No. Why should they? It looks like the Surface is making money, it's just not penetrating the market to the extent of its competitors. A product doesn't have to pillage and burn all competitors to be viable. It has to make money. It appears to be doing so.
I'm saying this from the standpoint of never wanting to own one, for several reasons I won't go into now. But obviously some people like them. That's why there are different kinds of products, because different people have different needs.
Wow, I didn't know. For O'Hare to be struggling with mental illness, and still be concerned about the rest of the cast, and for the show to continue, shows character like you seldom see anymore. And JMS trying to accomodate O'Hare where it was in his power to do so, even when it put the show at risk, shows integrity over and above what one would expect from the entertainment industry. Really puts today's spoiled, intolerant divas in a different light, doesn't it?
Actually you only need to ignore the first half of season 5 (the whole "Tragedy of the Telepaths" subplot was more a tragedy of the viewers), but I think there are some great episodes in the latter half. "Fall of Centauri Prime" is a personal favourite of mine.
You're right. I was looking at it from a story arc perspective rather than a quality perspective.
I wonder if there is a way to reorder that fits the best episodes of season 5 in appropriate places in season 4. Then we could still get the "far in the future" ending, which was an excellent way to end the series.
> Fact is that micro pollutants are just now entering the threshold of human understanding
Or perhaps micro pollutants are just now entering the threshold of human measurement, and the News is reporting it because it's a new thing. (Hence the name.)
Absolutely, but DO NOT TELL ANYONE. honestly automation will not get you a raise or a promotion, it will just get you extra work. for the same pay. Automate all of it and keep your frigging mouth shut. Hell I used to automate emails to be sent at 2am so that management though I was working 24/7.
If you've automated your job, *shouldn't* you get new tasks to do? You're being paid to do the job to the best of your ability. You've done that by automating - but that leaves you on-the-clock time to do other productive tasks.
Perhaps, but with the understanding that part of your time will now be devoted to maintaining the automation you created.
Wow, that sounds like a similar problem I was having with a dlink router years ago. It worked like a champ until my connection was upgraded (from 15Mbps to 25 Mbps) and then it started regularly rebooting. I read online it was something to do with the router not being able to keep up with the speed of the modem, an overflow would occur, causing a router reboot. Replaced router, worked fine. Later used old dlink router when setting up DSL at mother-in-law's house, and it worked fine. Still in use now. If she ever switches to cable modem / fiber, it'll probably have to be replaced, though.
I dropped Comcrap for OTA and DSL and I save $150/mo.
Sure, Comcast sucks... But what kind of Comcast plan were you on that you could have switched to DSL (or whatever) and reduce your bill by $150 and still have "high speed" Intertubes? I mean, what are you paying now? What was your Comcast bill? $250? Really?
I'm not him, and this was years ago, but when I moved from Comcast to Speakeasy DSL, (lucked out and got 3Mbps over my phone lines -- the best Verizon could do was something like 750K) I also made the decision that I also didn't need the ubiquitous cable TV and unlimited long distance calling that was bundled in. The savings really was about $150/mo. But arguably, that's cheating, because fewer services. But not really cheating, because they were services I wasn't using.
Currently have fiber to the house and no cable TV at all, and pay a fraction (a sizable fraction, but a fraction nonetheless) of the bundles Comcast keeps trying to sell me.
I've watched it and I agree. That's even more insidious because it serves to reinforce the expectation that the car doesn't need someone reasonably alert in the driver's seat.
There's an old urban legend about a guy leaving the driver's seat of an RV (on cruise control) to use the bathroom. Personally I've never believed it, but it does serve to illustrate something about expectations.
Judgement (and self-preservation) isn't a step function, it's more like a bell curve. And you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be a hopefully small but nevertheless significant portion of the population, down on the left end of the curve, who will think it's ok to have nobody in the driver's seat, or (more likely) someone asleep in the driver's seat, while the car is driving itself. It's statistically inevitable.
...because the expectation, among the unwashed public, is that a self-driving car will, you know, drive itself. It's even in the name. That there still has to be an operator in the driver's seat with hands near controls and looking outside is counter-intuitive to the concept of "a self-driving car".
I mean geeze, google "autopilot related accidents". And pilots get a lot more training than mere automobile drivers.
In Modern Family, it's the handheld camera that will flag a joke. There will be a pause in the conversation for the audience to "get it", and the camera will twitch or zoom in and out slightly to tell you there's something to get.
Although, I'll admit that this is less irritating than a canned laugh track, it's still a "tell".
Side issue: Why isn't Modern Family considered "gay blackface"?
Is it possible that Snowden still knows a way to get into the machines he used to manage?
