You haven't struggled one bit. You actively worked (by your own admission) for nearly forty years to support the organization's bias and intolerance.
I feel like a coward. Because I am a coward. I tell myself about the greater good, and put it out of my mind.
No, you're much worse than a coward. A coward is influenced by fear or force - and you are neither. You could walk away at any time, and you do not. You're a collaborator - and a willing one.
Or, in other words, the national organization tolerates (nay, tacitly encourages) discrimination, bigotry, intolerance, and bias by allowing local branches to enforce their faith on Scouts. So yes, as the grandparent says, you should know what you're getting into because the organization tolerates such things - all it takes is one bad apple, and in the case of the Boy Scouts there's a *lot* of bad apples. (In my area, it's practically a branch of the Mormon church.)
Has plumbing really become dependent on electronic control systems? Or does this phenomenon somehow affect gravity too?
Plumbing infrastructure includes pumps as well as remotely controlled valves, chemical injection, sensors of various types, etc... Why would you think water processing (either raw into drinkable or sewage into disposable) wouldn't be reliant on electronic controls in the first place? This is 2012 after all.
Viewtron was just another America Online, Prodigy, Compuserve, etc (but even worse, because it was also hardware based). A proprietary walled garden of content that nickel and dimed users to death, with very limited selection, slow performance, and expensive hardware.
I know "walled garden"[1] and "nickle and dime"[2] are popular memes/insults nowadays, but... your claim that Viewtron failed because they did such thing fails to square with reality where CIS, AOL, and Prodigy succeeded *despite* doing such things. (Kind of, as explained in the footnotes.) Within two years of Viewtron's failure, you had CIS, Delphi, DJIS, and GeNIE all using that selfsame business model and doing quite well. The AOL and Prodigy came alone a few years later using the same model and did very well indeed.
You'll have to look elsewhere, without your rose colored glasses, to find an explanation.
[1] They weren't really walled gardens in the modern sense anyhow... because there was no larger outside world to be walled off from.
[2] Which no major service actually did in the modern sense either. There was a single flat rate connect fee, and extra fees were fairly rare.
The writing's been on the wall for years. If your car gets 35mpg and you live within 15 miles of your job, an increase of $2 a gallon hits you with a whopping $5.80 increase per week -- what's that, a big mac? A latte and a half?
Assuming your budget stretches to such luxuries, sure. I know many people for whom $5.80 a week will either have to come out of their budget for staples.
And if you *haven't* got a fuel-efficient car and tried to live where you work or close to transit, given how long we've known that gas prices fluctuate in response to world events, well, you've done it to yourself. Shut up.
Yes. Because everyone has the budget for a well maintained new car and the freedom to afford a house wherever they want.
You've gotten modded 'Insightful', but you aren't.
Real values of the houses cannot and should not go up
Yes - housing prices should be prevented from obeying market forces. The fixed supply and increasing demand should not cause an increase in value.
I had a funny thread going on here, the guy can't understand basic inflation and that his house price is falling in terms of real money and in terms of his purchasing power, he expects the value of his house to go up, believe it or not.
I can believe, because he has an intuitive understanding of how economics works. You on the other hand...
It's actually hard to speculate in oil, simply because there's no place to store enough to make a huge difference.
Um... you do understand that you don't have to physically take possession of, or store a commodity to speculate in it? Heck, the commodity doesn't even have to physically exist yet to speculate in it for that matter. It's called a futures market.
On top of which, there are millions of barrels 'in storage' on any given day - onboard tankers during the days and weeks they're in transit to their destination.
To put this in Slashdot terms, supposed you had a complete set of Babylon 5 collector plates that were worth $100 today, and you expected them to be worth $1000 next year from now, would you sell them now or wait? The smart thing to do is either wait until next year, or require the buyer to pay you a premium today above the $100 asking price. Expectations affect the price. And if you wait until next year, you have reduced the global supply of collector plates on sale, so the price goes up a bit to compensate.
To put this in basic terms - your understanding of economics it quite lacking. It's the expectation of the *buyer* that sets prices, not the seller. No matter what you expect prices to do in the next year, it's the buyers decision to pay that premium - or find someone whose opinion about the future price matches theirs. This is where the speculators and futures traders artificially distort the market - by eliminating the supply of cheap plates.
If you're really worried about speculators, buy a Prius, Leaf, or Volt. Last time I checked, no one's been able to form a cartel on sunshine and wind.
