Sony's decision to kill the unit in its home market and reduce the rate at which it's investing in future OLED TV development has been perceived in some corners as a judgment on the long-term feasibility of OLED technology
No, it was a judgment in how stupid they were to come out with an ultra-premium-price 11" TV.
I understand that the Japanese are space-conscious, but 11" is a ridiculous size, especially in the day of 1080i broadcasts.
Sony came out with the 11" because that was the largest they could reasonably manufacture, but they forgot that it doesn't matter how cool the TV is if you can't see the damn thing. This one was so small, it'd practically have to be on your nightstand to watch it in bed. Maybe on your desk? Who wants to have an 11" TV on their desk when they have a 20" LCD display, or a 15" laptop display?
If they come out with an OLED set at a price that AV enthusiasts can afford at a size at least some people can use, they'll sell.
Uh, actually, no airfoil, either fixed or rotary, generates lift.
Uh, whut? "The shape of the disc, an airfoil in cross-section, allows it to fly by generating lift as it moves through the air while rotating." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_disc ).
If you're trying to say "it doesn't generate lift unless it is moving"...well, uh, no shit, sherlock?
K, so how is Brin and Page developing PageRank when an obscure economics paper published at Harvard in 1941 and only re-discovered in 2010 reinventing the wheel?
Who says it was first re-discovered in 2010, and not in the 90's, by two guys from Stanford?
There are a million possible ways Brin and Page could have come across that paper. A friend who was studying economics, maybe a magazine like the Economist mentioned it, etc.
Pretty funny claiming to be the first to re-discover something, though. What if you didn't 'discover' the other mentions in the, oh, SIXTY YEARS since the paper was published?
Also, I don't know which is worse. The idea of them stumbling across the paper and using the idea (and thus having no original idea except the application of the concept to ranking of web pages, which isn't nearly as impressive) or the idea that the PageRank concept is something of an obvious idea?
"The thorium fuel cycle creates Uranium-233, which can be used for making nuclear weapons - and since there are no neutrons from spontaneous fission of U-233, U-233 can be used easily in a simple gun-type nuclear bomb design"
Twenty-four mobile network operators have formed the Wholesale Applications Community to avoid fragmenting the apps market and to give developers one point of entry to all the members.
You say "ah-void frag-muhn-tation of the mar-ket", I say "mohn-op-oh-lee."
Anyone want to guess how they'll leverage this? My guess is that if you piss off one mobile carrier with your app (or blame them for a problem), you'll be blocked from all of them. Plus, of course, pushing the carrier's commissions as high as possible.
It's as fine-grained as you want it to be. Each Buzz can be published to any contact group you want, and you can select as many or as few as you want.
I'd never used groups in Gmail, but after spending about 20 minutes to sort my most common contacts into groups, I was able to publish Buzzes to specific groups of friends. For example, my friends really into cars probably are less interested in my posts about community group events.
End result, if you're smart, are Buzzes that are of the most interest to specific groups. Win for everyone. So many people post crap to Facebook endlessly about stuff I don't care about, and get 'hidden' as a result.
Tape? SS wire (what's used for tying down hoodpins on racecars and securing critical bolts) or aircraft cable (used with crimping connectors for tamperproof seals), some velcro bands, rope?
Didn't they learn anything from the apollo missions?
Create a second account, use it to shrink primary account (useful regardless, for many other troubleshooting reasons.)
+Get rid of the long waiting times at logout
And how often do you log out of your Mac? The only time I do that is when I reboot, and according to uptime, I haven't rebooted in more than a week. That was only because of security updates.
+Be safer by using open-source
1)When is the last time you validated the checksum of a package or source? 2)When is the last time you reviewed (end to end) the code for an open-source program? 3)When is the last time you looked at ANY source, instead of just reading README and then typing "./configure"? 4)How many people out there are qualified to review source code enough to detect the myriad of security vulnerabilities possible, intentional or otherwise?
The open-source security mantra has been trotted out for a decade and it still rings as hollow as can be. It's about as intelligent as handing blueprints to every car owner and wondering why people are still buying cars that break. 99.99999% of your users a)can't be bothered b)aren't qualified.
should be an embarrassment of journalistic integrity.
Slashvertisements, basic English grammar and spelling problems, completely wrong summaries and titles...
...and you a)think that Slashdot is "journalism" and b)it's had integrity to lose in the first place?
I like Slashdot, but gimme a break...it's a user-driven blog which directs readers to existing stories (now often lagging behind the major news wires) with good categorization and semi-sophisticated commenting system, utilized by a larger commenter population. Not much more, and definitely not journalism.
