This is one of those times where it's a very good thing that Supreme Court justices are appointed for life rather than needing to worry about getting reelected. They're supposed to decide cases on the merits of the law, and not based on whatever is popular at the moment, and this is especially true in cases involving the the 1st amendment. The whole point of guaranteeing free speech is to protect the right of people to say unpopular things. No one needs legal protection to say things that everyone else already agrees with. So it doesn't matter how many people agree with whatever some biased poll says, it only matters if the law infringes on 1st amendment rights.
IANAL, but i strongly suspect that an "open records request" is very different from a subpoena as part of an accusation of fraud. I could certainly understand a professor being, er, open to one and hostile to the other. The attitude/method of the person asking can certainly make a difference in the response.
I hope you're joking. There's no such think as sniping in a bidding war like this. 3PAR _always_ has the option to go back to the other bidders and solicit another bid. In fact if you check TFA or some of the earlier posts, part of the Dell's initial bid included an agreement that they would be allowed to match any other bids tendered by other companies.
I'm really surprised that ebay hasn't come up with any kind of similar system. An option that could be chosen by the person auctioning the item where any bit within the last X minutes of the auction resets the timer back to X minutes to give others a chance to beat the new bid. It would probably make the sellers more money, and would eliminate a lot of the frustration on the part of the regular bidders.
According to an article i read this morning (for which i haven't been able to find the link again, but still looking) 3PAR is the 4th largest player in the SAN market, and all three bigger players are part of much larger corporations that are out of Dell and HP's league. Furthermore cloud computing is projected to have twenty-something percent growth per year for the next several years, so any company in that area (which manages to survive anyways) is going to be worth a lot more a few years down the road than it is now.
However that same article wasn't sure the price of $2 billion made sense, and predicted that whichever company "won" the bid might suffer from some pretty severe buyer's remorse. It's not _quite_ as insane as it might appear at first, and it will take awhile to see if their gamble paid off or not.
If you want a serious answer, there are two reasons (at least for the case of GetGlue, don't know about the other two sites mentioned in the article.)
1: There are a lot of times where you will be doing something you might want to check-in for when you're not around a computer (or not around a computer you can use for that purpose.) Seeing a new movie in the theatre is an obvious case, but there are others. That's a pretty good reason to have an app.
2: There are some stickers that you can only get by checking in via the app (either iPhone or Android.) That's a pretty dumb reason, and was clearly engineered by them as a marketing gimmick to push adoption of the apps.
I've been using GetGlue for a couple months and am still in love with it (unlike my fling with FourSquare that mostly died out after a few weeks.) Not only is GetGlue a lot more tailored for my geeky interests than FourSquare, it's nice to be able to check into stuff without worry about the frickin GPS coordinates being off and it claiming i'm not within 200 meters when i'm standing right inside the venue =P
Of course on the downside that means that there are a number of people on GetGlue who will check into anything and everything as frequently as possible just in order to accumulate stickers/badges/achievements. Personally i only check into stuff that i'm actually doing and the people who've accumulated hundreds of stickers, thousands of "friends", and tens of thousands of "liked" things can irk me a bit, but i try and just remind myself that it's not actually a contest, despite what some of them seem to think. I'd rather have my stickers and "likes" reflect who i actually am, rather than how obsessively i can click on links.
Perhaps i should check out the other sites mentioned in the article, though i'm not sure if i'd want to maintain a presence on more than one such site. Checking-in when i start watching a show or playing a game or reading a book isn't too bad, but having to do so at two or three different sites might start to get a bit cumbersome.
Pretty much the bit about "Cut all federal subsidies" followed by using the savings to reduce the deficit. As things stand now, some of that money gets eaten up in graft, and not all of it is spent efficiently, but a lot of it ends up getting paid out to people as well.
So all federal subsidies are cut, a lot of farmers go out of business, a lot of construction workers lose their jobs, a lot of teachers lose their jobs, a lot of researchers lose their jobs, perhaps everyone at NASA loses their jobs. (I'm not sure what all is being included under "federal subsidy.")
