At first I thought this was ridiculous because music isn't a commodity, it's not like the government is selling the same thing as the music companies. But when I thought about it some more, in ways, most classical music is a commodity. I mean, when you're looking for Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2, for the most part people don't care about who plays it, the just care that it's a recording of the piece they're looking for. That said, it's not entirely commoditized, I mean, there are differences between recordings, there are different arrangements, different qualities of recording, etc.
It seems very odd though that record companies dealing in classic music would be of the opinion that classical recordings are commodities or that even if they weren't of that opinion, that they would encourage people to think of it that way. It just seems like bad business.
Whenever somebody hooks something up to be controlled over the web I have to wonder why they bother? I mean, I understand the geek fun factor and everything, but why make it available to the public? It's just going to suck. Something like this is only fun to control if there are only a couple people on the site at a time and well, it's something so cool that there's no way there will only be a couple people on at a time!
Does being a subscriber really make a difference? I mean, yeah, there are only thousands subscribers compared to hundreds of thousands (millions?) of regular users, but still, I figure there have got to be the better part of a hundred subscribers minimum who were trying to control this train at the same time as you.
I remember a friend of mine in high school telling every teacher he had that he had an iMac at home and as such couldn't take home any of the writing he had done in the labs at school to work on at home (we only had floppy disks). He didn't, but nobody ever questioned him.
Learning another typing layout doesn't make you lose your ability to type on a Qwerty keyboard anymore than learning German might make you forget how to speak English.
That said, you might not be quite as good a Qwerty typer as you were originally, just like how learning a new language occasionally introduces a little bit of confusion in your mind. For the most part you're just as proficient though and potentially better off because of what knowing something new (language or keyboard layout).
Nope, that's not how BlogAds works. An advertiser pays to have their ad up for a certain period of time (a week, a month, etc.). He doesn't get money for every ad that gets served up, he gets money when an advertiser pays him to put up an ad, regardless of how many times it's served up. The only guideline advertisers have as to how many impressions they'll get is the number of unique hits the webmaster says his site gets.
Not really, his logs will still count it as a hit, increasing his total number of hits which will cause more people to be interested in placing an ad through his site through Blogads. Although I suppose it would keep him from making money off of Google Ads, but well, you could have kept him from making money off that by just not clicking on them.
You might think that this is just a parrot trick, but this research about 'bird intelligence' might also help autistic and other learning-disabled children 'who have trouble learning language and counting skills.'
I still think it's a parrot trick, and when translated to autistic kids, it's just an autistic kid trick. Training someone how to react to a situation and making them understand it are very different things, i.e. I could teach a four year old how to recite the quadratic equation, it doesn't mean they can use it.
Wow, they ought to get the last $1,000 in no time now that it's posted on slashdot. Hell, they'll probably make a few thousand extra before they shut it down. A nice way to give the project a boost in funding!
Because $200-300/month is a lot for a FOSS project just starting to figure out how to make enough money to cover their costs. I'm sure hosting costs are coming out of their pockets right now.
An interesting part is that the new system should support both DEB (Debian package) and RPM (Red Hat Package Management) to enable better cross-compatibility with other Linux flavours.
This isn't all that interesting, you can get rpm and apt running on most distros. I mean, already Debian has debs for rpm, you can just apt-get it. Similarly, Redhat has rpms for apt.
Each station would cost from £150,000 to £2 million to fit depending on its size and the number of entrances.
That's a lot of money, and then you realize that the London Undergound has 275 stations. Supposing that the average cost to equip a station is the average of 150,000 and 2,000,000 (1,075,000), that's a total of
£295,625,000 or over HALF A BILLION DOLLARS!
The other cost that the article doesn't even mention is the cost of additional security staff, I mean, at every station entrance you've got to have a few employees who are going to pull aside somebody who looks suspicious on the scanner.
Maybe, but the estimate could be based in fact as well. Suppose the machines are a little over £150,000 apiece, the smallest stations will need one scanner and the largest might need 10 or more, that would result in a range similar to the one quoted.
These machines are expensive, I doubt they would be able to afford to get as of them as there are turnstyles in each station currently. As such, it would seem that this will be a terrible bottleneck in getting people on the trains, I mean, everyone will have to line up to go through these scanners. Sure, some stations might have several, not just one, but in any case they're not going to have one for each turnstyle in the station currently, so it's going to be a pain.
These scanners still can see through clothing, but they can't see through all materials. This means that (a) there's a security hole or more likely (b) anyone carrying anything that cannot be seen through and is large enough to potentially carry something dangerous will have to be pulled aside and taken a closer look at. In the second case this will slow things down just like airport security slows things down making it even more of a hassle to take the tube.
What's your point? This program can handle complex returns, ergo, a replacement would have to be able to handle complex returns, regardless of the simplicity of most Australian taxpayers' returns.
I think the idea of writing a replacement program for this is really unrealistic, I mean, why bother? The whole point of filing electronically is to make your life easier and help things go a little faster. Who would spend the time reverse engineering the program, learning the australian tax codes inside and out and put it together as a program that you could use without wanting to claw your eyes out?
and then, once you get that far, you have to redo the whole damn thing next year for any changes made in the program and, more dauntingly, the changes made in the tax code as well.
Basically, I think this idea is up shits creek unless you find a very good australian accountant with remarkable programming abilities and a lot of time to spare.