When "free market" (not that it's actually free... but hey, at least there's "competition") has failed repeatedly for decades, a competent monopoly with a proven track record is more than welcome.
Complaining that the free market has "failed repeatedly for decades" is like standing on an office building and bitching it's not a skyscraper.
Looked around recently? The internet is doing pretty well.
I bet they'll receive tens of thousands of applications in the coming weeks.
And guess what comes next? A reverse-competitive bidding process, whereby various cities write off their taxes on both the profits and the capital equipment, waive requirements like community access programs, and more- just to get google to give them fiber-to-the-home, something that has no proven public benefit. Which is idiotic- I don't want my tax dollars used to fund capital expenditures for corporations!
Anyone else a little more than slightly freaked out by this move? Google now encompasses search, email, instant messaging, calendaring, social networking, blogging (both content production and reading), cellular and telephone services, online payment, and now actual last-mile services? What's left?
Why does it feel like in 10 years we'll be calling it The Gnet, not the Internet?
Why the quotes? A disc generates real aerodynamic lift; anyone who plays Ultimate can tell you that. Throw right-handed and drop the outside edge, and it will curve to the right. Raise it and aim a bit out and up, and you can throw an "outside in" (aim up and out because, like with a plane, you have to compensate for lift being generated at an angle, which means less lift straight-up. You also have slip.) Tilt the disc upwards but throw it downwards, and it'll appear to "bounce."
Also: don't call a "disc" a Frisbee around an Ultimate player. Why? Wham-O saw a bunch of people playing this game called Ultimate, freaked out that someone was using their product for a game. They then tried to a)control it and then when that failed, b)made their own game to try and drown it out. It was a pretty despicable and petty move. Now they mostly spend their time chasing down anyone who uses the word "frisbee". Had they simply been content to sell discs, they'd be selling them by the boatload to Ultimate players. Instead, they got greedy and it backfired on 'em.
Also, Ultrastar's discs (considered the standard) are much more easier on the hand for most, and tend to fly better.
Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects.
Uh, no- all congresscritters hate it because NASA is giant cash-cow for the defense industry- companies like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. Hell hath no fury like a congresscritter who wants to stand on a platform in front of a defense factory in his or her district, come election time, and talk about how important the makers of the A43 Latrine Servicing Truck are to the defense and security of our great nation.
All those probes, satellites, etc? Built by defense contractors, carried up on rockets built by defense contractors, and very often launched from launch facilities owned by defense contractors.
The shuttle costs half a billion dollars per launch, for example...and almost everything NASA does is outsourced to government contractors.
As the NY Times discusses- the Christian nutjobs pushed themselves onto school boards over the last 20 years, and that's how we got into this mess. It's time for the rationalists, atheists, and humanists to do the same.
Hold more than a bachelor's degree, or a degree in education? Run for your local school board. Especially if you live in Texas. You're running against dentists and hair stylists. Just remember to not appear to be some anti-god nutjob.
Meanwhile, everyone lobby their state representatives and education boards to refuse to use any textbooks Texas does. Sue, if necessary. Make Texasisms so toxic that textbook companies will have no choice but to produce books for texas, and books for the rest of us. If they want to turn themselves into a hellhole of ignorance, so be it, but they can do it alone.
What? Look at the enterprise-marketed laptop lines for a great example of what corporations want. They're not "esoteric" by any stretch.
Way to prove you don't work in IT, much less corporate level. We care about things like price, TCO, parts availability, interchangeability of accessories (within reason), and management.
Meanwhile, consumers want just about everything under the sun.
and are concerned with getting the cheapest hardware possible.
Purchase price is not the ultimate concern, no- ballpark is important, yes. Again, way to prove you don't work in IT. I've never had a boss that said "well, this $3000 server is $300 cheaper than the other one, so we're going to get that, even though it doesn't have IPMI and we have no in-house experience with this brand, and their support contract is 8hr, not 4hr."
They have no desire or tolerance for "cool" Completely not the market Apple is going for.
It's not a matter of "cool". It's a matter that Apple likes consumers because they're easily pushed around and they CONSUME. And if you think companies don't want "Cool", you haven't seen a CEO of a million dollar company get handed his new Blackberry (hell hath no fury if it works more poorly than the old one, however.)
Corporations say, "Hey. Why did you just change the display port AGAIN? Now half of our 2000 member sales force have a different display port from the other half." Or, "why are all of our iMacs developing vertical lines? Our CEO's secretary has gone through two machines in a month and he's raising hell because they can't work. Don't you people have any quality control? Send us some goddamn WORKING computers or we buy Dell from now on. That's straight from the CEO's mouth."
