Did *I* miss something?
The 1.4GHz Itanium 2 comes out Monday for $1,172 in 1,000-unit quantities. [...] That $2000 buys the processor, alone, and I don't believe I know any gamers that buy processors in lots of 1000.
Are you saying that $1172 proc. in thousand quantity will cost $2000 when bought singly?
I hate to break it to you, but if you don't perform, it doesn't matter how much you regard yourself a "consumer" and how you feel paying for an education entitles you to a degree -
If you don't perform satisfactorily, then you're not earning your degree.
A university is not a store where you can wave money and demand product in return.
Of course, he can say that knowing full well he'll never be put in a new F1 car to put his mouth where his money is. Did occur to anybody Jackie Stewart might be a bit JEALOUS of Michael Schumacher's accomplishments?
Norm Abram is one of the worst craftsmen I've seen at work. He's good at acting like he knows what he's doing, with his "fancy" machinery and pseudotechnical jargon, but his craftsmanship is crude and poorly thought out. And he doesn't know how to do anything by hand, so he'll spend an hour setting up fixturing to do something that takes two minutes on the machine but would only have taken a total of five minutes to do by hand.
What's so "free" about being stripped of your right to decided where, when, and how to spend your own earnings?
Yeah, I'm so fed up with paying gasoline tax and not have a say in where that money is spent. I want that money to be spent on the roads I drive on, and only on those roads, but I don't get a say in that.
Wow, you just have no perspective do you? Arson vs. tossing cigarette butts on the ground? Arson can very easily kill people and cause enormous property damage. I'm not sure cig butts on the ground generally fall in that category of "inconvenience." And yes, keeping hackers out is the sysadmin's job. And yes, the busboy IS paid to clean up, if he doesn't like to clean up he really should not be a busboy.
Yes, but even polite smokers tend to make a mess by scattering their cigarette butts all over the ground in any place they congregate. As a non-smoker, it sort of pisses me off having to pick up after them!
Why is it that you have to pick up after them? If it's your job to clean up outside areas you might as well bitch about stupid trees with their stupid leaves falling off them.
It seems to me that if you have to stick some phallic-shaped object into your mouth to get your satisfaction, you've obviously got more than just a nicotine addiction...
Who is it that has a problem here? You sit there and make ridiculous comparisons, and YOU are the one bringing up all this phallus business.
In short, it's a bunch of feel-good legislation that legalizes a few shady practices, and add further laws against others. Nobody will bother to enforce it, and in a few years, it will have been forgotten.
If the powers that be can't even be bothered to enact a law against such practices, they're REALLY sending the message that they don't care, and so emboldens the spyware authors.
Passing a law in and of itself may not be terribly effective, but it DOES enable people to go after spyware makers - as it is now you have practically no recourse whatsoever against those who install software on YOUR computer AGAINST YOUR WISH.
"Surely there ought to be a law against that!" I can imagine many people say. Well, now there may be. And thus something can be done.
The article describes what is basically a problem with fads in writing - It cites Strange Horizon's submission guidelines as "evidence" that creativity is gone within Sci-Fi. (Basically, there were too many stories along the lines of "Visitor to alien planet ignores information about local rules, inadvertently violates them, is punished" and "Office life turns to be soul-deadening, literally or metaphorically")
Well, in screenwriting you read about fads too, one screenplay analyst said "If I read one more story about a journalist chasing a Pulitzer prize I'll gag!", does that mean that all screenwriting is now centered on journalists chasing Pulitzer Prizes? No!
The article has no perspective - there are citations of declining readership, stale storylines, stale this, stale that. Well duh - EVERY genre has its high and low points, but trending towards a low point does NOT mean the sky is falling, nor does it mean that a new high will never be reached.
Some try to argue that "we've done everything Sci-Fi used to promise would be in the future, so there are no more predictions to make." Excuse me? The 1900 patent bureau chief called, he wants his statement back.
I must really have slacked off on reading the news lately, because I've missed all the stories about us being able to
- Travel in time
- Travel interstellarly (But hey, we've been to the moon!
