The telegraaf.nl site (biggest Dutch newspaper) has been running an anti-ad-blocker for a long time now. When you try to access the site you get instructions how to disable your adblocker, but not the articles or even the frontpage itself. In response I stopped reading telegraaf.nl, and in hindsight that feels like a good decision.
Free speech is not the right to blast your message into someones bedroom at four in the morning. It is also not the right to break into your house and talk to you incessantly while you are having dinner. And it is also, therefore, not the right to break into your house electronically (using a phone) to talk to you incessantly while you are having dinner.
On an Android system they would be competing against millions of free games. That alone would reduce the acceptable price level for their games to close to zero, even if those games happen to be much better. How many parents will shell out 60 or 65 euro or dollar for a game when they can also say "see what's available on the download store for free", do you think?
The choice for cartridge confirms this. It not only helps protect against pirates but also adds perceived value - you are getting an actual, physical piece of hardware as well.
Due to its "One Child Policy" China has a rapidly aging and soon to be declining population.
Well, that's easily solved: just do as Europe did and import millions of unlettered muslims. We're already enjoying great benefits here in Europe in such diverse areas as population reduction (with deadly attacks on a weekly basis), elimination of our freedoms, and of course cultural genocide!
... what we're seeing now is the endpoint of process that Microsoft feared with Netscape back in the 90s: the marginalization of desktop operating systems as platforms.
Microsoft is not quite free from blame though, with their incessant changing of the look and feel, marginalisation of the desktop in favor of phones and tablets, and the dual-metaphor horror that is metro... I'm not saying they should have stuck with a single style, but nowadays there is no consistent language anymore for controls, thanks in no small part to Microsoft messing around with them so much. So yes, applications can now pick their own look and feel. No one is going to notice anymore.
Wow, such insanity. Clearly Pokémon Go is promoting a Lamarckian Theory of Evolution, not a Darwinian Theory of Evolution.
We are talking about a people who don't build any buildings with triangles in them, just because the triangle is a symbol of Christianity (it represents the father, son, and holy spirit). And who ban words with the letter 'X' in them because the X resembles a cross. I don't see why we should have any expectation of rationality out of that bunch.
If they want to cool their bills, I recommend they invest in a simple fridge and stick them in there. I find it keeps my bills quite cool - if I bother to keep them in the fridge at all, of course. For some reason it only rarely happens...
But we are eliminating all other programs - that's the premise of UBI. So no more section 8 housing, no more food stamps, no more WIC food (whatever that is). All that remains is that $10k from UBI, which you have just stated is simply not enough.
So what is it: - You secretly want to keep some other social programs active, despite promising that UBI would be the end of it? - You want to drive people deeper into poverty than they are today? -...?
_Bullshit_. GDP contains _everything_. It is not just salaries, it is also everything else in the economy. It is money that goes to roads, to education, to discovering new medicine, to maintenance, to production - everything. It isn't money lying on the table (and presumably grabbed by those evil, evil capitalists), it is the total sum of all economic activity in the country. And since it isn't an actual bank account you can plunder, you cannot simply 'divide it up' and give it to the poor.
And it's not just haggling over price either. Do you honestly believe everyone will be content with their UBI, given that you aim for no more than poverty level? Do you really mean to say that people will say "oh well, I'm fine with my rich neighbour across the street getting $10k just like me, because it is universal"? OF COURSE NOT! He will point out, and quite correctly, that the guy across the street already has more than enough, and really does not need any more - thus leaving more for the truly poor to be helped.
Quite frankly I do not understand how the notion of UBI even makes sense to you people. Would you honestly pay Bill Gates or Larry Ellison UBI? Would you consider that fair, given that that same money could have gone to people currently living on the poverty line? Wouldn't it make much more sense to provide financial assistance only to those who actually need it? What exactly is the big draw of giving money to everyone?
The same problem comes up in every discussion about UBI, and it is this one: people have no idea of the numbers involved, nor do they seem able to do basic sums. You come up with an impressive sounding list of programs 'that could be eliminated' under UBI, and then you vigorously wave your hands and assert that surely these are worth more than UBI!