Corporations have legal departments, so that when machines die, lawyers say "give us our money back or we seek damages." Consumers just bitch and moan on online forums- and purchase decisions are more rational in corporations (heh, I can't believe I just said that, but I mean they're not *emotional*.)
Corporations say "Oh, Macbook Pros are $2k? Well, we're buying 100 of them this month, and we've given you $500k in business this quarter. So, how about $1700?". Consumers just hand over their CC.
Corporations say, "If a laptop breaks, we want someone to come in and fix it. And if you won't, we want to be able to train our own IT staff in how to fix them and be able to order parts." Apple a)won't let you order parts unless you're a reseller, b)won't do on-site service of anything except Mac Pros and Xserves. Ever spent your day standing in line at the Genius Bar with a laptop belonging to a CEO of a $50M company because that was the best support option, and then arguing with some pimply-faced "Genius" who is used to talking to grandmas about why their gumdrop iMac is dead?
In big Apple-using companies I've worked at, we kept every single machine that died and cannibalized them for parts for the other ones, because we couldn't get the goddamn parts from Apple, couldn't get service manuals, couldn't train CSRs.
Meanwhile, HP, Dell, IBM, Sun will all happily take our precious dollars and promise that if anything breaks in my shiny server or desktop, I'll have a replacement part sitting on my desk in FOUR HOURS. They'll let almost anyone order parts, and happily train people in how to repair their products. And if a laptop breaks, they'll come out and service it on the spot if you bought that support plan, so our CEO doesn't have to be without his laptop while it gets shipped to fucking TEXAS, the only place you can get a Macbook Pro repaired if it's anything remotely complicated (the Apple Store can do drive replacements, that's about it.)
I had to replace two failed drives on an HP server once (one system drive, one data array drive.) I said "I have red lights, they were kicked out of the array by the controller." We had a 4 hour support contr
Maybe open-source project authors will Walk The Talk, instead of producing a decent-but-slightly-cranky-and-badly-documented open-source project, and then expecting to be able to make money off book deals instead of producing decent documentation.
If this is an independent photographer that has transferred the rights to the photos to the government then yes there could be copyright protection, if the photographer is an employee of the government then these pic should be public domain.
Please google "photographer work for hire."
The photographer does not retain ANY copyright over work done as part of employment. If it's contract work, it is unlikely that a government agency would agree to give the photographer copyright over the photos- I'm sure there's a mile-long line of photographers happy to work with the Whitehouse.
And I know I always evaluate whether research is scientifically valid based on two binary values: who funded it, and whether it was positive or negative.
God forbid someone actually look at those 350 studies and see if any of them even had the beginnings of a valid scientific process? What the sample sizes were? How they defined biological effect or harm?
Look, you condescending fuckhead, I know "the road is not a playground".
In one case I was hit from behind while making a legal left turn from a left-turn only lane, by a guy who went straight, illegally. In the second case, I was doored. The driver flung open her door while I was going about 10-12 MPH, right in front of me. I had just enough time to notice the door opening before I found myself flying through the air upside-down, looking at the cars behind me, and thinking "oh please, may I not get run over."
I had a cabbie make an oncoming left turn straight at me at an intersection, and then scream at me to get the fuck out of his way.
I had a valet parking attendant cut me off coming out of a parking lot- in the process of avoiding him, I went over the handlebars and landed in the road. He laughed.
I know people on a student cycling team who have been out on group training rides and had drivers on side-streets (or making oncoming left turns) drive right into the middle of the pack (with the cyclist hitting the side of the car, usually at +15 mph.) This happens about twice a year, and usually puts the cyclist in the hospital and completely destroys their bike.
Or how about that doctor who was convicted of slamming on his brakes to "scare" cyclists? Two of them couldn't stop in time, and they smashed into his back window. It came out in court that he had a long history of such road rage against cyclists.
It is the job of the more at-risk to protect themselves!
And then, by extension, the victims (let's not beat around the bush here- "the at-risk", my ass) if they don't protect themselves, deserve what they get? I suppose you tell rape victims that they shouldn't have dressed slutty? Or how about telling domestic violence victims that they shouldn't have made their partner angry? Society does not work by lecturing the victims- we punishing the criminals.
The thing is, guilt-tripping people like that doesn't actually work. If it did, PETA would have long since prevaled I wouldn't still be eating 5 pounds of cow every week.
