Cue people who pretend they understand the science...
As mentioned, there are some of us around here who are actual scientists. However, there are no details in the article, thus no science to understand. All I found were crappy analogies with afterburners and some hand-wavey crap about plasma. I'm pretty sure that if it were as easy as running some crap through a plasma to accelerate it, it would have been done some time ago. And there are a number of pertinent questions:
Why do they have to use a 2-mile accelerator if the plasma can do in a foot what it takes the 2 miles to do?
Why can't it be longer?
How is the plasma chamber set up? I'm guessing it's probably an coupled with an RF field, which can accelerate a plasma, but details, come on!
Your point is noted, and I'm sure huge volumes of Kazaa-using freeloaders will pretend your point about caching being a form of advertising has some validity.
That said, I am not a Kazaa using freeloader, and as such I think your point is retarded.
No need for name calling, don't be a dick. I wasn't making an argument about whether Google has the *right* to cache; they probably don't. I'm making the case that the newspapers are stupid to fuck with Google, particularly since Google provides them a net benefit, and that further even the caching probably helps them ultimately since their online revenue is probably over 99% ad driven. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Installing things per-user would be a pain in the ass to maintain. If IT needed to update an application on a computer, or change a setting for the application, and that application was installed separately for each user, how would they do that without logging in as each individual user? What about the additional space that it would take up? Sure, that may not matter for little things like GAIM or a text editor or something, but I would rather not having 10 copies of Adobe CS2, Microsoft Office, and Visual Studio/MSDN sitting on computers.
That's why I said that some few apps - like Office - would be deployed system-wide. But for smaller programs, we're scientists and frankly I don't have the time to ping the damned helpdesk with a laundrylist of 15 programs I want to try that might solve my problem. HDD space is cheap, and the lost productivity of those of us who are actively trying to do some research is a real problem. The way things work on a Mac now is fairly nice - most programs are compartmentalized in a single folder and don't need Admin priveleges to install. Program breaks? Delete the folder. Easy.
Naturally my solution to this problem was to simply requisition a new HDD, install linux, and not give them the root pw. I can install whatever the hell I want. And I can actually get some damned work done.
And each user *does* have their own registry - its loaded into HKEY_CURRENT_USER, and is located at %USERPROFILE%\NTUSER.DAT. HKLM (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) holds the per-machine registry settings.
Then maybe the problem is that the moron devs keep using the system one. I apologize for my Windows ignorance, I've been a (gratefully) occasional user for about 5 years. But it drives me friggin' nuts when I can't even install a small app to userland without it trying to write to Windows/System. Terrible design, and very prevalent.
The registry has a lot of drawbacks, but it wasn't that unreasonable an idea actually.
Sure, if every user had one instead of making it a system-wide thing. For a Windows system, it seems to me there should be relatively few 3rd-party apps installed system-wide. Other than that, most things should be installed user-level, but between MS and their damned developers this proves impossible.
At our company, we users don't have Admin privileges for our own machines (and I don't really blame IT for it). As a result, if I'm trying to try out open-source math/science apps, I can probably install 1 out of 5 that don't install to windows/system or some other protected directory. Almost impossible to maintain an environment where machines are secure and usable.
The point - mine, by the way - is that if these assholes want to screw with Google, they might find themselves disconnected from ALL Google services, which would include indexing, which would suck for them. Additionally, even the cache is good advertising in that it gets their name out there, and they probably derive more benefit from that then the pittance of reprints they sell.
Most of these newspapers are at least 60 years old. Somes are more than 100 years old. Nobody is really interested by Belgian news except Belgian themselves. Belgians know these newspapers names and URLs already. I really doubt that Google has any significant impact on their trafic.
If that's the case - which I doubt - then Google indexing and caching them couldn't possibly hurt them, then could it?
My intuition is that the newspaper business there is competitive like it is anywhere, and that there are many outlets for news, online and offline. Those who ignore the internet will find themselves screwed, and I don't think that ceases to be the case in Belgium. Belgians use Google too, don't they?