Well - no, they are not. According to wikipedia, total expenditure on social programs in the US is $1.3 trillion per year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States) ), far less than the $3.2 trillion per year needed to provide every American with $10,000/year stated by an earlier poster. So that's already $2 trillion unaccounted for right there. And _no_, government overhead is not anywhere near $2 trillion. You would only reach that figure if every last civil servant in the US (around 2 million, not counting postal workers) worked in social security, and earned around $1,000,000/year.
Is $10,000/year even enough to live on in the US? http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-... lists the price of a one bedroom apartment outside the city center as $900/month, i.e. around $11,000/year. There would be no money left over for food, education, medicine, etc., so anyone who is poor today would still be poor under this new system - and living out on the street. Well, nicely done - you did not eliminate poverty after all, but you did triple the cost of the program. Moreover, you reallocated funds that today go to the poor, and spread them to people who are already well-off.
This last problem will cause massive pressure to 'do something extra' for peope who still live on the street (and perhaps 'a little something' for people who have relatively high medical costs, and perhaps 'a little something more' for veterans or retired civil servants or whatever). Your claims that it would eliminate 'overhead' would quickly disappear as these new programs are put into place, and the government needs to figure out who qualifies and who doesn't.
There are other issues as well, but the simple fact that society simply cannot pay for UBI should already be enough to convince anyone.
I find it hilarious when the people who shoved alternative energy down our throats all of a sudden discover "short term problems". We were supposed to think long-term, remember? It's all about the planet, not about you? Please remember that when you sit in the dark, with no airco, next time.
As for your assertion that -somehow- the market is responsible for pricing peaks - what alternative do you propose then? There is scarcity, so an allocation must be made in some fashion. Would you prefer it to be done through a market, or would you prefer some unaccountable dictator to make the choice which districts receive power and which ones do not?
Oh wait - maybe you didn't want scarcity. Why then did you design an energy infrastructure that has it built in at its very core? Despite millions of people telling you exactly this would happen?
Agree completely. It's much better to wait until your hardware dies, and then let your company go bust as some vital business function cannot be replaced in time.
It's not really trial and error if you get the expected result, now is it? The learning curve always was "learn to enjoy sitting in the dark waiting for the lights to go back on", but since nobody seemed to care about that at the time ("I'm sure it will happen to other people"), here we are now.
And it's just hilarious to see how the whole mess now gets blaimed on "corruption". The sad truth is that if prices were artificially lowered, demand would quickly outstrip production, and the whole system would come down.
Renewables are not a reliable source of energy: their production levels vary as whatever natural phenomenon they depend on varies. This was known well in advance, as was the necessity to maintain classic plants for base load. A political choice was made not to maintain sufficient plants for base load, and since production through renewable sources does not have sufficient capacity at all times, an allocation scheme for times of tightness was needed - a market, so customers with very high requirements for reliable energy could simply pay more for that privilege while customers with lower requirements could choose to lower their consumption at times when production was insufficient.
So far, it looks to me like everything is working exactly as designed. So what exactly are you complaining about? Blackouts? Those were a known and expected feature of having a high level of renewables without enough classic plants. Varying prices with high peaks? Those were _also_ a known and expected feature of the technology! Or is it simply that you wanted to 'save the planet', as long as it didn't inconvenience you personally with high prices and blackouts?
Don't pretend it is all an evil plot to extort money. You made this bed, now lie in it. I'm just sad to see the people who wanted other options (nuclear, for example) having to suffer with you.
Last I heard, there was considerable evidence that it might not have been terrorism; it might have just someone going apeshit and committing mass murder.
According to various sources the driver was shouting "allahu akbar" (search for it on Google or read the wikipedia article if you do not believe me). Guns and grenades were found in the vehicle after the attack as well. I'm not sure how that could leave any doubt about whether it was terrorism or not.
Assembly weeds out the less competent programmers early after they realize they simply aren't up to the task. In other languages they can stick around for longer and might eventually learn. So what is to be preferred: that they learn eventually, or simply leave the field?
