What I don't get is that they had to do a lot of rewriting to make this version, as a complete afterthought. So they do more development and yet they charge less than the original.
I doubt it was a lot. But they don;t want something taht could be sold back to the first world.
"As long as every last one of you is pirating our software anyway, anything we can get you to pay for is a win for us."
But that situation is true in many countries. Only in Thailand, when the governement sponsored a Linux distribution to come preinstalled on cheap PCs, did MS take such action. MS wants to have 100% of every market, and pirated MS is better than no MS, in the long term it creates a legitimate market. And they really don't want to cut their list prices in one country. For one thing, they've been moving towards a single install world wide, and the languages are an option -- back in Win 3, for instance, in the Chinese edition almost every file was different. Now almost every file is the same. So grey market imports of a cheap edtion into the first world are a risk, some countries' legislation makes these impossible to stop (others more under the corporate thumb make them illegal).
the general public doesn't sit on a metric assload of various measurment instruments.
Not that it is in any way a replacement for a government service, but The Weather Undergound of Hong Kong, and presumably affiliated groups, do have their own weather stations, though most of their data is from government observatories. But I think witout weather satellite photos, no one can conme anywhere near current state-of-the-art.
>Yes you are. Have you ever seen one of these camcorder videos?
No, we aren't talking about camcorder rips. The typical source for first run films is screener copies and people inside the studio.
May I remind you that the topic is "Senate Unanimously Passes Anti-Camcorder Bill". And that will have no effect on screener copies, unless it's attached to that bill (it well may be, I haven't the stomach to wade through the legalese).
Providing a copy of a first run film to a release group for mass distribution over the web? not exactly talking about small losses there...
Yes you are. Have you ever seen one of these camcorder videos? Sometimes the image is almost acceptable, if oyu watch it on a 14" monitor. But the sound is alwys terrible, with a nice background of coughing and crinkling cellophane. Basically anyone who'd be satisfied with that is not at all likely to have bought a ticket, or even the legal DVD. In fact the only way I can see it losing significant income for the film makers is when people use it as a preview and decide that despite the millions in publicity, that it really does suck and pass on it. (A few months ago wasn't another industry group complaining about texting from cinemas losing sales; people sitting watching The Hulk were sending out warnings to their friends to KEEP AWAY from that turgid crap.)
Have you ever been to Hong Kong? My visit was from before the handover, but it seemed that their economic success was based on:
Good Education
A very high population density
Low wages
I live in Hong Kong.
Education: most people finish high school, which is better than China, but behind Singapore.
Pop density: The land shortage means extremely high real estate prices, good for the billionaire developers but bad for everyone who has to pay rent or live in a tiny flat. On the other hand, public transport is excellent.
Low wages: Not at all. Unless you mean of the Chinese in the factories over the border (there still is a border). HK workers are now facing similar outsourcing problems as US workers, back office work is being moved to China or Macau.
Hong Kong's prosperity was built on it being an entrepot to China (and drug imports to China; these days the drugs flow the other way) and that's basically still true. It doesn't really scale to a larger country.
I frequently need to work with extremely large amounts of data (for example, data collected in the field can have millions upon millions of rows). There are work-arounds, but they typically result in me having to whip up a program in C that I will use only once. In a spreadsheet program, the same thing would take me much less time because I am doing something that really should be done with a spreadsheet application.
Actually, I venture that you really should be doing it in a database program. Spreadsheets are basically WYSIWYG, you use the mouse to do stuff to slabs of data you can see, but there is no way you can do that with millions of rows.
Much simpler to keep clean code too, when you just have a few lines or pages of code, as opposed to embedding it in a huge spreadsheet.
This seems a bit like the people who try to lay out books in PhotoShop, because that's what they know, rather than using PageMaker or the like.
If they realize that piracy of American software is detrimental to american business, then, O/S doesn't have a chance over there. Sticking it to american business will have a much higher 'social value' than any prinicples of open source.
Pirating software, in a place like Iraq, doesn't hurt American business. Nothing is lost becasue no one is going to pay for it either way. Given the choice of seeing Iraq run on pirated MS software or Linux, it's certain that MS would very much prefer they were using their software. This point is made in the original BBC article, by the way. In many developing countries when they were poor they cheerfully pirated almost all their software. As the economy grows (and with gigantic oil reserves, once Iraq starts to grow, it will be very fast) companies and governments find they are dependent on commercial software, and to get support they have to get licences. It also becomes politically necessary to "stamp out piracy", to placate the Americans. So piracy prepares the ground for proprietary software; and wipes out any chance of home-grown software of competing.
