That sounds like an excellent environment to play in if you want to improve your concentration.
I remember reading in a book about meditation, that although you are tempted to only meditate in a quiet environment, you also want to try learning how to do it in a noisy one. Say on a noisy bus or when your neighbors are playing loud music again.
That way, you are able to relax all the time regardless of distractions.
Fine. Observing passengers for potential cues is security theater. Then explain to me, how exactly is airplane security is going to work? You can't possibly strip search everybody, no one would fly. Having everybody fly naked is not an option either, as is having everybody be sedated and tied to their seats.
My suggestion is to accept the 0.00001% you will die of a terrorist attack and get on with life.
Frankly, you are more likely to die in your car on the way to and from airport.
And if you want to remove that 0.00001% then all you have to do is change your foreign, drug, and energy policies.
Oh and if I were to make a bet on the next terrorist attack... It would be a suicide bomber who blows up a bunch of people who are waiting in line at the security check.
How are you going to prevent that? Have a security checkpoint for the security checkpoint?
You can't stop people from hurting you. Its impossible. The best solution for terrorism is to not change your way of life and get on with it.
The whole point of what they are trying to do is just what we are doing now... Spending billions of dollars needlessly on what is a bear repellent in central park. I mean if you take the terror out of terrorism and actually stand up and accept that you might die rather than panicking all the time, it actually might actually stop them from doing what they do because they'll know we won't care.
* Shutting down: "WTF? I visited that site! Why couldn't they find a business model that works?".
You forget. There are always alternatives on the internet and 99% of websites most people visit are unnecessary to maintain an upkeep of way of life. So if you force people to pay for something that really isn't worth any money in the first place other than eyes, they'll either look at competing websites that don't charge a fee or do without.
ie: If Slashdot put up a paywall or went offline tomorrow, I'd be sad, but I'd find something else to do... Like maybe go outside.
Because if anyone (or anything) is around to notice itself existing, it is safe to say conditions appear to allow their existence. Ergo, only those who who live in those conditions will be around questioning why would everything work out so nice for life when the universe appears quite hostile towards existence.
My main problem with the teaching of evolution is the attempt to actually ban the discussion of any criticism of the theory.
But um... Evolution really isn't a theory. It is proven as fact as most genetics experts can show you this happening with fruit flies.
That said, might be talking about the Abiogenesis theory coupled with macro-evolution from that. That is still pretty much a theory other than some guesses and non-conclusive experiments on trying to get life to form from nothing.
Many people accidentally leave their doors unlocked, garage doors open, etc. In fact, you can easily open anyone's garage at any time. Or break their large bay windows.
But you don't see people being robbed all the time due to these facts.
Locked doors are little more than security theater for our own minds. If someone *really* wants to rob you, they will.
Umm... That's a naive and simplistic view to have on life. Also it depends on where you live.
Lets take a business point of view on the matter.
If you happened to be robbed and your insurance company ask's you "Did you have your doors locked?" and if you honestly answer them "No." they will reject the claim.
Given the same point, if you have homeowners/renters/auto insurance that covers theft, if you have an alarm system they usually knock money off your premium per month.
Maybe they are on to something?
And yes... If someone wants to rob you, they can just get a gun and put it up to your head as your entering your house rather than worry about your alarm system.
But most criminals aren't that desperate and having minor precautions will prevent theft. Its like expecting your open router to not be used because of honesty. Of course in a Utopian society it would be nice, but you have to put some security measures on it because the majority of people out there are not actually honest as you would believe.
Not sure why you got modded down...games are a huge part of why Apple won't allow it. Places like Newgrounds, Kongregate, etc...they would be filled with games that worked on the iPad and iPhone, yet would be free...meaning Apple wouldn't get their cut.
In theory, you could write an HTML5/java game that behaves pretty much the same way as flash.
A lot more difficult to do from the developers perspective, but its possible.
Actually... What am I talking about "in theory. There are working examples out there of HTML games that play on iPhone via browswer.
How about having flash and java working being able to be installed out the box without having to go to the console?
(Oh snap)
I like the console more than most people, but in order for Ubuntu to be more successful, they have to make it easier to install programs without having to open the console.
Theora, while FF and Opera refuse to support H.264. So what format can they all play? Hmmm...maybe, oh I don't know, Flash?
