Why does it bother you if other take advantage of the gap?
Because a previous poster was implying that it was always the driver in the rear that is responsible for the lack of a gap there. Someone fills the gap, you start slowing down further to open the gap again, but before you open up a large enough gap again - BAM the lead car slams its brakes and you end up hitting it. According to the insurance rules, it's your fault that you were following too closely. What can you do to avoid this when everyone else keeps filling in your gap as soon as it is on the verge of forming? You are spending the majority of your time trying to back off and make the gap bigger after the last guy who just filled it. It's only in a minority of the time that you have achived the gap you want and can hold it there, typically after you have finally fallen back to the end of the "pack" of traffic - assuming there are any gaps at all in the flow for you to fill.
The gap cannot exist longer than a few senconds. You back off - leaving, say, 3 seconds of gap. Someone fills it and you now only have 1.5 seconds of gap. Then you back off some more and it gets filled again and you back off some more and it gets filled again - such that you are only ever achieving that 3 seconds of gap for brief moments before someone else decides to cut the gap for you. So you are perpetually in a state of attempting to achieve the size of gap you want but never actually attaining it no matter how slow you go.
Grrrr. You are very frustrating. If you are going to shoot me down, it would help if you cited things I haven't already agreed with. I fully agree that there was reason to believe there *MIGHT* be other land out there. Your conclusion that this means you shouldn't try to stop a man who is sailing under misconcieved notions is what I disagree with, and I have stated so several times.
Next time don't be an ass by pretending people are countering things that they aren't. I agree with your facts, but not your conclusion you are drawing from them. Knowing that Columbus was deluded about what was needed for his trip to survive (he thinks he he'll get to China in a couple of months - but you know he has to find hitherto unknown lands just to keep from dying) is plenty of reason to object right there. If you can guess that there will be some land out there, can you guess that it will be in a long vertical stripe that goes nearly pole to pole so you can't possibly miss it? That's what was needed to be sure of survival. Columbus is very lucky that that turned out to actually be the case.
Okay, I'll call your bluff. I don't believe for a moment that you are truly ignorant of these things. You're just hoping I wouldn't bother taking the time to dig up a URL to a five year old document. But here is a place where the whole thing is posted verbatim.
Here's a relevant excerpt since I doubt you have the integrety to back up your bluster with actual action and take the time to read the thing:
33. Microsoft enjoys so much power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems that if it wished to exercise this power solely in terms of price, it could charge a price for Windows substantially above that which could be charged in a competitive market. Moreover, it could do so for a significant period of time without losing an unacceptable amount of business to competitors. In other words, Microsoft enjoys monopoly power in the relevant market.
34. Viewed together, three main facts indicate that Microsoft enjoys monopoly power. First, Microsoft's share of the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems is extremely large and stable. Second, Microsoft's dominant market share is protected by a high barrier to entry. Third, and largely as a result of that barrier, Microsoft's customers lack a commercially viable alternative to Windows.
These are the words of the judge in his findings of fact statement.
2 : exclusive possession or control
Now learn what "or control" means. It means having *enough* of a majority that you can exert exclusive control - and that does not require 100%
By your misinterpretation of the definition there never could be a monopoly ever. All it would take would the exisitence of one single copy of one single product that is simliar to the one in question and there would be no monopoly. By your interpretation, Standard Oil would not have been a monopoly, and that company was the test case that the whole friggin anti-trust law system was designed for.
"best" means whatever product the consumers decided
When you can't buy product A without buying product B, and product A is the one you really want, you haven't "decided" to pick product B - you're getting it along for the ride. This is precisely how Microsoft won the OS market. People wanted cheap PC-compatables. MS-DOS was what was required to come with them.
When I went to see the recent remake of "The Stepton Wives" (Yes, I admit to this - we all have our embarassing moments), I was laughing myself silly during the opening credits.
People thought I was nuts but I just couldn't stop laughing - see, over the opening credits there was a montage of these '50's commercials depicting the perfect housewife, complete with poodle-skirts and everything - and one of the things they kept using clips from was "Design for Dreaming". I kept picturing the bot's making comments about it in my head.
No. Consumers have gotten Microsoft as baggage along with what they wanted, which was the (accidentally) open and cheap archetecture of IBM PC-compatable computers. The OS was not the main selling point back when Microsoft got themselves established into their unassaible position.
