That's my favorite one. It's just a matter of false advertising, where the true price is not what the customers think they are buying. It isn't uncommon for fees and taxes to make up 20% of a bill, which is just immoral.
They don't, and Bill G. probably knew someone on the inside.
Recognizing and taking advantage of being in the right place at the right time is part of what "significant insight" is. Billy G. could have been a lot like other rich boys, who aquire "affluenza" (not coined by me) and end up working at a video rental store while living off of trust funds. Saying that his current riches came simply from having connections is shortsighted, because only he was unscrupulous to do what he did with DOS and hold IBM by their balls for over a decade only to do it again with OS/2. I wouldn't have had the guts to pull it off nor the smarts to actually get away with it out of the reach of lawyers (20+ years and he's still not in prison).
Larry Ellison was a college drop out...He later became the richest man in the world, until Bill Gates came along
Two of the richest people in the world...both dropouts. They are the rare example of tremendous insight ("Why am I in college? Fuck this! I'm going to go out and get me $40 billion!") that 99.99% of people don't have. This is one reason why capitalism works and why nearly all animals, including humans, organize into various hierarchical social structures from the Silverback on down. Like them or no, Ellison and Gates employ several tens of thousands of ordinary people who generally get along well enough and make the USA what it is. Unfortunately, too many people want to get to the top fast and without being honest with themselves (ooh, a degree in game development...those guys at Square do pretty well...how hard can it be?).
On the other hand, I know the military is big on hiring games theory people for their warfare sims. I don't suppose this would help in that department however unless they gave a serious background in that area.
Again, the problem is that the number of warfare simulator developers really is quite small in the grand scheme of things. The reason I am a little peeved by all these high-profile things like game development/space missions/rock stars is that it creates a lot of wannabes to don't realize they need passion first, then smarts. A person shouldn't go into aerospace engineering, for example, if they have no first-hand experience with airplanes. Watching documentaries or reading Popular Mechanics just doesn't cut it.
I would hope that the number of people who enroll in Game Design is a very small group of dedicated people. Unfortunately, I know that a lot of people will probably enroll...you know the Uni knows that too ($$$)..., when most of those kids really just need to get a general-purpose degree in business and go out and get a real job and raise a real family and be satisfied.
I mean Bejeweled has made that little company quite a few million dollars, and its not the latest and greatest in 3d gaming.
Something as simple, elegant, and successful as Bejeweled is rare among human endeavors. Just because Donald Trump has made a little money in real estate doesn't mean that every real estate agent in the world is out to make a billion dollars. Most real estate agents are just happy to write off the milage on their Cadallac.
Yes, it is true that with vision and knowledge a person can go far. However, the rare very successful people are the ones making big headlines on The Discovery Channel, while everyone else goes "Wow...mommy I want to be like that..." without realizing just how much sacrifice/effort/dedication it takes to really get that far. A degree never made a person successful...successful people make themselves. A degree just gets them the interview; beyond that it is a worthless piece of paper. People who think otherwise are heading for burnout and misery.
Ask an astronomer. When something is a zillion billion million miles away, getting to within 1000% by measuring teeny tiny angles in a photograph is quite the feat.
Seriously, while gaming can teach serious algorithms and such, it is specific enough to be harmful to all the wannabes who graduate and find that game companies have already been saturated by their classmates. Not only that, game companies are relatively rare and in relatively few cities. There just isn't that much flexibility, and the popular notion that everyone should uproot their families and move to where the money is is naive, IMO. If I grew up in Kentucky or Maine or whatever, why should I want to move to San Jose or Houston? I've heard that game companies don't pay well (supply and demand), so those plane tickets back to mama aren't going to be cheap.
Honestly, I think Game Design degree prospects would probably be better of going into Nursing or Accounting (established relatively well-paying always-in-demand professions in every city on the planet).
People who feel it is their mission in life to convert others to some arbitrary religion are evil. Why? Because it reeks of such arrogance that it cannot be good.
Because for example my gas gauge when going downhill goes up very far, so that could be one of the reasons for it.
The reason gas gauges can vary with the angle of the car is that they measure the gas level using a floating ball in the tank. As the gas sloshes around fore and aft, the float moves around up and down affecting the gauge on the dashboard.
Bush is temporary. The nice thing about term limits is that, at worst, the USA will suffer for eight years. This is already better than suffering for decades under monarchs or dictators. The larger problem is educating voters why they should vote for someone else.
