Have you seen an average person's Windows box lately? It's full of random crap they've downloaded, each of which installs a desktop shortcut, a toolbar in the browser, a tray icon that pops up daily. Each one is "free" so you'll download it, but then uses all of these various ways of getting in your face to try to get you to spend money somehow. And that's if you're lucky, and don't have any malware.
Now think about an iPhone/iPad. They don't have nearly as many extension points, so they're not as customizable, but the upside is that there's less hooks for programs to get into and pop up in your face (and slow down and destabilize your system). Not to mention that the App Store blocks crappy/malicious/deceitful software.
I really hope that iOS will take up the mantle of an it-just-works machine for the average non-nerd. Walled gardens have their disadvantages, I agree. But they sure are pretty.
Doubt that, turns out the same day 100,000 Drum Fish died the same day.
Um... not the same day. The day before. And: "Biologists believe the bird deaths were stress-related from either fireworks or weather and are unrelated to the fish kill near Ozark, Stephens said."
"When will China emerge as a military threat to the U.S.? In most respects the answer is: not anytime soon -- China doesn't even contemplate a time it might challenge America directly. But one significant threat already exists: cyberwar. Attacks -- not just from China but from Russia and elsewhere -- on America's electronic networks cost millions of dollars and could in the extreme cause the collapse of financial life, the halt of most manufacturing systems, and the evaporation of all the data and knowledge stored on the Internet."
No, but they do have an "inside" for snow to pile up in. And that's probably worse since the place where the snow rests in this case (the bottom of the shield) would be higher up than in the other case (the top of the shield below it).
If you don't like a company crippling a product, what are the alternatives?
Well, one alternative is that the company couple sell different physical products with the different capabilities. Of course, that would increase costs, so both the crippled and uncrippled versions would cost more.
Or, the company could only sell uncrippled hardware. Now, what price would they sell it for? They certainly can't sell it for the lower price of a crippled product, because they'd lose money. So now you've lost the choice between a lower-price/lower-featured product, and a higher-price/higher-featured product. In other words, richer people win, poorer people lose.
So we should recognize that there's a benefit to being able to sell different sets of features to different consumers. More people get what they want at a price they can afford.
I hope this doesn't come across as cynical, because it's not meant to be. But one very reasonable strategy is to work hard at your regular job, and donate money to charitable causes.
I've often thought about how to put my software engineering skills to good use, and that's the best I've been able to come up with. If you can't find a great outlet to directly put your skills to use at a charitable organization, this is a pretty reasonable proxy. It lets you do what you do best, for the people that find it most helpful (i.e. a company that's willing to pay you for it), rather than having to shoehorn your skills where there may not be a great match.
If there's an volunteer opportunity that's actually a good fit, that's obviously a good mechanism (and probably more psychically rewarding). But if not, I think this is an efficient alternative.
This is guilt and arrogance. "I have so much, I am so smart, let me device a plan to improve capitalism."
Rich people who want to help the poor are arrogant? I guess they should just stay home, drink their champagne, and keep quiet?
Note to Bill, its been tried at least twice in the past 100 years and they were called communism and socialism. The only change for the poor in those systems is there is more of them.
Your logic is iron-clad. The fact that 2 systems have failed obviously means that no other system could possibly work. Our current form of capitalism is the best system possible. No other system is worth even considering.
To paraphrase Churchill: "It has been said that capitalism is the worst form of economy except all the others that have been tried."
We have decades more experience with capitalism and its effects on the world's poor than we used to. Is it blasphemy to try to improve on things? I'm actually pretty skeptical of his proposal until I hear more details... but I think it's great to consider it, rather than try to close my ears to it like you do.
The Gulf of Guinea happens to be at latitude zero, longitude zero, so I'd say that's due to data issues. Also 90 degrees longitude (or is it latitude? I forget) goes through Manitoba, so that might also be a similar problem.
Sorry, your arguments make no sense. It is literally irrelevant how much energy the sun sends down to us. The only useful metric is how much of that energy we can convert to useful form at a particular cost. We get your point, the sun shines really bright. But we're all trying to make logical arguments about different power sources, and all you can say is "but the sun shines really bright!"
And let me repeat it: if it was economically infeasible for us to tap an energy stream that hits us every single second with several thousands of times more energy than we could possibly use, something would be seriously wrong with economics.
In other words: "I don't care about all your logical arguments. My intuition tells me that solar power is the answer, so therefore it must be so!"
energy efficiency. The amount of heat energy alone that we throw away is staggering, etc...
