Tip of the hat to yahoo who may strangely become relevant again.
I'm sorry, remind me how the web portal that's held the number one spot in traffic rankings for years could ever be considered irrelevant?
Sure, they haven't been in the limelight like google has in a few years, but they've still got more eyeballs than anyone else, still employ thousands, and still churn out new stuff all the time.
When I worked at *pizza hut* of all places, the instructions were blatantly clear: Never let ANYONE behind the counter until they'd produced ID. All franchise management carried franchise ID cards.
This was fucking pizza hut. You'd hope places that actually mattered, like, you know, medical facilities would have security that was at least comperable.
The only way the GP's story makes any sense is if he was a client of some tiny credit union that used non-standard cards. As a result, this student ID bank card would *only* work at said tiny credit union.
Assuming an actual consumption of 300W (which I'm fairly confident is actually an overestimate for a modern PC idling -- you almost never actually draw as much as your power supply is 'rated' for), that's 2,629 KwH/year, which would run $299.70 at the above rate. Which actually suggests an incredibly convenient rule of thumb (that only applies at current electricity rates):
Anything drawing power all year is going to cost you $1/watt.
The current debian stable version of mysql 4.1 is a year and about 6 releases behind, having received only security patches. That means it's still got all the functionality bugs.
Have you stopped using gasoline because the price has tripled?
Why, yes I have. I used to live 60 miles from my place of employment, and averaged $12/day in gas costs. I moved to within 2 miles, and even with long distance holiday travel, I'm averaging $6/day this month. The oil industry priced themselves out of half my consumption.
Price too high, and demand falls.
Similary, my family used to frequent "Fresh Choice" restraunts, until they upped their prices and dropped their food quality. Where we once spent over $100 month eating there, now we've not spent a dime there in over 5 years.
Reduce the quality of your goods while maintaining or raising price, and demand falls
Making a move like this _without_ reduciing price could very well hurt Sony's sales dramatically. Especially if their competitors don't follow suit.
On the contrary, in a situation where oil is extremely expensive, who's better off:
The city with the population of 100,000 who can have tons upon tons of food delivered to them on a single train
OR
The 1,000 texas ranchers, each of which have no neighbors within a mile of their homes?
The cost per capita for shipping is MUCH lower for densely populated areas. You can live your entire life on foot in a major metropolitan area; it's those of us who live far from everything else who are most dependant on small scale (i.e. expensive and inefficient) transportation.
In a peak oil scenario, we're more or less looking at the country reverting to the way it was just over a century ago: A few trains hauling large loads cross country, cities thriving (relatively), and rural america becoming isolated.
By that line of reasoning, the kid can't have been threatening the teacher, as there is no "I" in the phrase "Kill Mr. Vwhatsis" whatsoever -- clearly he was merely attempting to incite others to violence.
I've actually had a bus driver talk on his cell phone while I was on his bus. Didn't seem very responsible. It was a VTA bus -- they're the primary bus service in the southern San Francisco Bay area, serving an area with a population of over 1 million.
"But I can put my phone down, I can't stop being drunk." Except that people don't put the phone down, they crash.
Every time road conditions change even the slightest bit, I instantly say "Hold on" and chuck my phone on the passenger seat. That includes coming toward a hill, seeing brake lights on the highway... anything.
I drove 30,000 miles last year without a single accident. However, two close calls were 100% the fault of jackasses on cellphones. One was doing 40 MPH bellow the speed of traffic in the fast lane, the other swerved in front of me to get on to an offramp, well after the ramp had split off from the highway.
Point being, some of us can handle cellphones responsibly. Some can't.
Have the landing gear signal go through one to several interlocks (already done in all passenger planes), serially, so no signal can ever get through unless (a)... (b)... (c)... (d)...
Of course, now you've skewed to the oposite end of the spectrum -- sure, you don't have to worry about the landing gear accidentally deploying, but now you have to worry that some tiny malfunction is going to cause it not to deploy at all!
The manual system has one really good thing going for it: Simplicity.
People don't use SMS in the US like they do in the EU. We like to talk.
Personally, I wouldn't mind an increase in SMS usage over here, but a lot of our phones suck in that department -- mine's got a tiny keypad, and the entire SMS system on it is web based, so every action takes 30+ seconds, because you're loading a webpage.
