I have to pay for this stuff, and I don't like having my money wasted any more than the next guy does. But the only criterion these stories ever seem to use to decide what is particularly wasteful is whether they can be described in a comical fashion. Hahahahaha -- urinals! There's plenty of serious-sounding stuff in the budget that returns a lot less value to taxpayers than water conservation.
Also, while a dollar is a dollar, even a hundred million here and there is rounding error on the federal budget. The real pieces are Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, pensions, the military and debt servicing; arguing about anything else is mostly a distraction from the structural problems.
No thanks Ask.com, I do not want spam in my mail or in my searches.
I don't understand -- Google has exactly the same thing! In fact, Ask.com's presentation of sponsored links is basically copied from Google.
I can sympathize, as a recent search on the Penduline Tit turned up some very NSFW ads, but the only difference in your case seems to be that no one has bought "latex chapter" from Google yet.
I never really understood the whole butler thing either. A butler is someone who greets you at the door (and maybe gets you your pipe and slippers), but not necessarily someone who can answer any questions you might have.
In the P. G. Wodehouse novels, the dimwitted protagonist Bertie Wooster was wholly dependent on the practical and theoretical wisdom of his butler, Jeeves. As you note, though, that reference may have been lsot on most users.
Like with most "natural language" search hype, I always found that the only thing Ask Jeeves seemed to do effectively was ignore the context and pick out keywords. That's probably genuinely useful for a lot of users, but if you know how to use keywords, there's no advantage.
But the new Ask.com site is the first real advance in web search since the original Google came out. My one gripe is that their banner ads on other sites (with the Google results whooshing by in a blur) are really annoying.
The bottom line is that AOL and Hotmail customers insist on receiving email from their friends and family, and from Amazon and EBay. Getting newsletters from you and Bennett Haselton is a bonus, but given a choice between giving them up and having to deal with spam while "EFF and other advocacy groups are working on anti-spam solutions" (because, y'know, that'll be done any day now), they'll live without your email.
Defining customers not leaving Hotmail because they can't get email from Bennett Haselton as a "market failure" seems like a peculiar defintion of "market".
...links in the comment sections that allow you to toggle open/closed all of a comments replies...
That's a feature I've long wanted -- every time some early bird gets a +5 for some offtopic spraying about Iraq or creationism that pulls 200 responses, I wish for it yet again. Thanks, developers!!!!
I understand why patents and IP rights are crucial for innovation, and why the problem is lousy patents, not patents as a whole. These filings, though, sound like textbook cases of lousy patents. So, are all the GSycophants here going to engage in the same hysterical screeching we're getting two stories down on the E-Bay case, or is Google going to get the same approval Transmeta got?
Remember how back in 1998 ("The Year Of Linux On The Desktop!") you couldn't turn around in a CompUSA without knocking over a stack of Corel or Mandrake boxes?
You don't need fancy sociology about "disruptive technology" to explain why Linux distros do or don't have prominent in-store displays. If the makers write their checks to the store, they get their displays; otherwise, they don't.
And it'll probably be like the airport, where you have CNN blaring and Muzak playing simultaneously, while everyone shouts into their cell phones that much louder...
This isn't a normally a source of valuable scientific information, but -- I was watching America's Funniest Home Videos a few nights ago, and they had a long series of videos of dogs "talking" like parrots.
I'd had no idea dogs could be trained to do that but since a) they had seven or eight of them and b) all the owners were teaching them to say the same thing ("Love you Mama"), it must be something people commonly know. Does everyone know this? A Google search mostly turns up page after page of links to videos on blocked or NSFW sites.
I imagine the Internet questionsing gives them a great opportunity to prevent another Jennings by dumbing down the entire applicant pool by selecting people who can search the Web the best instead of people who just know more trivia.
Ummm, that would tend to create another Jennings by increasing the advantage of outliers over the median.
I understand the MP3 issue (although anything pretending to be a desktop OS should make it easy to install the codecs). My point was in response to the "other audio codecs" he mentions.
I've never used Fedora (CentOS 4 is the most recent Red Hat-ish distro I've installed) but -- this sounds awful! What seems like a clueful reviewer struggled to get it to work with Nvidia graphics (you know, that obscure hardware maker that only a handful of Linux users need to worry about). And comments like:
I have installed and used Fedora since FC1 and have had frequent problems with anaconda in the past, so luckily I was prepared for these new glitches. I simply rebooted and selected the text mode installation, which went moderately well, although in the background there was jumbled text error messages saying something about an nv_raid error , but figuring after the initial probe the o.s. should boot up fine, I went through with the installation and ignored the scrambled error messages.
and:
Another strange caveat was that the installation did not ask me to make a regular user account. After the installation completed and I rebooted, I had to login as root and manually make the regular user account.
and:
Therefore next step was to figure out how to get mp3 and other audio codecs to work in FC5. Just because I like to use bleeding edge software and I was not interested in installing the older gstreamer-0.8 plugings from livna.org, I added the RPMforge repositories and disabled Livna. Then I installed gstreamer-plugins-bad & gstreamer-plugins-ugly via terminal and now I can listen to my music in Amarok, Banshee, and Rhythmbox.
