A language is just a communication protocol. Would you say that having 7000 incompatible networking protocols is a good thing? No, it patently isn't.
It's worth taking a second to note that having just one language (or networking protocol) would be a bad thing, too. Without a counter-example to compare against, it's hard to differentiate between a bad design choice in a language and a fundamental constraint.
When I learned my second language, I gained a whole new perspective on my first. There are things I think one does well, and things for which I prefer the other. It was after I learned the second that I first understood that it doesn't have to be that way.
Women only resort to pornography because of the amount of discrimination they still face in the job market today. I'll wager that a woman resorts to pornography for the same reasons anyone does any job: there's a market for her talents.
Some women with other talents do other jobs. Most of them earn more than all but the most successful porn actresses. How does that justify removing porn as an option for a woman whose best talents lie in porn.
Could this turn into the next kudzu? "Whatever their origin, when Triffids began sprouting all over the world, their extracts proved to be radically superior to existing vegetable and animal oils. Along with the resulting world-wide slew of Triffid farms, many households kept them as a curiosity, almost a garden pet, . .."
This administration, however, has wilfully ignored them _and_ said out in public that the FISA court system is an obstacle. Of course the FISA court system is an obstacle. So were the levies in New Orleans. The^H^H^H One of the many problems with this administration is that they don't understand the value of a obstacle.
For that matter, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution were designed to be obstacles.
Remember that the RIAA gets a maximum recovery per suit of ~$3000 and a mean recovery per suit of far less than that. Their mean legal costs per suit probably outstrip the recoveries.
So why do it? Answer: to keep the norod in line.
How much does the RIAA have to lose in these countersuits to stop them suing people? Answer: more than the profits gained by selling music to the masses.
This move will only alienate their consumer base. The fact that 3.5 is working, and in no need of overhaul, exposes the fact that they are doing this under the motivation of short-sighted greed. I shudder to think what sort of backlash (as before with Dungeon and Dragon were canceled) is taking place on the forum. Dungeons & Dragons: successfully alienating our customer base into a company-destroying backlash for 31 years!
In the city, I've never seen a barn that is just left to rot and collapse for a few winters, leaving a fire hazard that's filled with tetanus-risky nails and whatever else was in there.This is not an effective indictment of environmental failings in rural areas. Most of these things aren't hazards to the environment.
In the first place, you're misappreciating the time horizon: those barns rot over several decades, not a few years.
In the second place, the fauna love an abandoned barn; snakes, mice, marmots, insects, birds, bats -- you name it. An eyesore and an environmental hazard are not the same thing.
In the third place, unless there are stored chemicals involved, a barn fire is not exactly an environmental disaster. A safety hazard and an environmental hazard are not the same thing.
In the fourth place, tetanus? Tetanus!? Of course there's tetanus around. Tetanus is not an environmental hazard, it's a ubiquitous microbe, like staphylococcus, salmonella, or e. coli. We couldn't eradicate it from the earth if we wanted to. (The rusty nail thing is a partial understanding -- what's important is the tetanus thrives when deposited deep in a wound, e.g. a puncture wound from a nail.) As a disease, tetanus is equally present in healthy and unhealthy environments, in the city and in the country; it is not an environmental hazard.
If you want to go after rural environmental hazards, there are worse problems:
Rural people often burn, pile, or bury their own trash. (This one you got right, as far as you went.) They often pour out small quantities of waste chemicals such as motor oil and solvents.
Chemically-assisted agriculture involves spreading large quantities of fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides on the land, which enter the run-off.
Poorly planned agriculture can contribute to erosion.
Some rural homes still burn coal directly, releasing mercury and other pollutants directly into the home.
Recycling programs are almost nonexistent in rural areas.
Further, I have seen leaking vehicles and abandoned buildings in the city. The vehicles tend to be concentrated in scrap yards or hidden in garages, but they're there. The buildings are everywhere -- abandoned, condemned, inhabited by squatters, providing shelter for crime, and being greater fire hazards by virtue of being close to other structures. If the cities want to tout their environmental victories, they should tout the fact that they cram more human impacts into a smaller area, reducing sprawl and allowing efficient treatment of sewage, water, trash, transportation, recycling, etc.
Gartner is telling its corporate customers they should hasten this process by not permitting their employees to sync to their PCs.
It could as easily have said "We recommend that all corporations upgrade their employees to wireless background sync for its many, many advantages." Why does this stuff always have to be phrased as a prohibition on users?
TFA didn't even mention the real data security issue -- that users might sync the devices to outside computers -- which forbidding sync software in the office won't solve.
Automated syncing (i.e. wireless background sync) eliminates user error as a source of problems with data sync. Duh.
Data on company or vendor servers that are administered and backup up is less likely to be lost due to hardware failure or intrusion than data on individual PCs. Duh.
Neither wireless nor cabled sync will do a thing to prevent data on a stolen handheld from being misused. Duh.
Of course, by suggesting that comparing Bush to Clinton is like comparing $random_topic to Hitler, we have lost the argument. By virtue of Godwin's law.
