You're not wrong. California has the biggest idiots, the greatest geniuses, the worst criminals and the most visionary entrepeneurs. What they share is a willingness to try new things nobody has done before, and as a result most new trends in the world, good and bad, originate here.
The earthquakes help a lot. They seem very scary but are really a very small danger. So they keep out the irrationally cautious and cowardy, leaving an unusually bold and daring population.
Remind me never to live there.
I don't mean this in a bad way, but it's mutual. Stay away. We don't need your kind, and you wouldn't like it here.
I know that it's fun and exciting to believe that the NSA, CIA, and FBI are these amazing, magical places where things can be done that can't be done in the regular work-a-day world, and certainly this image is constantly perpetuated by books and movies, but reality is more mundane.
That is one stereotype. The other is that they are incompetent bumbling bureaucratic collossuses that let 9/11 happen because they were to lazy to get up from their desks.
I don't really have a point other than that I find it amusing how these contradictory views can coexist so well.
That's funny, since one of the things that annoy me in the US is the lack of private toilet facilities. That's in the sense that all 'public' toilets, in workplaces, restaurants etc, are multi user installations with very little in the way of visual or audible privacy. They're often covered with hard surfaces everywhere making every sound echo throughout the room.
Why the prudest people in the west insists on having their coworkers witness everything they do in the room they're too embarrased to even call toilet, I'll probably never understand...
Claiming your opponents aren't really human is an ancient as well as common part of conflict. It really helps if you plan to go to war or do other nasty things to them, and don't want to feel bad about it.
In reality businesses are nothing but a collection of people. Like all people they do good things and bad things.
Trying to draw a distinction between "people" on one hand and "businesses" on the other is saying that business people aren't really human. If you want to take their money and feel good about it, that's a handly mindset to have.
Really, don't be surfing Slashdot when you have two companies to run!
In reality, Steve Jobs came back as part of the deal when Apple bought Next. So his return didn't start the move for a new OS, it was a side effect of the end result of it.
Why are a large number of slashdot stories directly copied off other sites? They give no credit to the original site at all.
This story could have easily said: "jpkunst noticed over at macslash.org they are running a story about an article on kernelthread by Amit Singh etc etc...
In many cases these are copied word for word from the originating site, however thankfully our submitter took the time to rewrite a different summary for this particular story.
Isn't one of the main points of the GPL et al that you have to give credit to the original authors? How very hypocritical of the Slashdot editors to let things like this through.
Various tree hugging organizations will do whatever they can to stop the launch of a nuclear craft from Earth, but they can't say anything if it's launched from the moon.
But how do you propose to get the nuclear fuel to the moon without launching it from Earth first?
Even assuming we know where to find Uranium on the moon, which we don't, mining and enriching it there would be mindbogglingly expensive.
The term "terrorism" is essentially undefined beyond a certain gut feeling. So anyone faced with a borderline case where it's hard to tell if it is "terrorism" or "regular crime" will choose "terroism" or risk being called soft on terror. So the definition will keep expanding until "terror" and "crime" are synonymous.
The only change from now will be that there will be a new word invented for what we now call "terrorism", and all "emergency" legislation meant to apply to terrorism will apply to all crimes.
To even know that there is a bug, you need to know what the code is supposed to do. How else are you going to know it doesn't do it right? And you also need to know what it actually does. How else are you going to know that what it does isn't right?
How you would attempt to rewrite an application from scratch that you don't know what it's supposed to do is also something I find hard to fully buy in to.
Not that I've invented anything special or anything. It's just common good problem solving practice. In terms of the book rules, I focus on 3, 4, 5, 9, and occasionally 7.
Sure, it can take a lot of time and work sometimes. Days or even weeks. Some things are complicated and take time to do. But I fix my bugs for real. And that, sadly, makes me a fairly small minority among todays programmers.
I've been programming professionally on planet earth for 20 years on both big and small applications, good, bad and awful designwise.
And that leads into a classic chicken-and-egg discussion.
Does the difference in crime levels motivate different levels of police power?
Or does the example of Sweden show that you don't need a ruthless police force to keep crime low?
Or may even the police ruthlessness create more crime by raising the level of violence and putting more people in jail?
This has been discussed a zillion times, and we won't resolve it here. I'm sure there is some truth in all those arguments, but I don't claim to know which are most and least important
Mexico is an example of a police state/dictatorship, not a democracy.
Of course US police have less power than in countries like that, but compared to other democraciees, I seriously doubt it has.
I'm far from an expert on these things, but as a Swede living in California, it seems very clear that the Police here have much bigger licence to steal, kill and destroy at will.
So giving the Police the right to trash anyone's home or business is the only way to prevent anarchy? The only ways that are at all possible are this way, or the small poster way?
Besides the option of a large poster, it seems to me it would be possible to have a system where the police can search for evidence with a warrant, but have to pay for any damages they cause if the victims turn out to be innocent.
