Bicycles have barely improved in the past 20 years, as far as non-Olympians are concerned. The quality of "average" bikes has improved, though, as techniques that used to be only in hand-made frames has come to the mass market.
As for "upgrading" from heavy steel to aluminium to carbon; that's paying 100s of percent more for a tiny weight advantage.
On this page about testing frames, the weights of similar sized frames are:
titanium 1.44 kg
carbon 1.52 kg
aluminium 1.47 kg
531 steel 1.95 kg
Is saving 1 pound going to make much or any difference? Get your hair cut and save as much, and improve your streamling as well.
My 531 steel frame touring bike, after 21 years' service, may be retired, due to a crossed bottom bracket thread that would cost more than a new bike to fix. Meanwhile I'm riding a recent mountain bike, but pine for my old one. The spring shocks are just complications unnecessary for a road bike, but it's hard to get one without them now. Likewise going from clusters of 5 to 6 was nice, but now it's at 8 or 9, which is just pointless, and needs a narrower chain that wears out faster.
For Slashdotters, it may be worth noting that Shimano has been called the Microsoft of bicycles, due to it having wiped out a lot of competition in bike components through OEM agreements, and first following standards as it moves into a new segment (thread sizes, etc) then once it dominates, changing them on an annual basis in cosmetically pretty but functionally indifferent ways that make finding spare parts almost impossible and forcing replacements when all you need is a little cog wheel.
analogies? They don't work unless you are either, really proficient in English studies. Includes near perfect score on verbal SAT's or studying it in school as a profession or teaching it.
That seems an odd qualification to me. I've worked in publishing, and dealt with a lot of people like that; but found them in argument to often illogical and prone to making flawed analogies -- basically they use their rhetorical skills to justify their prejudices. I came from a Maths/Science background, and though those in these fields are traditionally considered clumsy in verbal skills, their arguments usually are logical, if blunt.
However, no matter who says it, I want to scream when I hear any and everything "explained" by analogy with cars. What is it with Americans that they have to describe everything as being like a car?
If they did this, the parts of MS could be weaken so much that they would effectively be taken out of the economy
I think we were discussing deleterious effects on the economy, not whether MS itself would remain strong. After the such a break up, the hope and expectation would be that the little-MS units would face real competition and be at least partially replaced by other companies. But the effect on the economy as a whole would not be negative.
There is also time involved. If MS is gone tomorrow, how long will it take for all those jobs to be replaced? How long will the effects of removing part of the economy will last?
In the worst (best) case, MS wouldn't disappear overnight, but be broken up into functional units. Such as OS, Office, games, other crap. They won't just lock the doors in Redmond and put all the coders on the street. (In any case, MS is busily shipping jobs to the third world as we speak.) Part of the economy won't be "removed", but be run by different people. Bill will still be a billionaire, but he won't be able to tell the Windows people to put in backdoors for MS Office, or lock out WordPerfect, Netscape or whoever his current enemy in other markets is.
Re:Tragedy and unfairness make realistic
on
A Game of Thrones
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· Score: 1
the happy-happy tripe spoon fed by most authors: "The Rambo Syndrome" where a formulaic plot consists of...
Try reading the original Rambo novel, First Blood by David Morrell. I read it a fewq years before the movies were made, so I didn't have any expectations. Rambo is killed at the end, and they originally shot that for the movie, unfortunately they decided to keep him alive for sequels.
Re:JR Rowling and initials and fashion...
on
A Game of Thrones
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· Score: 1
You have to wonder about the publishers given the success of other women fantasy authors such as Ursula K. LeGuin.
I think for a while she was bylined "U.K. Le Guin", for the sme reason. Others include Alice Mary Norton, "Andre Norton" and Alice Sheldon, "James Tiptree, Jr" (who kept it up for a long time till she was outed). Quite likely there were many others.
Arthur C Clarke's The City and the Stars had roads that moved faster smoothly as you walked to their centre, in the city Diaspar, the last city on earth a billion years in the future. Real sensawonda.
what is all the seemingly garbled text at the bottom of this guys page? It begins after "begin-base64 644 dayX.tgz
It's the MIME-encoded archive containing the files you need for the exploit: bert.xtf, ernie.xtf, (corrupted fonts) default.xbe (Linux loader). With a little bit of cutting and pasting you can decode it with Aladdin Expander, or probably Winzip, etc.
The DMCA. Circumventing a copyright protection system is illegal.
Since the hackers aren't Americans, and won't make Sklyarov's mistake of going there, it doesn't apply, unless GWB sends in the troops to take them off to Guantanamo Bay.