So all those people are out of jobs. The economy isn't doing great currently so they certainly can't all find new jobs. They're making no income so they spend less. The economy suffers even more. Kids aren't being taught, the highways aren't being repaired, pretty soon the economy starts suffering even worse. Perhaps the states will step in to fund things like that, but the money would have to come from somewhere, which would mean new taxes and a further strain on the economy.
One can make arguments either way about which is healthier for the economy, letting everyone keep their money or taking some portion of that money and redistributing it to another area. Both are thermodynamically sound processes (so to speak.) I don't see how you could argue that taking the money out in taxes but not putting it back into the system wouldn't have any kind of negative impact however. Yes paying off the debt is important, and we either need to cut spending or raise taxes to do that. However trying to go "cold turkey," either by getting rid of _all_ spending or raising taxes by an exorbitant amount, would be a bad idea. Whatever we do it should be done slowly and in moderation so the economy has time to adjust to the new situation.
I certainly doubt that something exactly like the Zones of Thought is likely to exist in reality, but there are all kinds of potential reasons why the idea of looking in galactic centers might be the wrong track. If someone was looking at the earth and for some reason couldn't immediately detect our cities, then following the same logic they might expect our largest and most advanced civilizations to be on the equator. That's where the most life is and where the most energy is available from the sun. The center of the galaxy may be a great place for civilizations (either biological or AI) or it might be a horrible place, it's impossible for us to judge given our current state of knowledge.
"Why do you think facebook should focus on geeks?"
Er, my first answer is: because i myself am both a geek and a human, and therefore am subject to rational egoism?
However you also missed the part where i had second thoughts and concluded that i don't really want Facebook interested in my stuff and that Facebook isn't really interested in people like me. So my final answer, again viewing it from my perspective, was "they aren't and they shouldn't be."
I'd say that what Facebook ought to copy isn't FourSquare but GetGlue, which is kind of like FourSquare but instead of checking into places you check into video games, books, movies, tv shows, etc. As a geek i'm a lot more interested in seeing what my friends are reading or playing than i am in seeing what restaurant they just went to. Plus since it's about things rather than places the privacy and stalker concerns are a lot less prevalent.
On the other hand though, i've logged into Facebook maybe three or four times in the past six months, and i'd rather it stayed away from buying or out-competing sites/companies that i actually like.
And on the other other hand, Facebook seems interested in convincing users that privacy doesn't matter anyways, so perhaps a system that encourages you to tell everyone where you actually are at the moment is actually the "best" thing for them =P
Oracle's products are pretty terrible with the one exception of the DB. And that's pretty ugly too, it just happens to work pretty well, not that its configuration is simple, intuitive, or quick, nor that its logging capabilities really tell you anything. I've never looked at Oracle as an example of how to write software or as a token example of a what a good, successful software company should look like.
Let me say upfront that i don't really like Microsoft. I use Windows because that's what i have to use at work and because that's what i need for most of the games i want to play at home. However i'll always look for alternatives to Microsoft products in any other area i can. Database software is one of the few areas where i've looked at Microsoft and looked at the competition and decided that Microsoft is just better. Both Microsoft and Oracle have fundamentally sound database software, but in my opinion Microsoft surpasses Oracle in pretty much every way when it comes to both user interface and support. Microsoft itself isn't generally known as a genius at coming up with interfaces, so you have to wonder about a company like Oracle being so technically proficient and yet doing so poorly at basic usability.
Queen's English: "Aerosmith are playing Wembley Stadium."
U.S. English: "Aerosmith is playing the Verizon Center."
Wow, i now have an image in my head of a giant rock star strumming an amphitheater, or perhaps banging on it with some giant drum sticks. I've always heard it as "Aerosmith is playing at the Verizon Center," so there are more differences in the language at play than just those from skipping across the pond:)
However correlation is strongly correlated with correlation, which is what the study said if you'd bothered to RTFA, or even just read the blurb. I suppose the companies manufacturing HD sets and content might be interested in the cause so they could figure out how to counteract it, but for the rest of us the correlation is all that matters.
