Cookies have legitimate uses that have nothing to do with "tracking". Perhaps the issue comes with trying to interpret the specific language used rather that knee-jerk "everyone must opt-in". If your cookies are not used to track -- if you do not use, for example, Google analytics -- then you are not in violation. The article basically states this.
Now I feel like an idiot. It turns out that the story is still there -- it's just that having clicked on the comments brings me to the start of the comments in that story. I just have to scroll up to see the summary. Clicking on the story headline brings me the whole shooting match .
Looks like when submitting a comment, there is some missing css on the "Comment submitted" string. It still appears in 8 point (?) Times New Roman rather than a larger sans font that slashdot is using.
User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
I think the new look is very nice. Kudos. One thing that is missing in the new version is that the story summary is missing in the comments section.
I generally fire up a tab for each story on the main page. In the mornings or after a particularly long spell, I might open 5 or 6 tabs. In the old edition, the story summary would be replicated at the top of the comments where I could read the story, and then read the comments. Sometimes I would go back and forth from comments to summary if there is something in the summary being discussed.
Please bring back the story summary!
...to do this is to make your cell phone act as a key to the vehicle. When the car is in anything except "P", then the cell phone cannot make or receive calls and automatically goes to voicemail. Even this system needs to be well thought out to endure emergency action. A modern car probably knows when it has crashed, when it is stopped, etc. The car should be able to active/deactivate the phone based on these factors.
I feel that you may be underestimating the power of the social search. By definition, Facebook exists because people *want* to be connected to each other. Social gaming platforms push the latest details of someone's accomplishments, people are constantly being invited (or otherwise) to groups they may have an interest in. Basically, any social context is now at the mercy of crowd-wisdom. I think social search is going to enable more of this behaviour, and I think if you dismiss it so easily, you just don't get social networks.
Nope. My bad. Since the SHY character is used as a way to dictate line breaks, it obviously isn't used to forge domains or anything similar. Presumably then, the SHY is used to ensure that patterns such as "Viagra" can be written as Viagra and not be caught by simple pattern matchers? TFA was light on actual examples.
And, as TFA points out, this is a valid tactic because "modern browsers" (ambiguously non-committal) do not render the character. I assume, spammers are writing URLs as: http://microsoft.com/ (eg. m-i-crosoft.com, but rendered onscreen as microsoft.com). This, of course, tricks folks into thinking that they are clicking on a valid microsoft.com URL.
Perhaps the question is incorrect. If i have a volume with data and a volume with encrypted data, then the encrypted data can be discerned from the non-encrypted data by virtue that there will be patterns detectable in the non-encrypted volume. So technically if you have a drive and there is random data on it but no discernible patterns, then there is either encrypted data on it, or it is an empty drive. It is likely not even factory default since that it likely to have some structure imposed upon it as well. What is the point of carrying around an encrypted volume with the ability for plausible deniability if that plausible deniability requires you to have random data as a volume? The existence of random data will render your plausible deniability claim useless since, by definition, your claim is no longer plausible.
It's basically the same situation that arises when a developer tries to talk to the business. Many developers just don't know how to speak in plain english (or language of choice) when it comes to describing technology. As a result, developers don't seem to "get the business" and the business doesn't seem to "get technology". Enter the business analyst: the BA is the interface that has the ability to speak both technology and business.
In the case of the media, they seem to lack really gifted technologists who can also convey the *meaning* of the science without losing their audience. Let's face it: most information consumers want the basic facts as well as the bit of novel "shiny" associated with the science. Sometimes the journalist has to understand the science *and* it's place so that they can come up with the novel bits for the audience. It takes a gifted journalist to do that, and many, obviously, fall short.
I've always wondered if there was any (automated) way to at least give developers a fighting chance when dealing with out-of-date documentation.
My only experience using a source code manager is CVS -- sorry. But I'm sure SVN and Git are similar. CVS understands the sections of code that have changed. There are also numerous ways to parse languages. Can we not combine the two to determine if there is a so-called "significant" change (where this is a highly questionable quantifiable value) and, if so, reject the check-in unless the comment directly above it, beside it, (or whatever) has changed as well? Perhaps there are already tools that do this? I am not aware of them and I would be most interested if anyone has anecdotal stories about things they use at their workplace to try to automate this.
Of course, nothing will stop a motivated developer from eventually getting around such a stop-gap system, but this would be designed to HELP, not PREVENT.