RTFA: "Crookes' radiometer has invariably rotated in the opposite sense to the expected one. The black side of the paddles invariably recedes from the light, and many explanations have been offered, but not including that which would seem the most obvious: the absence of radiation pressure on the bright side."
If it was just putting a coin in a slot, maybe. But not with all the rigmarole of signing up for the micropayment, then settling it on my credit card, and explaining the bill to my wife, all adds up to more hassle than I want to deal with when there are plenty of free comics on the web.
I work in *Japanese* publishing. The point is the shopkeeper would have to do it himself, because it isn't going to happen on the publisher's dime.
If it was a real problem, the printer would -- because bagging can be easily done at the press for negligible cost. For instance here a lot of computer (and porn) magazines are bagged to retain an CDROM/VCD. But since this is just a silly news filler, it isn't worth anyone's dime to worry about.
The printer" doesn't package books up for shipping.
I work in publishing. I get "the printer" to package books for me how I specify. Whether they subcontract it I don't care. And in this case, the point is that it ISN'T the shopkeeper.
And how much do you think it will cost them to do that?
Probably nothing. If it really is a problem (which it probably isn't), they printer would bag them before delivery. And as I said, they do it in some HK shops now, wher rents are at least as high as Tokyo.
Ok - so they want to read them on screen - sure, wonderful to read 50 pages of a bit skew maybe slightly blurry text:)
RTFA... some who did this were young women who wanted to get a few images of hairstyles to show their hairdresser, or of clothes to show their friends or help in finding them in a shop. As ever, no one buys, or pirates, glossy (men's or women's) magazines to "read the articles" (somewhat like Slashdot).
They're not going to be able to put them all behind the counter...
But they can shrinkwrap them, as they do in some bookshops and many suoermarkets in Hong Kong (to stop browsers dogearing them rather than photographing them, I suspect).
If you're going to stand in a bookstore, taking 500 pictures of the latest fav-novel of your choice, and *not* get caught, then you probably deserve to get away with the pictures.
Reminds me of when I was a teenager and stopped at the mewsagent/bookshop on the way home to "browse" a few chapters of a porn novel that I was too chicken to buy. Only took a few days to get through them.
You are also assuming that every website that can afford to display a graphic-encoded number can also afford to have a dedicated phone line with an automated voice response system. And that is a wrong assumption.
The spammers will only bother to automate sign ups for big webmail sites. Smaller ones probably deal with a few to a few dozen signups a day, and can manually intervene if they notice hundreds beig registered per minute.
Aside from your questions being culturally biased, the spammers would just have to spend a day doing this manually to accumulate a few thousand questions and the correct answersm then the coudl automate the process.
The problem is that they are trying to make a Turing test that can be both created and graded by a computer. Simpler just to say "if you have a problem with this visual test, please call xxxxx to be assisted by our operator. The 10 minute wait would be enough to deter bulk registrations; real users could endure this one time only. They could log caller's numbers to prevent any abuse regardless. Possibly they could even do an automated phone question and answer, and having caller ID could prevent mass registrations (unless it's possible to spoof caller ID).
Slashdot Mirror
- titanium 1.44 kg
- carbon 1.52 kg
- aluminium 1.47 kg
- 531 steel 1.95 kg
Is saving 1 pound going to make much or any difference? Get your hair cut and save as much, and improve your streamling as well.My 531 steel frame touring bike, after 21 years' service, may be retired, due to a crossed bottom bracket thread that would cost more than a new bike to fix. Meanwhile I'm riding a recent mountain bike, but pine for my old one. The spring shocks are just complications unnecessary for a road bike, but it's hard to get one without them now. Likewise going from clusters of 5 to 6 was nice, but now it's at 8 or 9, which is just pointless, and needs a narrower chain that wears out faster.
For Slashdotters, it may be worth noting that Shimano has been called the Microsoft of bicycles, due to it having wiped out a lot of competition in bike components through OEM agreements, and first following standards as it moves into a new segment (thread sizes, etc) then once it dominates, changing them on an annual basis in cosmetically pretty but functionally indifferent ways that make finding spare parts almost impossible and forcing replacements when all you need is a little cog wheel.
If you want POP3 mail access on Yahoo, you have to pay at least $20/year. Webmail is free.
That seems an odd qualification to me. I've worked in publishing, and dealt with a lot of people like that; but found them in argument to often illogical and prone to making flawed analogies -- basically they use their rhetorical skills to justify their prejudices. I came from a Maths/Science background, and though those in these fields are traditionally considered clumsy in verbal skills, their arguments usually are logical, if blunt.
However, no matter who says it, I want to scream when I hear any and everything "explained" by analogy with cars. What is it with Americans that they have to describe everything as being like a car?
