Computer Science is an expensive department to maintain.
Cite? It's actually a pretty cheap department. Just need office space and electricity for computers, which is really no different than, say, an English department.
I don't even really remember what I learned in English classes.
Sounds like we should shutter English departments if they're doing such a bang-up job educating their graduates.
I flew a Delta 10 hour transatlantic flight about 4 weeks ago. Boeing 767 with 36 passengers on board. Hopefully they had lots of expensive cargo in the hold, or they took a huge loss on that flight.
I was hoping they'd just bump everyone to business class, but I wasn't so lucky.
So when that final push on No. 11,982—an effort aided by humans and even a handful of game-solving programs—met with failure, Ring celebrated. Is every hand in FreeCell winnable? No. Thirty-one thousand nine hundred ninety-nine hands are winnable. And one isn’t. He proved that.
No he didn't. Unless the exploration of the game space was exhaustive, there's no proof. A bunch of people playing the game and failing to solve it isn't a proof.
They never agreed on a fixed price, which is what actually *is* illegal.
I left out a lot of the evidence listed in the criminal complaint because it was too verbose to retype here, and some of what I left out indicated that specific prices were discussed and set together by the publishers with Apple's consent. If the DOJ can actually back up what they've put in the complaint, this looks like a slam dunk for them.
Go read the actual criminal complaint and not just my excerpts. These companies are screwed. This is the kind of thing that leads to prison time for executives.
More text from the complaint suggesting that DOJ has hard evidence:
"Beginning no later than September 2008, the Publisher Defendants' senior executives engaged in a series of meetings, telephone conversations and other communication in which they jointly acknowledged to each other the threat posed by Amazon's pricing strategy and the need to work collectively to end that strategy. By the end of the summer of 2009, the Publisher Defendants had agreed to act collectively to force up Amazon's retail prices and thereafter considered and implemented various means to accomplish that goal."
"The Publisher Defendants directly discussed, agreed to, and encouraged each other to collective action to force Amazon to raise its retail e-book prices."
"Publisher Defendants took steps to conceal their communications with one another, including instructions to 'double delete' e-mail and taking other measures to avoid leaving a paper trail."
"They received assurances from both each other and Apple that they all would move together to raise retail e-book prices."
"All five Publisher Defendants agreed in 2009 at the latest to act collectively to raise retail prices for the most popular e-books above $9.99. [Then quotes internal email]."
"Apple concluded that competition from other retailers, especially Amazon, would prevent Apple from earning its desired 30 percent margins on e-book sales. Ultimately, Apple, together with the Publisher Defendants, set in motion a plan that would compel all non-Apple e-book retailers also to sign onto agency or else, as Apple's CEO put it, the Publisher Defendants all would say, 'we're not going to give you the books'."
"As it negotiated with the Publisher Defendants in December 2009 and January 2010, Apple kept each Publisher Defendant informed of the status of its negotiations with the other Publisher Defendants. Apple also assured the Publisher Defendants that its proposals were the same to each and that no deal Apple agreed to with one publisher would be materially different from any deal it agreed to with another publisher."
"Each publisher defendant rquired assurances that it would not be the only publisher to sign an agreement with Apple that would compel it either to take pricing authority from Amazon or to pull its e-books from Amazon. The Publisher Defendants continued to fear that Amazon would act to protect its ability to price e-books at $9.99 or less if any one of them acted alone. Apple supplied the needed assurances."
"Near the time Apple first presented the agency model, one Publisher Defendant's CEO used a telephone call, ostensibly made to discuss a marketing joint venture, to tell Penguin USA CEO David Shanks that 'everyone is in the same place with Apple'."
"On the evening of Saturday, January 23, 2010, Apple's Mr. Cue e-mailed his boss, Steve Jobs, and noted that Penguin USA CEO David Shanks 'wanted an assurance that he is 1 of 4 before signing'."
There's about 20 pages worth of evidence, with email and telephone conversations quoted. This will be a big case. It looks like Steve Jobs and the publishing companies' CEOs were personally involved in the conspiracy.
It sounds like the DOJ has evidence that collusion occurred. From the complaint filed today: "As a result of discussions with the Publisher Defendants, Apple learned that the Publisher Defendants shared a common objective with Apple to limit e-book retail price competition, and that the Publisher Defendants also desired to have popular e-book retail prices stabilize at levels significantly higher than $9.99. Together, Apple and the Publisher Defendants reached an agreement whereby retail price competition would cease (which all the conspirators desired), retail e-book prices would increase significantly (which the Publisher Defendants desired), and Apple would be guaranteed a 30 percent "commission" on each e-book it sold (which Apple desired)."
Case information, including the complaint, is here.
2) Publisher/seller model. Why couldn't the publishers sell the e-books (individual ID per copy) to the end sellers at a price, just like they do now for physical books. Then the end seller could decide on the end price. I admit I don't have any e-books, so I'm not conversant in this area.
