I don't see it as a breach of privacy if it only records the fact that I braked or swerved, not where I did it. It seems perfectly reasonable to me for my insurer to request (not demand) evidence of my ability in the area being insured. The request my age, number of years of driving experience, home address, where I store the car, previous claims record, all of which seem to me much more private than the fact that at some point I braked or swerved.
If they start reporting where I was when I drove badly, that is a totally different matter. But this seems to me information in a commercial context which is relevant to the commercial transaction being undertaken.
True, but all of these were created by the Gods, with their divine powers. Frankenstein was the first time the constructor of new technology was a man, and the premise was that this technology might become available to mankind in the near future. SF takes as its subject the hypothetically possible future of mankind (and others), and Frankenstein fits that mould (and, plausibly, created it). Mythology is about powers forever belonging to the Gods and beyond the reach of man. Of course, there is huge blurring of the boundary, which we may call Science Fantasy.
Definitely. We could make them work in factories, fed only on gamba grass, and exploit them while we live in luxury... What could possibly go wrong with ten-ton intelligent slaves?
Except that I don't think it would be too hard to control, or even wipe out, the elephants. They are not little critters that hide in holes, and they have a slow reproductive rate, unlike rabbits which breed...
No, they apply to any company which is using its size in the marketplace to force others out by means other than providing better goods and services. You don't even have to have 50% of the market, provided that you are dominant.
Looks like they have reinvented the inmos Transputer, from about 1984. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer . They alwaysintended to take that multicore, but never got that far. But it looks remarkably similar in intention.
While you are correct within limited bounds - the ER will treat people who turn up in an emergency situation, this actually covers a small minority. If you have cancer, you are not an emergency until the cancer is untreatable. If you have Alzheimers, you are not an emergency until you are totally mindless. If you are a diabetic, you are not an emergency until you collapse. What ERs do not provide is palliative and pain relief medicine which can stop people arriving in the ER. So what happens in the US is people are not treated until their condition has worsened so far that they really are an emergency. They are then rushed to the ER, where they are treated extremely expensively, until they are capable of standing upright, and discharged. This is like driving down the road by bouncing off the kerbs: taking no action until the emergency is upon you.
Because people are left untreated until they are in a really bad way, the US actually spends more per capita on "socialized medicine" through Medicare, Medicaid and funding ER than the UK spends on 100% coverage. The mechanisms described above, plus the huge cost of billing, mean that like for like treatments cost about twice as much in the US as they do in Europe. You are spending money to kill your fellow citizens.
They came from somewhere with an atmosphere chemically very similar to Mars. You can tell rocks that have been in an atmosphere from those that have only been in vacuum, and roughly what sort of atmosphere. There is only one place in the solar system with an atmosphere like that. The only alternative is the much wilder one that they crossed interstellar space from a Mars-like planet elsewhere.
I think this wouldn't work because it would "normalise" piracy. People who do not currently pirate would reckon that that they had paid for anything they wanted to download. so that they were free to do so. This would mean that piracy, instead of being 90% by people who would not by the media if they had to pay, would be done by everybody.
Example from a childcare business who had problems with parents being late to pick up their children after work. They tried charging for overtime, and found that the problem went up, not down: people reckoned it was OK to be late if they were paying for it. (from Freaconomics, I think).
This is based on a number of "how it is done now" assumptions that are particular to your history and way of doing things.
In the UK, we don't have any insistence on when the count is done by. Some towns have a tradition of hurrying to get their count in first, in perhaps 90 minutes. But the last constituencies, with scattered islands where the ballot boxes are helicoptered in and the helicopters prefer to fly in daylight, the count may not be complete till next afternoon.
And counts are not on a per-precinct basis. they are at least on a per constituency basis, with sealed ballot boxes sent to a central count. In a large city with several constituencies, they may all be counted in one central counting room. The counters are usually town civil servants on overtime for the night - or loaned for the day if the count is not overnight
And we have 200 years experience in sorting out badly marked ballots. While it causes a few delays, it doesn't cause ream problems.
Neither the summary nor the article tell us how Hawking has survived, only that he actually has survived, against professional expectation. I am pleased that he has survived, and greatly admiring of his achievements. But, as far as I can see, we have no idea why he has survived 50 years of a disease that usually kills within five.
So it didn't work for one particular site. For which the increment for premium payment delivered only a small increment, as seen from many people's point of view. The free product was good enough, the premium not better.
I don't think this invalidates the model at all, just this particular implementation. The value for the premium has to be perceptibly large. I have long subscribed to the This Is True newsletter, which has a premium version - 2 extra stories, no advertising, three days earlier. I see the extra value, and I want to keep the newsletter going. It works for him.