As for what happens 'when the destructor is called', it will clean up the sockets and queues and the like; that's what they are for. 'delete' is not just for deallocating memory, it is for deallocating all controlled resources. It's possibly the most fundamental building block of C++; I'm a little surprised you don't know this considering how much of an opinion you seem to have on higher level languages...
I'm not surprised that compiler technology never caught up with itanium. The volume was never there to allow the kind of investment that made the x86 compilers so amazing.
It will also act as a signpost for any other country who holds a similar referendum in the future; really for a referendum of such a constitutional importance, a higher threshold than a simple majority should be required for any vote-to-change to be valid.
Why? Simple majority votes (in parliament) were apparently good enough to get us to this point. Why wouldn't a simple majority vote be good enough to get out again?
A referendum should have been held whether the people of Britain wanted in in the first place. It should have asked something like "do you wish to transfer control over your nation's destiny over to the rest of Europe?", and the people could have spoken. I can tell you the outcome would have been a hell of a lot worse for the EU - in fact such referenda were held in the Netherlands and France, and in both cases the EU as a concept was soundly rejected.
At that time, nobody in charge said that a 60% threshold meant the referendum should be respected, and I certainly don't see why we should start doing so now.
Presumably she understands quite well how it works. After all, if every bit of content has to be 'rated' before publication (same as with movies), and assuming there will be a large, slow, and expensive burocracy to perform this rating (with all sorts of forms to be filled in, no doubt), it will put a certain end to anyone voicing his opinion outside of large, rich organisations. And that, I suspect, is not an accident but very much the whole point of the exercise.
Poor Brits. After succesfully escaping the totalitarian clutches of the EU, they get this kind of asshole as a potential future leader...
Ah yes, that reminds me of the webfilter at work. Of course they are free to filter what we can look at. Just a shame that _every_ single page on 3D ***mathematics*** (you know, the knowledge I need to do the programming I do) is labelled as "games", and therefore blocked. And yes, you can in fact write games using 3D mathematics. I happen to be writing scientific 3D visualisations, but the IT department honestly doesn't give a shit. If I want access to a specific page I can ask for it to be unblocked and they will evaluate it and get back to me later. That's such a great way to work, if I am looking for a specific algorithm and trying to find a page that has the correct information in the first place...
PCs have been able to do anything a console does until now.
Except run console specific games, and be truly affordable. Oh sure, you can buy a cheap PC, but the Master Race types on Steam would laugh at you if you called some $500 PC from a big box store a gaming rig. They'd be saying "Spend 1500 on a real rig n00b or j00 will get p@wn3d in LoL and TF2"
Cost is a matter of perspective. I'm gaming on a 6-year old PC now, with the only upgrade during that period being a new GPU. And I expect this machine to last me quite a few more years. I had it before the XBox One and PS4 came out, and I will still be playing on it by the time the Neo and Scorpio come out.
Prices for games are lower on PC as well, especially now that we live in the era of the Steam Sale.
As for what other people are saying... How exactly is their opinion relevant?
After this there will be no reason left to buy a console.
Plenty of reasons, games and game genres that don't appear on PC, preference for console controls that aren't the 360/Xbox one game pad, preference against using Windows, preference for not having to worry about system requirements/tweaking, one-button-it-just-works-easy-everything, and price.
You can use a PS4 controller with PC as well. And worrying about system requirements/tweaking became obsolete at the start of the 32-bit era. That's the one that is just about over now...
People have this amazingly misguided idea consoles were 'intended' to offer platform stability. That was NEVER the case. Instead it was an artifact of the development cycle: hardware costs money to develop, and that money has to be recovered. Only when sales slow down do console manufacturers invest in a new generation.
Now it is different: AMD is designing the hardware, so instead of investing, Sony and Microsoft can do simple periodic refreshes at negligible cost. And since not doing so will cause one or the other to fall behind and become irrelevant, they have no choice than to update.
Platform stability in consoles is now a thing of the past. Consoles are nothing but cheap, low-end, locked-down PCs now.
Slashdot Mirror
The telegraaf.nl site (biggest Dutch newspaper) has been running an anti-ad-blocker for a long time now. When you try to access the site you get instructions how to disable your adblocker, but not the articles or even the frontpage itself. In response I stopped reading telegraaf.nl, and in hindsight that feels like a good decision.