When sunshine or wind become a reasonable fraction of our energy generation... that would be a reasonable course of action. And you fail to note that they are effected by the 'last barrel' effect too... regardless of the cost of generation they have no incentive to sell at less than the spot market price set by other sources - especially since they have to sell while the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.
Remember how Liberty dollar and other gold currencies ended up?
The backers of the Liberty Dollar broke the law by revaluing their currency to something other than the US dollar. That the authorities took a dim view of breaking the law should neither be a surprise or be seen as evidence of some dark conspiracy. That, along with the list of community currencies in the link above should serve as evidence that you're either ill-informed, or operating on bias and assumptions rather than facts. (Or in the worst case, both.) The fact is, it's trivially easy and completely legal to start an alternative currency in the US and the laws surrounding them are astonishingly simple to comply with.
Google's problems, I suspect, stem from the need/desire to operate an alternative currency internationally - which is indeed fraught with problems.
If I were to create a startup based on alternative currencies ideas similar to Google's P2P money or Ripple, then Stockholm would be a much better place than Silicon Valley, all due to the absurd US anti-money laundering regulation.
That sounds suspiciously like a "no true Scotsman" argument - especially as I doubt that Sweden doesn't have laws and regulations to prevent money laundering. In fact, a quick Google search reveals that indeed they do.
The mistake both you and the OP are making is in mistaking Kodak for a camera company - it wasn't.
It's possible to look at Kodak as a film camera that sold cameras in order to sell more film and film processing equipment and services
In the same way it's possible to view General Motors as a audio equipment wholesaler - since it sells radios in order to sell more cars. Or, in other words, just because it's possible doesn't mean it's even remotely rational.
That doesn't mean failure was inevitable. The mistake you (and many others) are making is in thinking that companies can't change and refocus.
In some reality where I said any such thing, that might be true. But I didn't. What I said you (and others) are failing to understand why they died because you don't understand what kept them alive. (And it's equally apparent you don't understand the other businesses you cite either.)
The problem Kodak faced wasn't that they couldn't have become a digital photography business. The problem Kodak faced was that the digital business was so different from what they are good at that the restructuring costs were crippling, *precisely because they were perfectly adapted to the previous era.*
Nonsense. The problem wasn't that they couldn't change, but that they didn't change. Nikon and Canon (and Olympus and Fuji and countless other film-era companies) made the switch just fine.
Bit none of those were so heavily film dependent (except possibly Fuji) as Kodak was. The mistake both you and the OP are making is in mistaking Kodak for a camera company - it wasn't.
Kodak was a film company, with cameras being only a minor supporting player.. Film for consumer cameras. Film for x-ray machines. Film for radiography. Film for spy satellites. Film for printing plants. Film for movies, both consumer and commercial. Film for... every purpose under the sun. And backing up the film business, developing chemicals by the tanker full and photographic paper by the acre.
But, one by one, each of things went digital (in one form or another) or Kodak's marketshare fell to cheaper imports. (Fuji for consumer 35mm notably.) With 90% of their business gone, they were hardly in a position to retool around the 2% that consumer cameras represented. (The remaining 8% is various support services, consulting, etc...)
And as many companies failed in the digital transition as made is successfully.
In the internet era its more realistic to order online and wait a day or two, than to invest that kind of windshield time.
Only if you're content to accept whatever they ship you... and content to not compare products (like the smells of different hops)... etc... etc..
The internet is great for ordering things that are mass produced identical boxes (like books, cameras or games), not so much for anything else. I've learned a great deal about hops and grains because I invested windshield time.
A battery consists of an Anode, Cathode and Electrolyte.
No, a cell consists of those things - a battery is a collection of one or more cells. The public often confuses the two because the batteries most often encountered in day-to-day life are in fact (technically speaking) single cell batteries.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the terms 'battery' and 'cell'. A battery is the collection of cells. So a Tesla could be bricked by a failed battery but it is tolerant to a failure of individual cells. This is not surprising.
Semantics.
No, not semantics, but rather proper use of terminology. The AC is correct - a battery is a collection of cells. A battery pack is a collection of batteries. (The battery being the smallest individually replaceable part in the pack.)
That's why a "D" cell battery is called a "single cell battery" - because, duh, there's only a single cell in the battery. That's why automotive type batteries (of the type you add water to) have multiple vent caps - because each individual cell must be separately vented and/or topped off with water.
The quoted IDC analyst adds to the confusion (at least to those of us versed in standard terminology) by using the terms battery and cell interchangeably, which is the same mistake often made by the general public - you for example.