To send a message, and read one: Open the 'messaging' app. Wait 30 seconds for the menu page to load Select a recipient Wait 30 seconds for the 'send a message' page to load Type message on tiny phone keypad Wait 30 seconds for the 'message sent!' page to load Go back to the index. Select the inbox. Wait 30 seconds for the inbox to load Select message Wait 30 seconds for the message to load...Oh, and you get a 'network error' about 10% of the time, after a 60 second timeout. I fucking hate this phone.
When I'm on the road, I piggyback on signals all the time so that I can check my email. The best places are coffee shops and apartment complexes. I usually stop at a complex and just drive around slowly until I get a signal, then I park and surf. Simple password protection would prevent me from doing this, but most people don't bother.
Doing it once, when you're passing through town is one thing. Doing it for 3 months, and coming back after the cops have told you to leave is something entirely different.
While it's true that a battery-only car is still fossil fuel powered in the end, a gas burning electric plant is FAR more efficient than a 3 liter V6, thanks to economies of scale, and all that jazz. An automotive engine is optimized primarily for fast acceleration and small size, whereas a gas generator in a plant is optimized for maximal power generation per gallon -- size and acceleration are totally useless.
So, it's not actually clear without hard numbers wether or not driving an electric car 500 miles requires more fossil fuels than driving a gasoline car 500 miles.
ThreeRings, developers of the popular Puzzle Pirates online game, actually require job applicants to develop a small game in their (freely available) game engine.
The downside being, if you don't get the job, you've just wasted a week of your time.
In the case of the falling bowling ball, we have a well tested, centuries-old theory which explains the motion: gravity. We have no such theory for global warming. We know temperatures are going up, and we're pretty sure it's something we're doing, but we don't know *why*. Even more, we don't know HOW to "move our foot out of the way" -- how can we, unless we know *why* it's falling? As such, your analogy is invalid.
A more apt analogy might be an object flying *up* at you, for no discernable reason. It's still several minutes from hitting you at its current speed, but you have no idea *what's providing the upward force*, and as such, you can't really know where it will be in a few minutes, nor do you know that it will *continue* to rise, nor do you know how to stop it! You could assume it's coming anyway, and move, but what if that move costs you billions of dollars? You'd want to be awfully sure it's really coming for you before you spend all that money.
If global warming models are accurate, it's going to cost the world's economies billions, if not trillions to correct. We'd better be damn sure we're making the right move, as we'd likely be setting back human progress a few years, at least.
"climate change is occuring or that it was a result of humans"
is a *long* way off from
"Carbon dioxide emissions are causing a 'greenhouse effect' which is going to melt the icecaps and flood the globe"
'human-initiated climate change' and 'global warming' are really two different things. Personally, I'm of the opinion that, yes, the average global temperature is up about 0.4 celcius, but that alone doesn't mean that the upward trend will continue.
The current policy at credit card companies is retarded. More than once, I've come home to an answering machine message saying "This is Discover's Anti Fraud unit. We'd like to discuss some recent activity on your card. Please call us at 1-800-555-1212". As soon as you call, they start asking for personal information....How the hell am I supposed to know I'm actually talking to Discover? I'd much rather have them send me to a URL (discover.com/fraud) that lists the number, since I at least have *some* indication that it's probably discover that's running discover.com.
Anyway, yeah, this policy opens the door right up to phone phishing. Thanks Discover!
Actually, a name itself can have value. My fiance worked for a small chain of coffee stands called "Jazzland". Appearantly, the trademark itself was the most valuable asset the company had.
That's probably what's going on here. There's nothing preventing the guys who own the ethereal name from using it to label a totally different product.
Slashdot Mirror
It's the #1 site on the net, period. More people visit yahoo.com than any other domain.
That's an acheivment.
Tip of the hat to yahoo who may strangely become relevant again.
I'm sorry, remind me how the web portal that's held the number one spot in traffic rankings for years could ever be considered irrelevant?
Sure, they haven't been in the limelight like google has in a few years, but they've still got more eyeballs than anyone else, still employ thousands, and still churn out new stuff all the time.
When I worked at *pizza hut* of all places, the instructions were blatantly clear: Never let ANYONE behind the counter until they'd produced ID. All franchise management carried franchise ID cards.
