This gets posted on and off to a ton of submissions, it seems, but this may be one of the few where it's actually more interesting than the original post.
If I can paraphrase the article, it would be: "researchers have found that when a site encourages you to publish your GPS coordinates for all of your trivial daily tasks it's not hard to figure out approximately where you live". BRILLIANT!
Linus is a brilliant asshole and Romney is an incompetent Mormon.
Fixed that for ya, according to Linus, at least.
Personally, I think calling Mormons "batshit insane" makes about as much sense as calling someone who thinks a potato is God insane when everyone else worships a tomato.
Though I also don't think Romney is incompetent or a moron, he's very smart and has been extremely successful in everything he's done. He just has morals and opinions which are contrary to the general welfare of the majority of the US population, and doesn't seem to care about that discrepancy. i.e. he's a Republican...
Since when have people started asking about a candidate's college transcripts? The difference in this case is that Obama is black, and the already absurdly racist birther whackjobs want to imply he's not smart enough to have graduated from Harvard Law School. Well, no conspiracy needed, he was the president of the Harvard Law Review, everyone who cares about the topic knows that, go find a copy from 1989 if you don't believe it. Just face it, whatever you think of either candidate they are clearly both intelligent, well educated people.
Now please go away, this discussion does not need to devolve into conspiracy theory racist Birther arguments.
You clearly don't understand what TARP was. IMO it may go down in history as one of the better ideas the government has had. Why? In the end it was about purchasing preferred stock in those banks. Most banks have already repaid/bought back that loan/investment. And, for example, the Treasury has already made a $12B profit (that's about 30% return) on Citibank. Smaller profit on some others. There are 3-4 who have not fully paid it back, but shit, even AIG has committed to paying it all back, with a tidy profit to the taxpayers.
Not sure if you are conservative, libertarian, or just don't understand shared risk, but the same principles can be applied to universal healthcare (not that Obamacare is universal healthcare, just as close as he could get given the opposition). The key is to look for the longer term benefit, not the short term costs and "inconvenience". Just like TARP.
Inefficient, absolutely. Unnecessary - well, you may call it unnecessary, but I think the US (as opposed to almost every other country with the death penalty) should at least be somewhat proud of the fact that there are no *confirmed* wrongful executions yet (though there are several in doubt).
While I think CA spending $4B to execute 13 people is absurd, if it had led to the exoneration of one person who would have otherwise been executed it was worth it. Though by "worth it" I definitely do not mean "money well spent" as the same outcome would been achieved much more efficiently with life without parole.
That's one way to think of it, but not the only way.
Another would be that taxpayers are collectively funding a safety net that help anyone who is in dire need.
Another is that taxpayers are paying a form of insurance against the inevitable flood of people who end up in the ER with no way to pay for their emergency services - one that will cost an order of magnitude less than the currently badly broken ER "safety net".
Or if you don't even believe in even helping poor people in the ER because letting someone die when you don't have to is morally wrong, another way to think of it is an alternative to buying all of those extra street cleaners and incinerators to sweep up the piles of dead homeless and unemployed people who were denied affordable health care AND emergency medical care, and are now an eyesore and health hazard to those God-fearin' taxpayers who didn't want to help them sooner.
Eh, yeah, my statement may not have been clear... by the "same as in life without parole" I mean the same results - dead inmate - but as you say millions of dollars saved in the process.
At least they are still alive, and not lying face down in a gutter. And of course those inadequate facilities are probably still costing taxpayers about 10x what providing basic insurance would...
Always amazing the stupid decisions people (politicians and voters) will make with emotion or spite over reason. Reminds me of the CA death penalty. 13 people have been executed since it was reinstated in 1978, at a cost of about $4B. And the process takes so long that over *80* death row inmates have died of other causes. So $200M a year has been wasted just to wait around for 90% of the inmates to die on their own, same as in life without parole.
Then again, once Romney announces he's going to repeal the Patriot Act, fix the TSA and abolish the DHS, and prohibit all warrantless wiretapping and illegal imprisonment of US citizens, I'll consider his own right to privacy worth defending...
