I got credit for submitting a story that was posted, with the credit date of March 27. But... I haven't submitted an accepted story in years. (I haven't submitted anything in years.)
I suspect their records for that go back a lot further than other records, and they went all the way back.
However, as far as WoW being sluggish... a year old MacBook Pro vs. a two to three year old lower-end Dell isn't a completely fair comparison, is it?
Depends. Is the buyer's goal to play WoW? If so, it's a perfectly valid comparison to make. And the old computer suffers terribly.
If, on the other hand, the buyer's goal was to build the laptop into Linux and use it for telnet, I would think that the three-year-old Dell would knock the socks off the Mac.
As far as "Just Works," Windows works with a lot, and it's more of an OS + Age of Hardware thing than a Dell vs. Mac thing, I think.
I was thinking more in terms of the email my dad sent me last week, paraphrased as follows: "I've heard about this Conflicker thing. Do I need to do anything to protect the Mac Mini [that I bought him to replace an aging Dell, incidentally]? The Mac doesn't have anti-virus software. The old Dell isn't connected to the internet any more. Is it ok? What about your grandparents' computer?"
My response was: "Conflicker won't hurt the Mac. There's nothing out there right now that can target Firefox on a Mac and take over the computer, at least not without asking for the admin password. Don't worry about it. The Dell is fine as long as you keep it off the internet. Grandparents hopefully have anti-virus software and the latest patches of everything they use."
In other words, "Just Works" involves the hassle of trying to keep a friend/family computer sufficiently safe and usable. Fortunately I am in no-way required to keep my grandparents' computer safe; I am for my dad's computer and did so by buying him a Mac. It was well worth the cost.
Re:The question isn't just "are Macs expensive"
on
Mac Tax, Dell Tax, HP Tax
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
I have an old Dell that's about as old as yours sounds. I used it a little for travel, but mostly to do computer stuff in the TV room. I had to buy a second battery for it; the first one only lasts a few minutes now but works for around the house.
WoW, when I chose to play on the laptop, was sluggish. Actually, I think "sluggish" it the best word to use overall. Windows XP hasn't been getting faster with all those patches, and I can't not install them on a machine I would carry to foreign networks.
My Mac Book Pro, which I bought last year, is different. It replaced my last desktop computer (a Mac Mini), which replaced my last desktop PC (home built). It cost a lot more, but runs WoW at top rates, handles modern software at good speeds, and Just Works. That has value to me.
So when you determine if "it's twice as much as you need to spend for what you're going to do with it", you need to consider all the factors. Someone who just plans to do word processing and email likely doesn't need a $2800 Dell laptop, no. But if they feel that Macs provide more "Just Works", then perhaps they would buy a $2800 Mac laptop.
It's all relative. My phone was $6.50 refurbished from Virgin. I pay $90 pre-paid each November for a year of service. That's $186.50 for 2 years of service at about 75 minutes a month.
As much as as I like gadgets, I just can't imagine paying $15/MO for a phone. I'd much rather put that money towards blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the blackjack. Ah, screw the whole thing.
Then you need a manufacturing EE to redesign the circuit so it does not use any rare or known unreliable or hard to surface mount or single sourced parts.
Then you need a quality engineer who will redesign things so the hot voltage regulator is not right next to the electrolytic capacitors, and shuffle the pcb traces so they're less likely to short out from tin whiskers, and rearrange them for better ESD protection, and they will test it in an environmental chamber for performance over a wide temperature range.
Then you'll need a standards EE who will make sure it meets EU and US standards for safety and toxicity and flammability and electromagnetic emissions.
I think you just need a "quality" engineer in general. All of those fall into my unofficial job description and I handle all of those well.
Part of an invention is the process by which it operates and is constructed.
So every inventor of a product implemented on a circuit board needs to know the capabilities of modern board fabricators to produce a PCB capable of mass production at a reasonable price?
That's crazy. He's the inventor - fair enough. All he needs is to hire (or partner with) and engineer capable of implementing his circuit.
I, for example, could easily design a board to implement his circuit, in any combination of hardware and HDL as necessary, in a way that would yield a finished product capable of low-cost production. That's what I get paid for already.
