My Firebird has a Google search bar built in, and on the rare occasions I need to break out Explorer, I have the Google bar there to quash the stream of pop-ups. And also to help with the distributed computing on the folding problem, actually, but mostly for the popups.
I would argue you get one link to a page that does not contain the phrase - the "2Bee or Nottoobee". The other one I assume you're referring to is tobeornottobe.com, which I think is an absolutely sensible thing to offer when searching on "to be or not to be".
So, at minimum, I would accept that there is 90% accuracy in its top 10 results.
That said, I think I (and a lot of other people) disagree with you about what a search engine is. You compare it to a database query, which is sensible, seeing as a search engine is obviously going to depend on a database. However, I think the databse query is merely a process for answering what is, ultimately, not a database question but an ontological one.
When I type "to be or not to be" into Google, I am not merely querying a database for all pages that contain that phrase, and asking them to be listed according to a nebulous page rank. I am asking the far more subtle question "What page am I looking for right now? I'll give you a clue - 'to be or not to be'."
Thinking about the latter question instead of the former may clear up some of your problems.
Linux is free. It also is compatable with fewer things, requires a more intelligent user, and is not what most people are using right now, which creates a high cost of upgrade in terms of inconvenience and training.
Would you rather have a free box of all the parts you need to buy a car that you'll have to do all the maintenance on yourself, and that's really, really easy to accidentally crash, or to pay for a car that's already assembled and working, perhaps not entirely well, but that is capable of fixing many minor problems itself, and that is much harder to crash and destroy?
To put it another way, money exists to do two things: Get people to do things for you, and keep you from doing things you don't want to do. One thing that a lot of people don't want to do is think.
Therefore they are willing to pay money to get Windows, and not have to think.
But the people who make the decisions (stupid management) and the people who would actually be using the GPL (engineers) are two different people - the problem is that stupid ignorant management is going to stop intelligent, educated coders from using the GPL.
You're making the fatal mistake of assuming decisions are being made by people who have any idea what they're doing.
They are not.
The people who ultimately yay or nay investing in GPL software have no notion of the intricacies of the GPL or of these cases. Even if a company is going to comply with the GPL, this is likely to scare them away because not everybody reads Slashdot
The conversation will go something like this.
Boss: This report from the Engineer says that GPL software could save us money. Random Stupid Executive: I heard lots of people who use GPL software are getting sued by SCO. Second Random Stupid Executive: And I heard the people who administer the GPL are suing Linksys. Boss: Lawsuits cost money. Let's not do it.
Note how no one in that conversation pipes up that SCO's claim is bullshit, or that Linksys is only getting sued because they flagrantly violated the GPL. This is because they do not know these things, because they are typically ignorant.
Really, this couldn't be a worse time to go after Linksys. With the SCO case looming over everything, GPL software already looks like a risky investment to people. Now the GPL folks are going to go after Linksys?
Great. So now the perspective of someone who doesn't know the details of either case (Which probably makes up a large share of bosses who would have to sign off on any adoptions of GPL software) will look at GPL software, and see that using it gets you sued from the outside and the inside.
Ah well. At least your comments start at 0 now instead of 1
Hold on. Everyone keeps saying that Nintendo are very conservative, and that is why they didn't jump on the Online Gaming bandwagon. They are either conservative, or they take risks - which is it?
I think you'll have better luck in debates if you attempt to debate individual viewpoints instead of trying to debate the whole of Nintendo fans at once. See, Nintendo fans are people, and...
What information is there in that post? I do not know more than I did before I read it.
I can see insightful more... except that I'm pretty sure Bush didn't increase your tuition personally... and, really, there's something odd about objecting to the idea of reducing taxes to make up for a tax on things bought on the internet. I mean... really... tax cuts are generally seen as a sensible response to tax increases, no?
I could go on to point out that the current economic downturn started in the Clinton administration...
Or I could pount out your odd sense of punctuation and of forms of address...
To be honest, Britain has never had anything like the same privacy concerns we have in the US. For quite some time, there have regularly been cameras in public places for surveilance. They've also, for quite some time, had systems where if you ran a red light a camera would take a picture of your car, and you'd get a ticket in the mail.
This is pretty much par for the course - it's just not seen as a big deal to the general population for some reason.
It certainly looks from the description like a movie... but after the disaster that was Spirits Within, I'd be surprised if they risked that again... especially since they shut down their movie division entirely.
The statistics are entirely different. Nintendo claims an increase in unit sales from 2002 to 2003. That is to say that, strictly in terms of sales, more Gamecubes were sold in 2003 than were sold in 2002.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is only claiming that the percentage of people who own an XBox has consistantly gone up over the past year compared to the other two consoles. In other words, Microsoft's statistic is in comparison with both Nintendo and Sony, whereas Nintendo's statistic is in comparison only with themselves.
