I maintain three different websites, and the percentage visitors using a Mac for all three sites always ranges between 3% and 6%. This corresponds with the usually cited figures.
South Korea is the most "connected" nation in the world, with some 80% of households having broadband, and the average broadband connection being 4 MBits/s.
North Korea, well, can hardly feed themselves.
Take a look at North Korea vs South Korea in this NASA "Earth at night" image; it's really telling. South Korea is amongst brightest countries in the world, while North Korea is just this sudden dark, dark "void" sitting conspicuously between South Korea and China.
I doubt that Apple is planning a wholesale switch to Intel chips as there is too much invested in both marketing and developer relations.
... if Apple do want to switch to Intel chips in the long term (e.g. perhaps to ultimately eventually compete head-on with Windows in the PC OS space?), then the best time to start is now, i.e. sooner rather than later. Because although Apple have "a lot" invested in marketing and developer relations, that's not going to get less over time, it's going to get much much more --- and the longer they wait, the (exponentially) harder it will become to do a switch.
Apple have only about 3% of the PC market right now (but growing). Imagine trying to switch to x86 when they have, say, 20% market share some years down the line, and many more customers, ISVs and applications. By comparison, switching now will be an absolute breeze.
The ideal is if they can put a system in place that keeps both options open, e.g. perhaps automatical compilation to a dual binary format. If any application developed from 2006 on could support both platforms automatically, they could grow in whichever direction they felt best, and not be left high and dry if e.g. something happens to IBM. And even more ideally is if they can emulate PPC on x86 reasonably well enough that existing software can run on the x86-based Apple too.
In fact the more I think about it, the more sense it seems to make to try run on x86. Although it does seem like a risky move.
"Protecting copyright" is a red herring, designed to distract you from the real purpose of DRM, which is to ultimately be able to control which vendors are and are not "trusted" to run software on the platform. In other words, it's a hardware system designed for the current industry giants to, in the long term, forever lock out potential competition. It has little to do with "media content".
Of course they will wait until the majority of computers are based on the new hardware, and people have become "used to" the idea of DRM on their systems and have been lulled into a false sense of security that it's harmless.
This is the real purpose of DRM --- copyright protection is just an incidental "fringe benefit". The current industry giants want to be able to control the platform, to be able to pick who can and can't run software, and thus lock out anyone who might ever be a potential competitor -- ever. This means "monopoly pricing" for a long time to come, and for more than just Windows and Office. Network effects and other economic factors such as economies of scale will further cement the inability of new startups to ever compete with the current players.
The problem with DRM that should make everyone suspicious automatically is that it provides effectively no advantage to consumers (unless you're really ridiculous enough to think that industry would spend this much so that a few users can get 'slightly faster encryption/decryption' - oh please). Think about it for a moment - who is it for? who benefits? - and the answer is obvious.
Um, did it ever occur to you that the SMB implementation on Sun just swaps the byte order? The potential problem is that not everyone does --- i.e. there may be vendors out there who have developed software for Macs that makes assumptions about byte order, and Apple can do nothing about that, those ISVs will just hopefully have to be in a position to update their software for their clients. I very much doubt though that this would affect any of the "major" protocols, only "obscure" vendor-specific protocols. More likely IMO is third-party ISVs having made assumptions in their file formats.
Anyway, endianness is a problem for the ISVs, Apple can't do anything about it because there is no way to know when an fread or socket read (for example) is for an int. And since ISVs would probably have to recompile anyway to support the x86 architecture, they'd have to fix their software to do the necessary detection and byte swapping at the same time.. usually not too difficult. So only vendors who are no longer in a position to update their software will really fall behind (and their customers pissed off; for most customers I expect this would be "just a hitch"). Of course all that is assuming Apple would't provide some sort of automatic PPC 'emulation layer' to run old apps that have not yet been recompiled for dual native x86 / PPC, or whatever. (Whatever happens, they will have to try make this all quite transparent for customers --- while it may be normal practice for e.g. Linux apps, I somehow don't see the majority of Apple's customers as being able to decide if they want the "x86 download" or the "PPC download" from a website.)