What I don't understand is why a red-light camera that only fires when you run the red-light is an invasion of your privacy but a police officer pulling you over for the exact same thing isn't.
Because a cop's memory is fallible and will only get worse. A photograph is permanent.
Same reason why a cop or private investigator tailing someone can readily follow them to a porn shop, gambling house, etc. and even photograph them entering and leaving. But if the government were to set up a camera and face & license recognition software across the street, and automatically photo and document and archive and cross index and publish every customer, they'd be violating the customers' privacy. Even if it's on a public street.
Different people have different standards for this. I fully expect to get a reply saying "so what? I don't expect to have any privacy in public, ever, so you shouldn't either. Our laws don't support that." Then my reply points out that one slashdotter's opinion on the matter does not law make, and I mention a 2004 Ohio judge ruling that prohibited standing outside a polling place and writing down the license plate numbers of everyone who voted, calling it "voter intimidation".
I would use that law as an affirmative defense against a traffic camera ticket, were I to receive one.
To follow up on my own post, I assume the city keep records of when each light at each intersection was green or red. A subpoena of their records should back up my allegation.
And on that note, I drive a motorcycle, and quite often a motorcycle does not generate enough of an EM field to be noticed by the sensors. Pull up to an intersection that is slow in your direction and you can wait all day if you like and never get a green. The common solution here is to simply wait for traffic to slow, and then run the red when there's a break. This particular problem happens even more often when waiting for left-turn arrows.
Do you suggest I should just wait half an hour for a car to coincidentally be going my way, or just accept my ticket for running the red light, simply because a camera saw me do it?
Here at least (Texas), the law says you can legally run a light if you haven't been given an opportunity to go for five minutes. I've been at intersections where the weight sensors weren't working, or the optic sensors were blinded by the evening sun. In both cases, five minutes seems like a damn long time, but the systems automatically let traffic go through after that time even though it probably didn't "see" me waiting.
I would use that law as an affirmative defense against a traffic camera ticket, were I to receive one.
This is regulated, at least in this state. The problem is that the range is too wide; IIRC the minimum "safe" time was lowered about a decade ago for some reason.
When traffic cameras are installed, towns are turning the yellow down to the minimum, so they can claim the lights are still safe while clearly providing less time than before.
Traffic laws shouldn't be written/enforced with an eye towards making money -- they should be enforced with an eye towards deterring behavior that places everybody at risk.
Precisely. This is no different with traffic lights than with speed limits. When they built several tollways in our area, they replaced surface streets (in some cases) and converted some stretches of freeways (in a few limited cases). In every case, they lowered the speed limits on the free "frontage" roads to 45 MPH, whereas the old speed limits were all 55.
Speed limits on frontage roads alongside freeways throughout town remain 55 MPH, so clearly this wasn't related to safety; they just wanted to force more traffic onto the privately-funded for-profit tollways.
Then there's the first light on the free frontage road on my way home. Besides turning red to allow cross traffic way too often (every minute even if there's one car in the cross traffic, and 20 of us backed up on the frontage road), there's a 15 second dead time each cycle where all ways are red. Since this intersection can be conveniently skipped by paying a simple 50 cent toll, I see this as clear manipulation of traffic control for profit motive.
Incidentally, the second light along that same frontage road of the same tollway now has a red light camera; it's the only one in the entire area.
Most of us never need an accurate weight load stress analysis from an engineer but legal advice is necessary to remain free and properous.
If only lawyers needed periodic weight load stress analyses; I could charge them $250 "consultation" fees followed by $200/hr "research" fees, all to produce a result I could have created in 5 minutes with my calculator.
IMNSHO, science fiction is not about spaceships, space battles, people killing each other in spaces, monsters killing people, and most variations thereof. Science fiction is about exploring possible technical advances and their implications, as well as human nature in extreme situations and the like.
Which is why the station is renaming itself SyFy, just so it's completely clear that they no longer have any interest in anything resembling real science fiction.
No more human babies were being made? So you ditch technology and also give up sex? I just can't buy that.
No, not at all. Rather, all female descendants of the humans died out, possibly due to disease or some other form of natural selection. Hera was the mitochondrial DNA source for all of modern humanity, but that doesn't mean that human DNA from males was wiped out. (Perhaps it was; maybe it all comes from the natives, but the show doesn't specify.)
