year. That means either finding
a new way to get quick-and-dirty speed boosts,
or charging a lot more for CPUs.
Now, consider the humble start of the "IC"...
First a single transistor. Then they managed
to put two per chip, then a quad-pack, and now
we have millions of transistors on a single
chip.
I believe this will represent the next big
leap in CPU power. We'll see two, then four,
then probably sixteen (not eight, and although
nine counts as the next square, it just sounds
too strange to use). Then some company (possibly
neither Intel nor AMD) will figure out a way to
deal with heat in a 3 dimensional CPU packing
(Personally, I like the idea of "silicon on
copper pipe", and just let me use the damn
computer instead of spending money on a hot
water heater), and the number of cores will
skyrocket the same way transistor counts did.
Virii is not a word in the English language;
or any other language as far as I know.
Actually, you have it technically correct, but
for the wrong reason.
The correct plural of "virus", as a neuter third
declension, comes out to "vira". "Virii" would result
from the masculine second declension of "virius",
a non-word.
"Viri" could conceivably count as correct, though
only if "virus" has a gender, which it does not
(at least not in Latin). And even with a gender,
if you consider it fourth declension rather than
second, "virus" would count as its own plural,
pronounced with a long "u" sound.
Now, if you want to consider "virus" as a "pure"
English word (since we pronounce it differently
than the Latin anyway), you could use "viruses".
But, you have to consider that approach as a
double-edged sword, because by the exact same
argument, "virii" suddenly becomes a perfectly
valid irregular plural!
So you can argue against "virii". If you
do so, however, you cannot favor "viruses"
without contradicting your own best supporting
argument.
Therefore, as the only really supportable plural
of "virus", we have "vira". That has its own
problems (of a more historical nature than
grammatical), but it would count as the "most"
correct form.
Does anyone else but me think that at MOST
this should be a civil issue?
Yup. Most of us do.
And a few days ago, the 9th Circuit announced that
they agree with us.
I cannot even imagine why Ashcroft
would have chosen to do this now, since the legal
defense amount to pointing at the Grokster
decision and saying "See? Nothing wrong here.
Motion to dismiss."
You mean it blocks all email, and the one
ligitimate email among the 25000 is the
"misclassed" one...
Why did this get modded "funny"? Damned
insightful, IMO!
I currently get around 25k emails per month to
my general-purpose email address. Of those, I
get perhaps three "real" ones, and ten to twenty
ads from places I've legitimately done business
with (but certainly did not sign up to
keep getting email from them).
Looking at it like that, rather than as
originally presented, the situation takes
on a drastically different hue. It
sounds great to say it has a success rate
of 99.996%. It doesn't sound so good to
say that it "only" loses a third of your
legit email.
And how much of the 3GB did you actually
allocate to the JVM on startup?
What? How much what did he what?
But, but, but... Java takes care of all that
nasty memory stuff for the programmer, doesn't
it?
Next you'll tell us that passing objects by
value in a recursive function might cause
some problems. Silly people, Java magically
makes all that go away.
Clearly, the C program cheated. No other
answer.
Memory. Heh. How 1990s of you to even suggest
that.;-)
1) Go to uni library
2) Find book
3) Copy book
4) Put book back on shelf
I have attended a few colleges, and visited a
good number more than that to use their libraries
(for legit purposes, not to copy textbooks), and
have yet to see one where the minimum wage
"work/study" slaves would give a damn that you
violated copyright laws.
Now, copying a complete textbook can cost as
much as buying the book itself (for cheaper
texts, anyway). So, another tip:
1) Find old edition of the book used on-line
(or on a campus "for sale" board) for $5.
2) Copy only the end-of-chapter questions
from the library's version of the
latest-and-greatest
Different editions rarely change more than a
few words, but almost without fail change the
end-of-chapter questions (the only reason to
even buy the book for some easier
courses, if the prof gives a homework grade).
This way, you spend under $10, and actually
get to have a copy of the book.
It's not clear to me how "bitch" can mean
"female".
It doesn't... At least, not human female...
You see, Microsoft totally dominates the
human market for OS software, and has
decided to start branching out to other
species.
So, by "Man", they meant that in the
gender-neutral form, to refer to all humans.
"Bitch" actually refers to female dogs (as
anyone who has ever had a few dogs can tell
you, female dogs have far better linguistic
capabilities than male dogs, so made a more
natural choice to target "Windows for Dogs"
at). Thus, no foul involved here.
