It may be paranoia, but I am considering that given the welcome that Vista has received, Microsoft had no choice but to do this. Producing two OSs that compete with one another is insanity... especially when the product that's winning is not the latest one.
So the solution is fairly obvious - if you can't improve Vista, you can make XP worse. That way, people know they're going to be dissatisfied with your product from the get-go, but at least they'll buy the latest one.
Leave the cost, but instead have the cost be a percentage of the annual revenue of the entity that holds it, or a higher percentage of the annual revenue the copyright brings, whichever is larger.
So a copyrighted work that is not bringing revenue is inherently cheaper... and it's cheaper for an individual to hold a copyright than a corporation.
So far we have ONLY found life on one planet-- a planet that has liquid water, a single moon relatively large compared to the planet's mass, active volcanic and tectonic activity, a strong magnetosphere, and an active weather system.
While we have theorized that not all of those are needed, the truth is that we haven't found so much as a single primitive cell anywhere else. And we haven't found one single location in the entire universe with all five save for our home planet. You sound like a seasoned explorer of space, who has spent countless years braving the depths of interstellar space, visited hundreds of remote star systems, only to be faced with disappointment time after time.
I really feel for you.
/sarcasm
The kind of a claim you're making is even more of a hyperbole than claiming that there are no mexicans working in the kitchens of New York City restaurants, because you haven't seen one in Dubai.
Maybe it's just me, but I think that movements such as PETA are a sign of deep issues within our society. We have people who are so completely satiated and content with their lives, that they are willing to spend vast amounts of their time, effort, and money, in order to achieve something so truly inane.
We have hunger, diseases, war... and all these people want to do is to get everybody to stop eating animals. Considering that it was likely the consumption of large amounts of animal protein that allowed humanity to evolve rather rapidly in the last stage of our evolution, I find PETA's goals rather ironic.
Isn't one of the points of the movie that while scientists espouse neutrality, lack of bias, objectivity, etc. that they are not actually following it?
Actually, this is just Ben Stein's great way of capitalizing on fears and preconceptions of the population. He literally produced a film that caters to the ignorant and the blindly faithful... without even a shred of evidence that he himself believes it.
The movie will do great harm to the already eroded image of science and scientists in the U.S., despite presenting very flimsy evidence in the Michael Moore style of film-making (i.e. gross misrepresentations, half-truths, and outright lies, sprinkled with a dose of misplaced truth to prevent it from being rejected outright).
Stein actually told the people he interviewed for the movie that he was making a completely different film (philosophy, I think). This is grossly unethical, but par for the course for current media. Frankly, I just didn't expect Stein to follow suit.
As a scientist who believes in God, I am appalled at this film, and I think Stein should be ashamed of himself. Maybe if not for asshole exercises such as this, people would calm down and realize that unless you take religious texts literally, they address questions that are incompatible with science, and thus cannot possibly be in conflict with the latter.
"Sloppy" should not be in a lawyer's vocabulary. In court, "sloppy" can land somebody in jail, backrupt them, cause divorce, take away their children, and destroy their life altogether in a myriad of ways.
"Sloppy" is what a McDonalds' burger maker does. When lawyers serve a subpoena that's about as accurate as addressing McCain as "Mrs Clinton", there should certainly be repercussions.
Otherwise, what prevents them from being "sloppy" and just file papers against every single college student in the United States?
Dell sells Ubuntu, and evidently they've been selling better than Dell initially expected. It's still in a different section of the Website, as opposed to being a direct choice opposite of Windows... but it's there nonetheless.
Does it still require you to edit a configuration file in any situation?
Right.
It's getting better, but it's not ready. Umm... I was a Windows power user for awhile... and on countless times I was forced to hand-edit the registry, as well as a number of other files.
Does that mean Windows (XP) isn't ready for the desktop?
Of course, if you had read the article, you'd know that these solar plants use no special material, except aluminium. Building and maintaining these thermal solar plants would probably cost a lot less than, say, building equivalent nuclear plants. If YOU had read the article, you'd see that you need to cover more than 8200 square miles with this, in order to generate enough (daytime) power for the U.S.
Are you really telling me that building a set of structures 100x100 miles is going to be that much cheaper than building 20-30 nuclear power plants... which continue producing power when the sun goes down...