A long time ago, I left a company where I had been the sole admin for several years. I had been training up a PFY who eventually replaced me. His last assignment was to find my back door and close it. From my new job, I'd occasionally log into my old machines, have a look around, and send him an email to watch for this thing or fix that thing. He eventually figured out that the usenet news service account had a password.
I know I know, but it was a different time.
Point is, maybe there's new leaks because Snowden still has a back door into his old machines?
Aside from that, we all vi stands for Very Intuitive.
I'm not a vi fanatic, I use it because it's commonly available, not because it's particularly powerful or intuitive.
Back in the old days, when IBM PCs weren't yet everywhere and people were still commonly using terminals, I used to tell new users to play Rogue for an hour or two before trying to learn VI. It helped.
> The utilities are sticking their heads in the sand and trying to pretend that technology won't move forward. In some places they are trying to add an interconnect fee for those with solar panels that's as large as my electricity bill. They also are requiring solar panel inverters to stop working entirely when the grid goes down, instead of just providing power for the house and still leaving the grid upstream unenergized. All this, and the price of electricity keeps going up. And they expect people won't move forward with batteries as technology improves?
True. I'm experimenting with a different approach. There's one circuit (pilot project so far) that's solar / marine batteries only, and the rest of the house is connected to the grid. The two feeds don't interact in any way. If the grid goes down, most of the house power goes down, but a few sockets, including the one the freezer is plugged into and the one the fridge is plugged into, continue to operate. (Be careful to pick a properly spec'd sine wave inverter for this application.)
What I'd like to do eventually is have parallel wiring in the house, one string coming from the inverter, and one coming straight from the batteries, (through a fuse box of course) so that things like lights and electronic devices that don't mind working on 12 volts can use the native voltage, and things that need 110 will have 110. (Did you know that you could get CFLs that run on 12 volts?)
My concern at this point is that I don't really have a feel for how many charges the batteries will take, or whether the battery creation/disposal lifecycle is any better than a coal fired electricity plant, for the environment.
The Sheldon character holds down a high paying job and manages to interact with an admittedly small circle of friends. He's already doing better than a good segment of the population.
Do you really think that an IRL Sheldon without script immunity would be able to do the same? The TV Sheldon also seems to be a pretty crap physicist, given to conspiracy theories, junk science, and an inability to distinguish between fiction and reality.
I personally know a highly paid programmer who believes in witchcraft and astrology. I had a hard time understanding that someone with such a logical mind would believe in something so illogical, but apparently it's more common than one would think. It's what puts the the "quirk" in "quirky", I guess. Otherwise brilliant people who have strange blind spots in areas where you'd think they'd know better. You really don't know anyone like that?
My dad worked with a guy very much like Sheldon. He was brilliant, and so dedicated to his work that he would rarely and only under certain circumstances acknowledge the existence of others. Arguably someone with even more intense quirks than Sheldon. Although admittedly, Dad said that the guy had a "handler", a guy almost as brilliant as him who acted as confidant, kept him out of trouble, and acted as interpreter to the more normal people.
The audience's actions being prompted by people with cue boards, etc., of course.
True, I've heard that, and I since I haven't personally been in a studio audience since The Dating Game, I'm not qualified to say what goes on there, but I've heard from someone who has been in the audience of TBBT that the audience generally ignores the signs and does whatever they want. That there are signs doesn't necessarily mean that the reactions aren't genuine.
My preference would be no audience noises at all, but you can't have everything.
To those who point to the few sitcoms that have no laugh track, I've noticed that the music tends to "react" in the right moments and I'm not convinced that's an improvement.
We're talking about a fictional example, but Sheldon is highly successful, and seems quite happy with his life. He doesn't need to be medicated just because he doesn't meet stereotypical norms.
This. The Sheldon character holds down a high paying job and manages to interact with an admittedly small circle of friends. He's already doing better than a good segment of the population. That his personality quirks should be wrung out of him through therapy and/or medication is more than a little offensive.
> Uh, it sucks regardless of which party is in power.
Yes, that's the real moral of the story.
I'm sorry, it may be due to the crowd I'm forced to work in, but I tend to put things pragmatically rather than morally, because people (at least, some people) seem to connect better to pragmatism than to mere right and wrong.
I think Heinlein had a quote about that, but it slips my mind at this moment.
Slashdot Mirror
> Should Microsoft pull the plug on the tablet?
No. Why should they? It looks like the Surface is making money, it's just not penetrating the market to the extent of its competitors. A product doesn't have to pillage and burn all competitors to be viable. It has to make money. It appears to be doing so.
