Except of course the interest on the billions of dollars they now have invested in smarter places than Google stock. They don't particularly need to get paid anymore. They can't be expected to make decisions that will justify Googles current stock price, it's too far into silly land. They can be expected to do what they can to keep the bubble from bursting; like talking about their $1 salaries. A one dollar salary sure sounds like the execs beleive in the companies future. Selling 1.5 billion worth of Google stock off sounds not as good.
But Googles stock price is not linked to the companies success; it is linked the companies reputation as being really cool. Googles stock price exceeds what it's earnings justify by orders of magnitude. Google stock, or any stock at their kind of P/E ratio is mostly a pyramid scheme. Taking a one-dollar salary, and pointing that out without mentioning the billions in other compensation, is about keeping the really cool reputation going. Meanwhile, the execs are moving to diversify their wealth away from Google stock, because they are smart guys.
I certainly recomend finding happiness within oneself; but I also reccomend trying to change your external environment to suit yourself. You may fail; don't let that stop you from trying.
I have an Uncle, a very smart guy, who at some point in his youth decided he did not want to be a doctor, as he was on track to be. He decided what he loved was building wooden boats, by hand. This is not a way to make a lot of money, or even very much at all. So he bought a plot of land in the middle of nowhere. He built a sawmill, a workshop and a house. He built a great many boats. He built a violin and tought himself to play it. He raised a family. 40 years later, he has essentially no money at all, and more life satisfaction than anyone else I know. He has definitely found hapiness within himself. But has he changed his external environment to facilitate this? Big time. Could everyone do it? No. Most people are not as all-around competent at getting things done as he is, and very few have the imagination to see what really makes them happy. "Do what you love" is just shorthand advice for the imagination part.
Oh, there are no doubt some people somewhere who love mopping, but let's face it, there are a lot more mops to be pushed than people like that.
"Do what you love" in not a prescription for assigning everyone jobs in an efficient society; it is advice for individuals who don't want to push mops. If you want to do something better paying and/or more enjoyable than pushing a mop, you'll probably need to be good at it, or at least better than the next guy who also doesn't want to push a mop. People tend to be good at, or become good at, things they love doing. And since we're presumably trying to maximise your total happiness here, doing something you love get's you a head start to begin with.
Yeah, lot's of people have laws that seem "wacky", but who are we to judge?
Aparthied South Africa, Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany...
In short, bullshit on your cultural relativism. Some governments do things that are wrong, and responsible persons and corporations should be expected to determine this, and should refuse to abet them. Helping the Chines government quash dissent is wrong, and "But I have to to make money" is not a defense.
But that's somewhat deceptive. Non-porn sites tend to be fairly well organized, and link to sites on the same topic that are useful. If you are looking for information on (for example) antique bicycles, you do one search, then surf forth from the top few hits, quickly finding the good stuff. Porn sites on the other hand tend to be self-refferential rats nests of unhelpful links, and the strategy for finding sttuff is much more search-intensive. Uh, or, uh, so I've heard.
Porn sites have an easier time being profitable, but I don't buy that porn is a big driver for people getting internet access, for example. Without the porn, the internet would still be there.
Not so. All viruses are environment specific, yes. As noted by other posters, for the type of virus this article is about that required environment was a PC compatible machine; OS, or lack there of, was irrelevant. Most modern viruses are in some sens much less hard core. They require both specific apps and usually a clueless user. When virus writers pick an app to target, they do tend to pick specific apps that run on Windows, because they can count. All the more so if they need a clueless user.
So I agree that most viruses are specific to Windows; but I think it's dangerous to imagine it must be this way. Viruses are a feature of computers themselves, as I cannot imagine a computer capable enough to be worth using that could not support viruses, particularly with the addition of clueless users.
Oh, and "99.999..." is just a funny way of writing 100; numerically they are identical. I know another poster noted this, but I can't help myself.
"But is a card really all that necessary? It's not like I'm running into the giant megastore to buy a candy bar. They already can get this data from each of my visits-- how important is it that they can tie subsequent visits together?"
It's not essential. Walmart pioneered a lot of this sort of thing before discount cards with a datatabase just tying products together by their being in the same shopping cart; i.e. bought by a single customer in a single visit. Still, more data is better.
They no doubt do some of the analysis you suggest, but a lot of that is well known; prices on high volume staples (milk and bread) drive total store volume by getting the customer there, and they'll then buy low frequency items (detergent) at whatever store their already at. You can jerk around the price of detergent quite a bit, but charge an extra quarter for a gallon of milk, and they'll jump ship in droves.
The big deal to do with this data is a type of statistics called Cluster Analysis. Somewhat simplified, you assign all your customers to one of a bunch of types based on what they buy. Then you can create a detailed profile of the mix of customer types at each store.