I posted the title. Unfortunately, Slashdot titles are restricted in length. If the titles were longer, we might get more accurate descriptions. As it is, you can't and you do the best you can.
This isn't news. This is how it's done. Ignoring the fact that it's about degrading performance, split testing is designed to attempt to optimize one variable. Sometimes it's difficult to isolate said variable. In this case, microsoft spends inordinate amounts of time and money to keep a high volume site snappy and responsive. The question is: are they spending *too* much money. So, they are attempting to answer that question using ye-olde-standard split testing methods.
Air Canada (for all of it's financial woes now) and possibly WestJet (haven't flown them in 6 months, so I cannot be sure) has 3-prong 110 volt plugs built into the seat backs.
Then you haven't used it to track EVENTS (that affect more than one person) of personal importance to you: the first snippets of information to come out of Mumbai were via Twitter. Last night I used it to track snowfall (and traffic conditions) in Vancouver, BC. Coupled with instant upload of phone cam pictures, it was an amazingly realtime view of my personal geographic area.
Sounds like something Trigence already does. No need for OS-level virtualization in which you need to allocate tonnes of memory for an entire OS. Just allocate what the app needs. It encapsulates servers/services and the entire firesystem supporting it on both Windows and Linux. Their online demo is really, really well done. We looked at this product not too long ago because we were sick and tired of having our machines thrash under so many VMs that need X amount of resources (memory, disk space) just so they could run an encapsulated application requiring 10% of the resources.
I did a UI course back in 2002 and we happened to be talking about steering wheels as the UI input device. The prof happened to be a Psychology/Comp. Sci. cross, and he went off on a tangent wrt a certain thought experiment:
The hypothesis says: the higher the chance of death, the lower your speed. If the chance of death in a moving car were 100%, no one would drive. If the chance of death were 0, then everyone would drive as fast as the car could go.
What happens if you put a spear sticking out of the steering wheel aimed at your chest?
I know you're being funny. So with that said, here are the options for receiving mail when you are a cruiser.
1) You use a forwarding service to send all mail to a country that you are heading to.
2) You use other cruisers as a forwarding network (this is how they did mail transfer back in the day as well, if you recall).
Both are surprisingly effective, though non-intuitively you tend to miss more mail with option #1 than #2.
In light of the discussion, though, coordinates for your floating country plus speed and vector can easily be transmitted to inbound mail carriers.
I hate ignorant comments like this. Do you realize the massive amount of work required to run a company? Do you understand the job security you have as an employee of a company? It's *my* job to make sure you continue to have a job. It's my job to work ridiculous hours and be on call for things you can't even imagine. I have to be multi-talented, multi-disciplined, multi-tasking, and multi-personality. I have to understand the nuances of industries that aren't even related to my field. I spend massive amounts of money and personal time making sure that YOU are able to produce for me without being sidetracked by unrelated issues.
So don't tell me that I don't deserve it.
PS: For all of those people about to come back with crap-ass comments about "I should pay you more to retain you.", let me get that out of the way. I pay what I can. In fact, I go without pay to make sure you get paid. Yes, perhaps I'm in the minority, but you know what? Those years that are better than others? I'll take my fair share. If I am directly responsible for procuring 100% of the business, and you are responsible for creating a product that retains that business, then I trump you anyday. This is what people don't understand: sales *is* hard. If it were easier, you'd get paid more.
At 3 tons, this boat is very light. A 3 ton boat can be flipped very easily by a rough wave. Coupled with the fact that this is a catamaran, you have a boat that is equally as stable upside down as it is righted. Our boat is 12 tons without food and equipment (we have about 1.5 tons of spare parts and tools alone!) -- 8 tons of this is keel weight. It cannot flip over and stay upside down (unless the keel breaks off).
As for the stmt that says it will absorb the energy of the wave making for a smooth ride: don't believe it. That's like saying your knees can absorb the energy of your uneven surface. If there is more energy than can be absorbed, you will experience a rough time standing up. Same thing applies here. Do you know how much energy is in a wave? Think about the Tsunami on Boxing Day 2005. Think about wave-absorbing power plants. The amplitude of the wave doesn't even matter: it's a combination of amp. and freq. I've been in waves that are 60 feet tall, but they're 500 feet apart. This makes for a smooth, duck-like, enjoyable, infinity view when you crest, and a rather enclosing feel when you trough.:-)
Interesting facts: 5 knots is quite slow, but manageable. A knot is about 1.8 km/hour, so we're talking about 9 km/h which is actually slower than a human can run. Captain Cook sailed around the world at about 2.5 knots. He literally went around at walking speed.