Apple still has a relatively small share of the PC market, so if they are ever going to support x86, then the time to do it is now, while there are still relatively few ISVs and applications. If they grow to e.g. 20% and then try to change, the disruption would be far more massive (many more applications affected, more ISVs affected, more customers getting pissed off etc.) Maybe SJ thinks they should do it sometime in the future (e.g. perhaps in the long-term the strategy is to compete directly with Windows for standard PCs?), and if they want to do it anyway then the best time is "ASAP".
MacOSX is not about performance. It's about interface.
Let's compare kernels to kernels and UIs to UIs. Big difference, and it's impossible to make generalised statements about performance based only on timing of certain kernel functions. For server applications, especially for servers under heavy load, then sure, it makes perfect sense to compare e.g. how many microseconds it takes to spawn a thread. But that information is almost meaningless if you want to know how fast using the UI of Mac OS X is compared to, say, using the KDE Desktop, i.e. for non-server apps ("normal end users"). The effect of the speed of process forking is going to be vastly overshadowed by everything else going on. A better measure for non-server apps would be e.g., how many milliseconds does it take from the time an application requests a new window, to the time that new window is on-screen and accepting input? How about controls, e.g buttons and menus? That sort of timing seems far more relevant for what most people use computers for, but nobody ever seems to measure things like that.
(OS X sure "feels" faster than KDE to me, btw.) I understand the article benchmarks are aimed at server uses, but it's misleading to make generalised statements like "Mac OS X is slow" based on that. If you haven't actually measured the UI speed you can't comment on the UI speed.
Customers are tired of being locked into a proprietary format and being 'milked', accordingly, with monopoly pricing. This is just Microsoft's way of saying "hang on, don't switch to other software just yet, the next version of Office will have open formats". So people wait, and get hooked into the next round of upgrades, realising only too late that, whoops, it was a con, but hey, just a few more years of this and 'maybe next time'.
Come oooon - they pulled EXACTLY this stunt with the last version of Office... the same gullible people were all over/. about how MS were finally going to open their formats, and then, surprise, it never happened. Whatever happened to "fool me once", etc.? Are customers this gullible and their memories that short? They are lying again for sure. The primary reason Microsoft make truckloads of cash each year is that so many people are locked into their effectively-proprietary formats, and one in particular: Word. Why on earth would they ever be so stupid as to pro-actively change that, unless market conditions forced them? I promise you, OpenOffice is not nearly big enough for MS to feel that threatened just yet. This is just the same old lies. MS are just in that "false promises of big stuff coming in the next version" phase that they always go through inbetween major product releases to convince people to 'hold out' the wait just a bit longer.
"Linux server sales continued to show the strongest growth at 35.2 per cent and accounted for $1.2bn in sales. Linux servers made up 10 per cent of total sales in the quarter."
.NET is all about hype, that's its primary purpose. MS's chief marketing strategy for the past 15 years at least has been basically this:
- Latest version of Windows that just came out is a wash, full of problems, lots of people consider switching to other platforms because it's still three years until the next version...
- MS see uh oh, don't want people to switch, what to do?
- Tell users, "hang on, bear with us just a few more years: the next version of Windows is going to be such an incredible, progressive, advanced total workover, it will be so amazing it will increase your business's productivity and do amazing-thing X Y and Z" (e.g. Bill Gates recently spouting about 'corporate search').
- Users think wow, sounds great, MS on right track. Let's stick it out a few more years.
- As new version draws closer to release, announce little by little that you've had to 'cut back' on all the various ambitious faux "plans". The general rule is, the closer you are to the next release of Windows, the more people think "oh well, the next version comes out next year - might as well just wait now and upgrade, it's easier than switching, and hey, maybe this time Windows really will be good".
- Finally, MS release something that is only a slight incremental improvement over the previous version, but with the "look" changed enough that most people think it's a total rewrite anyway.
- Six to twelve months later, having long forgotten about the initial promises, the users start realising what a disaster the new OS is. MS starts promising that the next version will be incredible... cycle repeats.