Let's say someone comes to Safeway with a new kind of cheese-doodle. Safeway could send a case of them to every one of their thousands of stores, and see how they do, but that will cost a huge amount of money. So they'll send a case to each of a few dozen stores, and see not just how they do, but what customer types buy how much. Now they can make very accurate predictions about how much will sell at every one of their stores, so they know to send this one three cases, that one none, etc.
It may not sound like that big a deal, but the economics of the grocery business are kind of extreme. For every dollar that passes through their hands they get a penny or two to run the store and try to squeeze a profit out of. Extended across the number of stores someone like Safeway has, even a slight efficiency improvemnet is a huge amount of money.
Re:Frequent Shopping Card @ Grocery Store
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Myware and Spyware
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· Score: 1
"Don't fill out your parents' phone number. Make up a clearly bogus one, it's much more satisfying."
In fact, from the grocery stores point of view, a bogus one is probably just as good as the real one, and preferable to your parents number. So if your motivation is to "stick it to the man" or something like that, you're failing. If you just think it's fun to have it say OSCAR GROUCH, no problem. For the grocery store, the valuable data is being able to predict demand for certain products based on sales of other products. To do that, when you buy product X, they need to identify you as the same guy that bought product Y last week. They don't care what your name is, and in most cases, don't even track it.
Personally, I've got nothing particular against my grocery store; if collecting that data helps them out a bit, what the heck. I gave them a bogus name and the right address, so I would know if they sold my name (which the person taking the form said they wouldn't, but she didn't seem like the type to know). So far, they send me an occasional flyer, but no third parties.
Re:Grocery stores do it too.
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Myware and Spyware
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I don't remember too many "sales" at the grocery store. They certainly tried a lot of ways to trade minor discounts for marketing data though; coupons being the most obvious. I'd guess they're giving out comparitively more discounts these days (and possibly raising prices to cover it) and getting much better marketing data. I don't worry much about the supermarket discount cards though. They generally don't care if you give them a real name, because mostly they don't even track it. The valuable data is "People who buy product X also buy product Y". The grocery business is famous for it's slim margins; slim meaning like 1%. It is essential to them that hey not have stuff taking up shelf space that isn't selling.
I actually see the limited context as a feature; besides keeping things consise, it's a hint about the wideness of the articles appeal.
Before this thread, I didn't know what Blender was more than vaguely. So if an summary says the article is about a new feature in Blender, and doesn't define, I know I probably don't care. The only reason to say "Blender, a 3D modelling app..." is if the story is likely to be interesting to people who didn't already know that.
Now, I imagine I'm not alone amongst slashdotters in being the type who will ocasionally read a story about something specifically because I've no idea what it's talking about, but the lack of context actually provides useful information about what level of understanding the article assumes, and what audience is expected to be interested.
I've seen articles in other media that say they are going to tell me something about "HTML (the language of the Internet)"; and again, the amount of context helps me decide if I want to read the article.
Oh, by all means do discuss the fact that grammar on slashdot sucks in this thread; I did not mean to imply that you shouldn't, though I can certainly see how my post would seem to say that. I had meant to reply to the narrow topic of the sugestion that Shrunk and White is a definitive ruleset for English grammar, and/or that it ought to be applied to slashdot.
I went on to discussing the wider topic, spelling and grammar on slashdot. While I agree the state of spelling and grammer on slashdot is abysmal, I agree with Taco that, in other threads, complaints about grammar are more bothersome than the poor grammar itself. So the stuff asking you (or really Grammar Nazis in general, which I don't even know if you are) to shut up and go away should be intepreted really as an example of the reply I refrain from making every time I see someone else fail to refrain from correcting grammar on slashdot.
Re-reading this post, I don't know if I've made it any clearer...
"You sound like you haven't actually used (or flipped though) Strunk & White"
And you sound like you don't know what a formal grammar specification is. Strunk & White ain't one.
Strunk and White is a rather definitive guide for the writing of formal American-English prose. Yet even adherents to it may reasonably disagree about finer points. Compare the frequency of comma usage in a typical New York Times article with that in other respected publications, for example.
In any case, endless complaints that Slashdot does not adhere to a standard that it explicitly does not aspire to are boring until they become annoying. Slashdot has gramattical errors all over the place, yes! Thank you! We knew that, and for the 5 billionth time, there is no intent to try to correct it. If that pisses you off so much you must leave, don't let the door hit you on the ass! Otherwise may we return to discussing novel topics, or would you like to point out that I've misspelled something in this post? For the record, I don't know if I did or not, though it seems likely. I could find out with a single mouse-click, but I'm not going to! HAHAHAHA!
The ACLU has sued to defend your right to pray on public property in addition to to my right to not be compelled to pray. I won't call you an evil Christian; your religion clearly has nothing to do with your being an ignorant twit.