Are you upset because you think that only unattractive women should complain about sexual harassment, or do you just think that people should only comment on particular instances of harassment that happened to themselves rather than discussing it in the abstract?
You've gone from "someone posed in some pictures that weren't 100% depictions of an actual event" to condemning every "young" female american in existence.
Never thought I'd see a generation of women who's goal in life is 'I want to be a Trophy Wife when I grow up then get dumped and replaced by my wealthy husband for a younger trophy wife...'"
Are you sexist, out of touch with reality, or just trolling? Totally aside from the issue that no one actually has "then get dumped and replaced by my wealthy husband" as a goal, i can look around my office right now and see plenty of women "working hard and earning something in life." (Arguably more so than you or i, since i suspect that most of them aren't posting on Slashdot right now *cough*) I suggest you go compare the _reality_ of life today to that of just about all of history prior to the 20th century. Men spent several thousand years telling women that they mattered for nothing in life except for who they married and how many children they had. Do you really want to be the one bitching about how since we were finally gracious enough to start telling them they were equal a couple generations ago that it's unreasonable that some fraction (and _only_ a fraction) of them haven't gotten over that mindset yet? Despite the fact that a lot of men still treat them like they don't matter except for what's on their chest or between their legs?
"Maybe I am an old curmudgeon. But by God I want more 'women' and less 'chicks' please...."
If you look around and all you see is "chicks," then i suspect that you _are_ an old curmudgeon, and a sexist one at that, and are a bigger part of the problem than any woman who complains about being mistreated because of her gender, regardless of whether it's in a "fake" photoshoot or not. Either that, or you need to go outside and meet some real people living real lives and working at real jobs, rather than assuming that everything is just like what you see on TV or the internet.
I wonder if the people who complain about companies being granted patents for something "obvious" just because it's being done on a computer instead of in real life (or when a separate law is proposed or passed making something illegal online when it was already illegal in real life) are also the same people who complain about how data isn't a physical thing so taking it without permission isn't "stealing"?
I can see how both views fit into the "information wants to be free" mindset, but there's a bit of dichotomy there on whether "on a computer" is the same as "in real life." Seems like they want the answer to be different depending on what benefits themselves the most in that situation.
Yes, i realize that, which is why it isn't the primary argument for doing so, it's just a small added bonus in some cases.
When you get down to it there are a couple minor but good reasons to switch from roman numerals to arabic numerals when you're already abbreviating the name, and absolutely no good reasons for sticking with the roman numerals. If someone wants to type out the entire name they can argue that they're just presenting it as the creators intended. (I think it's silly to be that pedantic, but it's a logical and valid argument.) However you no longer have even that excuse once you're chopping "Civilization" or "Final Fantasy" down to just "Civ" or "FF".
"This is wrong. I'd like you to represent Lim x=>0 in roman numerals, you can't The romans didn't have a concept of zero."
I would, but i don't know Latin for "limit" and "goes to" or "approaches":)
The Romans knew what nothing was, they just didn't have a _number_ for it. The term you don't think exists is "nulla". You could argue that using it isn't using roman numerals, but that would be pedantic. The fact that they didn't have a numeral to represent 0 is what makes using roman numerals hard because it's what forced them to use the awkward system of totaling up a series of characters (using both addition and subtraction if subtractive notation was being used, which wasn't always the case) instead of having a placeholder for positional notation.
However since it's not being used for positional notation the only use for "0" is when you're actually referring to the basic concept of zero, ie nothing, for which the term "nulla" is entirely appropriate and usable.
It's not "dumbing-down," it's an improvement in speed and efficiency, both for writing and reading. Less characters (on average) to write, less characters to read and parse, _and_ the ordering is fixed! And it's not like leet-speak where you're mangling the text. Arabic numerals are a commonly accepted form of communicating numbers. Why do you say it's better for math but not for communication? There's technically nothing stopping you from doing calculus or other higher mathematics with roman numerals, it would just be painfully slow and awkward. The reason it's bad for math is the same reason it's bad for communication, just to a greater degree.
I can read roman numerals just fine. I can also read upside down and mirror text, or with the text in all caps or with no punctuation, or with the punctuation written out. But that doesn't mean i'd prefer to have my books written in any of those formats.