If I'm Google, I turn the morons off and see how fast they come screaming back when their ad revenue plummets. Seriously, IT'S FREE FREAKING ADVERTISING. Google should be charging *them*.
Sales tax is just another way to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. It is always a scam based on a will for the rich to avoid any responsibility for their greater consumption of natural resources that they would otherwise be paying for. I recommend always avoiding it whenever possible.
Great speech, comrade. Read that in Pravda, did you?
the question is... are the potatoe seeds large enough to survive re-entry? They're light, but is their density low enough so that they decelerate without burning up?
My guess is it depends how high they started. If they were in orbit, they'd have such a huge speed that they would definitely burn up. If they were dropped from a vehicle that was on the border of what we consider space, I might buy that their speed never gets high enough to burn them up before they decelerate to their terminal velocity at 1 atm.
Consider it an investment. By increasing opportunities in rural or economically disadvantaged areas, by introducing freer information and allowing more people the chance to inform and educate themselves, you only enrich society and create a more vital economy. That $25,000 could result in massive returns.
It's all very theoretical, I agree. You might even accuse me of wishful thinking.
But America prides itself on its technical knowhow. Why would you let the fear of a relatively small investment (compared to other governmental expenditures) hobble your citizenry?
It's not small, last I checked our welfare state cost me 1/3 of my paycheck. Not to mention which, it's pretty much proven that people spend most of their time online fucking around. Like I am now, but I pay for my broadband. $25,000 per capita is too much to pay to give these people faster internet. They can use 56K. If they think broadband is worth $25K/household, let them do Muni.
You want to talk about schools and broadband, fine. But as for charging me so some redneck can get to YouTube, no thanks.
Broadband is a luxury and the payoff you talk about is too speculative to start reaching into my wallet. The nickel-and-dime welfare state shit has to stop.
There's probably no cell coverage in these places either, am I going to pay for that too?
At some point, if you want all the modern services, you have to move out of the sticks.
let's lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities and rural towns all across America. We can do that
Who's this 'we' shit, and who pays for it? Sounds like Universal Service Fee part II. I'm not interested in spending $25,000 per person to connect a bunch of people who choose to live in the Bayou. Broadband access is not critical to life, and I'm not interested in subsidizing it.
It's not a capacity issue. Google can do that because it all happens on their own servers. An ISP only passes traffic through. If the traffic is encrypted, only the endpoints know what the data is, and if it is routed via proxy, the ISP doesn't even know what the destination is. There is no data for them to log at all.
Hey, that's not the ISP's problem. At that point, the feds would have to be content to try to get the info out of the foreign proxy server, the IP address the ISP would happily provide, at which point the proxy admin will tell them to stick their head in their ass. But nobody has to tell the idiot Congressmen that we'll figure out an end around their solution, hmmm?
They may as well legislate that gravity be lessened to solve the obesity problem. It's just as feasible from a technical sense.
Google logs every search made by its logged-in users. I expect it's quite feasible to set up a database to record every url requested by every person for quite some time. Unfortunately.
Well, predatory pricing is a ridiculous concept and Supreme Court has made it difficult (or next to impossible) to prove for a good reason. If it's YOUR product in a free country you should be able to sell it for any amount of money YOU deem appropriate. Well, try to sell... whether you actually do sell it at that price depends on whether you'll find a buyer who agrees.
Here's the not ridiculous concept: Say three small companies X, Y, and Z make comparable widgets that cost them about $100 to make and then sell for about $120. It's a healthy market. Now here comes big company W that doesn't sell widgets but they decide to start doing so. It costs them $105 to make the widgets, but they sell them for $50.
Now, why does company W do this? To be charitable? Hell no! They take a loss selling widgets for $50 until X, Y, and Z go out of business, then jack the price up to $200. That's predatory pricing, it's definitely anti-competitive, and it's definitely anti-consumer. That's bad, m'kay?
This doesn't change the inequity, however -- most companies want 2 (or more) weeks notice from you regardless of *your* reason for terminating the relationship.