That's exactly how it worked, prior to Apple's entry into the market. Apple forced the change away from the model you describe.
It actually is legit. Here's an article from 2010 giving the same budget numbers, and saying that it will be ready by 2011 at the earliest. Getting close to ready in 2012 then seems about right. Story
I have two offices, each with a different desktop (WinXP on one, OS X Lion on the other), two MacBooks (Lion on one, Leopard on the other), and a home Linux system (Ubuntu/KDE). I find all systems to be fairly usable, and for the most part, I don't really care which one I'm using. I just want to be able to use the computer, so trying to push one type of system over another seems pretty pointless if they're all ultimately usable. The differences among the systems end up being pretty minor:
Linux: - Easy connectivity to remote systems/servers. - Easy to find, install, and uninstall software via apt-get, with reasonable assurance that the centralized repositories aren't hosting malware. - I never think about licenses, everything is free [beer].
OS X: - Easy connectivity to remote systems/servers. - UNIX with a pretty GUI (though KDE is pretty nice nowadays). - Many applications have easy installs/uninstalls, just drag the folder into/Applications or from there to the trash. (Though having to remember which applications uninstall with a drag to the trash and which need to run an uninstaller is annoying).
Windows: - Usable as long as I can stay away from the start menu (which I find cumbersome). - Needs a real command line that lets me ssh & scp. Having to use a GUI program to scp annoys me. - No customizability. For example, I can't figure out how to have the clock on the taskbar also list today's date. - Installing software via downloads of.exe's from random websites is worrisome.
Just go read their early January 2000 article about the upcoming inauguration of G.W.Bush, entitled "Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity Is Finally Over", especially the part about using the military.
Or their issue from the first week of September, 2000: "Terrorist extremely annoyed by delayed flight".
The majority of people in the US don't vote because they don't feel that any of the candidates have their interests in mind and because they feel that no matter who they vote for, they're going to be screwed over anyway. The inconvenience of having to walk/drive to the polling place isn't the issue, and solving that isn't likely to dramatically improve voter turnout.
Oh, gotcha. The application's toolbar is in the title bar now. I've never even noticed that toolbar, as I've always just assumed that titlebar buttons control the window layout. For as many times as I've clicked the Office roundel in 2007, I'd never even noticed the save button to the right. My brain just ignores titlebar buttons when thinking about the application inside the window.
Oh, gotcha. The application's toolbar is in the title bar now. I've never scanned those, as I've always just assumed that titlebar buttons control the window layout. For as many times as I've clicked the Office roundel in 2007, I'd never even noticed the save button to the right. My brain just ignores titlebar buttons when thinking about the application inside the window.
Anyone who has ever used a word processor can sit down with Microsoft Word and write a letter. There will probably be things you don't know how to do, so you'll end up searching the Ribbon to find them. But that's just it -- you can find them.
Actually, I think you're missing the point. Windows 8 will now be pretty similar to OS X. Microsoft isn't replacing the desktop interface, they're adding Metro to it. It'll be a standard desktop with the ability to load the mobile interface if you choose. That's exactly how OS X works.
Windows: Desktop. Hit a key, see metro. OS X: Desktop. Run launchpad, see iPad grid.
Fair enough, but educational techniques *have* been changing
Well, if you look at the trend in math, it's pretty clear that the changes have just made math education worse. Maybe what we need to do rather than create new texts and new techniques that don't work is resurrect older techniques and older textbooks that actually seemed to educate.
Yes, you're right, I was looking only at fuel prices. Bringing all those costs to bear would make the non-TGV routes cheaper than driving. I didn't think about the other costs because they're paid by my employer.
TGV is probably still more expensive, but that's not really surprising since it also cruises twice as fast as the autoroutes. My last TGV ticket was 71€ to get from Paris to the city where I live. It was 1h20 on the train, but the drive would have been 2.5 to 3 hours.
It's not as clear as you describe. I live in France. Gas prices here work out to $7.50 to $8.00 per gallon of diesel. However, while I have the option to take the train instead (an option that is often missing in the US), the train ticket for just myself is more expensive than burning the fuel would have been. Taking a family on the train is ridiculously expensive. It's not even the high-speed train.
Yes, we have options in Europe due to better mass transit infrastructure. However, they are *all* expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
and this is where i have to ask what is the core competency of a university?
Gets 18-year-olds out of their parents' houses.
Also beer pong.
If you want people that write python, perl, and real code, then you should be recruiting CS grads, not IT grads. IT is a soft business degree.
Most schools I've been to don't have a computer science department, but rather lump it in with the math or engineering department.
If the universities that you've attended have a single "engineering department", then you've attended low quality universities.
Computer Science is an expensive department to maintain.