Of course since Hera's mitochondrial DNA should have come only from Sharon, that means that part of our DNA is entirely Cylon, while the rest could be any ratio from 100% human to 100% Cylon depending on interbreeding.
Right. So then those corporations can go state-by-state and completely overwhelm the smaller, more-limited resources of decentralized government, and get their legislation enacted that way.
How about decentralizing the corporations instead?
The more conservative parties would not bail out companies but they would reduce regulation. The more liberal parties would bail out companies, but they would have many more restrictions. In either the economy would at least have a chance to prosper.
And this reaffirms why a three-party system isn't viable. Of the people who would consider going outside the two-party system, they are often idealogues who have one of two disparate sets of opinions, plus aren't willing to "compromise" as you say.
Thus, to break the two-party system there needs to be four, not three, parties. And then the non-compromising extremes merely act like the non-compromising extremes of the Democrat and Republican parties, with the Democrats and Republicans in the middle that compromise still being the only ones able to enact legislation.
Perhaps you haven't seen Pontypool, a Canadian horror film about a virus that adapts to transmit itself through language. The film itself treats the premise as improbable but the best fit for the observed circumstances.
I liked the film most because of how much imagery they convey through the lack of film footage; the story centers around a small-town morning radio team and what they hear and broadcast. Almost everything is left to the imagination. As I was watching it, all I could do was think back to Cloverleaf and how Pontypool was the same thing, but better, because shakey-cam was replaced with no-cam.
Every add-on developer, by necessity, launches the game client at some point or another. There is a terms of service agreement that can include all of this language.
Slashdot Mirror
I got credit for submitting a story that was posted, with the credit date of March 27. But... I haven't submitted an accepted story in years. (I haven't submitted anything in years.)
I suspect their records for that go back a lot further than other records, and they went all the way back.
Just because it's April first you shouldn't assume there will be April Fools jokes on Slashdot.
Correlation does not imply causation.
;
Alas, I was speaking hypothetically. I likely couldn't work for him free and clear. Stupid no-compete clause from an over-protective employer.
However, as far as WoW being sluggish ... a year old MacBook Pro vs. a two to three year old lower-end Dell isn't a completely fair comparison, is it?
Depends. Is the buyer's goal to play WoW? If so, it's a perfectly valid comparison to make. And the old computer suffers terribly.
If, on the other hand, the buyer's goal was to build the laptop into Linux and use it for telnet, I would think that the three-year-old Dell would knock the socks off the Mac.
As far as "Just Works," Windows works with a lot, and it's more of an OS + Age of Hardware thing than a Dell vs. Mac thing, I think.
I was thinking more in terms of the email my dad sent me last week, paraphrased as follows:
"I've heard about this Conflicker thing. Do I need to do anything to protect the Mac Mini [that I bought him to replace an aging Dell, incidentally]? The Mac doesn't have anti-virus software. The old Dell isn't connected to the internet any more. Is it ok? What about your grandparents' computer?"
My response was:
"Conflicker won't hurt the Mac. There's nothing out there right now that can target Firefox on a Mac and take over the computer, at least not without asking for the admin password. Don't worry about it. The Dell is fine as long as you keep it off the internet. Grandparents hopefully have anti-virus software and the latest patches of everything they use."
In other words, "Just Works" involves the hassle of trying to keep a friend/family computer sufficiently safe and usable. Fortunately I am in no-way required to keep my grandparents' computer safe; I am for my dad's computer and did so by buying him a Mac. It was well worth the cost.
I have an old Dell that's about as old as yours sounds. I used it a little for travel, but mostly to do computer stuff in the TV room. I had to buy a second battery for it; the first one only lasts a few minutes now but works for around the house.
WoW, when I chose to play on the laptop, was sluggish. Actually, I think "sluggish" it the best word to use overall. Windows XP hasn't been getting faster with all those patches, and I can't not install them on a machine I would carry to foreign networks.
My Mac Book Pro, which I bought last year, is different. It replaced my last desktop computer (a Mac Mini), which replaced my last desktop PC (home built). It cost a lot more, but runs WoW at top rates, handles modern software at good speeds, and Just Works. That has value to me.