Considering that Nintendo released a Zelda game early in the year, my guess is that they then had a slow quarter somewhere after that, so their share did not substantially increase in a given quarter, while their overall sales increased dramatically for the year.
Actually, whoever modded that one redundant is wrong... the Yahoo press release that the blurb says talks about bundles doesn't actually say a word about them...
"Your first deadline's tomorrow. I want to see eight thousand words. Printable words. I still remember that essay you wrote when the Beast got elected. I do not want to see the word "fuck" typed eight thousand times again." - Transmetropolitan, nicely summing up the reaction I Have to this.
I confess, I have a bit of trouble believing that. If that's true, why do retailers like KB Toys offer additional game bundles? And, for that matter, why would stores stock the Gamecube at all? Considering its allegedly sluggish sales and your claim that retailers lose money on it, I'd expect it to be dropped. Provide some linkage?
Actually, I doubt Nintendo is losing money on the Gamecube. Most sources will say that Nintendo was turning a very small profit on the Cube when it launched at $199, and that was a couple of years ago - the prices on the components have fallen off considerably since then, as electronics tend to do, and production efficiency has increased. I'd guess that if Nintendo is taking any kind of loss on the GC, it's only since the price cut to $99, and it's very, very slight.
I doubt it, really... on Sandman, he's splitting the royalties with artists, and a comic book is probably not going to sell at NYT list levels. His novels, on the other hand, do sell at NYT list levels, and he gets to keep all the royalties himself. So, economically, he's far better off putting out novels when he wants money than another Sandman book, which is almost necessarily a labor of love for him.
Gaiman has stated on his blog in the past that there is a good chance he'll put it on hiatus when he starts his next novel.
The end of Sandman
on
Ask Neil Gaiman
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Does Endless Nights mark, to your mind, the final volume of Sandman? Or are there more stories you intend to tell in that universe. Do you see yourself ever being truly done with Sandman, or is it something you think you'll come back to every few years to fill in another hole or story here and there?
Slashdot Mirror
My Firebird has a Google search bar built in, and on the rare occasions I need to break out Explorer, I have the Google bar there to quash the stream of pop-ups. And also to help with the distributed computing on the folding problem, actually, but mostly for the popups.
I would argue you get one link to a page that does not contain the phrase - the "2Bee or Nottoobee". The other one I assume you're referring to is tobeornottobe.com, which I think is an absolutely sensible thing to offer when searching on "to be or not to be".
So, at minimum, I would accept that there is 90% accuracy in its top 10 results.
That said, I think I (and a lot of other people) disagree with you about what a search engine is. You compare it to a database query, which is sensible, seeing as a search engine is obviously going to depend on a database. However, I think the databse query is merely a process for answering what is, ultimately, not a database question but an ontological one.
When I type "to be or not to be" into Google, I am not merely querying a database for all pages that contain that phrase, and asking them to be listed according to a nebulous page rank. I am asking the far more subtle question "What page am I looking for right now? I'll give you a clue - 'to be or not to be'."
Thinking about the latter question instead of the former may clear up some of your problems.
My objection to "enhanced CDs" is usually that they try to auto-play the enhancements whenever I put them in my CD-ROM drive to rip them. =)
I think that oversimplifies it a lot.
Linux is free. It also is compatable with fewer things, requires a more intelligent user, and is not what most people are using right now, which creates a high cost of upgrade in terms of inconvenience and training.
Would you rather have a free box of all the parts you need to buy a car that you'll have to do all the maintenance on yourself, and that's really, really easy to accidentally crash, or to pay for a car that's already assembled and working, perhaps not entirely well, but that is capable of fixing many minor problems itself, and that is much harder to crash and destroy?
To put it another way, money exists to do two things: Get people to do things for you, and keep you from doing things you don't want to do. One thing that a lot of people don't want to do is think.
Therefore they are willing to pay money to get Windows, and not have to think.
But the people who make the decisions (stupid management) and the people who would actually be using the GPL (engineers) are two different people - the problem is that stupid ignorant management is going to stop intelligent, educated coders from using the GPL.
How is investing in GPL code risky?
It's not. But it can easily look risky from the perspective of a total idiot, which is, unfortunately, a perspective lots of people have.
You're making the fatal mistake of assuming decisions are being made by people who have any idea what they're doing.
They are not.
The people who ultimately yay or nay investing in GPL software have no notion of the intricacies of the GPL or of these cases. Even if a company is going to comply with the GPL, this is likely to scare them away because not everybody reads Slashdot
The conversation will go something like this.
Boss: This report from the Engineer says that GPL software could save us money.
Random Stupid Executive: I heard lots of people who use GPL software are getting sued by SCO.
Second Random Stupid Executive: And I heard the people who administer the GPL are suing Linksys.