Cite? It's actually a pretty cheap department. Just need office space and electricity for computers, which is really no different than, say, an English department.
I don't even really remember what I learned in English classes.
Sounds like we should shutter English departments if they're doing such a bang-up job educating their graduates.
FTFA:
I don't see that quoted text in the article at all. Anyway, supposing it's true, what's happening with the other 50% of the faculty? Fired?
I flew a Delta 10 hour transatlantic flight about 4 weeks ago. Boeing 767 with 36 passengers on board. Hopefully they had lots of expensive cargo in the hold, or they took a huge loss on that flight.
I was hoping they'd just bump everyone to business class, but I wasn't so lucky.
avoiding the wacko landing gear configuration
Don't lose the gear, you can land that thing in a crosswind at the crab angle because of the gear.
FTFA:
So when that final push on No. 11,982—an effort aided by humans and even a handful of game-solving programs—met with failure, Ring celebrated. Is every hand in FreeCell winnable? No. Thirty-one thousand nine hundred ninety-nine hands are winnable. And one isn’t. He proved that.
No he didn't. Unless the exploration of the game space was exhaustive, there's no proof. A bunch of people playing the game and failing to solve it isn't a proof.
They never agreed on a fixed price, which is what actually *is* illegal.
I left out a lot of the evidence listed in the criminal complaint because it was too verbose to retype here, and some of what I left out indicated that specific prices were discussed and set together by the publishers with Apple's consent. If the DOJ can actually back up what they've put in the complaint, this looks like a slam dunk for them.
Go read the actual criminal complaint and not just my excerpts. These companies are screwed. This is the kind of thing that leads to prison time for executives.
More text from the complaint suggesting that DOJ has hard evidence:
"Beginning no later than September 2008, the Publisher Defendants' senior executives engaged in a series of meetings, telephone conversations and other communication in which they jointly acknowledged to each other the threat posed by Amazon's pricing strategy and the need to work collectively to end that strategy. By the end of the summer of 2009, the Publisher Defendants had agreed to act collectively to force up Amazon's retail prices and thereafter considered and implemented various means to accomplish that goal."
"The Publisher Defendants directly discussed, agreed to, and encouraged each other to collective action to force Amazon to raise its retail e-book prices."
"Publisher Defendants took steps to conceal their communications with one another, including instructions to 'double delete' e-mail and taking other measures to avoid leaving a paper trail."
"They received assurances from both each other and Apple that they all would move together to raise retail e-book prices."
"All five Publisher Defendants agreed in 2009 at the latest to act collectively to raise retail prices for the most popular e-books above $9.99. [Then quotes internal email]."
"Apple concluded that competition from other retailers, especially Amazon, would prevent Apple from earning its desired 30 percent margins on e-book sales. Ultimately, Apple, together with the Publisher Defendants, set in motion a plan that would compel all non-Apple e-book retailers also to sign onto agency or else, as Apple's CEO put it, the Publisher Defendants all would say, 'we're not going to give you the books'."
"As it negotiated with the Publisher Defendants in December 2009 and January 2010, Apple kept each Publisher Defendant informed of the status of its negotiations with the other Publisher Defendants. Apple also assured the Publisher Defendants that its proposals were the same to each and that no deal Apple agreed to with one publisher would be materially different from any deal it agreed to with another publisher."
"Each publisher defendant rquired assurances that it would not be the only publisher to sign an agreement with Apple that would compel it either to take pricing authority from Amazon or to pull its e-books from Amazon. The Publisher Defendants continued to fear that Amazon would act to protect its ability to price e-books at $9.99 or less if any one of them acted alone. Apple supplied the needed assurances."
"Near the time Apple first presented the agency model, one Publisher Defendant's CEO used a telephone call, ostensibly made to discuss a marketing joint venture, to tell Penguin USA CEO David Shanks that 'everyone is in the same place with Apple'."
"On the evening of Saturday, January 23, 2010, Apple's Mr. Cue e-mailed his boss, Steve Jobs, and noted that Penguin USA CEO David Shanks 'wanted an assurance that he is 1 of 4 before signing'."
There's about 20 pages worth of evidence, with email and telephone conversations quoted. This will be a big case. It looks like Steve Jobs and the publishing companies' CEOs were personally involved in the conspiracy.
It sounds like the DOJ has evidence that collusion occurred. From the complaint filed today: "As a result of discussions with the Publisher Defendants, Apple learned that the Publisher Defendants shared a common objective with Apple to limit e-book retail price competition, and that the Publisher Defendants also desired to have popular e-book retail prices stabilize at levels significantly higher than $9.99. Together, Apple and the Publisher Defendants reached an agreement whereby retail price competition would cease (which all the conspirators desired), retail e-book prices would increase significantly (which the Publisher Defendants desired), and Apple would be guaranteed a 30 percent "commission" on each e-book it sold (which Apple desired)."
