Then, when they asked her on the stand if that is her harddrive, she would have to commit perjury, which is a lot worse than the penalty for downloading 200 mp3s.
If I were her, I would install kazaa, download every different version of "BritneySpearsNaked.exe" and run them all. Wanting to see britney spears naked is not illegal, and it would make it awfully hard for them to prove she purposefully destroyed her own computer.
Most people intuitively know this. Working *too* much is a personality disorder. The fact that you see it in Chinese-American culture does not necessarily mean it is inborn in the Chinese race.
What I am getting at is that you are racist (even if it's your own race) if you think this is OK due to the fact that they are Chinese. The fact that people work this hard should not be something to be proud of, and should not have to be justified.
Indexing into that extra file table takes bits. For example, if you have 1024 different possible abbreviations, you need to use on average 10 bits (at the least) to index that table for each abbrevation. You could use less bits for the more common ones (like huffman coding), but you are still wasting space indexing.
I think the cell phone scanner has potential if the phone is connected to the internet. It could be used to buy things from vending machines, for example (I'd be surprised if this hasn't been tried in japan).
"I'm currently a CS major/math minor in college, who's strongly considering a role reversal."
Make sure you are prepared for it. A lot of people I know who did well in calculus and differential equations (and other appliable engineering classes) weren't really prepared for the theoretical nature of high-level math classes. Try taking a low-level number theory class or something similar with a lot of proofs to determine if you are up for taking the high-level analysis classes.
I personally think a math major is somewhat useless if you want to be an engineer. The most it will do for you is teach you how to think in a more analytical way, but you won't learn as much as you may think. My school offered an applied math major which I think is a lot more useful and interesting.
"Language only has value if everyone understands and agrees what certain otherwise-meaningless utterances represent."
I know Harvard graduates who don't know what "begs the question" really means (I mean the bad latin translation version of it). I don't know anyone who can't understand what "circular reasoning" means.
I don't understand how I was trying to pigeonhole anything; infact, my original argument was that the gp was... The gp said "you can't use this phrase in this way" and I said "let people use english in a way that is natural to them and in a way that other people will understand." So, please explain what you mean.
I am sick of the intellectual snobbery on Slahsdot. I'm fine with my post (which I thought was on topic and insightful) being modded as off topic and troll, but I am tired of pseudo-intellectuals trying to prove that they are better than I am with half-assed reasoning.
Please mod the parent down, I am tired of these posts every time someone says "begs the question." In case you English snobs have not realized, "begs the question" is used much, much more often in the "incorrect" usage than the "correct" one. By most definitions that means it is actually correct. English is a constantly changing language, so what was wrong yesterday may be right today.
From what I can tell the companies that put the most money into R&D are the ones who get the most screwed. See IBM and Xerox. I'll admit hp may do well with R&D - I don't know much about them (when I think of HP I think of overpriced printer cartridges). The reason is that classic R&D requires 100s of millions, if not billions of dollars to have any sort of decent chance at getting returns. These are HUGE investments that could potentially destroy the company if nothing comes from it. "Thinking of the longterm" is an optimistic way of saying "putting a gamble into your future." Microsoft puts tons of money into R&D yet they still lag behind in a lot of the industry.
"Apple and Adobe arguably became who they are because of investments in fonts and laser printers (not to mention software and industrial design). Yahoo and Google are who they are almost exclusively because of R&D"
See my comment about Computer Science R&D. The reason is obvious - software research is cheap as hell. Google was founded off of academic papers written by people being paid 25K a year. Universities do R&D practically free for companies. This is a more economical way of doing things in the software industry.
"I have no doubt about that, but after working with some folks in defense, I can tell you it is an inefficient system littered with middle managers and other parasites that each need the hard work of others to justify an existence... All told, I would much rather see those dollars go into education, basic science and open competition for even defense related projects."
I agree, yet they are still 10 years ahead of industry. They may waste money, but so does any big project worth doing. It's not defense/government = waste, it's large = waste. Building a state of the art fighter plane (or for that matter space shuttle, cruise ship, or jet liner) will require millions of man-hours and a carefully controlled environment with a complex hierarchy of management.