Since he's running for President, expecting him to be rational and think about the technicalities rather than emotionally blurt out stupid things is not only important, but pretty damn essential.
If he's going to be President of a country who's attitude on individual privacy can now be summed up as "if you didn't do anything wrong, what are you hiding?" then yes, I think it's very relevant.
You just have to rob a bank to steal the money to pay for your health care. If you get away, you can now afford it. And if you get caught, no worries, the government will now pay for all of your health care, food, and lodgings anyway.
Oh, give me a break. I said *useful*. Their results aren't even remotely close to an engine like Google or Bing (it uses a lobotomized version of the already crappy Yahoo search).
And they handle in a day what a real search engine does in 30 seconds. If it was ever to scale to anything more useful than a silly counterexample, they'd either go out of business or have to change their model to something non-free or that advertisers would actually want to use.
We already have that - they are called submarines, and collectively carry a huge number of cruise missiles as well as a significant portion of the US nuclear arsenal. It would make no sense to put all of your missiles inside one nice, obvious, easily destroyed target when you can hide them underwater.
If carriers weren't so enormous and launching fighters impossible underwater, you don't think they'd have made them submersible as well? (that crazy WWII Japanese carrier-sub notwithstanding).
No worries, you can identify Titans pretty easily by the huge "whooshing" sound they make as they pass. Here's a more appropriate Wikipedia page for you.
The TF600T does have 32GB flash. And two cameras, 8MP & 2MP (vs 5MP and 0.3MP on iPad). And 2GB RAM (though who knows if the extra RAM is just to make up for Win8 bloat). And is 10% thinner and 20% lighter. TF600T definitely loses on the screen resolution (though driving that high res screen apparently takes almost 1/2 of the A5x's CPU power in many benchmarks, making it fairly equivalent to the Tegra 3 in real word use).
So basically, comparable features at comparable cost. But as you say, the TF600T isn't even out yet, so comparing them on incomplete specs and benchmarks is fairly pointless.
I didn't say it was easier or harder, or that everyone could do it (in fact just the opposite, very clearly stated as not everyone can learn to program to any useful degree).
My point was intelligent people can do many things if they really commit to it, and it's really more about a reasonable level of intelligence + motivation rather than some specific innate ability that many posters are contending.
So one 1 of 10 in your sample was broken? Is that a good statistic?
If you want to use anecdotes my girlfriend has broken two iPhones in 3 years, and she has only dropped it on concrete twice. Two for two. Given most city blocks are about 95% concrete, that's not an uncommon environment.
Stagnation doesn't mean no sales, it means no *growth*. Sure, there are some new consumers entering PC market (as you say, by entering the world) every year, but there are also consumers leaving that market. If the PC market is mostly saturated this turnover won't be enough to significantly increase sales, hence stagnation.
Whereas with smartphones and tablets, the market is not yet saturated, so all of the consumers already in the market buying smartphones for the first time is causing a lot of growth in the industry right now.
So, both higher turnover and growth can completely explain the observation from the article, that more DRAM is going to mobile devices than PCs. "The decline of the PC" in no way has to be implied by it, as well. Hence we probably come to the same conclusion, the article is rather stupid:)
More generally, I'd say no, not everyone can learn to program to any useful degree. But it most certainly isn't based on some silly concept like "a special logical mind" or anything.
If people can become accomplished economists, musicians, physicists, or poets, graduate from medical or law school, or as you say, write an authoritative, award winning cookbook, they can learn to program. They may not because they have no interest, but if they have the capacity and motivation to learn they can definitely figure it out - and I'm sure if they did they'd be better than a lot of the hacks out there programming professionally today, anyway:)
Slashdot Mirror
This gets posted on and off to a ton of submissions, it seems, but this may be one of the few where it's actually more interesting than the original post.
If I can paraphrase the article, it would be: "researchers have found that when a site encourages you to publish your GPS coordinates for all of your trivial daily tasks it's not hard to figure out approximately where you live". BRILLIANT!
