In the US, at least, the cost of mobile phones is massively subsidized by cellular providers offering phones for far below value in exchange for a contract for some length of cellular service. Therefore, the actual price of mobile phones here is all but irrelevant and there's no market pressure to reduce prices.
I really don't see the point of going nazi over one of the few cases where it was actually semi-legitimate.
1) Arguing that bnetd enabled piracy is dumb; pirated copies could still be played offline, over a LAN, or through other workarounds. Furthermore, the bnetd developers offered to add support for verifying CD keys against a Blizzard server but were ignored (yes, individuals running bnetd could hack the source to disable the check, but that'd make it pretty obvious what they were up to, and Blizzard could've nailed them, not bnetd itself).
2) People are banned from bnet for other things, such as cheating, and there's a fair population of jerks on bnet. Someone with a valid license may want to play online but be unable or unwilling to use bnet. I own a legit copy of war3 but I'd definitely rather play with friends on a private server.
3) Blizzard's (well, I think it's Vivendi's) management and legal department already had a reputation among a lot of people for being grand assholes, so people weren't inclined to give them any benefit of the doubt.
I'll agree it's not the WORST use of the DMCA, but it's still pretty indefensible. People have a reason for holding this particular grudge.
What the Bachus-Naur form is, I have no idea. I can with relative certainty say that it wasn't in any of the books on my curriculum during my 5 years of university. I just finished, and I read pretty much everything cover-to-cover regrardless of how little of the book we were supposed to read (and it's not on wikipedia, which means it doesn't exist).
Error control mechanisms, at the very least, would very much run against the flow of blind Darwinian processes.
No, error correction would counter the mutation process. Given that, generally, more mutations are harmful than beneficial, error-correcting genetics would be a short-term benefit in reducing genetic disorders. The downside would come if another species with a higher mutation rate evolves into a more successful form and crowds out the now-obsolete organism with rigid genetics. The overall winners would likely be organisms within some range of error-correction--neither a total free-for-all, nor a very rigid genome. This seems pretty well reflected in real life, unsurprisingly.
Yes, this discovery does not hurt the ID movement at all.
This is also true; no scientific discovery will hurt the ID movement, since it has precisely nothing to do with science...
So did we finally discover the Midichlorians that Qui-Gon was rambling about?
No, we already knew about those. They're called mitochondria, they provide the energy that powers the machinery of our cells, and they're descended from independent microscopic life forms that long ago entered a symbiotic relationship with animals.
Did you do in the late 19th century it was legal for husbands to beat their wives as long as they used a stick no wider than their thumb!
This is factually incorrect, derived from a series of misunderstandings; the phrase has nothing to do with wife-beating. Now you know. Please join the crusade against silly urban legends!
Good'oh, now we are all friends again we can go for a cooling pint down the pub eh?
And us Gentoo folk can even be generous and buy a round or two, using the money we've saved by not spending huge wads of cash to buy Windows licenses!:D
Stop to consider what the chances are of someone that flawlessly foolish even knowing/. exists?
Don't waste your time; that was almost certainly a calculated troll, trying to hit every negative stereotype of humanities majors to provoke reactions.
Uhm. Since when is school the only place for kids to socialize?
Not to mention, that a harmful social environment is potentially worse than no socialization at all. It's fairly easy for a public school to become a Lord of the Flies scenario, with a combination of kids who have to be there, a self-contained social structure with no goal or purpose, and administrators who don't care.
School is supposed to be for learning, anyhow. Let the kids socialize on their own time. Maybe if they actually taught kids things in school instead of "socializing" them, things would work better in the first place.
There's more involved in a university environment than just the final degree. A lot of the value is in being surrounded by other intelligent folks and interacting with professors who know their stuff. In a middle school kids are forced to be there, so there's less benefit (if any) from peer groups, and we all know what happens when you have math or science being taught by someone whose only degree is in "education".
Actually, with all the potential for abuse an online program could have, as with home schooling, if someone comes from that sort of background and still knows their stuff (scores well on standardized tests, etc.) they're probably smarter and/or more self-motivated than someone with an equivalent score from a regular school.