"Now then, where the F was the ACLU when the Clinton Admin was conducting physical searches without warrants?"
They were in court, suing to stop them; where were you?
"if the thought that ~36 authorizations of international phone calls"
It's 36 authorizations, not 36 calls. It is, as far as I can tell, a stupefyingly huge number of calls.
This is about listening to American citizens calls in cases where you don't think you could convince a judge who you apointed, that has top-secret clearance, who can issue warrants retroactively, who has refused to issue such warrants a couple times out of hundreds of requests. In cases where the administration doesn't think that guy is going to agree the wiretaps are justified, Bush is claiming the authority to just do it anyway, with no review from the judicial branch, and in direct contradiction of the legislative branch. The arguments he uses to claim this authority apply equally to ANYTHING he want's to do. This case is about whether the President may appoint himself King, or whether we still have a constitutional government.
The voting was fun too I bet. Oh, wait... Well, I'm sure that will change, I mean, it's not like they just roll over democracy protesters with tanks, right? Um, right.
And who really needs freedom of religion, speach, the press, any significant restraint on corruption, I mean come on, they've got whores! What else do you need?
"Now, there's a lot of cynicism in this this thread because 'Web 2.0' is a buzzword. Personally I think it's a worthwhile one though, if only because there is a sharp distinction betweem the two things above."
But there isn't a sharp distinction. I've been calling what I do "Web based software" for 8 years now. The capability for interaction on the web has been slowly evolving throughout. The "new" thing about Web 2.0 is it's proponents discovery of it. Yes, interactivity on the web is really cool, and worth getting excited about if that's your thing. But looking at it as a dramatic departure, a totally new thing that makes what has gone before, in short, all the reasons to call it "2.0", is pure hype. That's why people hate it. You take a cool thing, that's part real and part hype, and come up with a name that nicely sums up and exclusively isolates the hype part. Those who know what's up will hate the name.
"Web 2.0" is horse-shit. Meanwhile, interactive web-based software is really coming into it's own. \
In my experience, the quality of the signal degrades squarely with the number of people involved, whether they are communicating in a series of jumps, or all in a room together. If there are 10 people working on a project, it should be broken into sub-tasks that teams of 3 or less can attack seperately. If one of those ten people needs to communicate with another, they should meet directly with one another. If all 10 people are sitting there through every two-person communication, they'll never do anyuthing else. If all 10 legitimately need information from each of the other 10, the manager blew it when they split up the tasks.
I've been part of a large team that communicated via large meetings. We'd spend hours talking about tasks and rationales, and we still wouldn't be able to hash it all out when everybody and there brother had to be aware of everything. Today where I work, I have two meetings a year when the CEO lays out our big-picture goals and congratulates anyone who did something extra-cool recently. And that's pretty much it. It is indeed important to be able to recognize games of telephone when they occur, and short-circuit them; but largely that's handled by my manager, who is fairly adept at making sure everyone knows what they are responsible for, and who they should be communicating with. In this environment, I would guess I get more accomplished personally than the entire large meeting-laden team I was in previously.
But, continuing your analogy, someone translating Origin of Species into Russian would in fact need a basic grounding in Biology. Some level of understanding of the topic is necessary to produce a good translation. In particular, if there is a glaring error, one must know if one is faithfully translating an error, or misunderstanding the original text; whether the error is in the translators understanding or Darwins.
I would guess the WINE team understands the design of the windows APIs better than anyone, quite possibly including the original implementors. The fact that they didn't nottice the problem is certainly an argument that it wasn't blindingly obvious.
And frankly, it's being obvious ouhgt to be an argument aginst it's being intentional. If MS wanted to put a secret backdoor in Windows, they could easily have done it in a far easier to exploit, and much, much harder to find way. You don't document double-secret backdoors.
Well, admitedly, people flying hijacked airplanes into buildings is less of a threat to your security than the ones Franklin faced (An army under the control of the current government looking to hang you personally); and I'd argue the threats to his freedom, pre-revolt, were lesser than the threats to ours today. So I'd agree we need a different world view; the Franklin quote is much, much, more relevant today than it was in his time.
The wiretapping certainly isn't about listening to Bin Laden's telephone calls. The wiretapping is about listening to the telephone calls of American citizens when you are not willing to even try to get a warrant, not even from a secret court that can issue warrants retro-actively, and has refused to issue them a couple times out of the hundreds they've been asked. Do you think a warrant could have been obtained for calls to the Axis leaders? Somehow I think so. The administration clearly does not think they can convince a notably sympathetic Judge (who they picked) that this wiretapping is justifiabale, even if they show him the facts. Instead, the whole country should just take their word for it. That has got to be the most obvious horse-shit I've ever heard.