Why do so many people insist on using the roman numerals in casual conversation? The creators use them in the official titles for media because it looks "prettier" on a box or a poster or a movie screen, but roman numerals are unarguably inferior for actual communication. There's a reason we ditched that system for general use and went with arabic numerals a long time ago.
What's especially vexing is people who abbreviate the title but still insist on using the roman numerals. FF XIII, DQ IX, Civ V. If you're _already_ trying to simplify the name then using arabic numerals will always be more clear and will often save space/characters as well. FF 13, DQ 9, Civ 5.
Making things more difficult for yourself and for everyone else reading whatever you have to say in the name of a cheap marketing gimmick is just dumb!
There's certainly a strong argument for Amazon having an adverse effect on mom & pop stores, but i'm not sure the used book market is that argument. Half the time i get used stuff from Amazon the purchase is actually routed to some small and presumably independent bookstore that i've never heard of before. Maybe you can't physically enter your local used book store because of dust and mold issues, but it's possible that they're selling a fair number of used books via Amazon.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that i think the universe must have a center. I would like it if it _did_ have a center, or at least something that would serve as a reference point, so that certain kinds of FTL would be possible (again, if i'm understanding the theory) but i never said that it had to. And i concluded by saying that they'll probably find this phenomenon is evidence of something else entirely. So i'm really not sure what you're on about.
It would be great if they'd actually found the center of the universe, in contradiction to all previous theories, since that would allow a hole in relativity that you might be able to squeeze FTL through. At least as far as i understand it some methods of FTL would be non-paradoxical if there was actually a universal reference frame instead of everything being, well, relative.
Unfortunately i'm sure there's a much more mundane explanation for the phenomenon which they will eventually discover.
The PS3, it only does everything! (Where "everything" does not include all the features removed by hardware or software "upgrades" since the release of the original model.)
If you can figure out how to convince people to reject tribalism and operate in a completely rational manner then promoting free and open software will end up being small potatoes, you've probably got a nobel prize waiting for you.
Slashdot Mirror
This is one of those times where it's a very good thing that Supreme Court justices are appointed for life rather than needing to worry about getting reelected. They're supposed to decide cases on the merits of the law, and not based on whatever is popular at the moment, and this is especially true in cases involving the the 1st amendment. The whole point of guaranteeing free speech is to protect the right of people to say unpopular things. No one needs legal protection to say things that everyone else already agrees with. So it doesn't matter how many people agree with whatever some biased poll says, it only matters if the law infringes on 1st amendment rights.
IANAL, but i strongly suspect that an "open records request" is very different from a subpoena as part of an accusation of fraud. I could certainly understand a professor being, er, open to one and hostile to the other. The attitude/method of the person asking can certainly make a difference in the response.
I hope you're joking. There's no such think as sniping in a bidding war like this. 3PAR _always_ has the option to go back to the other bidders and solicit another bid. In fact if you check TFA or some of the earlier posts, part of the Dell's initial bid included an agreement that they would be allowed to match any other bids tendered by other companies.
I'm really surprised that ebay hasn't come up with any kind of similar system. An option that could be chosen by the person auctioning the item where any bit within the last X minutes of the auction resets the timer back to X minutes to give others a chance to beat the new bid. It would probably make the sellers more money, and would eliminate a lot of the frustration on the part of the regular bidders.
According to an article i read this morning (for which i haven't been able to find the link again, but still looking) 3PAR is the 4th largest player in the SAN market, and all three bigger players are part of much larger corporations that are out of Dell and HP's league. Furthermore cloud computing is projected to have twenty-something percent growth per year for the next several years, so any company in that area (which manages to survive anyways) is going to be worth a lot more a few years down the road than it is now.
However that same article wasn't sure the price of $2 billion made sense, and predicted that whichever company "won" the bid might suffer from some pretty severe buyer's remorse. It's not _quite_ as insane as it might appear at first, and it will take awhile to see if their gamble paid off or not.
If you want a serious answer, there are two reasons (at least for the case of GetGlue, don't know about the other two sites mentioned in the article.)