There are reasonable exceptions on both sides. Like I might *expect* 2 weeks severance if I get fired for Xeroxing my ass, but I ain't gonna get it. Similarly, they might *expect* 2 weeks notice if they decide to change my job to envelope stuffing, but they wouldn't get it.
So, at the risk of really beating the dead horse on this point, I say: Fire someone with 30 seconds' notice if you must, but remember that human beings and not just corporations must act out of necessity, expediency, and self-interest. To expect the former to make concessions for the latter without expecting the reverse is just short-sighted.
And I think good companies get that concept. Though it's probably a sticky subject to ask about severance in a job interview, but it probably is a pretty good gauge of how a company treats its people.
"The nationalistic pride that you Americans display really goes too far sometimes. Come on, if you'd just look a little further, there's a whole world out there, full of fascinating possibilities and opportunities. You could save several cents on your phone bill by moving to Europe."
I can see the commercials now:
Yeah, sorry, you're fired. But there is some good news: I saved hundreds on my phone bill by moving to Europe! So easy, a Frenchman can do it!
No, it doesn't mean their scientific findings aren't valid. But it sure the hell does mean they're financially motivated.
Same goes if you get money from NSF or any other funding agency. Politics is rampant in science. More likely, these companies chose to fund researchers who were already finding things they agreed with, and this is simply a matter of selection.
At the absolute WORST, they're funding research that otherwise wouldn't exist. This can't be a bad thing. Worst that happens is they're revealed for the fools that they are. Best would be to get into a real discussion regarding research instead of rhetoric and hyperbole.
Who's offering the $10,000 for the report proving global warming is our fault?
Pick up the last few years worth of Science and Nature, read the articles, check the acknowledgements. Is it your contention that research concluding that warming is anthropogenic is NOT currently being funded?
Slashdot Mirror
Cue people who pretend they understand the science...
As mentioned, there are some of us around here who are actual scientists. However, there are no details in the article, thus no science to understand. All I found were crappy analogies with afterburners and some hand-wavey crap about plasma. I'm pretty sure that if it were as easy as running some crap through a plasma to accelerate it, it would have been done some time ago. And there are a number of pertinent questions:
Why do they have to use a 2-mile accelerator if the plasma can do in a foot what it takes the 2 miles to do?
Why can't it be longer?
How is the plasma chamber set up? I'm guessing it's probably an coupled with an RF field, which can accelerate a plasma, but details, come on!
Your point is noted, and I'm sure huge volumes of Kazaa-using freeloaders will pretend your point about caching being a form of advertising has some validity. That said, I am not a Kazaa using freeloader, and as such I think your point is retarded.
No need for name calling, don't be a dick. I wasn't making an argument about whether Google has the *right* to cache; they probably don't. I'm making the case that the newspapers are stupid to fuck with Google, particularly since Google provides them a net benefit, and that further even the caching probably helps them ultimately since their online revenue is probably over 99% ad driven. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
WTF is an EMO kid? Jesus, can people stop inventing these crazy three letter words?
Maybe This will help
Not helping emo kids whine about their girlfriends.
Now I know you're making this up. Emo kids don't have girlfriends!
Installing things per-user would be a pain in the ass to maintain. If IT needed to update an application on a computer, or change a setting for the application, and that application was installed separately for each user, how would they do that without logging in as each individual user? What about the additional space that it would take up? Sure, that may not matter for little things like GAIM or a text editor or something, but I would rather not having 10 copies of Adobe CS2, Microsoft Office, and Visual Studio/MSDN sitting on computers.
That's why I said that some few apps - like Office - would be deployed system-wide. But for smaller programs, we're scientists and frankly I don't have the time to ping the damned helpdesk with a laundrylist of 15 programs I want to try that might solve my problem. HDD space is cheap, and the lost productivity of those of us who are actively trying to do some research is a real problem. The way things work on a Mac now is fairly nice - most programs are compartmentalized in a single folder and don't need Admin priveleges to install. Program breaks? Delete the folder. Easy.
Naturally my solution to this problem was to simply requisition a new HDD, install linux, and not give them the root pw. I can install whatever the hell I want. And I can actually get some damned work done.
