Those help centers in India are useless. My boss once lost his skiis with Air Canada and the luggage tracking call center was in India. The guy didn't even know what skiis were, let alone know where they were.
This went on for 3 months at which point they suspended his account (so obviously this isn't practical for a lot of us), but inevitably they gave in because he had handset repayments and they stood to lose a lot over it (though as did he, in terms of credit history).
That's why I register my phone bill under my dogs name.
Can I also bill them for the plane ride to/from Montreal and the cost of the two dozen eggs to throw at the Bell executives as they walk into the corporate headquarters?
Yes, and a gunfight would have broken out, resulting in not only the one dead passenger by the killer (that would have happened regardless), but several other dead passengers caught in the crossfire of inexperienced gun wielding idiots.
I agree completely - software based analysis will save time if you need to do it. My other point related to that is that you cannot take the results of the analysis blindly, you need a human sanity check. This does not mean you need a person to redo the calculations by hand, just that you need an experienced person who can tell when the results make sense and when they dont.
Agreed, except the spaceship is not entirely made up of complex parts and expensive materials - if it was it would never be affordable or likely work at all. Simple parets are cheaper to make by machinist vs modelling in CAD.
Also, materials such as carbon fiber sheets are not milled, they are laid by hand mostly, or in some cases by machine in large areas.
but as far as testing for weak points in a complex structure, it's more reliable and quicker just to give it over to the computer rather than rely on gut instinct and human calculations (though you still need a human to give the inputs to the simulation so it could still be flawed)
No. Computers are stupid. You still need an experienced engineer to both enter the data and to look at the results to see that they make sense. Blindly taking the output of any automated analysis will likely be doomed to failure.
Computer modelling tools mean that even small firms without much cash can design proper supercars and rockets without having anywhere near as much money as companies like Ferrari or NASA.
Knowledge is in the people, not the tools - you still have to pay your employees. Generally if you can only afford to pay people crap, you will get crap output. Small firms accomplish great things due to the lack of bureaucratic overhead and the small team atmosphere, not because of software tools.
The design costs of a product designed with CAD are typically bigger than the design costs of a product designed in the traditional method with manually made drawings. This is well documented and well known among older designers. The reason is that with modern CAD tools, they do so much more, but they also require so much more information to be put into the model. This takes time. This information was not needed before as the skill of the machinist was relied upon instead of the accuracy of the model.
Granted, many modern designs are so advanced they need this analysis or they would never work. The days of "just build it and try it" are almost over.
Because in the first case, the patentable object is an actual thing that does something useful. Software on it's own as a separate entity is not useful as it does not do anything. It needs hardware to actually function and be useful. If it's not useful, it doesn't pass the requirements to be patentable.
If you want to patent say a new harddrive with software file system that allows fast system access, then as a physical unit the entire thing is patentable, and the patent item just happens to have software in it. But software on its own should not be patentable - it doesn't make any sense.
Sure. I'd expect the budget difference has more to do with the fact that NASA built their shuttles way back when, and didn't have such advanced software tools and modern materials to use when designing and building them.
You do realize that in general, modern software design tools have *increased* design costs, not decreased them over traditional non-software based design methods.
False advertising. The tenant may have chosen to rent from that landlord based partly on the assurance that the cameras provided some security, but the landlord bought fake cameras to save money. The landlord failed to provide a service for which the tenant paid every month.
Nonsense. That's like suing the car manufacturer for stating that the car speedometer goes to 220, but you get a speeding ticket at 120. Isn't that also false advertising because you will never realistically achieve the speed the car says it will go?
I think the idea is sort of like the laws against false advertising. If I'm in trouble and run to where I've 'seen' a camera, so actions against me can be witnessed, I'd be pissed if it turned out to be fake and there's no video evidence of my being assaulted.
Not disputing that you would be dissapointed or upset, but that's not grounds for suing someone.
If you were mugged by a guy with a fake gun, do you sue him for giving you a false sense of peril?
I fail to see how the tenant could successfully sue the apartment building owner. What grounds? Sure he created a false sense of security *maybe* but he certainly didn't create an unsafe condition. It's no more unsafe than if the fake camera was not there.
If a corner store gets robbed do the customers sue the owner if there was no tape in the machine to record the crime? No. Next you'll have cops suing victims for wasting their time because they shouldn't be living in the high crime area in the first place...