Come on, learn from history. If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say "maybe the next version of Windows will be good...".. running on what, almost fifteen years now?
Almost by definition, every change is always going to be "just on the acceptable side", because it will always only be marginally worse than the current status quo, which people have already gotten used to and thus have already accepted as being totally the "norm". People have remarkably high tolerance, almost unlimited, to absymal conditions as long as they've gotten used to something as being "normal".
Each change represents only a marginal decrease in your rights. It will always be accepted. That's why there are "slippery slopes", and they're not imaginary, they're very real. Even the mere threat of something previously totally unheard of (e.g. the idea that anyone should be allowed to see you naked "for security reasons") is enough to start psychologically "normalising" the concept. An hour ago, it was just unheard of and "shocking" to me, but now I've already come to terms with this "new reality" as something I'll have to put up with when I travel again. By the second or third time I go through the scanners, I'll think it's 100% normal. And any children growing up now will live in such a world entirely and never realise that it was ever any other way. But there will be many more "marginal" changes coming still.
Everyone has a right to privacy. That should be so obvious that I find it something of a marvel that there are even people dumb enough to even consider that it might be debatable. Privacy is like almost everything else in our lives - it has countless positive and healthy uses, and a miniscule percentage of shady uses.
We all know this isn't really going to help combat terrorism either.
Microsoft Windows currently basically requires you to be computer-savvy just to be able to use your PC with getting owned, so they should only market and sell it to computer experts. They should be very clear in their marketing material that the product is only intended for computer-savvy people.
There are two main possible reasons a company lays off this many people in one go:
1. The company is run by sensible people at the top who realise that for long-term survival, they need to increase efficiency in the short term
2. Those at the top are a few greedy pigs who don't care if the company dies, but just want to massively cut R&D costs (i.e. short-term investment costs necessary to maintain growth in the longer term) in order to quickly push up profit margins artificially, pay themselves out incredibly huge bonuses, and then get out quickly before the company inevitably crashes and burns (because you need R&D to survive).
It's never possible to tell which is the case though if you only look at the information "there are layoffs". It's silly to assume though that a company is laying off people "because they are not necessary in the daily business" - that's only the case for number 1 above.
It is about preventing "lost sales", but I think it's also mainly about trying to protect and monopolise all distribution channels. Controlling the distribution channels allows them to charge "what the market will bear" for movies. P2P and piracy in general is a distribution channel that is not controlled by them but which offers almost the same service they're offering for a 'much lower price'. So from an economic perspective, P2P is a competitor that differentiates on price (often with lower quality at this stage though, but that'll become less of a problem in the coming years). People will always buy/rent etc. movies legally though, and many people do want to do 'the right thing', but the long-term effect of P2P might be that the MPAA have to lower prices to compete with the illegal channels, slashing their margins & eroding profits.
It boils down to the same thing though, it's just a slightly different way of looking at it.
With the drop in price and rise in popularity of decent home theatre systems, people are looking for more choice these days in terms of distribution channels. There's a greater demand for viewing the latest movies at home, and most people would pay legally for it if it were available, but the MPAA is not stepping up to fulfil that demand.
I would think that the information in it is more valuable than the piece of paper itself, which is, well, just a piece of paper.
I'm sure I would feel the same if my work had been dug up centuries from now, and everyone screamed "noooo!! protect the paper!" when an opportunity to read what I'd written came up. Do you think Archimedes would care about the paper itself more than its content?
I see you are somehow not able to make even the simple connection between the ticket price and the high profit margins of the movie industry. Interesting. Can I sell you something?
Hmm.. I think you may have struck upon the answer to global warming, just have dozens of orbiting ads that block the sun for a few hours total each day..
Heh - when I was at university, we had this loony UNIX sysadmin looking after the servers for the Comp Sci department. One day he pulled a gun on a couple of students who had come into the server room to ask some questions.
Needless to say, he very soon thereafter "resigned".
I still saw him on campus though once or twice after that, and found out later that the department still sometimes had him come in and do work for them, 'on the quiet', as an outside contractor.. I guess they still valued his skills.