And each user *does* have their own registry - its loaded into HKEY_CURRENT_USER, and is located at %USERPROFILE%\NTUSER.DAT. HKLM (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) holds the per-machine registry settings.
Then maybe the problem is that the moron devs keep using the system one. I apologize for my Windows ignorance, I've been a (gratefully) occasional user for about 5 years. But it drives me friggin' nuts when I can't even install a small app to userland without it trying to write to Windows/System. Terrible design, and very prevalent.
The registry has a lot of drawbacks, but it wasn't that unreasonable an idea actually.
Sure, if every user had one instead of making it a system-wide thing. For a Windows system, it seems to me there should be relatively few 3rd-party apps installed system-wide. Other than that, most things should be installed user-level, but between MS and their damned developers this proves impossible.
At our company, we users don't have Admin privileges for our own machines (and I don't really blame IT for it). As a result, if I'm trying to try out open-source math/science apps, I can probably install 1 out of 5 that don't install to windows/system or some other protected directory. Almost impossible to maintain an environment where machines are secure and usable.
The point - mine, by the way - is that if these assholes want to screw with Google, they might find themselves disconnected from ALL Google services, which would include indexing, which would suck for them. Additionally, even the cache is good advertising in that it gets their name out there, and they probably derive more benefit from that then the pittance of reprints they sell.
Most of these newspapers are at least 60 years old. Somes are more than 100 years old. Nobody is really interested by Belgian news except Belgian themselves. Belgians know these newspapers names and URLs already. I really doubt that Google has any significant impact on their trafic.
If that's the case - which I doubt - then Google indexing and caching them couldn't possibly hurt them, then could it?
My intuition is that the newspaper business there is competitive like it is anywhere, and that there are many outlets for news, online and offline. Those who ignore the internet will find themselves screwed, and I don't think that ceases to be the case in Belgium. Belgians use Google too, don't they?
If I'm Google, I turn the morons off and see how fast they come screaming back when their ad revenue plummets. Seriously, IT'S FREE FREAKING ADVERTISING. Google should be charging *them*.
A: Yes, the initial response to this was amazing, a measurable number of new Linux drivers will be created thanks to this program.
As per a Simpson's episode, I'm reminded that zero is a number. ;)
Sales tax is just another way to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. It is always a scam based on a will for the rich to avoid any responsibility for their greater consumption of natural resources that they would otherwise be paying for. I recommend always avoiding it whenever possible.
Great speech, comrade. Read that in Pravda, did you?
The sad thing is, something tells me that's not apocryphal.
the question is... are the potatoe seeds large enough to survive re-entry? They're light, but is their density low enough so that they decelerate without burning up?
My guess is it depends how high they started. If they were in orbit, they'd have such a huge speed that they would definitely burn up. If they were dropped from a vehicle that was on the border of what we consider space, I might buy that their speed never gets high enough to burn them up before they decelerate to their terminal velocity at 1 atm.
Consider it an investment. By increasing opportunities in rural or economically disadvantaged areas, by introducing freer information and allowing more people the chance to inform and educate themselves, you only enrich society and create a more vital economy. That $25,000 could result in massive returns. It's all very theoretical, I agree. You might even accuse me of wishful thinking. But America prides itself on its technical knowhow. Why would you let the fear of a relatively small investment (compared to other governmental expenditures) hobble your citizenry?
It's not small, last I checked our welfare state cost me 1/3 of my paycheck. Not to mention which, it's pretty much proven that people spend most of their time online fucking around. Like I am now, but I pay for my broadband. $25,000 per capita is too much to pay to give these people faster internet. They can use 56K. If they think broadband is worth $25K/household, let them do Muni.
You want to talk about schools and broadband, fine. But as for charging me so some redneck can get to YouTube, no thanks.
Broadband is a luxury and the payoff you talk about is too speculative to start reaching into my wallet. The nickel-and-dime welfare state shit has to stop.
There's probably no cell coverage in these places either, am I going to pay for that too?
At some point, if you want all the modern services, you have to move out of the sticks.