Your missing "the not so thought of picture" here. The majority of videos watched these days via flash is of course Youtube. (There are of course others but we are talking scale here)
So it really depends on what Google decides to do with youtube.
My bet is they will support both.
And many of the other non-youtube video sites will of course support both as well as they are afraid to shut out a good percentage of their viewership either way.
No sir. If you doing something morally wrong... It makes it even worse if you are doing it for the money. Its a volunteer position after all.
Albeit, I don't think what these guys in the story are doing is wrong, but the "I was following orders" was used by many German and Japanese war criminals who swung on the gallows.
So please don't defend our troops with the same methodology. In fact, the US Military has rules to say our soldiers are supposed to disobey unlawful orders. Find something else to defend them with.
This whole thing is just a bunch of wankers saying how awful business people are because they get paid well.
I don't see them saying this, but more of the point of obvious commonsense about business practices whether its for business people or average workers.
If you pay people large bonuses for accomplishing said task in x amount of time, some people will game the system.
Whether you tell a janitor to clean 100 toliets in an hour versus a ceo to come up with 100 ways to save the company money in an hour, some corners are going to be cut because they sure as hell don't want to miss that bonus.
The fact of the matter is, the bonus system on wall street is horrible way to get talent and it seems some companies and shareholders are grasping that idea. Goldman Sachs may never be the same for example after it gave bonuses to its top brass at the same time screwing its investors.
Its most likely going to be a litmus test in a few years just as much as earnings per share as in "Does this company give unqualified bonuses?" as could be a sign of potential failure in the future.
But does that really affect your work when you are being offered a large bonus at the end of the year?
Wall Street bonuses are based on quarterly earnings, not yearly performance.
If you do crappy 3 of the 4 quarters, the shareholders won't wait for the 4th.
Secondly, I have never worked for a company who did year end bonuses... It was always quarterly or trimester. I suppose the turn over rate was bad enough as well as the threat of downsizing/layoffs, that it was assumed you might not be there in a year so they needed a more short term carrot and stick for the people in the industry.
How much political activism will be enough to sway either the Democrats or Republicans into supporting copyright reform that allows for such fair use/dealing? How can you be politically effective? Can you even be politically effective (especially if you don't have some strong populist message/position, as is the case with copyright reform at this point in time)?
That's an easy question to answer...
"How much money do you have?"
No amount of protest or activism here will change a politicians mind on either side of the aisle, but a lobbyist will.
They me send a letter with thep police report and the serial # of the old and new Wii. And sure enough, they moved all my old content to the new Wii.
Goddamn. That sounds like a lot of effort considering most cell phone companies don't require police reports anymore for stolen cell phones.
And if someone stole my computer, all I'd need to do is change my password on my steam account (just in case) and I'd be set to download my steam games on a new computer.
Secondly, Apple has a nice system where all you have to do is deactivate the old computer and activate your new one in iTunes to redownload your purchases. I'm sure it would save Nintendo a lot of support costs if they just did either Steam's or Apple's solutions.
Putting all that extra armor on Humvees is also quite an energy hog as well.
But we're talking about an organization that has can drop $2 million dollar object on enemy sniper sitting in a bush with a 25 year old rifle and not really be too concerned about its next quarter profits.
One of the main problems with the concept of a flying car is that if the engines stop it doesn't just roll to a halt; it falls out of the sky.
Considering this would be used in say Iraq or Afghanistan (or say a nearby country in the future *cough*), slow moving low flying dirigibles present easy targets for RPGs and other small arms fire when the vehicle takes off or lands.
Of course what you're saying still applies to the current aircraft they use out in the field now which do tend to fall out of the sky.
Not that a hydrogen/helium ship wouldn't be useful, but it has to fly high enough that small arms fire can't hit it which defeats the whole purpose of the flying car design.
I'm curious as to why a company would spend a lot of money making something that other people will give away for free.
Microsoft's original success may have been related to its ease of piracy back in the late 80's and 90's as many people felt they were turning a blind eye to it for a while.
Only when they no longer had any competitors did they start cracking down on it.
As others have said, market cap doesn't really say how well a company is doing financially, but rather how much money investors currently have tied up in its stocks.