Free speech is not the right to blast your message into someones bedroom at four in the morning. It is also not the right to break into your house and talk to you incessantly while you are having dinner. And it is also, therefore, not the right to break into your house electronically (using a phone) to talk to you incessantly while you are having dinner.
On an Android system they would be competing against millions of free games. That alone would reduce the acceptable price level for their games to close to zero, even if those games happen to be much better. How many parents will shell out 60 or 65 euro or dollar for a game when they can also say "see what's available on the download store for free", do you think?
The choice for cartridge confirms this. It not only helps protect against pirates but also adds perceived value - you are getting an actual, physical piece of hardware as well.
I mean, wind-powered ships have been doing this for over half a millennium now. Clearly solar has a lot of catching up to do.
And how many continents were discovered using solar power so far? I tell you, wind is where it's at!
Due to its "One Child Policy" China has a rapidly aging and soon to be declining population.
Well, that's easily solved: just do as Europe did and import millions of unlettered muslims. We're already enjoying great benefits here in Europe in such diverse areas as population reduction (with deadly attacks on a weekly basis), elimination of our freedoms, and of course cultural genocide!
... what we're seeing now is the endpoint of process that Microsoft feared with Netscape back in the 90s: the marginalization of desktop operating systems as platforms.
Microsoft is not quite free from blame though, with their incessant changing of the look and feel, marginalisation of the desktop in favor of phones and tablets, and the dual-metaphor horror that is metro... I'm not saying they should have stuck with a single style, but nowadays there is no consistent language anymore for controls, thanks in no small part to Microsoft messing around with them so much. So yes, applications can now pick their own look and feel. No one is going to notice anymore.
I was two years away from being born, and I feel betrayed that man's greatest accomplishment happened before my lifetime.
Wow, such insanity. Clearly Pokémon Go is promoting a Lamarckian Theory of Evolution, not a Darwinian Theory of Evolution.
We are talking about a people who don't build any buildings with triangles in them, just because the triangle is a symbol of Christianity (it represents the father, son, and holy spirit). And who ban words with the letter 'X' in them because the X resembles a cross. I don't see why we should have any expectation of rationality out of that bunch.
If they want to cool their bills, I recommend they invest in a simple fridge and stick them in there. I find it keeps my bills quite cool - if I bother to keep them in the fridge at all, of course. For some reason it only rarely happens...
But we are eliminating all other programs - that's the premise of UBI. So no more section 8 housing, no more food stamps, no more WIC food (whatever that is). All that remains is that $10k from UBI, which you have just stated is simply not enough.
So what is it: ...?
- You secretly want to keep some other social programs active, despite promising that UBI would be the end of it?
- You want to drive people deeper into poverty than they are today?
-
_Bullshit_. GDP contains _everything_. It is not just salaries, it is also everything else in the economy. It is money that goes to roads, to education, to discovering new medicine, to maintenance, to production - everything. It isn't money lying on the table (and presumably grabbed by those evil, evil capitalists), it is the total sum of all economic activity in the country. And since it isn't an actual bank account you can plunder, you cannot simply 'divide it up' and give it to the poor.
And it's not just haggling over price either. Do you honestly believe everyone will be content with their UBI, given that you aim for no more than poverty level? Do you really mean to say that people will say "oh well, I'm fine with my rich neighbour across the street getting $10k just like me, because it is universal"? OF COURSE NOT! He will point out, and quite correctly, that the guy across the street already has more than enough, and really does not need any more - thus leaving more for the truly poor to be helped.
Quite frankly I do not understand how the notion of UBI even makes sense to you people. Would you honestly pay Bill Gates or Larry Ellison UBI? Would you consider that fair, given that that same money could have gone to people currently living on the poverty line? Wouldn't it make much more sense to provide financial assistance only to those who actually need it? What exactly is the big draw of giving money to everyone?
The same problem comes up in every discussion about UBI, and it is this one: people have no idea of the numbers involved, nor do they seem able to do basic sums. You come up with an impressive sounding list of programs 'that could be eliminated' under UBI, and then you vigorously wave your hands and assert that surely these are worth more than UBI!