It's just different. That doesn't necessarily mean it is better or worse.
In theory, yes. In practice, no - because Microsoft's goal is the elimination of everyone else, that puts people who want something else into a postion where they *must* be anti-Microsoft. Microsoft started it.
Have you ever driven in thick traffic, and payed attention to how it works when you do? If you try to leave enough following distance to safely brake, between you and the car in front of you, then someone else will merge in and fill that space before you manage to spread it out far enough. So you back off some more to try to open up that space again, and someone else merges in and fills it *again*. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. You cannot choose to leave a large gap unless the rest of the drivers around you are cooperating with your attempt to do so.
I was just pointing out that thinking something is fiction is not necesarily going to make one dislike it. Most stuff that is read for the sake of entertainment is fiction. It's only when the author's and the reader's opinion on whether or not it's fiction differ that it can be an obsticle to enjoyment.
The problem with those kinds of rules is that they are wrong - no, not just ethically wrong, but *factually* wrong. Plain and simple. A car is less manueverable than a bicycle. The car driver *should* be more careful, and I realize that this is the reason for these laws, but they are unfair since it is possible for a bicyclist to hit a car in a fashion that the driver could do nothing about. If I'm driving in traffic, with cars all around me and I have no room to maneuver, and a bike rider tries passing between the cars and plows into me - exactly what could I have done about it?
I also feel the same way about the assumption that the rear driver in a rear-end collision is always at fault. Whacking the brakes as fast as possible for no apparent reason can cause an accident in which the front car is at fault - but the insurance companies don't think this is possible for some reason.
Your response seems to be all about the distance travelled. That's nice, but the complaint of the parent you replied to was about the safety given the narrowness of the roads where he lives, and thus your response is a red herring.
I'm lucky enough to live in a place where bicycles are respected as a form of transit (Madison, WI), but I didn't always. I would never have even attempted to use a bike in most cities because to do so you have to do it right in the middle of traffic - whatever health benefits you get are overshadowed by the fact that you will end up getting in an accident once every few years. But here there are enough paths that follow non-auto routes that you can get to and from work without having to contend with much traffic.
I see you've bought into the lie that ANWR actually has a signifigant enough amount of oil for us to get by on our own. It doesn't. Not by a long shot.
Look, your whole point (as far as I can tell) was that people at the time shouldn't have objected to Columbus's trip because they didn't know for sure there was no land out there for him to find. But that doesn't make any sense because there is still perfectly good reason to object to someone who is taking a trip unaware of the actual risk (and worse yet, communicating that ignorance to his crew that he's hiring on). Columbus was unaware of the risk he was taking because he was unaware that he'd have to find some previously undiscovered land if he wanted to live. He seriously thought he would just get to China in a month or so.
How is that any better than just making a bunch of filenames that point to the same file via symlinks and then using locatedb? 10 different names for the same file is the same thing as 10 keywords typed in to refer to the file.
Just take a look at who exactly is being beaten by the corporate moneystick... Well some rich investors for one, some programmers here and there, some execs, some lawyers, oh and the few ppl who whon't be able to go to acapulco for summer break because the company they invested in got beat by the MS$ stick.
And billions of people, from future generations, that will lack the benefits of technology because his company retarded its progress. Gag orders via DRM and DMCA are very damaging to the future of humanity. I don't give a damn about speculative investors getting screwed. I do give a damn about making knowlege illegal.
Where you even alive a few years ago? At all? The old Netscape vs Microsoft ruling *did* find Microsoft to be a monopoly. Absolutely. It's just that being a monopoly is not a crime by itself. It opens up the possibiilty for types of crimes that would otherwise be impossible, but it is still possible to be a monopoly and not get in trouble for it if you watch your behaviour carefully. And no, 100% marketshare is not the definition of a monopoly.
So, to put it in your own words, "you're either misinformed, exaggerating, or outright lying. I hope it's the first case."
The company that can produce the best product for the best price with the best profit margin wins in the long run.
What does "best" mean here? It doesn't mean "best for the consumer".
This "party" is a regularly occurring thing. This meeting of governors happens often. And each time it's held somewhere different. This year it happened to be held at Gates' place. Next time it will be somewhere else. This isn't so much Gates saying "I think I'll start a party and invite governors" as it is Gates saying "I think I'll invite those governors who are already having a party anyway, to come have it here this time."