I'd guess at least 1/4 of my friends are vegetarian, and most of them do it because of animal cruelty at megafarms and environmental impact (the amount of methane produced by cattle, and the resources required to grow cattle vs. the amount of resources required to grow the same amount of calories in vegetables.)
I'm glad you used sound reasoning and solid argumentation and did not resort to baser things like guilt-trips and emotional appeals. Well done, sir.
Sure, because the parent I replied to had sound reasoning and solid argumentation when he said that most cyclists on the road are lawless jerks- and implied that they deserve what they get, or that drivers shouldn't be responsible for hitting them. Also, I think it's pretty logical and good reasoning to say, "When is the last time you read, 'motorist killed by cyclist'?"
You know what? If reading that story and looking at that picture of that orphan makes a couple of Slashdotters a liiiiitle bit more careful driving (around cyclists or not), then it was worth every mod point.
But yes, I see your point. Unfortunately, when you've been struck by cars twice (both breaking the law, when you were doing everything right), you tend to have a very shore fuse for the whole but-cyclists-are-lawless-idiots comment. Every time cyclist safety comes up in conversation someone has to blurt this out. While I was still in my cast from the first time I was hit, an asshole coworker sat across from me and told the table that cyclists knew that it was dangerous and thus drivers shouldn't be liable. I nearly cracked him over the head with the cast.
As a bicyclist (and driver. Remember that- most of us who ride our bikes ALSO DRIVE), I find it very difficult to sympathize with your viewpoint.
When is the last time you read, "motorist killed by bicyclist"? Bicyclists always lose in car-vs-bicyclist.
Now, look at the face of cyclist road deaths: Kylie Bruehler, orphaned when both her parents were struck by a truck. Go on, LOOK, Mr. Self Righteous. Look at the face of a 7 year old girl as she buries her parents. Look at her grandfather walk down the line of hundreds of cyclists who showed up to honor them.
Do you know what usually happens when a motorist kills a cyclist? Absolutely nothing- and this case is not the exception but the rule. Time and time again the cyclist community fumes when another person is struck simply because the driver wasn't paying attention to where they were going, the police call it a "terrible accident", and the driver walks off without so much as a manslaughter charge.
Some cities are studying the halfway measure of banning them from bicycle lanes while permitting them on streets
It's simple, really. Bicycle lanes exist to protect bicycles which travel slower than the rest of traffic. If you're assisted by an electric motor, there is less of a speed differential with traffic, but now you'll be a hazard to all the bicyclists yourself, since you'll be traveling much faster than them.
I can't wait for the first dooring of a moped rider in a bike lane- maybe drivers will start to take "look in your mirror before you fling open your door" seriously because it'll be in their best interests, both in terms of personal safety and damage to their car; a couple hundred pounds of metal and rider will at the very least bend that door pretty far forward, I'm guessing.
As someone who has been doored, it REALLY sucks getting doored because some stupid asshole can't take 2 seconds to look in their mirror before they open their door. The worst part isn't flying over your handlebars, or getting your hand permanently fucked up from getting pinched between the handlebar and edge of the car door at +10MPH with 150lb of momentum. The worst part is hitting the door and having that throw you right into the traffic lane and get hit/run over by a car, truck, or bus. It's not the door itself that kills bicyclists- it's getting hit/run over by the traffic that was just behind them. Yet another reason why bicycle lanes in the US, which are sandwiched between parked cars and traffic, are almost worse than nothing at all. In Europe and elsewhere, bike lanes are completely separated and often run nowhere near the road- they're a separate network.
Also, there is a special place in hell for all the hipster retards riding their 70's-era mopeds (Puchs seem to be the most popular.) In our part of town, there's at least a couple of them zipping around in their tight black jeans and flannel shirts, leaving a contrail of blue smoke which is so bad to ride behind and breathe, one has to pull over and wait a minute or two for it to dissipate. They're putting out 50 times the pollution of the SUV next to them, just to save money on gas and look cool.
Note how the US is just slliiiiiiiightly less than half of that pie chart, and the United states spent 5.8 times what China did in 2008. Let's also not forget who is embroiled in two wars- Iraq and Afghanistan.
GDP-wise, America outspends at a percentage twice the world average; Russia actually beat the US relative to GDP on a couple of occasions, but that probably has more to do with Russia's GDP being in the toilet.
Slashdot Mirror
Sony's decision to kill the unit in its home market and reduce the rate at which it's investing in future OLED TV development has been perceived in some corners as a judgment on the long-term feasibility of OLED technology
No, it was a judgment in how stupid they were to come out with an ultra-premium-price 11" TV.
I understand that the Japanese are space-conscious, but 11" is a ridiculous size, especially in the day of 1080i broadcasts.
