I am just wondering where on earth you see a "significant closing" of the income gap during the Clinton years?
"Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics"
Just because that particular chart doesn't show it, doesn't mean it can't be argued. The problem with tracking statistics like income disparity is that there's not one way to calculate it. When you posted that chart I decided to look around to see what other similar graphs I could find and guess what, looking at other charts I really have no idea because every one told a completely different story. This is why things like this get debated so often; because there really are a lot of different ways you can calculate it and a lot of different results you can find. Then, on top of that, there's the normal weirdness of statistics like where the data comes from, how it's aggregated, etc.
Ah, I see, you're absolutely right. It was kind of a dumb question in retrospect. Kind of exemplary of Slashdot though that my silly fantasy of an idea has already been modded up to "Score: 5, Insightful" but your common sense answer hasn't been modded up at all yet.
That sounds quite nice -- I was pretty sure DSL like that was not available in my area as I periodically check in on DSL prices. In the past DSL around here has either been significantly slower or when the speed was comparable, more expensive. However, after reading your post I decided to check out the DSL offerings in my area again and it turns out not only is DSL now available here with 768k up, but it's actually cheaper than my cable connection! The download bandwidth isn't is good (3Mb vs. 7Mb with Comcast) but still plenty usable, especially considering how infrequently I encounter servers where I can actually use the extra download bandwidth my cable connection provides. I'm going to call up tomorrow and get my service switched -- thanks for posting that or I probably would have waited a lot longer before switching!
I've had Comcast cable internet and it's like $60-70 a month around here. It was alright, but my big beef was the upload was only 40kB/s. How hard would it be to get like six of these lines and rig them up so that I have almost 100kB/s upload bandwidth for the same price?
And then the real question, if they can offer me that service for that price, why the fuck won't anybody just sell me a cable or DSL line with more upload bandwidth? I would be willing to pay more.
Notably, for all that people complain about all those extras, basic models just never sell well when a manufacturer actually tries to listen to the complaints.
I would bet it's mostly that SD cards have a larger market share, but there are also practical reasons why it would be less useful on a CF card. I mean, the places where CF is used instead of SD are generally stuff that needs faster data transfer -- wireless is slow, a little slow for a 2GB SD and a lot slow for CF. I mean, I'm assuming this uses 802.11b, you're going to get at best ~6Mbit/s -- a quality CF card can do like 40Mbit/s so that's a huge hit.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are a lot of compact flash cards available that are bigger than this 2GB card -- an 8GB card would take 3 hours to transfer at 6Mbit/s compared to less than half an hour at 40Mbit/s (and a CF card might be even faster in reality).
Yes, but what value does that $1.84/month give you over a regular 2GB SD card?
A regular 2GB SD card costs between $15 and $34 (5 year amortized at 4% blah blah blah is $0.28 to $0.63 per month). Essentially the advantage this card adds is not having to get up off your ass and walk 10 feet across the room to get your camera if it's not next to the computer. To me, that's of very little value -- far less than $66-85, especially given how prone SD cards are to getting lost. Then again, this is just me, I'm sure to some people with fatter asses than myself this is a value worth far more than the price difference.
Equip every passenger with anti-terrorist lasers, because of their nature, terrorists will shoot themselves by accident.
I don't think this would work because, c'mon, if somebody handed me a laser gun, there's no way I'm not trying it out a couple times, no matter what the consequences. I mean, it's fucking laser gun. Your other arguements are airtight though, bravo.
I know you're trolling, but I just wanted to say that at the very least that wouldn't work because most people that are licensed to carry guns will not have a permit in both the state they're departing from and the state they're arriving in, not to mention the states they land in for layovers and such.
It is possible, but that's not a cure-all because it only works with simulations where the datasets can be split up and run separately.
My point is that newly prevalent multi-core systems are a big change in computing, not just for programmers but for users as well. These people bought these systems thinking "8 cores? These will be done eight times as fast!" not realizing what it really means.
My brother just recently started doing IT stuff for the research psych department at a respected university I won't name. They do a lot of mathematical simulations with Matlab and in order to speed these up they decided to buy several Mac Pro towers with dual quad core Xeons at $15,000*. The problem is, their simulations aren't multithreaded (I don't know if this is a limitation of Matlab or of their programming abilities -- maybe both) so while one core is cranking on their simulations to the max, the other 7 are sitting there idle! So while a big part of this ridiculous situation is just uninformed people not understanding their computing needs, it also shows that there are plenty of programmers stuck playing catch-up since computers with multiple cores (i.e. Core 2 Duo, Athlon X2, etc.) have made their way onto the desktops of normal users.
I think this is a temporary situation though, and something that has happened before, there have been many cases where new powerful hardware seeps into the mainstream before programmers are prepared to use it.