The current system invites abuse. The police don't even have to frame anyone they dislike enough to get them convicted, only enough to get a warrant. Evidence can be hidden in furniture, walls, cars etc, all of which can be smashed down in the search for evidence, easily costing any uppity person $100k+.
Abuse of police power is arguably a bigger problem in the world than regular crime, so don't think it's a small issue.
Those blood pressure machines at the drug store sucks BTW. They're wildly inaccurate and serve little other purpose than to scare peopl einto talking to their doctor. Which I suppose saves some lives, but don't trust the numbers you get for a second.
I've heard from several places that the iPods cost very little more than the plain hard drives that are in them, and thus have very low margins.
If so the business plan would be to run the music store without a profit, in order to sell iPods without a profit, in order to sell macintoshes. But that doesn't sound too smart, so I'd be willing to believe they do make money on iPods, and maybe what I heard only applies to the first models.
If anyone knows any more or less real numbers on Apples iPod margins, I'd be very interested to hear them.
So in other words, the only way to compete with India is to become exactly like India, or to get India to be exactly like us. But the latter won't work, because our corporations will just move the work to some other country. That means the former will be the more likely outcome.
There is a finite supply of "somewhere else"'s. India itself is 15-20% of the worlds population. Once it and China (20-30%) starts to reach western levels, there aren't all that many poor people left in the world.
The same thing happened within the US and other rich countries. Certain pockets got rich and expensive, so companies went looking for labor elsewhere, and after a while they ran out of elsewheres, and standards rose everywhere.
One way of looking at it is that the bottom line is that you get to consume as much as you produce. The rich world consumes much because it produces much. If the poor world starts producing more, it will be able to consume more, but that doesn't mean the rich world will stop producing.
Slashdot Mirror
You're not wrong. California has the biggest idiots, the greatest geniuses, the worst criminals and the most visionary entrepeneurs. What they share is a willingness to try new things nobody has done before, and as a result most new trends in the world, good and bad, originate here.
The earthquakes help a lot. They seem very scary but are really a very small danger. So they keep out the irrationally cautious and cowardy, leaving an unusually bold and daring population.
Remind me never to live there.
I don't mean this in a bad way, but it's mutual. Stay away. We don't need your kind, and you wouldn't like it here.
That would be Bode's Law. It is wiewed as more of a coincidence than a law these days.
According to my hung over calculations Sedna is 67 AUs out, which is not that far off from the 77.6 that Bode predicts, but not really close either.
I know that it's fun and exciting to believe that the NSA, CIA, and FBI are these amazing, magical places where things can be done that can't be done in the regular work-a-day world, and certainly this image is constantly perpetuated by books and movies, but reality is more mundane.
That is one stereotype. The other is that they are incompetent bumbling bureaucratic collossuses that let 9/11 happen because they were to lazy to get up from their desks.
I don't really have a point other than that I find it amusing how these contradictory views can coexist so well.
That's funny, since one of the things that annoy me in the US is the lack of private toilet facilities. That's in the sense that all 'public' toilets, in workplaces, restaurants etc, are multi user installations with very little in the way of visual or audible privacy. They're often covered with hard surfaces everywhere making every sound echo throughout the room.
Why the prudest people in the west insists on having their coworkers witness everything they do in the room they're too embarrased to even call toilet, I'll probably never understand...
If so, there is still benefit to the consumer in that a lot more games are available than would be if profit margins were smaller.
I predict that The Informa Media Group will sell fewer reports after this one turns out to be wrong.
Claiming your opponents aren't really human is an ancient as well as common part of conflict. It really helps if you plan to go to war or do other nasty things to them, and don't want to feel bad about it.
In reality businesses are nothing but a collection of people. Like all people they do good things and bad things.
Trying to draw a distinction between "people" on one hand and "businesses" on the other is saying that business people aren't really human. If you want to take their money and feel good about it, that's a handly mindset to have.
Really, don't be surfing Slashdot when you have two companies to run!
In reality, Steve Jobs came back as part of the deal when Apple bought Next. So his return didn't start the move for a new OS, it was a side effect of the end result of it.
Why are a large number of slashdot stories directly copied off other sites? They give no credit to the original site at all.
This story could have easily said: "jpkunst noticed over at macslash.org they are running a story about an article on kernelthread by Amit Singh etc etc...
In many cases these are copied word for word from the originating site, however thankfully our submitter took the time to rewrite a different summary for this particular story.
Isn't one of the main points of the GPL et al that you have to give credit to the original authors? How very hypocritical of the Slashdot editors to let things like this through.
Various tree hugging organizations will do whatever they can to stop the launch of a nuclear craft from Earth, but they can't say anything if it's launched from the moon.
But how do you propose to get the nuclear fuel to the moon without launching it from Earth first?
Even assuming we know where to find Uranium on the moon, which we don't, mining and enriching it there would be mindbogglingly expensive.
