Why anybody would think that these companies would stand by and not partake in new energy technology is beyond me.
Because a monochromatic world of simple good and simple evil filled with shadowy bogeymen and vast conspiracies is easier for many to accept than the more complicated worldview known as "reality".
It sounds more like they want to limit it to paying customers, and give non-customers at least one hoop through which to jump. If you've ordered even once with Amazon, you're set. If everyone in the world could do the text search without any requirement, their servers would melt down. In fact, I doubt they really expect many to provide a CC just to do a search. It seems more like an expanded feature for previous customers.
I plan to check it out for engineering texts, but I suspect my local (relative to Amazon, that is) technical bookstore has nothing to fear.
"Windows is also the most beautiful interface on God's Green Earth, dammit!" shouted a sweaty and flatulent Ballmer at a press conference in an abandoned carnival outside of Twentynine Palms, California. "You should count yourselves blessed to have access to such heart-rending wonderment. I mean, look at those stately gray buttons. Look at them!"
Ballmer proceeded to point at the thin air next to him for three minutes while muttering what sounded like 'their little pig eyes they bore into my soul like dirty knives' and scanning the audience.
"What about the security issues?" asked Jayson Blair, cub reporter for D-Cup Magazine.
"And those button bars with the sometimes incomprehensible tiny icons. Those are works of art!" cried Ballmer. "If you can't understand what one means, you are nothing more than an animal. An animal, I tell you! Do you hear? An animal who sleeps in his own wastes and eats his own children! Die!"
"Do you have any data to back up your claim of being more secure than Linux?" asked Asian reporter Trish Takinawa of Channel 104 Public Access in Parumph, Nevada.
"Data!" thundered Ballmer. "We're freaking Microsoft, toots! We don't need any stinking dat-"
Ha ha! This has gone far enough!" said a swarthy man in ninja clothing from the back of the crowd as he leapt up onto a dusty platform festooned with tattered remnants of long dead happiness.
"So! Phil Schiller. Head of Marketing at Apple Computer," Ballmer said. "I wondered when we'd meet again."
"And it is as I said, ha-ha, at a time and place of my design, ha-ha!" heckled Schiller has he drew his adamantine katana from it's sheath. Gold plated depleted uranium throwing stars twinkled and glistened with righteousness in his other hand.
Strange alien devices began to scuttle threatingly from Ballmer's massive pores. They dripped with sweat. The sweat hit the floor and burned little holes.
Reporters scattered in a storm of makeup and microphone cable. Somewhere, a bird of prey cried out. A baby cried. Someone broke Godwin's law for the 5000th time that day. An charmed quark spontaneously appeared, but only briefly.
Schiller's bright eyes started down the angry monkey eyes of his eternal nemesis, and the world held it's breath...
I've had patches cause crashes.
And crashes that need patches.
And sneetches with stars, and those without.
But the patches for sneetches with crashes that-
Oh, sorry, slipped into the Seuss Continuum for a moment there.
Hey, anyone who is crucial to keeping the plane in the air is support staff. I think a lot of these famously overcost projects started out with project planners forgetting that.
Well, for example, the Concorde far less fuel efficiency of a 747. The Concorde consumes about 6 gallons per mile while the 747 consumes 5 gallons. May not seem like much, but spread that over millions of flight mile a year, and consider the fact that the 747 carries four times the number of passengers (400 versus 100). The Concorde is also more costly to maintain than a 747.
The numbers only get worse as you progress through later generations of the 7*7 family.
The way they ever made a profit was to charge $10,000 for a ticket. That way they pulled in $1 million per flight as opposed to about $750,000 for a 747. The loading of Concorde flights has dropped quite a bit, though, and hence we seem them being retired. Without the high class fares, the inefficiencies of the plane can no longer be supported.
Once the USAF took it over. While it was a CIA/Lockheed plane I believe the ground support crew consisted of about half a dozen people, and they were more reliable too.
Well, yeah, they were also newer at that point. I always read that they were at the point of needing a lot of parts that were manufactured strictly for the Blackbird, so if you include stuff like that, this extended family of a "support staff" was growing quite alarmingly.
