Wouldn't the real conspiracy be for the government to tell everyone about all the things they screw up, and keep all the successes on the down-low, so as to make everyone think that they simply are incapable of doing anything right?
The question then is, how exactly are you supposed to breathe? If you're out of flux with everything else, where's your air supply gonna come from, unless you wore some kind of rebreather too...
I've always wondered that in Star Trek episodes for example; a crew member gets sent into some slightly out of phase dimension but can still breathe. Where is all this out of phase oxygen coming from?!
I think what I love most about the LHC and whatnot is that, despite all the incredible and amazing science and technology and innovation and potential for learning behind it, what it really comes down to is just us banging rocks together and watching what happens, just like humans have been doing throughout history. It just happens that this time, the rocks are incredibly tiny and incredibly fast.
Kinda puts it all in perspective, in kind of a cool way, IMO.
From what I've gleaned from various Microsoft blogs, they DO release nightly builds, internally to all their own testers and employees.
That way, as far as I can tell, they get all the benefit of nightly builds, with absolutely zero of the downsides in terms of company image and dealing with buggy software in the wild.
I was under the impression that the whole point of a corporation IS that it is technically an individual, just a really big, rich one.
"The definition of a corporation is "An artificial person or legal entity created by or under the authority of the laws of a state" (Blacks Law Dictionary)""
So, tell me again why the corporation shouldn't get taxed as an individual too?
It may be anecdotal, but the linux that came pre-installed on my hp mini 1000 was so slow and shitty and useless that it was pretty much unusable. I love linux and I was really psyched to havee a real linux setup for once. But, it was TERRIBLE.
So.. i installed Windows 7 RC1 on the device and it was amazing. Fast, slick, easier to use, and *FAST*.
So, if you're trying to insinuate that Microsoft actively killed Linux on netbooks, I'd say that's somewhat naive.
Man, where are my mod points when I need them.. your post is spot on. It reminds me of trying to find an open source replacement for Visio, so I could throw together some really simple circuit diagrams.
I found a good half dozen programs that had the basic functionality I needed, except that they all sucked, really, really, really hard. A lot of them had amazing feature sets and could do some incredible stuff, but when it came to the basic nitty gritty of.. clicking on an object... rotating it... scaling it... moving it from here to there... they all failed *miserably*. Half of them didn't let you scale objects, half didn't let you rotate them at all, the others only did 90 degree increments, etc. The most basic, raw surface of the interface of all these programs were simply unusable.
It doesn't matter if all the open-source apps were loaded to the brim with extremely powerful features, which indeed many of them were, if it's like pulling teeth to drop some objects on the screen and move them and point them where I want them to.
I eventually found a circuit drawing program a friend of mine was writing for fun, that actually did what I wanted pretty much, but then I realized I could get Visio for free from school through the academic alliance, so I switched to that, and the joy of having a gigantic company's worth of resources to make sure every little tiny piece of the interface works great became apparent. (except autoconnect. that feature sucks.) It makes it so much easier to just Do Work, and not Work at doing work.
Maybe you make that in a month, but for someone making minimum wage, 5k is half a years worth of after-tax pay. Heck, even after a healthy raise, 5k is almost 3 months after-tax wages for me too...
$5k is an awful lot of money when you're earning less than $8 an hour. I don't ever want to risk going to jail, but I can completely understand why the equation might go the other way for someone. Especially in a situation like this where unless another security camera caught an image of their getaway car, or somehow someone catches them fencing the merchandise, the risk level is pretty darn low overall.
Yeah, the first time I ever tried texting while driving I came within about 4 inches of rear ending someone at a red light. Learned that lesson EXTREMELY quickly. Thank goodness for 4 wheel disc brakes!
Not to be a killjoy, but don't forget about the wholesale destruction of whole civilizations, and blatant abuse and rape of other civilizations as a result of the european expansion.
I hope there really aren't any aliens, at least none of them nearby! Get a bunch of earthlings down on them and they'd be fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked.....
Regular beat cops in the UK don't have guns, but if you think they're more than one radio call for backup away from a fully armed squad, you'd be sorely mistaken!
agreed, try driving with the iphone navigation in a city.. my friend and I were driving around a city, and we used the iphone nav to find the nearest Subway for food (which it did), but then the lack of realtime updates on the iphone as to your current location, combined with the fact that the city was seriously lacking in signs that actually told you the name of the streets, meant that the directions were 100% useless, because there was no way to match up the 'turn-by-turn' directions on screen, with what you're actually driving yourself into.
After getting lost for 10 minutes, I ended up pulling out my trusty Tomtom (possibly the single best gadget i've ever owned in terms of how much it has directly benefitted my life) and we got there in no time.