And for anyone doubting this, you've seen
MS add little features leading up to this
ever since Windows 95 - Why, by the time they
reached ME (perhaps for "Mutt Edition"?), it
already ran (cue rimshot) dog-slow.
For the average Joe: $20 or under will get
impulse buys ("Not that much if it ends up
sucking"); over $50 means they'll only buy it
if they already know they want it; Over $250
will only get those who really need it and have
done some decent research into alternatives.
Over $1000 means you can guarantee that everyone
will pirate it without even feeling bad ("At that
price, I didn't count as a potential customer
anyway").
For teens and older kids, drop those to $5, $20,
$50 (yes, the average price of a game) and $100,
respectively.
For business customers, the scene changes a bit.
A very small business may behave like a somewhat
more well-to-do average Joe. Once layers of
accountability start appearing, though, the
low and high categories vanish - No impulse
buys, and no piracy. For that reason, as the
business gets bigger, the potential price does
as well, almost without limit. Keep in
mind that the higher the price, the fewer
your potential customer base, though.
Ok, I'm joking. My questions: did Google
do something dishonest, or illegal? I don't
know enough about IPO's to know.
No, nothing dishonest, not even unethical. In
fact, you could go so far as to say they had the
single most "honest" IPO in history.
Rather than the norm of paying a group of
"experts" to decide a good starting price for
their shares (which invariably results in those
experts setting the price WAY too low so their
buddies can all make a killing when the price
goes up), Google basically asked the actual
public what price they would pay to get a good
estimate. Thus, Google made far more than
they would have otherwise, while starting their
stock at a realistic price. This annoyed the
experts, their buddies, and all the middlemen
who would have gotten a cut (by "a cut", read
"the lion's share of the IPO").
The "controversial" drop in starting price you
can consider an incredibly saavy move - It
guaranteed that the price would go up a bit,
but not so much as to get the same sort of
unrealistic bubbles that killed so many
dot-coms. Sort of a built-in reward for those
who jumped in on the IPO, but not so much as
to look unsustainable.
I don't quite understand the details of this
part, but they somehow also managed to make sure
that real people (rather than only Wall Street
scum) could buy shares. Naturally, this caused
a great deal of annoyance to the Wall Street scum
who would normally profit from such an IPO.
Overall, they joined The System while telling
The System to piss off.
As an aside, even for those who would
fault them for bucking the system, I would
point out that they only joined kicking and
screaming. Because they had gotten so big,
even if they had stayed private, SEC rules
would have kicked in that provide all the
hassle of public trading but none of the
benefits. Almost like telling someone "You
make the best widgets around, so we'll take
them. We'll pay you if you want, but we take
them either way".
I live in the same county of the same state I
was born in and I certainly knew Kashmir is a
disputed region between India and Pakistan, and
I certainly knew China refuses to acknowledge
Taiwan exists as a separate entity from
China.
Hypothetical situation for you...
While walking through Belfast, a Catholic and
a Protestant approach you from opposite sides
and each hold a gun to your head. They ask
you your religion. Do you respond, "Sorry,
I need to do more research before answering?"
What response should people take in
addressing "Disputed" regions? Keep in mind
such issues entirely exist as matters
of perception and opinion, rather than physical
reality. So, do you piss off China or Taiwan?
India or Pakistan? Israel or the rest of the
Middle East?
Research would not have prevented these problems,
nor will it prevent similar issues from arising
in the future.
Incidentally, I personally would opt for pissing
off both sides in such issues, since you
can't win either way. Kashmir? No, "New
Islington". Israel and Palestine? "Greater
Iberia". Taiwan? How about "The place we get
cheap electronic goods". Protestant or Catholic?
"Satanist".
Unfortunately, real-world data from a large
ISP shows that these difficulty levels would
mean that significant numbers of senders of
legitimate email would be unable to continue
their current levels of activity.
Translation - Ignoring actual content, mailing
lists look very much like spam, and approaches
to spam that make sending email "expensive"
would also impact mailing lists.
Others have mentioned whitelisting, but I'll
take the (IMO) bolder step of saying "Too Damn
Bad". If it means I won't get a few thousand
spams per week, I'll accept the concept of an
email list becoming nonviable.
Greedy, you might say? Hey, I do subscribe
to a number of mailing lists. Every single
one of them, however, I can read via the web,
and only get them emailed to me as a convenience.