I've actually been following ion powered (and all space flight) for a long time now and have wondered that ever since Deep Space 1 (no, not a TV series) "proved" the technology worked (that was one of its main jobs, it was a technology demonstrator) they didn't use ion engines on the space craft that used RTGs.
Because ion drives are heavy, and their fuel tanks are heavier - and the wiring and controls are complex. So, weight to take away from payload, and more things to break, for very little return. What's not to like?
Considering the distance it has to travel, an ion drive could've really sped things up (or conversely allowed it to brake, and orbit Pluto!)
Nope. While ion drives have insanely high ISP's, they have almost no thrust. And it's thrust you want for braking into orbit, especially for small bodies like Pluto. (And that's on top of the whole "the drive and it's fuel would replace 90% of the payload" problem.)
Someday, when we talk about sample return missions and the delta-V requirements at least double (and the fuel requirements go up geoemetrically!), ion drives (or their derivatives like the Vasimir drive) will be essential.
Before that can take place- two things need to happen. The first is a power supply vastly more efficient and more powerful than pretty much anything built to date has to be invented, and has be light enough to not eat up significant payload. The second is someone needs to develop an ion drive (or derivative) that works worth a damn with much lighter fuels than they currently do. Then, and only then, will ion engines (or derivatives) stop being a solution in search of problem.
But until then, scientists and engineers in need of funding will keep beating the drum of our wonderful ion powered future - only a few years off. (Just like it has been since the 50's.)
Animal rights activists aren't trying to stop the killing of animals altogether. They are trying to stop the unnecessary killing and torture of animals.
I don't know about your planet - but here on earth animal rights activists form a spectrum, and the vast majority *are* trying to stop the killing of animals altogether. You don't need to be an apologist for them, and you just look stupid for trying to whitewash their activities.
How many times is this going to be 'discovered' and featured on the front page of Slashdot? It's old news. We get it. No need to publish another story on the topic, there's been one a quarter or so for years.
You're on slashdot, so you're a developer, or at least have some interest in that area. You make appreciate that there probably won't be any difference in time between an app with a splash screen and once with a launch image that looks like the skeleton of the app.
Wrong in the first sentence, correct in the second.
But most people aren't developers. Which isn't the same as being as stupid as an eggplant. And even you, with your brain the size of a planet, respond more subconsciously and emotionally to these things, than logically.
And here we have the reverse situation - correct on the first, wrong on the second. (Or more accurately, my emotional response will be annoyance - because I know I'm being lied to, not the fluffy nonsense you discuss below.)
In the general case, a splash-screen is perceived as stop-light. A sign that says WAIT. A launch image gives the feeling that an app is quicker - that it's actually starting faster.
A skeleton launch image will also put your brain in the model of the app sooner than a splash screen will. Such that you're thinking about what your first interaction will be earlier.
All of which depends on the user never figuring out they they are being lied to. Hence, eggplant.
This stuff is all pretty standard stuff in mobile UX design. If you see a mobile app with a splash screen, you can be sure it's a badly designed app, an app that wasn't designed at all, or at least one who's design has been compromised by management that don't understand UX design.
Yeah, it's so standard that virtually every app I've ever seen, when starting from scratch (I.E. invoked from the screen and not running) displays a splash screen. But this damages your sense of self estem - so you invoke 'no true Scotsman'.
A "lie" that the UI is starting to work earlier than it really does is better than a splash screen, and the article makes that point.
Why is a lie better? Unless you have the intellectual capacity of overcooked eggplant - you *know* the program isn't available yet. It's *still* a splash screen.
Yes, that. Sign up with a new account and compartmentalize your activities appropriately.
Remember when information compartmentalization was the concern of 3 letter agencies and not part of the everyday life of the average citizen?
That was probably back in the same era when you walked uphill both ways, in six feet of snow and across broken glass to school. Right?
I've only got one birthday left between me and fifty - and I've been practicing information compartmentalization practically all my life. Even as a pre-teen I was up to things (like heaving rocks through the windows of an empty house) that I didn't want my parents to know about. On the flip side, I didn't want my friends to know that I played with Barbie dolls with my sister. Etc... etc...
Not to mention things that society found objectionable while I was growing up... Being gay, or dating someone not of your race, or religion, or that you weren't married to for example. You sure as hell compartmentalized those.
Just because we didn't have a term for it doesn't mean we didn't practice it.
Slashdot Mirror
You haven't struggled one bit. You actively worked (by your own admission) for nearly forty years to support the organization's bias and intolerance.