The "War on Terror" and the PATRIOT act go hand-in-hand. Only due to this arbitrary declaration of war are the rules of society changed for the worse ("enemy combatants"). This is not a normal state for the USA to be in and it is only three years old, now. Hopefully, the "war on terror" will die at age four. Also, all societies are susecptible to decline once war begins agains "terrorists". No nation, including Canada, is immune. The only debate is whether western civilization, as a whole, has reached its peak.
Regardless, I still feel comfortable that I can say pretty much anything without fear of persecution. I can still travel anywhere across state lines. Libraries are still open to the public. There are no roving bands of gunmen in my neighborhood. Etc. People who live in fear are themselves to blame; don't blame the government for this (reserve the blame for things like overtaxation and pork projects).
Wow, that sounds really triumphalist and ethnocentric.
No, it doesn't. My next sentence was "I don't know". Several other posters have already stepped in to say (effectively) "Yes, Canada fares pretty well in the 'free speech' department." My question was simply a single example of a smart question to ask when facing something as big as moving to a whole new country with different laws and different cultures. The article above was from someone completely polarized over Corporate America, and I felt the attitude of the article's author is probably not well thought through (he/she needs to ask more questions).
why is it Fahrenhiet 911 won't be allowed for viewing in theatre's?
At first I read "451", but then saw it was "911". Regardless, no one stopped Mr. Moore from making that movie and seeking distributors. Are there laws stopping this movie, or is it just theatre managers making a choice, which is fully within their right to do? There are "worse" movies out there that are very accessible right at the neighborhood Blockbuster Movies.
If there was true freedom of speech the reporter (sorry can't remember his name) that publicly criticized the Bush administration would still have his job, instead he was fired.
Too bad for him, but if your logic is extended, then David Letterman and Al Franken should be paupers...they aren't. If that reporter was irresponsibly stepping outside the bounds of responsible journalism (not simply a matter of free speech), then he probably lost his job for good reason.
...get a Subaru - it does all those things you like, and the windows work all the time.
Yes, while Subarus are awesome cars, are fun to drive, and verbally abuse snow as it passes, they also tend to get less than 25MPG in real-world conditions (at least the Legacies do), so I think your post needs to be modded offtopic (this thread is about high MPG, you see).
Regardless, I do challenge any station wagon out there under $50K to be as fun to drive as a Subaru wagon (i.e., BMW 540 wagons need not apply).
I used to have a little toy car with an air tank and a little pump. The pump would pressurize the tank and then the air would drive a little two-cycle-like piston motor. The car would go about ten feet per charge.
A few things that I think would make air impractical for large cars is lubrication (how to do it reliably), condensation (how to get rid of it), and temperature (compressors get HOT). Overall, it would probably have a very low overall efficiency, after all the engineering to make it reliable.
1) Your brakes catch on fire, you lose control, crash and die. 2) You are driving downhill in snow, lose control, crash, and die.
The best thing about engine braking is safety, when you can control speed in the winter without risking wheel lock-up. Also, you will get much longer service from your brakes, and your engine really doesn't care if it is revved a little down hill (plus it's practically burning no fuel down hill, anyway). I remember those old MPG meters on the dashboards of some cars, where the thing would go very very high double digits downhill and then solid single digits while accelerating.
How to you tell whether the grass really is greener under that 27" of snow?
Granted, American suburban sprawl sucks, but is making the leap of becoming a member of another nation truly worth it? For example, an important question would be: does Canada value freedom and speech in all the same ways as the USA does? I really don't know (not being Canadian), but I do know that the USA is better than Slashdot doomsayers claim it to be.
Perhaps you simply need a career change? No one is forced into 1-hour commutes to a job they hate. How about moving rural, get a low-paying job, and lay back and enjoy life for a while? Buy a cheap john boat and go fishing for a change.
Are you sure it isn't your own idealism that you are chasing and never catching? Do you understand that naive idealism begets misery--in any country in the world?
Post signs saying that hikers must register at the trail head (provide pencils and forms). Hikers that are too lazy to register don't deserve to be found.
Also, how about wiring up some decoy trees, so vandals that absolutely have to leave behind their initials get a nice memorable shock through their knife blade.
You could also dust litter for fingerprints and send the owners fines through the mail.
Unless you really want to watch every station's take on a presidential message, im sure the slight camera angles make all the difference in the world;)
I know David Letterman's writers are a small market, but imagine being able to capture all the angles of GWB to pick the best material for their show! Before they would need a rack of VCRs...now they can have it all in one box.
I wonder if biometrics engineers actually believe in what they are doing or if they are in it just for a job to hold them over until their next job.
