Heh, if only it were possible to give loans to those who needed them. Instead, banks have to give loans to those who can repay them. I was listening to a radio show where one of the interviewees had no job, no equity, and borrowed 540k to pay off his gambling debts when his local mobster wouldn't loan it to him. That's crazy.:)
From what I understand, they were giving loans to people who had no collateral and no income. If your computer model says that loan is a safe loan, then you have a bug.
DST is the worst possible way to handle the daylight difference. Instead of changing the clocks, businesses should just say "Summer hours: 9am-5pm, winter hours: 8am-4pm. It's the same dang thing, except you don't have to be going "oh, they are in Arizona, and they don't observe DST" or "Wait, UK DST starts a week later, so they aren't in the office yet..." etc.
The way we do DST now is like saying that the centimeter is a little too small for measuring fence posts, so let's just add one centimeter to the measurement. So now 1cm=2cm, and 2cm=3cm. But then someone else says they should add.5cm, and someone else wants the rule to apply to gear boxes AND fence posts...
I don't want to sound like I'm pulling the rug out from under the Samba team, who has helped to make SMB a truly interoperable protocol - but there is a big part of me that just wants it to go away. It's really not very good. And very complicated. And inefficient. Oh I hope that somethin' better comes aloooong!
Tesla couldn't get their gearbox to work right so they went to the old school gearbox maker for help and got one that worked.
Sounds like a smart move. Most start-up companies don't design and manufacture everything themselves. And no car company does. It is just too much for any one company to do.
Look to see A123 to supply the battery pack for the Volt.
I'll keep an eye on them. Sometimes I think I'd love to know which solar and battery companies to invest in. I think that will be the future.
If Tesla had delivered their car two years ago, a year ago, or even yesterday then yes they would be somewhat important.
Okay, so your complaint is not that Tesla wasn't innovative, but that they were are too late. You are probably right that they would have done much better a few years ago than they will now.
The original point here was that Tesla is a valuable company, with a good invention, and it is a shame to see them struggle due to the economy. I, for one, hope that start-ups like Tesla come to replace the big, slow, non-innovative car manufacturers we have now in the US.
Just because wireless power tools use batteries does not mean that all R&D required to put batteries in an electric car is done. Just because Borg Warner makes gearboxes does not mean the Tesla gearbox is not innovative. We are now 2 steps closer toward electric cars becoming more common, and those are just the inventions that I know about. I'm sure there are many more. Your hand-waving cannot diminish the value of the contributions Tesla engineers have made.
The powertrain that Tesla designed is more efficient than any to come before it. And they had much to do with the design of the gearbox.
Tesla it nothing but a exotic car company.
Repeating the same premise over and over again does not constitute an argument.
I understand what you are saying. And I see that lots of groups do this. People who use the word "Liberal" or "Conservative" interchangeably with "Asshole" and who say things like "There's not a single reason to vote for %other_candidate%" or "All %people_on_other_side% are fools" So I do get what you mean.
But that isn't what I am doing. I understand that there could be persons who understand the constitution, and know what the founding fathers fought for, and understand the "price of freedom," and has a rebuttal to "who will watch the watchers?" Someone who knows why George Washington told us to stay out of European affairs, and has considered the "those who give-up essential liberty for temporary security" quota and understands what Al-Qaeda really is and *still* judges that it is worth it to risk of all those things in exchange for protection from terrorists. I've just never met such a person.
Is this the same Slashdot who jumps on everyone as soon as they someone says that NASA never did anything useful? How about the gerabox that Tesla developed that was unlike what any other manufacturer did? Or the engineering involved in making an electric car with the range this had? Or how much it is pushing the demand and money going into battery development? A lot of good things come out of Tesla.
Lots of new technology starts out as toys for the rich. Don't knock them for being that. Tesla is doing what we have wanted GM to do for decades and they have refused: innovate. That innovation doesn't have to solve every problem, or even any problem at all. It just has to push what we can do. Tesla is doing that.
Next time Intel comes out with a high-speed chip that wastes heat and is too expensive for you. Just remember that in 2 years that same technology will be shrunken, optimized, and 10,000 a low-end laptops.
That could just as well apply to vigilance against tyrants and oppressors in other countries.
Yes, but that isn't what it meant when it was said. And it isn't the issue at hand. This quote means we must be vigilant against the tendancy of a government to oppress its own people. And Americans have been taking that for granted for a generation or so, and they have totally forgotten about that.
My point is that your post marginalizes other people and paints them as ignorant rather than admitting that it's a difference of opinion
You are right that I do that, and I think I stand by it:
Experience tells me that my mythical 49% do not hold that opinion out of a conscious decision resulting from a knowledge of history and politics. I think that they go that way because they don't know history, and because those in power are manipulating them into being afraid of far-off invisible enemies rather than their own government. People now take government to be this benevolent thing that can be trusted so they no longer demand truth or transparency.