No, you're much worse than a coward. A coward is influenced by fear or force - and you are neither. You could walk away at any time, and you do not. You're a collaborator - and a willing one.
Or, in other words, the national organization tolerates (nay, tacitly encourages) discrimination, bigotry, intolerance, and bias by allowing local branches to enforce their faith on Scouts. So yes, as the grandparent says, you should know what you're getting into because the organization tolerates such things - all it takes is one bad apple, and in the case of the Boy Scouts there's a *lot* of bad apples. (In my area, it's practically a branch of the Mormon church.)
LOL. But I assume you do know what staple means in context?
Plumbing infrastructure includes pumps as well as remotely controlled valves, chemical injection, sensors of various types, etc... Why would you think water processing (either raw into drinkable or sewage into disposable) wouldn't be reliant on electronic controls in the first place? This is 2012 after all.
I know "walled garden"[1] and "nickle and dime"[2] are popular memes/insults nowadays, but... your claim that Viewtron failed because they did such thing fails to square with reality where CIS, AOL, and Prodigy succeeded *despite* doing such things. (Kind of, as explained in the footnotes.) Within two years of Viewtron's failure, you had CIS, Delphi, DJIS, and GeNIE all using that selfsame business model and doing quite well. The AOL and Prodigy came alone a few years later using the same model and did very well indeed.
You'll have to look elsewhere, without your rose colored glasses, to find an explanation.
[1] They weren't really walled gardens in the modern sense anyhow... because there was no larger outside world to be walled off from.
[2] Which no major service actually did in the modern sense either. There was a single flat rate connect fee, and extra fees were fairly rare.
Assuming your budget stretches to such luxuries, sure. I know many people for whom $5.80 a week will either have to come out of their budget for staples.
Yes. Because everyone has the budget for a well maintained new car and the freedom to afford a house wherever they want.
You've gotten modded 'Insightful', but you aren't.
Yes - housing prices should be prevented from obeying market forces. The fixed supply and increasing demand should not cause an increase in value.
I can believe, because he has an intuitive understanding of how economics works. You on the other hand...
Um... you do understand that you don't have to physically take possession of, or store a commodity to speculate in it? Heck, the commodity doesn't even have to physically exist yet to speculate in it for that matter. It's called a futures market.
On top of which, there are millions of barrels 'in storage' on any given day - onboard tankers during the days and weeks they're in transit to their destination.
To put this in basic terms - your understanding of economics it quite lacking. It's the expectation of the *buyer* that sets prices, not the seller. No matter what you expect prices to do in the next year, it's the buyers decision to pay that premium - or find someone whose opinion about the future price matches theirs. This is where the speculators and futures traders artificially distort the market - by eliminating the supply of cheap plates.
When sunshine or wind become a reasonable fraction of our energy generation... that would be a reasonable course of action. And you fail to note that they are effected by the 'last barrel' effect too... regardless of the cost of generation they have no incentive to sell at less than the spot market price set by other sources - especially since they have to sell while the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.
Nope. Community currencies are as alive and well as they've ever been.
The backers of the Liberty Dollar broke the law by revaluing their currency to something other than the US dollar. That the authorities took a dim view of breaking the law should neither be a surprise or be seen as evidence of some dark conspiracy. That, along with the list of community currencies in the link above should serve as evidence that you're either ill-informed, or operating on bias and assumptions rather than facts. (Or in the worst case, both.) The fact is, it's trivially easy and completely legal to start an alternative currency in the US and the laws surrounding them are astonishingly simple to comply with.
Google's problems, I suspect, stem from the need/desire to operate an alternative currency internationally - which is indeed fraught with problems.
That sounds suspiciously like a "no true Scotsman" argument - especially as I doubt that Sweden doesn't have laws and regulations to prevent money laundering. In fact, a quick Google search reveals that indeed they do.
In the same way it's possible to view General Motors as a audio equipment wholesaler - since it sells radios in order to sell more cars. Or, in other words, just because it's possible doesn't mean it's even remotely rational.
In some reality where I said any such thing, that might be true. But I didn't. What I said you (and others) are failing to understand why they died because you don't understand what kept them alive. (And it's equally apparent you don't understand the other businesses you cite either.)
Bit none of those were so heavily film dependent (except possibly Fuji) as Kodak was. The mistake both you and the OP are making is in mistaking Kodak for a camera company - it wasn't.