So, unless the iPhone's navigation gives you real time updates of your location (which the new version might, I don't know), it is a complete non-feature to me.
$85 minus the cost of having to tell everyone your new phone number, friends, family, any company you've done business with, etc etc... and then all the missed calls and confusion from people who don't get the message, etc.
I would say that to be a programmer requires something innate, but to be good you need education for sure.
If you've ever sat through a programming 101 course, you'll realize that some people "Just Get It" and some people have absolutely no clue no matter how simply you describe it and how simple the task is. Some people can see the flow of ideas necessary to make even something as simple as a for loop work, while others won't even begin to comprehend the concept or even be able to visualize any of it.
But eventually, once you have the basic grasp of it, having the education will expose you to a lot of things you might not know. Abstract concepts even as simple as data structures like linked lists might not immediately occur to you, so having someone teach them to you will help to no end.
But still, if you're not cut out to be a programmer, no amount of degrees are gonna help you...
That's true, but the big problem is that the debit card money comes out of your account immediately.... even if you do get it all back, there is the possibility for this to happen:
1- you check your bank balance in the morning 2- you make a string of purchases, knowing that you're safe in your balance
hidden step 1.5 - someone illegitimately uses your bank card and zeros you out. hidden step 3 - every purchase you made hits you for a $20-40 overdraft charge, which you may or may not get back, and even if you do get it back, it takes a finite amount of time, during which every other transaction that may not have posted yet ALSO hits you for overdraft, and you can't use your card, and have no money.
It's a really awkward and annoying situation to be in, for sure.
You know, you bring up a point which no one ever seems to talk about... why is everything these days "Beta", and why is "beta" so cool? Does it play to our natural desire to get a sneak preview of something? gmail has been beta since forever, and it makes you wonder when exactly it'll stop being beta, and, indeed, what difference will it even make?
When Beta products are practically mainstream all the time anyway, what's the point of even having it?
Oh of course, I don't deny that they're useful... I'd been using a reasonably old Toshiba laptop as a bedroom computer, and it was working great for a long time until the power supply burned through the cable. But, would you pay $350 today for that laptop? I doubt it:)
I've noticed that it's next to impossible, via normal channels, to get even old laptops for less than $300.. they may be worth about $1.50, but that doesn't stop people from charging the big bucks for an outdated piece of shit.
It's like craigslist syndrome; no one wants to admit that their ancient worthless crap is actually worthless.
I guess it depends on how good the employee discount is! If I could work there and get a $9500 fully tricked out studio-quality system for significantly less than that, then maybe I wouldn't complain about not making top dollar.
In the end, though, I guess it depends on intangibles: How is the office camaraderie? What are the health benefits? What's the vacation plan? Is it a super high stress environment, or is it a bit more laid back and awesome? Is there a lot of turnover, or are jobs there pretty stable?
I know I for one would be more than willing to take a somewhat lower salary, if I know there's good job security, the job is intellectually stimulating, I can take a vacation from time to time, I like my coworkers, and I don't go home with less hair than I started with from being stressed out the whole time, and if I get sick I can pay my doctor's bills. Other people I'm sure would take the money, but I find a ton of value in comfort!
What about the fact that 200 years ago, people were married at 13-14 and were most likely getting busy with each other?
Obviously with the fact that we live twice as long, we have the luxury to protect people's innocence for longer and give people a chance to develop a lot more emotionally (which is absolutely a good thing; I know 25 year olds who are immature enough to handle a proper relationship and have kids, don't even get started on people below 18), but still, screaming "think of the kids" does seem to be a pretty modern invention.
I am curious as to when exactly it all changed... maybe an interesting research subject just for interests sake!
I think the problem with nice looking computers is that everyone upgrades their systems so often that it's foolish to spend the money on "looking nice" when it's gonna get tossed pretty quickly. Stereo equipment tends to last a lot longer. Still, older stereo equipment definitely had more charm than even the modern stuff does; wood or faux-wood, brushed metal, giant knobs, etc.
Ah but it's a lot easier to slowly pump the tube out over a period of time, rather than have to use volatile chemicals to unleash the same amount of energy very quickly.
Maybe part of it is the fact that while it does have problems, Windows Vista in fact is not the antichrist, and it does, in fact, work pretty darn well for a lot of things? Is it perfect? no. Is it easier for a regular average joe home user than linux? Yes. Is linux better for a lot of things? yes. But, is Vista going to go and rape your children and steal all your stuff? Slashdot seems to think it will, but really, it won't. It works, most everything nowadays works with it, and in many ways it's actually easier to use than previous windows.
So what's the problem with someone recommending it?
