The only reasons you drive less (as in distance not in frequency, is your sky high taxes, shitty roads, and that you are willing to live shoulder to shoulder in town with barely any parking, is the only reason you guys drive small cars.
That's not true. The most significant reason why Europeans drive less is exactly the same as the reason people in New York drive less: the cities were built before zoning and cars. Here in America, we're usually not allowed to "live shoulder to shoulder in town" because governments have created dendritic street patterns (or extremely large blocks) with homogeneous zones so that there are no jobs or stores within walking distance and we're forced to rely on cars.
It's January and there isn't any snow on the ground; in fact it's raining water.
In Atlanta, we usually go the winter without having any snow, or at most a few flurries. This year, however, we've had two significant snow storms within the past week (where "significant" means it actually snowed for several hours at a time, and accumulated on things other than paved ground). Except for the "blizzard" (a.k.a. 2 inches of accumulation) of '93, it's the most snow I've ever seen in my life.
My CS curriculum did have a required course about that! We didn't do a whole lot of assembly or actually build any circuits, but we did learn about how digital computers work from transistors to gates to truth tables and Karnaugh maps to combinational and sequential logic to ALUs and RAM.
By all means, schools should have a scientific computing or introductory programming class in Java.
On the contrary, an introductory class ought to be taught in something like Scheme. After all, how are the students supposed to be expected to understand objects when they don't even know what an algorithm is yet?
FORTRAN (the current version) is still very much alive in academia. You'll find a lot of scientists still write programs in the language.
And engineering, too. I work on structural engineering software, and the people in charge insist that FORTRAN still produces faster code than C (or anything else). I don't necessarily believe them, but considering that chunks of this program predate most operating systems (and all modern operating systems) I don't think it's going to be re-written any time soon...
Hey buddy, why don't you take your useless partisan bullshit rhetoric somewhere else? Here's a newsflash for you, asshole: pointing out that "the other guy" also sucks does not diminish the suckage of "this guy," regardless of what names you plug in to the variables. Really, all you ever manage to accomplish with your vapid, nonsensical drooling is to pollute the polite discourse the rest of us are trying to accomplish here!
In summary: you're not helping. In fact, you're harming America by trying to turn thinking people into raving partisan sheeple like yourself. So shut the fuck up, and get the fuck out!
Now these are people who were screened for a TV gameshow. They should be smarter than the average bear. A third got it wrong.
No, they should be better at memorization than the average bear. Not smarter; there's a difference. Intelligence, in the traditional sense, is a measure of the ability to synthesize new ideas, not regurgitate the original ones.
The fact that proportionally so many of the people were unable to answer the question has more to do with the lack of decent civics classes (and lack of giving a damn about government) than lack of intelligence.
Tablets are not great products, they're niche products - and that niche isn't anywhere near as big as the computer makers thought it would be.
And what the heck do you think this super-thin subnotebook is, then?! It's a niche product too! Moreover, I'll wager it's the same niche, or at least a significantly overlapping one, as the tablet niche. Here's why:
It's a Mac. That means that a lot of the people interested in it are artists, and artists are the primary market for things like Wacom tablets. Even if a Mac tablet would be expensive, it'd still be cheaper than a Mac Mini and a Cintiq.
It's a Mac. That means a lot of the people interested in it are students, and students would benefit from being able to draw diagrams in their notes with the stylus.
The type of people who need a laptop that's that portable are extremely mobile. They don't always have a good place to sit down to use the computer. They would benefit from being able to whip the thing out of their carry-on, look up something on it quickly (using the stylus or touchscreen for input), and stuff it back in their bag -- just like a big PDA.
Besides, one important reason why tablets have failed before is the lack of good software (believe me, I know!), and Apple is probably the single company most suited to overcoming that problem.
Yeah, if Apple really wanted to make a great product, it should have made it a tablet. Then the thinness and lightness (and multitouch!) really would have mattered!
Actually, I don't think the "luxury" brands are generally considered to be the most reliable anyway. Of those brands the one with the highest quality is Lexus, and that's only because they're part of Toyota (and the Toyota-brand cars are more reliable than the Lexus-brand ones!) So if by "quality" you mean "build quality and reliability," brands like Hyundai or Toyota will get you 100%+ compared to the BMW. Instead, it's luxury features (e.g. heads-up display, 20-way leather seats, etc.) and higher performance (e.g. Hyundai doesn't make a V8 or rear-wheel drive, although both are coming soon) that you're missing.
Yes, I know (I own a 2003 Accent). It'd be even better once those "right" things also include making sporty cars, like that SR Accent concept they showed a while back.
