With an outlook like that, you should run for President. Imagine all the problems that we could ignore! Imagine how bad we could make life for the middle class, and it would be all OK! After all, nothing that affects mostly the middle class matters, because they aren't poor enough.
Well, that at least is completely obvious. The gorillas who "handle" the checked baggage are likely to crack the casing on poorly-packed batteries, but most people are reasonably careful with their own stuff.
Sometimes a big company will try some new endeavor to much fanfare, but not bother to try very hard, assuming somehow that they will win because they are big. When that happens it's easy to take them out. Wal-Mart had no plan here; they just thought selling some videos at terms dictated by the studios might get them some cash. If they ran their retail stores that way, those would fail too, but they put serious effort into their retail stores.
Well, I don't know how the translation works out, but the line you quoted seems like awfully bad wording to me. A constitution which states that you HAVE this right or that right isn't worth the paper it's printed on. The US Bill of Rights, on the other hand, is written as a set of restrictions on the government, sort of like a law that operates in reverse.
This may seem like a pedantic distinction but I think the difference can be important. People have rights when the government is also bound by laws. People who have an unrestricted government that writes fancy promises have nothing.
Forget "lossless" when you've already lost so much of the original wave by mixing it down to 16-bit 44khz stereo in the first place. I'd rather have something that started out with a higher sampling rate/etc, but with good lossy compression to pull it down to something that doesn't require DVD-type storage for a single album.
Our schools are supposed to teach discipline, which most people think means following the rules. As Stephen Colbert says, if the rules were logical then they wouldn't be learning respect for the rules, they'd be learning logic.
Obsolete means it's just not a very good rocket compared to what can be built today. As for the parts, sure there are custom parts, but there are plenty of off-the-shelf parts also, and even the existing plans for manufacturing the custom parts call for the use of off-the-shelf parts or equipment to build.
"There is no point in even contemplating trying to rebuild the Saturn 5. Having a complete set of Saturn 5 blueprints would do us no good whatsoever. True, we would still be able to bend the big pieces of metal fairly easily. But they are not the problem.
"The real problem is the hundreds of thousands of other parts, some as apparently insignificant as a bolt or a washer, that are simply not manufactured any more. Everything would have to be redone. So a simple rebuild would be impossible. The only real answer would be to start from scratch and build anew using modern parts and processes. Yet another immense challenge!"
Urban legend. The plans for the Saturn V are just fine, but they are completely useless now. For one the rocket is ridiculously obsolete in many ways; for another the parts it was made with have been out of production for decades.
the only way for time to slow down is to travel faster than the speed of light
Whoops -- a simple mistake but a big one (like saying that you have to factor prime numbers to break encryption). No, all travel at any speed causes time dilation. The effect simply isn't significant unless you're travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
Of course, to be pedantic it's all relative (and that's where the equations get wacky).
I'm sorry, but this viewpoint, while popular, shows tremendous ignorance of the two companies and personal computing history in general.
Apple has always had its platform, which has been the "Apple Platform" from top to bottom. Their strategy has been to develop and sell that platform; other companies can interact with that in generally designated ways. All of their development efforts are within this closed model. Even the iPod was developed as a Mac-exclusive accessory and iTunes was ported to Windows as an afterthought.
Microsoft's strategy is not like this in the least. Microsoft infects open platforms and seeks to take them over using anticompetitive practices. Most of their development efforts are focused on taking over technologies that they didn't develop. For example, consider the IBM PC, which consisted basically as a bunch of parts from different people put together. Once Compaq reverse-engineered the BIOS it became an open platform where even the OS could come from a different vendor, until Microsoft managed to turn it into the Microsoft PC. Even today they maintain a convenient fiction that companies like Dell have some kind of control, but the direction of the platform is determined entirely by Redmond.
Consider then the Web, developed in an open fashion mostly on Unix. Microsoft almost did take that over; for years you couldn't do online banking with anything other than Internet Explorer. Technologies like ActiveX weren't developed because they were necessary, but as part of Microsoft's plan.
You can argue that Apple under Jobs would do the same thing if they could, but there just isn't any evidence. iTunes and the iPod were sold first and foremost to manage and play music ripped from CDs. iTunes by default has always ripped into a non-Apple format with no DRM; the iPod has always played multiple non-Apple formats. The same cannot be said of Microsoft and Windows Media Player.
Re:Perl 6: The Language of the Future (... Forever
on
State of the Onion 11
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· Score: 1
You need to know the whole of the language to use it with someone who knows, and uses, the whole of the language.
No! You need to know the whole of the language to work with three other people, each of whom knows a different part of the language.