Why does everyone seem to think that there are only 3 countries in North America?
Same goes for "Western Hemisphere", which seems to mean North and Spouth America, ignoring the fact that it includes a whole swath of Pacific and Atlantic islands, half of Antarctica, Ireland, and England to the west of Greenwich.
My advice to you would be.....transfer your domain to another hosting provider pronto. Let them know it was because of their unfounded threats,
I would, if I wasn't really cashpoor from being unemployed.
If your hosting service wants to cancel your contract, demand a full refund. Even if their TOS allow them to terminate for no reason (and it probably does) being unemployed means you have the time to harass them till you get it. And in the worst case, there are plenty of free hosting services that give you a couple of Meg in return for a banner. Just select one that isn't too obnoxious, doesn't have popups or host porn.
Actually if it's the metric base unit for the measure of length, it's spelled metre. If it's a device for measuring, it's spelled meter (last two letters swapped). Much like a regional building for large gatherings of people is a centre, and the geometric mean of this building is it's center (again the last two letters are swapped). Subtle and pedantic, but true.
Maybe it's true where you live, but in UK/Australian/etc English "center" is not a word, it's a typo. Also, as you're being pedantic, "its center", not "it's center".
If somebody needs to constantly send 1000+ emails to a large variety of people (i.e. running their own mailing list) maybe they should apply for/pay for additional access anyway
I disagree; sending 1000 emails consumes very little resources, that's why there is a spam problem. This shouldn't be used as a way to screw over customers who have a legitimate mailing list. However, it might be an idea that those who do want to send mail on that scale need to register in some way, just fill out an online form stating roughly how many messages how often they plan to send, and contact details for complaints so admins can take reasonable action if there is a problem. If you try to bill outrageously you'll just end up with legit users using spammer tools to bypass it.
I've got a local ISP account, but never used it for email. I used to only get their monthly bill there. But last year it started to get an ever increasing spam load. (A similar account at another ISP gets almost none.) I suspected the ISP selling my address. But later I realised that I was using my ~username webspace to keep a small website, though it was normally referenced by a cjb.net subdomain redirect. So it's quite possible that it was harvestd by some search of websites looking for ~ URLs, which give you the username and thus email address. Now this account gets about 100 spams a day, but I just whitelist the bills and trash the rest.
It would not surprise me at all if the alarm bells didn't start ringing as soon as the DB ground to a halt while it was returning 92000000 rows
Since the FA says he did this at least twice, either they don't check their audit files very often, or he was ratted out by someone later, or did something stupid with his ill-earned cash to attract attention.
AOL can't really have 92 million subscribers, can it? Assuming almost all are in the US, that's almost a third of the population, virtually the entire number of people with any kind of email.
I am actually an excellent speller; but a poor typist, and Slashdot's dicky little text entry box in a small Courier font doesn't help proofing (Who can be bothered to use "preview" when it takes an extra 10 seconds?)
know refers to food in imperial units: a teaspoon of sugar, or a burger having X calories
I wasn't clear: I meant that a "teaspoon", while not an SI unit, is not an Imperial unit either. A metric cookbook defines a teaspoon as 5 ml, a US one as 1/6 fluid ounce. Cookery doesn't require high precsion after all. And calories are actually a metric unit, (energy to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree C), though it's not an SI unit (Joules should be used for all energy strictly).
I'm a big supporter of the metric system but I cook with cups and teaspoons.
There are metric versions of these, eg here 1/5 teaspoon = 1 ml 1 teaspoon = 5 ml 1 tablespoon = 15 ml 1 fluid oz. = 30 ml 1/5 cup = 50 ml 1 cup = 240 ml
>(I still remember 63360 inches to a mile.)
Why would anyone except a mental packrat remember that? It's not like there are a lot of things you might want to measure in either inches or miles interchangably....
I am a mental packrat. I must have learnt that in about grade 3. But it did come in useful when using maps, 1 inch:1 mile and multiples of that.
By anyone who isn't such a petty asshole that they can't accept American English as being a valid version of the language.
Valid for an American, or someone who wishes he was one. Join Howard and be an "American deputy". Oh, and as for the insults; FOAD, to use a useful Americanism.
Which matters where spelling on the internet is concerned HOW?
