The outcome of every election has a notable impact on millions of people.
If you believe that if one person gets elected that the country will go to shit, but if the other one wins there will be gumdrops and rainbows, you're deluded. Americans directly elect 537 people in Washington D.C. There are 3,000,000 federal employees and untold lobbyists and media. Your vote isn't going to change much.
In 1983 maybe 1 person in 50 had what would be considered a personal computer. Today practically everybody has one, even in third-world countries like Canada.
From 1983 to 1993 computers changed a lot. From 1993 to 2003 they didn't change that much. They just got faster and a few more holes in the back.
This is also happening in California, which has some of the highest prices (and salaries) around. An utterly ordinary 2 bedroom, 1 bath house would sell in some places for $300,000.
While I don't disagree in general with your sentiments, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire had much more to do with the fact that the exits were locked to keep labor organizers out. I don't disagree with your cronyism argument, but it is also true that unfettered capitalism does have a dark side. Whether government intervention makes it better or worse is debatable, but reasonable regulations regarding working conditions allows for functional capitalism as well as improving the lives of employees. It's not such a bad trade off.
Yeah, I caught one about at the beginning of the problem, now I'm waiting.
However, I got an email saying they were working on it--which I believe--and that they'll credit my account--which I believe. All in all, Netflix does a great job, and stands behind their service to the best of their ability. I don't have any complaints.
Having a job and a family killed PC gaming for me. I don't have the time to get good enough to play online FPSs, and playing with friends on MMOs is folly as somebody always has time to grind and now your party is unbalanced. Strategy games, again, require a lot of time to get good enough so you're not raped online. (And it takes an hour or more to watch Koreans ruin your shit.)
I think this explains the incredible popularity of the Wii pretty well. The casual games market is huge and underserved.
First, I'm more worried about the number of college graduates who can barely read and write than whether or not 8th graders know science.
Second, I suspect the root cause of the first point adequately explains the pitiful science testing performance. That is, our science education is not very good because our schools are not very good.
I would add to that a general decline in American culture, which is even harder to reverse than our ghastly schools, contributes to the general decay of education. It takes quite a lot of effort to turn a naturally curious child into a mumbling, illiterate worker bee who lives to shop, but Americans are known for their can-do spirit.
They all sucked, that's why they failed. Especially for home use, due to the lack of widespread broadband.
The last decent effort I think was the Javastation (or whatever it was called), as it was introduced around the time that many businesses had robust Ethernet networks. However, it depended on expensive Sun servers, which made it an "enterprise-only" solution. Not bad, but people couldn't take work home with them.
But now, things are different. The home computer spends most of its time fiddling on the Internet, and businesses like controlling what their employees' computers can do. And you can take stuff home with you, thanks to VPNs.
Think of the iPod--it's a very successful thin-client.
I'm more interested in when Google starts returning relevant results to my queries.
I can't believe that I'm the only one that finds Google's quality of service somewhat below par. I guess they're better than randomly stabbing in the dark, and there certainly isn't any alternative that's obviously better, but Google sure isn't everything they think they are.
I know--stop trying to compete with Wikipedia and cut out Experts-Exchange.com from your search results since their pages don't actually return the information you think they do.
Because you know about those things through reading atheist rah-rah books that focus on them as proof that Christians are wrong, or ignorant, or whatever.
Market capitalization is not a good metric either. There isn't a One True Metric, but a sound bullshit-o-meter is the P/E, which in GOOG's case is somewhere around 33 IIRC. That's practically fantasy material. Warren Buffet didn't become rich--real rich, not paper rich--by buying a lot of high P/E companies.
While it can be argued that a high P/E means an expectation of future growth, that's a daft assumption in the case of an Internet company. Their whole business model goes ffffft if another nerd makes a better search engine. Not to mention the recent trends of only caring about quarter-over-quarter growth and a lessened enthusiasm for paying dividends rather than re-investment.