There are plenty of *real* reasons to hate Gates. This isn't one of them.
If the American people had any freakin' backbone, we *would* have that kind of power. What is needed is the backbone to tell the two major parties to go stuff it, and vote for whom we *want* to instead of always trying for the lesser of two evils. Would it have an effect right away? No. But KEEP DOING it year after year and it will as the numbers of dissenters rise higher and higher.
In the alternate universe in which companies never ever change, then your implied accsations of hypocracy might have actually made some sense. But here in the real world where the rest of us live - we recognize that companies actually change.
And Bill always was an ass, by the way - even back in the days of Altair Basic. All that has changed is that he got into a position where his behavior affected others instead of being something ignorable.
Only in the alternate universe where the biggest complaint about Bush is the economy. There do exist sane bush-bashers, who bash for other reasons. Maybe you should try living in the real world.
My problem with the Silmarillion is that it's not actually a novel. It's a history textbook - and it's about as interesting.
If Tolkien had written another STORY set in those times, I'd have loved to have read it. But to read a history text of those times is dull, dull, dull. I've tried to read the Silmarilion but I never get past a few pages before I bore myself to tears.
Firstly, remember that the plan for the hobbits to go alone was not actually the original plan. The original plan was to keep the fellowship together and have all of them go. When that was broken up, The plan was altered.
Secondly, with the new, altered plan of having frodo and sam slip in unnoticed, the task of the others was to act bold and foolhardy so as to draw all of Sauron's attention their way and make him think they had the ring. Everything they did was to this purpose.
Basically, the reason for not using eagles is that they would be easily noticed heading in. The hobbits' only thing in their favor is that they were ignorably puny and powerless.
What's so surpsising about that? Both Tolkien and Lewis are great at writing fiction. They tell good yarns. And yes, they are based heavily on their Christian thoughts. The thing is - their fiction works are presented as fiction. You don't have to believe them to be reality in order to like them. In fact, the authors themselves don't try to sell them as reality. Lewis's essays about his religion, however, are presented as reality. That is the chief difference.
We atheists enjoy fantastical fiction just as much as the next guy. We just don't like confusing "I think this would be neato if it was true" with "I think this is true".
Slashdot Mirror
Why does it bother you if other take advantage of the gap?
Because a previous poster was implying that it was always the driver in the rear that is responsible for the lack of a gap there. Someone fills the gap, you start slowing down further to open the gap again, but before you open up a large enough gap again - BAM the lead car slams its brakes and you end up hitting it. According to the insurance rules, it's your fault that you were following too closely. What can you do to avoid this when everyone else keeps filling in your gap as soon as it is on the verge of forming? You are spending the majority of your time trying to back off and make the gap bigger after the last guy who just filled it. It's only in a minority of the time that you have achived the gap you want and can hold it there, typically after you have finally fallen back to the end of the "pack" of traffic - assuming there are any gaps at all in the flow for you to fill.
The gap cannot exist longer than a few senconds. You back off - leaving, say, 3 seconds of gap. Someone fills it and you now only have 1.5 seconds of gap. Then you back off some more and it gets filled again and you back off some more and it gets filled again - such that you are only ever achieving that 3 seconds of gap for brief moments before someone else decides to cut the gap for you. So you are perpetually in a state of attempting to achieve the size of gap you want but never actually attaining it no matter how slow you go.
Grrrr. You are very frustrating. If you are going to shoot me down, it would help if you cited things I haven't already agreed with. I fully agree that there was reason to believe there *MIGHT* be other land out there. Your conclusion that this means you shouldn't try to stop a man who is sailing under misconcieved notions is what I disagree with, and I have stated so several times.
Next time don't be an ass by pretending people are countering things that they aren't. I agree with your facts, but not your conclusion you are drawing from them. Knowing that Columbus was deluded about what was needed for his trip to survive (he thinks he he'll get to China in a couple of months - but you know he has to find hitherto unknown lands just to keep from dying) is plenty of reason to object right there. If you can guess that there will be some land out there, can you guess that it will be in a long vertical stripe that goes nearly pole to pole so you can't possibly miss it? That's what was needed to be sure of survival. Columbus is very lucky that that turned out to actually be the case.