You brought up the subject in reference to being "unjustly" marked down in school; an Australian school, not "on the Internet". I try not to flame people here for spelling, no matter how bad. I make typos often enough.
But also a factor in that real world are customers that never return and return whatever they bought for just such lack of concern by the people who made/sold it to them.
I see people are taking this far too seriously. Partly I was stating an attitude that I believe is common, and probably too common. Birchall's willingness to point out his own errors is remarkable because it went against this. Personally, to describe a "real world" example of an error I thought it better to quietly forget, I noticed after some documents had been printed that some of the text was 11 points, and some 11.5. Since no one else had noticed and everyone was very happy with the document I saw no reason to point out the flaw; I just determined to double check this every time and fix it if it ever came to a reprint.
I've often been criticised for being too much of a perfectionist, unable to let something below my standards go by. So your remarks on my "lack of concern" with my work are ironic, as well a insulting and unwarranted.
Slashdot Mirror
Not true. Linux TLE is still the default. See for instance this article, though it's a few months old.
I doubt it was a lot. But they don;t want something taht could be sold back to the first world.
But that situation is true in many countries. Only in Thailand, when the governement sponsored a Linux distribution to come preinstalled on cheap PCs, did MS take such action. MS wants to have 100% of every market, and pirated MS is better than no MS, in the long term it creates a legitimate market. And they really don't want to cut their list prices in one country. For one thing, they've been moving towards a single install world wide, and the languages are an option -- back in Win 3, for instance, in the Chinese edition almost every file was different. Now almost every file is the same. So grey market imports of a cheap edtion into the first world are a risk, some countries' legislation makes these impossible to stop (others more under the corporate thumb make them illegal).
Just be thankful that Jon Katz didn't review it.
Not that it is in any way a replacement for a government service, but The Weather Undergound of Hong Kong, and presumably affiliated groups, do have their own weather stations, though most of their data is from government observatories. But I think witout weather satellite photos, no one can conme anywhere near current state-of-the-art.
May I remind you that the topic is "Senate Unanimously Passes Anti-Camcorder Bill". And that will have no effect on screener copies, unless it's attached to that bill (it well may be, I haven't the stomach to wade through the legalese).
Yes you are. Have you ever seen one of these camcorder videos? Sometimes the image is almost acceptable, if oyu watch it on a 14" monitor. But the sound is alwys terrible, with a nice background of coughing and crinkling cellophane. Basically anyone who'd be satisfied with that is not at all likely to have bought a ticket, or even the legal DVD. In fact the only way I can see it losing significant income for the film makers is when people use it as a preview and decide that despite the millions in publicity, that it really does suck and pass on it. (A few months ago wasn't another industry group complaining about texting from cinemas losing sales; people sitting watching The Hulk were sending out warnings to their friends to KEEP AWAY from that turgid crap.)
Good Education
A very high population density
Low wages
I live in Hong Kong.
Education: most people finish high school, which is better than China, but behind Singapore.
Pop density: The land shortage means extremely high real estate prices, good for the billionaire developers but bad for everyone who has to pay rent or live in a tiny flat. On the other hand, public transport is excellent.
Low wages: Not at all. Unless you mean of the Chinese in the factories over the border (there still is a border). HK workers are now facing similar outsourcing problems as US workers, back office work is being moved to China or Macau.
Hong Kong's prosperity was built on it being an entrepot to China (and drug imports to China; these days the drugs flow the other way) and that's basically still true. It doesn't really scale to a larger country.
Actually, I venture that you really should be doing it in a database program. Spreadsheets are basically WYSIWYG, you use the mouse to do stuff to slabs of data you can see, but there is no way you can do that with millions of rows.
Much simpler to keep clean code too, when you just have a few lines or pages of code, as opposed to embedding it in a huge spreadsheet.
This seems a bit like the people who try to lay out books in PhotoShop, because that's what they know, rather than using PageMaker or the like.
$10? In China about $1, in Hong Kong about $2.50. Learn to bargain.
Pirating software, in a place like Iraq, doesn't hurt American business. Nothing is lost becasue no one is going to pay for it either way. Given the choice of seeing Iraq run on pirated MS software or Linux, it's certain that MS would very much prefer they were using their software. This point is made in the original BBC article, by the way. In many developing countries when they were poor they cheerfully pirated almost all their software. As the economy grows (and with gigantic oil reserves, once Iraq starts to grow, it will be very fast) companies and governments find they are dependent on commercial software, and to get support they have to get licences. It also becomes politically necessary to "stamp out piracy", to placate the Americans. So piracy prepares the ground for proprietary software; and wipes out any chance of home-grown software of competing.