My point is that these projects really do bring innovation, albeit not in the most effective manner (as you point out). But I would argue that research in an educational setting is just as inefficient (90% of the academics I know care more about getting their papers published or getting tenure than contributing anything to the real-world. They only use results that make them look good, and don't publish papers that don't agree with their hypothesis, etc).
Defense projects are open. There are about 5-10 large (huge) defense companies that I know of in this country, and they often compete very intensely for the government's business. It's not a perfectly open market, but it's not a monopoly. It's hard to have more companies involved because these projects can cost million of dollars just to do R&D into the feasibility of a project.
Yes, that is what I meant. That has been the American definition of "conservative" since at least Reagan's time.
Neocons and liberals disagree on a HUGE number of things. Yes, they can agree on some things, but that isn't a weakness of the system like some Slashdotters think.
"Years ago there were more far thinking companies like Xerox, HP, SGI and Bell Labs, but they got lazy and were under more pressure from shareholders to focus more on short term profits and less on long term viability of the company."
I would actually say a lot of the R&D a lot of companies did back in the day did not help them as much as it should have. They would invent great things, but some other company would usually profit off of it. R&D is expensive and needs to be well-justified.
Today, computer science has plenty of R&D in industry, but mechanical engineering has to turn to defense simply because of the huge cost in making anything interesting. The technology that goes into modern warfare will trickle down into society in several years, similar to the way NASA worked 30 years ago. It's not an entirely terrible system, because no one but defense is really willing to spend the amount of money and defense is pretty universally agreed on as neccesary.
Assuming the screen takes up the *entire* space of the iPod (I haven't seen pictures but that seems intuitive), I'd guess you'd be getting about a 6 inch screen. That really isn't bad for viewing a movie on an airplane or bus.
How do you explain Bush, who is by most measures very conservative? Most democrats would disagree with him on 95% of the issues. Now that is what I call a very disjoint two party system.
This is true - if a company spends 50 cents for each dollar that comes in, it is charging its customers double its income, and therefore can be sued for double its income.
But in google's case it is all almost pure profit. They *maybe* spend 10 cents for each dollar.
That's a very narrow view of American politics that indicates to me that you either don't understand it very well or you are very jaded (like me!). Assumming the latter, I think you should settle with the fact that the two party system sucks but that it won't change in our lifetimes. And besides, do you really think any of the popular third party candidates are any better than the mainsteam ones? Hell no, they are the same dorky kids in high school and college who thought student council was all that mattered in the world. I don't want them governining my life...
Perhaps you keeping yourself amused guessing where the buttons are is what makes you think you are getting done faster. That cashier who does nothing but ring people up 8 hours a day doesn't even have to press an "OK" button in advance. He is busy ringing up your stuff by the time you get through all the front screen crap.
"Don't vote for anyone in the Democratic or Republican party."
I hate to say this, because it is so damn obvious but so unpopular in the USA; I'll say it anyway: what you propose is throwing your vote away.
If you have an "intelligent" retort like I am what is wrong with democracy or I am giving in to the two parties, than you are even more deluded that the average voter. The 1992 and 2000 elections proved that running on the third party can actually harm your cause. Can you please remind me how our version of democracy is so great?
"I can get through them faster than it would take me to make eye contact with the human cashier"
Studies have shown that self-checkout actually takes longer for the average person (ever had one of those things start blinking and make you wait for an employee?). The reason why it feels shorter is because you are in control, and hence not bored with small-talk and inane questions about what kind of bag you want.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes.a rtha_sentencing/
http://money.cnn.com/2004/07/16/news/newsmakers/m
Then, when they asked her on the stand if that is her harddrive, she would have to commit perjury, which is a lot worse than the penalty for downloading 200 mp3s.
If I were her, I would install kazaa, download every different version of "BritneySpearsNaked.exe" and run them all. Wanting to see britney spears naked is not illegal, and it would make it awfully hard for them to prove she purposefully destroyed her own computer.
Apple is willing to do this because they make >100 dollars when you buy an iPod. My friend's new iPod cost more than my computer...
working hard != superior life
Most people intuitively know this. Working *too* much is a personality disorder. The fact that you see it in
Chinese-American culture does not necessarily mean it is inborn in the Chinese race.