- Concquer all disease (But we're really close!)
- Extract energy in totally novel ways (Like using decay heat to boil water to drive a steam turbine!)
So in short, what's "wrong" with sci-fi today is that a few fads have been wrung to death, and those with novel ideas have been sidelined. Their time will come, and I predict that in the future, we will still have good, thought-provoking, evocative sci-fi.
The USA Today article states "No charges were brought against Kurtz." Three of his colleagues were subpoenaed to testify, but again, NO charges.
I dare say that when they're investigating the death of a family member and they find bacteriological lab equipment, they a) have the right to, and b) SHOULD err conservative and investigate what the heck has been going on. The article further states that the health officials had declared the apartment safe, and the artist was staying in a HOTEL while they were checking the apartment.
The grand jury has been convened so that some answers can be gotten as to what has been going on. Nothing unreasonable there.
The author seems to find great pleasure in mocking everything about past predictions of the future. Rather than taking the time to write a coherent comparison and analysis the author instead put up a bunch of magazine scans and straw men and pushed them all over.
This could have been a great website, featuring what people thought the future would look like, comparing it to what it ended up looking like, and featuring some analysis as to why the discrepancies occured, or at the very least some surmises.
It's not easy telling the future, and I doubt very many of the magazine scans and "future" products were meant to be authoritarian "this is what it WILL look like" presentations. Rather, they were "hey, wouldn't it be neat if we could have this in the future?" With that view this could actually have been an inspiration to help develop what we already don't have. Instead it was turned into a poorly written "ha ha, what stupid ideas"-fest.
What's the use of even putting up this website when all it is doing is slam those who try to have some sort of vision?
Mr Pun said they were now looking at ways of using the wi-fi network for distance learning as there is a shortage of qualified teachers in the area.
This is something that ought to be used in more locales than just Nepal - imagine how this can be put to good use in any underdeveloped nation. Solar-powered WiFi networks and computers, teaching reading and math, and even more advanced topics. Using freely downloaded and distributed learning materials, or learning materials created by teachers.
Discover Magazine ran an article on this process, and it's incredibly versatile. It can serve a dual purpose: reducing the dependence on foreign oil, AND reducing the amount of waste going into landfills.
100-200 barrels a day is NOT to laugh at, many privately owned oil wells produce far less than that per day. It still pays off to run them. And yes, it is realistic to set up hundreds or even thousands of these plants - I'd imagine many municipalities would be interested in using a plant like this to turn their waste into a resource rather than a drain. The process isn't just for turkey guts, it can convert plastic scrap, old tires, and other such refuse into oil as well.
So don't knock it just because the output seems puny - this can be used not only to reduce the dependence on foreign oil, it is also useful in creating a decentralized energy infrastructure.
My test for whether something is really *that* addictive...
Would people sell themselves for another fix of it?
Would somebody REALLY sell themselves for a cup of coffee? Would you sleep with someone you hate or are repulsed by just so you can get a cup of coffee?
Well, the article is another inconsistent ramble about how movies are unrealistic and implies that people are stupid (well, ok, only "gullible", that's so much better).
About 50% of the American public believes that UFO's are real, and what they mean by "real" is that UFO's are piloted by aliens from some distant world, not Earthlings from the local Air Force Base or actors in Hollywood costumes.
This is presented as if it were "evidence" of anything bad going on, as if it has been proven that UFOs are NOT extraterrestrial craft. The point isn't whether they are or not. WE DON'T KNOW. Hence the "U" in "UFO".
Of course I agree that it's bad that misinformation is spread, but come on, give the public a break. Sometimes it is rather tempting to get on a high horse and pity the fools that believe all this BS that is churned out by the movie industry and its ilk. This overlooks an important point though: A lot of people realize that Science Fiction isn't necessarily "realistic" (as if any movie is), a lot of people realize that there is no moon landing hoax. Just because this trash is widespread does NOT mean everybody believes it or buys into it. This is what the intuitor guy and the writer of this article can never get into their heads. But then, they wouldn't be able to sit on their perch and feel good about how they're never fooled by the "bad science" that everybody else is fooled by.
