Unfortunately, though, having a true choice on content WILL include the Brittany Spears's and boy bands that this crowd loves to bash. Though it seems nobody here would ever believe it, some people actually, honestly, truely LIKE this kind of music.
Free speech (and free choice, as well) has the nasty side effect of exposing people to stuff they don't want to hear.
I've always thought of tips as a way to have wait staff's wages performance based. The better they do, the bigger the tip. Also, it may not be legally required (except for those cases where it is automatically included, such as for large parties), but it IS required by our social rules. Anyone who doesn't tip a good server is reguarded as an asshole.
BTW, a friend of mine who was a waiter for a few summers told me the worst insult you can give through a tip is to include pennies. I remember that when I get a very bad server.
Personally, if I were in an accident bad enough to need "responders" to get me out, I wouldn't be there saying "oh, don't forget your rubber gloves and boots, or you might get a nasty shock. I'll sit here while you go get them."
I'd be saying "get me the F#$* out of here!"
Not that I want anything bad to happen to them, just a survival instinct.
Me, I was on my way home (West Michigan) from California. When I landed in Minneapolis, I checked my messages, and my wife was telling me that I should check to make sure my flight wasn't canceled. I had no problem, but I did meet someone who was trying to get to Detroit, and she eventually got on my plane. I felt bad, cuz she was trying to get to a wedding.
On top of that, it's not a very good "law" (in the scientific definition-something that is always true). I seem to remember that the doubling time period has changed over the years, not to refine the entire history of semiconductors, but to refine for the new generation (i.e., started out doubling something like every 12 months, then it streatched to 18, but the previous few years still had doubled every 12 months).
Actually, I have heard of many studies that have shown that all the exercise you do over the coarse of the day adds up, so if you go for 3 ten minute walks, it is the same as going for one 30 minute walk (for either cardio or weight loss, I can't remember which).
I do aggree that warmup is necessary for intense workouts, but not for a light peddaling or an easy walk. And if there is adjustable resistance on the peddaling machine, it would allow for your scenario (peddal lightly at a low resistance to warm up, then up the resistance for a workout, and finally lower the resistance again for a warm down).
Actually, as someone who works in the Scantool industry, they would not be protected by copyrights so much as patents. And, even then, the protocol is completely open (i.e., CAN or KEYWORD), it's just the specific codes and what you can do with them.
Also, it is worth noting that companies can already license much of this information from the car companies (mine does for one of our products), plus there are a limited number of codes that relate to Emissions systems that are standardized by the EPA. This would seem to just open it up so there were no licensing fees, and the mechanic would know what a P02534 code meant and thus be able to fix the problem.
You know, that's what it reminded me of as well. And I personally think that the whole thing is pretty dumb, esepecially when WOODTV shows the thing during commercial breaks. Maybe I just don't get it, being in Kalamazoo and all, but the whole thing is a little cheesy.
If I ever had one of those ambient orbs, I'd select monitoring something very volatile so it pulsated. Wait, I think Spencer's carrys something like that... (or at least they should).
That was quite the interesting premise for a story, making everyone equal by forcing all to the lowest common denominator. However, the way I remember the ending ruined the story for me. I may be wrong (I read it in a High School English class, and didn't pay the most attention because the teacher was just not good), but I remember him flying around the room when he was finally caught, and I remember that I took this to be literal flying, as in the air. Just kinda ruined the story for me.
Basically IBM makes it very worthwhile for their employees to come up with patentable ideas - they are rewarded with pay raises, bonuses, and the like.
It also helps when you have around 315,889 (figures from IBM.com's "ABOUT" page).
I am guessing that there is more of an incentive than bonuses, because we have a bonus system where I work, and my department is lucky to get 1 patent a year (we have fewer than 30 employees at my location). People around here just don't see $1000 as enough motivation when the past actions of the company have inspired as much cynacism as this one has.
The minor tweaks, fixes, and changes that made the old version work so well can only go so far. Such is often the nature of code. Tiny fixes and patches are (sometimes haphazardly) hacked on to the code.