I'm saying this from the standpoint of never wanting to own one, for several reasons I won't go into now. But obviously some people like them. That's why there are different kinds of products, because different people have different needs.
Regarding the Sinclair -> Sheridan switch (which I didn't mind, I never particularly cared for Sinclair), there was a quite good reason for it.
Wow, I didn't know. For O'Hare to be struggling with mental illness, and still be concerned about the rest of the cast, and for the show to continue, shows character like you seldom see anymore. And JMS trying to accomodate O'Hare where it was in his power to do so, even when it put the show at risk, shows integrity over and above what one would expect from the entertainment industry. Really puts today's spoiled, intolerant divas in a different light, doesn't it?
Actually you only need to ignore the first half of season 5 (the whole "Tragedy of the Telepaths" subplot was more a tragedy of the viewers), but I think there are some great episodes in the latter half. "Fall of Centauri Prime" is a personal favourite of mine.
You're right. I was looking at it from a story arc perspective rather than a quality perspective.
I wonder if there is a way to reorder that fits the best episodes of season 5 in appropriate places in season 4. Then we could still get the "far in the future" ending, which was an excellent way to end the series.
I know it's difficult, but the series arc works better if you ignore season 5.
You are completely right, except for: Al Gore dod not exaggerate anything!
I was going to respond, but it's too easy a target.
> Fact is that micro pollutants are just now entering the threshold of human understanding
Or perhaps micro pollutants are just now entering the threshold of human measurement, and the News is reporting it because it's a new thing. (Hence the name.)
Absolutely, but DO NOT TELL ANYONE. honestly automation will not get you a raise or a promotion, it will just get you extra work. for the same pay.
Automate all of it and keep your frigging mouth shut.
Hell I used to automate emails to be sent at 2am so that management though I was working 24/7.
If you've automated your job, *shouldn't* you get new tasks to do? You're being paid to do the job to the best of your ability. You've done that by automating - but that leaves you on-the-clock time to do other productive tasks.
Perhaps, but with the understanding that part of your time will now be devoted to maintaining the automation you created.
Wow, that sounds like a similar problem I was having with a dlink router years ago. It worked like a champ until my connection was upgraded (from 15Mbps to 25 Mbps) and then it started regularly rebooting. I read online it was something to do with the router not being able to keep up with the speed of the modem, an overflow would occur, causing a router reboot. Replaced router, worked fine. Later used old dlink router when setting up DSL at mother-in-law's house, and it worked fine. Still in use now. If she ever switches to cable modem / fiber, it'll probably have to be replaced, though.
I dropped Comcrap for OTA and DSL and I save $150/mo.
Sure, Comcast sucks... But what kind of Comcast plan were you on that you could have switched to DSL (or whatever) and reduce your bill by $150 and still have "high speed" Intertubes? I mean, what are you paying now? What was your Comcast bill? $250? Really?
I'm not him, and this was years ago, but when I moved from Comcast to Speakeasy DSL, (lucked out and got 3Mbps over my phone lines -- the best Verizon could do was something like 750K) I also made the decision that I also didn't need the ubiquitous cable TV and unlimited long distance calling that was bundled in. The savings really was about $150/mo. But arguably, that's cheating, because fewer services. But not really cheating, because they were services I wasn't using.
Currently have fiber to the house and no cable TV at all, and pay a fraction (a sizable fraction, but a fraction nonetheless) of the bundles Comcast keeps trying to sell me.
> This video is nothing more than an ad.
I've watched it and I agree. That's even more insidious because it serves to reinforce the expectation that the car doesn't need someone reasonably alert in the driver's seat.
There's an old urban legend about a guy leaving the driver's seat of an RV (on cruise control) to use the bathroom. Personally I've never believed it, but it does serve to illustrate something about expectations.
Judgement (and self-preservation) isn't a step function, it's more like a bell curve. And you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be a hopefully small but nevertheless significant portion of the population, down on the left end of the curve, who will think it's ok to have nobody in the driver's seat, or (more likely) someone asleep in the driver's seat, while the car is driving itself. It's statistically inevitable.
I mean geeze, google "autopilot related accidents". And pilots get a lot more training than mere automobile drivers.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
In Modern Family, it's the handheld camera that will flag a joke. There will be a pause in the conversation for the audience to "get it", and the camera will twitch or zoom in and out slightly to tell you there's something to get.
Although, I'll admit that this is less irritating than a canned laugh track, it's still a "tell".
Side issue: Why isn't Modern Family considered "gay blackface"?
Yes. And to a certain extent, in TBBT, Leonard serves (with varying degrees of success) as Sheldon's social handler.
Is it possible that Snowden still knows a way to get into the machines he used to manage?