If you use pirated software, you have not paid for the right to use that software. Like it or not, creators of software get to charge for the right to use their software. It is, after all, their intellectual property.
One can argue the safety of the 'net (patches against worms and such), but the responsibility for any worm infestation on a computer running a pirated OS falls on the user of pirated software.
Slashdot Mirror
They also made another version, in a factory down south to promote employment in that region. They call it the Alfredosud.
Did *I* miss something? The 1.4GHz Itanium 2 comes out Monday for $1,172 in 1,000-unit quantities. [...] That $2000 buys the processor, alone, and I don't believe I know any gamers that buy processors in lots of 1000. Are you saying that $1172 proc. in thousand quantity will cost $2000 when bought singly?
I don't think the hooker cares much as long as she gets paid.
If you don't perform satisfactorily, then you're not earning your degree.
A university is not a store where you can wave money and demand product in return.
Of course, he can say that knowing full well he'll never be put in a new F1 car to put his mouth where his money is. Did occur to anybody Jackie Stewart might be a bit JEALOUS of Michael Schumacher's accomplishments?
Norm Abram is one of the worst craftsmen I've seen at work. He's good at acting like he knows what he's doing, with his "fancy" machinery and pseudotechnical jargon, but his craftsmanship is crude and poorly thought out. And he doesn't know how to do anything by hand, so he'll spend an hour setting up fixturing to do something that takes two minutes on the machine but would only have taken a total of five minutes to do by hand.
Yeah, I'm so fed up with paying gasoline tax and not have a say in where that money is spent. I want that money to be spent on the roads I drive on, and only on those roads, but I don't get a say in that.
Wow, you just have no perspective do you? Arson vs. tossing cigarette butts on the ground? Arson can very easily kill people and cause enormous property damage. I'm not sure cig butts on the ground generally fall in that category of "inconvenience." And yes, keeping hackers out is the sysadmin's job. And yes, the busboy IS paid to clean up, if he doesn't like to clean up he really should not be a busboy.
Why is it that you have to pick up after them? If it's your job to clean up outside areas you might as well bitch about stupid trees with their stupid leaves falling off them.
It seems to me that if you have to stick some phallic-shaped object into your mouth to get your satisfaction, you've obviously got more than just a nicotine addiction...
Who is it that has a problem here? You sit there and make ridiculous comparisons, and YOU are the one bringing up all this phallus business.
Asok: "Can you think of anything Wally would do vigorously?"
Alice: "I'd rather not"
So someone who's working on an H1B isn't necessarily foreign-EDUCATED, only foreign. Plenty of H1B workers are US educated.
Amen dude :)
Also, where are these people supposed to get their experience in the first place, if everybody follows your logic?
If the powers that be can't even be bothered to enact a law against such practices, they're REALLY sending the message that they don't care, and so emboldens the spyware authors.
Passing a law in and of itself may not be terribly effective, but it DOES enable people to go after spyware makers - as it is now you have practically no recourse whatsoever against those who install software on YOUR computer AGAINST YOUR WISH.
"Surely there ought to be a law against that!" I can imagine many people say. Well, now there may be. And thus something can be done.
Well, in screenwriting you read about fads too, one screenplay analyst said "If I read one more story about a journalist chasing a Pulitzer prize I'll gag!", does that mean that all screenwriting is now centered on journalists chasing Pulitzer Prizes? No!
The article has no perspective - there are citations of declining readership, stale storylines, stale this, stale that. Well duh - EVERY genre has its high and low points, but trending towards a low point does NOT mean the sky is falling, nor does it mean that a new high will never be reached.
Some try to argue that "we've done everything Sci-Fi used to promise would be in the future, so there are no more predictions to make." Excuse me? The 1900 patent bureau chief called, he wants his statement back.
I must really have slacked off on reading the news lately, because I've missed all the stories about us being able to
- Travel in time
- Travel interstellarly (But hey, we've been to the moon!
