I think this is a general rule for most languages. Paradoxically, people will stop commenting on how 'good' your language skills are only when you are fluent and they don't notice your shortcomings. If someone politely comments that you speak very well in a particular language, most likely you still have some way to go. As someone who has been learning german for the past year, and getting those same compliments, I have to say to you: thanks dude, that'll really help me feel good next time I get one of those:-P
Reminds me of a recent flight. One flight attendant asked me to shut down my Nintendo DS, and I promptly closed it -- when you close the console, it goes into standby mode. She told me it's not really off, and I said it was. She asked me to open it again, and, of course the console came back on, so she said "See? it's on!". I replied "Yes, but when I close it, it goes off automatically. It's like magic" which I think she believed and went on her way.
Now I realize that standby isn't really off, but it's close enough and I believe that some cell phones and pdas don't really turn off either when you press the button. Anyway, I would've really turned it off, but I couldn't save the game at that point.
If you're already happy with Sony Ericsson, why not wait a little bit for the W960i? It should come out pretty soon, runs the symbian OS (I suppose the N95 is the same) and also has wifi. It's also prettier than at least the N95, small, has a touchscreen and a keypad, though you should also be able to write with the jot handwriting recognition. Oh, and it's a 3G phone.
And I am pretty sure that it should be cheaper than the iPhone. In fact, it should cost more or less the same as the N95.
Canada benefits from the US umbrella. That's not entirely true. Canada also benefits from being geographically positioned in a island-continent, with neighbouring countries that do not represent a threat, as do the US. It also benefits from a large number of years of good foreign policy that insures that, unlike the US, there are not many people who would like to see Canada burn just as a matter of principle.
While I am sure that every ally of the US benefits from the high values of defence expenditure, I believe that if that were not the case, at least Canada wouldn't have to increase it's own expenditure, if any.
If a user downloaded a malignant file from the internet, he's going to run it, wether from inside the browser download dialog, or from other UI. It doesn't require any expertise with computers.
Removing the "Open this file" is just blame-shifting and making the life unnecessarily harder for your users. What you need to do it teach the users about safety (arguably, the browser already warns the user to make sure that the downloaded file is safe) and have safety mechanisms, such as system privileges and anti-virus utilities.
Granted, these mechanisms aren't perfect, but if the user is intent on shooting himself in the foot, it's not the lack of a "Open this file" option that will deter him.
The point is that the schedules for the parents and the children are rarely aligned, and even when they are, you cannot really follow them around for the 1/3 of the day like you claim. I think you're imagining a nice middle-class family with two parents and normal to light working hours. What's your suggestion to the single-parents who are working hard to keep things afloat?
Even in your utopia, you can't expect that a friend with less strict/paranoid parents wouldn't just get the stuff for them. I remember when I was a kid I would come up with all sorts of schemes to do stuff I wasn't supposed to -- it's what kids do.
Anyway, I wonder if you worked at a store, you would really sell a pornographic magazine or a bottle of vodka to a 13 y/o.
Wanting store employees to do your job--the job of keeping "inappropriate" games out of your kid's hands--does, in fact, make you lazy. Sorry. Do you honestly believe that parents should monitor their children 24h per day? Do you honestly believe that this is even possible for most families?
Because that's the alternative to having stores refuse to sell some games/porn/alcohol to minors.
Isn't the variable 'a' defined only inside the for loop? It seems to me that the code wouldn't even compile, but I guess that it might depend on the language used...
After being subjected to Notes for the past 8 months, yes, Microsoft Outlook would be a blessing! Seriously, if you don't hate it, you never used it -- it's that bad.
Well, I agree with you if you can say that when you bought your phone, had apple told you that the price would drop by 200$ in 2 months, you would have bought it anyway.
I think most people who are pissed off by this (and I would be as well, if I had bought one) would've waited a little while.
It's normal for consumer electronics to drop in price over time, but not this much in such a short time.