What I am getting at is that you are racist (even if it's your own race) if you think this is OK due to the fact that they are Chinese. The fact that people work this hard should not be something to be proud of, and should not have to be justified.
"The Onion is satire and makes itself known as such."
/ a/2002/06/08/MN129538.DTL
Apparently not entirely
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c
"Wikipedia works, when it works at all, in spite of its design, not because of it."
That's a strong statement considering the fact that majority of the popular articles are actually very good.
Indexing into that extra file table takes bits. For example, if you have 1024 different possible abbreviations, you need to use on average 10 bits (at the least) to index that table for each abbrevation. You could use less bits for the more common ones (like huffman coding), but you are still wasting space indexing.
And your link doesn't have a referral tag (which I hate because I know those are the next popup windows of the internet).
It's hard to write a bad review when you know you will make money if people buy it...
I think the cell phone scanner has potential if the phone is connected to the internet. It could be used to buy things from vending machines, for example (I'd be surprised if this hasn't been tried in japan).
"I'm currently a CS major/math minor in college, who's strongly considering a role reversal."
Make sure you are prepared for it. A lot of people I know who did well in calculus and differential equations (and other appliable engineering classes) weren't really prepared for the theoretical nature of high-level math classes. Try taking a low-level number theory class or something similar with a lot of proofs to determine if you are up for taking the high-level analysis classes.
I personally think a math major is somewhat useless if you want to be an engineer. The most it will do for you is teach you how to think in a more analytical way, but you won't learn as much as you may think. My school offered an applied math major which I think is a lot more useful and interesting.
whoops sorry, i didn't realize you were replying to someone else :(
I apologize, i should have replied to another post...
"Language only has value if everyone understands and agrees what certain otherwise-meaningless utterances represent."
I know Harvard graduates who don't know what "begs the question" really means (I mean the bad latin translation version of it). I don't know anyone who can't understand what "circular reasoning" means.
I don't understand how I was trying to pigeonhole anything; infact, my original argument was that the gp was... The gp said "you can't use this phrase in this way" and I said "let people use english in a way that is natural to them and in a way that other people will understand." So, please explain what you mean.
I am sick of the intellectual snobbery on Slahsdot. I'm fine with my post (which I thought was on topic and insightful) being modded as off topic and troll, but I am tired of pseudo-intellectuals trying to prove that they are better than I am with half-assed reasoning.
Please mod the parent down, I am tired of these posts every time someone says "begs the question." In case you English snobs have not realized, "begs the question" is used much, much more often in the "incorrect" usage than the "correct" one. By most definitions that means it is actually correct. English is a constantly changing language, so what was wrong yesterday may be right today.
From what I can tell the companies that put the most money into R&D are the ones who get the most screwed. See IBM and Xerox. I'll admit hp may do well with R&D - I don't know much about them (when I think of HP I think of overpriced printer cartridges). The reason is that classic R&D requires 100s of millions, if not billions of dollars to have any sort of decent chance at getting returns. These are HUGE investments that could potentially destroy the company if nothing comes from it. "Thinking of the longterm" is an optimistic way of saying "putting a gamble into your future." Microsoft puts tons of money into R&D yet they still lag behind in a lot of the industry.
... All told, I would much rather see those dollars go into education, basic science and open competition for even defense related projects."
"Apple and Adobe arguably became who they are because of investments in fonts and laser printers (not to mention software and industrial design). Yahoo and Google are who they are almost exclusively because of R&D"
See my comment about Computer Science R&D. The reason is obvious - software research is cheap as hell. Google was founded off of academic papers written by people being paid 25K a year. Universities do R&D practically free for companies. This is a more economical way of doing things in the software industry.
"I have no doubt about that, but after working with some folks in defense, I can tell you it is an inefficient system littered with middle managers and other parasites that each need the hard work of others to justify an existence
I agree, yet they are still 10 years ahead of industry. They may waste money, but so does any big project worth doing. It's not defense/government = waste, it's large = waste. Building a state of the art fighter plane (or for that matter space shuttle, cruise ship, or jet liner) will require millions of man-hours and a carefully controlled environment with a complex hierarchy of management.