As an aside, you can always tell the difference between the cruiser boat and the bay-sailer simply by the sheer amount of shit attached to every surface.:-) Also, look at the size and number of anchors. If there are two or more anchors: cruiser. If the anchor looks like it should be grounding the USS Enterprise: cruiser.
All of the comments I'm seeing about first-hand experiences with rogue waves all seem to have a common thread: they happen within a few hundred metres near shore. This *might* imply that these waves are being affected by ground features, coral formations, etc. Look, even the article discusses rogue waves that were ONLY seen during periods of weather stress: a large wave during a hurricane? No shit! A large wave near South Africa -- this isn't news -- the cape of SA is a known dangerous spot as is the Cape Horn in South America.
I've done a lot of open ocean sailing -- this is sailing where you are 9 days from the nearest land mass. When you are at the mercy of waves 24 hours a day for more than a week at a time, you quickly learn what makes them tick.
First off, waves need wind. Without wind, there are no waves. A large high pressure system will quickly quiet the waves such that the ocean resembles a pane of glass (this is when you play "spot the flot(sam)"). It is only during periods of high wind where you get increasingly higher and higher waves. These waves can be created in a few hours and sustain themselves for long distances (thousands of kilometers).
The *only* times that waves collide, resonate, and otherwise interrupt themselves is if there is another external force (think Newton's Laws). *HOWEVER, as soon as the wave is larger than the wind can support it, it will collapse*. Coral reefs, submerged volcanoes, high spots (yes, they exist in the middle of nowhere), earthquakes, alternating wind currents, and ocean currents will all contribute. I would be EXTREMELY sceptical about rogue waves appearing OUTSIDE of areas that are known volcanic lines, reef areas, etc. It would be interesting to cross-reference all experiences of these rogue waves with lat/lon and map them according to these phenomenon.
Just finished reading the article and here's the bit that probably everyone is missing:
So far some patterns have already been found. Rogue waves are often associated with sites where ordinary waves encounter ocean currents and eddies. The strength of the current concentrates the wave energy, forming larger waves - Lehner compares it to an optical lens, concentrating energy in a small area.
This is especially true in the case of the notoriously dangerous Agulhas current off the east coast of South Africa, but rogue wave associations are also found with other currents such as the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, interacting with waves coming down from the Labrador Sea.
However the data show rogue waves also occur well away from currents, often occurring in the vicinity of weather fronts and lows. Sustained winds from long-lived storms exceeding 12 hours may enlarge waves moving at an optimum speed in sync with the wind - too quickly and they'd move ahead of the storm and dissipate, too slowly and they would fall behind.
I am forced to conclude that no new information on rogue waves has been discerned: it's still common sense to me.
Why is it so hard for these types of companies to understand that the less you sell something for, the more you sell. Rather then trying to squeeze a limited audience for all you can, squeeze them less and find yourselve with a bigger audience.
Game theory dictates that there is an optimum cost-benefit for things. The lower the price, the more that sells *might* be true, but there are only so many people who will buy certain things: eg. there is only a finite number of people in the world. So you need to run various scenarios in which simulate what threshold of price you think people might buy things for. You then map these results out and determine your optimum price point.
Look at it this way: if you make things INFINITELY expensive, you get zero sales. If you make things cost zero, then you will get zero sales because it COSTS money to produce (anything) and you cannot do it without going bankrupt. Information is, alas, not free -- as much as people want it to be. If nothing else, it costs money SOMEWHERE to get a computer up and running. So let's assume those two extrema are more-or-less accurate. I think we can agree that a sales graph that is flat at zero sales will not garner a whole lot of enthusiasm. Therefore, there is likely a point somewhere between 0 and +INF where the graph reaches a maximum. This is the science in pricing. Then you factor in the psychology of the people as an extra dimension. This is why popcorn at the cinema costs way more than you would reasonably expect anywhere except at the cinema. The accountants/financial people KNOW that it is likely you will buy at an inflated price.
Hell, most female paragliders wear diapers when performing long cross-country flights especially in competitive or hostile environments when landing for bathroom breaks is not an option. Most guys tend to perform "high altitude irrigation" -- it's easier to perform when you can angle the flow.