Sony came out with the 11" because that was the largest they could reasonably manufacture, but they forgot that it doesn't matter how cool the TV is if you can't see the damn thing. This one was so small, it'd practically have to be on your nightstand to watch it in bed. Maybe on your desk? Who wants to have an 11" TV on their desk when they have a 20" LCD display, or a 15" laptop display?
If they come out with an OLED set at a price that AV enthusiasts can afford at a size at least some people can use, they'll sell.
Uh, actually, no airfoil, either fixed or rotary, generates lift.
Uh, whut? "The shape of the disc, an airfoil in cross-section, allows it to fly by generating lift as it moves through the air while rotating." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_disc ).
If you're trying to say "it doesn't generate lift unless it is moving"...well, uh, no shit, sherlock?
K, so how is Brin and Page developing PageRank when an obscure economics paper published at Harvard in 1941 and only re-discovered in 2010 reinventing the wheel?
Who says it was first re-discovered in 2010, and not in the 90's, by two guys from Stanford?
There are a million possible ways Brin and Page could have come across that paper. A friend who was studying economics, maybe a magazine like the Economist mentioned it, etc.
Pretty funny claiming to be the first to re-discover something, though. What if you didn't 'discover' the other mentions in the, oh, SIXTY YEARS since the paper was published?
Also, I don't know which is worse. The idea of them stumbling across the paper and using the idea (and thus having no original idea except the application of the concept to ranking of web pages, which isn't nearly as impressive) or the idea that the PageRank concept is something of an obvious idea?
"The thorium fuel cycle creates Uranium-233, which can be used for making nuclear weapons - and since there are no neutrons from spontaneous fission of U-233, U-233 can be used easily in a simple gun-type nuclear bomb design"
Twenty-four mobile network operators have formed the Wholesale Applications Community to avoid fragmenting the apps market and to give developers one point of entry to all the members.
You say "ah-void frag-muhn-tation of the mar-ket", I say "mohn-op-oh-lee."
Anyone want to guess how they'll leverage this? My guess is that if you piss off one mobile carrier with your app (or blame them for a problem), you'll be blocked from all of them. Plus, of course, pushing the carrier's commissions as high as possible.
ow Buzz needs finer tuned privacy control
It's as fine-grained as you want it to be. Each Buzz can be published to any contact group you want, and you can select as many or as few as you want.
I'd never used groups in Gmail, but after spending about 20 minutes to sort my most common contacts into groups, I was able to publish Buzzes to specific groups of friends. For example, my friends really into cars probably are less interested in my posts about community group events.
End result, if you're smart, are Buzzes that are of the most interest to specific groups. Win for everyone. So many people post crap to Facebook endlessly about stuff I don't care about, and get 'hidden' as a result.
Tape? SS wire (what's used for tying down hoodpins on racecars and securing critical bolts) or aircraft cable (used with crimping connectors for tamperproof seals), some velcro bands, rope?
Didn't they learn anything from the apollo missions?
+Get your space back
Create a second account, use it to shrink primary account (useful regardless, for many other troubleshooting reasons.)
+Get rid of the long waiting times at logout
And how often do you log out of your Mac? The only time I do that is when I reboot, and according to uptime, I haven't rebooted in more than a week. That was only because of security updates.
+Be safer by using open-source
1)When is the last time you validated the checksum of a package or source? 2)When is the last time you reviewed (end to end) the code for an open-source program? 3)When is the last time you looked at ANY source, instead of just reading README and then typing "./configure"? 4)How many people out there are qualified to review source code enough to detect the myriad of security vulnerabilities possible, intentional or otherwise?
The open-source security mantra has been trotted out for a decade and it still rings as hollow as can be. It's about as intelligent as handing blueprints to every car owner and wondering why people are still buying cars that break. 99.99999% of your users a)can't be bothered b)aren't qualified.
should be an embarrassment of journalistic integrity.
Slashvertisements, basic English grammar and spelling problems, completely wrong summaries and titles...
...and you a)think that Slashdot is "journalism" and b)it's had integrity to lose in the first place?
I like Slashdot, but gimme a break...it's a user-driven blog which directs readers to existing stories (now often lagging behind the major news wires) with good categorization and semi-sophisticated commenting system, utilized by a larger commenter population. Not much more, and definitely not journalism.
When "free market" (not that it's actually free... but hey, at least there's "competition") has failed repeatedly for decades, a competent monopoly with a proven track record is more than welcome.
Complaining that the free market has "failed repeatedly for decades" is like standing on an office building and bitching it's not a skyscraper.