This has been true for decades, and it hasn't changed. What makes you think it's going to change now?
Environmentalists have been talking about reducing energy consumption since the 70's. Guess what's happened since then? Huge increases in the amount of energy consumed. What makes you think it's going to be any different going forward. I don't think that "c'mon guys, this time I really mean it!" is going to change anything.
The problem is that you're asking literally billions of people to make sacrifices - sacrifices that mainly benefit everyone else. See Tragedy of the Commons. Guilting people into these sacrifices hasn't worked in the past, and I can't think of a good reason why it'll change in the future.
We need to either give people incentives to do the right thing (carbon tax, which at least in the U.S. has been politically suicidal), or do something radical like switch to nuclear power. Wired Magazine favors the latter.
The interview with the Stanford team lead also said that last year, there was talk of the course being much harder and 300 miles long, so teams over-engineered their vehicles. This year they had a much better idea of what the course would be like, so they could spend their time better.
Bullshite. They knew exactly what the law would be used for and by whom. This law was drafted for the sole purpose of kissing the collective asses of big business.
Uh... This is a case of one big business fighting with another big business over the DMCA. So how exactly does your argument work?
Not sure why I bother, but I call BS on you. Look at the Merriam-Webster definition of "censor," and tell me how your statements fit that definition.
tr.v.: To examine and expurgate.
You seem to think that "censor" means "drowns out" or "distracts from". By your definition, when I play my guitar badly, I'm censoring and surpressing good music...
This document is a NOTE made available by W3C for discussion only. This indicates no endorsement of its content, nor that W3C has had any editorial control in its preparation, nor that W3C has, is, or will be allocating any resources to the issues addressed by the NOTE.
Slashdot Mirror
Here are a counter-argument from comments on the blog:
mike_s said...
They presumably use Doppler radar, which can measure speeds throughout the system, instead of relying on point sources, which can't.
The ISS, and manned spaceflight in general, is a pointless waste of money. Not a troll, just a (well-justified) opinion.
In the novel 2010 by Arthur C. Clarke (the follow up to 2001), Jupiter is revealed to have a diamond the size of the earth at its core.
Every language has warts. If that's your definitely of "bad language" you can find such problems in any popular language.
Have you seen an average person's Windows box lately? It's full of random crap they've downloaded, each of which installs a desktop shortcut, a toolbar in the browser, a tray icon that pops up daily. Each one is "free" so you'll download it, but then uses all of these various ways of getting in your face to try to get you to spend money somehow. And that's if you're lucky, and don't have any malware.
Now think about an iPhone/iPad. They don't have nearly as many extension points, so they're not as customizable, but the upside is that there's less hooks for programs to get into and pop up in your face (and slow down and destabilize your system). Not to mention that the App Store blocks crappy/malicious/deceitful software.
I really hope that iOS will take up the mantle of an it-just-works machine for the average non-nerd. Walled gardens have their disadvantages, I agree. But they sure are pretty.
Doubt that, turns out the same day 100,000 Drum Fish died the same day.
Um... not the same day. The day before. And: "Biologists believe the bird deaths were stress-related from either fireworks or weather and are unrelated to the fish kill near Ozark, Stephens said."
"When will China emerge as a military threat to the U.S.? In most respects the answer is: not anytime soon -- China doesn't even contemplate a time it might challenge America directly. But one significant threat already exists: cyberwar. Attacks -- not just from China but from Russia and elsewhere -- on America's electronic networks cost millions of dollars and could in the extreme cause the collapse of financial life, the halt of most manufacturing systems, and the evaporation of all the data and knowledge stored on the Internet."
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/cyber-warriors/7917/
Your comment is not so helpful unless you explain the difference. They sound like synonyms to me.
No, but they do have an "inside" for snow to pile up in. And that's probably worse since the place where the snow rests in this case (the bottom of the shield) would be higher up than in the other case (the top of the shield below it).
Check out the bio-mimicry database: http://asknature.org/
Here's the really interesting TED talk where the founder introduces it, and describes some examples of nature's engineering at work: http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action.html
If you don't like a company crippling a product, what are the alternatives?
Well, one alternative is that the company couple sell different physical products with the different capabilities. Of course, that would increase costs, so both the crippled and uncrippled versions would cost more.