Linus is a brilliant asshole and Romney is an incompetent Mormon.
Fixed that for ya, according to Linus, at least.
Personally, I think calling Mormons "batshit insane" makes about as much sense as calling someone who thinks a potato is God insane when everyone else worships a tomato.
Though I also don't think Romney is incompetent or a moron, he's very smart and has been extremely successful in everything he's done. He just has morals and opinions which are contrary to the general welfare of the majority of the US population, and doesn't seem to care about that discrepancy. i.e. he's a Republican...
Since when have people started asking about a candidate's college transcripts? The difference in this case is that Obama is black, and the already absurdly racist birther whackjobs want to imply he's not smart enough to have graduated from Harvard Law School. Well, no conspiracy needed, he was the president of the Harvard Law Review, everyone who cares about the topic knows that, go find a copy from 1989 if you don't believe it. Just face it, whatever you think of either candidate they are clearly both intelligent, well educated people.
Now please go away, this discussion does not need to devolve into conspiracy theory racist Birther arguments.
Yes, absolutely, that's a great idea. And it should be administered by the NSA!
I think a lot more people are worried about their right to privacy than freedom of speech.
You clearly don't understand what TARP was. IMO it may go down in history as one of the better ideas the government has had. Why? In the end it was about purchasing preferred stock in those banks. Most banks have already repaid/bought back that loan/investment. And, for example, the Treasury has already made a $12B profit (that's about 30% return) on Citibank. Smaller profit on some others. There are 3-4 who have not fully paid it back, but shit, even AIG has committed to paying it all back, with a tidy profit to the taxpayers.
Not sure if you are conservative, libertarian, or just don't understand shared risk, but the same principles can be applied to universal healthcare (not that Obamacare is universal healthcare, just as close as he could get given the opposition). The key is to look for the longer term benefit, not the short term costs and "inconvenience". Just like TARP.
Inefficient, absolutely. Unnecessary - well, you may call it unnecessary, but I think the US (as opposed to almost every other country with the death penalty) should at least be somewhat proud of the fact that there are no *confirmed* wrongful executions yet (though there are several in doubt).
While I think CA spending $4B to execute 13 people is absurd, if it had led to the exoneration of one person who would have otherwise been executed it was worth it. Though by "worth it" I definitely do not mean "money well spent" as the same outcome would been achieved much more efficiently with life without parole.
That's one way to think of it, but not the only way.
Another would be that taxpayers are collectively funding a safety net that help anyone who is in dire need.
Another is that taxpayers are paying a form of insurance against the inevitable flood of people who end up in the ER with no way to pay for their emergency services - one that will cost an order of magnitude less than the currently badly broken ER "safety net".
Or if you don't even believe in even helping poor people in the ER because letting someone die when you don't have to is morally wrong, another way to think of it is an alternative to buying all of those extra street cleaners and incinerators to sweep up the piles of dead homeless and unemployed people who were denied affordable health care AND emergency medical care, and are now an eyesore and health hazard to those God-fearin' taxpayers who didn't want to help them sooner.
Eh, yeah, my statement may not have been clear... by the "same as in life without parole" I mean the same results - dead inmate - but as you say millions of dollars saved in the process.
Obama released 12 years worth of tax returns. Stay with us AC, the thread is not that complicated...
At least they are still alive, and not lying face down in a gutter. And of course those inadequate facilities are probably still costing taxpayers about 10x what providing basic insurance would...
Always amazing the stupid decisions people (politicians and voters) will make with emotion or spite over reason. Reminds me of the CA death penalty. 13 people have been executed since it was reinstated in 1978, at a cost of about $4B. And the process takes so long that over *80* death row inmates have died of other causes. So $200M a year has been wasted just to wait around for 90% of the inmates to die on their own, same as in life without parole.
Both may be appropriate.
Then again, once Romney announces he's going to repeal the Patriot Act, fix the TSA and abolish the DHS, and prohibit all warrantless wiretapping and illegal imprisonment of US citizens, I'll consider his own right to privacy worth defending...