Google is offering money. I bet IBM retain a perpetual licence for their own use, so they haven't lost the use of the patents. IBM probably didn't expect to use the patents - they were just part of their armoury. Google needs that armoury more, and is willing to pay for it. Like one army selling weaponry surplus to its needs to another. IBM would probably like the counter-patents broken: as a services company nowadays, IBM has less to gain from patent monopolisation than it used to.
I was not speculating so. In fact, I agree with you. I was taking it as a premise, a counterfactual to investigate. IF the FTC found what the Senate fear, what follows?
Yes. The powerful are held to higher standards than the weak. A toddler can punch you all he likes without fear of the law; a heavyweight boxer had better keep his punches to the ring. It is not success that demands it, it is power. But the powerful are usually successful - failure is a weakness.
Since the other people are paying lots of money to do so, they certainly do. I work for a fabless semiconductor company, whose current chip is being manufactured by SMIC. It costs many hundreds of thousands of dollars to get them to make out chips.
I was merely referring to the quote from the original summary "Another worrying quote is from Marissa Meyer, Google's VP of location services, who said that it was 'only fair' that Google put its own sites on higher placements than competitors", in which a Google VP appears to be saying that they do.
My remarks were made in the context of this particular/. posting, not as general truth. I agree with you, in principle. But if the FTC found, as the article reports that Congress thinks they might, that they are a monopoly, then my remarks would apply. You have been taking my remarks as having general application, whereas I have intended them to be read in context bot of the original/. posting and of the remarks further up the thread to which they were a reply. Data has context.
Defending against link farms etc. is not partial. Partial implies positive selection: slanting in favour of a particular selected party. Optimisation does not, per se, imply partiality.
I would not regard most of what made Google good as "slanted": it was not aimed to favour any particular company. The allegation is that they are now providing featured not intended to optimize search results but to favour their commercial interests.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see it as a breach of privacy if it only records the fact that I braked or swerved, not where I did it. It seems perfectly reasonable to me for my insurer to request (not demand) evidence of my ability in the area being insured. The request my age, number of years of driving experience, home address, where I store the car, previous claims record, all of which seem to me much more private than the fact that at some point I braked or swerved.
If they start reporting where I was when I drove badly, that is a totally different matter. But this seems to me information in a commercial context which is relevant to the commercial transaction being undertaken.
True, but all of these were created by the Gods, with their divine powers. Frankenstein was the first time the constructor of new technology was a man, and the premise was that this technology might become available to mankind in the near future. SF takes as its subject the hypothetically possible future of mankind (and others), and Frankenstein fits that mould (and, plausibly, created it). Mythology is about powers forever belonging to the Gods and beyond the reach of man. Of course, there is huge blurring of the boundary, which we may call Science Fantasy.
Definitely. We could make them work in factories, fed only on gamba grass, and exploit them while we live in luxury... What could possibly go wrong with ten-ton intelligent slaves?
Except that I don't think it would be too hard to control, or even wipe out, the elephants. They are not little critters that hide in holes, and they have a slow reproductive rate, unlike rabbits which breed...
No, they apply to any company which is using its size in the marketplace to force others out by means other than providing better goods and services. You don't even have to have 50% of the market, provided that you are dominant.
Looks like they have reinvented the inmos Transputer, from about 1984. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer . They alwaysintended to take that multicore, but never got that far. But it looks remarkably similar in intention.
While you are correct within limited bounds - the ER will treat people who turn up in an emergency situation, this actually covers a small minority. If you have cancer, you are not an emergency until the cancer is untreatable. If you have Alzheimers, you are not an emergency until you are totally mindless. If you are a diabetic, you are not an emergency until you collapse. What ERs do not provide is palliative and pain relief medicine which can stop people arriving in the ER. So what happens in the US is people are not treated until their condition has worsened so far that they really are an emergency. They are then rushed to the ER, where they are treated extremely expensively, until they are capable of standing upright, and discharged. This is like driving down the road by bouncing off the kerbs: taking no action until the emergency is upon you.
Because people are left untreated until they are in a really bad way, the US actually spends more per capita on "socialized medicine" through Medicare, Medicaid and funding ER than the UK spends on 100% coverage. The mechanisms described above, plus the huge cost of billing, mean that like for like treatments cost about twice as much in the US as they do in Europe. You are spending money to kill your fellow citizens.