Yes, and if you RTFA, when the cops questions the owner who *claimed* to know nothing about it, the device suddenly dissapeared from that house. Obviously she contacted who she bought it from and they removed it.
Unless you are really stupid, most people who buy highly discounted expensive stuff should at least suspect it is stolen. Like who really thinks that guys selling speakers out of a van are a legitimate business?
That's the stupidist thing I ever heard to sue someone over. It can't possibly be illegal to put up fake cameras - they do this all over the world.
In London where they have a number of cameras monitoring the streets, many of the cameras are fake and look exactly like the real cameras. It's simply not financially possible to have real cameras everywhere, but the appearance of cameras keeps the idiots in line.
Only in Texas could you possibly be held liable when some other person is the one committing a crime. Geez.
I don't know what that means. Fundamentally I do not agree that a religion can 'act' like a race. No race in it's entirety acts in any one manner so acting like a race is impossible.
'Acting white' or 'acting black' are nonsensical phrases.
IIRC, before the Viking mission the Mars sky was expected to be blue from the surface.
The colour of the sky as seen from Mars will change depending on the weather. As there is typically a lot of dust in the atmosphere on Mars, the blue and green components get scattered so all you see is the red, giving you a red sky. This is the same effect as looking at a sunset with a lot of smoke or pollution in the sky here on Earth - the sunlight goes through more of the atmosphere than normal and the blue is scattered away leaving the red.
If you managed to look up on Mars when there was little dust, yes the sky would be blue, but due to the ever present dust storms and the thickness of the atmosphere, it would usually appear red.
I agree. Every religion in the world can be considered a cult by other religions because their beliefs are not mainstream in the other society.
Even within a religion you can have cult references. American Christian Fundamentalists are certainly considered a cult by most Catholics and Anglicans that I know.
Honestly, they should have turned it around and asked what software is bug-free, intuitive and a pleasure to use. The list would have been a lot shorter.
Although at this point I can't think of a single application that achieves the above.
Slashdot Mirror
Those help centers in India are useless. My boss once lost his skiis with Air Canada and the luggage tracking call center was in India. The guy didn't even know what skiis were, let alone know where they were.
This went on for 3 months at which point they suspended his account (so obviously this isn't practical for a lot of us), but inevitably they gave in because he had handset repayments and they stood to lose a lot over it (though as did he, in terms of credit history).
That's why I register my phone bill under my dogs name.
Can I also bill them for the plane ride to/from Montreal and the cost of the two dozen eggs to throw at the Bell executives as they walk into the corporate headquarters?
If it had been in England, the police would have shot some Brazilian guy who was nothing at all to do with it.
And Bush would have said "Oh my God! A brazillion people were killed on a bus! How many is that anyway?
Yes, and a gunfight would have broken out, resulting in not only the one dead passenger by the killer (that would have happened regardless), but several other dead passengers caught in the crossfire of inexperienced gun wielding idiots.
I agree completely - software based analysis will save time if you need to do it. My other point related to that is that you cannot take the results of the analysis blindly, you need a human sanity check. This does not mean you need a person to redo the calculations by hand, just that you need an experienced person who can tell when the results make sense and when they dont.
Agreed, except the spaceship is not entirely made up of complex parts and expensive materials - if it was it would never be affordable or likely work at all. Simple parets are cheaper to make by machinist vs modelling in CAD.
Also, materials such as carbon fiber sheets are not milled, they are laid by hand mostly, or in some cases by machine in large areas.
but as far as testing for weak points in a complex structure, it's more reliable and quicker just to give it over to the computer rather than rely on gut instinct and human calculations (though you still need a human to give the inputs to the simulation so it could still be flawed)
No. Computers are stupid. You still need an experienced engineer to both enter the data and to look at the results to see that they make sense. Blindly taking the output of any automated analysis will likely be doomed to failure.
Computer modelling tools mean that even small firms without much cash can design proper supercars and rockets without having anywhere near as much money as companies like Ferrari or NASA.
Knowledge is in the people, not the tools - you still have to pay your employees. Generally if you can only afford to pay people crap, you will get crap output. Small firms accomplish great things due to the lack of bureaucratic overhead and the small team atmosphere, not because of software tools.
I agree. I don't believe software patents should exist at all.
In fact patents in general are a bad idea and serve only to stifle innovation.
Your software on it's own does nothing. It cannot function. It doesn't even exist except in concept.
Software only ever does anything with the help of something physical and with an interface to the real world.