Geez, didn't you even read the blurb, let alone TFA? The bracelet's signal is read by RFID readers installed all over the prison. The bracelet is an RFID transmitter.
Only one 'half' of an RFID system is passive, but the other half is still "RFID". The reader doesn't work by itself - there must always be an RFID transmitter. In a retail store this might be at the checkout or at the door (do you think it works by magic?). In tracking of shipments and stock the transmitter may also be mobile, e.g. a handheld RFID scanner. In this case it's almost the same, except it's actually worn on the arm, and the reader doesn't move. It's still an "RFID bracelet" because it transmits an RFID signal. But hey, keep looking for gotchas or mistakes in every article, sooner or later you'll really spot some mistake nobody else thought of... riight? Sigh.
Dupes aren't so bad. Because believe it or not, not everyone has the time to read every article that appears on/. every day for months on end, and read every visible comment in every thread.
That is most certainly not German, neither is the origin of the phrase "OK". Did you even read the link that you yourself posted? OK is an Americanism, originating in New York, and is a comical pronunciation of "All Correct". Now, a few people may dispute that explanation, but nobody thinks the origin is German. The first recorded occurrences of the word are all in the US.
There is no reason why your body shouldn't 'know' to get out of breath, because your breathing rate is dependent only on the levels of oxygen in your blood. This is very well-established: There are many non-exercise-related ways to lower the body's oxygen levels, and they all have this same effect. This technique uses oxygen, so your breathing rate would increase and your heart rate would increase if this consumed oxygen at significant (exercise-like) levels. Although it's right to be cautious, methinks you're a tad skeptical. All told this seems to be fairly similar to how cells draw energy from blood, so the effect should be similar to having 'a bit more flesh' for the blood to serve. I would perhaps rather be looking at things like blood glucose though, and seeing if there might be any long-term risks there.
Slashdot Mirror
I maintain three different websites, and the percentage visitors using a Mac for all three sites always ranges between 3% and 6%. This corresponds with the usually cited figures.
Night vs. Day.
South Korea is the most "connected" nation in the world, with some 80% of households having broadband, and the average broadband connection being 4 MBits/s.
North Korea, well, can hardly feed themselves.
Take a look at North Korea vs South Korea in this NASA "Earth at night" image; it's really telling. South Korea is amongst brightest countries in the world, while North Korea is just this sudden dark, dark "void" sitting conspicuously between South Korea and China.
I doubt that Apple is planning a wholesale switch to Intel chips as there is too much invested in both marketing and developer relations.
... if Apple do want to switch to Intel chips in the long term (e.g. perhaps to ultimately eventually compete head-on with Windows in the PC OS space?), then the best time to start is now, i.e. sooner rather than later. Because although Apple have "a lot" invested in marketing and developer relations, that's not going to get less over time, it's going to get much much more --- and the longer they wait, the (exponentially) harder it will become to do a switch.
Apple have only about 3% of the PC market right now (but growing). Imagine trying to switch to x86 when they have, say, 20% market share some years down the line, and many more customers, ISVs and applications. By comparison, switching now will be an absolute breeze.
The ideal is if they can put a system in place that keeps both options open, e.g. perhaps automatical compilation to a dual binary format. If any application developed from 2006 on could support both platforms automatically, they could grow in whichever direction they felt best, and not be left high and dry if e.g. something happens to IBM. And even more ideally is if they can emulate PPC on x86 reasonably well enough that existing software can run on the x86-based Apple too.
In fact the more I think about it, the more sense it seems to make to try run on x86. Although it does seem like a risky move.
Let's see, a rumour on /. based on a rumour on cnet.com is "another reason not to buy an Apple"?
And the dumbest part is that you will use Windows on x86 instead, which will definitely have DRM, just in case Apple "might get" DRM!? WTF?
Or am I just feeding a troll now?
"Protecting copyright" is a red herring, designed to distract you from the real purpose of DRM, which is to ultimately be able to control which vendors are and are not "trusted" to run software on the platform. In other words, it's a hardware system designed for the current industry giants to, in the long term, forever lock out potential competition. It has little to do with "media content".