Then there was so much ruckus, the tubes got all clogged.
Who's this 'we' shit, and who pays for it? Sounds like Universal Service Fee part II. I'm not interested in spending $25,000 per person to connect a bunch of people who choose to live in the Bayou. Broadband access is not critical to life, and I'm not interested in subsidizing it.
Obama has a lot of great ideas with no funding.
It's not a capacity issue. Google can do that because it all happens on their own servers. An ISP only passes traffic through. If the traffic is encrypted, only the endpoints know what the data is, and if it is routed via proxy, the ISP doesn't even know what the destination is. There is no data for them to log at all.
Hey, that's not the ISP's problem. At that point, the feds would have to be content to try to get the info out of the foreign proxy server, the IP address the ISP would happily provide, at which point the proxy admin will tell them to stick their head in their ass. But nobody has to tell the idiot Congressmen that we'll figure out an end around their solution, hmmm?
They may as well legislate that gravity be lessened to solve the obesity problem. It's just as feasible from a technical sense.
Google logs every search made by its logged-in users. I expect it's quite feasible to set up a database to record every url requested by every person for quite some time. Unfortunately.
You know, they also have a car that can run totally on water, man, but the government keeps covering it up!
Thanks Hyde.
similar to where Windows 2000 was when it was fresh out the door.
Should be better, considering that Win2K came from a completely different code tree than 98.
Just use the 'nv' driver
No ways, 'vesa' is teh fast0r!
Well, predatory pricing is a ridiculous concept and Supreme Court has made it difficult (or next to impossible) to prove for a good reason. If it's YOUR product in a free country you should be able to sell it for any amount of money YOU deem appropriate. Well, try to sell... whether you actually do sell it at that price depends on whether you'll find a buyer who agrees.
Here's the not ridiculous concept: Say three small companies X, Y, and Z make comparable widgets that cost them about $100 to make and then sell for about $120. It's a healthy market. Now here comes big company W that doesn't sell widgets but they decide to start doing so. It costs them $105 to make the widgets, but they sell them for $50.
Now, why does company W do this? To be charitable? Hell no! They take a loss selling widgets for $50 until X, Y, and Z go out of business, then jack the price up to $200. That's predatory pricing, it's definitely anti-competitive, and it's definitely anti-consumer. That's bad, m'kay?
This doesn't change the inequity, however -- most companies want 2 (or more) weeks notice from you regardless of *your* reason for terminating the relationship.
There are reasonable exceptions on both sides. Like I might *expect* 2 weeks severance if I get fired for Xeroxing my ass, but I ain't gonna get it. Similarly, they might *expect* 2 weeks notice if they decide to change my job to envelope stuffing, but they wouldn't get it.
So, at the risk of really beating the dead horse on this point, I say: Fire someone with 30 seconds' notice if you must, but remember that human beings and not just corporations must act out of necessity, expediency, and self-interest. To expect the former to make concessions for the latter without expecting the reverse is just short-sighted.
And I think good companies get that concept. Though it's probably a sticky subject to ask about severance in a job interview, but it probably is a pretty good gauge of how a company treats its people.
"The nationalistic pride that you Americans display really goes too far sometimes. Come on, if you'd just look a little further, there's a whole world out there, full of fascinating possibilities and opportunities. You could save several cents on your phone bill by moving to Europe."
I can see the commercials now:
No, it doesn't mean their scientific findings aren't valid. But it sure the hell does mean they're financially motivated.
Same goes if you get money from NSF or any other funding agency. Politics is rampant in science. More likely, these companies chose to fund researchers who were already finding things they agreed with, and this is simply a matter of selection.
At the absolute WORST, they're funding research that otherwise wouldn't exist. This can't be a bad thing. Worst that happens is they're revealed for the fools that they are. Best would be to get into a real discussion regarding research instead of rhetoric and hyperbole.
Who's offering the $10,000 for the report proving global warming is our fault?
Pick up the last few years worth of Science and Nature, read the articles, check the acknowledgements. Is it your contention that research concluding that warming is anthropogenic is NOT currently being funded?