Your BMW is a diesel, which is not comparable because it uses higher compression on a more energy-dense fuel, and is thus inherently more efficient. Instead, realize that everybody is comparing to a gasoline car, and thinks it's impressive because they're used to 30 mpg or less.
Of course, the real reason it's not impressive is that even non-hybrid gasoline cars, such as the Honda CRX HF and 3-cylinder Geo Metro, were capable of getting fuel economy in the 50 mpg range 15 years ago or so, and did it with more horsepower.
First, the "Submit" button did say just that: "submit." Not "submit and certify that I agree to blah, blah, blah, etc." There was not and is not any indication that the button represents anything more than the act of transmitting the data to Slashdot.
Second, who says I pressed the button at all? Maybe I walked off and somebody else pressed it. Maybe my (fictional) cat walked across the keyboard and hit "enter" when the focus was on it. Maybe I wrote the HTTP request by hand using Telnet! Who knows?!
So, this fanciful theory that posting on Slashdot somehow constitutes a copyright license doesn't hold water for two reasons:
Merely clicking a button doesn't constitute intent to grant a distribution license; it only constitutes intent to send Slashdot the data for uses which would not violate copyright law (i.e., Sourceforge Inc.'s "personal" use).
There's not even a way to prove that the button was clicked, or that the copyright holder [or his agent with power of attorney] was the one who did it, to begin with!
No. Can't you sue radio stations for allowing you to hear copyrighted music for free? Can't you sue the library for allowing you to read copyrighted books for free? Didn't think so.
Huh? I think you're confused; it would be the copyright holder, not the listener/reader, suing in those instances. And except for the fact that those two particular things get special exceptions (i.e. compulsory radio licensing administered by ASCAP, library exemption), the copyright holder could sue! Similarly, it wouldn't be the Slashdot readers suing because they were allowed to read somebody else's copyrighted posts; it would be the writers of the posts suing because Slashdot allowed everybody else to read them.
By posting the comment, we imply publication authorization (if we didn't explicitly give it when signing up) granted to Slashdot.
Yeah, but implying it isn't the same thing as having a signed, legally binding, contract! Now, I agree: in a sane court system, with sane copyright law, this sort of thing would get immediately laughed out of court. However, neither the courts nor copyright law are sane!
How can they differentiate unauthorized copyright from authorized?
No kidding! Heck, how can anyone, including Slashdot, do it? What makes SourceForge, Inc. think they have the right to serve my post to others? It sure as Hell isn't copyright law! And it sure as Hell isn't anything else, because I never signed a contract! (And no, "terms of service" aren't valid because I never explicitly agreed to them.)
The whole situation is really just a huge clusterfuck. The bottom line is that copyright law is incompatible with the Internet! These kinds of problems are never going to go away until we get rid of one or the other entirely.
How do they make money by pissing off their customers?
Why would they care if the customers are pissed off? They're the phone company! The customers don't have any choice but to put up with it. What are they gonna do, not have Internet service at all?
Slashdot Mirror
Eh, same diff!
That's not true. The most significant reason why Europeans drive less is exactly the same as the reason people in New York drive less: the cities were built before zoning and cars. Here in America, we're usually not allowed to "live shoulder to shoulder in town" because governments have created dendritic street patterns (or extremely large blocks) with homogeneous zones so that there are no jobs or stores within walking distance and we're forced to rely on cars.
In Atlanta, we usually go the winter without having any snow, or at most a few flurries. This year, however, we've had two significant snow storms within the past week (where "significant" means it actually snowed for several hours at a time, and accumulated on things other than paved ground). Except for the "blizzard" (a.k.a. 2 inches of accumulation) of '93, it's the most snow I've ever seen in my life.
My CS curriculum did have a required course about that! We didn't do a whole lot of assembly or actually build any circuits, but we did learn about how digital computers work from transistors to gates to truth tables and Karnaugh maps to combinational and sequential logic to ALUs and RAM.
On the contrary, an introductory class ought to be taught in something like Scheme. After all, how are the students supposed to be expected to understand objects when they don't even know what an algorithm is yet?
And engineering, too. I work on structural engineering software, and the people in charge insist that FORTRAN still produces faster code than C (or anything else). I don't necessarily believe them, but considering that chunks of this program predate most operating systems (and all modern operating systems) I don't think it's going to be re-written any time soon...
Hey buddy, why don't you take your useless partisan bullshit rhetoric somewhere else? Here's a newsflash for you, asshole: pointing out that "the other guy" also sucks does not diminish the suckage of "this guy," regardless of what names you plug in to the variables. Really, all you ever manage to accomplish with your vapid, nonsensical drooling is to pollute the polite discourse the rest of us are trying to accomplish here!
