A bike will easily go 15 mph, doesn't have a range restriction, and uses no electricity.
A motorized scooter will go the same speed or faster, and has a greater range, plus has the advantage of being able to stop almost anywhere for gasoline.
So which niche is this targetting?
The suicide niche, of course.
I wage I could get myself killed in *half* the time using one of those things than I could with a bike or scooter. It's all about efficiency, you know.
One kilo of strawberries is, for the sake of ease, around 50 strawberries. The cost of one kilo of strawberries around here is $10.
Fifty employees will probably eat around 4 strawberries a day measured over any prolonged period. Let us say 25% of the strawberries go bad and get tossed out. So we need 250 strawberries a day, or around $50.
I can't find a source for this[1], but I remember reading an article a few weeks/months ago stating that the reason Street View hadn't covered Washington, D.C. or Baltimore was because Homeland Security had requested that Google not do those cities. The rationale was that there are too many high-security establishments and they didn't want to give away any secrets.
If that article was to be believed and that Google agreed with that request, then Government "secrets" which are apparently out in the public eye are off-limits, but individual, personal "secrets" where are also out in the public eye are free game...
(Of course, even if the Google Street View van is careless enough to blunder right on past "Private Property" and "Keep Out" signs, I would hope that the caretakers of any government secrets would be on the ball enough to notice a giant van with massive photographic equipment on top of it crashing around their top secret campus and actually stop it or something...)
[1] -- The closest thing I could find was a paragraph in the wikipedia article about Street View... but it has a nice "citation needed" tag on it...
maybe those aliens just don't want to be found... perhaps a more prudent use of resources would be folding@home. You know, curing cancer instead of holding our head to the ground to listen for non-existent buffalo..
Bah, maybe that cancer just doesn't want to be cured...
Ensuring that there's no imminent repeat of this on a more populated area?
That implies that humanity has the ability to take some kind of preventative action if a collision is imminent. As far as I know, we do not.
Well, we probably couldn't shoot down an incoming meteoroid, but given enough warning time, we could at least begin an evacuation of the impact zone. Additionally, knowing that a sudden, shock explosion was due to a natural occurrence rather than a terrorist or "rogue state" could help prevent WWII being touched off...
One of the first things that shows up in the Apache video is a "rodent of unusual size" (!). Your webserver was coded by a hamster and your Perl smells of elderberries!
I think you're getting your Princess Bride references confused with your Monty Python pointers...
I just realized that I hadn't RTFA closely enough to realize that this report was actually someone's High School project, so I have to apologize for the unnecessary harshness in my tone there.
So, popularity on Google trends means that a candidate has succeeded in getting his/her message across, or that people are interested in what s/he has to say, or that people like forwarding e-mail jokes about the candidate, or that the candidate has reached some critical mass of Internet meme-ness, or some other undefined level of Internet interest.
In other words, popularity on Google indicates popularity on Google. While I can't argue with the truth of that statement, I can quibble with its usefulness...
"For the Republican Primaries, last names could easily be used. Ron Paul was excluded. His last name is too common. Using his full name is not a good solution either, because he had massive popularity on the Internet, becoming a meme of sorts, which did not at all correspond with his actual successes (or lack thereof) in the primaries."
Translation: Including Ron Paul would have indicated our hypothesis was incorrect, so we excluded him.
I think you are actually agreeing with the article.
TFA:
Lately I seem to find everywhere lots of articles about the imminent dismissal of Java and its replacement with the scripting language of the day or sometimes with other compiled languages. No, that is not gonna happen.
I'm mainly a C hacker, but I don't get why people would prefer Python over Java.
I'm having similar questions, only wondering why people would prefer Ruby over Java. I've had to start learning Ruby for a variety of reasons so I've been reading Ruby tutorials off and on for a week or so.
I don't think that Ruby is bad, not by a long shot. It's seems fairly decent and it doesn't seem to be lacking anything necessary. I'm just curious as to why someone would pick Ruby over some other language. I'm not quite understanding what the "killer app" of Ruby is. I'm not sure why this language had to be created.
My understanding is that the main reason for choosing Ruby is to use it with Rails (which I have not looked at yet). And yet it's rare for me to read a good word about Ruby on Rails.
Does anyone else get the impression that a lot of these newer languages are simply solutions that are looking for problems?
I find their criticism of linkedin to be rather odd. Their description, in full: "LinkedIn's offices are just like LinkedIn.com: utilitarian and utterly boring."
Okay, I'll give a pass to the second half: "utterly boring" is an opinion... but how is utilitarian a valid criticism of a work area? Do they know what the word actually means? Would anyone really be happy working somewhere that wasn't utilitarian? How would you get any work done?
But others, with their pseudo-hip graffiti, kindergarten toys and plastic decorations -- all in a desperate attempt to seem "Internet-y" -- come off even worse."