The abolition of religion would quite clearly have many positive benefits
You have no proof of that, as religious beliefs remain widely spread. You think it would be a benefit. It might turn people into self-centered assholes. Well, more than they are already.
By my reckoning, humans are social animals, and social animals will congregate. If you take away religion we'll just replace it with some other form of tribalism. Maybe base it on professional sports teams. And then we'll be right back where we are now. This, of course, assumes that you can wipe away all religion in a single stroke. As it happens, religious types tend to out-reproduce non-believers, so unless you can wave a magic wand your scheme is likely destined to fail.
Interestingly, part of the doctrine of many Christian sects is the inherent sinfulness of Man. You seem to believe that if we just shake off this religious baggage that Man's better nature will shine through. You can bet on the latter if you wish, but the former is the way to go unless you dig on disappointment.
As I understand them, windmills are taller than your average tree to reach the more reliably consistent wind at higher elevations. And, as you say, deforestation does produce local environmental effects.
Maybe the risk is so close to zero it doesn't matter, but I seriously doubt it is actually zero.
Every now and then you'll see a How-To that has absurd example domains. "a.b.c" or "bob.jones.company". I seem to recall an LDAP How-To that had such junk in it.
It's hard to read and really is a pain in the ass. To me it's just like doing a search-and-replace of all capital "S"s to "$".
Slashdot Mirror
The outcome of every election has a notable impact on millions of people.
If you believe that if one person gets elected that the country will go to shit, but if the other one wins there will be gumdrops and rainbows, you're deluded. Americans directly elect 537 people in Washington D.C. There are 3,000,000 federal employees and untold lobbyists and media. Your vote isn't going to change much.
In 1983 maybe 1 person in 50 had what would be considered a personal computer. Today practically everybody has one, even in third-world countries like Canada.
From 1983 to 1993 computers changed a lot. From 1993 to 2003 they didn't change that much. They just got faster and a few more holes in the back.
Floppy drives, $9 from Newegg.
You can still buy motherboards with serial and parallel ports, for God's sake.
25 years isn't that far in the future.
Yikes. I was going from memory, but it's clear my memory is 10 (or 15, or more) years out of date.
My point remains--California has a whacked-out market.
This is also happening in California, which has some of the highest prices (and salaries) around. An utterly ordinary 2 bedroom, 1 bath house would sell in some places for $300,000.
While I don't disagree in general with your sentiments, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire had much more to do with the fact that the exits were locked to keep labor organizers out. I don't disagree with your cronyism argument, but it is also true that unfettered capitalism does have a dark side. Whether government intervention makes it better or worse is debatable, but reasonable regulations regarding working conditions allows for functional capitalism as well as improving the lives of employees. It's not such a bad trade off.
You do that. You sound like a whiner, which will only hinder my service.
Yeah, I caught one about at the beginning of the problem, now I'm waiting.
However, I got an email saying they were working on it--which I believe--and that they'll credit my account--which I believe. All in all, Netflix does a great job, and stands behind their service to the best of their ability. I don't have any complaints.
Having a job and a family killed PC gaming for me. I don't have the time to get good enough to play online FPSs, and playing with friends on MMOs is folly as somebody always has time to grind and now your party is unbalanced. Strategy games, again, require a lot of time to get good enough so you're not raped online. (And it takes an hour or more to watch Koreans ruin your shit.)
I think this explains the incredible popularity of the Wii pretty well. The casual games market is huge and underserved.
First, I'm more worried about the number of college graduates who can barely read and write than whether or not 8th graders know science.
Second, I suspect the root cause of the first point adequately explains the pitiful science testing performance. That is, our science education is not very good because our schools are not very good.
I would add to that a general decline in American culture, which is even harder to reverse than our ghastly schools, contributes to the general decay of education. It takes quite a lot of effort to turn a naturally curious child into a mumbling, illiterate worker bee who lives to shop, but Americans are known for their can-do spirit.