In summary: you're not helping. In fact, you're harming America by trying to turn thinking people into raving partisan sheeple like yourself. So shut the fuck up, and get the fuck out!
No, they should be better at memorization than the average bear. Not smarter; there's a difference. Intelligence, in the traditional sense, is a measure of the ability to synthesize new ideas, not regurgitate the original ones.
The fact that proportionally so many of the people were unable to answer the question has more to do with the lack of decent civics classes (and lack of giving a damn about government) than lack of intelligence.
Since when did MapReduce have anything to do with databases? It's actually about parallel computations, which are entirely different.
Well, sort of... but mostly I just thought he was lying so I challenged him to prove his statement.
[citation needed]
And what the heck do you think this super-thin subnotebook is, then?! It's a niche product too! Moreover, I'll wager it's the same niche, or at least a significantly overlapping one, as the tablet niche. Here's why:
Besides, one important reason why tablets have failed before is the lack of good software (believe me, I know!), and Apple is probably the single company most suited to overcoming that problem.
Yeah, if Apple really wanted to make a great product, it should have made it a tablet. Then the thinness and lightness (and multitouch!) really would have mattered!
Actually, I don't think the "luxury" brands are generally considered to be the most reliable anyway. Of those brands the one with the highest quality is Lexus, and that's only because they're part of Toyota (and the Toyota-brand cars are more reliable than the Lexus-brand ones!) So if by "quality" you mean "build quality and reliability," brands like Hyundai or Toyota will get you 100%+ compared to the BMW. Instead, it's luxury features (e.g. heads-up display, 20-way leather seats, etc.) and higher performance (e.g. Hyundai doesn't make a V8 or rear-wheel drive, although both are coming soon) that you're missing.
Yes, I know (I own a 2003 Accent). It'd be even better once those "right" things also include making sporty cars, like that SR Accent concept they showed a while back.
So did the Hyundai Sonata.
Not since 2000, they don't. And it's exactly the post-2000 Mondeo that we would want!
That's what I said: "it uses higher compression on a more energy-dense fuel."
Your BMW is a diesel, which is not comparable because it uses higher compression on a more energy-dense fuel, and is thus inherently more efficient. Instead, realize that everybody is comparing to a gasoline car, and thinks it's impressive because they're used to 30 mpg or less.
Of course, the real reason it's not impressive is that even non-hybrid gasoline cars, such as the Honda CRX HF and 3-cylinder Geo Metro, were capable of getting fuel economy in the 50 mpg range 15 years ago or so, and did it with more horsepower.
Screw the Punto; Honda CRX HFs and Geo Metro LSis* got equally good fuel economy 20 years ago!
(*It might be the XFi instead; it was whichever one had the 3-cylinder engine)
First, the "Submit" button did say just that: "submit." Not "submit and certify that I agree to blah, blah, blah, etc." There was not and is not any indication that the button represents anything more than the act of transmitting the data to Slashdot.
Second, who says I pressed the button at all? Maybe I walked off and somebody else pressed it. Maybe my (fictional) cat walked across the keyboard and hit "enter" when the focus was on it. Maybe I wrote the HTTP request by hand using Telnet! Who knows?!
So, this fanciful theory that posting on Slashdot somehow constitutes a copyright license doesn't hold water for two reasons:
Huh? I think you're confused; it would be the copyright holder, not the listener/reader, suing in those instances. And except for the fact that those two particular things get special exceptions (i.e. compulsory radio licensing administered by ASCAP, library exemption), the copyright holder could sue! Similarly, it wouldn't be the Slashdot readers suing because they were allowed to read somebody else's copyrighted posts; it would be the writers of the posts suing because Slashdot allowed everybody else to read them.
Yeah, but implying it isn't the same thing as having a signed, legally binding, contract! Now, I agree: in a sane court system, with sane copyright law, this sort of thing would get immediately laughed out of court. However, neither the courts nor copyright law are sane!
No, he wants kids to have good laptops and good educational materials. The Intel Classmate PC does not qualify on either count!
No kidding! Heck, how can anyone, including Slashdot, do it? What makes SourceForge, Inc. think they have the right to serve my post to others? It sure as Hell isn't copyright law! And it sure as Hell isn't anything else, because I never signed a contract! (And no, "terms of service" aren't valid because I never explicitly agreed to them.)
The whole situation is really just a huge clusterfuck. The bottom line is that copyright law is incompatible with the Internet! These kinds of problems are never going to go away until we get rid of one or the other entirely.
Personally, I vote for ditching copyright law...
Why would they care if the customers are pissed off? They're the phone company! The customers don't have any choice but to put up with it. What are they gonna do, not have Internet service at all?