So when you determine if "it's twice as much as you need to spend for what you're going to do with it", you need to consider all the factors. Someone who just plans to do word processing and email likely doesn't need a $2800 Dell laptop, no. But if they feel that Macs provide more "Just Works", then perhaps they would buy a $2800 Mac laptop.
Sounds like he has a napkin's worth of circuit. That's fine. When I finish it for him, I'll be an inventor on the patent, too.
He doesn't have the patent, yet. He just thinks it's patentable.
It's all relative. My phone was $6.50 refurbished from Virgin. I pay $90 pre-paid each November for a year of service. That's $186.50 for 2 years of service at about 75 minutes a month.
As much as as I like gadgets, I just can't imagine paying $15/MO for a phone. I'd much rather put that money towards blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the blackjack. Ah, screw the whole thing.
You need an EE to design the circuit.
Then you need a manufacturing EE to redesign the circuit so it does not use any rare or known unreliable or hard to surface mount or single sourced parts.
Then you need a quality engineer who will redesign things so the hot voltage regulator is not right next to the electrolytic capacitors, and shuffle the pcb traces so they're less likely to short out from tin whiskers, and rearrange them for better ESD protection, and they will test it in an environmental chamber for performance over a wide temperature range.
Then you'll need a standards EE who will make sure it meets EU and US standards for safety and toxicity and flammability and electromagnetic emissions.
I think you just need a "quality" engineer in general. All of those fall into my unofficial job description and I handle all of those well.
What, exactly, is your definition of "invent"?
Part of an invention is the process by which it operates and is constructed.
So every inventor of a product implemented on a circuit board needs to know the capabilities of modern board fabricators to produce a PCB capable of mass production at a reasonable price?
That's crazy. He's the inventor - fair enough. All he needs is to hire (or partner with) and engineer capable of implementing his circuit.
I, for example, could easily design a board to implement his circuit, in any combination of hardware and HDL as necessary, in a way that would yield a finished product capable of low-cost production. That's what I get paid for already.
I turned signatures off nearly a decade ago. I just can't see a trivial user preference like that being crucial for a legal case.
Of course, I can't see a slashdot post from a lawyer as crucial for a legal case, either.
What I don't understand is why a red-light camera that only fires when you run the red-light is an invasion of your privacy but a police officer pulling you over for the exact same thing isn't.
Because a cop's memory is fallible and will only get worse. A photograph is permanent.
Same reason why a cop or private investigator tailing someone can readily follow them to a porn shop, gambling house, etc. and even photograph them entering and leaving. But if the government were to set up a camera and face & license recognition software across the street, and automatically photo and document and archive and cross index and publish every customer, they'd be violating the customers' privacy. Even if it's on a public street.
Different people have different standards for this. I fully expect to get a reply saying "so what? I don't expect to have any privacy in public, ever, so you shouldn't either. Our laws don't support that." Then my reply points out that one slashdotter's opinion on the matter does not law make, and I mention a 2004 Ohio judge ruling that prohibited standing outside a polling place and writing down the license plate numbers of everyone who voted, calling it "voter intimidation".
I would use that law as an affirmative defense against a traffic camera ticket, were I to receive one.
To follow up on my own post, I assume the city keep records of when each light at each intersection was green or red. A subpoena of their records should back up my allegation.
And on that note, I drive a motorcycle, and quite often a motorcycle does not generate enough of an EM field to be noticed by the sensors. Pull up to an intersection that is slow in your direction and you can wait all day if you like and never get a green. The common solution here is to simply wait for traffic to slow, and then run the red when there's a break. This particular problem happens even more often when waiting for left-turn arrows.
Do you suggest I should just wait half an hour for a car to coincidentally be going my way, or just accept my ticket for running the red light, simply because a camera saw me do it?
Here at least (Texas), the law says you can legally run a light if you haven't been given an opportunity to go for five minutes. I've been at intersections where the weight sensors weren't working, or the optic sensors were blinded by the evening sun. In both cases, five minutes seems like a damn long time, but the systems automatically let traffic go through after that time even though it probably didn't "see" me waiting.
I would use that law as an affirmative defense against a traffic camera ticket, were I to receive one.