Along with this, there are many times that I have been working in code for a few of our products (codebase is at least 15 years old, I believe) where the customer has asked for a new feature that, try as I might, cannot be put into the current code. So I have to re-write a good part of it, sometimes complete executables.
Recently, we have moved a couple of products to new operating systems (DOS to Windows, yes, we are still selling products that run on DOS, partially because they work "good enough" that the cost of rewriting is not acceptable to the powers that be), which obviously requires a rewrite. However, the code is so much less complicated than before, and the coders better (IMHO), that we actually have had fewer problems than if we had updated the old system.
Along with the fact that PCI has been relatively stable for 10 years, now is a great time for this to be coming out. We'll all be buying new stuff soon anyway to take advantage of SATA and the like, so why not throw one more thing in? Only downside I can see to this is the need to buy some more pheripherals than simply replacing MB and drives, but still not too bad. It's nice when upgrade cycles are at least close to each other.
I've always wondered what George Boole's fellow mathematicians must have thought about him speding so much time developing an algebra based on only two numbers. And I believe that when Joseph Fourier presented his work to the academy of sciences showing that any function could be represented as an infinite sum of sine and cosine functions, the result was a big yawn from everyone.
Actually, I believe in both of those cases the response was not "How will I ever use this?", but "How can I use this?" The mathemeticians I know (mostly college professors and grad students) were not so interested in developing something useful, like engineers do, but something neat that either has a use for some other problem they are trying to solve or just answers a question that was bugging them.
However, a removable hard drive bay is also a much newer technology (at least when it comes to mainstream availability), and CDR media is just dirt cheap--I am in the middle of using a 100 pack I bought in February basically for the tax (rebates made them free, but I had to pay taxes). I have yet to see a ~70GB Hard Drive for free after rebate. Plus, while a HDD might be a little more reliable (I personally wouldn't say there was a major difference-I have not ever had a CD fail on me, sure I get scratches once in a while, but nothing that has prevented me from listening to my music in the 13+ years I have been using CDs), CDs are also more phsyically robust--drop a HDD and a CD from your side onto pavement and I would wager that the CD will come out a little more usable.
Most poeple I know, at least the geeks and especially those who read the book, found the longer version of the fellowship a _lot_ better.
As a testament to the longer version being a lot better, my wife (who has not read the books yet, but she is working on them now) actually understood the movie when we watched the extended version. The same could not be said for the origional theatrical release. After watching the extended edition the first time, I was shocked at some of the things that had been cut out--they were rather important plot points! (I'd give an example, but it's been so long since I saw the short version I don't remember what the specific scenes that are different are) I just hope TTT gains as much improvement as FoTR did.
This is rather new software, and is coming out of an educational source - if a company were to put this out, it would most likely not even be alpha software. I'm sure this is not ready for any type of wide-spread, regular user deployment, and thus does not have anywhere near the optimization that is present in Visual Studio or Mozilla.
One issue that people don't see with these discs is that even if they work on whatever hardware you have now that doesn't mean it will work in what you buy later
True, and I have heard that many DVD players actually use PC drives to read the DVD. I'm sure my Toshiba DVD player and the Toshiba DVD drive in my PC were not seperately developed. That would be stupid. They probably based one off the other and I would suppose the differences are minor (speed being the biggest). The DVD player is even capable of reading regular disks with MP3s stored on them, and it does, even though the playback sucks. If these disks are designed so that CDROM drives (and, most likely, combo DVD/CDROM drives) cannot read them, they will seem broken in DVD players as well.
I would aggree completely with this solution. This whole thing reminds me of how my college was wired up in the dorm rooms - plug a cable into an ethernet-size jack (their wiring was slightly different), and you have your connection. Just need to have someone turn it on, which I thinkw as done with some sort of patch panel or something, I never really saw. It was fast, painless, and oh-so nice.