By claiming he has the authority top order this wiretapping, the President is claiming that he has the authority to do anything he wants, without telling anyone, even if both Congress and the courts specifically say otherwise. What does this claim amount to other than saying "I am King."?
Yes, I think Franklin would have objected; I think he would have revolted.
"there *has* to be a meeting between him and the team leads ot keep him up to speed"
But those could optimaly be handled in a series of two or three person meetings. Two or three people discussing something can be the most useful way to exchange information. I think of a "Meeting" meaning 4 or more people in a conference room, and they are mostly a waste of time.
Meetings come in essentially 3 varieties: One-to-many: There are meetings where one person gives information to a whole bunch of people. Most of these can be better handled by email. I'm in two worthwhile ones of these a year, and those, the good ones, are 90% pep rally.
Many-to-one: There are meetings where one person takes in information from a whole bunch of people. Or more to the point, one person takes in information from one person after another while everyone else sits there doing nothing. These meetings are your quick-and-easy sign of a poor manager. A good manager will gather information from each of the people seperately, and redistribute just the relevant bits without wasting everyones time.
Many-to-many: There are meetings where a bunch of people all need to share information with each other. More than three people in such a meeting is asking for trouble, more than 5 almost certainly means it will devolve into two people having an incredibly long conversation no one else needs to be part of. A good moderator is essential for this type of meeting. Any time 30 seconds goes by without a fact everyone needs to know, the moderator should say "Why don't we discuss that off-line?" A good moderator is one who is perfectly willing to interupt people to keep things focussed.
That doesn't work. Once an invention is out there (on sale or otherwise "published"), you have a limited time (a year IIRC) to file for a patent.
The standard Pharmaceutical company trick is shortly before the patent expires, they introduce a new version with a trivial (but newly patented) "improvement". Aggressive marketing tries to get all their current customers switched to the new drug. When the patent expires, other companies can make generic versions of the original drug, and these may for all practical purposes be just as good at treating whatever it is, but pharmacists can't make the substitution for the new one without a new prescription.
The other trick is to find new uses for current drugs, and patent those new uses, which gets weird in that eventually generic companies can make the exact same drug, but not market it for the new purpose.
Both of these seem to me like side effects of applying patent law, which works reasonably well for things like mechanical engineering, to other realms.
To put it simply, No.
Using only C functionality, in the worst case, a C++ compiler should produce an equivalent runtime to a pure C compiler. In many cases it will produce a faster runtime; the classic example is the standard library sort function. This uses the same algorithm, and probably much of the same code, in both languages; but in c++ it is a template, so the comipler can inline the comparison function.
People who beleive C is faster than C++ do not know what they are talking about. They will start telling you about virtual functions or exceptions. These are not required in C++, and C does not have them at all, so how is it faster again?
C++ is very nearly a superset of C. There are certain ways in which it is not (can't call main(), stricter typing of pointers, etc.); but none of these adversely affect performance. So unless your compiler sucks (and non-sucky ones do exist) C++ should never be inherently slower than C. Sometimes it's faster; and it certainly has advantages in areas not related to performance.
So this could theoretically lead to having a peice of prior art considered, and rejected, before the patent is granted. That would make it harder to bring up that same peice of prior art in court after the patent is granted, eliminating the meager chance that that prior art will pass the much higher standard at that point after it failed the lower standard? Gee, I never thought of that. You're right, this is a terrible idea. In fact, that same argument makes clear that we should try to ensure the patent office never hears about any prior art! Best they just issue patents to anyone who applies, and let us fight it out in court. Are you sure you're not a patent lawyer?
"So basically this means open source projects are now liable for making sure they don't infringe on corporate patents."
You mean, just like they always have been? If you infringe on someones patent and they send you a cease-and-desist, you've got some level of problem, and this has no impact on what that level is.
This is trying to let you hear about patent applications in particular areas before the patent is granted; presumably so you can tell the patent office, "Hey, wait! I've been doing it that way for years, I just never patented it because it's so stupidly obvious." I don't see how it puts any more burden on anybody. If it works, maybe it will reduce the number of stupid patents. I'm not sure why you're bent on deciding this is not a good thing.
Please make some attempt to understand what a story is about before pointing out why it is an attempt by MS to cause trouble for Open Source. At the least, please identify whether the story has anything particular to do with MS or Open Source. Note that mention of open source in the Slashdot summary is not a good guide. This story, for example, is about patents, which are an topic under the larger heading "Technology" which also contains the topics "Open source" and "Microsoft"; and that's about as close as it gets.
"I suppose it makes them feel safer, being in a heavier vehicle (which they probably are)."
"They may be more likely to survive"
But they are not. Study after study, including TFA, shows that while SUVs are much more dangerous to the other guy, they aren't any safer for the occupants. Using an SUV when a car would do is not just selfish, it's stupid too.