Damn slashdot ate my html. Here it is in plain text since the HREF markup got eaten:
t m
o ng term/microsoft/documents/fof1.htm
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.h
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/l
(Both contain the same text - just from different servers)
here is a place where the whole thing is posted verbatim.
Here's a relevant excerpt since I doubt you have the integrety to back up your bluster with actual action and take the time to read the thing:
These are the words of the judge in his findings of fact statement.
2 : exclusive possession or control
Now learn what "or control" means. It means having *enough* of a majority that you can exert exclusive control - and that does not require 100%
By your misinterpretation of the definition there never could be a monopoly ever. All it would take would the exisitence of one single copy of one single product that is simliar to the one in question and there would be no monopoly. By your interpretation, Standard Oil would not have been a monopoly, and that company was the test case that the whole friggin anti-trust law system was designed for.
"best" means whatever product the consumers decided
When you can't buy product A without buying product B, and product A is the one you really want, you haven't "decided" to pick product B - you're getting it along for the ride. This is precisely how Microsoft won the OS market. People wanted cheap PC-compatables. MS-DOS was what was required to come with them.
When I went to see the recent remake of "The Stepton Wives" (Yes, I admit to this - we all have our embarassing moments), I was laughing myself silly during the opening credits.
People thought I was nuts but I just couldn't stop laughing - see, over the opening credits there was a montage of these '50's commercials depicting the perfect housewife, complete with poodle-skirts and everything - and one of the things they kept using clips from was "Design for Dreaming". I kept picturing the bot's making comments about it in my head.
Microsoft has given consumers what they want
No. Consumers have gotten Microsoft as baggage along with what they wanted, which was the (accidentally) open and cheap archetecture of IBM PC-compatable computers. The OS was not the main selling point back when Microsoft got themselves established into their unassaible position.
It's just different. That doesn't necessarily mean it is better or worse.
In theory, yes. In practice, no - because Microsoft's goal is the elimination of everyone else, that puts people who want something else into a postion where they *must* be anti-Microsoft. Microsoft started it.
You're so full of it. Please do block me, and try to get me boycotted from the internet. Go ahead. I won't even notice.
Have you ever driven in thick traffic, and payed attention to how it works when you do? If you try to leave enough following distance to safely brake, between you and the car in front of you, then someone else will merge in and fill that space before you manage to spread it out far enough. So you back off some more to try to open up that space again, and someone else merges in and fills it *again*. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
You cannot choose to leave a large gap unless the rest of the drivers around you are cooperating with your attempt to do so.
I was just pointing out that thinking something is fiction is not necesarily going to make one dislike it. Most stuff that is read for the sake of entertainment is fiction. It's only when the author's and the reader's opinion on whether or not it's fiction differ that it can be an obsticle to enjoyment.
I'd appreciate it if in the future you would back up your lies
Sure thing. When I get around to posting some lies I'll do that. In the meantime I'll remain honest.
The problem with those kinds of rules is that they are wrong - no, not just ethically wrong, but *factually* wrong. Plain and simple. A car is less manueverable than a bicycle. The car driver *should* be more careful, and I realize that this is the reason for these laws, but they are unfair since it is possible for a bicyclist to hit a car in a fashion that the driver could do nothing about. If I'm driving in traffic, with cars all around me and I have no room to maneuver, and a bike rider tries passing between the cars and plows into me - exactly what could I have done about it?
I also feel the same way about the assumption that the rear driver in a rear-end collision is always at fault. Whacking the brakes as fast as possible for no apparent reason can cause an accident in which the front car is at fault - but the insurance companies don't think this is possible for some reason.
Your response seems to be all about the distance travelled. That's nice, but the complaint of the parent you replied to was about the safety given the narrowness of the roads where he lives, and thus your response is a red herring.
I'm lucky enough to live in a place where bicycles are respected as a form of transit (Madison, WI), but I didn't always. I would never have even attempted to use a bike in most cities because to do so you have to do it right in the middle of traffic - whatever health benefits you get are overshadowed by the fact that you will end up getting in an accident once every few years. But here there are enough paths that follow non-auto routes that you can get to and from work without having to contend with much traffic.
I see you've bought into the lie that ANWR actually has a signifigant enough amount of oil for us to get by on our own. It doesn't. Not by a long shot.