Or, the company could only sell uncrippled hardware. Now, what price would they sell it for? They certainly can't sell it for the lower price of a crippled product, because they'd lose money. So now you've lost the choice between a lower-price/lower-featured product, and a higher-price/higher-featured product. In other words, richer people win, poorer people lose.
So we should recognize that there's a benefit to being able to sell different sets of features to different consumers. More people get what they want at a price they can afford.
I hope this doesn't come across as cynical, because it's not meant to be. But one very reasonable strategy is to work hard at your regular job, and donate money to charitable causes.
I've often thought about how to put my software engineering skills to good use, and that's the best I've been able to come up with. If you can't find a great outlet to directly put your skills to use at a charitable organization, this is a pretty reasonable proxy. It lets you do what you do best, for the people that find it most helpful (i.e. a company that's willing to pay you for it), rather than having to shoehorn your skills where there may not be a great match.
If there's an volunteer opportunity that's actually a good fit, that's obviously a good mechanism (and probably more psychically rewarding). But if not, I think this is an efficient alternative.
This is guilt and arrogance. "I have so much, I am so smart, let me device a plan to improve capitalism."
Rich people who want to help the poor are arrogant? I guess they should just stay home, drink their champagne, and keep quiet?
Note to Bill, its been tried at least twice in the past 100 years and they were called communism and socialism. The only change for the poor in those systems is there is more of them.
Your logic is iron-clad. The fact that 2 systems have failed obviously means that no other system could possibly work. Our current form of capitalism is the best system possible. No other system is worth even considering.
To paraphrase Churchill: "It has been said that capitalism is the worst form of economy except all the others that have been tried."
We have decades more experience with capitalism and its effects on the world's poor than we used to. Is it blasphemy to try to improve on things? I'm actually pretty skeptical of his proposal until I hear more details... but I think it's great to consider it, rather than try to close my ears to it like you do.
The Gulf of Guinea happens to be at latitude zero, longitude zero, so I'd say that's due to data issues. Also 90 degrees longitude (or is it latitude? I forget) goes through Manitoba, so that might also be a similar problem.
Jobs said that they've filed for over 200 patents on the iPhone overall, not multi-touch specifically. You can see it in his slide here:
d ia/2007/01/dsc_0232.jpg
http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/me
Those are miniature tires that lego makes, not real full-sized ones.
The science of carbon sinks is far from certain.
Sorry, your arguments make no sense. It is literally irrelevant how much energy the sun sends down to us. The only useful metric is how much of that energy we can convert to useful form at a particular cost. We get your point, the sun shines really bright. But we're all trying to make logical arguments about different power sources, and all you can say is "but the sun shines really bright!"
And let me repeat it: if it was economically infeasible for us to tap an energy stream that hits us every single second with several thousands of times more energy than we could possibly use, something would be seriously wrong with economics.
In other words: "I don't care about all your logical arguments. My intuition tells me that solar power is the answer, so therefore it must be so!"
energy efficiency. The amount of heat energy alone that we throw away is staggering, etc...
This has been true for decades, and it hasn't changed. What makes you think it's going to change now?
Environmentalists have been talking about reducing energy consumption since the 70's. Guess what's happened since then? Huge increases in the amount of energy consumed. What makes you think it's going to be any different going forward. I don't think that "c'mon guys, this time I really mean it!" is going to change anything.
The problem is that you're asking literally billions of people to make sacrifices - sacrifices that mainly benefit everyone else. See Tragedy of the Commons. Guilting people into these sacrifices hasn't worked in the past, and I can't think of a good reason why it'll change in the future.
We need to either give people incentives to do the right thing (carbon tax, which at least in the U.S. has been politically suicidal), or do something radical like switch to nuclear power. Wired Magazine favors the latter.
The interview with the Stanford team lead also said that last year, there was talk of the course being much harder and 300 miles long, so teams over-engineered their vehicles. This year they had a much better idea of what the course would be like, so they could spend their time better.
Others have pointed out that the preview includes hardware.
Bullshite. They knew exactly what the law would be used for and by whom. This law was drafted for the sole purpose of kissing the collective asses of big business.
Uh... This is a case of one big business fighting with another big business over the DMCA. So how exactly does your argument work?
The opposite of prescriptive grammar is descriptive grammar - not no grammar.
WBXML (oh, and this *is* a W3C standard)
Nope:
This document is a NOTE made available by W3C for discussion only. This indicates no endorsement of its content, nor that W3C has had any editorial control in its preparation, nor that W3C has, is, or will be allocating any resources to the issues addressed by the NOTE.