1: There are a lot of times where you will be doing something you might want to check-in for when you're not around a computer (or not around a computer you can use for that purpose.) Seeing a new movie in the theatre is an obvious case, but there are others. That's a pretty good reason to have an app.
2: There are some stickers that you can only get by checking in via the app (either iPhone or Android.) That's a pretty dumb reason, and was clearly engineered by them as a marketing gimmick to push adoption of the apps.
I've been using GetGlue for a couple months and am still in love with it (unlike my fling with FourSquare that mostly died out after a few weeks.) Not only is GetGlue a lot more tailored for my geeky interests than FourSquare, it's nice to be able to check into stuff without worry about the frickin GPS coordinates being off and it claiming i'm not within 200 meters when i'm standing right inside the venue =P
Of course on the downside that means that there are a number of people on GetGlue who will check into anything and everything as frequently as possible just in order to accumulate stickers/badges/achievements. Personally i only check into stuff that i'm actually doing and the people who've accumulated hundreds of stickers, thousands of "friends", and tens of thousands of "liked" things can irk me a bit, but i try and just remind myself that it's not actually a contest, despite what some of them seem to think. I'd rather have my stickers and "likes" reflect who i actually am, rather than how obsessively i can click on links.
Perhaps i should check out the other sites mentioned in the article, though i'm not sure if i'd want to maintain a presence on more than one such site. Checking-in when i start watching a show or playing a game or reading a book isn't too bad, but having to do so at two or three different sites might start to get a bit cumbersome.
Pretty much the bit about "Cut all federal subsidies" followed by using the savings to reduce the deficit. As things stand now, some of that money gets eaten up in graft, and not all of it is spent efficiently, but a lot of it ends up getting paid out to people as well.
So all federal subsidies are cut, a lot of farmers go out of business, a lot of construction workers lose their jobs, a lot of teachers lose their jobs, a lot of researchers lose their jobs, perhaps everyone at NASA loses their jobs. (I'm not sure what all is being included under "federal subsidy.")
So all those people are out of jobs. The economy isn't doing great currently so they certainly can't all find new jobs. They're making no income so they spend less. The economy suffers even more. Kids aren't being taught, the highways aren't being repaired, pretty soon the economy starts suffering even worse. Perhaps the states will step in to fund things like that, but the money would have to come from somewhere, which would mean new taxes and a further strain on the economy.
One can make arguments either way about which is healthier for the economy, letting everyone keep their money or taking some portion of that money and redistributing it to another area. Both are thermodynamically sound processes (so to speak.) I don't see how you could argue that taking the money out in taxes but not putting it back into the system wouldn't have any kind of negative impact however. Yes paying off the debt is important, and we either need to cut spending or raise taxes to do that. However trying to go "cold turkey," either by getting rid of _all_ spending or raising taxes by an exorbitant amount, would be a bad idea. Whatever we do it should be done slowly and in moderation so the economy has time to adjust to the new situation.
I certainly doubt that something exactly like the Zones of Thought is likely to exist in reality, but there are all kinds of potential reasons why the idea of looking in galactic centers might be the wrong track. If someone was looking at the earth and for some reason couldn't immediately detect our cities, then following the same logic they might expect our largest and most advanced civilizations to be on the equator. That's where the most life is and where the most energy is available from the sun. The center of the galaxy may be a great place for civilizations (either biological or AI) or it might be a horrible place, it's impossible for us to judge given our current state of knowledge.
There haven't been any known cases of a private citizen destroying a city with an atomic blast, so free nuclear weapons for everyone!
"Why do you think facebook should focus on geeks?"
Er, my first answer is: because i myself am both a geek and a human, and therefore am subject to rational egoism?
However you also missed the part where i had second thoughts and concluded that i don't really want Facebook interested in my stuff and that Facebook isn't really interested in people like me. So my final answer, again viewing it from my perspective, was "they aren't and they shouldn't be."