This was fucking pizza hut. You'd hope places that actually mattered, like, you know, medical facilities would have security that was at least comperable.
The only way the GP's story makes any sense is if he was a client of some tiny credit union that used non-standard cards. As a result, this student ID bank card would *only* work at said tiny credit union.
Looking at my PG&E bill, a KwH goes for $0.114.
Assuming an actual consumption of 300W (which I'm fairly confident is actually an overestimate for a modern PC idling -- you almost never actually draw as much as your power supply is 'rated' for), that's 2,629 KwH/year, which would run $299.70 at the above rate. Which actually suggests an incredibly convenient rule of thumb (that only applies at current electricity rates):
Anything drawing power all year is going to cost you $1/watt.
why do the 1,000 have to go only two days before Conroe appears? Couldn't Intel just hang on for a few more weeks until the Conroe sales take off?
Dead weight is dead weight, wether your company is on the rise, or is in a downward spiral. If employees aren't earning their keep, they need to go.
It takes enourmous amounts of capital, and even more importantly, reputation to compete in the processor space.
Damn straight -- startup costs in that industry are measured in billions of dollars. AMD's new plant is going to cost them $3.2 billion.
The current debian stable version of mysql 4.1 is a year and about 6 releases behind, having received only security patches. That means it's still got all the functionality bugs.
It can be a real bitch.
Have you stopped using gasoline because the price has tripled?
Why, yes I have. I used to live 60 miles from my place of employment, and averaged $12/day in gas costs. I moved to within 2 miles, and even with long distance holiday travel, I'm averaging $6/day this month. The oil industry priced themselves out of half my consumption.
Price too high, and demand falls.
Similary, my family used to frequent "Fresh Choice" restraunts, until they upped their prices and dropped their food quality. Where we once spent over $100 month eating there, now we've not spent a dime there in over 5 years.
Reduce the quality of your goods while maintaining or raising price, and demand falls
Making a move like this _without_ reduciing price could very well hurt Sony's sales dramatically. Especially if their competitors don't follow suit.
On the contrary, in a situation where oil is extremely expensive, who's better off:
The city with the population of 100,000 who can have tons upon tons of food delivered to them on a single train
OR
The 1,000 texas ranchers, each of which have no neighbors within a mile of their homes?
The cost per capita for shipping is MUCH lower for densely populated areas. You can live your entire life on foot in a major metropolitan area; it's those of us who live far from everything else who are most dependant on small scale (i.e. expensive and inefficient) transportation.
In a peak oil scenario, we're more or less looking at the country reverting to the way it was just over a century ago: A few trains hauling large loads cross country, cities thriving (relatively), and rural america becoming isolated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainmen t#Titles
Blizzard released a half-dozen console games before they stuck gold with Warcraft.
There are flash-based playable demos of a couple of 'em here:
http://www.blizzard.com/blizzclassic/
Nothing really special.
By that line of reasoning, the kid can't have been threatening the teacher, as there is no "I" in the phrase "Kill Mr. Vwhatsis" whatsoever -- clearly he was merely attempting to incite others to violence.
I've actually had a bus driver talk on his cell phone while I was on his bus. Didn't seem very responsible. It was a VTA bus -- they're the primary bus service in the southern San Francisco Bay area, serving an area with a population of over 1 million.
"But I can put my phone down, I can't stop being drunk." Except that people don't put the phone down, they crash.
Every time road conditions change even the slightest bit, I instantly say "Hold on" and chuck my phone on the passenger seat. That includes coming toward a hill, seeing brake lights on the highway... anything.
I drove 30,000 miles last year without a single accident. However, two close calls were 100% the fault of jackasses on cellphones. One was doing 40 MPH bellow the speed of traffic in the fast lane, the other swerved in front of me to get on to an offramp, well after the ramp had split off from the highway.
Point being, some of us can handle cellphones responsibly. Some can't.
Have the landing gear signal go through one to several interlocks (already done in all passenger planes), serially, so no signal can ever get through unless (a)... (b)... (c)... (d)...
Of course, now you've skewed to the oposite end of the spectrum -- sure, you don't have to worry about the landing gear accidentally deploying, but now you have to worry that some tiny malfunction is going to cause it not to deploy at all!