I was actually out there...
on
Birth of an Island
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
No kidding. I was sailing from New Zealand to Vanuatu when this happened. Our ham radio was awash in traffic as this thing surfaced. The problem with pumice is that it floats on the water and reduces the surface tension. When your boat goes through it, you get all your expensive ablative paint scraped off...and then you sink a few feet into the water. If you don't have enough freeboard (the amount of boat height from waterline to decking), then you *will* sink. The other thing is that you can't actually use your motor very well, so you have try to sail out...this is obviously a problem during nighttime when you can't see anything and you end up running right into it. That'll wake you up.
Slashdot Mirror
Cookies have legitimate uses that have nothing to do with "tracking". Perhaps the issue comes with trying to interpret the specific language used rather that knee-jerk "everyone must opt-in". If your cookies are not used to track -- if you do not use, for example, Google analytics -- then you are not in violation. The article basically states this.
Have you even used Google Docs before? Every document has a detailed versioning history with full support to revert back.
Now I feel like an idiot. It turns out that the story is still there -- it's just that having clicked on the comments brings me to the start of the comments in that story. I just have to scroll up to see the summary. Clicking on the story headline brings me the whole shooting match .
Awesome.
Looks like when submitting a comment, there is some missing css on the "Comment submitted" string. It still appears in 8 point (?) Times New Roman rather than a larger sans font that slashdot is using.
User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
I think the new look is very nice. Kudos. One thing that is missing in the new version is that the story summary is missing in the comments section. I generally fire up a tab for each story on the main page. In the mornings or after a particularly long spell, I might open 5 or 6 tabs. In the old edition, the story summary would be replicated at the top of the comments where I could read the story, and then read the comments. Sometimes I would go back and forth from comments to summary if there is something in the summary being discussed. Please bring back the story summary!
...to do this is to make your cell phone act as a key to the vehicle. When the car is in anything except "P", then the cell phone cannot make or receive calls and automatically goes to voicemail. Even this system needs to be well thought out to endure emergency action. A modern car probably knows when it has crashed, when it is stopped, etc. The car should be able to active/deactivate the phone based on these factors.
I feel that you may be underestimating the power of the social search. By definition, Facebook exists because people *want* to be connected to each other. Social gaming platforms push the latest details of someone's accomplishments, people are constantly being invited (or otherwise) to groups they may have an interest in. Basically, any social context is now at the mercy of crowd-wisdom. I think social search is going to enable more of this behaviour, and I think if you dismiss it so easily, you just don't get social networks.
Nope. My bad. Since the SHY character is used as a way to dictate line breaks, it obviously isn't used to forge domains or anything similar. Presumably then, the SHY is used to ensure that patterns such as "Viagra" can be written as Viagra and not be caught by simple pattern matchers? TFA was light on actual examples.
And, as TFA points out, this is a valid tactic because "modern browsers" (ambiguously non-committal) do not render the character. I assume, spammers are writing URLs as: http://microsoft.com/ (eg. m-i-crosoft.com, but rendered onscreen as microsoft.com). This, of course, tricks folks into thinking that they are clicking on a valid microsoft.com URL.
Perhaps the question is incorrect. If i have a volume with data and a volume with encrypted data, then the encrypted data can be discerned from the non-encrypted data by virtue that there will be patterns detectable in the non-encrypted volume. So technically if you have a drive and there is random data on it but no discernible patterns, then there is either encrypted data on it, or it is an empty drive. It is likely not even factory default since that it likely to have some structure imposed upon it as well. What is the point of carrying around an encrypted volume with the ability for plausible deniability if that plausible deniability requires you to have random data as a volume? The existence of random data will render your plausible deniability claim useless since, by definition, your claim is no longer plausible.
It's basically the same situation that arises when a developer tries to talk to the business. Many developers just don't know how to speak in plain english (or language of choice) when it comes to describing technology. As a result, developers don't seem to "get the business" and the business doesn't seem to "get technology". Enter the business analyst: the BA is the interface that has the ability to speak both technology and business.
In the case of the media, they seem to lack really gifted technologists who can also convey the *meaning* of the science without losing their audience. Let's face it: most information consumers want the basic facts as well as the bit of novel "shiny" associated with the science. Sometimes the journalist has to understand the science *and* it's place so that they can come up with the novel bits for the audience. It takes a gifted journalist to do that, and many, obviously, fall short.
I've always wondered if there was any (automated) way to at least give developers a fighting chance when dealing with out-of-date documentation.
My only experience using a source code manager is CVS -- sorry. But I'm sure SVN and Git are similar. CVS understands the sections of code that have changed. There are also numerous ways to parse languages. Can we not combine the two to determine if there is a so-called "significant" change (where this is a highly questionable quantifiable value) and, if so, reject the check-in unless the comment directly above it, beside it, (or whatever) has changed as well? Perhaps there are already tools that do this? I am not aware of them and I would be most interested if anyone has anecdotal stories about things they use at their workplace to try to automate this.