I'd say that what Facebook ought to copy isn't FourSquare but GetGlue, which is kind of like FourSquare but instead of checking into places you check into video games, books, movies, tv shows, etc. As a geek i'm a lot more interested in seeing what my friends are reading or playing than i am in seeing what restaurant they just went to. Plus since it's about things rather than places the privacy and stalker concerns are a lot less prevalent.
On the other hand though, i've logged into Facebook maybe three or four times in the past six months, and i'd rather it stayed away from buying or out-competing sites/companies that i actually like.
And on the other other hand, Facebook seems interested in convincing users that privacy doesn't matter anyways, so perhaps a system that encourages you to tell everyone where you actually are at the moment is actually the "best" thing for them =P
Oracle's products are pretty terrible with the one exception of the DB. And that's pretty ugly too, it just happens to work pretty well, not that its configuration is simple, intuitive, or quick, nor that its logging capabilities really tell you anything. I've never looked at Oracle as an example of how to write software or as a token example of a what a good, successful software company should look like.
Let me say upfront that i don't really like Microsoft. I use Windows because that's what i have to use at work and because that's what i need for most of the games i want to play at home. However i'll always look for alternatives to Microsoft products in any other area i can. Database software is one of the few areas where i've looked at Microsoft and looked at the competition and decided that Microsoft is just better. Both Microsoft and Oracle have fundamentally sound database software, but in my opinion Microsoft surpasses Oracle in pretty much every way when it comes to both user interface and support. Microsoft itself isn't generally known as a genius at coming up with interfaces, so you have to wonder about a company like Oracle being so technically proficient and yet doing so poorly at basic usability.
Queen's English: "Aerosmith are playing Wembley Stadium."
U.S. English: "Aerosmith is playing the Verizon Center."
Wow, i now have an image in my head of a giant rock star strumming an amphitheater, or perhaps banging on it with some giant drum sticks. I've always heard it as "Aerosmith is playing at the Verizon Center," so there are more differences in the language at play than just those from skipping across the pond :)
However correlation is strongly correlated with correlation, which is what the study said if you'd bothered to RTFA, or even just read the blurb. I suppose the companies manufacturing HD sets and content might be interested in the cause so they could figure out how to counteract it, but for the rest of us the correlation is all that matters.
You've gone from "someone posed in some pictures that weren't 100% depictions of an actual event" to condemning every "young" female american in existence.
Never thought I'd see a generation of women who's goal in life is 'I want to be a Trophy Wife when I grow up then get dumped and replaced by my wealthy husband for a younger trophy wife...'"
Are you sexist, out of touch with reality, or just trolling? Totally aside from the issue that no one actually has "then get dumped and replaced by my wealthy husband" as a goal, i can look around my office right now and see plenty of women "working hard and earning something in life." (Arguably more so than you or i, since i suspect that most of them aren't posting on Slashdot right now *cough*) I suggest you go compare the _reality_ of life today to that of just about all of history prior to the 20th century. Men spent several thousand years telling women that they mattered for nothing in life except for who they married and how many children they had. Do you really want to be the one bitching about how since we were finally gracious enough to start telling them they were equal a couple generations ago that it's unreasonable that some fraction (and _only_ a fraction) of them haven't gotten over that mindset yet? Despite the fact that a lot of men still treat them like they don't matter except for what's on their chest or between their legs?
"Maybe I am an old curmudgeon. But by God I want more 'women' and less 'chicks' please...."
If you look around and all you see is "chicks," then i suspect that you _are_ an old curmudgeon, and a sexist one at that, and are a bigger part of the problem than any woman who complains about being mistreated because of her gender, regardless of whether it's in a "fake" photoshoot or not. Either that, or you need to go outside and meet some real people living real lives and working at real jobs, rather than assuming that everything is just like what you see on TV or the internet.
I wonder if the people who complain about companies being granted patents for something "obvious" just because it's being done on a computer instead of in real life (or when a separate law is proposed or passed making something illegal online when it was already illegal in real life) are also the same people who complain about how data isn't a physical thing so taking it without permission isn't "stealing"?
I can see how both views fit into the "information wants to be free" mindset, but there's a bit of dichotomy there on whether "on a computer" is the same as "in real life." Seems like they want the answer to be different depending on what benefits themselves the most in that situation.