And you don't think taxpayers pay for prisons?
Since he's running for President, expecting him to be rational and think about the technicalities rather than emotionally blurt out stupid things is not only important, but pretty damn essential.
If he's going to be President of a country who's attitude on individual privacy can now be summed up as "if you didn't do anything wrong, what are you hiding?" then yes, I think it's very relevant.
Simple, Ryan has this one covered...
You just have to rob a bank to steal the money to pay for your health care. If you get away, you can now afford it. And if you get caught, no worries, the government will now pay for all of your health care, food, and lodgings anyway.
Oh, give me a break. I said *useful*. Their results aren't even remotely close to an engine like Google or Bing (it uses a lobotomized version of the already crappy Yahoo search).
And they handle in a day what a real search engine does in 30 seconds. If it was ever to scale to anything more useful than a silly counterexample, they'd either go out of business or have to change their model to something non-free or that advertisers would actually want to use.
Point out a single useful web search engine who's business model doesn't depend on that. Big surprise, you can't as there isn't one.
Just convert the car to biodiesel, and you'll have free fuel every time you cook breakfast.
We already have that - they are called submarines, and collectively carry a huge number of cruise missiles as well as a significant portion of the US nuclear arsenal. It would make no sense to put all of your missiles inside one nice, obvious, easily destroyed target when you can hide them underwater.
If carriers weren't so enormous and launching fighters impossible underwater, you don't think they'd have made them submersible as well? (that crazy WWII Japanese carrier-sub notwithstanding).
No worries, you can identify Titans pretty easily by the huge "whooshing" sound they make as they pass. Here's a more appropriate Wikipedia page for you.
The TF600T does have 32GB flash. And two cameras, 8MP & 2MP (vs 5MP and 0.3MP on iPad). And 2GB RAM (though who knows if the extra RAM is just to make up for Win8 bloat). And is 10% thinner and 20% lighter. TF600T definitely loses on the screen resolution (though driving that high res screen apparently takes almost 1/2 of the A5x's CPU power in many benchmarks, making it fairly equivalent to the Tegra 3 in real word use).
So basically, comparable features at comparable cost. But as you say, the TF600T isn't even out yet, so comparing them on incomplete specs and benchmarks is fairly pointless.
I didn't say it was easier or harder, or that everyone could do it (in fact just the opposite, very clearly stated as not everyone can learn to program to any useful degree).
My point was intelligent people can do many things if they really commit to it, and it's really more about a reasonable level of intelligence + motivation rather than some specific innate ability that many posters are contending.
So one 1 of 10 in your sample was broken? Is that a good statistic?
If you want to use anecdotes my girlfriend has broken two iPhones in 3 years, and she has only dropped it on concrete twice. Two for two. Given most city blocks are about 95% concrete, that's not an uncommon environment.
Stagnation doesn't mean no sales, it means no *growth*. Sure, there are some new consumers entering PC market (as you say, by entering the world) every year, but there are also consumers leaving that market. If the PC market is mostly saturated this turnover won't be enough to significantly increase sales, hence stagnation.
Whereas with smartphones and tablets, the market is not yet saturated, so all of the consumers already in the market buying smartphones for the first time is causing a lot of growth in the industry right now.
So, both higher turnover and growth can completely explain the observation from the article, that more DRAM is going to mobile devices than PCs. "The decline of the PC" in no way has to be implied by it, as well. Hence we probably come to the same conclusion, the article is rather stupid :)
I like this analogy.
More generally, I'd say no, not everyone can learn to program to any useful degree. But it most certainly isn't based on some silly concept like "a special logical mind" or anything.
If people can become accomplished economists, musicians, physicists, or poets, graduate from medical or law school, or as you say, write an authoritative, award winning cookbook, they can learn to program. They may not because they have no interest, but if they have the capacity and motivation to learn they can definitely figure it out - and I'm sure if they did they'd be better than a lot of the hacks out there programming professionally today, anyway :)