If Red Hat wanted more cap they could simply issue more stock and thereby lowering their stock price as they dilute the current shares out there.
Or if Oracle wanted it could buy back shares etc...
Personally, I use market cap as a judge to see how big a company is in its operations as there is that saying that companies can be too big to fail... Well... Then again, that isn't always true these days.
Yeah, cause, I'm sure the Oracle *employees* and shareholders who are trying to, well, you know, pay mortgages and feed and clothe their children and other selfish stuff like that don't give a rat's @ss about money.
Actually, (I'm loosing a mod point here) I think the key term the grandparent should have said instead was "Short term profit, short term profit, short term profit" rather than just money.
As most golden parachute CEO's these days tend to focus on that rather than the long term success of the company.
If you just focus on making money simply for short term profit and nothing else long term, then all those shareholders and employees are going to get screwed in 5 to 10 years. A company really needs to focus on things like R&D, good will projects, and other things that does not make the company money in the short term so that they will be there in 20 years from now.
Unless you're a shorter like Goldman Sachs... Then well... You'll profit when the company goes under when you bet against them.
Well, since you ask, I'll explain my reasoning. It's a proper noun, and I'm writing English - so I write "Iphone". Write "iPhone" if you prefer, but that's a matter of preference. (I've also seen "IPhone" sometimes used by people.)
Oddly enough. When I type "Iphone" or "IPhone" or "IPHONE" on my iPhone, it automatically changes it to "iPhone" so it must be the right way.
Though on this comment in Firefox it wants to of course change all of my aforementioned spellings to just "Phone"
Slashdot Mirror
That sounds like an excellent environment to play in if you want to improve your concentration.
I remember reading in a book about meditation, that although you are tempted to only meditate in a quiet environment, you also want to try learning how to do it in a noisy one. Say on a noisy bus or when your neighbors are playing loud music again.
That way, you are able to relax all the time regardless of distractions.
Fine. Observing passengers for potential cues is security theater. Then explain to me, how exactly is airplane security is going to work? You can't possibly strip search everybody, no one would fly. Having everybody fly naked is not an option either, as is having everybody be sedated and tied to their seats.
My suggestion is to accept the 0.00001% you will die of a terrorist attack and get on with life.
Frankly, you are more likely to die in your car on the way to and from airport.
And if you want to remove that 0.00001% then all you have to do is change your foreign, drug, and energy policies.
Oh and if I were to make a bet on the next terrorist attack... It would be a suicide bomber who blows up a bunch of people who are waiting in line at the security check.
How are you going to prevent that? Have a security checkpoint for the security checkpoint?
You can't stop people from hurting you. Its impossible. The best solution for terrorism is to not change your way of life and get on with it.
The whole point of what they are trying to do is just what we are doing now... Spending billions of dollars needlessly on what is a bear repellent in central park. I mean if you take the terror out of terrorism and actually stand up and accept that you might die rather than panicking all the time, it actually might actually stop them from doing what they do because they'll know we won't care.
There are only two models, ads and subscription/purchase.
You forgot donations, subsidies, and patronization.
Hey patronization worked during the Renaissance for starving artists. Could work now.
* Shutting down: "WTF? I visited that site! Why couldn't they find a business model that works?".
You forget. There are always alternatives on the internet and 99% of websites most people visit are unnecessary to maintain an upkeep of way of life. So if you force people to pay for something that really isn't worth any money in the first place other than eyes, they'll either look at competing websites that don't charge a fee or do without.
ie: If Slashdot put up a paywall or went offline tomorrow, I'd be sad, but I'd find something else to do... Like maybe go outside.
Because if anyone (or anything) is around to notice itself existing, it is safe to say conditions appear to allow their existence. Ergo, only those who who live in those conditions will be around questioning why would everything work out so nice for life when the universe appears quite hostile towards existence.
See: Anthropic principle
My main problem with the teaching of evolution is the attempt to actually ban the discussion of any criticism of the theory.
But um... Evolution really isn't a theory. It is proven as fact as most genetics experts can show you this happening with fruit flies.
That said, might be talking about the Abiogenesis theory coupled with macro-evolution from that. That is still pretty much a theory other than some guesses and non-conclusive experiments on trying to get life to form from nothing.