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't the real conspiracy be for the government to tell everyone about all the things they screw up, and keep all the successes on the down-low, so as to make everyone think that they simply are incapable of doing anything right?
The question then is, how exactly are you supposed to breathe? If you're out of flux with everything else, where's your air supply gonna come from, unless you wore some kind of rebreather too...
I've always wondered that in Star Trek episodes for example; a crew member gets sent into some slightly out of phase dimension but can still breathe. Where is all this out of phase oxygen coming from?!
I think what I love most about the LHC and whatnot is that, despite all the incredible and amazing science and technology and innovation and potential for learning behind it, what it really comes down to is just us banging rocks together and watching what happens, just like humans have been doing throughout history. It just happens that this time, the rocks are incredibly tiny and incredibly fast.
Kinda puts it all in perspective, in kind of a cool way, IMO.
From what I've gleaned from various Microsoft blogs, they DO release nightly builds, internally to all their own testers and employees.
That way, as far as I can tell, they get all the benefit of nightly builds, with absolutely zero of the downsides in terms of company image and dealing with buggy software in the wild.
I was under the impression that the whole point of a corporation IS that it is technically an individual, just a really big, rich one.
"The definition of a corporation is "An artificial person or legal entity created by or under the authority of the laws of a state" (Blacks Law Dictionary)""
So, tell me again why the corporation shouldn't get taxed as an individual too?
It may be anecdotal, but the linux that came pre-installed on my hp mini 1000 was so slow and shitty and useless that it was pretty much unusable. I love linux and I was really psyched to havee a real linux setup for once. But, it was TERRIBLE.
So.. i installed Windows 7 RC1 on the device and it was amazing. Fast, slick, easier to use, and *FAST*.
So, if you're trying to insinuate that Microsoft actively killed Linux on netbooks, I'd say that's somewhat naive.
Man, where are my mod points when I need them.. your post is spot on. It reminds me of trying to find an open source replacement for Visio, so I could throw together some really simple circuit diagrams.
I found a good half dozen programs that had the basic functionality I needed, except that they all sucked, really, really, really hard. A lot of them had amazing feature sets and could do some incredible stuff, but when it came to the basic nitty gritty of .. clicking on an object ... rotating it ... scaling it... moving it from here to there... they all failed *miserably*. Half of them didn't let you scale objects, half didn't let you rotate them at all, the others only did 90 degree increments, etc. The most basic, raw surface of the interface of all these programs were simply unusable.
It doesn't matter if all the open-source apps were loaded to the brim with extremely powerful features, which indeed many of them were, if it's like pulling teeth to drop some objects on the screen and move them and point them where I want them to.
I eventually found a circuit drawing program a friend of mine was writing for fun, that actually did what I wanted pretty much, but then I realized I could get Visio for free from school through the academic alliance, so I switched to that, and the joy of having a gigantic company's worth of resources to make sure every little tiny piece of the interface works great became apparent. (except autoconnect. that feature sucks.) It makes it so much easier to just Do Work, and not Work at doing work.
Maybe you make that in a month, but for someone making minimum wage, 5k is half a years worth of after-tax pay. Heck, even after a healthy raise, 5k is almost 3 months after-tax wages for me too...
$5k is an awful lot of money when you're earning less than $8 an hour. I don't ever want to risk going to jail, but I can completely understand why the equation might go the other way for someone. Especially in a situation like this where unless another security camera caught an image of their getaway car, or somehow someone catches them fencing the merchandise, the risk level is pretty darn low overall.
Yeah, the first time I ever tried texting while driving I came within about 4 inches of rear ending someone at a red light. Learned that lesson EXTREMELY quickly. Thank goodness for 4 wheel disc brakes!
Maybe it's a small percentage point, but twice the size of texas is still pretty damn big!
Not to be a killjoy, but don't forget about the wholesale destruction of whole civilizations, and blatant abuse and rape of other civilizations as a result of the european expansion.
I hope there really aren't any aliens, at least none of them nearby! Get a bunch of earthlings down on them and they'd be fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked.....
Regular beat cops in the UK don't have guns, but if you think they're more than one radio call for backup away from a fully armed squad, you'd be sorely mistaken!
agreed, try driving with the iphone navigation in a city..
my friend and I were driving around a city, and we used the iphone nav to find the nearest Subway for food (which it did), but then the lack of realtime updates on the iphone as to your current location, combined with the fact that the city was seriously lacking in signs that actually told you the name of the streets, meant that the directions were 100% useless, because there was no way to match up the 'turn-by-turn' directions on screen, with what you're actually driving yourself into.
After getting lost for 10 minutes, I ended up pulling out my trusty Tomtom (possibly the single best gadget i've ever owned in terms of how much it has directly benefitted my life) and we got there in no time.