Slashdot Mirror
"Nothing about their salary is locked in"
Except of course the interest on the billions of dollars they now have invested in smarter places than Google stock. They don't particularly need to get paid anymore. They can't be expected to make decisions that will justify Googles current stock price, it's too far into silly land. They can be expected to do what they can to keep the bubble from bursting; like talking about their $1 salaries. A one dollar salary sure sounds like the execs beleive in the companies future. Selling 1.5 billion worth of Google stock off sounds not as good.
But Googles stock price is not linked to the companies success; it is linked the companies reputation as being really cool. Googles stock price exceeds what it's earnings justify by orders of magnitude. Google stock, or any stock at their kind of P/E ratio is mostly a pyramid scheme. Taking a one-dollar salary, and pointing that out without mentioning the billions in other compensation, is about keeping the really cool reputation going. Meanwhile, the execs are moving to diversify their wealth away from Google stock, because they are smart guys.
I certainly recomend finding happiness within oneself; but I also reccomend trying to change your external environment to suit yourself. You may fail; don't let that stop you from trying.
I have an Uncle, a very smart guy, who at some point in his youth decided he did not want to be a doctor, as he was on track to be. He decided what he loved was building wooden boats, by hand. This is not a way to make a lot of money, or even very much at all. So he bought a plot of land in the middle of nowhere. He built a sawmill, a workshop and a house. He built a great many boats. He built a violin and tought himself to play it. He raised a family. 40 years later, he has essentially no money at all, and more life satisfaction than anyone else I know. He has definitely found hapiness within himself. But has he changed his external environment to facilitate this? Big time. Could everyone do it? No. Most people are not as all-around competent at getting things done as he is, and very few have the imagination to see what really makes them happy. "Do what you love" is just shorthand advice for the imagination part.
Oh, there are no doubt some people somewhere who love mopping, but let's face it, there are a lot more mops to be pushed than people like that.
"Do what you love" in not a prescription for assigning everyone jobs in an efficient society; it is advice for individuals who don't want to push mops. If you want to do something better paying and/or more enjoyable than pushing a mop, you'll probably need to be good at it, or at least better than the next guy who also doesn't want to push a mop. People tend to be good at, or become good at, things they love doing. And since we're presumably trying to maximise your total happiness here, doing something you love get's you a head start to begin with.
Yeah, lot's of people have laws that seem "wacky", but who are we to judge?
Aparthied South Africa, Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany...
In short, bullshit on your cultural relativism. Some governments do things that are wrong, and responsible persons and corporations should be expected to determine this, and should refuse to abet them. Helping the Chines government quash dissent is wrong, and "But I have to to make money" is not a defense.
But that's somewhat deceptive. Non-porn sites tend to be fairly well organized, and link to sites on the same topic that are useful. If you are looking for information on (for example) antique bicycles, you do one search, then surf forth from the top few hits, quickly finding the good stuff. Porn sites on the other hand tend to be self-refferential rats nests of unhelpful links, and the strategy for finding sttuff is much more search-intensive. Uh, or, uh, so I've heard.
Porn sites have an easier time being profitable, but I don't buy that porn is a big driver for people getting internet access, for example. Without the porn, the internet would still be there.
Not so. All viruses are environment specific, yes. As noted by other posters, for the type of virus this article is about that required environment was a PC compatible machine; OS, or lack there of, was irrelevant. Most modern viruses are in some sens much less hard core. They require both specific apps and usually a clueless user. When virus writers pick an app to target, they do tend to pick specific apps that run on Windows, because they can count. All the more so if they need a clueless user.
So I agree that most viruses are specific to Windows; but I think it's dangerous to imagine it must be this way. Viruses are a feature of computers themselves, as I cannot imagine a computer capable enough to be worth using that could not support viruses, particularly with the addition of clueless users.
Oh, and "99.999..." is just a funny way of writing 100; numerically they are identical. I know another poster noted this, but I can't help myself.
Yes, hard drive marketers slimily redefine MB to make their capacities seem bigger. They are not doing it because it is a standard.
"But is a card really all that necessary? It's not like I'm running into the giant megastore to buy a candy bar. They already can get this data from each of my visits-- how important is it that they can tie subsequent visits together?"
It's not essential. Walmart pioneered a lot of this sort of thing before discount cards with a datatabase just tying products together by their being in the same shopping cart; i.e. bought by a single customer in a single visit. Still, more data is better.
They no doubt do some of the analysis you suggest, but a lot of that is well known; prices on high volume staples (milk and bread) drive total store volume by getting the customer there, and they'll then buy low frequency items (detergent) at whatever store their already at. You can jerk around the price of detergent quite a bit, but charge an extra quarter for a gallon of milk, and they'll jump ship in droves.
