I think Ruby would be better off if it worked like ColdFusion, whiles CFML code into Java bytecode so it can run on existing JVMs. There are literally thousands of people at hundreds of companies who do nothing else but work on ways to speed up Java runtimes and JIT compilations.
So let me guess. The LABS part of the company provided free listings in order to develop and test for its paid service. Unfortunately, too many Linux free-as-in-free types latched on to the development service's URL, used it for their home-made myth-boxes, and took the whole thing to its knees.
And now they're crying because the service they abused is being shut down and no one else will give them what they want for free. Close enough?
"if people use that money to buy apple software (like ilife, iwork or Mac osX leopard, when it comes out) - apple wont loose anything but the shipping and packaging costs (which are negliagble)."
Well... it might be also be assumed that I'd buy Leopard anyway. In which case that's an additional $100 (theoretically in pure profit) that they did NOT get from me. Or an extra $100 that I didn't spend at the iTunes store. Or so on.
In short, your "logic" only holds for items that, but for the $100 gift card, I would NEVER have purchased in the first place.
Yeah, but that $100 iTunes gift card (just to pick something) would still have cost ME $100, whatever their costs.
Secondarily, no one held a gun to our head and forced us to buy anything. Apple made an exceedingly cool product and we weighed the "cool" and utility against $600, made a decision, and bought it. They could just as easily spent millions making a technological flop like the Zune, in which case all of those R&D and marketing costs would have been a total write-off. They gambled and rolled the dice.
You may also notice that they made an Apple iPod HiFi dock... that just disappeared from the store. They made the AppleTV, which isn't exactly blowing off the shelves. In fact, I was just in a store yesterday and saw the new nano. Don't like the form factor, build quality, or the interface. So I'm not getting one, nor recommending them, nor buying them as gifts. Maybe other people will make the same decision and do the same. Maybe not. The point is that people don't buy EVERYTHING Apple makes just because it has their logo on it.
On the flip side, my MacBook Pro is the best notebook I've ever owned. OS X makes other most OS's look like they were designed by brain-dead committees (if that's not redundant). Aperture and Final Cut are some of the best tools on the planet. And if a truck rolled over my iPhone I'd be back in the store in a second buying a new one.
Fan? Yes. But I'm only a fan for as long as they continue to make great products.
Actually, I think the real irony is that we only learned how devastating carrier attacks could be was after Japan hit our BB's at Pearl and the only thing we really had left to fight back WITH were carriers.
Heck, nearly every spy movie or TV show made in the last few decades has some scene in it where the guy presses his thumb to the computer screen and it scans it. Guess they were just ahead of their time.
"Tell me something - why do you think the island hopping in the Pacific in World War II happened AFTER and not before the Japanese lost their carriers in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway?"
Wait! I know! I know! Because we didn't have the ships, men, and materials needed and positioned to do the job? Because we focused primarily on the European Theatre first?
Or for a better answer: Because Coral Sea and Midway occurred barely a year into the war? And everything by definition occurred after that?
BTW, I believe that Japan lost four carriers (1 CV and 3CVLs) in the battle of Leyte Gulf (1944), whereas your statement that "the Japanese lost their carriers in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway" carries the implication that they had none left. Heck, even at Midway they left with two fleet carriers.
"Its sole purpose [sic] is to attack enemy submarines and surface vessels."
Ah..., well..., there is recon and intelligence duty you know, and special forces delivery, and interdiction detail, and S&R, and I think that, with Tomahawks and whatnot, there are maybe just a few sea/land attack capabilities as well.
So its sole purpose is NOT just to attack enemy submarines and surface vessels. Might be its primary purpose, perhaps, but a modern United States Nuclear Attack Submarine is actually a fairly flexible piece of hardware.
If you'll reread my post (this time for comprehension) you may notice I never said ANYTHING about dragging down the "bright" kids. I did, however, take exception to your original conceit that the "dumb" ones shouldn't be taught math, shouldn't be taught science, shouldn't be taught history, and in fact are good for little more than learning auto mechanics.
"Its a pretty dubious endeavor trying to teach history, social studies, geography and even math and science to these people in the first place though."
Doesn't mean you shouldn't try. People need to know how societies work and, more so, how they fail. Basic levels of math and science are needed as well. All in all, everyone needs to be able to function in a complex, modern society to the best of their ability, and more effort should be expended on teaching kids how to learn on their own.
Vocational skills aren't the answer either, since all you'll be doing is teaching some subset of skills and technology used at that point in time. Anyone think that all of those people who learned to hand set type for printers are doing well today? How about all of those data-entry operators in a OCR'd world? Heck, probably half the skills taught back when I was in HS (class of '75) are obsolete today. Now what? How many of those people are now greeters at Wal-Mart?
Secondarily, you assume that you can identify the bright kids and the dumb ones. When I was in HS I had horrendous grades in anything that didn't interest me. But when told I need to pass a math class to continue on the varsity tennis team, I read the book over the weekend and got an A+ on the final test. (Had to take it twice, as the teacher thought I'd cheated.)