Case information, including the complaint, is here.
2) Publisher/seller model. Why couldn't the publishers sell the e-books (individual ID per copy) to the end sellers at a price, just like they do now for physical books. Then the end seller could decide on the end price. I admit I don't have any e-books, so I'm not conversant in this area.
That's exactly how it worked, prior to Apple's entry into the market. Apple forced the change away from the model you describe.
It actually is legit. Here's an article from 2010 giving the same budget numbers, and saying that it will be ready by 2011 at the earliest. Getting close to ready in 2012 then seems about right. Story
I have two offices, each with a different desktop (WinXP on one, OS X Lion on the other), two MacBooks (Lion on one, Leopard on the other), and a home Linux system (Ubuntu/KDE). I find all systems to be fairly usable, and for the most part, I don't really care which one I'm using. I just want to be able to use the computer, so trying to push one type of system over another seems pretty pointless if they're all ultimately usable. The differences among the systems end up being pretty minor:
Linux:
- Easy connectivity to remote systems/servers.
- Easy to find, install, and uninstall software via apt-get, with reasonable assurance that the centralized repositories aren't hosting malware.
- I never think about licenses, everything is free [beer].
OS X: /Applications or from there to the trash. (Though having to remember which applications uninstall with a drag to the trash and which need to run an uninstaller is annoying).
- Easy connectivity to remote systems/servers.
- UNIX with a pretty GUI (though KDE is pretty nice nowadays).
- Many applications have easy installs/uninstalls, just drag the folder into
Windows: .exe's from random websites is worrisome.
- Usable as long as I can stay away from the start menu (which I find cumbersome).
- Needs a real command line that lets me ssh & scp. Having to use a GUI program to scp annoys me.
- No customizability. For example, I can't figure out how to have the clock on the taskbar also list today's date.
- Installing software via downloads of
Just go read their early January 2000 article about the upcoming inauguration of G.W.Bush, entitled "Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity Is Finally Over", especially the part about using the military.
Or their issue from the first week of September, 2000: "Terrorist extremely annoyed by delayed flight".
I'm amused that the ACLU's map has given West Virginia back to Virginia.
The majority of people in the US don't vote because they don't feel that any of the candidates have their interests in mind and because they feel that no matter who they vote for, they're going to be screwed over anyway. The inconvenience of having to walk/drive to the polling place isn't the issue, and solving that isn't likely to dramatically improve voter turnout.
Oh, gotcha. The application's toolbar is in the title bar now. I've never even noticed that toolbar, as I've always just assumed that titlebar buttons control the window layout. For as many times as I've clicked the Office roundel in 2007, I'd never even noticed the save button to the right. My brain just ignores titlebar buttons when thinking about the application inside the window.
Oh, gotcha. The application's toolbar is in the title bar now. I've never scanned those, as I've always just assumed that titlebar buttons control the window layout. For as many times as I've clicked the Office roundel in 2007, I'd never even noticed the save button to the right. My brain just ignores titlebar buttons when thinking about the application inside the window.
Anyone who has ever used a word processor can sit down with Microsoft Word and write a letter. There will probably be things you don't know how to do, so you'll end up searching the Ribbon to find them. But that's just it -- you can find them.
Find undo.
Actually, I think you're missing the point. Windows 8 will now be pretty similar to OS X. Microsoft isn't replacing the desktop interface, they're adding Metro to it. It'll be a standard desktop with the ability to load the mobile interface if you choose. That's exactly how OS X works.
Windows: Desktop. Hit a key, see metro.
OS X: Desktop. Run launchpad, see iPad grid.
It's the same thing.
I guess we should have worked harder on our lobbying and less on our engineering.
Yes. Your competitors hired Michael Chertoff. Of course your company wasn't going to win the contract.
Fair enough, but educational techniques *have* been changing
Well, if you look at the trend in math, it's pretty clear that the changes have just made math education worse. Maybe what we need to do rather than create new texts and new techniques that don't work is resurrect older techniques and older textbooks that actually seemed to educate.
Yes, you're right, I was looking only at fuel prices. Bringing all those costs to bear would make the non-TGV routes cheaper than driving. I didn't think about the other costs because they're paid by my employer.
TGV is probably still more expensive, but that's not really surprising since it also cruises twice as fast as the autoroutes. My last TGV ticket was 71€ to get from Paris to the city where I live. It was 1h20 on the train, but the drive would have been 2.5 to 3 hours.
It's not as clear as you describe. I live in France. Gas prices here work out to $7.50 to $8.00 per gallon of diesel. However, while I have the option to take the train instead (an option that is often missing in the US), the train ticket for just myself is more expensive than burning the fuel would have been. Taking a family on the train is ridiculously expensive. It's not even the high-speed train.
Yes, we have options in Europe due to better mass transit infrastructure. However, they are *all* expensive.