Yes, I want the North Korean government to get its well-deserved comeuppance as much as the next guy, but take a look at Seoul on Google Earth. Now drag northwards until you come to the North Korean border. Not very far, is it? Forget fancy missiles, it's within artillery range. It won't matter that they get "(at most) a couple of miles into South Korean territory." By the time they've done so, one of Asia's financial and industrial capitals will lie in ruins. The fact that the already mostly empty shell of Pyongyang will be razed to the ground shortly thereafter is cold comfort.
Funny you should mention Bobby Tables in relation to this story. To escape his youthful indescretions, he changed his name to Robert');DROP TABLE Employees;--
Look, buddy. Starfleet Academy is hard enough as it is, and as you can tell by the color of my shirt, I'm a dead man anyway. Can't I just have a little fun while I'm here?
The RF geeks replying that it probably won't do any harm are absolutely correct. It will almost certainly be entirely harmless.
However, the people saying that it will adversely affect your resale value are also correct, and in this case their opinion is the far more important one. Anyone purchasing a Manhattan penthouse will certainly do sufficient due diligence to look out the window before purchasing. The future purchaser won't think, "Hey, there's a cell tower right by me, maybe I should ask Slashdot." They'll think, "OMG, my testicles will fry! Abort transaction!"
I'm sorry, was my reference not erudite enough for you? Perhaps I've been concealing my knowledge of the books, to make you believe that I knew only of the film...
I go outside on a 5deg day in nothing more than a sweater and a top hat.
This is not a fair comparison. You burn significantly more calories, since you're constantly running from police trying to arrest you for indecent exposure.
I was replying flippantly to my parent post, who seemed to envision China as a warped, frustrated old man determined to turn America into Pottersville. China just wants stability. They buy economic stability by manufacturing stuff for us, and buy currency stability (which facilitates the broader economic stability) with our government debt.
Very smart people on both sides of the Pacific know we're in a death embrace. Sure, they could stop bidding on our debt, but they know that would tank our currency, cause the trillions of dollars worth of notes to dive rapidly towards worthlessness, and kill one of their most important export markets. However we get out of this, it's going to happen very, VERY S-L-O-W-L-Y. China's too big a player in currency markets to dump anything without ruinous consequences for all parties.
Wait a minute... You can arbitrarily raise the interest rate on Treasury Notes!? Woo hoo! I'm gonna buy a whole mess of 'em and raise the rate to 3,000%, compounded minutely! Suck it, Uncle Sam!
I am so unbelievably tired of hearing this fallacy repeated over and over again, when it is just not true. I mean, it's trivially true, in that the money used to pay the taxes will ultimately come from consumers, because that's where all the company's income comes from. But it is absolutely positively not true that the price must rise dollar for dollar with increased taxation. In fact, price has almost nothing whatever to do with unit cost, especially when a company has an artificial monopoly on a product, as they do with software, and double especially when a company has an actual monopoly on a product, as Windows does with desktop operating systems.
Price is concerned with one thing and one thing only: Supply and demand. And when you have an artificial monopoly, you control supply entirely. If Microsoft decides to produce only 1,000 copies of Windows 7, the price will be astronomical... Well above the marginal cost to produce it. If they decide to produce 10,000,000,000 copies, the price will dive to the basement and end up at pennies per copy, and they may need to open up a new landfill next to where they buried all those copies of E.T. for the Atari 2600.
If Microsoft raises the price of the product to account for this additional taxation, and they sell exactly as many copies as they would have otherwise, that only means that the price they were charging is too low. If that taxation suddenly disappears, I can guarantee that the price won't decline by even a single penny. Don't believe me? Gas is much cheaper now than it was a few years ago, but have the airlines eliminated those fuel surcharges and baggage fees?
If you don't think that corporations should pay taxes, that's one thing. But don't try to scare people into supporting tax dodges for huge, profitable coprorations for fear that the cost of their product will increase dollar-for-dollar.