- Concquer all disease (But we're really close!)
- Extract energy in totally novel ways (Like using decay heat to boil water to drive a steam turbine!)
So in short, what's "wrong" with sci-fi today is that a few fads have been wrung to death, and those with novel ideas have been sidelined. Their time will come, and I predict that in the future, we will still have good, thought-provoking, evocative sci-fi.
One word: Lysenkoism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Wrong - Missouri IS a swing state, which is why Bush and Cheney has visited it repeatedly, and Kerry/Edwards made a campaign stop there.
Obsource:
Below and to the right is a map with the results of the 2000 election and to the left is a list of what are considered the swing states for the 2004 election http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op= modload&name=News&file=article&sid=578
"I have a huge crack in my butt" :)
The USA Today article states "No charges were brought against Kurtz." Three of his colleagues were subpoenaed to testify, but again, NO charges.
I dare say that when they're investigating the death of a family member and they find bacteriological lab equipment, they a) have the right to, and b) SHOULD err conservative and investigate what the heck has been going on. The article further states that the health officials had declared the apartment safe, and the artist was staying in a HOTEL while they were checking the apartment.
The grand jury has been convened so that some answers can be gotten as to what has been going on. Nothing unreasonable there.
This could have been a great website, featuring what people thought the future would look like, comparing it to what it ended up looking like, and featuring some analysis as to why the discrepancies occured, or at the very least some surmises.
It's not easy telling the future, and I doubt very many of the magazine scans and "future" products were meant to be authoritarian "this is what it WILL look like" presentations. Rather, they were "hey, wouldn't it be neat if we could have this in the future?" With that view this could actually have been an inspiration to help develop what we already don't have. Instead it was turned into a poorly written "ha ha, what stupid ideas"-fest.
What's the use of even putting up this website when all it is doing is slam those who try to have some sort of vision?
This is something that ought to be used in more locales than just Nepal - imagine how this can be put to good use in any underdeveloped nation. Solar-powered WiFi networks and computers, teaching reading and math, and even more advanced topics. Using freely downloaded and distributed learning materials, or learning materials created by teachers.
100-200 barrels a day is NOT to laugh at, many privately owned oil wells produce far less than that per day. It still pays off to run them. And yes, it is realistic to set up hundreds or even thousands of these plants - I'd imagine many municipalities would be interested in using a plant like this to turn their waste into a resource rather than a drain. The process isn't just for turkey guts, it can convert plastic scrap, old tires, and other such refuse into oil as well.
So don't knock it just because the output seems puny - this can be used not only to reduce the dependence on foreign oil, it is also useful in creating a decentralized energy infrastructure.
Would people sell themselves for another fix of it?
Would somebody REALLY sell themselves for a cup of coffee? Would you sleep with someone you hate or are repulsed by just so you can get a cup of coffee?
Get off the scare tactic wagon.
About 50% of the American public believes that UFO's are real, and what they mean by "real" is that UFO's are piloted by aliens from some distant world, not Earthlings from the local Air Force Base or actors in Hollywood costumes.
This is presented as if it were "evidence" of anything bad going on, as if it has been proven that UFOs are NOT extraterrestrial craft. The point isn't whether they are or not. WE DON'T KNOW. Hence the "U" in "UFO".
Of course I agree that it's bad that misinformation is spread, but come on, give the public a break. Sometimes it is rather tempting to get on a high horse and pity the fools that believe all this BS that is churned out by the movie industry and its ilk. This overlooks an important point though: A lot of people realize that Science Fiction isn't necessarily "realistic" (as if any movie is), a lot of people realize that there is no moon landing hoax. Just because this trash is widespread does NOT mean everybody believes it or buys into it. This is what the intuitor guy and the writer of this article can never get into their heads. But then, they wouldn't be able to sit on their perch and feel good about how they're never fooled by the "bad science" that everybody else is fooled by.
One can argue the safety of the 'net (patches against worms and such), but the responsibility for any worm infestation on a computer running a pirated OS falls on the user of pirated software.