TFA wrote: "Feminists often claim that sexual harassment is "not about sex but about power."
Which got me to thinking--what if that's true? What if true sexual harassment is, by definition, sexual conduct whose goal is to attain power. That implies that sexual conduct whose goal is to attain something other than power is not harassment.
If so, then when a coworker is engages in sexual conduct solely to attain sex, that wouldn't be harassment. Gives a whole new perspective on the question of whether some one is just doing something to get in your pants.
You think it's in any way different today? If anything, it gets worse. There is no reason to expect that today's documents won't be classified perpetually, 20 years at a time. After all, in 1975, copyright could not last more than 56 years; today, it lasts at least 70.
This article is a transparent attempt to get us to turn off our brains by picking a sympathetic poster child. What about the student or the teacher who gets mistreated/ discriminated against/ fired by a school and has to sue? Don't we want the school to preserve its emails so that the jury can hear what they say? This is no different for a school than it is for any business.
To be sure, doing the right thing can cost some money sometimes (though not nearly as much as the article supposes). But destroying evidence is doing the wrong thing.
What will determine if this model is interesting is whether it does better than the models it replaces. For instance, the draft states that a model that predicts that the militarily stronger state will win is right only about 60% of the time (looking either at wars in the last 200 years or at major power interventions in the last 60). This model claims to be right 80% of the time.
So, if people adopted this model, they could avoid 20% of wars/interventions by realizing that they were going to lose even though the old model said they would win.
Re:Unbefreakinglievable
on
A Geek On Everest
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Those of us who've never climbed past 10,000 feet can STFU. There goes 90% of/.
Those of us who've never climbed past 15,000 feet can put a lid on it. There goes another 8% and me.
Those of us who've never climbed past 18,000 feet should please sit down. There goes another ~2%.
Now, let's hear from the couple of dozen/.ers still standing.
There is no ambiguity about climbing a mountain. He's doing it.
We definitely need an easier way of verifying reputation than this:
NISKA: Do you know what a reputation is? It's people talking, gossip, it's not... to hold, touch it, you can't. Not from gossip. Now I also have reputation, not so pleasant, I think you know. [Kills man.] NISKA: Now, for you, my reputation is not from gossip. . . . I show you what I do with him and now, my reputation for you is fact, is... solid. You do the . . . job for me, then you are solid. No more gossip. That is strong relationship.
My empirical survey suggests that the average Marsha is inferior to the average John in detecting a seat-up condition. YMMV. This is not surprising since John has been checking every time he performed any operation (sitting or standing) since he was three. Marsha has not. While Marsha could learn a new habit (a cost not addressed in TFA), she doesn't have that habit to defend her at the start of their cohabitation.
In any event, removing Marsha from the equation simply because she has a fault would be pretty dumb. It is only sensible to remove some one from the equation if their fault-to-benefit ratio exceeds that of the next best available alternative. The alternatives are no one (fewer benefits), a John (different faults and benefits), and a different Marsha (if available). Good luck. --- "Applying logic to relationships is, to a certain extent, irrational." --Anonymous
Slashdot Mirror
A language is just a communication protocol. Would you say that having 7000 incompatible networking protocols is a good thing? No, it patently isn't.
It's worth taking a second to note that having just one language (or networking protocol) would be a bad thing, too. Without a counter-example to compare against, it's hard to differentiate between a bad design choice in a language and a fundamental constraint.
When I learned my second language, I gained a whole new perspective on my first. There are things I think one does well, and things for which I prefer the other. It was after I learned the second that I first understood that it doesn't have to be that way.
Some women with other talents do other jobs. Most of them earn more than all but the most successful porn actresses. How does that justify removing porn as an option for a woman whose best talents lie in porn.
censorship - No one may sell this music.
personal choice - I won't sell this music.
See the difference?
For that matter, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution were designed to be obstacles.
Remember that the RIAA gets a maximum recovery per suit of ~$3000 and a mean recovery per suit of far less than that. Their mean legal costs per suit probably outstrip the recoveries.
So why do it? Answer: to keep the norod in line.
How much does the RIAA have to lose in these countersuits to stop them suing people? Answer: more than the profits gained by selling music to the masses.
So now Bush has tarnished Democracy as badly as Stalin tarnished socialism.
Particularly sad, since neither one practiced either doctrine.
- In the first place, you're misappreciating the time horizon: those barns rot over several decades, not a few years.
- In the second place, the fauna love an abandoned barn; snakes, mice, marmots, insects, birds, bats -- you name it. An eyesore and an environmental hazard are not the same thing.
- In the third place, unless there are stored chemicals involved, a barn fire is not exactly an environmental disaster. A safety hazard and an environmental hazard are not the same thing.