Same goes for "Western Hemisphere", which seems to mean North and Spouth America, ignoring the fact that it includes a whole swath of Pacific and Atlantic islands, half of Antarctica, Ireland, and England to the west of Greenwich.
But aren't most of their exports to the US measured in grams?
I would, if I wasn't really cashpoor from being unemployed.
If your hosting service wants to cancel your contract, demand a full refund. Even if their TOS allow them to terminate for no reason (and it probably does) being unemployed means you have the time to harass them till you get it. And in the worst case, there are plenty of free hosting services that give you a couple of Meg in return for a banner. Just select one that isn't too obnoxious, doesn't have popups or host porn.
Maybe it's true where you live, but in UK/Australian/etc English "center" is not a word, it's a typo. Also, as you're being pedantic, "its center", not "it's center".
I disagree; sending 1000 emails consumes very little resources, that's why there is a spam problem. This shouldn't be used as a way to screw over customers who have a legitimate mailing list. However, it might be an idea that those who do want to send mail on that scale need to register in some way, just fill out an online form stating roughly how many messages how often they plan to send, and contact details for complaints so admins can take reasonable action if there is a problem. If you try to bill outrageously you'll just end up with legit users using spammer tools to bypass it.
I've got a local ISP account, but never used it for email. I used to only get their monthly bill there. But last year it started to get an ever increasing spam load. (A similar account at another ISP gets almost none.) I suspected the ISP selling my address. But later I realised that I was using my ~username webspace to keep a small website, though it was normally referenced by a cjb.net subdomain redirect. So it's quite possible that it was harvestd by some search of websites looking for ~ URLs, which give you the username and thus email address. Now this account gets about 100 spams a day, but I just whitelist the bills and trash the rest.
Since the FA says he did this at least twice, either they don't check their audit files very often, or he was ratted out by someone later, or did something stupid with his ill-earned cash to attract attention.
AOL can't really have 92 million subscribers, can it? Assuming almost all are in the US, that's almost a third of the population, virtually the entire number of people with any kind of email.
I am actually an excellent speller; but a poor typist, and Slashdot's dicky little text entry box in a small Courier font doesn't help proofing (Who can be bothered to use "preview" when it takes an extra 10 seconds?)
I wasn't clear: I meant that a "teaspoon", while not an SI unit, is not an Imperial unit either. A metric cookbook defines a teaspoon as 5 ml, a US one as 1/6 fluid ounce. Cookery doesn't require high precsion after all. And calories are actually a metric unit, (energy to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree C), though it's not an SI unit (Joules should be used for all energy strictly).
I'm a big supporter of the metric system but I cook with cups and teaspoons.
There are metric versions of these, eg here
1/5 teaspoon = 1 ml
1 teaspoon = 5 ml
1 tablespoon = 15 ml
1 fluid oz. = 30 ml
1/5 cup = 50 ml
1 cup = 240 ml
Though I think 250 ml for a cup would be rounder.
Why would anyone except a mental packrat remember that? It's not like there are a lot of things you might want to measure in either inches or miles interchangably....
I am a mental packrat. I must have learnt that in about grade 3. But it did come in useful when using maps, 1 inch:1 mile and multiples of that.
Valid for an American, or someone who wishes he was one. Join Howard and be an "American deputy". Oh, and as for the insults; FOAD, to use a useful Americanism. Which matters where spelling on the internet is concerned HOW?
You brought up the subject in reference to being "unjustly" marked down in school; an Australian school, not "on the Internet". I try not to flame people here for spelling, no matter how bad. I make typos often enough.
I see people are taking this far too seriously. Partly I was stating an attitude that I believe is common, and probably too common. Birchall's willingness to point out his own errors is remarkable because it went against this. Personally, to describe a "real world" example of an error I thought it better to quietly forget, I noticed after some documents had been printed that some of the text was 11 points, and some 11.5. Since no one else had noticed and everyone was very happy with the document I saw no reason to point out the flaw; I just determined to double check this every time and fix it if it ever came to a reprint.
I've often been criticised for being too much of a perfectionist, unable to let something below my standards go by. So your remarks on my "lack of concern" with my work are ironic, as well a insulting and unwarranted.