Practical math beyond addition and multiplication? That's easy. There's a lot of money to be made in knowing if you want a tall skinny can or a short fat can for a given volume of canned good. Also, as a practical matter, we'd all be exposed to a lot less stupidity if journalists were required to take a little statistics.
When did Antarctica become a country? What's the capitol? What sort of government does it have? Either I completely missed something that could be very important (in which case, please do inform me) or you have failed to name a country.
My grandfather used a Coleco Adam as his primary computer well into the 90s until he could no longer find parts to keep it working. It did what he wanted from a computer and he knew how to use it. Since then he's had a 286 DOS PC that he never did figure out how to use (and that I could have killed my Uncle for even thinking that was appropriate to give him) and a new Mac that he could do things with, but he never really understood it and was always concerned that it was infected with some kind of virus (it never was, but the notion of invisible files didn't sit well with him) so for the most part now he just doesn't use computers. I think that if he had a working Coleco Adam, he'd use that. It would be more functional for him, stacked up against modern systems, because he knows how to use it. I doubt he's alone in this and could certainly see someone continuing to use archaic and obsolete machines simply because they have no interest in learning how to work with modern systems.
With respect to RFID in passports, the Faraday cage (at least for US passports) supposedly will be built into the passport (old news) so the signal only leaks out when the passport is open. No doubt the government is just waiting for the right time to take that out of the plan when nobody is looking (as long as this is a tinfoil hat article). After all, my non-RFID passport is already machine readable.
So the HD-DVD drive for the XBox 360 (a game console) won't play games and Sony's Blu-Ray drive for PCs won't play Blu-Ray movies. What's the point again?
Didn't do so well in cell bio, huh? Anyway, the sugar high thing is a World War 2 myth created to lower domestic demand for sugar when it became in short supply (lots of support from Google on this much). I saw a newspaper story recently about a study that concluded that the crazy behavior of children supposedly on a sugar high has more to do with the parents expectation of such behavior. Anecdotally, I recall my own childhood in which I consumed sugar-rich treats frequently and abundantly, but I never acted like the screaming monkey children I see with parents who just don't give a damn about raising children to be mindful of others.
I purchased a video game today. The rating tag reads:
EVERYONE 10+ E 10+ Fantasy Violence Mild Language Mild Suggestive Themes Use of Alcohol and Tobacco ESRB CONTENT RATING www.esrb.org
You have to flip the box over to get that as there's just the non-descriptive rating on the front of the box, but that looks pretty good to me. There's usually also some text and screenshots on the packaging that would let a concerned parent know a little about the game. I guess I don't understand where you see the problem.
But this does affect the author of the grandparent post. If ODF is a credible standard that is widely supported, a KOffice user can mail an ODF much like today people mail Word documents (and it will be just as annoying).
It's rabid love for Sony in connection with game consoles (after all, you can run Linux on the PS2 and we all love Linux) and rabid hate for Sony in connection with music and movies (DRM, UMD, weird proprietary connectors for apparent reason other than annoying people).
My grandfather didn't think Social Security would be there for him. It is. My father did not think that Social Security would be there for him. It probably will be. For those of us who are farther away from retirement, Social Security will be there for us EVEN IF the baby boomers bankrupt the system. It's an extremely popular political program and Congress will do whatever they need to in order to keep it going in some form. Will they wait too long to fix any problems? Certainly. That's a given. It'll be a big, ugly, expensive mess with long term consequences, but at the end of the day we'll get our checks because there is no political future for the politicians who let Social Security die while they're in office. Count on it as a primary source of interest after retirement? Of course not, but it'll be something.
Your points are mostly valid, of course, but note that I was talking about media players in general, not just the drive going into the PS3. Sony wouldn't be paying licensing for its own drives (well, maybe it would, but that's just shifting numbers on paper), but the manufacturer of the Blu-ray player mentioned in the summary is from Pioneer, which, as far as I know, is not Sony. Also, just because development costs can be recouped over decades doesn't mean that the involved companies will want to take that long with it, particularly if there's going to be a next-next generation media a decade and a half later. Something can ammortize approaching zero and still hurt in the short term, so while it shouldn't be analyzed as a cost, it can still affect the price. In this context, cost and price are two very different things.
They're making a big deal about this thing so that people will be willing to shell out way more than this new technology is actually costing them?