This is blatant descrimination against minorities on the part of the Australian goverment. Us OS/360 users want to file our taxes online too! We will not stop until we achieve the equality we so sorely deserve!
Slashdot Mirror
At first I thought this was ridiculous because music isn't a commodity, it's not like the government is selling the same thing as the music companies. But when I thought about it some more, in ways, most classical music is a commodity. I mean, when you're looking for Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2, for the most part people don't care about who plays it, the just care that it's a recording of the piece they're looking for. That said, it's not entirely commoditized, I mean, there are differences between recordings, there are different arrangements, different qualities of recording, etc.
It seems very odd though that record companies dealing in classic music would be of the opinion that classical recordings are commodities or that even if they weren't of that opinion, that they would encourage people to think of it that way. It just seems like bad business.
Security patches do not taste as good in my Flurry as oreos and peanut butter cup pieces do.
Whenever somebody hooks something up to be controlled over the web I have to wonder why they bother? I mean, I understand the geek fun factor and everything, but why make it available to the public? It's just going to suck. Something like this is only fun to control if there are only a couple people on the site at a time and well, it's something so cool that there's no way there will only be a couple people on at a time!
Does being a subscriber really make a difference? I mean, yeah, there are only thousands subscribers compared to hundreds of thousands (millions?) of regular users, but still, I figure there have got to be the better part of a hundred subscribers minimum who were trying to control this train at the same time as you.
So that DRM they were talking about last week in an article on here, was it Rot26?
I remember a friend of mine in high school telling every teacher he had that he had an iMac at home and as such couldn't take home any of the writing he had done in the labs at school to work on at home (we only had floppy disks). He didn't, but nobody ever questioned him.
Here's an article and discussion on the topic: An Arguement for Dvorak
I wonder if slashdot fans are as tender about linking to Kuro5hin as Kuro5hin fans are about linking to Slashdot. Let's find out.
Learning another typing layout doesn't make you lose your ability to type on a Qwerty keyboard anymore than learning German might make you forget how to speak English.
That said, you might not be quite as good a Qwerty typer as you were originally, just like how learning a new language occasionally introduces a little bit of confusion in your mind. For the most part you're just as proficient though and potentially better off because of what knowing something new (language or keyboard layout).
Nope, that's not how BlogAds works. An advertiser pays to have their ad up for a certain period of time (a week, a month, etc.). He doesn't get money for every ad that gets served up, he gets money when an advertiser pays him to put up an ad, regardless of how many times it's served up. The only guideline advertisers have as to how many impressions they'll get is the number of unique hits the webmaster says his site gets.
Not really, his logs will still count it as a hit, increasing his total number of hits which will cause more people to be interested in placing an ad through his site through Blogads. Although I suppose it would keep him from making money off of Google Ads, but well, you could have kept him from making money off that by just not clicking on them.
Modern science = Stupid parrot tricks
I always knew David Lettermen was onto something with stupid pet tricks, I'm surprised he never got a grant.
Wow, they ought to get the last $1,000 in no time now that it's posted on slashdot. Hell, they'll probably make a few thousand extra before they shut it down. A nice way to give the project a boost in funding!
Because $200-300/month is a lot for a FOSS project just starting to figure out how to make enough money to cover their costs. I'm sure hosting costs are coming out of their pockets right now.
I can second that.
Anyone want to take bets on how long it takes before somebody suggests you use mysql instead of Oracle?
The other cost that the article doesn't even mention is the cost of additional security staff, I mean, at every station entrance you've got to have a few employees who are going to pull aside somebody who looks suspicious on the scanner.
There are 4 billion people on earth. 237 are Scanners. They have the most terrifying powers ever created... and they are winning.
Maybe, but the estimate could be based in fact as well. Suppose the machines are a little over £150,000 apiece, the smallest stations will need one scanner and the largest might need 10 or more, that would result in a range similar to the one quoted.
These machines are expensive, I doubt they would be able to afford to get as of them as there are turnstyles in each station currently. As such, it would seem that this will be a terrible bottleneck in getting people on the trains, I mean, everyone will have to line up to go through these scanners. Sure, some stations might have several, not just one, but in any case they're not going to have one for each turnstyle in the station currently, so it's going to be a pain.
These scanners still can see through clothing, but they can't see through all materials. This means that (a) there's a security hole or more likely (b) anyone carrying anything that cannot be seen through and is large enough to potentially carry something dangerous will have to be pulled aside and taken a closer look at. In the second case this will slow things down just like airport security slows things down making it even more of a hassle to take the tube.
What's your point? This program can handle complex returns, ergo, a replacement would have to be able to handle complex returns, regardless of the simplicity of most Australian taxpayers' returns.
I think the idea of writing a replacement program for this is really unrealistic, I mean, why bother? The whole point of filing electronically is to make your life easier and help things go a little faster. Who would spend the time reverse engineering the program, learning the australian tax codes inside and out and put it together as a program that you could use without wanting to claw your eyes out?
and then, once you get that far, you have to redo the whole damn thing next year for any changes made in the program and, more dauntingly, the changes made in the tax code as well.
Basically, I think this idea is up shits creek unless you find a very good australian accountant with remarkable programming abilities and a lot of time to spare.
This is blatant descrimination against minorities on the part of the Australian goverment. Us OS/360 users want to file our taxes online too! We will not stop until we achieve the equality we so sorely deserve!