They came from somewhere with an atmosphere chemically very similar to Mars. You can tell rocks that have been in an atmosphere from those that have only been in vacuum, and roughly what sort of atmosphere. There is only one place in the solar system with an atmosphere like that. The only alternative is the much wilder one that they crossed interstellar space from a Mars-like planet elsewhere.
I think this wouldn't work because it would "normalise" piracy. People who do not currently pirate would reckon that that they had paid for anything they wanted to download. so that they were free to do so. This would mean that piracy, instead of being 90% by people who would not by the media if they had to pay, would be done by everybody.
Example from a childcare business who had problems with parents being late to pick up their children after work. They tried charging for overtime, and found that the problem went up, not down: people reckoned it was OK to be late if they were paying for it. (from Freaconomics, I think).
This is based on a number of "how it is done now" assumptions that are particular to your history and way of doing things.
In the UK, we don't have any insistence on when the count is done by. Some towns have a tradition of hurrying to get their count in first, in perhaps 90 minutes. But the last constituencies, with scattered islands where the ballot boxes are helicoptered in and the helicopters prefer to fly in daylight, the count may not be complete till next afternoon.
And counts are not on a per-precinct basis. they are at least on a per constituency basis, with sealed ballot boxes sent to a central count. In a large city with several constituencies, they may all be counted in one central counting room. The counters are usually town civil servants on overtime for the night - or loaned for the day if the count is not overnight
And we have 200 years experience in sorting out badly marked ballots. While it causes a few delays, it doesn't cause ream problems.
It doesn't have to be the way you do it now.
The government's monopoly on the use of force. Having competing private armies would definitely be a bad thing.
Linus Torvald's monopoly on the name "Linux".
The IETF's monopoly over Internet standards.
Neither the summary nor the article tell us how Hawking has survived, only that he actually has survived, against professional expectation. I am pleased that he has survived, and greatly admiring of his achievements. But, as far as I can see, we have no idea why he has survived 50 years of a disease that usually kills within five.
The funny thing is that I've heard a lot of creationists saying his condition is a result of defying God (by being a scientist apparently).
Since he was diagnosed while still an undergraduate, God was certainly getting in his retaliation early.
So it didn't work for one particular site. For which the increment for premium payment delivered only a small increment, as seen from many people's point of view. The free product was good enough, the premium not better.
I don't think this invalidates the model at all, just this particular implementation. The value for the premium has to be perceptibly large. I have long subscribed to the This Is True newsletter, which has a premium version - 2 extra stories, no advertising, three days earlier. I see the extra value, and I want to keep the newsletter going. It works for him.
Google is offering money. I bet IBM retain a perpetual licence for their own use, so they haven't lost the use of the patents. IBM probably didn't expect to use the patents - they were just part of their armoury. Google needs that armoury more, and is willing to pay for it. Like one army selling weaponry surplus to its needs to another. IBM would probably like the counter-patents broken: as a services company nowadays, IBM has less to gain from patent monopolisation than it used to.
I was not speculating so. In fact, I agree with you. I was taking it as a premise, a counterfactual to investigate. IF the FTC found what the Senate fear, what follows?
Yes. The powerful are held to higher standards than the weak. A toddler can punch you all he likes without fear of the law; a heavyweight boxer had better keep his punches to the ring. It is not success that demands it, it is power. But the powerful are usually successful - failure is a weakness.
Since the other people are paying lots of money to do so, they certainly do. I work for a fabless semiconductor company, whose current chip is being manufactured by SMIC. It costs many hundreds of thousands of dollars to get them to make out chips.
I was merely referring to the quote from the original summary "Another worrying quote is from Marissa Meyer, Google's VP of location services, who said that it was 'only fair' that Google put its own sites on higher placements than competitors", in which a Google VP appears to be saying that they do.
My remarks were made in the context of this particular /. posting, not as general truth. I agree with you, in principle. But if the FTC found, as the article reports that Congress thinks they might, that they are a monopoly, then my remarks would apply. You have been taking my remarks as having general application, whereas I have intended them to be read in context bot of the original /. posting and of the remarks further up the thread to which they were a reply. Data has context.
But their ARMs are fabbed for them by Samsung.
China doesn't tend to make things like chips. Those are almost all made somewhere else
Yes it does. Look up SMIC, one of the larger semiconductor fab companies in the world, making other people's designs.
Anobit is fabless. I can't find out who actually fabs for them, but they don't have a fab.
Defending against link farms etc. is not partial. Partial implies positive selection: slanting in favour of a particular selected party. Optimisation does not, per se, imply partiality.
I would not regard most of what made Google good as "slanted": it was not aimed to favour any particular company. The allegation is that they are now providing featured not intended to optimize search results but to favour their commercial interests.