And, to stay with this example, it would last longer and produce zero radioactive materials. Now the latter is an interesting thought. Certainly this could be the kind of a massive project that could employ tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, and perhaps even help us get out of an economic slump, the way New Deal projects were designed. However, let us not be deluded into thinking that there is no opportunity cost here.
As far as I know the amount of IGF-1 content is significantly increased (+ 40-70%) in Posilac treated cows compared to untreated ones.
IGF-I had been associated with the growth of numerous tumors, including colon (Tricoli et al., 1986), smooth muscle (Hoppener et al., 1988), breast (Rosen et al., 1991), and others (Pavelic et al., 1986). You're making a very common mistake. You're drawing conclusions based on inadequate information.
This is what you're given:
1. IGF-1 overexpression has been associated with cancer
2. IGF-1 is identical for cows and humans
3. IGF-1 is increased in cows treated with growth hormone.
The data you're NOT given are the most essential figures:
1. How much IGF-1 is transferred from consumed cow products into the human bloodstream
2. What is the absolute contribution of the xenobiotic IGF-1 to the total IGF-1
3. How is the latter value related to the amounts of IGF-1 found in cancer.
Without those 3 figures, you can't make ANY conclusions... especially given that a 70% increase in blood levels of IGF-1 in cows is unlikely to transfer efficiently through the digestive system of people into the bloodstream, and what makes it across is probably going to be irrelevant against the background levels of IGF-1 already present in the host bloodstream.
This is a very common mistake that people make, when they are not used to analyzing data on a daily basis. I think it took me the better part of a graduate degree to learn to see it, and I still miss it a lot more than my advisor.
I'm no specialist, but one of the problems is that the functioning of growth hormones does not stop in the animal... also the consumers of the meat will be exposed to the growth hormone with all of its medical implications. Actually growth hormones are species-specific - cow hormones won't work on people.
Another problem is ethical... there is no reason to give animals growth hormone but to increase the profits of the farmers. The reason is to increase yield of meat or milk per animal. Yet it seems that you're bothered by even the possibility that the farmer may benefit...
We don't go around giving our kids growth hormones, do we? We do when they don't grow well.
Sorry, I should've specified - I'd like a scientific explanation... one devoid of the word "corporation".
The idea of rBGH-treated cows, somehow causing cancer in people is preposterous from a biological point of view... which is why if you're going to claim it, I'd like to see primary peer-reviewed literature telling me so. But for Slashdot, I'd be fine if you could just provide me with a theory of what happens biochemically to have such an effect... you know... in reality... not in a hippie wet dream.
The concept of "blind trust" as applied to public, but not professional sources, isn't new... and it certainly existed long before Wikipedia.
However, with the advent of the internet, the same fads that would have come and gone in the real world, seem to have gained a staying power that is truly incredible to behold.
I think that part of the reason is that the Internet finally gave any individual the ability to distribute "media"... wherefore previously economic barriers would have prevented the dissemination of information by most independent individuals. With this barrier gone, any cook can make a claim, and as long as the claim is ridiculous enough to attract attention, it is also certain to attract a following.
For instance, how would one explain the "Autism/Vaccination" fiasco? Talking of blind trust, here we have literally hundreds of thousands of people, who willingly and knowingly ignore multiple large-scale peer-reviewed studies, only to put their faith into something that can only be described as an internet fad, started by some really sad an unfortunate parents, looking to place the blame for the tragic condition that befell their child.
The question is - what is there to be done about this. To be honest, I think that the situation can go both ways. We could slowly mature in our understanding of how the Internet works, and accept it as a public forum, with all the positive and negative implications that come with such a place. Or we could continue down into the rabbit hole of collective ignorance, into a future that I, for one, would not want to experience... a future where truth is no longer a function of fact, but a function of how many supporters an idea has.
Maybe I am behind the times... but could someone please explain to me what harm comes to PEOPLE from treating cows with growth hormone? It's not like a pesticide - it doesn't get concentrated up in the food chain. Hormones are species-specific, and their effects are strictly physiological. At least that's the information that I have.
So if anyone could explain to me what the problem is, I would highly appreciate it.