I am an Apple fanboi, born and bred in the soft, comforting womb of the Reality Distortion Field. There is not a single computer or device in my house that was not Designed by Apple in California.
If Apple were to do this on my Mac, or my iPhone, or my iWhateverTheHellElse, I would jump ship like Neo leaving the Matrix*. Apple fanbois are Apple fanbois because we prize elegance and design. Implementing this in OS X would shit on it.
(* Just like in that ONE AND ONLY ONE movie, that had ABSOLUTELY NO sequels... See how good at distorting reality I am?)
Given the proliferation of ad supported free apps on the iPhone, perhaps Apple is building an ad-display framework for developers to hook into, rather than have them continually re-invent the wheel for each app. And since it would technically be "part of the OS," perhaps this is a defensive mechanism to prevent patent trolls from pouncing once they implement it.
The first person who both desires this job and a) has a resume, b) manages to find the motivation to print a copy of the resume, put it in an envelope, and send it to the HR department, and c) remembers to attend the interview gets the job automatically.
I suspect the position will go unfilled for some time...
If you'd RTFA, you would have seen that the morning after he submitted the apps to Palm for approval, he turned into a giant cockroach. Therefore, Kafkaesque is a completely appropriate adjective.
Actually, the grandparent poster is not a person at all. It is a computer programmed to alert the Soviets about our own Doomsday Device by posting about it on Slashdot, activated as soon as it detected information about the Soviet device.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, God, no.
Yes, I want the North Korean government to get its well-deserved comeuppance as much as the next guy, but take a look at Seoul on Google Earth. Now drag northwards until you come to the North Korean border. Not very far, is it? Forget fancy missiles, it's within artillery range. It won't matter that they get "(at most) a couple of miles into South Korean territory." By the time they've done so, one of Asia's financial and industrial capitals will lie in ruins. The fact that the already mostly empty shell of Pyongyang will be razed to the ground shortly thereafter is cold comfort.
How does it affect the balance of teutonic plates having say 50,000 trucks moving from California to Arizona from 10PM to 4AM?
If you like your German plate collection so much, perhaps you shouldn't balance them precariously along the side of an Interstate highway?
Funny you should mention Bobby Tables in relation to this story. To escape his youthful indescretions, he changed his name to Robert');DROP TABLE Employees;--
It's like espresso, except with less caffiene to calm the frayed nerves of internet pedantics.
That's how you know it's over...
Look, buddy. Starfleet Academy is hard enough as it is, and as you can tell by the color of my shirt, I'm a dead man anyway. Can't I just have a little fun while I'm here?
The RF geeks replying that it probably won't do any harm are absolutely correct. It will almost certainly be entirely harmless.
However, the people saying that it will adversely affect your resale value are also correct, and in this case their opinion is the far more important one. Anyone purchasing a Manhattan penthouse will certainly do sufficient due diligence to look out the window before purchasing. The future purchaser won't think, "Hey, there's a cell tower right by me, maybe I should ask Slashdot." They'll think, "OMG, my testicles will fry! Abort transaction!"
a laptop full of Chinese secrets
My God! It's full of Calgon!
I'm sorry, was my reference not erudite enough for you? Perhaps I've been concealing my knowledge of the books, to make you believe that I knew only of the film...
A feint, within a feint, within a feint...
Well thanks for posting that, Ukab the Great... Ukab the Great... Ukab the Great... UKAB THE... *BOOM!!!*
Your name is a killing word...
Well, you said it yourself: The question is age-old...
I go outside on a 5deg day in nothing more than a sweater and a top hat.
This is not a fair comparison. You burn significantly more calories, since you're constantly running from police trying to arrest you for indecent exposure.
"Le Last Mile."
What do they call a hogshead?
I'm currently submitting a patent application for the use of a Zans to open cans.