Looked around recently? The internet is doing pretty well.
I bet they'll receive tens of thousands of applications in the coming weeks.
And guess what comes next? A reverse-competitive bidding process, whereby various cities write off their taxes on both the profits and the capital equipment, waive requirements like community access programs, and more- just to get google to give them fiber-to-the-home, something that has no proven public benefit. Which is idiotic- I don't want my tax dollars used to fund capital expenditures for corporations!
Anyone else a little more than slightly freaked out by this move? Google now encompasses search, email, instant messaging, calendaring, social networking, blogging (both content production and reading), cellular and telephone services, online payment, and now actual last-mile services? What's left?
Why does it feel like in 10 years we'll be calling it The Gnet, not the Internet?
I invention of a 'flying' plastic disc
Why the quotes? A disc generates real aerodynamic lift; anyone who plays Ultimate can tell you that. Throw right-handed and drop the outside edge, and it will curve to the right. Raise it and aim a bit out and up, and you can throw an "outside in" (aim up and out because, like with a plane, you have to compensate for lift being generated at an angle, which means less lift straight-up. You also have slip.) Tilt the disc upwards but throw it downwards, and it'll appear to "bounce."
Also: don't call a "disc" a Frisbee around an Ultimate player. Why? Wham-O saw a bunch of people playing this game called Ultimate, freaked out that someone was using their product for a game. They then tried to a)control it and then when that failed, b)made their own game to try and drown it out. It was a pretty despicable and petty move. Now they mostly spend their time chasing down anyone who uses the word "frisbee". Had they simply been content to sell discs, they'd be selling them by the boatload to Ultimate players. Instead, they got greedy and it backfired on 'em.
Also, Ultrastar's discs (considered the standard) are much more easier on the hand for most, and tend to fly better.
Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects.
Uh, no- all congresscritters hate it because NASA is giant cash-cow for the defense industry- companies like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. Hell hath no fury like a congresscritter who wants to stand on a platform in front of a defense factory in his or her district, come election time, and talk about how important the makers of the A43 Latrine Servicing Truck are to the defense and security of our great nation.
All those probes, satellites, etc? Built by defense contractors, carried up on rockets built by defense contractors, and very often launched from launch facilities owned by defense contractors.
The shuttle costs half a billion dollars per launch, for example...and almost everything NASA does is outsourced to government contractors.
Hold more than a bachelor's degree, or a degree in education? Run for your local school board. Especially if you live in Texas. You're running against dentists and hair stylists. Just remember to not appear to be some anti-god nutjob.
Meanwhile, everyone lobby their state representatives and education boards to refuse to use any textbooks Texas does. Sue, if necessary. Make Texasisms so toxic that textbook companies will have no choice but to produce books for texas, and books for the rest of us. If they want to turn themselves into a hellhole of ignorance, so be it, but they can do it alone.
Businesses demand a lot of esoteric features
What? Look at the enterprise-marketed laptop lines for a great example of what corporations want. They're not "esoteric" by any stretch.
Way to prove you don't work in IT, much less corporate level. We care about things like price, TCO, parts availability, interchangeability of accessories (within reason), and management.
Meanwhile, consumers want just about everything under the sun.
and are concerned with getting the cheapest hardware possible.
Purchase price is not the ultimate concern, no- ballpark is important, yes. Again, way to prove you don't work in IT. I've never had a boss that said "well, this $3000 server is $300 cheaper than the other one, so we're going to get that, even though it doesn't have IPMI and we have no in-house experience with this brand, and their support contract is 8hr, not 4hr."
They have no desire or tolerance for "cool" Completely not the market Apple is going for.
It's not a matter of "cool". It's a matter that Apple likes consumers because they're easily pushed around and they CONSUME. And if you think companies don't want "Cool", you haven't seen a CEO of a million dollar company get handed his new Blackberry (hell hath no fury if it works more poorly than the old one, however.)
Corporations say, "Hey. Why did you just change the display port AGAIN? Now half of our 2000 member sales force have a different display port from the other half." Or, "why are all of our iMacs developing vertical lines? Our CEO's secretary has gone through two machines in a month and he's raising hell because they can't work. Don't you people have any quality control? Send us some goddamn WORKING computers or we buy Dell from now on. That's straight from the CEO's mouth."
Corporations have legal departments, so that when machines die, lawyers say "give us our money back or we seek damages." Consumers just bitch and moan on online forums- and purchase decisions are more rational in corporations (heh, I can't believe I just said that, but I mean they're not *emotional*.)