Look, your whole point (as far as I can tell) was that people at the time shouldn't have objected to Columbus's trip because they didn't know for sure there was no land out there for him to find. But that doesn't make any sense because there is still perfectly good reason to object to someone who is taking a trip unaware of the actual risk (and worse yet, communicating that ignorance to his crew that he's hiring on). Columbus was unaware of the risk he was taking because he was unaware that he'd have to find some previously undiscovered land if he wanted to live. He seriously thought he would just get to China in a month or so.
How is that any better than just making a bunch of filenames that point to the same file via symlinks and then using locatedb? 10 different names for the same file is the same thing as 10 keywords typed in to refer to the file.
Just take a look at who exactly is being beaten by the corporate moneystick... Well some rich investors for one, some programmers here and there, some execs, some lawyers, oh and the few ppl who whon't be able to go to acapulco for summer break because the company they invested in got beat by the MS$ stick.
And billions of people, from future generations, that will lack the benefits of technology because his company retarded its progress. Gag orders via DRM and DMCA are very damaging to the future of humanity. I don't give a damn about speculative investors getting screwed. I do give a damn about making knowlege illegal.
Where you even alive a few years ago? At all? The old Netscape vs Microsoft ruling *did* find Microsoft to be a monopoly. Absolutely. It's just that being a monopoly is not a crime by itself. It opens up the possibiilty for types of crimes that would otherwise be impossible, but it is still possible to be a monopoly and not get in trouble for it if you watch your behaviour carefully. And no, 100% marketshare is not the definition of a monopoly.
So, to put it in your own words, "you're either misinformed, exaggerating, or outright lying. I hope it's the first case."
The company that can produce the best product for the best price with the best profit margin wins in the long run.
What does "best" mean here? It doesn't mean "best for the consumer".
This "party" is a regularly occurring thing. This meeting of governors happens often. And each time it's held somewhere different. This year it happened to be held at Gates' place. Next time it will be somewhere else. This isn't so much Gates saying "I think I'll start a party and invite governors" as it is Gates saying "I think I'll invite those governors who are already having a party anyway, to come have it here this time."
There are plenty of *real* reasons to hate Gates. This isn't one of them.
If the American people had any freakin' backbone, we *would* have that kind of power. What is needed is the backbone to tell the two major parties to go stuff it, and vote for whom we *want* to instead of always trying for the lesser of two evils. Would it have an effect right away? No. But KEEP DOING it year after year and it will as the numbers of dissenters rise higher and higher.
In the alternate universe in which companies never ever change, then your implied accsations of hypocracy might have actually made some sense. But here in the real world where the rest of us live - we recognize that companies actually change.
And Bill always was an ass, by the way - even back in the days of Altair Basic. All that has changed is that he got into a position where his behavior affected others instead of being something ignorable.
Only in the alternate universe where the biggest complaint about Bush is the economy. There do exist sane bush-bashers, who bash for other reasons. Maybe you should try living in the real world.
My problem with the Silmarillion is that it's not actually a novel. It's a history textbook - and it's about as interesting.
If Tolkien had written another STORY set in those times, I'd have loved to have read it. But to read a history text of those times is dull, dull, dull. I've tried to read the Silmarilion but I never get past a few pages before I bore myself to tears.
Firstly, remember that the plan for the hobbits to go alone was not actually the original plan. The original plan was to keep the fellowship together and have all of them go. When that was broken up, The plan was altered.
Secondly, with the new, altered plan of having frodo and sam slip in unnoticed, the task of the others was to act bold and foolhardy so as to draw all of Sauron's attention their way and make him think they had the ring. Everything they did was to this purpose.
Basically, the reason for not using eagles is that they would be easily noticed heading in. The hobbits' only thing in their favor is that they were ignorably puny and powerless.
What's so surpsising about that? Both Tolkien and Lewis are great at writing fiction. They tell good yarns. And yes, they are based heavily on their Christian thoughts. The thing is - their fiction works are presented as fiction. You don't have to believe them to be reality in order to like them. In fact, the authors themselves don't try to sell them as reality. Lewis's essays about his religion, however, are presented as reality. That is the chief difference.
We atheists enjoy fantastical fiction just as much as the next guy. We just don't like confusing "I think this would be neato if it was true" with "I think this is true".