The current high pricing on next-gen disc media players is impacted hardly at all by manufacturing costs. There's a need to recoup development costs and the manufacturers probably also have to pay some technology licensing fees. The cost of parts, assembly, and packing are probably the least expensive per unit cost in delivering one right now. The more they charge up front to the early adopters, the quicker they can drop the price into a range mainstream consumers will be willing to pay. This is especially important if I'm right in thinking that nobody really wants a replacement for the DVD yet.
So, to tie this back into the PS3, putting Sony's preferred format player into the PS3 is very smart. Sony is going to have a lot of demand for the PS3, likely quite a bit in excess of the demand for a next generation DVD player. With those units in households, there's a greater incentive for other companies to release media on Blu-ray, especially if Sony releases its media holdings. And that's why Microsoft missed the boat with the 360 in not including its preferred format, HD-DVD. Now that console would have market fragmentation, making it a lot less likely that third party developers would use HD-DVD, which of course means that fewer XBox360 owners will go for the HD-DVD upgrade. It looks like Microsoft is hoping that offering greater support for HD-DVD over other media drives in Vista and its dominance in desktop software will make up for that. It might.
While true, I really doubt ISPs are going to start blocking Windows users from accessing the Internet. Not only because they'd be blocking somewhere between most and all of their customers (Why yes, we'll sell you Internet access, we just won't let you use it.), but I've also encountered a lot of ISPs that would get really freaked out (for no good reason) if they heard you planned on connecting with anything but a Windows PC.
Wait... you don't want them to use `rm -Rf *'? Okay, they wipe out the contents of their home directory. Maybe they `cd/' first, but that's no big deal because they aren't running as root. Your five year old isn't root, right? This shouldn't be an issue.
I suppose the desktop environment I'd pick for a five year old would probably be something like Squeak. Educationally oriented, no clearing necessary, and would have been a lot more interesting to me as a five year old than something that was obviously crippled.
Linux (the kernel) is licensed under v2, there are some other projects that are also licensed under a specific version of the GPL, but a lot of projects are licensed under some version of the GPL or any later version (the FSF recommends this), in which case the developers would not have to be contacted and the developers would have to do something about it only if they did not like what GPL3 turns out to be.
I keep reading about this, and I can never figure why the rapid adoption of Linux makes GPLv3 important. Sure, there are a lot of projects that use the GPL that allow distribution under the current or any future version of the GPL, but Linux isn't one of them. From/usr/src/linux/COPYING
Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.
I do a fair amount of flying and, to be honest, I'm not seeing insanely tight airport security on a routine basis in the United States. So maybe now instead of being delayed in the customs line while I'm trying to get to my connecting flight I get a quick interview with a national guard officer or a short random search (a look through my laptop bag and a wave of the metal detector) before boarding. The added security is not being applied consistently, at least at the airports I've been to, and it hasn't been invasive. Airport security flying out of San Jose International (Costa Rica) has seemed considerably tighter.
If you're really worried, I've found that I'm pulled aside for added security checks much less frequently if my beard is well trimmed and I'm wearing a suit. Applying this test to every passenger before boarding would be a bit much, but if it's applied randomly to cut down on the number of people pulled aside for other checks, it could speed things up and would be, in my opinion, much better than spending a week trapped on a breeding ground for infectious bacteria as you seem to prefer.
As you can see in a scan posted in this thread, Goofy, Donald and that cutie Sora are fully decked out in the duds of the Master Control Program universe, as well as Mr. Kevin Flynn himself, Jeff Bridges.
Yes, coffee has some positive health effects. The medical debate on this dates back to the 9th century*. Unfortunately, your first two links are really weak in supporting that argument. Coffee only has about 4% the antioxidant effect of Vitamin C. The study cited is not inconsistent with these results. Rather, it just means that Americans drink a lot of coffee. Then again, the antioxidant effect of green tea isn't that much better than coffee but it's one of the main contributors to the tea as health food craze.
* this is really a conservative estimate based on when a description of the health effects of coffee first entered print. Given that the latest anybody dates coffee's emigration from Abyssinia (Ethiopia) to Arabia (Yemen) is the 6th century, it seems likely that various physicians have had some opinion on the plant and the various concoctions made from it longer than that.