A convenience, I would point out, that spam
completely obliterates, since it takes me
far, far longer to wade through the crap and
find the legit email than it would to just
visit a web page.
So, for those who point out that POW or HashCash
or the like would make most larger mailing lists
impossible, I have little sympathy. This does not
count as a "throwing out the baby with the bathwater"
situation... More like a "draining the tub and a tiny
speck of still-good soap goes down, but we have another
fresh bar in the closet" situation.
Of course, I would still prefer the spam solution of
placing bounties on spammers, paying double if the
hunter brings them in dead (hey, putting someone in
prison costs a lot, y'know). And anyone who
considers that idea a joke, well, not even a little.
We've done enough (I'm from Toronto) to screw
up the environment around this city, we should
NOT be doing this!
Did no one RTFA???
You've already extracted from the exact
same source of water for decades, for use
as drinking water. This just raises the
temperature of your drinking water by about
10C, with a net "gain" derived from reducing
AC costs to the city.
So yes, you can technically say that removing
water from the coldest part of the lake raises
the average temperature. But to turn that into
"we should not be doing this" ignores the
reality of the situation. This results in
less energy consumption overall, a good
result no matter how you look at the situation.
Since they plan to offer this in retail stores, where you
can realistically pay cash, any idea how they plan to enforce
the subscription terms? Or will this turn into another
NetPC(? The similar deal MSN tried a few years ago) fiasco,
where they end up losing huge amounts of money because no
one actually follows through with the subscription?
Though, it really doesn't look like they stand to lose all that
much. For the machine they offer, I expect $300 comes pretty
close to their actual costs. For less than the total contract
(just under $600), you could get a better-equipped eMachine, or
even a Dell or HP.
The problem with that theory is that Al Queda has proven
itself to be rather creative in how it'll attack. I think it's
fair to say they aren't considering "normal" expected methods
(like bombs in a locker) primarily. They're going to be
thinking of new ways we aren't/can't expect.
Bingo. Thank you for pointing that out.
I have an exercise for anyone who doesn't "get" that as
mind-numbingly obvious... Given what we, the public, know
about, think for a few minutes on how you might go about
getting something not allowed into the SoL. Work as a
janitor, perhaps? Canoe during the middle of the night?
Inside your own body (Hey, you can live quite a while with
your digestive organs carefully removed and replaced with
explosives, and these people have proven themselves willing
to die for their cause)?
Now, you probably came up with a few of your own, or perhaps
spotted some obvious flaws with what I suggested. But more
to the point, we can think of things like that. And
you can bet that if we can come up with a few good
ideas, those intent on blowing things up can as well.
Having a false sense of security is worse than realizing
we don't have any/much security.
No kidding... Airport security... Bah! They needed to do one and
only one thing to make airplanes un-hijackable - make the cockpit
and the cabin completely physically distinct, with the crew only
able to enter or exit via their own door with the plane on the
ground. Yet, instead, we get to deal with the shout-and-pounce
squads delaying us needlessly, yet still hear about reporters
sneaking fake weapons through once a week or so. Typical
bureaucratic thinking - Why successfully secure the single
point of weakness, when we can justify spending tax dollars
trying to unsuccessfully secure everything, then
point at the failure to justify spending even more?
I would consider this one situation where keeping
up with the latest MS patch seems like a very
bad idea.
Medical devices undergo huge amounts of
testing to make sure they work correctly. Throw
on the latest patch, and poof, suddently the same
device might not work at all, or might work most
of the time and crash on occasion (probably the
most dangerous situation).
Keeping up with the latest MS patches mostly
only matters on networked machines trying to
run a more-or-less random collection of 3rd
party software. For a standalone medical
device, that simply does not apply, and the
old maxim very much applies - If it don't
break, don't fix it.
Obviously some exceptions to this apply... A machine
that already crashes at random clearly needs some
improvement. But trying the latest LookOut patch
that might break 20 other system components won't
help that - Thus the whole recertification process,
which ONLY the device manufacturer and the
FDA can (and should) have influence over.
Slashdot Mirror
The answer is a resounding "no".
Okay, up to here it sounded like you planned to make a reasonable point... Do we have the right to travel without showing ID? Yes. End of story, right? Hmm...
are we to believe that there is, then, such a "law"
Of course not, and if we had only that, I would agree with you 100% (on this particular point). From the article, howerver, the very first sentence tells us "The U.S. Department of Justice has asked an appellate court to keep its arguments secret for a case in which privacy advocate John Gilmore is challenging federal requirements to show identification before boarding an airplane."