Kodak was a film company, with cameras being only a minor supporting player.. Film for consumer cameras. Film for x-ray machines. Film for radiography. Film for spy satellites. Film for printing plants. Film for movies, both consumer and commercial. Film for... every purpose under the sun. And backing up the film business, developing chemicals by the tanker full and photographic paper by the acre.
But, one by one, each of things went digital (in one form or another) or Kodak's marketshare fell to cheaper imports. (Fuji for consumer 35mm notably.) With 90% of their business gone, they were hardly in a position to retool around the 2% that consumer cameras represented. (The remaining 8% is various support services, consulting, etc...)
And as many companies failed in the digital transition as made is successfully.
Only if you're content to accept whatever they ship you... and content to not compare products (like the smells of different hops)... etc... etc..
The internet is great for ordering things that are mass produced identical boxes (like books, cameras or games), not so much for anything else. I've learned a great deal about hops and grains because I invested windshield time.
Here in the [US] Pacific Northwest too... You can have two inches moss/lichens in as little as two years.
There was buzz about delivery pet food too.
Just because there's buzz, doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Not, it is not.
No, a cell consists of those things - a battery is a collection of one or more cells. The public often confuses the two because the batteries most often encountered in day-to-day life are in fact (technically speaking) single cell batteries.
No, not semantics, but rather proper use of terminology. The AC is correct - a battery is a collection of cells. A battery pack is a collection of batteries. (The battery being the smallest individually replaceable part in the pack.)
That's why a "D" cell battery is called a "single cell battery" - because, duh, there's only a single cell in the battery. That's why automotive type batteries (of the type you add water to) have multiple vent caps - because each individual cell must be separately vented and/or topped off with water.
The quoted IDC analyst adds to the confusion (at least to those of us versed in standard terminology) by using the terms battery and cell interchangeably, which is the same mistake often made by the general public - you for example.
And to be considered a crank by Robert Zubrin (a World Class Crank himself), you really have to be whack-a-doodle.
Because ion drives are heavy, and their fuel tanks are heavier - and the wiring and controls are complex. So, weight to take away from payload, and more things to break, for very little return. What's not to like?
Nope. While ion drives have insanely high ISP's, they have almost no thrust. And it's thrust you want for braking into orbit, especially for small bodies like Pluto. (And that's on top of the whole "the drive and it's fuel would replace 90% of the payload" problem.)
Before that can take place- two things need to happen. The first is a power supply vastly more efficient and more powerful than pretty much anything built to date has to be invented, and has be light enough to not eat up significant payload. The second is someone needs to develop an ion drive (or derivative) that works worth a damn with much lighter fuels than they currently do. Then, and only then, will ion engines (or derivatives) stop being a solution in search of problem.
But until then, scientists and engineers in need of funding will keep beating the drum of our wonderful ion powered future - only a few years off. (Just like it has been since the 50's.)
I don't know about your planet - but here on earth animal rights activists form a spectrum, and the vast majority *are* trying to stop the killing of animals altogether. You don't need to be an apologist for them, and you just look stupid for trying to whitewash their activities.
How many times is this going to be 'discovered' and featured on the front page of Slashdot? It's old news. We get it. No need to publish another story on the topic, there's been one a quarter or so for years.
Wrong in the first sentence, correct in the second.
And here we have the reverse situation - correct on the first, wrong on the second. (Or more accurately, my emotional response will be annoyance - because I know I'm being lied to, not the fluffy nonsense you discuss below.)
All of which depends on the user never figuring out they they are being lied to. Hence, eggplant.
Yeah, it's so standard that virtually every app I've ever seen, when starting from scratch (I.E. invoked from the screen and not running) displays a splash screen. But this damages your sense of self estem - so you invoke 'no true Scotsman'.
Why is a lie better? Unless you have the intellectual capacity of overcooked eggplant - you *know* the program isn't available yet. It's *still* a splash screen.
That was probably back in the same era when you walked uphill both ways, in six feet of snow and across broken glass to school. Right?
I've only got one birthday left between me and fifty - and I've been practicing information compartmentalization practically all my life. Even as a pre-teen I was up to things (like heaving rocks through the windows of an empty house) that I didn't want my parents to know about. On the flip side, I didn't want my friends to know that I played with Barbie dolls with my sister. Etc... etc...
Not to mention things that society found objectionable while I was growing up... Being gay, or dating someone not of your race, or religion, or that you weren't married to for example. You sure as hell compartmentalized those.
Just because we didn't have a term for it doesn't mean we didn't practice it.
The transport containers used for military purposes are even designed/tested to an even higher standard.