So, unless the iPhone's navigation gives you real time updates of your location (which the new version might, I don't know), it is a complete non-feature to me.
$85 minus the cost of having to tell everyone your new phone number, friends, family, any company you've done business with, etc etc... and then all the missed calls and confusion from people who don't get the message, etc.
not worth it, imo!
And when it does, it means we learned something really, really important.
I would say that to be a programmer requires something innate, but to be good you need education for sure.
If you've ever sat through a programming 101 course, you'll realize that some people "Just Get It" and some people have absolutely no clue no matter how simply you describe it and how simple the task is. Some people can see the flow of ideas necessary to make even something as simple as a for loop work, while others won't even begin to comprehend the concept or even be able to visualize any of it.
But eventually, once you have the basic grasp of it, having the education will expose you to a lot of things you might not know. Abstract concepts even as simple as data structures like linked lists might not immediately occur to you, so having someone teach them to you will help to no end.
But still, if you're not cut out to be a programmer, no amount of degrees are gonna help you...
That's true, but the big problem is that the debit card money comes out of your account immediately.... even if you do get it all back, there is the possibility for this to happen:
1- you check your bank balance in the morning
2- you make a string of purchases, knowing that you're safe in your balance
hidden step 1.5 - someone illegitimately uses your bank card and zeros you out.
hidden step 3 - every purchase you made hits you for a $20-40 overdraft charge, which you may or may not get back, and even if you do get it back, it takes a finite amount of time, during which every other transaction that may not have posted yet ALSO hits you for overdraft, and you can't use your card, and have no money.
It's a really awkward and annoying situation to be in, for sure.
You know, you bring up a point which no one ever seems to talk about... why is everything these days "Beta", and why is "beta" so cool? Does it play to our natural desire to get a sneak preview of something? gmail has been beta since forever, and it makes you wonder when exactly it'll stop being beta, and, indeed, what difference will it even make?
When Beta products are practically mainstream all the time anyway, what's the point of even having it?
Oh of course, I don't deny that they're useful... I'd been using a reasonably old Toshiba laptop as a bedroom computer, and it was working great for a long time until the power supply burned through the cable. But, would you pay $350 today for that laptop? I doubt it :)
I've noticed that it's next to impossible, via normal channels, to get even old laptops for less than $300.. they may be worth about $1.50, but that doesn't stop people from charging the big bucks for an outdated piece of shit.
It's like craigslist syndrome; no one wants to admit that their ancient worthless crap is actually worthless.
I guess it depends on how good the employee discount is! If I could work there and get a $9500 fully tricked out studio-quality system for significantly less than that, then maybe I wouldn't complain about not making top dollar.
In the end, though, I guess it depends on intangibles: How is the office camaraderie? What are the health benefits? What's the vacation plan? Is it a super high stress environment, or is it a bit more laid back and awesome? Is there a lot of turnover, or are jobs there pretty stable?
I know I for one would be more than willing to take a somewhat lower salary, if I know there's good job security, the job is intellectually stimulating, I can take a vacation from time to time, I like my coworkers, and I don't go home with less hair than I started with from being stressed out the whole time, and if I get sick I can pay my doctor's bills. Other people I'm sure would take the money, but I find a ton of value in comfort!
What about the fact that 200 years ago, people were married at 13-14 and were most likely getting busy with each other?
Obviously with the fact that we live twice as long, we have the luxury to protect people's innocence for longer and give people a chance to develop a lot more emotionally (which is absolutely a good thing; I know 25 year olds who are immature enough to handle a proper relationship and have kids, don't even get started on people below 18), but still, screaming "think of the kids" does seem to be a pretty modern invention.
I am curious as to when exactly it all changed... maybe an interesting research subject just for interests sake!
I think the problem with nice looking computers is that everyone upgrades their systems so often that it's foolish to spend the money on "looking nice" when it's gonna get tossed pretty quickly. Stereo equipment tends to last a lot longer. Still, older stereo equipment definitely had more charm than even the modern stuff does; wood or faux-wood, brushed metal, giant knobs, etc.
Ah but it's a lot easier to slowly pump the tube out over a period of time, rather than have to use volatile chemicals to unleash the same amount of energy very quickly.
Maybe part of it is the fact that while it does have problems, Windows Vista in fact is not the antichrist, and it does, in fact, work pretty darn well for a lot of things? Is it perfect? no. Is it easier for a regular average joe home user than linux? Yes. Is linux better for a lot of things? yes. But, is Vista going to go and rape your children and steal all your stuff? Slashdot seems to think it will, but really, it won't. It works, most everything nowadays works with it, and in many ways it's actually easier to use than previous windows.
So what's the problem with someone recommending it?