Corporations say "Oh, Macbook Pros are $2k? Well, we're buying 100 of them this month, and we've given you $500k in business this quarter. So, how about $1700?". Consumers just hand over their CC.
Corporations say, "If a laptop breaks, we want someone to come in and fix it. And if you won't, we want to be able to train our own IT staff in how to fix them and be able to order parts." Apple a)won't let you order parts unless you're a reseller, b)won't do on-site service of anything except Mac Pros and Xserves. Ever spent your day standing in line at the Genius Bar with a laptop belonging to a CEO of a $50M company because that was the best support option, and then arguing with some pimply-faced "Genius" who is used to talking to grandmas about why their gumdrop iMac is dead?
In big Apple-using companies I've worked at, we kept every single machine that died and cannibalized them for parts for the other ones, because we couldn't get the goddamn parts from Apple, couldn't get service manuals, couldn't train CSRs.
Meanwhile, HP, Dell, IBM, Sun will all happily take our precious dollars and promise that if anything breaks in my shiny server or desktop, I'll have a replacement part sitting on my desk in FOUR HOURS. They'll let almost anyone order parts, and happily train people in how to repair their products. And if a laptop breaks, they'll come out and service it on the spot if you bought that support plan, so our CEO doesn't have to be without his laptop while it gets shipped to fucking TEXAS, the only place you can get a Macbook Pro repaired if it's anything remotely complicated (the Apple Store can do drive replacements, that's about it.)
I had to replace two failed drives on an HP server once (one system drive, one data array drive.) I said "I have red lights, they were kicked out of the array by the controller." We had a 4 hour support contr
This book is not endorsed by the Cacti Group.
Maybe open-source project authors will Walk The Talk, instead of producing a decent-but-slightly-cranky-and-badly-documented open-source project, and then expecting to be able to make money off book deals instead of producing decent documentation.
If this is an independent photographer that has transferred the rights to the photos to the government then yes there could be copyright protection, if the photographer is an employee of the government then these pic should be public domain.
Please google "photographer work for hire."
The photographer does not retain ANY copyright over work done as part of employment. If it's contract work, it is unlikely that a government agency would agree to give the photographer copyright over the photos- I'm sure there's a mile-long line of photographers happy to work with the Whitehouse.
God forbid someone actually look at those 350 studies and see if any of them even had the beginnings of a valid scientific process? What the sample sizes were? How they defined biological effect or harm?
Naaaaaaaaaaaah.
Look, you condescending fuckhead, I know "the road is not a playground".
In one case I was hit from behind while making a legal left turn from a left-turn only lane, by a guy who went straight, illegally. In the second case, I was doored. The driver flung open her door while I was going about 10-12 MPH, right in front of me. I had just enough time to notice the door opening before I found myself flying through the air upside-down, looking at the cars behind me, and thinking "oh please, may I not get run over."
I had a cabbie make an oncoming left turn straight at me at an intersection, and then scream at me to get the fuck out of his way.
I had a valet parking attendant cut me off coming out of a parking lot- in the process of avoiding him, I went over the handlebars and landed in the road. He laughed.
I know people on a student cycling team who have been out on group training rides and had drivers on side-streets (or making oncoming left turns) drive right into the middle of the pack (with the cyclist hitting the side of the car, usually at +15 mph.) This happens about twice a year, and usually puts the cyclist in the hospital and completely destroys their bike.
Or how about that doctor who was convicted of slamming on his brakes to "scare" cyclists? Two of them couldn't stop in time, and they smashed into his back window. It came out in court that he had a long history of such road rage against cyclists.
It is the job of the more at-risk to protect themselves!
And then, by extension, the victims (let's not beat around the bush here- "the at-risk", my ass) if they don't protect themselves, deserve what they get? I suppose you tell rape victims that they shouldn't have dressed slutty? Or how about telling domestic violence victims that they shouldn't have made their partner angry? Society does not work by lecturing the victims- we punishing the criminals.
The thing is, guilt-tripping people like that doesn't actually work. If it did, PETA would have long since prevaled I wouldn't still be eating 5 pounds of cow every week.
I'd guess at least 1/4 of my friends are vegetarian, and most of them do it because of animal cruelty at megafarms and environmental impact (the amount of methane produced by cattle, and the resources required to grow cattle vs. the amount of resources required to grow the same amount of calories in vegetables.)
That would be a good start.
I'm glad you used sound reasoning and solid argumentation and did not resort to baser things like guilt-trips and emotional appeals. Well done, sir.