I've had discussions with people IRL on this subject. And those who believe that it is okay to violate the constitution, or to grant blanket powers to government and monopolies are those kinds of people who don't really know how to think things through. They are those people who choose their party first, and then make their decisions by following that. (There was a recent thing on Slashdot about how 70% of people pick a side then their brains inherently ignore any facts not supporting that party.) People who when I quote an author, or a philosphy, reply with scoffs and laughter or tell me that I read too much.
I am curious how much of your points are devil's advocate, and how much you truly believe. If you believe that telecom immunity is good or that blanket surveillance violating the 4th amendment is okay, I'd love to hear a sane rational reason for it.
The problem is 49% of Americans don't understand what we fought for in the revolution, or in the World Wars. They thing that "fighting for freedom" means going to another country. They think freedom means more TV channels. They think it is okay for the government to ignore the constitution if there is a 1 in a billion chance it will stop another 9/11.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" (Unknown - attributed to Thomas Jefferson)
Tesla was building something amazing. It is unfortunate to see a company making something so cutting edge have to scale back or even fold. Especially when it isn't because of their own fault (or is it, and they are using this as an excuse?) These types of companies are the future, and the world loses a lot when these types of companies don't make it.
Almost no other laptop would have survived such a drop. There are a few industrial-ish laptops like the Toughbooks. Otherwise, you are lucky your hard drive works and your LCD didn't crack. Be thankful.
I have a MBP that survived a heft fall in my cushioned backpack. Slightly dented. I can't imagine any plastic case would have survived it. Not to mention the fact that the MBP is very light for its size.
This is a good example of Microsoft's brand of evil. They went out of their way to make Exchange work worse on other browsers.
If you use Exchange on IE, it gives you a nice AJAX thing that is almost like an app. Windows, menus, etc. If you use it on something else, it gives you a "classic" version of the app. The thing is, those other browsers have as good or better CSS/AJAX support than IE does. So the only reason it doesn't work on those browsers is because they coded it to.
To all the dumb asses who modded me down: please read the article before moderating. Same to all the ACs who replied with "your car is electronic" - no duh. But the article is about an EMP protected power grid, so it has nothing to do with my car, which is neither in Kansas, nor connected to the power grid.
I was making fun of the stupid journalism, and anyone actually read the article noticed that.
The article, once you get into it, is about some grant awards to universities for studying a second power grid that would be EMP protected and designed for emergency situations. But the author wasn't content with that, so they made-up an irrelevant example about cars everyone failing, just to scare the reader.
Thanks to everyone who tried to clarify about the power of EMP devices and the scale of the damage and such. Too bad the author of the article didn't cite any of that relevant information.
In Vista, if you open the "all users" start menut and re-arrange 10 shortcuts, you get 10 prompts (actually, 20 - moves involve two prompts). In Linux, if you use the KDE/Gnome/whatever tools to reorganize the "start" menu, you get one single prompt when you save the changes.
In Vista, you also get prompts merely for viewing some information in the control panel. Then you get another prompt when you save/apply it, then another if you apply it again. In Linux, running the appropriate "control panel" tools requires no special privileges until you change something, at which point it prompts you once. And if you change something else without closing that window, you don't get another prompt.
I am guessing that the underlying difference is that Vista is confirming each particular action (system call?) whereas Linux is prompting for a privilege escalation which then applies to that process.
My comment was meant to be flip, since that was the first thing I thought of when I looked at the dialog - "click the damn details!" But you are correct about the details being useless - in my experience the UAC details often shows only a GUID. Which, IMHO, makes things even MORE confusing.
In most Linux distros, if you do something that requires admin access, it asks you for the admin password and holds onto privileges for a little while. That way, if I rearrange a bunch of icons I don't get 100 different prompts. This is simply common sense. It amazes me that the Microsoft developers didn't get fed up with the prompts and do the obvious thing.
If only there was some sort of button, or perhaps a downward facing arrow, that would provide additional details about what is happening. That would be awesome.
I imagine that the telco must have had to get permits to lay their own fiber. The government could have blocked those requests until the result of the case was decided, thus cancelling-out the telco's attempt to delay the government and get a head start. I wonder why this didn't happen?
You point out that SSL with a self-signed cert tells you that either you are safe, or the attacker is smart. Telling me "If you are being scammed, the attacker are doing a good job" is little consolation!
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, if only it were possible to give loans to those who needed them. Instead, banks have to give loans to those who can repay them. I was listening to a radio show where one of the interviewees had no job, no equity, and borrowed 540k to pay off his gambling debts when his local mobster wouldn't loan it to him. That's crazy. :)
From what I understand, they were giving loans to people who had no collateral and no income. If your computer model says that loan is a safe loan, then you have a bug.