...the hell?
I mean I agree with it and all, but surely you could have said the exact same thing about half the stuff that ended up on their Top Ten Best list too...
I've looked around for information before, but have never found any. Does anyone know how often people actually use the Street View for the purpose for which it was designed (i.e. non-voyeuristic purposes)?
Personally, I just don't see the overwhelming need for it. I've never really needed to see what a road or a street looks like before driving on it. The only case that springs to mind is for odd places way out in remote areas, where there the lay-out may be different... but that's exactly the sort of place that would never get put into the StreetView system anyway.
So, does anyone find StreetView genuinely useful enough to be worth all the privacy hassle?
Slashdot Mirror
The suicide niche, of course.
I wage I could get myself killed in *half* the time using one of those things than I could with a bike or scooter. It's all about efficiency, you know.
Oh, definitely.
Actually, from today's Boston Globe: Hunt is on for more men to lead classrooms.
Exactly, which is why statements such as "the second largest number of cellphone users (after China)" are mostly useless at conveying information.
Tell us what the number of cellphones per capita is and in comparison to the rest of the world. Then you'll be telling us something useful...
63 comments in and still no one has made an "it's dead, Jim" joke? What happened to the slashdot I used to know?!
ME TOO!!!
</aol>
Captain Queeg, is that you?
I dunno; for a good workout, surely he'd have to lift something heavier than a book.
(And stop calling me Shirley.)
I can't find a source for this[1], but I remember reading an article a few weeks/months ago stating that the reason Street View hadn't covered Washington, D.C. or Baltimore was because Homeland Security had requested that Google not do those cities. The rationale was that there are too many high-security establishments and they didn't want to give away any secrets.
If that article was to be believed and that Google agreed with that request, then Government "secrets" which are apparently out in the public eye are off-limits, but individual, personal "secrets" where are also out in the public eye are free game...
(Of course, even if the Google Street View van is careless enough to blunder right on past "Private Property" and "Keep Out" signs, I would hope that the caretakers of any government secrets would be on the ball enough to notice a giant van with massive photographic equipment on top of it crashing around their top secret campus and actually stop it or something...)
[1] -- The closest thing I could find was a paragraph in the wikipedia article about Street View... but it has a nice "citation needed" tag on it...
Oh, hush. I'm sure it's just an homage to Amok Time:
http://img384.imageshack.us/my.php?image=16845670dh4.png
D'oh! As always, I blame the font... (Either that, or I accidentally declared WWI to be non-canon...)
Bah, maybe that cancer just doesn't want to be cured...
Well, we probably couldn't shoot down an incoming meteoroid, but given enough warning time, we could at least begin an evacuation of the impact zone. Additionally, knowing that a sudden, shock explosion was due to a natural occurrence rather than a terrorist or "rogue state" could help prevent WWII being touched off...
I just realized that I hadn't RTFA closely enough to realize that this report was actually someone's High School project, so I have to apologize for the unnecessary harshness in my tone there.
So, popularity on Google trends means that a candidate has succeeded in getting his/her message across, or that people are interested in what s/he has to say, or that people like forwarding e-mail jokes about the candidate, or that the candidate has reached some critical mass of Internet meme-ness, or some other undefined level of Internet interest.
In other words, popularity on Google indicates popularity on Google. While I can't argue with the truth of that statement, I can quibble with its usefulness...
TFA:
I don't think that Ruby is bad, not by a long shot. It's seems fairly decent and it doesn't seem to be lacking anything necessary. I'm just curious as to why someone would pick Ruby over some other language. I'm not quite understanding what the "killer app" of Ruby is. I'm not sure why this language had to be created.
My understanding is that the main reason for choosing Ruby is to use it with Rails (which I have not looked at yet). And yet it's rare for me to read a good word about Ruby on Rails.
Does anyone else get the impression that a lot of these newer languages are simply solutions that are looking for problems?
Okay, I'll give a pass to the second half: "utterly boring" is an opinion... but how is utilitarian a valid criticism of a work area? Do they know what the word actually means? Would anyone really be happy working somewhere that wasn't utilitarian? How would you get any work done?
I mean I agree with it and all, but surely you could have said the exact same thing about half the stuff that ended up on their Top Ten Best list too...
I've looked around for information before, but have never found any. Does anyone know how often people actually use the Street View for the purpose for which it was designed (i.e. non-voyeuristic purposes)?
Personally, I just don't see the overwhelming need for it. I've never really needed to see what a road or a street looks like before driving on it. The only case that springs to mind is for odd places way out in remote areas, where there the lay-out may be different... but that's exactly the sort of place that would never get put into the StreetView system anyway.
So, does anyone find StreetView genuinely useful enough to be worth all the privacy hassle?
Ha! Not if we're dead!
Sure they will! But from now on everything will be attributed to "DeepThroat69".