Yes, i realize that, which is why it isn't the primary argument for doing so, it's just a small added bonus in some cases.
When you get down to it there are a couple minor but good reasons to switch from roman numerals to arabic numerals when you're already abbreviating the name, and absolutely no good reasons for sticking with the roman numerals. If someone wants to type out the entire name they can argue that they're just presenting it as the creators intended. (I think it's silly to be that pedantic, but it's a logical and valid argument.) However you no longer have even that excuse once you're chopping "Civilization" or "Final Fantasy" down to just "Civ" or "FF".
"This is wrong. I'd like you to represent Lim x=>0 in roman numerals, you can't The romans didn't have a concept of zero."
:)
I would, but i don't know Latin for "limit" and "goes to" or "approaches"
The Romans knew what nothing was, they just didn't have a _number_ for it. The term you don't think exists is "nulla". You could argue that using it isn't using roman numerals, but that would be pedantic. The fact that they didn't have a numeral to represent 0 is what makes using roman numerals hard because it's what forced them to use the awkward system of totaling up a series of characters (using both addition and subtraction if subtractive notation was being used, which wasn't always the case) instead of having a placeholder for positional notation.
However since it's not being used for positional notation the only use for "0" is when you're actually referring to the basic concept of zero, ie nothing, for which the term "nulla" is entirely appropriate and usable.
It's not "dumbing-down," it's an improvement in speed and efficiency, both for writing and reading. Less characters (on average) to write, less characters to read and parse, _and_ the ordering is fixed! And it's not like leet-speak where you're mangling the text. Arabic numerals are a commonly accepted form of communicating numbers. Why do you say it's better for math but not for communication? There's technically nothing stopping you from doing calculus or other higher mathematics with roman numerals, it would just be painfully slow and awkward. The reason it's bad for math is the same reason it's bad for communication, just to a greater degree.
I can read roman numerals just fine. I can also read upside down and mirror text, or with the text in all caps or with no punctuation, or with the punctuation written out. But that doesn't mean i'd prefer to have my books written in any of those formats.
Why do so many people insist on using the roman numerals in casual conversation? The creators use them in the official titles for media because it looks "prettier" on a box or a poster or a movie screen, but roman numerals are unarguably inferior for actual communication. There's a reason we ditched that system for general use and went with arabic numerals a long time ago.
What's especially vexing is people who abbreviate the title but still insist on using the roman numerals. FF XIII, DQ IX, Civ V. If you're _already_ trying to simplify the name then using arabic numerals will always be more clear and will often save space/characters as well. FF 13, DQ 9, Civ 5.
Making things more difficult for yourself and for everyone else reading whatever you have to say in the name of a cheap marketing gimmick is just dumb!
There's certainly a strong argument for Amazon having an adverse effect on mom & pop stores, but i'm not sure the used book market is that argument. Half the time i get used stuff from Amazon the purchase is actually routed to some small and presumably independent bookstore that i've never heard of before. Maybe you can't physically enter your local used book store because of dust and mold issues, but it's possible that they're selling a fair number of used books via Amazon.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that i think the universe must have a center. I would like it if it _did_ have a center, or at least something that would serve as a reference point, so that certain kinds of FTL would be possible (again, if i'm understanding the theory) but i never said that it had to. And i concluded by saying that they'll probably find this phenomenon is evidence of something else entirely. So i'm really not sure what you're on about.
It would be great if they'd actually found the center of the universe, in contradiction to all previous theories, since that would allow a hole in relativity that you might be able to squeeze FTL through. At least as far as i understand it some methods of FTL would be non-paradoxical if there was actually a universal reference frame instead of everything being, well, relative.
Unfortunately i'm sure there's a much more mundane explanation for the phenomenon which they will eventually discover.
The PS3, it only does everything! (Where "everything" does not include all the features removed by hardware or software "upgrades" since the release of the original model.)
If you can figure out how to convince people to reject tribalism and operate in a completely rational manner then promoting free and open software will end up being small potatoes, you've probably got a nobel prize waiting for you.