The big deal to do with this data is a type of statistics called Cluster Analysis. Somewhat simplified, you assign all your customers to one of a bunch of types based on what they buy. Then you can create a detailed profile of the mix of customer types at each store.
Let's say someone comes to Safeway with a new kind of cheese-doodle. Safeway could send a case of them to every one of their thousands of stores, and see how they do, but that will cost a huge amount of money. So they'll send a case to each of a few dozen stores, and see not just how they do, but what customer types buy how much. Now they can make very accurate predictions about how much will sell at every one of their stores, so they know to send this one three cases, that one none, etc.
It may not sound like that big a deal, but the economics of the grocery business are kind of extreme. For every dollar that passes through their hands they get a penny or two to run the store and try to squeeze a profit out of. Extended across the number of stores someone like Safeway has, even a slight efficiency improvemnet is a huge amount of money.
"Don't fill out your parents' phone number. Make up a clearly bogus one, it's much more satisfying."
In fact, from the grocery stores point of view, a bogus one is probably just as good as the real one, and preferable to your parents number. So if your motivation is to "stick it to the man" or something like that, you're failing. If you just think it's fun to have it say OSCAR GROUCH, no problem. For the grocery store, the valuable data is being able to predict demand for certain products based on sales of other products. To do that, when you buy product X, they need to identify you as the same guy that bought product Y last week. They don't care what your name is, and in most cases, don't even track it.
Personally, I've got nothing particular against my grocery store; if collecting that data helps them out a bit, what the heck. I gave them a bogus name and the right address, so I would know if they sold my name (which the person taking the form said they wouldn't, but she didn't seem like the type to know). So far, they send me an occasional flyer, but no third parties.
I don't remember too many "sales" at the grocery store. They certainly tried a lot of ways to trade minor discounts for marketing data though; coupons being the most obvious. I'd guess they're giving out comparitively more discounts these days (and possibly raising prices to cover it) and getting much better marketing data.
I don't worry much about the supermarket discount cards though. They generally don't care if you give them a real name, because mostly they don't even track it. The valuable data is "People who buy product X also buy product Y". The grocery business is famous for it's slim margins; slim meaning like 1%. It is essential to them that hey not have stuff taking up shelf space that isn't selling.
I actually see the limited context as a feature; besides keeping things consise, it's a hint about the wideness of the articles appeal.
Before this thread, I didn't know what Blender was more than vaguely. So if an summary says the article is about a new feature in Blender, and doesn't define, I know I probably don't care. The only reason to say "Blender, a 3D modelling app..." is if the story is likely to be interesting to people who didn't already know that.
Now, I imagine I'm not alone amongst slashdotters in being the type who will ocasionally read a story about something specifically because I've no idea what it's talking about, but the lack of context actually provides useful information about what level of understanding the article assumes, and what audience is expected to be interested.
I've seen articles in other media that say they are going to tell me something about "HTML (the language of the Internet)"; and again, the amount of context helps me decide if I want to read the article.
Oh, by all means do discuss the fact that grammar on slashdot sucks in this thread; I did not mean to imply that you shouldn't, though I can certainly see how my post would seem to say that. I had meant to reply to the narrow topic of the sugestion that Shrunk and White is a definitive ruleset for English grammar, and/or that it ought to be applied to slashdot.
I went on to discussing the wider topic, spelling and grammar on slashdot. While I agree the state of spelling and grammer on slashdot is abysmal, I agree with Taco that, in other threads, complaints about grammar are more bothersome than the poor grammar itself. So the stuff asking you (or really Grammar Nazis in general, which I don't even know if you are) to shut up and go away should be intepreted really as an example of the reply I refrain from making every time I see someone else fail to refrain from correcting grammar on slashdot.
Re-reading this post, I don't know if I've made it any clearer...
"You sound like you haven't actually used (or flipped though) Strunk & White"
And you sound like you don't know what a formal grammar specification is. Strunk & White ain't one.
Strunk and White is a rather definitive guide for the writing of formal American-English prose. Yet even adherents to it may reasonably disagree about finer points. Compare the frequency of comma usage in a typical New York Times article with that in other respected publications, for example.
In any case, endless complaints that Slashdot does not adhere to a standard that it explicitly does not aspire to are boring until they become annoying. Slashdot has gramattical errors all over the place, yes! Thank you! We knew that, and for the 5 billionth time, there is no intent to try to correct it. If that pisses you off so much you must leave, don't let the door hit you on the ass! Otherwise may we return to discussing novel topics, or would you like to point out that I've misspelled something in this post? For the record, I don't know if I did or not, though it seems likely. I could find out with a single mouse-click, but I'm not going to! HAHAHAHA!
The ACLU has sued to defend your right to pray on public property in addition to to my right to not be compelled to pray. I won't call you an evil Christian; your religion clearly has nothing to do with your being an ignorant twit.