Wow, you must either really love the iPhone, or have a really high tolerance for pain. If a company had just screwed me out of 200$ (I consider ir screweing the customer -- I can't believe they didn't know about this price drop two months in advance) I wouldn't be back to buy more. At least not more of the same item they used to screw me in the first place.
I fail to believe that the funny plug justifies the extra cost. It does in the sense that the economies of scale for custom components don't work as well as with standard plugs.
Often as not, the generics are made in the same factories. Yeah, sometimes, but most times they are made in some other factory where QA are just two letters of the alphabet. Maybe it's not important to have a quality charger, but in some other products quality does matter. And you can't tell me that if you have a charger from Nokia on your hand and one from a generic brand, that they will look the same quality. I bought an after-market data/power cable for my PDA, and on the connector it's written on one side "up". That side is actually the part that is down, but whatever.
But the point is that if they used a standard connector, whether USB or one of the cylindrical types like many music players use, you wouldn't need to buy a new charger at all, ever. We weren't discussing this. When that day comes you won't hear any objections from me (though I would still prefer it if there was massive uptake of those tabletop wireless chargers).
I still cant get a old Geforce4 card working on my wifes ubuntu PC That's not only a problem with the Linux drivers, as I had exactly the same happening to me in my mothers Windows XP computer. It appears that nVidia stops testing their drivers with old iterations of their video cards, though it would be at least helpfull if they acknowlodged the problem and made available on their website old versions that are know to be working.
In the end I made it work by searching for old versions of the nVidia drivers on the internet. Perhaps if you try an old version of the linux drivers you will be luckier.
As I said, I agree there's profiteering, but again, your comparisons aren't really fair: usually the generic transformers (batteries, ink cartridges, etc) are lower quality than the official ones, and quality is expensive.
You write "which is influenced by local wages and rents" as if it was accounting for only cents in the retail price. I think it probably has a bigger influence than that.
Having said that, I agree that the manufacturer is profiteering, but probably not as much as you insinuated by your original numbers. Besides, I would think that they also markup the prices in Vietnam by as much as they think they can get away with (which is obviously much less than in the US).
The average wage in Vietnam is $700/year [1] while in the US it is $36,764/year [2]. I'm not even going to bother with calculations. I think the point is clear: You're not really comparing apples to apples there.
I think usually the trolls are lawyers themselves, so they don't have real legal fees because they don't have to pay the exorbitant lawyer wages.
My opinion is that these companies that keep getting hit with these patent troll lawsuits should just make an example of one of these guys: fight the lawsuit and start parallel procedures to invalidate each an every one of the other patents that the trolls have, until they are left with no IP and have to fold. It would be expensive, but the message would be clear and in the long run it might even be cheaper than fighting each new patent troll individually.
I usually don't agree with the "prolong the lawsuit until they give up" method because it's an abuse of the system and is generally the wrong/evil way to win a lawsuit.
I can't comment on that as my country doesn't have absentee ballots.
Where I live you have to declare in advance (don't know how long) that you're not able to vote at the normal voting booths, so on the election day, a government official visits your home with a portable ballot. I don't know the details as I haven't done this myself, so I don't know if there's potential for abuse there. If you're an emigrant, you can vote in your nearest embassy just as you would at a normal voting booth. I've even heard that some countries actually fly you home if you're abroad and want to participate in the elections.
Mailing your vote seems dangerous to me, and I can't see how you would implement that in a secure way.
Aww man, I was thinking that it was a Good Idea(tm), but did it have to be so ugly? I don't want to be on a date and pull out a credit card with a cartoon penguin and a yellow URL on it!
I mean, they still could have the penguin (and maybe the URL) in there, but I'm sure that with those 100,000$/year, they could hire a real designer to make it look classy.
Anyway, it looks like it's only for the US and Canada, so I couldn't get one either way, but if it ever makes it to this side of the pond, I really hope that there's a redesign, because the idea is good and I would love to get one.