Well - no, they are not. According to wikipedia, total expenditure on social programs in the US is $1.3 trillion per year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States) ), far less than the $3.2 trillion per year needed to provide every American with $10,000/year stated by an earlier poster. So that's already $2 trillion unaccounted for right there. And _no_, government overhead is not anywhere near $2 trillion. You would only reach that figure if every last civil servant in the US (around 2 million, not counting postal workers) worked in social security, and earned around $1,000,000/year.
Is $10,000/year even enough to live on in the US? http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-... lists the price of a one bedroom apartment outside the city center as $900/month, i.e. around $11,000/year. There would be no money left over for food, education, medicine, etc., so anyone who is poor today would still be poor under this new system - and living out on the street. Well, nicely done - you did not eliminate poverty after all, but you did triple the cost of the program. Moreover, you reallocated funds that today go to the poor, and spread them to people who are already well-off.
This last problem will cause massive pressure to 'do something extra' for peope who still live on the street (and perhaps 'a little something' for people who have relatively high medical costs, and perhaps 'a little something more' for veterans or retired civil servants or whatever). Your claims that it would eliminate 'overhead' would quickly disappear as these new programs are put into place, and the government needs to figure out who qualifies and who doesn't.
There are other issues as well, but the simple fact that society simply cannot pay for UBI should already be enough to convince anyone.
I find it hilarious when the people who shoved alternative energy down our throats all of a sudden discover "short term problems". We were supposed to think long-term, remember? It's all about the planet, not about you? Please remember that when you sit in the dark, with no airco, next time.
As for your assertion that -somehow- the market is responsible for pricing peaks - what alternative do you propose then? There is scarcity, so an allocation must be made in some fashion. Would you prefer it to be done through a market, or would you prefer some unaccountable dictator to make the choice which districts receive power and which ones do not?
Oh wait - maybe you didn't want scarcity. Why then did you design an energy infrastructure that has it built in at its very core? Despite millions of people telling you exactly this would happen?
Agree completely. It's much better to wait until your hardware dies, and then let your company go bust as some vital business function cannot be replaced in time.
It's not really trial and error if you get the expected result, now is it? The learning curve always was "learn to enjoy sitting in the dark waiting for the lights to go back on", but since nobody seemed to care about that at the time ("I'm sure it will happen to other people"), here we are now.
And it's just hilarious to see how the whole mess now gets blaimed on "corruption". The sad truth is that if prices were artificially lowered, demand would quickly outstrip production, and the whole system would come down.
Renewables are not a reliable source of energy: their production levels vary as whatever natural phenomenon they depend on varies. This was known well in advance, as was the necessity to maintain classic plants for base load. A political choice was made not to maintain sufficient plants for base load, and since production through renewable sources does not have sufficient capacity at all times, an allocation scheme for times of tightness was needed - a market, so customers with very high requirements for reliable energy could simply pay more for that privilege while customers with lower requirements could choose to lower their consumption at times when production was insufficient.
So far, it looks to me like everything is working exactly as designed. So what exactly are you complaining about? Blackouts? Those were a known and expected feature of having a high level of renewables without enough classic plants. Varying prices with high peaks? Those were _also_ a known and expected feature of the technology! Or is it simply that you wanted to 'save the planet', as long as it didn't inconvenience you personally with high prices and blackouts?
Don't pretend it is all an evil plot to extort money. You made this bed, now lie in it. I'm just sad to see the people who wanted other options (nuclear, for example) having to suffer with you.
Last I heard, there was considerable evidence that it might not have been terrorism; it might have just someone going apeshit and committing mass murder.
According to various sources the driver was shouting "allahu akbar" (search for it on Google or read the wikipedia article if you do not believe me). Guns and grenades were found in the vehicle after the attack as well. I'm not sure how that could leave any doubt about whether it was terrorism or not.
It saves a lot of space too. Just so you know it isn't just Feynman doing all the cool stuff.
Assembly weeds out the less competent programmers early after they realize they simply aren't up to the task. In other languages they can stick around for longer and might eventually learn. So what is to be preferred: that they learn eventually, or simply leave the field?