A lot of technology is simply bad, but it gets made and sold. As the Diebold memos show, the employees even know the technology is bad, but politics and the desire to not burn bridges with former employers prevents whistleblowing and forces people to show up each day. I've also seen this firsthand before, where specifications or whatever are known to be bad by almost everyone, and everyone somehow lives in just enough denial to push it through at great expense.
Perhaps this is just an issue of human nature, where idealism puts us into a very uncomfortable scenario, and we imprison ourselves, effectively, until we can find a new job without giving up good references.
For those masochistic enough, Java supports Unicode for symbol names. Imagine a project that has been outsourced at various times to Russia, India, Mexico, and China, whose developers decided to make full use of the Java Language Specification (not using features is wasteful, right?).
This is why the huge steaming masses of fine print are so important to companies like Orbitz. They know that the majority of people are too impatient or too poorly educated to read all of it and understand the subtle word choices like "different". I feel a little bad for all those people who sign away their savings on a daily basis to unethical businesses, but I also feel little sympathy for people who, generation after generation, never learn a damn thing (scams are as old as the hills).
And if you think your're going to get multinationals like peoplesoft or Allen-bradley to support linux you're smoking crack.
Oracle, Parametric Technology Corporation, Sun Microsystems, and IBM are among the large multinationals that support Linux. It's mostly a matter of time before more companies join in.
he's got no say, but he's the computer guy...so he's gotta keep it up cause it's his JOB!
This is why IT, especially in the Windows world, is really a crappy terrible job. Among the most overrated professions of all time, I'd bet IT is in the top 50 along side Marine Biologist, Aerospace Engineer, and Professional Musician (i.e., these are all professions popular among the trash spouted by high-school career counselors that are totally unrealistic for 99% of the kids who think they can pursue them and make lots of money/fame while still being happy, and the remaining 1% who actually make it big are the only thing society focuses on to fuel their hype machines).
Slashdot Mirror
It would be nice if there were some kind of 'transparency in billing' law that required bills to make some kind of dang sense.
No, because, then, it would be much harder to exploit the elderly, Medicare, and Medicaid for every last penny.
That's my favorite one. It's just a matter of false advertising, where the true price is not what the customers think they are buying. It isn't uncommon for fees and taxes to make up 20% of a bill, which is just immoral.
They don't, and Bill G. probably knew someone on the inside.
Recognizing and taking advantage of being in the right place at the right time is part of what "significant insight" is. Billy G. could have been a lot like other rich boys, who aquire "affluenza" (not coined by me) and end up working at a video rental store while living off of trust funds. Saying that his current riches came simply from having connections is shortsighted, because only he was unscrupulous to do what he did with DOS and hold IBM by their balls for over a decade only to do it again with OS/2. I wouldn't have had the guts to pull it off nor the smarts to actually get away with it out of the reach of lawyers (20+ years and he's still not in prison).
Larry Ellison was a college drop out...He later became the richest man in the world, until Bill Gates came along
Two of the richest people in the world...both dropouts. They are the rare example of tremendous insight ("Why am I in college? Fuck this! I'm going to go out and get me $40 billion!") that 99.99% of people don't have. This is one reason why capitalism works and why nearly all animals, including humans, organize into various hierarchical social structures from the Silverback on down. Like them or no, Ellison and Gates employ several tens of thousands of ordinary people who generally get along well enough and make the USA what it is. Unfortunately, too many people want to get to the top fast and without being honest with themselves (ooh, a degree in game development...those guys at Square do pretty well...how hard can it be?).
On the other hand, I know the military is big on hiring games theory people for their warfare sims. I don't suppose this would help in that department however unless they gave a serious background in that area.
Again, the problem is that the number of warfare simulator developers really is quite small in the grand scheme of things. The reason I am a little peeved by all these high-profile things like game development/space missions/rock stars is that it creates a lot of wannabes to don't realize they need passion first, then smarts. A person shouldn't go into aerospace engineering, for example, if they have no first-hand experience with airplanes. Watching documentaries or reading Popular Mechanics just doesn't cut it.
I would hope that the number of people who enroll in Game Design is a very small group of dedicated people. Unfortunately, I know that a lot of people will probably enroll...you know the Uni knows that too ($$$)..., when most of those kids really just need to get a general-purpose degree in business and go out and get a real job and raise a real family and be satisfied.
I mean Bejeweled has made that little company quite a few million dollars, and its not the latest and greatest in 3d gaming.