The manual system has one really good thing going for it: Simplicity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Software_All iance
The BSA is pretty much completely analogous to the RIAA/MPAA
People don't use SMS in the US like they do in the EU. We like to talk.
...Oh, and you get a 'network error' about 10% of the time, after a 60 second timeout. I fucking hate this phone.
Personally, I wouldn't mind an increase in SMS usage over here, but a lot of our phones suck in that department -- mine's got a tiny keypad, and the entire SMS system on it is web based, so every action takes 30+ seconds, because you're loading a webpage.
To send a message, and read one:
Open the 'messaging' app.
Wait 30 seconds for the menu page to load
Select a recipient
Wait 30 seconds for the 'send a message' page to load
Type message on tiny phone keypad
Wait 30 seconds for the 'message sent!' page to load
Go back to the index. Select the inbox.
Wait 30 seconds for the inbox to load
Select message
Wait 30 seconds for the message to load
When I'm on the road, I piggyback on signals all the time so that I can check my email. The best places are coffee shops and apartment complexes. I usually stop at a complex and just drive around slowly until I get a signal, then I park and surf. Simple password protection would prevent me from doing this, but most people don't bother.
Doing it once, when you're passing through town is one thing. Doing it for 3 months, and coming back after the cops have told you to leave is something entirely different.
While it's true that a battery-only car is still fossil fuel powered in the end, a gas burning electric plant is FAR more efficient than a 3 liter V6, thanks to economies of scale, and all that jazz. An automotive engine is optimized primarily for fast acceleration and small size, whereas a gas generator in a plant is optimized for maximal power generation per gallon -- size and acceleration are totally useless.
So, it's not actually clear without hard numbers wether or not driving an electric car 500 miles requires more fossil fuels than driving a gasoline car 500 miles.
ThreeRings, developers of the popular Puzzle Pirates online game, actually require job applicants to develop a small game in their (freely available) game engine.
The downside being, if you don't get the job, you've just wasted a week of your time.
In the case of the falling bowling ball, we have a well tested, centuries-old theory which explains the motion: gravity. We have no such theory for global warming. We know temperatures are going up, and we're pretty sure it's something we're doing, but we don't know *why*. Even more, we don't know HOW to "move our foot out of the way" -- how can we, unless we know *why* it's falling? As such, your analogy is invalid.
A more apt analogy might be an object flying *up* at you, for no discernable reason. It's still several minutes from hitting you at its current speed, but you have no idea *what's providing the upward force*, and as such, you can't really know where it will be in a few minutes, nor do you know that it will *continue* to rise, nor do you know how to stop it! You could assume it's coming anyway, and move, but what if that move costs you billions of dollars? You'd want to be awfully sure it's really coming for you before you spend all that money.
If global warming models are accurate, it's going to cost the world's economies billions, if not trillions to correct. We'd better be damn sure we're making the right move, as we'd likely be setting back human progress a few years, at least.
It's important to point out that
"climate change is occuring or that it was a result of humans"
is a *long* way off from
"Carbon dioxide emissions are causing a 'greenhouse effect' which is going to melt the icecaps and flood the globe"
'human-initiated climate change' and 'global warming' are really two different things. Personally, I'm of the opinion that, yes, the average global temperature is up about 0.4 celcius, but that alone doesn't mean that the upward trend will continue.
Cats are well on their way as well --
http://jasoncross.com/images/etc/scuba_cat.jpg
The current policy at credit card companies is retarded. More than once, I've come home to an answering machine message saying "This is Discover's Anti Fraud unit. We'd like to discuss some recent activity on your card. Please call us at 1-800-555-1212". As soon as you call, they start asking for personal information. ...How the hell am I supposed to know I'm actually talking to Discover? I'd much rather have them send me to a URL (discover.com/fraud) that lists the number, since I at least have *some* indication that it's probably discover that's running discover.com.
Anyway, yeah, this policy opens the door right up to phone phishing. Thanks Discover!
Actually, a name itself can have value. My fiance worked for a small chain of coffee stands called "Jazzland". Appearantly, the trademark itself was the most valuable asset the company had.
That's probably what's going on here. There's nothing preventing the guys who own the ethereal name from using it to label a totally different product.