Of course, nothing will stop a motivated developer from eventually getting around such a stop-gap system, but this would be designed to HELP, not PREVENT.
I posted the title. Unfortunately, Slashdot titles are restricted in length. If the titles were longer, we might get more accurate descriptions. As it is, you can't and you do the best you can.
This isn't news. This is how it's done. Ignoring the fact that it's about degrading performance, split testing is designed to attempt to optimize one variable. Sometimes it's difficult to isolate said variable. In this case, microsoft spends inordinate amounts of time and money to keep a high volume site snappy and responsive. The question is: are they spending *too* much money. So, they are attempting to answer that question using ye-olde-standard split testing methods.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Air Canada (for all of it's financial woes now) and possibly WestJet (haven't flown them in 6 months, so I cannot be sure) has 3-prong 110 volt plugs built into the seat backs.
Then you haven't used it to track EVENTS (that affect more than one person) of personal importance to you: the first snippets of information to come out of Mumbai were via Twitter. Last night I used it to track snowfall (and traffic conditions) in Vancouver, BC. Coupled with instant upload of phone cam pictures, it was an amazingly realtime view of my personal geographic area.
Sounds like something Trigence already does. No need for OS-level virtualization in which you need to allocate tonnes of memory for an entire OS. Just allocate what the app needs. It encapsulates servers/services and the entire firesystem supporting it on both Windows and Linux. Their online demo is really, really well done. We looked at this product not too long ago because we were sick and tired of having our machines thrash under so many VMs that need X amount of resources (memory, disk space) just so they could run an encapsulated application requiring 10% of the resources.
I did a UI course back in 2002 and we happened to be talking about steering wheels as the UI input device. The prof happened to be a Psychology/Comp. Sci. cross, and he went off on a tangent wrt a certain thought experiment:
The hypothesis says: the higher the chance of death, the lower your speed. If the chance of death in a moving car were 100%, no one would drive. If the chance of death were 0, then everyone would drive as fast as the car could go.
What happens if you put a spear sticking out of the steering wheel aimed at your chest?
I know you're being funny. So with that said, here are the options for receiving mail when you are a cruiser. 1) You use a forwarding service to send all mail to a country that you are heading to. 2) You use other cruisers as a forwarding network (this is how they did mail transfer back in the day as well, if you recall). Both are surprisingly effective, though non-intuitively you tend to miss more mail with option #1 than #2. In light of the discussion, though, coordinates for your floating country plus speed and vector can easily be transmitted to inbound mail carriers.
I hate ignorant comments like this. Do you realize the massive amount of work required to run a company? Do you understand the job security you have as an employee of a company? It's *my* job to make sure you continue to have a job. It's my job to work ridiculous hours and be on call for things you can't even imagine. I have to be multi-talented, multi-disciplined, multi-tasking, and multi-personality. I have to understand the nuances of industries that aren't even related to my field. I spend massive amounts of money and personal time making sure that YOU are able to produce for me without being sidetracked by unrelated issues.
So don't tell me that I don't deserve it.
PS: For all of those people about to come back with crap-ass comments about "I should pay you more to retain you.", let me get that out of the way. I pay what I can. In fact, I go without pay to make sure you get paid. Yes, perhaps I'm in the minority, but you know what? Those years that are better than others? I'll take my fair share. If I am directly responsible for procuring 100% of the business, and you are responsible for creating a product that retains that business, then I trump you anyday. This is what people don't understand: sales *is* hard. If it were easier, you'd get paid more.
At 3 tons, this boat is very light. A 3 ton boat can be flipped very easily by a rough wave. Coupled with the fact that this is a catamaran, you have a boat that is equally as stable upside down as it is righted. Our boat is 12 tons without food and equipment (we have about 1.5 tons of spare parts and tools alone!) -- 8 tons of this is keel weight. It cannot flip over and stay upside down (unless the keel breaks off).