Maybe the iPod Touch is. The iPod, however, isn't much good without iTunes and a desktop computer.
They all sucked, that's why they failed. Especially for home use, due to the lack of widespread broadband.
The last decent effort I think was the Javastation (or whatever it was called), as it was introduced around the time that many businesses had robust Ethernet networks. However, it depended on expensive Sun servers, which made it an "enterprise-only" solution. Not bad, but people couldn't take work home with them.
But now, things are different. The home computer spends most of its time fiddling on the Internet, and businesses like controlling what their employees' computers can do. And you can take stuff home with you, thanks to VPNs.
Think of the iPod--it's a very successful thin-client.
I'm more interested in when Google starts returning relevant results to my queries.
I can't believe that I'm the only one that finds Google's quality of service somewhat below par. I guess they're better than randomly stabbing in the dark, and there certainly isn't any alternative that's obviously better, but Google sure isn't everything they think they are.
I know--stop trying to compete with Wikipedia and cut out Experts-Exchange.com from your search results since their pages don't actually return the information you think they do.
Cool, you study the Bible. Like, you know, most atheists do.
Because you know about those things through reading atheist rah-rah books that focus on them as proof that Christians are wrong, or ignorant, or whatever.
Am I right?
Using Star Wars to make a theological point...
Only on Slashdot.
Market capitalization is not a good metric either. There isn't a One True Metric, but a sound bullshit-o-meter is the P/E, which in GOOG's case is somewhere around 33 IIRC. That's practically fantasy material. Warren Buffet didn't become rich--real rich, not paper rich--by buying a lot of high P/E companies.
While it can be argued that a high P/E means an expectation of future growth, that's a daft assumption in the case of an Internet company. Their whole business model goes ffffft if another nerd makes a better search engine. Not to mention the recent trends of only caring about quarter-over-quarter growth and a lessened enthusiasm for paying dividends rather than re-investment.
You have no proof of that, as religious beliefs remain widely spread. You think it would be a benefit. It might turn people into self-centered assholes. Well, more than they are already.
By my reckoning, humans are social animals, and social animals will congregate. If you take away religion we'll just replace it with some other form of tribalism. Maybe base it on professional sports teams. And then we'll be right back where we are now. This, of course, assumes that you can wipe away all religion in a single stroke. As it happens, religious types tend to out-reproduce non-believers, so unless you can wave a magic wand your scheme is likely destined to fail.
Interestingly, part of the doctrine of many Christian sects is the inherent sinfulness of Man. You seem to believe that if we just shake off this religious baggage that Man's better nature will shine through. You can bet on the latter if you wish, but the former is the way to go unless you dig on disappointment.
Qwest said "no".
Qwest actually said, "This is not what a warrant looks like; come back when you have a real warrant."
It was pretty much the most impressive piece of corporate ballsiness I can recall in recent history.
But just think how smart and well-informed the interviewer sounds!
I stopped reading halfway through. Useless interviewer leads to useless interview.
So... yes? It will affect things?
As I understand them, windmills are taller than your average tree to reach the more reliably consistent wind at higher elevations. And, as you say, deforestation does produce local environmental effects.
Maybe the risk is so close to zero it doesn't matter, but I seriously doubt it is actually zero.
Every now and then you'll see a How-To that has absurd example domains. "a.b.c" or "bob.jones.company". I seem to recall an LDAP How-To that had such junk in it.
It's hard to read and really is a pain in the ass. To me it's just like doing a search-and-replace of all capital "S"s to "$".
"example.com" is useful, and available. Use it.
GMail is still beta. They bought SketchUp. Picasa, too, IIRC. Dunno about the others.
Google doesn't go gold because people like you who excuse errors with, "it's BETA!".
I seriously doubt that AT&T hires chimps for lawyers. This was not a legal decision, per se.
I'm about ready for Google to go gold with something. This perma-beta crap is for the fail.