I hate to be the one pouring cold water on this proposal, but it sounds more like an abusable deduction that would allow any programmer to write off 20% of all their computer equipment purchases. If I wanted to abuse the system, couldn't I just write a hello world program, say I spent 2 monthes writing it, throw it on my website, and claim a fat deduction on everything?
To put it another way, the amount of effort you'd have to expend on accounting probably outweighs any benefit you'd get. Basically, if you buy something and use it for >50% open-source development and if you fully document it, you can get 20% back. I can't see too many developers getting much out of this.
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It avoids those division-by-zero errors you'd get if you used an accounting package designed for normal businesses.
Yeah, I read that name and thought "Gee, "Ekiga" suddenly doesn't seem so bad..."
Also, while a dollar is a dollar, even a hundred million here and there is rounding error on the federal budget. The real pieces are Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, pensions, the military and debt servicing; arguing about anything else is mostly a distraction from the structural problems.
I don't understand -- Google has exactly the same thing! In fact, Ask.com's presentation of sponsored links is basically copied from Google.
I can sympathize, as a recent search on the Penduline Tit turned up some very NSFW ads, but the only difference in your case seems to be that no one has bought "latex chapter" from Google yet.
In the P. G. Wodehouse novels, the dimwitted protagonist Bertie Wooster was wholly dependent on the practical and theoretical wisdom of his butler, Jeeves. As you note, though, that reference may have been lsot on most users.
But the new Ask.com site is the first real advance in web search since the original Google came out. My one gripe is that their banner ads on other sites (with the Google results whooshing by in a blur) are really annoying.
Summary: This study had exactly the same oversight that every Phase I trial in the US has.
Yeah, but unless you get the Advanced Shoes, your feet disappear when you tie the laces. And they don't work with Unix.
Defining customers not leaving Hotmail because they can't get email from Bennett Haselton as a "market failure" seems like a peculiar defintion of "market".
It's sure too bad we didn't give them control of the Internet, huh?
Except that the metrosexuals have money to spend.
That's a feature I've long wanted -- every time some early bird gets a +5 for some offtopic spraying about Iraq or creationism that pulls 200 responses, I wish for it yet again. Thanks, developers!!!!
That link was worth reading, if only for:
Somebody thought this was worth dropping $11 million on?!?!?I understand why patents and IP rights are crucial for innovation, and why the problem is lousy patents, not patents as a whole. These filings, though, sound like textbook cases of lousy patents. So, are all the GSycophants here going to engage in the same hysterical screeching we're getting two stories down on the E-Bay case, or is Google going to get the same approval Transmeta got?
Poor Michael Toner -- you know half his emails get bounced by spam filters. He should change it to T0n3r.
You don't need fancy sociology about "disruptive technology" to explain why Linux distros do or don't have prominent in-store displays. If the makers write their checks to the store, they get their displays; otherwise, they don't.
But in the spirit of Friday afternoon, let's call it a draw and go home...
Southwest Airlines famously settled a trademark infringement suit with an arm-wrestling match between CEO's.
(Warning: link not really unsafe for work but does feature a loud Howard Dean-ish scream, so beware if you're not on headphones.)
The prefix "pod" gives a clue as to what the ideal software/player combo is...
And it'll probably be like the airport, where you have CNN blaring and Muzak playing simultaneously, while everyone shouts into their cell phones that much louder...
I'd had no idea dogs could be trained to do that but since a) they had seven or eight of them and b) all the owners were teaching them to say the same thing ("Love you Mama"), it must be something people commonly know. Does everyone know this? A Google search mostly turns up page after page of links to videos on blocked or NSFW sites.
Ummm, that would tend to create another Jennings by increasing the advantage of outliers over the median.
I understand the MP3 issue (although anything pretending to be a desktop OS should make it easy to install the codecs). My point was in response to the "other audio codecs" he mentions.
To put it another way, the amount of effort you'd have to expend on accounting probably outweighs any benefit you'd get. Basically, if you buy something and use it for >50% open-source development and if you fully document it, you can get 20% back. I can't see too many developers getting much out of this.