However, what bothers me most about Monsanto, is that they are killing the concept of genetically engineered crops (which is sure to become a necessity as the Earth's population grows), by doing exactly the kind of genetic engineering that is risky, dangerous, and epitomizes the idea of taking the easy way out.
Subpixel shading + No hinting + High resolution = completely invisible font pixels & gorgeous sharp fonts on Ubuntu 8.04 - superior to anything I've seen on Windows or Mac... but it only works on relatively high resolution monitors (in my experience). So a 15" 1280x720 screen is never going to have good-looking fonts... but a 1680x1050 15" screen will (it's >2X the number of pixels).
"who needs to spend $300 on one of these cards creative put out?"
Hopefully nobody. One may, however, need to spend money of a good sound card, in order to output to a decent audio system.
For me, the absolutely deal-breaker is Creative's insistence of resampling all 44.1kHz content to 48kHz. I don't rely on my sound card to do any of the work - I just want it to take the data, and faithfully stream it via SPDIF into my external DAC.
That's why for many years now, I've been enjoying the services of the M-Audio Revolution.
Umm... I have used a number of commercial email systems (in-house for major companies and institutions) and none of them could provide a service that was even remotely close to what Gmail does for free.
What annoys me about this kind of hippie nonsense is that you single out the United States. You know, last time I checked, it was about the connections you had REGARDLESS of the country.
Normally I am very reserved when it comes to political commentary. However, this time I simply cannot help but note that the show has certainly reached a new low, and we should all be ashamed of ourselves.
It is absolutely despicable that we've become so fat and complacent, that we allow our government to pull these sorts of stunts. Looking at the proposed legislation, one should note that IP infringement might be punished more severely than rape, if these laws are to become real. Actually, we should see the whole thing as a rape... the rape of our Constitution, and every value that made our society ever so slightly better than the regimes we like to fight so much.
Google is riding the wave of computer hardware commoditization into one where general computing is also a commodity. Google's approach here is exemplary because it shows that monetizing every aspect of the consumer's digital interactions (which is essentially the current model for computing/internet-based businesses in the U.S.) is not necessarily the key to maximizing one's profits. By providing basic services free of charge, Google gains a share of a market that wasn't traditionally its own, and thus gains billions of additional impressions for its ads. Furthermore, by leveraging its trusted name, Google can now reasonably expect a fair increase in its ad audience with every additional service it offers.
This is a genius idea, which is an example of how forward thinking and good PR can bring in higher profits than unadulterated greed (yes, telecoms, I am looking at you). However, what this also means is that with its large cash purse, Google can continue to provide further services, channeling more and more monitor-watching eyes to its own webpages. Its purchase of Youtube provides ample evidence that Google won't be upset if you spend 100% of your computing time, on a Google-branded internet.
Slashdot Mirror
It may be paranoia, but I am considering that given the welcome that Vista has received, Microsoft had no choice but to do this. Producing two OSs that compete with one another is insanity... especially when the product that's winning is not the latest one.
So the solution is fairly obvious - if you can't improve Vista, you can make XP worse. That way, people know they're going to be dissatisfied with your product from the get-go, but at least they'll buy the latest one.
Leave the cost, but instead have the cost be a percentage of the annual revenue of the entity that holds it, or a higher percentage of the annual revenue the copyright brings, whichever is larger.
So a copyrighted work that is not bringing revenue is inherently cheaper... and it's cheaper for an individual to hold a copyright than a corporation.
While we have theorized that not all of those are needed, the truth is that we haven't found so much as a single primitive cell anywhere else. And we haven't found one single location in the entire universe with all five save for our home planet. You sound like a seasoned explorer of space, who has spent countless years braving the depths of interstellar space, visited hundreds of remote star systems, only to be faced with disappointment time after time.
I really feel for you.
The kind of a claim you're making is even more of a hyperbole than claiming that there are no mexicans working in the kitchens of New York City restaurants, because you haven't seen one in Dubai.
Maybe it's just me, but I think that movements such as PETA are a sign of deep issues within our society. We have people who are so completely satiated and content with their lives, that they are willing to spend vast amounts of their time, effort, and money, in order to achieve something so truly inane.