- In the fourth place, tetanus? Tetanus!? Of course there's tetanus around. Tetanus is not an environmental hazard, it's a ubiquitous microbe, like staphylococcus, salmonella, or e. coli. We couldn't eradicate it from the earth if we wanted to. (The rusty nail thing is a partial understanding -- what's important is the tetanus thrives when deposited deep in a wound, e.g. a puncture wound from a nail.) As a disease, tetanus is equally present in healthy and unhealthy environments, in the city and in the country; it is not an environmental hazard.
If you want to go after rural environmental hazards, there are worse problems:- Rural people often burn, pile, or bury their own trash. (This one you got right, as far as you went.) They often pour out small quantities of waste chemicals such as motor oil and solvents.
- Chemically-assisted agriculture involves spreading large quantities of fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides on the land, which enter the run-off.
- Poorly planned agriculture can contribute to erosion.
- Some rural homes still burn coal directly, releasing mercury and other pollutants directly into the home.
- Recycling programs are almost nonexistent in rural areas.
Further, I have seen leaking vehicles and abandoned buildings in the city. The vehicles tend to be concentrated in scrap yards or hidden in garages, but they're there. The buildings are everywhere -- abandoned, condemned, inhabited by squatters, providing shelter for crime, and being greater fire hazards by virtue of being close to other structures. If the cities want to tout their environmental victories, they should tout the fact that they cram more human impacts into a smaller area, reducing sprawl and allowing efficient treatment of sewage, water, trash, transportation, recycling, etc.Gartner is telling its corporate customers they should hasten this process by not permitting their employees to sync to their PCs.
It could as easily have said "We recommend that all corporations upgrade their employees to wireless background sync for its many, many advantages." Why does this stuff always have to be phrased as a prohibition on users?
TFA didn't even mention the real data security issue -- that users might sync the devices to outside computers -- which forbidding sync software in the office won't solve.
Automated syncing (i.e. wireless background sync) eliminates user error as a source of problems with data sync. Duh.
Data on company or vendor servers that are administered and backup up is less likely to be lost due to hardware failure or intrusion than data on individual PCs. Duh.
Neither wireless nor cabled sync will do a thing to prevent data on a stolen handheld from being misused. Duh.
If they're smart, then they know that the money should not be the issue. The issue should be whether they can get consumers to forgive them.
BENEFIT(lawsuit) = - PR_value(reminding consumers what they did) + PR_value(blaming some one else) +$12MM*P(winning) - $$(cost of suit)
If they're smart, they realize that those last two terms are negligible. I'm not so sure they're smart.
Of course, by suggesting that comparing Bush to Clinton is like comparing $random_topic to Hitler, we have lost the argument. By virtue of Godwin's law.
TFA wrote: "Feminists often claim that sexual harassment is "not about sex but about power."
Which got me to thinking--what if that's true? What if true sexual harassment is, by definition, sexual conduct whose goal is to attain power. That implies that sexual conduct whose goal is to attain something other than power is not harassment.
If so, then when a coworker is engages in sexual conduct solely to attain sex, that wouldn't be harassment. Gives a whole new perspective on the question of whether some one is just doing something to get in your pants.
Don't you just wish you had an account with ATT?
So you could cancel it.
This article is a transparent attempt to get us to turn off our brains by picking a sympathetic poster child. What about the student or the teacher who gets mistreated/ discriminated against/ fired by a school and has to sue? Don't we want the school to preserve its emails so that the jury can hear what they say? This is no different for a school than it is for any business.
To be sure, doing the right thing can cost some money sometimes (though not nearly as much as the article supposes). But destroying evidence is doing the wrong thing.
What will determine if this model is interesting is whether it does better than the models it replaces. For instance, the draft states that a model that predicts that the militarily stronger state will win is right only about 60% of the time (looking either at wars in the last 200 years or at major power interventions in the last 60). This model claims to be right 80% of the time.
So, if people adopted this model, they could avoid 20% of wars/interventions by realizing that they were going to lose even though the old model said they would win.
There is no ambiguity about climbing a mountain. He's doing it.
Save Me a Bottle.
Information that you want to follow you (e.g., "I have a BA in Math from UCLA" or "I have excellent karma on Slashdot") will follow you across sites.
Among the 'big problems' would have to be that users will want their good information to follow them and their bad not to.
My empirical survey suggests that the average Marsha is inferior to the average John in detecting a seat-up condition. YMMV. This is not surprising since John has been checking every time he performed any operation (sitting or standing) since he was three. Marsha has not. While Marsha could learn a new habit (a cost not addressed in TFA), she doesn't have that habit to defend her at the start of their cohabitation.
In any event, removing Marsha from the equation simply because she has a fault would be pretty dumb. It is only sensible to remove some one from the equation if their fault-to-benefit ratio exceeds that of the next best available alternative. The alternatives are no one (fewer benefits), a John (different faults and benefits), and a different Marsha (if available). Good luck.
---
"Applying logic to relationships is, to a certain extent, irrational." --Anonymous
1. What country issued the patent? (i.e., where is it enforceable?)
2. What is the patent number?
3. What, exactly, does it claim to cover?
How many lazy articles (/., wikipedia, or otherwise) must we endure until submitters learn to include basic facts?