Is it really fair to call it technological regression? There's more to flight than raw speed. The Concordes were notoriously inefficient. I think an argument can be made that some of Boeing's latest offerings are technologically more advanced.
You have a similar situation with the SR-71. It's still probably the one of the most amazing and fastest planes ever built, but it required a support staff similar to that of an aircraft carrier.
It's possible the Space Shuttle may be replaced by cheap, simple capsules. Technological advancement isn't always about faster and more complicated. It's also about discovering what's the most efficent and practical way to do something. They've done a lot of work on advanced space planes, but there's a lot of hurdles there, and the space plane could easily become another boondoggle like the Shuttle.
In the early years, cars got faster and faster. Now we're looking to more safety and fuel efficiency. And some days I think we might have been better off when our car engines didn't have 57 computers all over the place increasing the rate of failure. Most people I know who were into working on their own cars have just given up. There's just too much crap under the hood now, some of it requiring specialized and expensive equipment just to test. The manuals are multivolume.
We also have sharper wits, better abstract thinking skills and vastly larger genitalia. Bow before us, shorties! Mwah ha haaaa! C'mere! I need someplace to put my beer.
Shouldn't it sound like the original CD because AIFF is an uncompressed copy of the CD track?
Maybe better sound, but it reduces the song capactiy of your iPod about 90%, eh?
Anyway, I can't trust someone who refers to themselves as "gimlet eyed" and agonizes over their identity as an audiophile. To me that situation is just crying out for an intervention. Or a deprogramming. Or a delousing. Or a kick in the butt. Or something.
And, yes, that same answer gets posted, but it seems to be the answer to an entirely different question.;-)
There is no indication that the bulk of the DNC list is the "elderly, mentally infirm... etc". In fact, it seems to be, based on any public information available, a mob of people sick of sales calls.
In fact, I dare suggest that people who are not paying attention to such things and are not even aware of the DNC list make a choicer target for the telemarketers. Seems to me the DNC list performs a sort of reverse Darwinism on the pool of potential callable phones. What they get is a list of hard or impossible sales, leaving the wounded gazelles of the herd behind for easay picking.
Slashdot Mirror
It just goes to show, oh, something.
Yeah. That's be sweet. The Everquest Chainmail Massacre. Yeah. Mmm hmmm. I want me some o' that.
Blah bla-blah bla-blah bla-blah. Geez, did you people not get your caffiene this morning?
There. That's TOTALLY different.
I hope this helps.
Hey, I got a million of 'em.
Well, a couple dozen.
OK, three.
Because a monochromatic world of simple good and simple evil filled with shadowy bogeymen and vast conspiracies is easier for many to accept than the more complicated worldview known as "reality".
I plan to check it out for engineering texts, but I suspect my local (relative to Amazon, that is) technical bookstore has nothing to fear.
Yes, the missing "a" was a typo, and, what, she's not allowed to follow her dreams of a career in public access?? Huh? Huh? Communist!
Ballmer proceeded to point at the thin air next to him for three minutes while muttering what sounded like 'their little pig eyes they bore into my soul like dirty knives' and scanning the audience.
"What about the security issues?" asked Jayson Blair, cub reporter for D-Cup Magazine.
"And those button bars with the sometimes incomprehensible tiny icons. Those are works of art!" cried Ballmer. "If you can't understand what one means, you are nothing more than an animal. An animal, I tell you! Do you hear? An animal who sleeps in his own wastes and eats his own children! Die!"
"Do you have any data to back up your claim of being more secure than Linux?" asked Asian reporter Trish Takinawa of Channel 104 Public Access in Parumph, Nevada.
"Data!" thundered Ballmer. "We're freaking Microsoft, toots! We don't need any stinking dat-"
Ha ha! This has gone far enough!" said a swarthy man in ninja clothing from the back of the crowd as he leapt up onto a dusty platform festooned with tattered remnants of long dead happiness.