As for what happens 'when the destructor is called', it will clean up the sockets and queues and the like; that's what they are for. 'delete' is not just for deallocating memory, it is for deallocating all controlled resources. It's possibly the most fundamental building block of C++; I'm a little surprised you don't know this considering how much of an opinion you seem to have on higher level languages...
I'm not surprised that compiler technology never caught up with itanium. The volume was never there to allow the kind of investment that made the x86 compilers so amazing.
It will also act as a signpost for any other country who holds a similar referendum in the future; really for a referendum of such a constitutional importance, a higher threshold than a simple majority should be required for any vote-to-change to be valid.
Why? Simple majority votes (in parliament) were apparently good enough to get us to this point. Why wouldn't a simple majority vote be good enough to get out again?
A referendum should have been held whether the people of Britain wanted in in the first place. It should have asked something like "do you wish to transfer control over your nation's destiny over to the rest of Europe?", and the people could have spoken. I can tell you the outcome would have been a hell of a lot worse for the EU - in fact such referenda were held in the Netherlands and France, and in both cases the EU as a concept was soundly rejected.
At that time, nobody in charge said that a 60% threshold meant the referendum should be respected, and I certainly don't see why we should start doing so now.
Presumably she understands quite well how it works. After all, if every bit of content has to be 'rated' before publication (same as with movies), and assuming there will be a large, slow, and expensive burocracy to perform this rating (with all sorts of forms to be filled in, no doubt), it will put a certain end to anyone voicing his opinion outside of large, rich organisations. And that, I suspect, is not an accident but very much the whole point of the exercise.
Poor Brits. After succesfully escaping the totalitarian clutches of the EU, they get this kind of asshole as a potential future leader...
Ah yes, that reminds me of the webfilter at work. Of course they are free to filter what we can look at. Just a shame that _every_ single page on 3D ***mathematics*** (you know, the knowledge I need to do the programming I do) is labelled as "games", and therefore blocked. And yes, you can in fact write games using 3D mathematics. I happen to be writing scientific 3D visualisations, but the IT department honestly doesn't give a shit. If I want access to a specific page I can ask for it to be unblocked and they will evaluate it and get back to me later. That's such a great way to work, if I am looking for a specific algorithm and trying to find a page that has the correct information in the first place...
PCs have been able to do anything a console does until now.
Except run console specific games, and be truly affordable. Oh sure, you can buy a cheap PC, but the Master Race types on Steam would laugh at you if you called some $500 PC from a big box store a gaming rig. They'd be saying "Spend 1500 on a real rig n00b or j00 will get p@wn3d in LoL and TF2"
Cost is a matter of perspective. I'm gaming on a 6-year old PC now, with the only upgrade during that period being a new GPU. And I expect this machine to last me quite a few more years. I had it before the XBox One and PS4 came out, and I will still be playing on it by the time the Neo and Scorpio come out.
Prices for games are lower on PC as well, especially now that we live in the era of the Steam Sale.
As for what other people are saying... How exactly is their opinion relevant?
After this there will be no reason left to buy a console.
Plenty of reasons, games and game genres that don't appear on PC, preference for console controls that aren't the 360/Xbox one game pad, preference against using Windows, preference for not having to worry about system requirements/tweaking, one-button-it-just-works-easy-everything, and price.
You can use a PS4 controller with PC as well. And worrying about system requirements/tweaking became obsolete at the start of the 32-bit era. That's the one that is just about over now...
What is the purpose of the console?
People have this amazingly misguided idea consoles were 'intended' to offer platform stability. That was NEVER the case. Instead it was an artifact of the development cycle: hardware costs money to develop, and that money has to be recovered. Only when sales slow down do console manufacturers invest in a new generation.
Now it is different: AMD is designing the hardware, so instead of investing, Sony and Microsoft can do simple periodic refreshes at negligible cost. And since not doing so will cause one or the other to fall behind and become irrelevant, they have no choice than to update.
Platform stability in consoles is now a thing of the past. Consoles are nothing but cheap, low-end, locked-down PCs now.