Sure, because the parent I replied to had sound reasoning and solid argumentation when he said that most cyclists on the road are lawless jerks- and implied that they deserve what they get, or that drivers shouldn't be responsible for hitting them. Also, I think it's pretty logical and good reasoning to say, "When is the last time you read, 'motorist killed by cyclist'?"
You know what? If reading that story and looking at that picture of that orphan makes a couple of Slashdotters a liiiiitle bit more careful driving (around cyclists or not), then it was worth every mod point.
But yes, I see your point. Unfortunately, when you've been struck by cars twice (both breaking the law, when you were doing everything right), you tend to have a very shore fuse for the whole but-cyclists-are-lawless-idiots comment. Every time cyclist safety comes up in conversation someone has to blurt this out. While I was still in my cast from the first time I was hit, an asshole coworker sat across from me and told the table that cyclists knew that it was dangerous and thus drivers shouldn't be liable. I nearly cracked him over the head with the cast.
As a bicyclist (and driver. Remember that- most of us who ride our bikes ALSO DRIVE), I find it very difficult to sympathize with your viewpoint.
When is the last time you read, "motorist killed by bicyclist"? Bicyclists always lose in car-vs-bicyclist.
Now, look at the face of cyclist road deaths: Kylie Bruehler, orphaned when both her parents were struck by a truck. Go on, LOOK, Mr. Self Righteous. Look at the face of a 7 year old girl as she buries her parents. Look at her grandfather walk down the line of hundreds of cyclists who showed up to honor them.
Do you know what usually happens when a motorist kills a cyclist? Absolutely nothing- and this case is not the exception but the rule. Time and time again the cyclist community fumes when another person is struck simply because the driver wasn't paying attention to where they were going, the police call it a "terrible accident", and the driver walks off without so much as a manslaughter charge.
Some cities are studying the halfway measure of banning them from bicycle lanes while permitting them on streets
It's simple, really. Bicycle lanes exist to protect bicycles which travel slower than the rest of traffic. If you're assisted by an electric motor, there is less of a speed differential with traffic, but now you'll be a hazard to all the bicyclists yourself, since you'll be traveling much faster than them.
I can't wait for the first dooring of a moped rider in a bike lane- maybe drivers will start to take "look in your mirror before you fling open your door" seriously because it'll be in their best interests, both in terms of personal safety and damage to their car; a couple hundred pounds of metal and rider will at the very least bend that door pretty far forward, I'm guessing.
As someone who has been doored, it REALLY sucks getting doored because some stupid asshole can't take 2 seconds to look in their mirror before they open their door. The worst part isn't flying over your handlebars, or getting your hand permanently fucked up from getting pinched between the handlebar and edge of the car door at +10MPH with 150lb of momentum. The worst part is hitting the door and having that throw you right into the traffic lane and get hit/run over by a car, truck, or bus. It's not the door itself that kills bicyclists- it's getting hit/run over by the traffic that was just behind them. Yet another reason why bicycle lanes in the US, which are sandwiched between parked cars and traffic, are almost worse than nothing at all. In Europe and elsewhere, bike lanes are completely separated and often run nowhere near the road- they're a separate network.
Also, there is a special place in hell for all the hipster retards riding their 70's-era mopeds (Puchs seem to be the most popular.) In our part of town, there's at least a couple of them zipping around in their tight black jeans and flannel shirts, leaving a contrail of blue smoke which is so bad to ride behind and breathe, one has to pull over and wait a minute or two for it to dissipate. They're putting out 50 times the pollution of the SUV next to them, just to save money on gas and look cool.
and the most powerful military.
The US spends more money in total than the next dozen or so nations combined: http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending#InContextUSMilitarySpendingVersusRestoftheWorld
Note how the US is just slliiiiiiiightly less than half of that pie chart, and the United states spent 5.8 times what China did in 2008. Let's also not forget who is embroiled in two wars- Iraq and Afghanistan.
Per capita for the US, looks to be about $2500 in 2004, now $3200: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PerCapitaInflationAdjustedDefenseSpending.PNG
Why not have a look at where that places us relative to everyone else? For some reason "Nationmaster" doesn't list the US, but here you can see that figure is $1000 more than the next-highest, Israel (all the figures are from 2004): http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_exp_dol_fig_percap-expenditures-dollar-figure-per-capita
GDP-wise, America outspends at a percentage twice the world average; Russia actually beat the US relative to GDP on a couple of occasions, but that probably has more to do with Russia's GDP being in the toilet.
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ms_mil_xpnd_gd_zs&idim=country:USA:CHN:GBR:RUS&tdim=true&tstart=567993600000&tunit=Y&tlen=20