Someone noticed; you were modded down "redundant" like everyone else who commented on it (how long will it take before this disappears?)
I think we were discussing deleterious effects on the economy, not whether MS itself would remain strong. After the such a break up, the hope and expectation would be that the little-MS units would face real competition and be at least partially replaced by other companies. But the effect on the economy as a whole would not be negative.
In the worst (best) case, MS wouldn't disappear overnight, but be broken up into functional units. Such as OS, Office, games, other crap. They won't just lock the doors in Redmond and put all the coders on the street. (In any case, MS is busily shipping jobs to the third world as we speak.) Part of the economy won't be "removed", but be run by different people. Bill will still be a billionaire, but he won't be able to tell the Windows people to put in backdoors for MS Office, or lock out WordPerfect, Netscape or whoever his current enemy in other markets is.
Try reading the original Rambo novel, First Blood by David Morrell. I read it a fewq years before the movies were made, so I didn't have any expectations. Rambo is killed at the end, and they originally shot that for the movie, unfortunately they decided to keep him alive for sequels.
I think for a while she was bylined "U.K. Le Guin", for the sme reason. Others include Alice Mary Norton, "Andre Norton" and Alice Sheldon, "James Tiptree, Jr" (who kept it up for a long time till she was outed). Quite likely there were many others.
Arthur C Clarke's The City and the Stars had roads that moved faster smoothly as you walked to their centre, in the city Diaspar, the last city on earth a billion years in the future. Real sensawonda.
It's the MIME-encoded archive containing the files you need for the exploit: bert.xtf, ernie.xtf, (corrupted fonts) default.xbe (Linux loader). With a little bit of cutting and pasting you can decode it with Aladdin Expander, or probably Winzip, etc.
We just broke into OUR OWN house that we bought from you, and found that your lock is very easy to pick. We can help you to improve the lock....
Since the hackers aren't Americans, and won't make Sklyarov's mistake of going there, it doesn't apply, unless GWB sends in the troops to take them off to Guantanamo Bay.
After you're read a few, you realise that they're not worth your time, let alone money. Hack writing doen't get any more hackneyed than porn.
RTFA: "Crookes' radiometer has invariably rotated in the opposite sense to the expected one. The black side of the paddles invariably recedes from the light, and many explanations have been offered, but not including that which would seem the most obvious: the absence of radiation pressure on the bright side."
If it was just putting a coin in a slot, maybe. But not with all the rigmarole of signing up for the micropayment, then settling it on my credit card, and explaining the bill to my wife, all adds up to more hassle than I want to deal with when there are plenty of free comics on the web.
If it was a real problem, the printer would -- because bagging can be easily done at the press for negligible cost. For instance here a lot of computer (and porn) magazines are bagged to retain an CDROM/VCD. But since this is just a silly news filler, it isn't worth anyone's dime to worry about.
Yes you can, he gives the first 6 frames free. It didn't intrigue me enough to pay to see the rest.
I work in publishing. I get "the printer" to package books for me how I specify. Whether they subcontract it I don't care. And in this case, the point is that it ISN'T the shopkeeper.
Probably nothing. If it really is a problem (which it probably isn't), they printer would bag them before delivery. And as I said, they do it in some HK shops now, wher rents are at least as high as Tokyo.
RTFA... some who did this were young women who wanted to get a few images of hairstyles to show their hairdresser, or of clothes to show their friends or help in finding them in a shop. As ever, no one buys, or pirates, glossy (men's or women's) magazines to "read the articles" (somewhat like Slashdot).
But they can shrinkwrap them, as they do in some bookshops and many suoermarkets in Hong Kong (to stop browsers dogearing them rather than photographing them, I suspect).
Even more effective, use International Rescue's camera detectors.
Reminds me of when I was a teenager and stopped at the mewsagent/bookshop on the way home to "browse" a few chapters of a porn novel that I was too chicken to buy. Only took a few days to get through them.
The spammers will only bother to automate sign ups for big webmail sites. Smaller ones probably deal with a few to a few dozen signups a day, and can manually intervene if they notice hundreds beig registered per minute.
Aside from your questions being culturally biased, the spammers would just have to spend a day doing this manually to accumulate a few thousand questions and the correct answersm then the coudl automate the process.
The problem is that they are trying to make a Turing test that can be both created and graded by a computer. Simpler just to say "if you have a problem with this visual test, please call xxxxx to be assisted by our operator. The 10 minute wait would be enough to deter bulk registrations; real users could endure this one time only. They could log caller's numbers to prevent any abuse regardless. Possibly they could even do an automated phone question and answer, and having caller ID could prevent mass registrations (unless it's possible to spoof caller ID).