Of course they will wait until the majority of computers are based on the new hardware, and people have become "used to" the idea of DRM on their systems and have been lulled into a false sense of security that it's harmless.
This is the real purpose of DRM --- copyright protection is just an incidental "fringe benefit". The current industry giants want to be able to control the platform, to be able to pick who can and can't run software, and thus lock out anyone who might ever be a potential competitor -- ever. This means "monopoly pricing" for a long time to come, and for more than just Windows and Office. Network effects and other economic factors such as economies of scale will further cement the inability of new startups to ever compete with the current players.
The problem with DRM that should make everyone suspicious automatically is that it provides effectively no advantage to consumers (unless you're really ridiculous enough to think that industry would spend this much so that a few users can get 'slightly faster encryption/decryption' - oh please). Think about it for a moment - who is it for? who benefits? - and the answer is obvious.
Um, did it ever occur to you that the SMB implementation on Sun just swaps the byte order? The potential problem is that not everyone does --- i.e. there may be vendors out there who have developed software for Macs that makes assumptions about byte order, and Apple can do nothing about that, those ISVs will just hopefully have to be in a position to update their software for their clients. I very much doubt though that this would affect any of the "major" protocols, only "obscure" vendor-specific protocols. More likely IMO is third-party ISVs having made assumptions in their file formats.
Anyway, endianness is a problem for the ISVs, Apple can't do anything about it because there is no way to know when an fread or socket read (for example) is for an int. And since ISVs would probably have to recompile anyway to support the x86 architecture, they'd have to fix their software to do the necessary detection and byte swapping at the same time .. usually not too difficult. So only vendors who are no longer in a position to update their software will really fall behind (and their customers pissed off; for most customers I expect this would be "just a hitch"). Of course all that is assuming Apple would't provide some sort of automatic PPC 'emulation layer' to run old apps that have not yet been recompiled for dual native x86 / PPC, or whatever. (Whatever happens, they will have to try make this all quite transparent for customers --- while it may be normal practice for e.g. Linux apps, I somehow don't see the majority of Apple's customers as being able to decide if they want the "x86 download" or the "PPC download" from a website.)
Apple still has a relatively small share of the PC market, so if they are ever going to support x86, then the time to do it is now, while there are still relatively few ISVs and applications. If they grow to e.g. 20% and then try to change, the disruption would be far more massive (many more applications affected, more ISVs affected, more customers getting pissed off etc.) Maybe SJ thinks they should do it sometime in the future (e.g. perhaps in the long-term the strategy is to compete directly with Windows for standard PCs?), and if they want to do it anyway then the best time is "ASAP".
MacOSX is not about performance. It's about interface.
Let's compare kernels to kernels and UIs to UIs. Big difference, and it's impossible to make generalised statements about performance based only on timing of certain kernel functions. For server applications, especially for servers under heavy load, then sure, it makes perfect sense to compare e.g. how many microseconds it takes to spawn a thread. But that information is almost meaningless if you want to know how fast using the UI of Mac OS X is compared to, say, using the KDE Desktop, i.e. for non-server apps ("normal end users"). The effect of the speed of process forking is going to be vastly overshadowed by everything else going on. A better measure for non-server apps would be e.g., how many milliseconds does it take from the time an application requests a new window, to the time that new window is on-screen and accepting input? How about controls, e.g buttons and menus? That sort of timing seems far more relevant for what most people use computers for, but nobody ever seems to measure things like that.
(OS X sure "feels" faster than KDE to me, btw.) I understand the article benchmarks are aimed at server uses, but it's misleading to make generalised statements like "Mac OS X is slow" based on that. If you haven't actually measured the UI speed you can't comment on the UI speed.
Customers are tired of being locked into a proprietary format and being 'milked', accordingly, with monopoly pricing. This is just Microsoft's way of saying "hang on, don't switch to other software just yet, the next version of Office will have open formats". So people wait, and get hooked into the next round of upgrades, realising only too late that, whoops, it was a con, but hey, just a few more years of this and 'maybe next time'.