DST is the worst possible way to handle the daylight difference. Instead of changing the clocks, businesses should just say "Summer hours: 9am-5pm, winter hours: 8am-4pm. It's the same dang thing, except you don't have to be going "oh, they are in Arizona, and they don't observe DST" or "Wait, UK DST starts a week later, so they aren't in the office yet..." etc.
The way we do DST now is like saying that the centimeter is a little too small for measuring fence posts, so let's just add one centimeter to the measurement. So now 1cm=2cm, and 2cm=3cm. But then someone else says they should add .5cm, and someone else wants the rule to apply to gear boxes AND fence posts...
The whole idea of DRM is to keep the decryption keys secret from the person who is using them. So how can you make DRM be open source?
MarlinPlayer(filename)
{
SuperSecretKey = "WhoWillWatchTheWatchers123"
GetKeyFromServer(SuperSecretKey)
DecryptToSecretPlaceNobodyCanFindIt("C:\temp\__secret\123.mp3")
PlayThatFile()
}
FAIL.
I don't want to sound like I'm pulling the rug out from under the Samba team, who has helped to make SMB a truly interoperable protocol - but there is a big part of me that just wants it to go away. It's really not very good. And very complicated. And inefficient. Oh I hope that somethin' better comes aloooong!
Tesla couldn't get their gearbox to work right so they went to the old school gearbox maker for help and got one that worked.
Sounds like a smart move. Most start-up companies don't design and manufacture everything themselves. And no car company does. It is just too much for any one company to do.
Look to see A123 to supply the battery pack for the Volt.
I'll keep an eye on them. Sometimes I think I'd love to know which solar and battery companies to invest in. I think that will be the future.
If Tesla had delivered their car two years ago, a year ago, or even yesterday then yes they would be somewhat important.
Okay, so your complaint is not that Tesla wasn't innovative, but that they were are too late. You are probably right that they would have done much better a few years ago than they will now.
The original point here was that Tesla is a valuable company, with a good invention, and it is a shame to see them struggle due to the economy. I, for one, hope that start-ups like Tesla come to replace the big, slow, non-innovative car manufacturers we have now in the US.
Just because wireless power tools use batteries does not mean that all R&D required to put batteries in an electric car is done. Just because Borg Warner makes gearboxes does not mean the Tesla gearbox is not innovative. We are now 2 steps closer toward electric cars becoming more common, and those are just the inventions that I know about. I'm sure there are many more. Your hand-waving cannot diminish the value of the contributions Tesla engineers have made.
The powertrain that Tesla designed is more efficient than any to come before it. And they had much to do with the design of the gearbox.
Tesla it nothing but a exotic car company.
Repeating the same premise over and over again does not constitute an argument.
I understand what you are saying. And I see that lots of groups do this. People who use the word "Liberal" or "Conservative" interchangeably with "Asshole" and who say things like "There's not a single reason to vote for %other_candidate%" or "All %people_on_other_side% are fools" So I do get what you mean.
But that isn't what I am doing. I understand that there could be persons who understand the constitution, and know what the founding fathers fought for, and understand the "price of freedom," and has a rebuttal to "who will watch the watchers?" Someone who knows why George Washington told us to stay out of European affairs, and has considered the "those who give-up essential liberty for temporary security" quota and understands what Al-Qaeda really is and *still* judges that it is worth it to risk of all those things in exchange for protection from terrorists. I've just never met such a person.
Is this the same Slashdot who jumps on everyone as soon as they someone says that NASA never did anything useful? How about the gerabox that Tesla developed that was unlike what any other manufacturer did? Or the engineering involved in making an electric car with the range this had? Or how much it is pushing the demand and money going into battery development? A lot of good things come out of Tesla.
Lots of new technology starts out as toys for the rich. Don't knock them for being that. Tesla is doing what we have wanted GM to do for decades and they have refused: innovate. That innovation doesn't have to solve every problem, or even any problem at all. It just has to push what we can do. Tesla is doing that.
Next time Intel comes out with a high-speed chip that wastes heat and is too expensive for you. Just remember that in 2 years that same technology will be shrunken, optimized, and 10,000 a low-end laptops.
That could just as well apply to vigilance against tyrants and oppressors in other countries.
Yes, but that isn't what it meant when it was said. And it isn't the issue at hand. This quote means we must be vigilant against the tendancy of a government to oppress its own people. And Americans have been taking that for granted for a generation or so, and they have totally forgotten about that.
My point is that your post marginalizes other people and paints them as ignorant rather than admitting that it's a difference of opinion
You are right that I do that, and I think I stand by it:
Experience tells me that my mythical 49% do not hold that opinion out of a conscious decision resulting from a knowledge of history and politics. I think that they go that way because they don't know history, and because those in power are manipulating them into being afraid of far-off invisible enemies rather than their own government. People now take government to be this benevolent thing that can be trusted so they no longer demand truth or transparency.