Re:Perl 6: The Language of the Future (... Forever
on
State of the Onion 11
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You said that it's OK for Perl to have an excessive number of features, because you don't have to know them. I'm pointing out that the truth is that you do have to know the whole language to use it. So no, I don't have to "blame myself for not knowing the language", I blame the language for being poorly designed.
Re:Perl 6: The Language of the Future (... Forever
on
State of the Onion 11
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
That sounds great, until you're trying to work with someone else's Perl code and it turns out that they have a special fondness for those Perl features which were inspired by awk. A language with a clean design means that you can collaborate with others.
You know, it's funny. I drive a Honda. Honda's market share is something like 8 or 9 percent, and they're a market leader. Apple's market share is something like 6 or 7 percent and everyone says that's "niche". Both corporations rake in the cash. Care to explain that one to me?
I think the problem with this theory is that vaccinations are just about the least profitable segment of the drug market. This is why the drug companies do such a great job convincing us that we need their latest heartburn remedy, and zero dollars communicating the benefits of vaccinations.
If someone takes your heartburn pill once a day you can make $1500 off them over a ten-year period, easy. Nobody will pay $1500 for a vaccine.
I'd think the USPS would do fine for remote areas of the country
Therein lies the rub. Delivering mail to Alaska costs way more than 41 cents or whatever it is now. Rural routes are just not very profitable.
Any private competitor would focus on urban delivery as it's far cheaper, and they certainly would charge less than the USPS. That would force the USPS to greatly increase delivery rates as the remote delivery would no longer be subsidized by urban delivery. Or we'd be spending a bunch of tax money to subsidize the USPS, which wouldn't exactly be free market competition.
So it's not going to happen -- remember, Alaska has *two* senators. As does Montana, North Dakota, and every other rural state.
Note that this "analysis" is from a guy who's been recommending Blockbuster stock over Netflix stock for a while, and that's been looking like a really dumb recommendation lately. The scenario described in the article -- where Netflix takes no action to rectify a problem that would destroy all their profits -- is unreasonable on its face.
he never claimed they were or weren't guilty, just that from the evidence it probably should have gone to trial.
And that is just a flat-out stupid thing for him to say. There was no evidence! SCO invented this absurd "methods and concepts" legal theory out of whole cloth, but that's not evidence.
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With an outlook like that, you should run for President. Imagine all the problems that we could ignore! Imagine how bad we could make life for the middle class, and it would be all OK! After all, nothing that affects mostly the middle class matters, because they aren't poor enough.
Well, that at least is completely obvious. The gorillas who "handle" the checked baggage are likely to crack the casing on poorly-packed batteries, but most people are reasonably careful with their own stuff.
Sorry, I don't think so. Check out the handy chart in TFA.
Sure they did. In this case, it wasn't even hard.
Sometimes a big company will try some new endeavor to much fanfare, but not bother to try very hard, assuming somehow that they will win because they are big. When that happens it's easy to take them out. Wal-Mart had no plan here; they just thought selling some videos at terms dictated by the studios might get them some cash. If they ran their retail stores that way, those would fail too, but they put serious effort into their retail stores.
Well, I don't know how the translation works out, but the line you quoted seems like awfully bad wording to me. A constitution which states that you HAVE this right or that right isn't worth the paper it's printed on. The US Bill of Rights, on the other hand, is written as a set of restrictions on the government, sort of like a law that operates in reverse.
This may seem like a pedantic distinction but I think the difference can be important. People have rights when the government is also bound by laws. People who have an unrestricted government that writes fancy promises have nothing.
Forget "lossless" when you've already lost so much of the original wave by mixing it down to 16-bit 44khz stereo in the first place. I'd rather have something that started out with a higher sampling rate/etc, but with good lossy compression to pull it down to something that doesn't require DVD-type storage for a single album.
Our schools are supposed to teach discipline, which most people think means following the rules. As Stephen Colbert says, if the rules were logical then they wouldn't be learning respect for the rules, they'd be learning logic.
Obsolete means it's just not a very good rocket compared to what can be built today. As for the parts, sure there are custom parts, but there are plenty of off-the-shelf parts also, and even the existing plans for manufacturing the custom parts call for the use of off-the-shelf parts or equipment to build.
Here's a quote from http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/saturn_five_000313.html:
"There is no point in even contemplating trying to rebuild the Saturn 5. Having a complete set of Saturn 5 blueprints would do us no good whatsoever. True, we would still be able to bend the big pieces of metal fairly easily. But they are not the problem.
"The real problem is the hundreds of thousands of other parts, some as apparently insignificant as a bolt or a washer, that are simply not manufactured any more. Everything would have to be redone. So a simple rebuild would be impossible. The only real answer would be to start from scratch and build anew using modern parts and processes. Yet another immense challenge!"