"Now then, where the F was the ACLU when the Clinton Admin was conducting physical searches without warrants?"
They were in court, suing to stop them; where were you?
"if the thought that ~36 authorizations of international phone calls"
It's 36 authorizations, not 36 calls. It is, as far as I can tell, a stupefyingly huge number of calls.
This is about listening to American citizens calls in cases where you don't think you could convince a judge who you apointed, that has top-secret clearance, who can issue warrants retroactively, who has refused to issue such warrants a couple times out of hundreds of requests. In cases where the administration doesn't think that guy is going to agree the wiretaps are justified, Bush is claiming the authority to just do it anyway, with no review from the judicial branch, and in direct contradiction of the legislative branch. The arguments he uses to claim this authority apply equally to ANYTHING he want's to do. This case is about whether the President may appoint himself King, or whether we still have a constitutional government.
The voting was fun too I bet. Oh, wait... Well, I'm sure that will change, I mean, it's not like they just roll over democracy protesters with tanks, right? Um, right.
And who really needs freedom of religion, speach, the press, any significant restraint on corruption, I mean come on, they've got whores! What else do you need?
And just to be nit-picky, WW2 was in the 1940s.
"Now, there's a lot of cynicism in this this thread because 'Web 2.0' is a buzzword. Personally I think it's a worthwhile one though, if only because there is a sharp distinction betweem the two things above."
But there isn't a sharp distinction. I've been calling what I do "Web based software" for 8 years now. The capability for interaction on the web has been slowly evolving throughout. The "new" thing about Web 2.0 is it's proponents discovery of it. Yes, interactivity on the web is really cool, and worth getting excited about if that's your thing. But looking at it as a dramatic departure, a totally new thing that makes what has gone before, in short, all the reasons to call it "2.0", is pure hype. That's why people hate it. You take a cool thing, that's part real and part hype, and come up with a name that nicely sums up and exclusively isolates the hype part. Those who know what's up will hate the name.
"Web 2.0" is horse-shit. Meanwhile, interactive web-based software is really coming into it's own. \
In my experience, the quality of the signal degrades squarely with the number of people involved, whether they are communicating in a series of jumps, or all in a room together. If there are 10 people working on a project, it should be broken into sub-tasks that teams of 3 or less can attack seperately. If one of those ten people needs to communicate with another, they should meet directly with one another. If all 10 people are sitting there through every two-person communication, they'll never do anyuthing else. If all 10 legitimately need information from each of the other 10, the manager blew it when they split up the tasks.
I've been part of a large team that communicated via large meetings. We'd spend hours talking about tasks and rationales, and we still wouldn't be able to hash it all out when everybody and there brother had to be aware of everything. Today where I work, I have two meetings a year when the CEO lays out our big-picture goals and congratulates anyone who did something extra-cool recently. And that's pretty much it. It is indeed important to be able to recognize games of telephone when they occur, and short-circuit them; but largely that's handled by my manager, who is fairly adept at making sure everyone knows what they are responsible for, and who they should be communicating with. In this environment, I would guess I get more accomplished personally than the entire large meeting-laden team I was in previously.
But, continuing your analogy, someone translating Origin of Species into Russian would in fact need a basic grounding in Biology. Some level of understanding of the topic is necessary to produce a good translation. In particular, if there is a glaring error, one must know if one is faithfully translating an error, or misunderstanding the original text; whether the error is in the translators understanding or Darwins.
I would guess the WINE team understands the design of the windows APIs better than anyone, quite possibly including the original implementors. The fact that they didn't nottice the problem is certainly an argument that it wasn't blindingly obvious.
And frankly, it's being obvious ouhgt to be an argument aginst it's being intentional. If MS wanted to put a secret backdoor in Windows, they could easily have done it in a far easier to exploit, and much, much harder to find way. You don't document double-secret backdoors.
Well, admitedly, people flying hijacked airplanes into buildings is less of a threat to your security than the ones Franklin faced (An army under the control of the current government looking to hang you personally); and I'd argue the threats to his freedom, pre-revolt, were lesser than the threats to ours today. So I'd agree we need a different world view; the Franklin quote is much, much, more relevant today than it was in his time.
The wiretapping certainly isn't about listening to Bin Laden's telephone calls. The wiretapping is about listening to the telephone calls of American citizens when you are not willing to even try to get a warrant, not even from a secret court that can issue warrants retro-actively, and has refused to issue them a couple times out of the hundreds they've been asked. Do you think a warrant could have been obtained for calls to the Axis leaders? Somehow I think so. The administration clearly does not think they can convince a notably sympathetic Judge (who they picked) that this wiretapping is justifiabale, even if they show him the facts. Instead, the whole country should just take their word for it. That has got to be the most obvious horse-shit I've ever heard.