Boss: Lawsuits cost money. Let's not do it.
Note how no one in that conversation pipes up that SCO's claim is bullshit, or that Linksys is only getting sued because they flagrantly violated the GPL. This is because they do not know these things, because they are typically ignorant.
That is why this is bad.
Really, this couldn't be a worse time to go after Linksys. With the SCO case looming over everything, GPL software already looks like a risky investment to people. Now the GPL folks are going to go after Linksys?
Great. So now the perspective of someone who doesn't know the details of either case (Which probably makes up a large share of bosses who would have to sign off on any adoptions of GPL software) will look at GPL software, and see that using it gets you sued from the outside and the inside.
This is going to be bad.
Oh. You're back.
Ah well. At least your comments start at 0 now instead of 1
Hold on. Everyone keeps saying that Nintendo are very conservative, and that is why they didn't jump on the Online Gaming bandwagon. They are either conservative, or they take risks - which is it?
I think you'll have better luck in debates if you attempt to debate individual viewpoints instead of trying to debate the whole of Nintendo fans at once. See, Nintendo fans are people, and...
Wait a minute, why am I feeding the trolls?
Imagine a world without any good games.
I don't have to imagine.
Oh, please, let me metamoderate this one...
Informative????
What information is there in that post? I do not know more than I did before I read it.
I can see insightful more... except that I'm pretty sure Bush didn't increase your tuition personally... and, really, there's something odd about objecting to the idea of reducing taxes to make up for a tax on things bought on the internet. I mean... really... tax cuts are generally seen as a sensible response to tax increases, no?
I could go on to point out that the current economic downturn started in the Clinton administration...
Or I could pount out your odd sense of punctuation and of forms of address...
But instead I think I'll just be succinct.
Mod parent the fuck down.
To be honest, Britain has never had anything like the same privacy concerns we have in the US. For quite some time, there have regularly been cameras in public places for surveilance. They've also, for quite some time, had systems where if you ran a red light a camera would take a picture of your car, and you'd get a ticket in the mail.
This is pretty much par for the course - it's just not seen as a big deal to the general population for some reason.
It certainly looks from the description like a movie... but after the disaster that was Spirits Within, I'd be surprised if they risked that again... especially since they shut down their movie division entirely.
The statistics are entirely different. Nintendo claims an increase in unit sales from 2002 to 2003. That is to say that, strictly in terms of sales, more Gamecubes were sold in 2003 than were sold in 2002.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is only claiming that the percentage of people who own an XBox has consistantly gone up over the past year compared to the other two consoles. In other words, Microsoft's statistic is in comparison with both Nintendo and Sony, whereas Nintendo's statistic is in comparison only with themselves.
Considering that Nintendo released a Zelda game early in the year, my guess is that they then had a slow quarter somewhere after that, so their share did not substantially increase in a given quarter, while their overall sales increased dramatically for the year.
Actually, whoever modded that one redundant is wrong... the Yahoo press release that the blurb says talks about bundles doesn't actually say a word about them...
Mod parent up and whatnot.
SCO issued a strange press release
Does SCO really issue any other kind of press releases anymore?
"Your first deadline's tomorrow. I want to see eight thousand words. Printable words. I still remember that essay you wrote when the Beast got elected. I do not want to see the word "fuck" typed eight thousand times again." - Transmetropolitan, nicely summing up the reaction I Have to this.
I confess, I have a bit of trouble believing that. If that's true, why do retailers like KB Toys offer additional game bundles? And, for that matter, why would stores stock the Gamecube at all? Considering its allegedly sluggish sales and your claim that retailers lose money on it, I'd expect it to be dropped. Provide some linkage?
Actually, I doubt Nintendo is losing money on the Gamecube. Most sources will say that Nintendo was turning a very small profit on the Cube when it launched at $199, and that was a couple of years ago - the prices on the components have fallen off considerably since then, as electronics tend to do, and production efficiency has increased. I'd guess that if Nintendo is taking any kind of loss on the GC, it's only since the price cut to $99, and it's very, very slight.
Nintendo started as a playing card company, and slowly evolved into a video game company as the technology came into being.
Redding?
I doubt it, really... on Sandman, he's splitting the royalties with artists, and a comic book is probably not going to sell at NYT list levels. His novels, on the other hand, do sell at NYT list levels, and he gets to keep all the royalties himself. So, economically, he's far better off putting out novels when he wants money than another Sandman book, which is almost necessarily a labor of love for him.
Gaiman has stated on his blog in the past that there is a good chance he'll put it on hiatus when he starts his next novel.
Does Endless Nights mark, to your mind, the final volume of Sandman? Or are there more stories you intend to tell in that universe. Do you see yourself ever being truly done with Sandman, or is it something you think you'll come back to every few years to fill in another hole or story here and there?