We have hunger, diseases, war... and all these people want to do is to get everybody to stop eating animals. Considering that it was likely the consumption of large amounts of animal protein that allowed humanity to evolve rather rapidly in the last stage of our evolution, I find PETA's goals rather ironic.
Actually, this is just Ben Stein's great way of capitalizing on fears and preconceptions of the population. He literally produced a film that caters to the ignorant and the blindly faithful... without even a shred of evidence that he himself believes it.
The movie will do great harm to the already eroded image of science and scientists in the U.S., despite presenting very flimsy evidence in the Michael Moore style of film-making (i.e. gross misrepresentations, half-truths, and outright lies, sprinkled with a dose of misplaced truth to prevent it from being rejected outright).
Stein actually told the people he interviewed for the movie that he was making a completely different film (philosophy, I think). This is grossly unethical, but par for the course for current media. Frankly, I just didn't expect Stein to follow suit.
As a scientist who believes in God, I am appalled at this film, and I think Stein should be ashamed of himself. Maybe if not for asshole exercises such as this, people would calm down and realize that unless you take religious texts literally, they address questions that are incompatible with science, and thus cannot possibly be in conflict with the latter.
"For example, I have a quite regular mouse IMO with side buttons. Do they work as expected out of the box?"
Mine do... on a logitech MX400.
Please mod parent up.
"Sloppy" should not be in a lawyer's vocabulary. In court, "sloppy" can land somebody in jail, backrupt them, cause divorce, take away their children, and destroy their life altogether in a myriad of ways.
"Sloppy" is what a McDonalds' burger maker does. When lawyers serve a subpoena that's about as accurate as addressing McCain as "Mrs Clinton", there should certainly be repercussions.
Otherwise, what prevents them from being "sloppy" and just file papers against every single college student in the United States?
Dell sells Ubuntu, and evidently they've been selling better than Dell initially expected. It's still in a different section of the Website, as opposed to being a direct choice opposite of Windows... but it's there nonetheless.
IGF-I had been associated with the growth of numerous tumors, including colon (Tricoli et al., 1986), smooth muscle (Hoppener et al., 1988), breast (Rosen et al., 1991), and others (Pavelic et al., 1986). You're making a very common mistake. You're drawing conclusions based on inadequate information. This is what you're given: 1. IGF-1 overexpression has been associated with cancer 2. IGF-1 is identical for cows and humans 3. IGF-1 is increased in cows treated with growth hormone.The data you're NOT given are the most essential figures: 1. How much IGF-1 is transferred from consumed cow products into the human bloodstream 2. What is the absolute contribution of the xenobiotic IGF-1 to the total IGF-1 3. How is the latter value related to the amounts of IGF-1 found in cancer.
Without those 3 figures, you can't make ANY conclusions... especially given that a 70% increase in blood levels of IGF-1 in cows is unlikely to transfer efficiently through the digestive system of people into the bloodstream, and what makes it across is probably going to be irrelevant against the background levels of IGF-1 already present in the host bloodstream.
This is a very common mistake that people make, when they are not used to analyzing data on a daily basis. I think it took me the better part of a graduate degree to learn to see it, and I still miss it a lot more than my advisor.
Yawn. Citation needed.
Sorry, I should've specified - I'd like a scientific explanation... one devoid of the word "corporation".
The idea of rBGH-treated cows, somehow causing cancer in people is preposterous from a biological point of view... which is why if you're going to claim it, I'd like to see primary peer-reviewed literature telling me so. But for Slashdot, I'd be fine if you could just provide me with a theory of what happens biochemically to have such an effect... you know... in reality... not in a hippie wet dream.
The concept of "blind trust" as applied to public, but not professional sources, isn't new... and it certainly existed long before Wikipedia.
However, with the advent of the internet, the same fads that would have come and gone in the real world, seem to have gained a staying power that is truly incredible to behold.
I think that part of the reason is that the Internet finally gave any individual the ability to distribute "media"... wherefore previously economic barriers would have prevented the dissemination of information by most independent individuals. With this barrier gone, any cook can make a claim, and as long as the claim is ridiculous enough to attract attention, it is also certain to attract a following.