However, I would point out here that the law itself we can read, just not the DoJ's reasons for enforcing it. Subtle, but each has entirely different (though equally chilling) implications.
Not quite the same as "some unnamed worker".
But some form of identification, fake or not, gives authorities a place to start in an investigation, rather than nothing at all.
And knowing our whereabouts to sub-1-meter resolution 24/7 would certainly help an awfully lot of investigations as well. "Would you mind wearing this small transmitter for the rest of your life?"
And if you'd argue against a search, then you might as well argue against ALL security measures at airports.
And if people start arguing against that, why, next thing you know, we'll need to reinstate the fourth amendment!
Goodness! Lions and Tigers and Bears abound, Dorothy, so you'd better keep that dainty little ass on the path!
Install pegboard to entirely cover one wall of your computer room or office.
Mount the boards via standoffs to the pegboard.
Bonus points:
He should be prosecuted, to the full extent of the law.
Yeah!
Like those terrifying little 9YO girls I have in my neighborhood, the little thigs - Going around drawing these no-doubt-gang-related rectangular grids on the ground in chalk. Then they even revel in their defacement, by doing this bizarre little dance inside the grid.
I think we can all agree we need to put these worthless punks behind bars, where we can pay a decent lower-middle class income for them to watch TV all day. But at least we'd have sidewalks safe from that damned brightly-colored chalk!
Can't help but think this doesn't really seem all that revolutionary of a design. With the original iMac, they made the monitor and the PC the same nice compact unit. This just takes the next logical step now that flat panel displays have come to the mainstream.
Also doesn't seem all that much of a leap from a tablet PC... Make one a bit bigger, and add ports for all the standard peripherals, and mount it vertically. Poof, you have the new iMac.
I will, however, give Apple credit for doing it first. Might not seem like a real leap o' engineering, but I've looked forward to exactly this form-factor. If they make it use a wireless keyboard and optical mouse as well... Oooh, what a wonderful thought! A literally one-wire PC (two if you still use a wired LAN).
Just sell it for under $1000, and I'll take three (and here we run into the reason for which I will probably never buy a Mac... I'd guess a starting price of $1600-$2400, depending on how decked out they make it).
In paper industry, some studies have shown that departments lead by female chiefs, run more efficiently and have less disputes among workers.
Well, duhh!
In a "boys club" work environment, you can talk about whatever you want - Rude, crude, offensive, and no one cares. This occasionally may lead to a few riled tempers.
Throw some women into the mix, and everything changes. Since we have sexual harassment laws based on the "feelings" of the "victim", rather than the intent of the accused, the friendly banter grinds to a halt. Suddenly, a formerly happy work force becomes silent, bored, and frustrated.
As a side-effect, efficiency increases (less banter means more more time to actually work), arguments decrease (what can you argue about if you can't talk freely about anything?). But morale? Well, no one cares about morale. Only productivity.
And anyone who thinks I mean this as a troll or flamebait has clearly never experienced this transition in person... Like helplessly watching a tsunami speed toward you.
Not to say that I in any way object to working with women - I've worked with quite a few that understood the idea of "humor". I object, however, to the current orientation of the sexual harassment laws. Basically, if someone bothers to accuse you, that in itself counts as "proof" of your "crime". That I consider intolerable.
The stuff the RIAA gets away with in the US just wouldn't fly in Canada.
...You mean like a tax on all blank recording
media, regardless of intended use, that goes
straight into the RIAA/CRIA's pockets?
Oh, wait, we don't have that in the US. Sorry, nevermind.
I thought the Titan bet was a great deal until I RTFA and found out it's intelligent life on Titan. I think I'll pass.
In that case, I'd like to bet six trillion dollars against, with a whopping payout of 600 million dollars. Will they take my country as collateral?
If Titan had intellegent life, we would have detected it by now. Single-celled life, I might put a few bucks on just because of the great odds, but intelligent? No way.
(and for the nit-pickers, yes, I realize the US owes that much, rather than having that as its value, but anyone would recognize "six trillion", whereas no one would get the result of some convoluted formula involving GNP:ND ratios before statistically-probable destabilization).
I'm not a hardware pro, but is this basically the same as having two seperate chips, or am I missing the point here?
Yes and no...