Come oooon - they pulled EXACTLY this stunt with the last version of Office ... the same gullible people were all over /. about how MS were finally going to open their formats, and then, surprise, it never happened. Whatever happened to "fool me once", etc.? Are customers this gullible and their memories that short? They are lying again for sure. The primary reason Microsoft make truckloads of cash each year is that so many people are locked into their effectively-proprietary formats, and one in particular: Word. Why on earth would they ever be so stupid as to pro-actively change that, unless market conditions forced them? I promise you, OpenOffice is not nearly big enough for MS to feel that threatened just yet. This is just the same old lies. MS are just in that "false promises of big stuff coming in the next version" phase that they always go through inbetween major product releases to convince people to 'hold out' the wait just a bit longer.
"Linux server sales continued to show the strongest growth at 35.2 per cent and accounted for $1.2bn in sales. Linux servers made up 10 per cent of total sales in the quarter."
Is .NET going to be a wash?
.NET is all about hype, that's its primary purpose. MS's chief marketing strategy for the past 15 years at least has been basically this:
- Latest version of Windows that just came out is a wash, full of problems, lots of people consider switching to other platforms because it's still three years until the next version ...
- MS see uh oh, don't want people to switch, what to do?
- Tell users, "hang on, bear with us just a few more years: the next version of Windows is going to be such an incredible, progressive, advanced total workover, it will be so amazing it will increase your business's productivity and do amazing-thing X Y and Z" (e.g. Bill Gates recently spouting about 'corporate search').
- Users think wow, sounds great, MS on right track. Let's stick it out a few more years.
- As new version draws closer to release, announce little by little that you've had to 'cut back' on all the various ambitious faux "plans". The general rule is, the closer you are to the next release of Windows, the more people think "oh well, the next version comes out next year - might as well just wait now and upgrade, it's easier than switching, and hey, maybe this time Windows really will be good".
- Finally, MS release something that is only a slight incremental improvement over the previous version, but with the "look" changed enough that most people think it's a total rewrite anyway.
- Six to twelve months later, having long forgotten about the initial promises, the users start realising what a disaster the new OS is. MS starts promising that the next version will be incredible ... cycle repeats.
Come on, learn from history. If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say "maybe the next version of Windows will be good ..." .. running on what, almost fifteen years now?
What then would be unacceptable?
Almost by definition, every change is always going to be "just on the acceptable side", because it will always only be marginally worse than the current status quo, which people have already gotten used to and thus have already accepted as being totally the "norm". People have remarkably high tolerance, almost unlimited, to absymal conditions as long as they've gotten used to something as being "normal".
Each change represents only a marginal decrease in your rights. It will always be accepted. That's why there are "slippery slopes", and they're not imaginary, they're very real. Even the mere threat of something previously totally unheard of (e.g. the idea that anyone should be allowed to see you naked "for security reasons") is enough to start psychologically "normalising" the concept. An hour ago, it was just unheard of and "shocking" to me, but now I've already come to terms with this "new reality" as something I'll have to put up with when I travel again. By the second or third time I go through the scanners, I'll think it's 100% normal. And any children growing up now will live in such a world entirely and never realise that it was ever any other way. But there will be many more "marginal" changes coming still.
Everyone has a right to privacy. That should be so obvious that I find it something of a marvel that there are even people dumb enough to even consider that it might be debatable. Privacy is like almost everything else in our lives - it has countless positive and healthy uses, and a miniscule percentage of shady uses.
We all know this isn't really going to help combat terrorism either.
Microsoft Windows currently basically requires you to be computer-savvy just to be able to use your PC with getting owned, so they should only market and sell it to computer experts. They should be very clear in their marketing material that the product is only intended for computer-savvy people.
There are two main possible reasons a company lays off this many people in one go:
1. The company is run by sensible people at the top who realise that for long-term survival, they need to increase efficiency in the short term
2. Those at the top are a few greedy pigs who don't care if the company dies, but just want to massively cut R&D costs (i.e. short-term investment costs necessary to maintain growth in the longer term) in order to quickly push up profit margins artificially, pay themselves out incredibly huge bonuses, and then get out quickly before the company inevitably crashes and burns (because you need R&D to survive).