*I know what you're thinking: "How the hell do you spend $15,000 on a Mac?". I wouldn't have thought it was possible either, but basically all you have to do is buy a Mac with every single option that no sane person would buy: max out the overpriced RAM, buy the four 750GB hard drives at 100% markup, throw in a $1700 Nvidia Quadro FX 4500, get the $1K quad fibre channel card, etc.
I think this is a bad idea. Robots should always be smaller than people because that way it's easier to fight back when they go crazy and try to kill you. If C-3PO whigs out it's no problem, just hit him with a baseball bat, but when you've got robots as big as buildings, you're just asking for trouble.
Sounds like a great way to lose friends, if you take a fuse you can put it back in and everything's fine, if you fry a key it'll can cost you a ridiculous amount (near $100) to get a replacement.
Then again, letting them drive runk is a pretty good way to lose friends as well:(
blockquote>fast channel changing - What's slow about pushing the button and the next channel is there? I can't even blink that fast.Sure, with analog cable it's quick, but digital cable usually takes 1-2 seconds as does satellite (sometimes more) which may not seem like a long time, but it's long enough to virtually eliminate being able to quickly flip through channels to check out what's on.
three set-top boxes - Right, cuz 1 just wasn't enough.
Well, it's not really, most houses have more than one TV, necessitating more than one tuner. A lot of cable and satellite companies make you pay a monthly fee ($10 or so) for each additional tuner you get.
a digital video recorder - Is that ANOTHER box? Anyhow, cable without DVR isn't worth it.
I don't know about this service, but a lot of DVRs from cable companies have a tuner inside them as well so it's all in one box.
a picture-in-picture feature that allows viewers to surf channels without switching channels - TV, cable, satellite have all have this for years,
This is not totally true. I know when I had digital cable (Comcast) you could get picture in picture, but only if you also were paying for a DVR.
6. So-called water-saving toilets. Sure, they use less water, but they don't work worth a shit (pun intended). So, do you really save any water when you have to flush them twice because the first time wasn't entirely successful?
In general, I find this to be true, but there are some exceptions. About 15 years ago my parents remodeled our house which included replacing toilets in our two existing bathrooms and adding on another bathroom as well. All three of these are low-flow toilets, but they are, without a doubt, the BEST toilets I have ever used, bar none. Unlike most low-flow toilets, they very rarely need to be flushed twice (no more often than a regular toilet) and they are essentially uncloggable as well. Even when stuffed with a huge amount of toilet paper they rarely clog and when they have clogged, they can almost always be cleared simply by flushing the toilet again. I can only recall having to use a plunger on them once ever in 15 years.
So yes, while in general I agree with your sentiment on low-flow toilets, there are always exceptions. It's too bad that you usually can't test out toilets before you buy them to find out whether they're any good.
I've fired a bolt action rifle and going from my experience I can understand why a lot of people would question the ability of Oswald to fire as quickly as he did. However, I have seen video of someone (Oswald's brother, actually) successfully firing the same number of rounds in the same amount of time so I'm pretty convinced that it's entirely possible. I think the inclination I and other people have against the possibility stems from not having tried or been trained to fire as quickly as possible.
It's a matter of preference and which you prefer probably depends on what's popular where you are because that's what you're used to.
I prefer a smaller non L-shaped enter key but only because the usual way space is made for a bigger enter key is by moving the backslash/pipe key up next to the backspace and making the backspace key the size of a regular key. I'd rather have a larger backspace key than a ginormous enter key.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because that particular chart doesn't show it, doesn't mean it can't be argued. The problem with tracking statistics like income disparity is that there's not one way to calculate it. When you posted that chart I decided to look around to see what other similar graphs I could find and guess what, looking at other charts I really have no idea because every one told a completely different story. This is why things like this get debated so often; because there really are a lot of different ways you can calculate it and a lot of different results you can find. Then, on top of that, there's the normal weirdness of statistics like where the data comes from, how it's aggregated, etc.
Ah, I see, you're absolutely right. It was kind of a dumb question in retrospect. Kind of exemplary of Slashdot though that my silly fantasy of an idea has already been modded up to "Score: 5, Insightful" but your common sense answer hasn't been modded up at all yet.
That sounds quite nice -- I was pretty sure DSL like that was not available in my area as I periodically check in on DSL prices. In the past DSL around here has either been significantly slower or when the speed was comparable, more expensive. However, after reading your post I decided to check out the DSL offerings in my area again and it turns out not only is DSL now available here with 768k up, but it's actually cheaper than my cable connection! The download bandwidth isn't is good (3Mb vs. 7Mb with Comcast) but still plenty usable, especially considering how infrequently I encounter servers where I can actually use the extra download bandwidth my cable connection provides. I'm going to call up tomorrow and get my service switched -- thanks for posting that or I probably would have waited a lot longer before switching!