This is regulated, at least in this state. The problem is that the range is too wide; IIRC the minimum "safe" time was lowered about a decade ago for some reason.
When traffic cameras are installed, towns are turning the yellow down to the minimum, so they can claim the lights are still safe while clearly providing less time than before.
Traffic laws shouldn't be written/enforced with an eye towards making money -- they should be enforced with an eye towards deterring behavior that places everybody at risk.
Precisely. This is no different with traffic lights than with speed limits. When they built several tollways in our area, they replaced surface streets (in some cases) and converted some stretches of freeways (in a few limited cases). In every case, they lowered the speed limits on the free "frontage" roads to 45 MPH, whereas the old speed limits were all 55.
Speed limits on frontage roads alongside freeways throughout town remain 55 MPH, so clearly this wasn't related to safety; they just wanted to force more traffic onto the privately-funded for-profit tollways.
Then there's the first light on the free frontage road on my way home. Besides turning red to allow cross traffic way too often (every minute even if there's one car in the cross traffic, and 20 of us backed up on the frontage road), there's a 15 second dead time each cycle where all ways are red. Since this intersection can be conveniently skipped by paying a simple 50 cent toll, I see this as clear manipulation of traffic control for profit motive.
Incidentally, the second light along that same frontage road of the same tollway now has a red light camera; it's the only one in the entire area.
Most of us never need an accurate weight load stress analysis from an engineer but legal advice is necessary to remain free and properous.
If only lawyers needed periodic weight load stress analyses; I could charge them $250 "consultation" fees followed by $200/hr "research" fees, all to produce a result I could have created in 5 minutes with my calculator.
IMNSHO, science fiction is not about spaceships, space battles, people killing each other in spaces, monsters killing people, and most variations thereof. Science fiction is about exploring possible technical advances and their implications, as well as human nature in extreme situations and the like.
Which is why the station is renaming itself SyFy, just so it's completely clear that they no longer have any interest in anything resembling real science fiction.
No more human babies were being made? So you ditch technology and also give up sex? I just can't buy that.
No, not at all. Rather, all female descendants of the humans died out, possibly due to disease or some other form of natural selection. Hera was the mitochondrial DNA source for all of modern humanity, but that doesn't mean that human DNA from males was wiped out. (Perhaps it was; maybe it all comes from the natives, but the show doesn't specify.)
Of course since Hera's mitochondrial DNA should have come only from Sharon, that means that part of our DNA is entirely Cylon, while the rest could be any ratio from 100% human to 100% Cylon depending on interbreeding.
Right. So then those corporations can go state-by-state and completely overwhelm the smaller, more-limited resources of decentralized government, and get their legislation enacted that way.
How about decentralizing the corporations instead?
The more conservative parties would not bail out companies but they would reduce regulation. The more liberal parties would bail out companies, but they would have many more restrictions. In either the economy would at least have a chance to prosper.
And this reaffirms why a three-party system isn't viable. Of the people who would consider going outside the two-party system, they are often idealogues who have one of two disparate sets of opinions, plus aren't willing to "compromise" as you say.
Thus, to break the two-party system there needs to be four, not three, parties. And then the non-compromising extremes merely act like the non-compromising extremes of the Democrat and Republican parties, with the Democrats and Republicans in the middle that compromise still being the only ones able to enact legislation.
Worst yet, you watch a TV show where the actors are watching TV, and your TV responds to their commands...
Apparently no one got the "funny" part of my post.
Perhaps you haven't seen Pontypool, a Canadian horror film about a virus that adapts to transmit itself through language. The film itself treats the premise as improbable but the best fit for the observed circumstances.
I liked the film most because of how much imagery they convey through the lack of film footage; the story centers around a small-town morning radio team and what they hear and broadcast. Almost everything is left to the imagination. As I was watching it, all I could do was think back to Cloverleaf and how Pontypool was the same thing, but better, because shakey-cam was replaced with no-cam.
Every add-on developer, by necessity, launches the game client at some point or another. There is a terms of service agreement that can include all of this language.
Needless to say, I won't ever do business with Capital One again.
Maybe, but someone with your name, address, SSN, and DOB will likely be banking with them again in the near future.