Urban legend. The plans for the Saturn V are just fine, but they are completely useless now. For one the rocket is ridiculously obsolete in many ways; for another the parts it was made with have been out of production for decades.
the only way for time to slow down is to travel faster than the speed of light
Whoops -- a simple mistake but a big one (like saying that you have to factor prime numbers to break encryption). No, all travel at any speed causes time dilation. The effect simply isn't significant unless you're travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
Of course, to be pedantic it's all relative (and that's where the equations get wacky).
Not to disparage the little guy, but RC Cola also tastes terrible.
So you're saying they have a monopoly... on their own products? Seems pretty dumb to me, Mr. Management 101.
I'm sorry, but this viewpoint, while popular, shows tremendous ignorance of the two companies and personal computing history in general.
Apple has always had its platform, which has been the "Apple Platform" from top to bottom. Their strategy has been to develop and sell that platform; other companies can interact with that in generally designated ways. All of their development efforts are within this closed model. Even the iPod was developed as a Mac-exclusive accessory and iTunes was ported to Windows as an afterthought.
Microsoft's strategy is not like this in the least. Microsoft infects open platforms and seeks to take them over using anticompetitive practices. Most of their development efforts are focused on taking over technologies that they didn't develop. For example, consider the IBM PC, which consisted basically as a bunch of parts from different people put together. Once Compaq reverse-engineered the BIOS it became an open platform where even the OS could come from a different vendor, until Microsoft managed to turn it into the Microsoft PC. Even today they maintain a convenient fiction that companies like Dell have some kind of control, but the direction of the platform is determined entirely by Redmond.
Consider then the Web, developed in an open fashion mostly on Unix. Microsoft almost did take that over; for years you couldn't do online banking with anything other than Internet Explorer. Technologies like ActiveX weren't developed because they were necessary, but as part of Microsoft's plan.
You can argue that Apple under Jobs would do the same thing if they could, but there just isn't any evidence. iTunes and the iPod were sold first and foremost to manage and play music ripped from CDs. iTunes by default has always ripped into a non-Apple format with no DRM; the iPod has always played multiple non-Apple formats. The same cannot be said of Microsoft and Windows Media Player.
You need to know the whole of the language to use it with someone who knows, and uses, the whole of the language.
No! You need to know the whole of the language to work with three other people, each of whom knows a different part of the language.
You said that it's OK for Perl to have an excessive number of features, because you don't have to know them. I'm pointing out that the truth is that you do have to know the whole language to use it. So no, I don't have to "blame myself for not knowing the language", I blame the language for being poorly designed.
That sounds great, until you're trying to work with someone else's Perl code and it turns out that they have a special fondness for those Perl features which were inspired by awk. A language with a clean design means that you can collaborate with others.
One of these days mankind is going to have to forgo the luxury of killing trees because they smell nice.
Why is that? We already grow lots of paper trees on paper tree farms, just like corn or wheat or whatever else.
You know, it's funny. I drive a Honda. Honda's market share is something like 8 or 9 percent, and they're a market leader. Apple's market share is something like 6 or 7 percent and everyone says that's "niche". Both corporations rake in the cash. Care to explain that one to me?
I think the problem with this theory is that vaccinations are just about the least profitable segment of the drug market. This is why the drug companies do such a great job convincing us that we need their latest heartburn remedy, and zero dollars communicating the benefits of vaccinations.
If someone takes your heartburn pill once a day you can make $1500 off them over a ten-year period, easy. Nobody will pay $1500 for a vaccine.
I'd think the USPS would do fine for remote areas of the country
Therein lies the rub. Delivering mail to Alaska costs way more than 41 cents or whatever it is now. Rural routes are just not very profitable.
Any private competitor would focus on urban delivery as it's far cheaper, and they certainly would charge less than the USPS. That would force the USPS to greatly increase delivery rates as the remote delivery would no longer be subsidized by urban delivery. Or we'd be spending a bunch of tax money to subsidize the USPS, which wouldn't exactly be free market competition.
So it's not going to happen -- remember, Alaska has *two* senators. As does Montana, North Dakota, and every other rural state.
And yet I can't get it to work no matter what I do. Though I think it would help if Microsoft released a version of Windows for the PowerPC.
Note that this "analysis" is from a guy who's been recommending Blockbuster stock over Netflix stock for a while, and that's been looking like a really dumb recommendation lately. The scenario described in the article -- where Netflix takes no action to rectify a problem that would destroy all their profits -- is unreasonable on its face.
Will you still be going on about this a year from now? Three years from now? When does it end?
he never claimed they were or weren't guilty, just that from the evidence it probably should have gone to trial.
And that is just a flat-out stupid thing for him to say. There was no evidence! SCO invented this absurd "methods and concepts" legal theory out of whole cloth, but that's not evidence.
Maybe while you're checking in the dictionary for how to spell "redundant", you can look up what it means.