The term "terrorism" is essentially undefined beyond a certain gut feeling. So anyone faced with a borderline case where it's hard to tell if it is "terrorism" or "regular crime" will choose "terroism" or risk being called soft on terror. So the definition will keep expanding until "terror" and "crime" are synonymous.
The only change from now will be that there will be a new word invented for what we now call "terrorism", and all "emergency" legislation meant to apply to terrorism will apply to all crimes.
This would be easier to take seriously if it didn't come from someone who obviously still reads Slashdot...
I find your statement a bit baffling.
To even know that there is a bug, you need to know what the code is supposed to do. How else are you going to know it doesn't do it right? And you also need to know what it actually does. How else are you going to know that what it does isn't right?
How you would attempt to rewrite an application from scratch that you don't know what it's supposed to do is also something I find hard to fully buy in to.
Not that I've invented anything special or anything. It's just common good problem solving practice. In terms of the book rules, I focus on 3, 4, 5, 9, and occasionally 7.
Sure, it can take a lot of time and work sometimes. Days or even weeks. Some things are complicated and take time to do. But I fix my bugs for real. And that, sadly, makes me a fairly small minority among todays programmers.
I've been programming professionally on planet earth for 20 years on both big and small applications, good, bad and awful designwise.
Here's what I've always done.
1. Figure out what the code should do.
2. Figure out what it does.
3. Figure out where 1 and 2 diverges.
If you have reproducible error, you really don't need any great skills or brilliant thinking to find and fix a bug this way.
And that leads into a classic chicken-and-egg discussion.
Does the difference in crime levels motivate different levels of police power?
Or does the example of Sweden show that you don't need a ruthless police force to keep crime low?
Or may even the police ruthlessness create more crime by raising the level of violence and putting more people in jail?
This has been discussed a zillion times, and we won't resolve it here. I'm sure there is some truth in all those arguments, but I don't claim to know which are most and least important
Mexico is an example of a police state/dictatorship, not a democracy.
Of course US police have less power than in countries like that, but compared to other democraciees, I seriously doubt it has.
I'm far from an expert on these things, but as a Swede living in California, it seems very clear that the Police here have much bigger licence to steal, kill and destroy at will.
So giving the Police the right to trash anyone's home or business is the only way to prevent anarchy? The only ways that are at all possible are this way, or the small poster way?
Besides the option of a large poster, it seems to me it would be possible to have a system where the police can search for evidence with a warrant, but have to pay for any damages they cause if the victims turn out to be innocent.
The current system invites abuse. The police don't even have to frame anyone they dislike enough to get them convicted, only enough to get a warrant. Evidence can be hidden in furniture, walls, cars etc, all of which can be smashed down in the search for evidence, easily costing any uppity person $100k+.
Abuse of police power is arguably a bigger problem in the world than regular crime, so don't think it's a small issue.
"A Sharp Blade for a Sharp Mind!"
Those blood pressure machines at the drug store sucks BTW. They're wildly inaccurate and serve little other purpose than to scare peopl einto talking to their doctor. Which I suppose saves some lives, but don't trust the numbers you get for a second.
My doctor tells me this.
Off topic? Yup.
I've heard from several places that the iPods cost very little more than the plain hard drives that are in them, and thus have very low margins.
If so the business plan would be to run the music store without a profit, in order to sell iPods without a profit, in order to sell macintoshes. But that doesn't sound too smart, so I'd be willing to believe they do make money on iPods, and maybe what I heard only applies to the first models.
If anyone knows any more or less real numbers on Apples iPod margins, I'd be very interested to hear them.
screaming about Janet Jackson's left boob
Those screaming about her left boob, which was the one left covered, were not social conservatives, but rather the strip club crowd.
So in other words, the only way to compete with India is to become exactly like India, or to get India to be exactly like us. But the latter won't work, because our corporations will just move the work to some other country. That means the former will be the more likely outcome.
There is a finite supply of "somewhere else"'s. India itself is 15-20% of the worlds population. Once it and China (20-30%) starts to reach western levels, there aren't all that many poor people left in the world.
The same thing happened within the US and other rich countries. Certain pockets got rich and expensive, so companies went looking for labor elsewhere, and after a while they ran out of elsewheres, and standards rose everywhere.
One way of looking at it is that the bottom line is that you get to consume as much as you produce. The rich world consumes much because it produces much. If the poor world starts producing more, it will be able to consume more, but that doesn't mean the rich world will stop producing.
prices aren't kept down
Compared to what??
From reading the notice it seems like the size of the bitmap has to be bugger than 2^31. That's over 2GB if my binary math is working right.
If so, I doubt you'll get many people walking into a trap it takes hours or days to download.
But maybe I misunderstand what the 2^31 means.
Do you know what's a good day to cancel a show? Any day besides Valentine's Day! I mean, what, were they running low on dramatic irony?