Yes, but your quote was conveniently incomplete, giving another meaning to the original phrase. They never blamed Microsoft. They were blaming themselves for the bug that resulted in this mess, and Microsoft's participation was merely as the catalyst that activated the bug.
As a software developer myself, I tend to view outside interactions that expose bugs in my code as beneficial (I get to squash one more bug in my software), at least when the exposure isn't hostile, which is obviously the case here.
Slashdot Mirror
(though I agree with your post 100%)
Sure:
- Are you Christian?
Yes No
- How about your children?
Yes No
Reminds me of a recent flight. One flight attendant asked me to shut down my Nintendo DS, and I promptly closed it -- when you close the console, it goes into standby mode.
She told me it's not really off, and I said it was. She asked me to open it again, and, of course the console came back on, so she said "See? it's on!".
I replied "Yes, but when I close it, it goes off automatically. It's like magic" which I think she believed and went on her way.
Now I realize that standby isn't really off, but it's close enough and I believe that some cell phones and pdas don't really turn off either when you press the button.
Anyway, I would've really turned it off, but I couldn't save the game at that point.
If you're already happy with Sony Ericsson, why not wait a little bit for the W960i? It should come out pretty soon, runs the symbian OS (I suppose the N95 is the same) and also has wifi.
It's also prettier than at least the N95, small, has a touchscreen and a keypad, though you should also be able to write with the jot handwriting recognition.
Oh, and it's a 3G phone.
And I am pretty sure that it should be cheaper than the iPhone. In fact, it should cost more or less the same as the N95.
It also benefits from a large number of years of good foreign policy that insures that, unlike the US, there are not many people who would like to see Canada burn just as a matter of principle.
While I am sure that every ally of the US benefits from the high values of defence expenditure, I believe that if that were not the case, at least Canada wouldn't have to increase it's own expenditure, if any.
They say that taking something out of the internet is like taking piss out of a pool.
If a user downloaded a malignant file from the internet, he's going to run it, wether from inside the browser download dialog, or from other UI. It doesn't require any expertise with computers.
Removing the "Open this file" is just blame-shifting and making the life unnecessarily harder for your users.
What you need to do it teach the users about safety (arguably, the browser already warns the user to make sure that the downloaded file is safe) and have safety mechanisms, such as system privileges and anti-virus utilities.
Granted, these mechanisms aren't perfect, but if the user is intent on shooting himself in the foot, it's not the lack of a "Open this file" option that will deter him.
The point is that the schedules for the parents and the children are rarely aligned, and even when they are, you cannot really follow them around for the 1/3 of the day like you claim.
I think you're imagining a nice middle-class family with two parents and normal to light working hours. What's your suggestion to the single-parents who are working hard to keep things afloat?
Even in your utopia, you can't expect that a friend with less strict/paranoid parents wouldn't just get the stuff for them. I remember when I was a kid I would come up with all sorts of schemes to do stuff I wasn't supposed to -- it's what kids do.
Anyway, I wonder if you worked at a store, you would really sell a pornographic magazine or a bottle of vodka to a 13 y/o.
Do you honestly believe that this is even possible for most families?
Because that's the alternative to having stores refuse to sell some games/porn/alcohol to minors.
Isn't the variable 'a' defined only inside the for loop?
It seems to me that the code wouldn't even compile, but I guess that it might depend on the language used...
Blue screen of death indeed...
After being subjected to Notes for the past 8 months, yes, Microsoft Outlook would be a blessing!
Seriously, if you don't hate it, you never used it -- it's that bad.
Well, I agree with you if you can say that when you bought your phone, had apple told you that the price would drop by 200$ in 2 months, you would have bought it anyway.
I think most people who are pissed off by this (and I would be as well, if I had bought one) would've waited a little while.
It's normal for consumer electronics to drop in price over time, but not this much in such a short time.