A long time ago, I left a company where I had been the sole admin for several years. I had been training up a PFY who eventually replaced me. His last assignment was to find my back door and close it. From my new job, I'd occasionally log into my old machines, have a look around, and send him an email to watch for this thing or fix that thing. He eventually figured out that the usenet news service account had a password.
I know I know, but it was a different time.
Point is, maybe there's new leaks because Snowden still has a back door into his old machines?
Aside from that, we all vi stands for Very Intuitive.
I'm not a vi fanatic, I use it because it's commonly available, not because it's particularly powerful or intuitive.
Back in the old days, when IBM PCs weren't yet everywhere and people were still commonly using terminals, I used to tell new users to play Rogue for an hour or two before trying to learn VI. It helped.
Well... ok... but why would you go to a BBT taping if you hated the show?
> The utilities are sticking their heads in the sand and trying to pretend that technology won't move forward. In some places they are trying to add an interconnect fee for those with solar panels that's as large as my electricity bill. They also are requiring solar panel inverters to stop working entirely when the grid goes down, instead of just providing power for the house and still leaving the grid upstream unenergized. All this, and the price of electricity keeps going up. And they expect people won't move forward with batteries as technology improves?
True. I'm experimenting with a different approach. There's one circuit (pilot project so far) that's solar / marine batteries only, and the rest of the house is connected to the grid. The two feeds don't interact in any way. If the grid goes down, most of the house power goes down, but a few sockets, including the one the freezer is plugged into and the one the fridge is plugged into, continue to operate. (Be careful to pick a properly spec'd sine wave inverter for this application.)
What I'd like to do eventually is have parallel wiring in the house, one string coming from the inverter, and one coming straight from the batteries, (through a fuse box of course) so that things like lights and electronic devices that don't mind working on 12 volts can use the native voltage, and things that need 110 will have 110. (Did you know that you could get CFLs that run on 12 volts?)
My concern at this point is that I don't really have a feel for how many charges the batteries will take, or whether the battery creation/disposal lifecycle is any better than a coal fired electricity plant, for the environment.
shrug. I kinda doubt it, but if so, maybe utilities need to be disrupted.
The Sheldon character holds down a high paying job and manages to interact with an admittedly small circle of friends. He's already doing better than a good segment of the population.
Do you really think that an IRL Sheldon without script immunity would be able to do the same? The TV Sheldon also seems to be a pretty crap physicist, given to conspiracy theories, junk science, and an inability to distinguish between fiction and reality.
Script immunity, reasonable point. Nevertheless...
I personally know a highly paid programmer who believes in witchcraft and astrology. I had a hard time understanding that someone with such a logical mind would believe in something so illogical, but apparently it's more common than one would think. It's what puts the the "quirk" in "quirky", I guess. Otherwise brilliant people who have strange blind spots in areas where you'd think they'd know better. You really don't know anyone like that?
My dad worked with a guy very much like Sheldon. He was brilliant, and so dedicated to his work that he would rarely and only under certain circumstances acknowledge the existence of others. Arguably someone with even more intense quirks than Sheldon. Although admittedly, Dad said that the guy had a "handler", a guy almost as brilliant as him who acted as confidant, kept him out of trouble, and acted as interpreter to the more normal people.
The audience's actions being prompted by people with cue boards, etc., of course.
True, I've heard that, and I since I haven't personally been in a studio audience since The Dating Game, I'm not qualified to say what goes on there, but I've heard from someone who has been in the audience of TBBT that the audience generally ignores the signs and does whatever they want. That there are signs doesn't necessarily mean that the reactions aren't genuine.
My preference would be no audience noises at all, but you can't have everything.
To those who point to the few sitcoms that have no laugh track, I've noticed that the music tends to "react" in the right moments and I'm not convinced that's an improvement.
I agree on the annoyance of laugh tracks, but TBBT is filmed in front of an audience, and it's the audience's actions you hear, not canned laughter.
.
Citation needed.
We're talking about a fictional example, but Sheldon is highly successful, and seems quite happy with his life. He doesn't need to be medicated just because he doesn't meet stereotypical norms.
This. The Sheldon character holds down a high paying job and manages to interact with an admittedly small circle of friends. He's already doing better than a good segment of the population. That his personality quirks should be wrung out of him through therapy and/or medication is more than a little offensive.
> Uh, it sucks regardless of which party is in power.
Yes, that's the real moral of the story.
I'm sorry, it may be due to the crowd I'm forced to work in, but I tend to put things pragmatically rather than morally, because people (at least, some people) seem to connect better to pragmatism than to mere right and wrong.
I think Heinlein had a quote about that, but it slips my mind at this moment.