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Practical math beyond addition and multiplication? That's easy. There's a lot of money to be made in knowing if you want a tall skinny can or a short fat can for a given volume of canned good. Also, as a practical matter, we'd all be exposed to a lot less stupidity if journalists were required to take a little statistics.
When did Antarctica become a country? What's the capitol? What sort of government does it have? Either I completely missed something that could be very important (in which case, please do inform me) or you have failed to name a country.
It already does. It's called Underrated. Still waiting for -1 Wrong, personally (not that it applies here).
My grandfather used a Coleco Adam as his primary computer well into the 90s until he could no longer find parts to keep it working. It did what he wanted from a computer and he knew how to use it. Since then he's had a 286 DOS PC that he never did figure out how to use (and that I could have killed my Uncle for even thinking that was appropriate to give him) and a new Mac that he could do things with, but he never really understood it and was always concerned that it was infected with some kind of virus (it never was, but the notion of invisible files didn't sit well with him) so for the most part now he just doesn't use computers. I think that if he had a working Coleco Adam, he'd use that. It would be more functional for him, stacked up against modern systems, because he knows how to use it. I doubt he's alone in this and could certainly see someone continuing to use archaic and obsolete machines simply because they have no interest in learning how to work with modern systems.
With respect to RFID in passports, the Faraday cage (at least for US passports) supposedly will be built into the passport (old news) so the signal only leaks out when the passport is open. No doubt the government is just waiting for the right time to take that out of the plan when nobody is looking (as long as this is a tinfoil hat article). After all, my non-RFID passport is already machine readable.
So the HD-DVD drive for the XBox 360 (a game console) won't play games and Sony's Blu-Ray drive for PCs won't play Blu-Ray movies. What's the point again?
Just because it's true doesn't mean it's not funny. Personally, I think it's a great idea and would love to see it at the federal level.
Didn't do so well in cell bio, huh? Anyway, the sugar high thing is a World War 2 myth created to lower domestic demand for sugar when it became in short supply (lots of support from Google on this much). I saw a newspaper story recently about a study that concluded that the crazy behavior of children supposedly on a sugar high has more to do with the parents expectation of such behavior. Anecdotally, I recall my own childhood in which I consumed sugar-rich treats frequently and abundantly, but I never acted like the screaming monkey children I see with parents who just don't give a damn about raising children to be mindful of others.
I purchased a video game today. The rating tag reads:
EVERYONE 10+
E 10+
Fantasy Violence
Mild Language
Mild Suggestive Themes
Use of Alcohol and Tobacco
ESRB CONTENT RATING www.esrb.org
You have to flip the box over to get that as there's just the non-descriptive rating on the front of the box, but that looks pretty good to me. There's usually also some text and screenshots on the packaging that would let a concerned parent know a little about the game. I guess I don't understand where you see the problem.
But this does affect the author of the grandparent post. If ODF is a credible standard that is widely supported, a KOffice user can mail an ODF much like today people mail Word documents (and it will be just as annoying).
Who ever heard of Sri Lanka tea? (since Burma's already been covered) No New Geography there, just good old fashioned marketing.
It's rabid love for Sony in connection with game consoles (after all, you can run Linux on the PS2 and we all love Linux) and rabid hate for Sony in connection with music and movies (DRM, UMD, weird proprietary connectors for apparent reason other than annoying people).
My grandfather didn't think Social Security would be there for him. It is. My father did not think that Social Security would be there for him. It probably will be. For those of us who are farther away from retirement, Social Security will be there for us EVEN IF the baby boomers bankrupt the system. It's an extremely popular political program and Congress will do whatever they need to in order to keep it going in some form. Will they wait too long to fix any problems? Certainly. That's a given. It'll be a big, ugly, expensive mess with long term consequences, but at the end of the day we'll get our checks because there is no political future for the politicians who let Social Security die while they're in office. Count on it as a primary source of interest after retirement? Of course not, but it'll be something.
Your points are mostly valid, of course, but note that I was talking about media players in general, not just the drive going into the PS3. Sony wouldn't be paying licensing for its own drives (well, maybe it would, but that's just shifting numbers on paper), but the manufacturer of the Blu-ray player mentioned in the summary is from Pioneer, which, as far as I know, is not Sony. Also, just because development costs can be recouped over decades doesn't mean that the involved companies will want to take that long with it, particularly if there's going to be a next-next generation media a decade and a half later. Something can ammortize approaching zero and still hurt in the short term, so while it shouldn't be analyzed as a cost, it can still affect the price. In this context, cost and price are two very different things.