As for the stmt that says it will absorb the energy of the wave making for a smooth ride: don't believe it. That's like saying your knees can absorb the energy of your uneven surface. If there is more energy than can be absorbed, you will experience a rough time standing up. Same thing applies here. Do you know how much energy is in a wave? Think about the Tsunami on Boxing Day 2005. Think about wave-absorbing power plants. The amplitude of the wave doesn't even matter: it's a combination of amp. and freq. I've been in waves that are 60 feet tall, but they're 500 feet apart. This makes for a smooth, duck-like, enjoyable, infinity view when you crest, and a rather enclosing feel when you trough. :-)
Interesting facts: 5 knots is quite slow, but manageable. A knot is about 1.8 km/hour, so we're talking about 9 km/h which is actually slower than a human can run. Captain Cook sailed around the world at about 2.5 knots. He literally went around at walking speed.
As an aside, you can always tell the difference between the cruiser boat and the bay-sailer simply by the sheer amount of shit attached to every surface. :-) Also, look at the size and number of anchors. If there are two or more anchors: cruiser. If the anchor looks like it should be grounding the USS Enterprise: cruiser.
All of the comments I'm seeing about first-hand experiences with rogue waves all seem to have a common thread: they happen within a few hundred metres near shore. This *might* imply that these waves are being affected by ground features, coral formations, etc. Look, even the article discusses rogue waves that were ONLY seen during periods of weather stress: a large wave during a hurricane? No shit! A large wave near South Africa -- this isn't news -- the cape of SA is a known dangerous spot as is the Cape Horn in South America.
I've done a lot of open ocean sailing -- this is sailing where you are 9 days from the nearest land mass. When you are at the mercy of waves 24 hours a day for more than a week at a time, you quickly learn what makes them tick.
First off, waves need wind. Without wind, there are no waves. A large high pressure system will quickly quiet the waves such that the ocean resembles a pane of glass (this is when you play "spot the flot(sam)"). It is only during periods of high wind where you get increasingly higher and higher waves. These waves can be created in a few hours and sustain themselves for long distances (thousands of kilometers).
The *only* times that waves collide, resonate, and otherwise interrupt themselves is if there is another external force (think Newton's Laws). *HOWEVER, as soon as the wave is larger than the wind can support it, it will collapse*. Coral reefs, submerged volcanoes, high spots (yes, they exist in the middle of nowhere), earthquakes, alternating wind currents, and ocean currents will all contribute. I would be EXTREMELY sceptical about rogue waves appearing OUTSIDE of areas that are known volcanic lines, reef areas, etc. It would be interesting to cross-reference all experiences of these rogue waves with lat/lon and map them according to these phenomenon.
Just finished reading the article and here's the bit that probably everyone is missing:
I am forced to conclude that no new information on rogue waves has been discerned: it's still common sense to me.
Why is it so hard for these types of companies to understand that the less you sell something for, the more you sell. Rather then trying to squeeze a limited audience for all you can, squeeze them less and find yourselve with a bigger audience.
Game theory dictates that there is an optimum cost-benefit for things. The lower the price, the more that sells *might* be true, but there are only so many people who will buy certain things: eg. there is only a finite number of people in the world. So you need to run various scenarios in which simulate what threshold of price you think people might buy things for. You then map these results out and determine your optimum price point.
Look at it this way: if you make things INFINITELY expensive, you get zero sales. If you make things cost zero, then you will get zero sales because it COSTS money to produce (anything) and you cannot do it without going bankrupt. Information is, alas, not free -- as much as people want it to be. If nothing else, it costs money SOMEWHERE to get a computer up and running. So let's assume those two extrema are more-or-less accurate. I think we can agree that a sales graph that is flat at zero sales will not garner a whole lot of enthusiasm. Therefore, there is likely a point somewhere between 0 and +INF where the graph reaches a maximum. This is the science in pricing. Then you factor in the psychology of the people as an extra dimension. This is why popcorn at the cinema costs way more than you would reasonably expect anywhere except at the cinema. The accountants/financial people KNOW that it is likely you will buy at an inflated price.
Hell, most female paragliders wear diapers when performing long cross-country flights especially in competitive or hostile environments when landing for bathroom breaks is not an option. Most guys tend to perform "high altitude irrigation" -- it's easier to perform when you can angle the flow.
No kidding. I was sailing from New Zealand to Vanuatu when this happened. Our ham radio was awash in traffic as this thing surfaced. The problem with pumice is that it floats on the water and reduces the surface tension. When your boat goes through it, you get all your expensive ablative paint scraped off...and then you sink a few feet into the water. If you don't have enough freeboard (the amount of boat height from waterline to decking), then you *will* sink. The other thing is that you can't actually use your motor very well, so you have try to sail out...this is obviously a problem during nighttime when you can't see anything and you end up running right into it. That'll wake you up.