"So! Phil Schiller. Head of Marketing at Apple Computer," Ballmer said. "I wondered when we'd meet again."
"And it is as I said, ha-ha, at a time and place of my design, ha-ha!" heckled Schiller has he drew his adamantine katana from it's sheath. Gold plated depleted uranium throwing stars twinkled and glistened with righteousness in his other hand.
Strange alien devices began to scuttle threatingly from Ballmer's massive pores. They dripped with sweat. The sweat hit the floor and burned little holes.
Reporters scattered in a storm of makeup and microphone cable. Somewhere, a bird of prey cried out. A baby cried. Someone broke Godwin's law for the 5000th time that day. An charmed quark spontaneously appeared, but only briefly.
Schiller's bright eyes started down the angry monkey eyes of his eternal nemesis, and the world held it's breath...
Who needs to lie?!?!
I've had patches cause crashes.
And crashes that need patches.
And sneetches with stars, and those without.
But the patches for sneetches with crashes that-
Oh, sorry, slipped into the Seuss Continuum for a moment there.
So there.
It uses, um... dark energy, or something.
Round trip between NYC and London earlier this year was $12,743 on British Airways.
Hey, anyone who is crucial to keeping the plane in the air is support staff. I think a lot of these famously overcost projects started out with project planners forgetting that.
The numbers only get worse as you progress through later generations of the 7*7 family.
The way they ever made a profit was to charge $10,000 for a ticket. That way they pulled in $1 million per flight as opposed to about $750,000 for a 747. The loading of Concorde flights has dropped quite a bit, though, and hence we seem them being retired. Without the high class fares, the inefficiencies of the plane can no longer be supported.
Well, yeah, they were also newer at that point. I always read that they were at the point of needing a lot of parts that were manufactured strictly for the Blackbird, so if you include stuff like that, this extended family of a "support staff" was growing quite alarmingly.
As what? Target drones? ;-)
You have a similar situation with the SR-71. It's still probably the one of the most amazing and fastest planes ever built, but it required a support staff similar to that of an aircraft carrier.
It's possible the Space Shuttle may be replaced by cheap, simple capsules. Technological advancement isn't always about faster and more complicated. It's also about discovering what's the most efficent and practical way to do something. They've done a lot of work on advanced space planes, but there's a lot of hurdles there, and the space plane could easily become another boondoggle like the Shuttle.
In the early years, cars got faster and faster. Now we're looking to more safety and fuel efficiency. And some days I think we might have been better off when our car engines didn't have 57 computers all over the place increasing the rate of failure. Most people I know who were into working on their own cars have just given up. There's just too much crap under the hood now, some of it requiring specialized and expensive equipment just to test. The manuals are multivolume.
We also have sharper wits, better abstract thinking skills and vastly larger genitalia. Bow before us, shorties! Mwah ha haaaa! C'mere! I need someplace to put my beer.
Yes. Yes we can.
Personally, I just think it's pretty cool we can use terms like "planetside assets" with a straight face nowadays. :)
I trust it not to compute.
I'm sorry. I have a cold.
I must call my iPod that from now on. Thanks.
And for some reason "the gay version of 2001: A Space Odyssey" popped into my head.
"Open the fruit pod doors, Hal."
Oh, God, it's only Tuieday and I'm reduced to this.
Maybe better sound, but it reduces the song capactiy of your iPod about 90%, eh?
Anyway, I can't trust someone who refers to themselves as "gimlet eyed" and agonizes over their identity as an audiophile. To me that situation is just crying out for an intervention. Or a deprogramming. Or a delousing. Or a kick in the butt. Or something.
There is no indication that the bulk of the DNC list is the "elderly, mentally infirm... etc". In fact, it seems to be, based on any public information available, a mob of people sick of sales calls.
In fact, I dare suggest that people who are not paying attention to such things and are not even aware of the DNC list make a choicer target for the telemarketers. Seems to me the DNC list performs a sort of reverse Darwinism on the pool of potential callable phones. What they get is a list of hard or impossible sales, leaving the wounded gazelles of the herd behind for easay picking.