If you seriously think Outlook+Exchange is "absurdly expensive", then you've little experience out in the real world.
Actually, by itself, Exchange server license isn't that bad.
Usually its the Windows server license and equipment costs that kill you.
So I guess if I fall down the stairs today everyone should stop using stairs?
You falling down the stairs doesn't make your neighbors fall down the stairs.
If it did, then your neighbors would politely ask for you to stop using them.
Many people accidentally leave their doors unlocked, garage doors open, etc. In fact, you can easily open anyone's garage at any time. Or break their large bay windows.
But you don't see people being robbed all the time due to these facts.
Locked doors are little more than security theater for our own minds. If someone *really* wants to rob you, they will.
Umm... That's a naive and simplistic view to have on life. Also it depends on where you live.
Lets take a business point of view on the matter.
If you happened to be robbed and your insurance company ask's you "Did you have your doors locked?" and if you honestly answer them "No." they will reject the claim.
Given the same point, if you have homeowners/renters/auto insurance that covers theft, if you have an alarm system they usually knock money off your premium per month.
Maybe they are on to something?
And yes... If someone wants to rob you, they can just get a gun and put it up to your head as your entering your house rather than worry about your alarm system.
But most criminals aren't that desperate and having minor precautions will prevent theft. Its like expecting your open router to not be used because of honesty. Of course in a Utopian society it would be nice, but you have to put some security measures on it because the majority of people out there are not actually honest as you would believe.
For better or worse EVE Online was designed to be played completely with the mouse.
In fact the devs have made it impossible to play with just the keyboard.
So thats why it can most likley be played with a tablet.
Not sure why you got modded down...games are a huge part of why Apple won't allow it. Places like Newgrounds, Kongregate, etc...they would be filled with games that worked on the iPad and iPhone, yet would be free...meaning Apple wouldn't get their cut.
In theory, you could write an HTML5/java game that behaves pretty much the same way as flash.
A lot more difficult to do from the developers perspective, but its possible.
Actually... What am I talking about "in theory. There are working examples out there of HTML games that play on iPhone via browswer.
Take this for example:
Its an html5 game that actually runs in the iPhone browser.
How about having flash and java working being able to be installed out the box without having to go to the console?
(Oh snap)
I like the console more than most people, but in order for Ubuntu to be more successful, they have to make it easier to install programs without having to open the console.
Theora, while FF and Opera refuse to support H.264. So what format can they all play? Hmmm...maybe, oh I don't know, Flash?
Your missing "the not so thought of picture" here. The majority of videos watched these days via flash is of course Youtube. (There are of course others but we are talking scale here)
So it really depends on what Google decides to do with youtube.
My bet is they will support both.
And many of the other non-youtube video sites will of course support both as well as they are afraid to shut out a good percentage of their viewership either way.
Not fair to attack the individuals. They're regular people just doing what they're trained (and ordered) to do.
Why did the Allies/Soviets/and Post-Nazi-German government try and convict concentration camp guards?
Weren't they just "doing their jobs"?
No sir. If you doing something morally wrong... It makes it even worse if you are doing it for the money. Its a volunteer position after all.
Albeit, I don't think what these guys in the story are doing is wrong, but the "I was following orders" was used by many German and Japanese war criminals who swung on the gallows.
So please don't defend our troops with the same methodology. In fact, the US Military has rules to say our soldiers are supposed to disobey unlawful orders. Find something else to defend them with.
This whole thing is just a bunch of wankers saying how awful business people are because they get paid well.
I don't see them saying this, but more of the point of obvious commonsense about business practices whether its for business people or average workers.
If you pay people large bonuses for accomplishing said task in x amount of time, some people will game the system.
Whether you tell a janitor to clean 100 toliets in an hour versus a ceo to come up with 100 ways to save the company money in an hour, some corners are going to be cut because they sure as hell don't want to miss that bonus.
The fact of the matter is, the bonus system on wall street is horrible way to get talent and it seems some companies and shareholders are grasping that idea. Goldman Sachs may never be the same for example after it gave bonuses to its top brass at the same time screwing its investors.
Its most likely going to be a litmus test in a few years just as much as earnings per share as in "Does this company give unqualified bonuses?" as could be a sign of potential failure in the future.
But does that really affect your work when you are being offered a large bonus at the end of the year?