It's never possible to tell which is the case though if you only look at the information "there are layoffs". It's silly to assume though that a company is laying off people "because they are not necessary in the daily business" - that's only the case for number 1 above.
Hmm .. interesting, if I think back, I've only ever used Bittorrent to download legal stuff.
It is about preventing "lost sales", but I think it's also mainly about trying to protect and monopolise all distribution channels. Controlling the distribution channels allows them to charge "what the market will bear" for movies. P2P and piracy in general is a distribution channel that is not controlled by them but which offers almost the same service they're offering for a 'much lower price'. So from an economic perspective, P2P is a competitor that differentiates on price (often with lower quality at this stage though, but that'll become less of a problem in the coming years). People will always buy/rent etc. movies legally though, and many people do want to do 'the right thing', but the long-term effect of P2P might be that the MPAA have to lower prices to compete with the illegal channels, slashing their margins & eroding profits.
It boils down to the same thing though, it's just a slightly different way of looking at it.
With the drop in price and rise in popularity of decent home theatre systems, people are looking for more choice these days in terms of distribution channels. There's a greater demand for viewing the latest movies at home, and most people would pay legally for it if it were available, but the MPAA is not stepping up to fulfil that demand.
I would think that the information in it is more valuable than the piece of paper itself, which is, well, just a piece of paper.
I'm sure I would feel the same if my work had been dug up centuries from now, and everyone screamed "noooo!! protect the paper!" when an opportunity to read what I'd written came up. Do you think Archimedes would care about the paper itself more than its content?
I see you are somehow not able to make even the simple connection between the ticket price and the high profit margins of the movie industry. Interesting. Can I sell you something?
Hmm .. I think you may have struck upon the answer to global warming, just have dozens of orbiting ads that block the sun for a few hours total each day ..
Heh - when I was at university, we had this loony UNIX sysadmin looking after the servers for the Comp Sci department. One day he pulled a gun on a couple of students who had come into the server room to ask some questions.
Needless to say, he very soon thereafter "resigned".
I still saw him on campus though once or twice after that, and found out later that the department still sometimes had him come in and do work for them, 'on the quiet', as an outside contractor .. I guess they still valued his skills.
Geez, didn't you even read the blurb, let alone TFA? The bracelet's signal is read by RFID readers installed all over the prison. The bracelet is an RFID transmitter.
Only one 'half' of an RFID system is passive, but the other half is still "RFID". The reader doesn't work by itself - there must always be an RFID transmitter. In a retail store this might be at the checkout or at the door (do you think it works by magic?). In tracking of shipments and stock the transmitter may also be mobile, e.g. a handheld RFID scanner. In this case it's almost the same, except it's actually worn on the arm, and the reader doesn't move. It's still an "RFID bracelet" because it transmits an RFID signal. But hey, keep looking for gotchas or mistakes in every article, sooner or later you'll really spot some mistake nobody else thought of ... riight? Sigh.
Terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy. How can you be at war with it?
Dupes aren't so bad. Because believe it or not, not everyone has the time to read every article that appears on /. every day for months on end, and read every visible comment in every thread.
At least, that's what I heard.
That is most certainly not German, neither is the origin of the phrase "OK". Did you even read the link that you yourself posted? OK is an Americanism, originating in New York, and is a comical pronunciation of "All Correct". Now, a few people may dispute that explanation, but nobody thinks the origin is German. The first recorded occurrences of the word are all in the US.
There is no reason why your body shouldn't 'know' to get out of breath, because your breathing rate is dependent only on the levels of oxygen in your blood. This is very well-established: There are many non-exercise-related ways to lower the body's oxygen levels, and they all have this same effect. This technique uses oxygen, so your breathing rate would increase and your heart rate would increase if this consumed oxygen at significant (exercise-like) levels. Although it's right to be cautious, methinks you're a tad skeptical. All told this seems to be fairly similar to how cells draw energy from blood, so the effect should be similar to having 'a bit more flesh' for the blood to serve. I would perhaps rather be looking at things like blood glucose though, and seeing if there might be any long-term risks there.