I've had Comcast cable internet and it's like $60-70 a month around here. It was alright, but my big beef was the upload was only 40kB/s. How hard would it be to get like six of these lines and rig them up so that I have almost 100kB/s upload bandwidth for the same price?
And then the real question, if they can offer me that service for that price, why the fuck won't anybody just sell me a cable or DSL line with more upload bandwidth? I would be willing to pay more.
I would bet it's mostly that SD cards have a larger market share, but there are also practical reasons why it would be less useful on a CF card. I mean, the places where CF is used instead of SD are generally stuff that needs faster data transfer -- wireless is slow, a little slow for a 2GB SD and a lot slow for CF. I mean, I'm assuming this uses 802.11b, you're going to get at best ~6Mbit/s -- a quality CF card can do like 40Mbit/s so that's a huge hit.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are a lot of compact flash cards available that are bigger than this 2GB card -- an 8GB card would take 3 hours to transfer at 6Mbit/s compared to less than half an hour at 40Mbit/s (and a CF card might be even faster in reality).
Yes, but what value does that $1.84/month give you over a regular 2GB SD card?
A regular 2GB SD card costs between $15 and $34 (5 year amortized at 4% blah blah blah is $0.28 to $0.63 per month). Essentially the advantage this card adds is not having to get up off your ass and walk 10 feet across the room to get your camera if it's not next to the computer. To me, that's of very little value -- far less than $66-85, especially given how prone SD cards are to getting lost. Then again, this is just me, I'm sure to some people with fatter asses than myself this is a value worth far more than the price difference.
A year from now we'll all have to take Voight-Kampff tests to prove that we're not super-strong replicants programmed to take over the plane.
I know you're trolling, but I just wanted to say that at the very least that wouldn't work because most people that are licensed to carry guns will not have a permit in both the state they're departing from and the state they're arriving in, not to mention the states they land in for layovers and such.
It is possible, but that's not a cure-all because it only works with simulations where the datasets can be split up and run separately.
My point is that newly prevalent multi-core systems are a big change in computing, not just for programmers but for users as well. These people bought these systems thinking "8 cores? These will be done eight times as fast!" not realizing what it really means.
My brother just recently started doing IT stuff for the research psych department at a respected university I won't name. They do a lot of mathematical simulations with Matlab and in order to speed these up they decided to buy several Mac Pro towers with dual quad core Xeons at $15,000*. The problem is, their simulations aren't multithreaded (I don't know if this is a limitation of Matlab or of their programming abilities -- maybe both) so while one core is cranking on their simulations to the max, the other 7 are sitting there idle! So while a big part of this ridiculous situation is just uninformed people not understanding their computing needs, it also shows that there are plenty of programmers stuck playing catch-up since computers with multiple cores (i.e. Core 2 Duo, Athlon X2, etc.) have made their way onto the desktops of normal users.
I think this is a temporary situation though, and something that has happened before, there have been many cases where new powerful hardware seeps into the mainstream before programmers are prepared to use it.
*I know what you're thinking: "How the hell do you spend $15,000 on a Mac?". I wouldn't have thought it was possible either, but basically all you have to do is buy a Mac with every single option that no sane person would buy: max out the overpriced RAM, buy the four 750GB hard drives at 100% markup, throw in a $1700 Nvidia Quadro FX 4500, get the $1K quad fibre channel card, etc.
I think this is a bad idea. Robots should always be smaller than people because that way it's easier to fight back when they go crazy and try to kill you. If C-3PO whigs out it's no problem, just hit him with a baseball bat, but when you've got robots as big as buildings, you're just asking for trouble.
Sounds like a great way to lose friends, if you take a fuse you can put it back in and everything's fine, if you fry a key it'll can cost you a ridiculous amount (near $100) to get a replacement.
:(
Then again, letting them drive runk is a pretty good way to lose friends as well
Yep, right behind Jesse Stone: Death in Paradise, a made for TV movie starring Tom Selleck.
Nice try, but Google Video predates Youtube.
So yes, while in general I agree with your sentiment on low-flow toilets, there are always exceptions. It's too bad that you usually can't test out toilets before you buy them to find out whether they're any good.
I've fired a bolt action rifle and going from my experience I can understand why a lot of people would question the ability of Oswald to fire as quickly as he did. However, I have seen video of someone (Oswald's brother, actually) successfully firing the same number of rounds in the same amount of time so I'm pretty convinced that it's entirely possible. I think the inclination I and other people have against the possibility stems from not having tried or been trained to fire as quickly as possible.
It's a matter of preference and which you prefer probably depends on what's popular where you are because that's what you're used to.
I prefer a smaller non L-shaped enter key but only because the usual way space is made for a bigger enter key is by moving the backslash/pipe key up next to the backspace and making the backspace key the size of a regular key. I'd rather have a larger backspace key than a ginormous enter key.
Could this be the end of being able to trick hot teenage lifeguards into making out with you?