Something as simple, elegant, and successful as Bejeweled is rare among human endeavors. Just because Donald Trump has made a little money in real estate doesn't mean that every real estate agent in the world is out to make a billion dollars. Most real estate agents are just happy to write off the milage on their Cadallac.
Yes, it is true that with vision and knowledge a person can go far. However, the rare very successful people are the ones making big headlines on The Discovery Channel, while everyone else goes "Wow...mommy I want to be like that..." without realizing just how much sacrifice/effort/dedication it takes to really get that far. A degree never made a person successful...successful people make themselves. A degree just gets them the interview; beyond that it is a worthless piece of paper. People who think otherwise are heading for burnout and misery.
What's An Order Of Magnitude Among Friends?
Ask an astronomer. When something is a zillion billion million miles away, getting to within 1000% by measuring teeny tiny angles in a photograph is quite the feat.
Seriously, while gaming can teach serious algorithms and such, it is specific enough to be harmful to all the wannabes who graduate and find that game companies have already been saturated by their classmates. Not only that, game companies are relatively rare and in relatively few cities. There just isn't that much flexibility, and the popular notion that everyone should uproot their families and move to where the money is is naive, IMO. If I grew up in Kentucky or Maine or whatever, why should I want to move to San Jose or Houston? I've heard that game companies don't pay well (supply and demand), so those plane tickets back to mama aren't going to be cheap.
Honestly, I think Game Design degree prospects would probably be better of going into Nursing or Accounting (established relatively well-paying always-in-demand professions in every city on the planet).
Just imagine a group of very nervous looking sailors waiting while one of them is mixing up a large batch of 5-minute epoxy.
People who feel it is their mission in life to convert others to some arbitrary religion are evil. Why? Because it reeks of such arrogance that it cannot be good.
Because for example my gas gauge when going downhill goes up very far, so that could be one of the reasons for it.
The reason gas gauges can vary with the angle of the car is that they measure the gas level using a floating ball in the tank. As the gas sloshes around fore and aft, the float moves around up and down affecting the gauge on the dashboard.
Partial list of reasons: ....
Bush is temporary. The nice thing about term limits is that, at worst, the USA will suffer for eight years. This is already better than suffering for decades under monarchs or dictators. The larger problem is educating voters why they should vote for someone else.
The "War on Terror" and the PATRIOT act go hand-in-hand. Only due to this arbitrary declaration of war are the rules of society changed for the worse ("enemy combatants"). This is not a normal state for the USA to be in and it is only three years old, now. Hopefully, the "war on terror" will die at age four. Also, all societies are susecptible to decline once war begins agains "terrorists". No nation, including Canada, is immune. The only debate is whether western civilization, as a whole, has reached its peak.
Regardless, I still feel comfortable that I can say pretty much anything without fear of persecution. I can still travel anywhere across state lines. Libraries are still open to the public. There are no roving bands of gunmen in my neighborhood. Etc. People who live in fear are themselves to blame; don't blame the government for this (reserve the blame for things like overtaxation and pork projects).
Wow, that sounds really triumphalist and ethnocentric.
No, it doesn't. My next sentence was "I don't know". Several other posters have already stepped in to say (effectively) "Yes, Canada fares pretty well in the 'free speech' department." My question was simply a single example of a smart question to ask when facing something as big as moving to a whole new country with different laws and different cultures. The article above was from someone completely polarized over Corporate America, and I felt the attitude of the article's author is probably not well thought through (he/she needs to ask more questions).
why is it Fahrenhiet 911 won't be allowed for viewing in theatre's?
At first I read "451", but then saw it was "911". Regardless, no one stopped Mr. Moore from making that movie and seeking distributors. Are there laws stopping this movie, or is it just theatre managers making a choice, which is fully within their right to do? There are "worse" movies out there that are very accessible right at the neighborhood Blockbuster Movies.
If there was true freedom of speech the reporter (sorry can't remember his name) that publicly criticized the Bush administration would still have his job, instead he was fired.
Too bad for him, but if your logic is extended, then David Letterman and Al Franken should be paupers...they aren't. If that reporter was irresponsibly stepping outside the bounds of responsible journalism (not simply a matter of free speech), then he probably lost his job for good reason.
...get a Subaru - it does all those things you like, and the windows work all the time.
Yes, while Subarus are awesome cars, are fun to drive, and verbally abuse snow as it passes, they also tend to get less than 25MPG in real-world conditions (at least the Legacies do), so I think your post needs to be modded offtopic (this thread is about high MPG, you see).
Regardless, I do challenge any station wagon out there under $50K to be as fun to drive as a Subaru wagon (i.e., BMW 540 wagons need not apply).