Wow, you must either really love the iPhone, or have a really high tolerance for pain.
If a company had just screwed me out of 200$ (I consider ir screweing the customer -- I can't believe they didn't know about this price drop two months in advance) I wouldn't be back to buy more.
At least not more of the same item they used to screw me in the first place.
And you can't tell me that if you have a charger from Nokia on your hand and one from a generic brand, that they will look the same quality.
I bought an after-market data/power cable for my PDA, and on the connector it's written on one side "up". That side is actually the part that is down, but whatever. But the point is that if they used a standard connector, whether USB or one of the cylindrical types like many music players use, you wouldn't need to buy a new charger at all, ever. We weren't discussing this. When that day comes you won't hear any objections from me (though I would still prefer it if there was massive uptake of those tabletop wireless chargers).
In the end I made it work by searching for old versions of the nVidia drivers on the internet. Perhaps if you try an old version of the linux drivers you will be luckier.
As I said, I agree there's profiteering, but again, your comparisons aren't really fair: usually the generic transformers (batteries, ink cartridges, etc) are lower quality than the official ones, and quality is expensive.
You write "which is influenced by local wages and rents" as if it was accounting for only cents in the retail price. I think it probably has a bigger influence than that.
Having said that, I agree that the manufacturer is profiteering, but probably not as much as you insinuated by your original numbers. Besides, I would think that they also markup the prices in Vietnam by as much as they think they can get away with (which is obviously much less than in the US).
And what percentage is that of the average wage?
The average wage in Vietnam is $700/year [1] while in the US it is $36,764/year [2].
I'm not even going to bother with calculations. I think the point is clear: You're not really comparing apples to apples there.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5301086.stm
[2] http://www.bls.gov/cew/state2002.txt
I think usually the trolls are lawyers themselves, so they don't have real legal fees because they don't have to pay the exorbitant lawyer wages.
My opinion is that these companies that keep getting hit with these patent troll lawsuits should just make an example of one of these guys: fight the lawsuit and start parallel procedures to invalidate each an every one of the other patents that the trolls have, until they are left with no IP and have to fold.
It would be expensive, but the message would be clear and in the long run it might even be cheaper than fighting each new patent troll individually.
I usually don't agree with the "prolong the lawsuit until they give up" method because it's an abuse of the system and is generally the wrong/evil way to win a lawsuit.
I can't comment on that as my country doesn't have absentee ballots.
Where I live you have to declare in advance (don't know how long) that you're not able to vote at the normal voting booths, so on the election day, a government official visits your home with a portable ballot. I don't know the details as I haven't done this myself, so I don't know if there's potential for abuse there.
If you're an emigrant, you can vote in your nearest embassy just as you would at a normal voting booth.
I've even heard that some countries actually fly you home if you're abroad and want to participate in the elections.
Mailing your vote seems dangerous to me, and I can't see how you would implement that in a secure way.
And someone could also persuade/threaten/pay you to vote a certain way, and he would have a way to check if you had been a good boy or not.
Aww man, I was thinking that it was a Good Idea(tm), but did it have to be so ugly?
I don't want to be on a date and pull out a credit card with a cartoon penguin and a yellow URL on it!
I mean, they still could have the penguin (and maybe the URL) in there, but I'm sure that with those 100,000$/year, they could hire a real designer to make it look classy.
Anyway, it looks like it's only for the US and Canada, so I couldn't get one either way, but if it ever makes it to this side of the pond, I really hope that there's a redesign, because the idea is good and I would love to get one.
Yes, but your quote was conveniently incomplete, giving another meaning to the original phrase.
They never blamed Microsoft. They were blaming themselves for the bug that resulted in this mess, and Microsoft's participation was merely as the catalyst that activated the bug.
As a software developer myself, I tend to view outside interactions that expose bugs in my code as beneficial (I get to squash one more bug in my software), at least when the exposure isn't hostile, which is obviously the case here.