For most purposes, this will have the same effect as having two CPUs. It will take up a bit less room, probably the same amount of power (for which two reasons, cooling will become a huge problem in the near future), but from outside-the-beige-box, it will look like just having two CPUs (and unlike Intel's pathetic "hyperthreading", will perform like two CPUs as well).
To see why this really matters, you need to look into the not-so-distant future, perhaps 5 years away. CPUs have started speeding up less quickly... Perhaps Moore's law hasn't stopped yet, but we've reached the point where, to keep pushing it, Intel and AMD need to build a new chip fab (a multi-BILLION dollar factory) literally every year. That means either finding a new way to get quick-and-dirty speed boosts, or charging a lot more for CPUs.
Now, consider the humble start of the "IC"... First a single transistor. Then they managed to put two per chip, then a quad-pack, and now we have millions of transistors on a single chip.
I believe this will represent the next big leap in CPU power. We'll see two, then four, then probably sixteen (not eight, and although nine counts as the next square, it just sounds too strange to use). Then some company (possibly neither Intel nor AMD) will figure out a way to deal with heat in a 3 dimensional CPU packing (Personally, I like the idea of "silicon on copper pipe", and just let me use the damn computer instead of spending money on a hot water heater), and the number of cores will skyrocket the same way transistor counts did.
Virii is not a word in the English language; or any other language as far as I know.
Actually, you have it technically correct, but for the wrong reason.
The correct plural of "virus", as a neuter third declension, comes out to "vira". "Virii" would result from the masculine second declension of "virius", a non-word.
"Viri" could conceivably count as correct, though only if "virus" has a gender, which it does not (at least not in Latin). And even with a gender, if you consider it fourth declension rather than second, "virus" would count as its own plural, pronounced with a long "u" sound.
Now, if you want to consider "virus" as a "pure" English word (since we pronounce it differently than the Latin anyway), you could use "viruses". But, you have to consider that approach as a double-edged sword, because by the exact same argument, "virii" suddenly becomes a perfectly valid irregular plural!
So you can argue against "virii". If you do so, however, you cannot favor "viruses" without contradicting your own best supporting argument.
Therefore, as the only really supportable plural of "virus", we have "vira". That has its own problems (of a more historical nature than grammatical), but it would count as the "most" correct form.
Does anyone else but me think that at MOST this should be a civil issue?
Yup. Most of us do.
And a few days ago, the 9th Circuit announced that they agree with us.
I cannot even imagine why Ashcroft would have chosen to do this now, since the legal defense amount to pointing at the Grokster decision and saying "See? Nothing wrong here. Motion to dismiss."
You mean it blocks all email, and the one ligitimate email among the 25000 is the "misclassed" one...
Why did this get modded "funny"? Damned insightful, IMO!
I currently get around 25k emails per month to my general-purpose email address. Of those, I get perhaps three "real" ones, and ten to twenty ads from places I've legitimately done business with (but certainly did not sign up to keep getting email from them).
Looking at it like that, rather than as originally presented, the situation takes on a drastically different hue. It sounds great to say it has a success rate of 99.996%. It doesn't sound so good to say that it "only" loses a third of your legit email.
And how much of the 3GB did you actually allocate to the JVM on startup?
;-)
What? How much what did he what?
But, but, but... Java takes care of all that nasty memory stuff for the programmer, doesn't it?
Next you'll tell us that passing objects by value in a recursive function might cause some problems. Silly people, Java magically makes all that go away.
Clearly, the C program cheated. No other answer.
Memory. Heh. How 1990s of you to even suggest that.
1) Go to uni library
2) Find book
3) Copy book
4) Put book back on shelf
I have attended a few colleges, and visited a good number more than that to use their libraries (for legit purposes, not to copy textbooks), and have yet to see one where the minimum wage "work/study" slaves would give a damn that you violated copyright laws.
Now, copying a complete textbook can cost as much as buying the book itself (for cheaper texts, anyway). So, another tip:
1) Find old edition of the book used on-line (or on a campus "for sale" board) for $5.
2) Copy only the end-of-chapter questions from the library's version of the latest-and-greatest
Different editions rarely change more than a few words, but almost without fail change the end-of-chapter questions (the only reason to even buy the book for some easier courses, if the prof gives a homework grade). This way, you spend under $10, and actually get to have a copy of the book.
It's not clear to me how "bitch" can mean "female".
It doesn't... At least, not human female...
You see, Microsoft totally dominates the human market for OS software, and has decided to start branching out to other species.