Wall Street bonuses are based on quarterly earnings, not yearly performance.
If you do crappy 3 of the 4 quarters, the shareholders won't wait for the 4th.
Secondly, I have never worked for a company who did year end bonuses... It was always quarterly or trimester. I suppose the turn over rate was bad enough as well as the threat of downsizing/layoffs, that it was assumed you might not be there in a year so they needed a more short term carrot and stick for the people in the industry.
How much political activism will be enough to sway either the Democrats or Republicans into supporting copyright reform that allows for such fair use/dealing? How can you be politically effective? Can you even be politically effective (especially if you don't have some strong populist message/position, as is the case with copyright reform at this point in time)?
That's an easy question to answer...
"How much money do you have?"
No amount of protest or activism here will change a politicians mind on either side of the aisle, but a lobbyist will.
- Block Youtube et. al., they eat your time
Youtube does have some extremely useful tutorials for certain software packages these days.
They me send a letter with thep police report and the serial # of the old and new Wii. And sure enough, they moved all my old content to the new Wii.
Goddamn. That sounds like a lot of effort considering most cell phone companies don't require police reports anymore for stolen cell phones.
And if someone stole my computer, all I'd need to do is change my password on my steam account (just in case) and I'd be set to download my steam games on a new computer.
Secondly, Apple has a nice system where all you have to do is deactivate the old computer and activate your new one in iTunes to redownload your purchases. I'm sure it would save Nintendo a lot of support costs if they just did either Steam's or Apple's solutions.
Putting all that extra armor on Humvees is also quite an energy hog as well.
But we're talking about an organization that has can drop $2 million dollar object on enemy sniper sitting in a bush with a 25 year old rifle and not really be too concerned about its next quarter profits.
One of the main problems with the concept of a flying car is that if the engines stop it doesn't just roll to a halt; it falls out of the sky.
Considering this would be used in say Iraq or Afghanistan (or say a nearby country in the future *cough*), slow moving low flying dirigibles present easy targets for RPGs and other small arms fire when the vehicle takes off or lands.
Of course what you're saying still applies to the current aircraft they use out in the field now which do tend to fall out of the sky.
Not that a hydrogen/helium ship wouldn't be useful, but it has to fly high enough that small arms fire can't hit it which defeats the whole purpose of the flying car design.
I'm curious as to why a company would spend a lot of money making something that other people will give away for free.
Microsoft's original success may have been related to its ease of piracy back in the late 80's and 90's as many people felt they were turning a blind eye to it for a while.
Only when they no longer had any competitors did they start cracking down on it.
As others have said, market cap doesn't really say how well a company is doing financially, but rather how much money investors currently have tied up in its stocks.
If Red Hat wanted more cap they could simply issue more stock and thereby lowering their stock price as they dilute the current shares out there.
Or if Oracle wanted it could buy back shares etc...
Personally, I use market cap as a judge to see how big a company is in its operations as there is that saying that companies can be too big to fail... Well... Then again, that isn't always true these days.
Yeah, cause, I'm sure the Oracle *employees* and shareholders who are trying to, well, you know, pay mortgages and feed and clothe their children and other selfish stuff like that don't give a rat's @ss about money.
Actually, (I'm loosing a mod point here) I think the key term the grandparent should have said instead was "Short term profit, short term profit, short term profit" rather than just money.
As most golden parachute CEO's these days tend to focus on that rather than the long term success of the company.
If you just focus on making money simply for short term profit and nothing else long term, then all those shareholders and employees are going to get screwed in 5 to 10 years. A company really needs to focus on things like R&D, good will projects, and other things that does not make the company money in the short term so that they will be there in 20 years from now.
Unless you're a shorter like Goldman Sachs... Then well... You'll profit when the company goes under when you bet against them.
Well, since you ask, I'll explain my reasoning. It's a proper noun, and I'm writing English - so I write "Iphone". Write "iPhone" if you prefer, but that's a matter of preference. (I've also seen "IPhone" sometimes used by people.)
Oddly enough. When I type "Iphone" or "IPhone" or "IPHONE" on my iPhone, it automatically changes it to "iPhone" so it must be the right way.
Though on this comment in Firefox it wants to of course change all of my aforementioned spellings to just "Phone"