I was replying flippantly to my parent post, who seemed to envision China as a warped, frustrated old man determined to turn America into Pottersville. China just wants stability. They buy economic stability by manufacturing stuff for us, and buy currency stability (which facilitates the broader economic stability) with our government debt.
Very smart people on both sides of the Pacific know we're in a death embrace. Sure, they could stop bidding on our debt, but they know that would tank our currency, cause the trillions of dollars worth of notes to dive rapidly towards worthlessness, and kill one of their most important export markets. However we get out of this, it's going to happen very, VERY S-L-O-W-L-Y. China's too big a player in currency markets to dump anything without ruinous consequences for all parties.
Wait a minute... You can arbitrarily raise the interest rate on Treasury Notes!? Woo hoo! I'm gonna buy a whole mess of 'em and raise the rate to 3,000%, compounded minutely! Suck it, Uncle Sam!
I was an AOL user, you insensitive clod!
Me, too!
I am so unbelievably tired of hearing this fallacy repeated over and over again, when it is just not true. I mean, it's trivially true, in that the money used to pay the taxes will ultimately come from consumers, because that's where all the company's income comes from. But it is absolutely positively not true that the price must rise dollar for dollar with increased taxation. In fact, price has almost nothing whatever to do with unit cost, especially when a company has an artificial monopoly on a product, as they do with software, and double especially when a company has an actual monopoly on a product, as Windows does with desktop operating systems.
Price is concerned with one thing and one thing only: Supply and demand. And when you have an artificial monopoly, you control supply entirely. If Microsoft decides to produce only 1,000 copies of Windows 7, the price will be astronomical... Well above the marginal cost to produce it. If they decide to produce 10,000,000,000 copies, the price will dive to the basement and end up at pennies per copy, and they may need to open up a new landfill next to where they buried all those copies of E.T. for the Atari 2600.
If Microsoft raises the price of the product to account for this additional taxation, and they sell exactly as many copies as they would have otherwise, that only means that the price they were charging is too low. If that taxation suddenly disappears, I can guarantee that the price won't decline by even a single penny. Don't believe me? Gas is much cheaper now than it was a few years ago, but have the airlines eliminated those fuel surcharges and baggage fees?
If you don't think that corporations should pay taxes, that's one thing. But don't try to scare people into supporting tax dodges for huge, profitable coprorations for fear that the cost of their product will increase dollar-for-dollar.
I am an Apple fanboi, born and bred in the soft, comforting womb of the Reality Distortion Field. There is not a single computer or device in my house that was not Designed by Apple in California.
If Apple were to do this on my Mac, or my iPhone, or my iWhateverTheHellElse, I would jump ship like Neo leaving the Matrix*. Apple fanbois are Apple fanbois because we prize elegance and design. Implementing this in OS X would shit on it.
(* Just like in that ONE AND ONLY ONE movie, that had ABSOLUTELY NO sequels... See how good at distorting reality I am?)
Given the proliferation of ad supported free apps on the iPhone, perhaps Apple is building an ad-display framework for developers to hook into, rather than have them continually re-invent the wheel for each app. And since it would technically be "part of the OS," perhaps this is a defensive mechanism to prevent patent trolls from pouncing once they implement it.
The first person who both desires this job and a) has a resume, b) manages to find the motivation to print a copy of the resume, put it in an envelope, and send it to the HR department, and c) remembers to attend the interview gets the job automatically.
I suspect the position will go unfilled for some time...
Ah, I see you've played "knifey-spooney" before...
If you'd RTFA, you would have seen that the morning after he submitted the apps to Palm for approval, he turned into a giant cockroach. Therefore, Kafkaesque is a completely appropriate adjective.
Actually, the grandparent poster is not a person at all. It is a computer programmed to alert the Soviets about our own Doomsday Device by posting about it on Slashdot, activated as soon as it detected information about the Soviet device.
Terrifically cunning plan, eh?
Math gives you a highly addictive mind/mood altering experience? Hmm... We must have tried different Math.
You are. The addictive one is called "Crystal Math."