The only problem might be that it was just a large network - anyone could see all the other computers on the network, and access shared folders (like newer versions of Windows set up by default).
For that matter, just have something that vibrates already (like most PCs). Place your phone/PDA on your PC, and the energy lost to vibration in your PC (from fans, hard disks, CDROM, etc) charges your small devices. The only question would be if the vibration creates a significant amount of energy to charge your phone in a reasonable amount of time.
I am not a privacy expert, but I would not think that there would need to be a record of what any single person downloads, just how many times a particular item was downloaded (i.e., song X was downloaded 500 times this month.). That way, the record company would be able to be compensated for whatever 500 downloads a month is worth.
The concern about "1337" kiddies causing an increase to any other person's fee would be, most likely, insignificant. Remember, this would be spread out over a few million users, and I doubt there are so many heavy users that it would cause undue problems. Any true solution to this, though, would likely include tracking at the very least numbers on how much a person downloaded, which brings the privacy quesion up again...
The press release did not say that ONLY Gnome could use this, it just said that Gnome _would_ use it. And that other open source projects could use these fonts. The Gnome foundation, however, probably won't do the development for KDE.
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Free speech (and free choice, as well) has the nasty side effect of exposing people to stuff they don't want to hear.
BTW, a friend of mine who was a waiter for a few summers told me the worst insult you can give through a tip is to include pennies. I remember that when I get a very bad server.
I'd be saying "get me the F#$* out of here!"
Not that I want anything bad to happen to them, just a survival instinct.
Really takes on a new meaning when you add something I heard a co-worker say:
"You just can't fix stupid".
You know you just guaranteed it, don't you?
Me, I was on my way home (West Michigan) from California. When I landed in Minneapolis, I checked my messages, and my wife was telling me that I should check to make sure my flight wasn't canceled. I had no problem, but I did meet someone who was trying to get to Detroit, and she eventually got on my plane. I felt bad, cuz she was trying to get to a wedding.
On top of that, it's not a very good "law" (in the scientific definition-something that is always true). I seem to remember that the doubling time period has changed over the years, not to refine the entire history of semiconductors, but to refine for the new generation (i.e., started out doubling something like every 12 months, then it streatched to 18, but the previous few years still had doubled every 12 months).
I do aggree that warmup is necessary for intense workouts, but not for a light peddaling or an easy walk. And if there is adjustable resistance on the peddaling machine, it would allow for your scenario (peddal lightly at a low resistance to warm up, then up the resistance for a workout, and finally lower the resistance again for a warm down).
Another one of my favorite sayings that has come out of our testing department is "You just can't fix stupid".
Actually, OBDII ports HAVE to be in the cabin, according to EPA spec.
Also, it is worth noting that companies can already license much of this information from the car companies (mine does for one of our products), plus there are a limited number of codes that relate to Emissions systems that are standardized by the EPA. This would seem to just open it up so there were no licensing fees, and the mechanic would know what a P02534 code meant and thus be able to fix the problem.
You know, that's what it reminded me of as well. And I personally think that the whole thing is pretty dumb, esepecially when WOODTV shows the thing during commercial breaks. Maybe I just don't get it, being in Kalamazoo and all, but the whole thing is a little cheesy. If I ever had one of those ambient orbs, I'd select monitoring something very volatile so it pulsated. Wait, I think Spencer's carrys something like that... (or at least they should).
That was quite the interesting premise for a story, making everyone equal by forcing all to the lowest common denominator. However, the way I remember the ending ruined the story for me. I may be wrong (I read it in a High School English class, and didn't pay the most attention because the teacher was just not good), but I remember him flying around the room when he was finally caught, and I remember that I took this to be literal flying, as in the air. Just kinda ruined the story for me.
It also helps when you have around 315,889 (figures from IBM.com's "ABOUT" page).
I am guessing that there is more of an incentive than bonuses, because we have a bonus system where I work, and my department is lucky to get 1 patent a year (we have fewer than 30 employees at my location). People around here just don't see $1000 as enough motivation when the past actions of the company have inspired as much cynacism as this one has.