By claiming he has the authority top order this wiretapping, the President is claiming that he has the authority to do anything he wants, without telling anyone, even if both Congress and the courts specifically say otherwise. What does this claim amount to other than saying "I am King."?
Yes, I think Franklin would have objected; I think he would have revolted.
"there *has* to be a meeting between him and the team leads ot keep him up to speed"
But those could optimaly be handled in a series of two or three person meetings. Two or three people discussing something can be the most useful way to exchange information. I think of a "Meeting" meaning 4 or more people in a conference room, and they are mostly a waste of time.
Meetings come in essentially 3 varieties:
One-to-many: There are meetings where one person gives information to a whole bunch of people. Most of these can be better handled by email. I'm in two worthwhile ones of these a year, and those, the good ones, are 90% pep rally.
Many-to-one: There are meetings where one person takes in information from a whole bunch of people. Or more to the point, one person takes in information from one person after another while everyone else sits there doing nothing. These meetings are your quick-and-easy sign of a poor manager. A good manager will gather information from each of the people seperately, and redistribute just the relevant bits without wasting everyones time.
Many-to-many: There are meetings where a bunch of people all need to share information with each other. More than three people in such a meeting is asking for trouble, more than 5 almost certainly means it will devolve into two people having an incredibly long conversation no one else needs to be part of. A good moderator is essential for this type of meeting. Any time 30 seconds goes by without a fact everyone needs to know, the moderator should say "Why don't we discuss that off-line?" A good moderator is one who is perfectly willing to interupt people to keep things focussed.
That doesn't work. Once an invention is out there (on sale or otherwise "published"), you have a limited time (a year IIRC) to file for a patent.
The standard Pharmaceutical company trick is shortly before the patent expires, they introduce a new version with a trivial (but newly patented) "improvement". Aggressive marketing tries to get all their current customers switched to the new drug. When the patent expires, other companies can make generic versions of the original drug, and these may for all practical purposes be just as good at treating whatever it is, but pharmacists can't make the substitution for the new one without a new prescription.
The other trick is to find new uses for current drugs, and patent those new uses, which gets weird in that eventually generic companies can make the exact same drug, but not market it for the new purpose.
Both of these seem to me like side effects of applying patent law, which works reasonably well for things like mechanical engineering, to other realms.
To put it simply, No.
Using only C functionality, in the worst case, a C++ compiler should produce an equivalent runtime to a pure C compiler. In many cases it will produce a faster runtime; the classic example is the standard library sort function. This uses the same algorithm, and probably much of the same code, in both languages; but in c++ it is a template, so the comipler can inline the comparison function.
People who beleive C is faster than C++ do not know what they are talking about. They will start telling you about virtual functions or exceptions. These are not required in C++, and C does not have them at all, so how is it faster again?
C++ is very nearly a superset of C. There are certain ways in which it is not (can't call main(), stricter typing of pointers, etc.); but none of these adversely affect performance. So unless your compiler sucks (and non-sucky ones do exist) C++ should never be inherently slower than C. Sometimes it's faster; and it certainly has advantages in areas not related to performance.
So this could theoretically lead to having a peice of prior art considered, and rejected, before the patent is granted. That would make it harder to bring up that same peice of prior art in court after the patent is granted, eliminating the meager chance that that prior art will pass the much higher standard at that point after it failed the lower standard? Gee, I never thought of that. You're right, this is a terrible idea. In fact, that same argument makes clear that we should try to ensure the patent office never hears about any prior art! Best they just issue patents to anyone who applies, and let us fight it out in court. Are you sure you're not a patent lawyer?
"So basically this means open source projects are now liable for making sure they don't infringe on corporate patents."
You mean, just like they always have been? If you infringe on someones patent and they send you a cease-and-desist, you've got some level of problem, and this has no impact on what that level is.
This is trying to let you hear about patent applications in particular areas before the patent is granted; presumably so you can tell the patent office, "Hey, wait! I've been doing it that way for years, I just never patented it because it's so stupidly obvious." I don't see how it puts any more burden on anybody. If it works, maybe it will reduce the number of stupid patents. I'm not sure why you're bent on deciding this is not a good thing.
Please make some attempt to understand what a story is about before pointing out why it is an attempt by MS to cause trouble for Open Source. At the least, please identify whether the story has anything particular to do with MS or Open Source. Note that mention of open source in the Slashdot summary is not a good guide. This story, for example, is about patents, which are an topic under the larger heading "Technology" which also contains the topics "Open source" and "Microsoft"; and that's about as close as it gets.
"I suppose it makes them feel safer, being in a heavier vehicle (which they probably are)."
"They may be more likely to survive"
But they are not. Study after study, including TFA, shows that while SUVs are much more dangerous to the other guy, they aren't any safer for the occupants. Using an SUV when a car would do is not just selfish, it's stupid too.