So, by "Man", they meant that in the gender-neutral form, to refer to all humans. "Bitch" actually refers to female dogs (as anyone who has ever had a few dogs can tell you, female dogs have far better linguistic capabilities than male dogs, so made a more natural choice to target "Windows for Dogs" at). Thus, no foul involved here.
And for anyone doubting this, you've seen MS add little features leading up to this ever since Windows 95 - Why, by the time they reached ME (perhaps for "Mutt Edition"?), it already ran (cue rimshot) dog-slow.
A good price depends on your target audience.
For the average Joe: $20 or under will get impulse buys ("Not that much if it ends up sucking"); over $50 means they'll only buy it if they already know they want it; Over $250 will only get those who really need it and have done some decent research into alternatives. Over $1000 means you can guarantee that everyone will pirate it without even feeling bad ("At that price, I didn't count as a potential customer anyway").
For teens and older kids, drop those to $5, $20, $50 (yes, the average price of a game) and $100, respectively.
For business customers, the scene changes a bit. A very small business may behave like a somewhat more well-to-do average Joe. Once layers of accountability start appearing, though, the low and high categories vanish - No impulse buys, and no piracy. For that reason, as the business gets bigger, the potential price does as well, almost without limit. Keep in mind that the higher the price, the fewer your potential customer base, though.
Ok, I'm joking. My questions: did Google do something dishonest, or illegal? I don't know enough about IPO's to know.
No, nothing dishonest, not even unethical. In fact, you could go so far as to say they had the single most "honest" IPO in history.
Rather than the norm of paying a group of "experts" to decide a good starting price for their shares (which invariably results in those experts setting the price WAY too low so their buddies can all make a killing when the price goes up), Google basically asked the actual public what price they would pay to get a good estimate. Thus, Google made far more than they would have otherwise, while starting their stock at a realistic price. This annoyed the experts, their buddies, and all the middlemen who would have gotten a cut (by "a cut", read "the lion's share of the IPO").
The "controversial" drop in starting price you can consider an incredibly saavy move - It guaranteed that the price would go up a bit, but not so much as to get the same sort of unrealistic bubbles that killed so many dot-coms. Sort of a built-in reward for those who jumped in on the IPO, but not so much as to look unsustainable.
I don't quite understand the details of this part, but they somehow also managed to make sure that real people (rather than only Wall Street scum) could buy shares. Naturally, this caused a great deal of annoyance to the Wall Street scum who would normally profit from such an IPO.
Overall, they joined The System while telling The System to piss off.
As an aside, even for those who would fault them for bucking the system, I would point out that they only joined kicking and screaming. Because they had gotten so big, even if they had stayed private, SEC rules would have kicked in that provide all the hassle of public trading but none of the benefits. Almost like telling someone "You make the best widgets around, so we'll take them. We'll pay you if you want, but we take them either way".
I live in the same county of the same state I was born in and I certainly knew Kashmir is a disputed region between India and Pakistan, and I certainly knew China refuses to acknowledge Taiwan exists as a separate entity from China.
Hypothetical situation for you...
While walking through Belfast, a Catholic and a Protestant approach you from opposite sides and each hold a gun to your head. They ask you your religion. Do you respond, "Sorry, I need to do more research before answering?"
What response should people take in addressing "Disputed" regions? Keep in mind such issues entirely exist as matters of perception and opinion, rather than physical reality. So, do you piss off China or Taiwan? India or Pakistan? Israel or the rest of the Middle East?
Research would not have prevented these problems, nor will it prevent similar issues from arising in the future.
Incidentally, I personally would opt for pissing off both sides in such issues, since you can't win either way. Kashmir? No, "New Islington". Israel and Palestine? "Greater Iberia". Taiwan? How about "The place we get cheap electronic goods". Protestant or Catholic? "Satanist".
Unfortunately, real-world data from a large ISP shows that these difficulty levels would mean that significant numbers of senders of legitimate email would be unable to continue their current levels of activity.
Translation - Ignoring actual content, mailing lists look very much like spam, and approaches to spam that make sending email "expensive" would also impact mailing lists.
Others have mentioned whitelisting, but I'll take the (IMO) bolder step of saying "Too Damn Bad". If it means I won't get a few thousand spams per week, I'll accept the concept of an email list becoming nonviable.
Greedy, you might say? Hey, I do subscribe to a number of mailing lists. Every single one of them, however, I can read via the web, and only get them emailed to me as a convenience. A convenience, I would point out, that spam completely obliterates, since it takes me far, far longer to wade through the crap and find the legit email than it would to just visit a web page.