That sounds a lot like Gentoo.
The current high pricing on next-gen disc media players is impacted hardly at all by manufacturing costs. There's a need to recoup development costs and the manufacturers probably also have to pay some technology licensing fees. The cost of parts, assembly, and packing are probably the least expensive per unit cost in delivering one right now. The more they charge up front to the early adopters, the quicker they can drop the price into a range mainstream consumers will be willing to pay. This is especially important if I'm right in thinking that nobody really wants a replacement for the DVD yet.
So, to tie this back into the PS3, putting Sony's preferred format player into the PS3 is very smart. Sony is going to have a lot of demand for the PS3, likely quite a bit in excess of the demand for a next generation DVD player. With those units in households, there's a greater incentive for other companies to release media on Blu-ray, especially if Sony releases its media holdings. And that's why Microsoft missed the boat with the 360 in not including its preferred format, HD-DVD. Now that console would have market fragmentation, making it a lot less likely that third party developers would use HD-DVD, which of course means that fewer XBox360 owners will go for the HD-DVD upgrade. It looks like Microsoft is hoping that offering greater support for HD-DVD over other media drives in Vista and its dominance in desktop software will make up for that. It might.
While true, I really doubt ISPs are going to start blocking Windows users from accessing the Internet. Not only because they'd be blocking somewhere between most and all of their customers (Why yes, we'll sell you Internet access, we just won't let you use it.), but I've also encountered a lot of ISPs that would get really freaked out (for no good reason) if they heard you planned on connecting with anything but a Windows PC.
Well, three different letters, but four characters. Don't take this to mean that I disagree with your point, though.
Wait... you don't want them to use `rm -Rf *'? Okay, they wipe out the contents of their home directory. Maybe they `cd /' first, but that's no big deal because they aren't running as root. Your five year old isn't root, right? This shouldn't be an issue.
I suppose the desktop environment I'd pick for a five year old would probably be something like Squeak. Educationally oriented, no clearing necessary, and would have been a lot more interesting to me as a five year old than something that was obviously crippled.
Linux (the kernel) is licensed under v2, there are some other projects that are also licensed under a specific version of the GPL, but a lot of projects are licensed under some version of the GPL or any later version (the FSF recommends this), in which case the developers would not have to be contacted and the developers would have to do something about it only if they did not like what GPL3 turns out to be.
So what's the Linux connection here?
I do a fair amount of flying and, to be honest, I'm not seeing insanely tight airport security on a routine basis in the United States. So maybe now instead of being delayed in the customs line while I'm trying to get to my connecting flight I get a quick interview with a national guard officer or a short random search (a look through my laptop bag and a wave of the metal detector) before boarding. The added security is not being applied consistently, at least at the airports I've been to, and it hasn't been invasive. Airport security flying out of San Jose International (Costa Rica) has seemed considerably tighter.
If you're really worried, I've found that I'm pulled aside for added security checks much less frequently if my beard is well trimmed and I'm wearing a suit. Applying this test to every passenger before boarding would be a bit much, but if it's applied randomly to cut down on the number of people pulled aside for other checks, it could speed things up and would be, in my opinion, much better than spending a week trapped on a breeding ground for infectious bacteria as you seem to prefer.
Should read:
As you can see in a scan posted in this thread, Goofy, Donald and that cutie Sora are fully decked out in the duds of the Master Control Program universe, as well as Mr. Kevin Flynn himself, Jeff Bridges.
Yes, coffee has some positive health effects. The medical debate on this dates back to the 9th century*. Unfortunately, your first two links are really weak in supporting that argument. Coffee only has about 4% the antioxidant effect of Vitamin C. The study cited is not inconsistent with these results. Rather, it just means that Americans drink a lot of coffee. Then again, the antioxidant effect of green tea isn't that much better than coffee but it's one of the main contributors to the tea as health food craze.
* this is really a conservative estimate based on when a description of the health effects of coffee first entered print. Given that the latest anybody dates coffee's emigration from Abyssinia (Ethiopia) to Arabia (Yemen) is the 6th century, it seems likely that various physicians have had some opinion on the plant and the various concoctions made from it longer than that.