I've had discussions with people IRL on this subject. And those who believe that it is okay to violate the constitution, or to grant blanket powers to government and monopolies are those kinds of people who don't really know how to think things through. They are those people who choose their party first, and then make their decisions by following that. (There was a recent thing on Slashdot about how 70% of people pick a side then their brains inherently ignore any facts not supporting that party.) People who when I quote an author, or a philosphy, reply with scoffs and laughter or tell me that I read too much.
I am curious how much of your points are devil's advocate, and how much you truly believe. If you believe that telecom immunity is good or that blanket surveillance violating the 4th amendment is okay, I'd love to hear a sane rational reason for it.
The problem is 49% of Americans don't understand what we fought for in the revolution, or in the World Wars. They thing that "fighting for freedom" means going to another country. They think freedom means more TV channels. They think it is okay for the government to ignore the constitution if there is a 1 in a billion chance it will stop another 9/11.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance"
(Unknown - attributed to Thomas Jefferson)
Tesla was building something amazing. It is unfortunate to see a company making something so cutting edge have to scale back or even fold. Especially when it isn't because of their own fault (or is it, and they are using this as an excuse?) These types of companies are the future, and the world loses a lot when these types of companies don't make it.
Anyone remember this article?
Obama Requests Creative Commons for Presidential Debates
That is when I started liking the guy. Seems like he was even more prescient than I thought.
Almost no other laptop would have survived such a drop. There are a few industrial-ish laptops like the Toughbooks. Otherwise, you are lucky your hard drive works and your LCD didn't crack. Be thankful.
I have a MBP that survived a heft fall in my cushioned backpack. Slightly dented. I can't imagine any plastic case would have survived it. Not to mention the fact that the MBP is very light for its size.
This is a good example of Microsoft's brand of evil. They went out of their way to make Exchange work worse on other browsers.
If you use Exchange on IE, it gives you a nice AJAX thing that is almost like an app. Windows, menus, etc. If you use it on something else, it gives you a "classic" version of the app. The thing is, those other browsers have as good or better CSS/AJAX support than IE does. So the only reason it doesn't work on those browsers is because they coded it to.
That's all stuff that was supposed to be in Vista, but didn't make it. :)
*whoosh*
To all the dumb asses who modded me down: please read the article before moderating. Same to all the ACs who replied with "your car is electronic" - no duh. But the article is about an EMP protected power grid, so it has nothing to do with my car, which is neither in Kansas, nor connected to the power grid.
I was making fun of the stupid journalism, and anyone actually read the article noticed that.
The article, once you get into it, is about some grant awards to universities for studying a second power grid that would be EMP protected and designed for emergency situations. But the author wasn't content with that, so they made-up an irrelevant example about cars everyone failing, just to scare the reader.
Thanks to everyone who tried to clarify about the power of EMP devices and the scale of the damage and such. Too bad the author of the article didn't cite any of that relevant information.
Imagine if electronic devices in the U.S. were disabled. Your car would not run.
Yes, disabling a power plant in Kansas would make my gasoline powered car fail to start.
Perhaps I was not clear in my explanation.
In Vista, if you open the "all users" start menut and re-arrange 10 shortcuts, you get 10 prompts (actually, 20 - moves involve two prompts). In Linux, if you use the KDE/Gnome/whatever tools to reorganize the "start" menu, you get one single prompt when you save the changes.
In Vista, you also get prompts merely for viewing some information in the control panel. Then you get another prompt when you save/apply it, then another if you apply it again. In Linux, running the appropriate "control panel" tools requires no special privileges until you change something, at which point it prompts you once. And if you change something else without closing that window, you don't get another prompt.
I am guessing that the underlying difference is that Vista is confirming each particular action (system call?) whereas Linux is prompting for a privilege escalation which then applies to that process.
My comment was meant to be flip, since that was the first thing I thought of when I looked at the dialog - "click the damn details!" But you are correct about the details being useless - in my experience the UAC details often shows only a GUID. Which, IMHO, makes things even MORE confusing.
In most Linux distros, if you do something that requires admin access, it asks you for the admin password and holds onto privileges for a little while. That way, if I rearrange a bunch of icons I don't get 100 different prompts. This is simply common sense. It amazes me that the Microsoft developers didn't get fed up with the prompts and do the obvious thing.
If only there was some sort of button, or perhaps a downward facing arrow, that would provide additional details about what is happening. That would be awesome.
I imagine that the telco must have had to get permits to lay their own fiber. The government could have blocked those requests until the result of the case was decided, thus cancelling-out the telco's attempt to delay the government and get a head start. I wonder why this didn't happen?
You point out that SSL with a self-signed cert tells you that either you are safe, or the attacker is smart. Telling me "If you are being scammed, the attacker are doing a good job" is little consolation!
Except that in this case, Real Networks is doing the right thing.