So, for those who point out that POW or HashCash or the like would make most larger mailing lists impossible, I have little sympathy. This does not count as a "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" situation... More like a "draining the tub and a tiny speck of still-good soap goes down, but we have another fresh bar in the closet" situation.
Of course, I would still prefer the spam solution of placing bounties on spammers, paying double if the hunter brings them in dead (hey, putting someone in prison costs a lot, y'know). And anyone who considers that idea a joke, well, not even a little.
We've done enough (I'm from Toronto) to screw up the environment around this city, we should NOT be doing this!
Did no one RTFA???
You've already extracted from the exact same source of water for decades, for use as drinking water. This just raises the temperature of your drinking water by about 10C, with a net "gain" derived from reducing AC costs to the city.
So yes, you can technically say that removing water from the coldest part of the lake raises the average temperature. But to turn that into "we should not be doing this" ignores the reality of the situation. This results in less energy consumption overall, a good result no matter how you look at the situation.
This is Slashdot. More likely it's going to go like this:
:-)
Honey, I'm home!
<miaauw>
Great, now I have Dew all over my keyboard, and all my coworkers think I've gone completely mad.
Thanks.
Ok weenie, how do you do that in Windows, using only built-in (non third party) tools?
;-)
Fair enough, but right back atcha - How do you un-gzip and untar a file on a Windows box with no 3rd party tools?
Since they plan to offer this in retail stores, where you can realistically pay cash, any idea how they plan to enforce the subscription terms? Or will this turn into another NetPC(? The similar deal MSN tried a few years ago) fiasco, where they end up losing huge amounts of money because no one actually follows through with the subscription?
Though, it really doesn't look like they stand to lose all that much. For the machine they offer, I expect $300 comes pretty close to their actual costs. For less than the total contract (just under $600), you could get a better-equipped eMachine, or even a Dell or HP.
(And yes, I RTFA, all three of them).
The problem with that theory is that Al Queda has proven itself to be rather creative in how it'll attack. I think it's fair to say they aren't considering "normal" expected methods (like bombs in a locker) primarily. They're going to be thinking of new ways we aren't/can't expect.
Bingo. Thank you for pointing that out.
I have an exercise for anyone who doesn't "get" that as mind-numbingly obvious... Given what we, the public, know about, think for a few minutes on how you might go about getting something not allowed into the SoL. Work as a janitor, perhaps? Canoe during the middle of the night? Inside your own body (Hey, you can live quite a while with your digestive organs carefully removed and replaced with explosives, and these people have proven themselves willing to die for their cause)?
Now, you probably came up with a few of your own, or perhaps spotted some obvious flaws with what I suggested. But more to the point, we can think of things like that. And you can bet that if we can come up with a few good ideas, those intent on blowing things up can as well.
Having a false sense of security is worse than realizing we don't have any/much security.
No kidding... Airport security... Bah! They needed to do one and only one thing to make airplanes un-hijackable - make the cockpit and the cabin completely physically distinct, with the crew only able to enter or exit via their own door with the plane on the ground. Yet, instead, we get to deal with the shout-and-pounce squads delaying us needlessly, yet still hear about reporters sneaking fake weapons through once a week or so. Typical bureaucratic thinking - Why successfully secure the single point of weakness, when we can justify spending tax dollars trying to unsuccessfully secure everything, then point at the failure to justify spending even more?
they're afraid that a group of misfits will spray the inside with evil pink ooze, play late 80's pop music
A Jackie Wilson hit from the 1967 does not really count as "late 80's pop".
I agree though, your idea would warrant such overboard preventative measures. Eeek.
I would consider this one situation where keeping up with the latest MS patch seems like a very bad idea.
Medical devices undergo huge amounts of testing to make sure they work correctly. Throw on the latest patch, and poof, suddently the same device might not work at all, or might work most of the time and crash on occasion (probably the most dangerous situation).
Keeping up with the latest MS patches mostly only matters on networked machines trying to run a more-or-less random collection of 3rd party software. For a standalone medical device, that simply does not apply, and the old maxim very much applies - If it don't break, don't fix it.
Obviously some exceptions to this apply... A machine that already crashes at random clearly needs some improvement. But trying the latest LookOut patch that might break 20 other system components won't help that - Thus the whole recertification process, which ONLY the device manufacturer and the FDA can (and should) have influence over.