I used to have a little toy car with an air tank and a little pump. The pump would pressurize the tank and then the air would drive a little two-cycle-like piston motor. The car would go about ten feet per charge.
A few things that I think would make air impractical for large cars is lubrication (how to do it reliably), condensation (how to get rid of it), and temperature (compressors get HOT). Overall, it would probably have a very low overall efficiency, after all the engineering to make it reliable.
Screw 'em.
I wonder if you will say the same thing after:
1) Your brakes catch on fire, you lose control, crash and die.
2) You are driving downhill in snow, lose control, crash, and die.
The best thing about engine braking is safety, when you can control speed in the winter without risking wheel lock-up. Also, you will get much longer service from your brakes, and your engine really doesn't care if it is revved a little down hill (plus it's practically burning no fuel down hill, anyway). I remember those old MPG meters on the dashboards of some cars, where the thing would go very very high double digits downhill and then solid single digits while accelerating.
I have two Saturn SL cars, and they both average between 42 and 44 miles per gallon.
What kind of magic fuel are you using? The best I've seen in an SL2 is 38MPG for highway and high 20s for around-town.
Regardless the SL does have a very low cost of upkeep (simple cars, not much to break, easy routine maintenance).
How to you tell whether the grass really is greener under that 27" of snow?
Granted, American suburban sprawl sucks, but is making the leap of becoming a member of another nation truly worth it? For example, an important question would be: does Canada value freedom and speech in all the same ways as the USA does? I really don't know (not being Canadian), but I do know that the USA is better than Slashdot doomsayers claim it to be.
Perhaps you simply need a career change? No one is forced into 1-hour commutes to a job they hate. How about moving rural, get a low-paying job, and lay back and enjoy life for a while? Buy a cheap john boat and go fishing for a change.
Are you sure it isn't your own idealism that you are chasing and never catching? Do you understand that naive idealism begets misery--in any country in the world?
Post signs saying that hikers must register at the trail head (provide pencils and forms). Hikers that are too lazy to register don't deserve to be found.
Also, how about wiring up some decoy trees, so vandals that absolutely have to leave behind their initials get a nice memorable shock through their knife blade.
You could also dust litter for fingerprints and send the owners fines through the mail.
Unless you really want to watch every station's take on a presidential message, im sure the slight camera angles make all the difference in the world ;)
I know David Letterman's writers are a small market, but imagine being able to capture all the angles of GWB to pick the best material for their show! Before they would need a rack of VCRs...now they can have it all in one box.
Biometrics aren't a silver bullet.
I wonder if biometrics engineers actually believe in what they are doing or if they are in it just for a job to hold them over until their next job.
A lot of technology is simply bad, but it gets made and sold. As the Diebold memos show, the employees even know the technology is bad, but politics and the desire to not burn bridges with former employers prevents whistleblowing and forces people to show up each day. I've also seen this firsthand before, where specifications or whatever are known to be bad by almost everyone, and everyone somehow lives in just enough denial to push it through at great expense.
Perhaps this is just an issue of human nature, where idealism puts us into a very uncomfortable scenario, and we imprison ourselves, effectively, until we can find a new job without giving up good references.
For those masochistic enough, Java supports Unicode for symbol names. Imagine a project that has been outsourced at various times to Russia, India, Mexico, and China, whose developers decided to make full use of the Java Language Specification (not using features is wasteful, right?).
This is why the huge steaming masses of fine print are so important to companies like Orbitz. They know that the majority of people are too impatient or too poorly educated to read all of it and understand the subtle word choices like "different". I feel a little bad for all those people who sign away their savings on a daily basis to unethical businesses, but I also feel little sympathy for people who, generation after generation, never learn a damn thing (scams are as old as the hills).
And if you think your're going to get multinationals like peoplesoft or Allen-bradley to support linux you're smoking crack.
Oracle, Parametric Technology Corporation, Sun Microsystems, and IBM are among the large multinationals that support Linux. It's mostly a matter of time before more companies join in.
he's got no say, but he's the computer guy...so he's gotta keep it up cause it's his JOB!
This is why IT, especially in the Windows world, is really a crappy terrible job. Among the most overrated professions of all time, I'd bet IT is in the top 50 along side Marine Biologist, Aerospace Engineer, and Professional Musician (i.e., these are all professions popular among the trash spouted by high-school career counselors that are totally unrealistic for 99% of the kids who think they can pursue them and make lots of money/fame while still being happy, and the remaining 1% who actually make it big are the only thing society focuses on to fuel their hype machines).