My point is that these projects really do bring innovation, albeit not in the most effective manner (as you point out). But I would argue that research in an educational setting is just as inefficient (90% of the academics I know care more about getting their papers published or getting tenure than contributing anything to the real-world. They only use results that make them look good, and don't publish papers that don't agree with their hypothesis, etc).
Defense projects are open. There are about 5-10 large (huge) defense companies that I know of in this country, and they often compete very intensely for the government's business. It's not a perfectly open market, but it's not a monopoly. It's hard to have more companies involved because these projects can cost million of dollars just to do R&D into the feasibility of a project.
Yes, that is what I meant. That has been the American definition of "conservative" since at least Reagan's time.
Neocons and liberals disagree on a HUGE number of things. Yes, they can agree on some things, but that isn't a weakness of the system like some Slashdotters think.
"Years ago there were more far thinking companies like Xerox, HP, SGI and Bell Labs, but they got lazy and were under more pressure from shareholders to focus more on short term profits and less on long term viability of the company."
I would actually say a lot of the R&D a lot of companies did back in the day did not help them as much as it should have. They would invent great things, but some other company would usually profit off of it. R&D is expensive and needs to be well-justified.
Today, computer science has plenty of R&D in industry, but mechanical engineering has to turn to defense simply because of the huge cost in making anything interesting. The technology that goes into modern warfare will trickle down into society in several years, similar to the way NASA worked 30 years ago. It's not an entirely terrible system, because no one but defense is really willing to spend the amount of money and defense is pretty universally agreed on as neccesary.
Assuming the screen takes up the *entire* space of the iPod (I haven't seen pictures but that seems intuitive), I'd guess you'd be getting about a 6 inch screen. That really isn't bad for viewing a movie on an airplane or bus.
How do you explain Bush, who is by most measures very conservative? Most democrats would disagree with him on 95% of the issues. Now that is what I call a very disjoint two party system.
This is true - if a company spends 50 cents for each dollar that comes in, it is charging its customers double its income, and therefore can be sued for double its income.
But in google's case it is all almost pure profit. They *maybe* spend 10 cents for each dollar.
"Democrats are Republicans are Democrats"
That's a very narrow view of American politics that indicates to me that you either don't understand it very well or you are very jaded (like me!). Assumming the latter, I think you should settle with the fact that the two party system sucks but that it won't change in our lifetimes. And besides, do you really think any of the popular third party candidates are any better than the mainsteam ones? Hell no, they are the same dorky kids in high school and college who thought student council was all that mattered in the world. I don't want them governining my life...
Perhaps you keeping yourself amused guessing where the buttons are is what makes you think you are getting done faster. That cashier who does nothing but ring people up 8 hours a day doesn't even have to press an "OK" button in advance. He is busy ringing up your stuff by the time you get through all the front screen crap.
"Don't vote for anyone in the Democratic or Republican party."
I hate to say this, because it is so damn obvious but so unpopular in the USA; I'll say it anyway: what you propose is throwing your vote away.
If you have an "intelligent" retort like I am what is wrong with democracy or I am giving in to the two parties, than you are even more deluded that the average voter. The 1992 and 2000 elections proved that running on the third party can actually harm your cause. Can you please remind me how our version of democracy is so great?
"I can get through them faster than it would take me to make eye contact with the human cashier"
Studies have shown that self-checkout actually takes longer for the average person (ever had one of those things start blinking and make you wait for an employee?). The reason why it feels shorter is because you are in control, and hence not bored with small-talk and inane questions about what kind of bag you want.
"Like, how long does it take an expert to break into a car and steal it WITHOUT the keys, a couple of minutes?"
Not in a new car.
"Like, how long does it take an expert to break into your WEP secured access point these days, a couple of minutes?"
Not using new security measures.
"Note also, that somebody who uses a public wireless access point is not a criminal. Lets not get into the habit of comparing it with car theft.."
Reread my post, I was talking about how people *can* do illegal things with an internet connection.