Your suggestions would simply result in more stratification, and a class structure even worse than we have now. (Yeah, I've since read a history book or two...)
"Today for me this means being mobile, avoiding any government intervention, avoiding taxes for example, avoiding your political causes. If necessary my resistance will become violent."
So... I guess this means your parents move around a lot?
Here's an idea NBC absolutely, positively will hate. Instead of watching a show like Heroes on NBC. Don't. And don't use their site. And don't torrent them either.
Instead, when the DVD sets come up for sale... BUY USED. Get used sets from Amazon or Half.com. That way you'll have legitimate copies, but NBC will only have the one first sale of each set. When you're done sell 'em to the next guy in they same way.
All perfectly legal... and as little money to NBC as possible.
"...there are much greater priority causes that need addressing in this country before we start quibbling over copyright."
True, but how else is he going to rationalize his stealing? From his viewpoint he has the moral high ground [sic] AND free content.
Retail price would increase to $4.99 per episode
on
NBC Universal Drops iTunes
·
· Score: 4, Informative
"This really upsets me that they would do this to their paying customers"
According to Ars, the issue is that they want you to pay more. A LOT more. To quote, "Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99."
So how does $5 a pop sound? At that rate, a typical series would cost over $100 purchased digitally, as opposed to buying the DVDs for $30-$50.
One thing's for sure, if hulu has this kind of idiotic pricing structure, then it's just SURE to be a success...
"You are modifying software that you already have already paid for."
Well, as near as I can tell most hacks are modifying the image and copying it (or portions of it) to the phone. So you ARE copying copyrighted software (the unmodified part).
Be that as it may, Apple could simply use iTunes to check for changes to the phone's software and refuse to sync to it, effectively bricking the phone.
Okay, since you want to get technical about the whole thing. How many aqueducts would you need to disrupt? That water doesn't get from the Catskills to Manhattan by magic.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I've probably downloaded 30-40 of them personally.
Ah. So why then aren't we crying about content owners who're trying to control what happens with their content?
I think Ruby would be better off if it worked like ColdFusion, whiles CFML code into Java bytecode so it can run on existing JVMs. There are literally thousands of people at hundreds of companies who do nothing else but work on ways to speed up Java runtimes and JIT compilations.
I'd leverage those efforts.
"With Rails you just throw more hardware at it..."
Actually, that was the core of the Twitter problem, because you can only add so many servers before you start saturating your database connections.
So let me guess. The LABS part of the company provided free listings in order to develop and test for its paid service. Unfortunately, too many Linux free-as-in-free types latched on to the development service's URL, used it for their home-made myth-boxes, and took the whole thing to its knees.
And now they're crying because the service they abused is being shut down and no one else will give them what they want for free. Close enough?
"... and eating the US companies' breakfast, lunch, and dinner."
Hey! That's MY quote!
"Even one of the few remaining dark sky sites in the North East is now being threatened [sic] by a proposed wind farm."
You HAVE to be kidding. So now we can't have cheap, clean, renewable energy sources... since if we do so some people won't be able to see a few stars?
This BANANA at it's finest.
Do you think Fuji spends retail for the flash RAM used in an SD card?
"if people use that money to buy apple software (like ilife, iwork or Mac osX leopard, when it comes out) - apple wont loose anything but the shipping and packaging costs (which are negliagble)."
Well... it might be also be assumed that I'd buy Leopard anyway. In which case that's an additional $100 (theoretically in pure profit) that they did NOT get from me. Or an extra $100 that I didn't spend at the iTunes store. Or so on.
In short, your "logic" only holds for items that, but for the $100 gift card, I would NEVER have purchased in the first place.
Yeah, but that $100 iTunes gift card (just to pick something) would still have cost ME $100, whatever their costs.
Secondarily, no one held a gun to our head and forced us to buy anything. Apple made an exceedingly cool product and we weighed the "cool" and utility against $600, made a decision, and bought it. They could just as easily spent millions making a technological flop like the Zune, in which case all of those R&D and marketing costs would have been a total write-off. They gambled and rolled the dice.
You may also notice that they made an Apple iPod HiFi dock... that just disappeared from the store. They made the AppleTV, which isn't exactly blowing off the shelves. In fact, I was just in a store yesterday and saw the new nano. Don't like the form factor, build quality, or the interface. So I'm not getting one, nor recommending them, nor buying them as gifts. Maybe other people will make the same decision and do the same. Maybe not. The point is that people don't buy EVERYTHING Apple makes just because it has their logo on it.
On the flip side, my MacBook Pro is the best notebook I've ever owned. OS X makes other most OS's look like they were designed by brain-dead committees (if that's not redundant). Aperture and Final Cut are some of the best tools on the planet. And if a truck rolled over my iPhone I'd be back in the store in a second buying a new one.
Fan? Yes. But I'm only a fan for as long as they continue to make great products.