For instance, how would one explain the "Autism/Vaccination" fiasco? Talking of blind trust, here we have literally hundreds of thousands of people, who willingly and knowingly ignore multiple large-scale peer-reviewed studies, only to put their faith into something that can only be described as an internet fad, started by some really sad an unfortunate parents, looking to place the blame for the tragic condition that befell their child.
The question is - what is there to be done about this. To be honest, I think that the situation can go both ways. We could slowly mature in our understanding of how the Internet works, and accept it as a public forum, with all the positive and negative implications that come with such a place. Or we could continue down into the rabbit hole of collective ignorance, into a future that I, for one, would not want to experience... a future where truth is no longer a function of fact, but a function of how many supporters an idea has.
Maybe I am behind the times... but could someone please explain to me what harm comes to PEOPLE from treating cows with growth hormone? It's not like a pesticide - it doesn't get concentrated up in the food chain. Hormones are species-specific, and their effects are strictly physiological. At least that's the information that I have.
So if anyone could explain to me what the problem is, I would highly appreciate it.
However, what bothers me most about Monsanto, is that they are killing the concept of genetically engineered crops (which is sure to become a necessity as the Earth's population grows), by doing exactly the kind of genetic engineering that is risky, dangerous, and epitomizes the idea of taking the easy way out.
I guess they decided to take phrases "computer crash" and "blue screen of death" seriously.
I could only imagine the program modifying GPS directions on the fly:
- Left turn ahead.
- Traffic ahead.
- Please turn right and over the railing
- Please fall 200 feet to the road below and proceed west on highway 53.
Subpixel shading + No hinting + High resolution = completely invisible font pixels & gorgeous sharp fonts on Ubuntu 8.04 - superior to anything I've seen on Windows or Mac... but it only works on relatively high resolution monitors (in my experience). So a 15" 1280x720 screen is never going to have good-looking fonts... but a 1680x1050 15" screen will (it's >2X the number of pixels).
"who needs to spend $300 on one of these cards creative put out?" Hopefully nobody. One may, however, need to spend money of a good sound card, in order to output to a decent audio system. For me, the absolutely deal-breaker is Creative's insistence of resampling all 44.1kHz content to 48kHz. I don't rely on my sound card to do any of the work - I just want it to take the data, and faithfully stream it via SPDIF into my external DAC. That's why for many years now, I've been enjoying the services of the M-Audio Revolution.
This kind of language reminds me of this great xkcd.com piece.
Umm... I have used a number of commercial email systems (in-house for major companies and institutions) and none of them could provide a service that was even remotely close to what Gmail does for free.
Through the border where? Into Mexico? Are you going to tell me they have less of a corruption problem?
At least here we're free to whine about it, with little fear of having our children's ears sent to us as a reminder of who runs the show.
What annoys me about this kind of hippie nonsense is that you single out the United States. You know, last time I checked, it was about the connections you had REGARDLESS of the country.
Normally I am very reserved when it comes to political commentary. However, this time I simply cannot help but note that the show has certainly reached a new low, and we should all be ashamed of ourselves.
It is absolutely despicable that we've become so fat and complacent, that we allow our government to pull these sorts of stunts. Looking at the proposed legislation, one should note that IP infringement might be punished more severely than rape, if these laws are to become real. Actually, we should see the whole thing as a rape... the rape of our Constitution, and every value that made our society ever so slightly better than the regimes we like to fight so much.
Google is riding the wave of computer hardware commoditization into one where general computing is also a commodity. Google's approach here is exemplary because it shows that monetizing every aspect of the consumer's digital interactions (which is essentially the current model for computing/internet-based businesses in the U.S.) is not necessarily the key to maximizing one's profits. By providing basic services free of charge, Google gains a share of a market that wasn't traditionally its own, and thus gains billions of additional impressions for its ads. Furthermore, by leveraging its trusted name, Google can now reasonably expect a fair increase in its ad audience with every additional service it offers.
This is a genius idea, which is an example of how forward thinking and good PR can bring in higher profits than unadulterated greed (yes, telecoms, I am looking at you). However, what this also means is that with its large cash purse, Google can continue to provide further services, channeling more and more monitor-watching eyes to its own webpages. Its purchase of Youtube provides ample evidence that Google won't be upset if you spend 100% of your computing time, on a Google-branded internet.