Along with this, there are many times that I have been working in code for a few of our products (codebase is at least 15 years old, I believe) where the customer has asked for a new feature that, try as I might, cannot be put into the current code. So I have to re-write a good part of it, sometimes complete executables.
Recently, we have moved a couple of products to new operating systems (DOS to Windows, yes, we are still selling products that run on DOS, partially because they work "good enough" that the cost of rewriting is not acceptable to the powers that be), which obviously requires a rewrite. However, the code is so much less complicated than before, and the coders better (IMHO), that we actually have had fewer problems than if we had updated the old system.
Along with the fact that PCI has been relatively stable for 10 years, now is a great time for this to be coming out. We'll all be buying new stuff soon anyway to take advantage of SATA and the like, so why not throw one more thing in? Only downside I can see to this is the need to buy some more pheripherals than simply replacing MB and drives, but still not too bad. It's nice when upgrade cycles are at least close to each other.
Actually, I believe in both of those cases the response was not "How will I ever use this?", but "How can I use this?" The mathemeticians I know (mostly college professors and grad students) were not so interested in developing something useful, like engineers do, but something neat that either has a use for some other problem they are trying to solve or just answers a question that was bugging them.
However, a removable hard drive bay is also a much newer technology (at least when it comes to mainstream availability), and CDR media is just dirt cheap--I am in the middle of using a 100 pack I bought in February basically for the tax (rebates made them free, but I had to pay taxes). I have yet to see a ~70GB Hard Drive for free after rebate. Plus, while a HDD might be a little more reliable (I personally wouldn't say there was a major difference-I have not ever had a CD fail on me, sure I get scratches once in a while, but nothing that has prevented me from listening to my music in the 13+ years I have been using CDs), CDs are also more phsyically robust--drop a HDD and a CD from your side onto pavement and I would wager that the CD will come out a little more usable.
As a testament to the longer version being a lot better, my wife (who has not read the books yet, but she is working on them now) actually understood the movie when we watched the extended version. The same could not be said for the origional theatrical release. After watching the extended edition the first time, I was shocked at some of the things that had been cut out--they were rather important plot points! (I'd give an example, but it's been so long since I saw the short version I don't remember what the specific scenes that are different are) I just hope TTT gains as much improvement as FoTR did.
This is rather new software, and is coming out of an educational source - if a company were to put this out, it would most likely not even be alpha software. I'm sure this is not ready for any type of wide-spread, regular user deployment, and thus does not have anywhere near the optimization that is present in Visual Studio or Mozilla.
True, and I have heard that many DVD players actually use PC drives to read the DVD. I'm sure my Toshiba DVD player and the Toshiba DVD drive in my PC were not seperately developed. That would be stupid. They probably based one off the other and I would suppose the differences are minor (speed being the biggest). The DVD player is even capable of reading regular disks with MP3s stored on them, and it does, even though the playback sucks. If these disks are designed so that CDROM drives (and, most likely, combo DVD/CDROM drives) cannot read them, they will seem broken in DVD players as well.
The only problem might be that it was just a large network - anyone could see all the other computers on the network, and access shared folders (like newer versions of Windows set up by default).
For that matter, just have something that vibrates already (like most PCs). Place your phone/PDA on your PC, and the energy lost to vibration in your PC (from fans, hard disks, CDROM, etc) charges your small devices. The only question would be if the vibration creates a significant amount of energy to charge your phone in a reasonable amount of time.
The concern about "1337" kiddies causing an increase to any other person's fee would be, most likely, insignificant. Remember, this would be spread out over a few million users, and I doubt there are so many heavy users that it would cause undue problems. Any true solution to this, though, would likely include tracking at the very least numbers on how much a person downloaded, which brings the privacy quesion up again...
The press release did not say that ONLY Gnome could use this, it just said that Gnome _would_ use it. And that other open source projects could use these fonts. The Gnome foundation, however, probably won't do the development for KDE.