Yeah, but does the SD card have an aluminum case, color screen, control wheel, or LiPo battery?
Actually, I think the real irony is that we only learned how devastating carrier attacks could be was after Japan hit our BB's at Pearl and the only thing we really had left to fight back WITH were carriers.
Heck, nearly every spy movie or TV show made in the last few decades has some scene in it where the guy presses his thumb to the computer screen and it scans it. Guess they were just ahead of their time.
"Tell me something - why do you think the island hopping in the Pacific in World War II happened AFTER and not before the Japanese lost their carriers in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway?"
Wait! I know! I know! Because we didn't have the ships, men, and materials needed and positioned to do the job? Because we focused primarily on the European Theatre first?
Or for a better answer: Because Coral Sea and Midway occurred barely a year into the war? And everything by definition occurred after that?
BTW, I believe that Japan lost four carriers (1 CV and 3CVLs) in the battle of Leyte Gulf (1944), whereas your statement that "the Japanese lost their carriers in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway" carries the implication that they had none left. Heck, even at Midway they left with two fleet carriers.
"Its sole purpose [sic] is to attack enemy submarines and surface vessels."
Ah..., well..., there is recon and intelligence duty you know, and special forces delivery, and interdiction detail, and S&R, and I think that, with Tomahawks and whatnot, there are maybe just a few sea/land attack capabilities as well.
So its sole purpose is NOT just to attack enemy submarines and surface vessels. Might be its primary purpose, perhaps, but a modern United States Nuclear Attack Submarine is actually a fairly flexible piece of hardware.
"The secret bit of these propellors is what materials they are made of, how precisely they curve, and to what tolerance they are engineered."
Ummm, you forgot cross-section, of which leading/trailing edge curve is only a part.
If you'll reread my post (this time for comprehension) you may notice I never said ANYTHING about dragging down the "bright" kids. I did, however, take exception to your original conceit that the "dumb" ones shouldn't be taught math, shouldn't be taught science, shouldn't be taught history, and in fact are good for little more than learning auto mechanics.
"Its a pretty dubious endeavor trying to teach history, social studies, geography and even math and science to these people in the first place though."
Doesn't mean you shouldn't try. People need to know how societies work and, more so, how they fail. Basic levels of math and science are needed as well. All in all, everyone needs to be able to function in a complex, modern society to the best of their ability, and more effort should be expended on teaching kids how to learn on their own.
Vocational skills aren't the answer either, since all you'll be doing is teaching some subset of skills and technology used at that point in time. Anyone think that all of those people who learned to hand set type for printers are doing well today? How about all of those data-entry operators in a OCR'd world? Heck, probably half the skills taught back when I was in HS (class of '75) are obsolete today. Now what? How many of those people are now greeters at Wal-Mart?
Secondarily, you assume that you can identify the bright kids and the dumb ones. When I was in HS I had horrendous grades in anything that didn't interest me. But when told I need to pass a math class to continue on the varsity tennis team, I read the book over the weekend and got an A+ on the final test. (Had to take it twice, as the teacher thought I'd cheated.)
Your suggestions would simply result in more stratification, and a class structure even worse than we have now. (Yeah, I've since read a history book or two...)
"Today for me this means being mobile, avoiding any government intervention, avoiding taxes for example, avoiding your political causes. If necessary my resistance will become violent."
So... I guess this means your parents move around a lot?
Here's an idea NBC absolutely, positively will hate. Instead of watching a show like Heroes on NBC. Don't. And don't use their site. And don't torrent them either.
Instead, when the DVD sets come up for sale... BUY USED. Get used sets from Amazon or Half.com. That way you'll have legitimate copies, but NBC will only have the one first sale of each set. When you're done sell 'em to the next guy in they same way.
All perfectly legal... and as little money to NBC as possible.
A mere $3 billion is minor league compared to GWB's handling of the war. Heck, we've wasted more in payouts to corrupt contractors.
"...there are much greater priority causes that need addressing in this country before we start quibbling over copyright."
True, but how else is he going to rationalize his stealing? From his viewpoint he has the moral high ground [sic] AND free content.
"This really upsets me that they would do this to their paying customers"
According to Ars, the issue is that they want you to pay more. A LOT more. To quote, "Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99."
So how does $5 a pop sound? At that rate, a typical series would cost over $100 purchased digitally, as opposed to buying the DVDs for $30-$50.
One thing's for sure, if hulu has this kind of idiotic pricing structure, then it's just SURE to be a success...
"You are modifying software that you already have already paid for."
Well, as near as I can tell most hacks are modifying the image and copying it (or portions of it) to the phone. So you ARE copying copyrighted software (the unmodified part).
Be that as it may, Apple could simply use iTunes to check for changes to the phone's software and refuse to sync to it, effectively bricking the phone.
Okay, since you want to get technical about the whole thing. How many aqueducts would you need to disrupt? That water doesn't get from the Catskills to Manhattan by magic.