Patenting software would be like patenting the ink on a book or the spaces between the words..
The design costs of a product designed with CAD are typically bigger than the design costs of a product designed in the traditional method with manually made drawings. This is well documented and well known among older designers. The reason is that with modern CAD tools, they do so much more, but they also require so much more information to be put into the model. This takes time. This information was not needed before as the skill of the machinist was relied upon instead of the accuracy of the model.
Granted, many modern designs are so advanced they need this analysis or they would never work. The days of "just build it and try it" are almost over.
Because in the first case, the patentable object is an actual thing that does something useful. Software on it's own as a separate entity is not useful as it does not do anything. It needs hardware to actually function and be useful. If it's not useful, it doesn't pass the requirements to be patentable.
If you want to patent say a new harddrive with software file system that allows fast system access, then as a physical unit the entire thing is patentable, and the patent item just happens to have software in it. But software on its own should not be patentable - it doesn't make any sense.
Sure. I'd expect the budget difference has more to do with the fact that NASA built their shuttles way back when, and didn't have such advanced software tools and modern materials to use when designing and building them.
You do realize that in general, modern software design tools have *increased* design costs, not decreased them over traditional non-software based design methods.
False advertising. The tenant may have chosen to rent from that landlord based partly on the assurance that the cameras provided some security, but the landlord bought fake cameras to save money. The landlord failed to provide a service for which the tenant paid every month.
Nonsense. That's like suing the car manufacturer for stating that the car speedometer goes to 220, but you get a speeding ticket at 120. Isn't that also false advertising because you will never realistically achieve the speed the car says it will go?
I think the idea is sort of like the laws against false advertising. If I'm in trouble and run to where I've 'seen' a camera, so actions against me can be witnessed, I'd be pissed if it turned out to be fake and there's no video evidence of my being assaulted.
Not disputing that you would be dissapointed or upset, but that's not grounds for suing someone.
If you were mugged by a guy with a fake gun, do you sue him for giving you a false sense of peril?
I fail to see how the tenant could successfully sue the apartment building owner. What grounds? Sure he created a false sense of security *maybe* but he certainly didn't create an unsafe condition. It's no more unsafe than if the fake camera was not there.
If a corner store gets robbed do the customers sue the owner if there was no tape in the machine to record the crime? No. Next you'll have cops suing victims for wasting their time because they shouldn't be living in the high crime area in the first place...
Yes, and if you RTFA, when the cops questions the owner who *claimed* to know nothing about it, the device suddenly dissapeared from that house. Obviously she contacted who she bought it from and they removed it.
Unless you are really stupid, most people who buy highly discounted expensive stuff should at least suspect it is stolen. Like who really thinks that guys selling speakers out of a van are a legitimate business?
That's the stupidist thing I ever heard to sue someone over. It can't possibly be illegal to put up fake cameras - they do this all over the world.
In London where they have a number of cameras monitoring the streets, many of the cameras are fake and look exactly like the real cameras. It's simply not financially possible to have real cameras everywhere, but the appearance of cameras keeps the idiots in line.
Only in Texas could you possibly be held liable when some other person is the one committing a crime. Geez.
No I'm not. Stop being an ass by acting American.
I don't know what that means. Fundamentally I do not agree that a religion can 'act' like a race. No race in it's entirety acts in any one manner so acting like a race is impossible.
'Acting white' or 'acting black' are nonsensical phrases.
Is that James Baldwin the writer? Regardless, that quote makes no sense.
The colour of the sky as seen from Mars will change depending on the weather. As there is typically a lot of dust in the atmosphere on Mars, the blue and green components get scattered so all you see is the red, giving you a red sky. This is the same effect as looking at a sunset with a lot of smoke or pollution in the sky here on Earth - the sunlight goes through more of the atmosphere than normal and the blue is scattered away leaving the red.
If you managed to look up on Mars when there was little dust, yes the sky would be blue, but due to the ever present dust storms and the thickness of the atmosphere, it would usually appear red.
I agree. Every religion in the world can be considered a cult by other religions because their beliefs are not mainstream in the other society.
Even within a religion you can have cult references. American Christian Fundamentalists are certainly considered a cult by most Catholics and Anglicans that I know.
Honestly, they should have turned it around and asked what software is bug-free, intuitive and a pleasure to use. The list would have been a lot shorter.
Although at this point I can't think of a single application that achieves the above.
Because you're doing it wrong??