I'd be very doubtful of the value of this for conventional mice and single-user computers. Mice are best used for highly position sensitive input with limited input types... drawing lines, selecting groups of items, and other things where the location of the input is important and the limited range of input values (left or right click) isn't a hinderance. Adding multiple mice allows more input of this type, but at the expense input of other types.
Not many applications are likely to require a lot of mouse-type input, and ones that do (3d modelling, image manipulation...) are likely to either demand enough attention to detail that most people would only be able to work effectively with one pointer or the other at a time, or to require a substantial amount of input with a much richer range of values than a mouse provides, which will result in either sub-optimal mouse use (agonizingly slow hunt-and-click toolbar use) or switching hands from one mouse onto the keyboard or some other input device (which gets awkward).
Not to mention that the vast majority of applications being used regularly (email, IM, word processing...) require mostly keyboard-type input; people already often use the mouse for things it isn't best suited for, such as using mouse-driven toolbars or menus for common operations when keyboard shortcuts would be more appropriate.
On the other hand, this could potentially be very interesting for multi-user or otherwise non-traditional applications, with an interface designed around the concept, which I assume is where they're going with this and just using normal desktops as demonstrations right now.
I wish them luck, but definitely won't be plugging anymore mice into my desktop.
Are you making a joke by implying that Slashdot's servers are insecure, by implying that Slashdot's servers run on Windows, or by implying that most Slashdot users run Linux?
Because I'm pretty sure all three are unlikely, but potentially humorous.
Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?
on
When Wikipedia Fails
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Continually modded up. Think carefully about what that means for a second.
So... you're saying that the community has an ideological bias towards complaining about Slashdot's moderation system?
Wait, no, because your comment got modded up, too. Argh! Now I'm confused, which way is the bias?!
Unfortunately for you, the "militant weirdos" have mostly won, as neutral "he" is on the way out and won't be back. The better approach is for purists to remove the stick from their hindquarters, accept the fluidity and evolution of the language, and acknowledge that the abuse of the plural "they" to stand in for gender-ambiguous singular is winning out, and will likely be taught as correct within a few decades.
Actually, it is commonly accepted that Google's name does in fact come from the word googol, which means 10^100; generally taken as a reference to the staggering amount of data availible on the web (see Wikipedia's Google article, etc.). I'm not aware of any official source for that, though I would expect that were it incorrect some Google employee would have fixed the Wikipedia page by now.:) Either way, both meanings may have been intentional; the combination of "to look" and "gigantic number" does sum up the idea of web searching pretty well.
He was making a joke. The recent movie V for Vendetta is, with a few tweaks to make nods to current events, based on a comic from the 80s by, I think, the same author as Watchmen, the "dated" material being referred to.
Humor through sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek faux-hypocracy.
...short answer is: yes it has been considered, but current models of neutrino formation suggest they can't account for all dark matter (or even a significant component of it).
Hunh. I've not used Ubuntu specifically, but I run pure linux on my home machines and I've found package management systems like apt-get and emerge to be incredibly easy and pleasant to use compared to the hassle of various downloads and "install wizards" that you deal with on Windows.
Personally, the ease of installing applications on linux is one of the main reasons I'll never go back to Windows!
Slashdot Mirror
In the US, at least, the cost of mobile phones is massively subsidized by cellular providers offering phones for far below value in exchange for a contract for some length of cellular service. Therefore, the actual price of mobile phones here is all but irrelevant and there's no market pressure to reduce prices.
I thought Ubuntu's business model was "be funded by an generous and independently wealthy geek". You mean to tell me it actually makes money?
I really don't see the point of going nazi over one of the few cases where it was actually semi-legitimate.
1) Arguing that bnetd enabled piracy is dumb; pirated copies could still be played offline, over a LAN, or through other workarounds. Furthermore, the bnetd developers offered to add support for verifying CD keys against a Blizzard server but were ignored (yes, individuals running bnetd could hack the source to disable the check, but that'd make it pretty obvious what they were up to, and Blizzard could've nailed them, not bnetd itself).
2) People are banned from bnet for other things, such as cheating, and there's a fair population of jerks on bnet. Someone with a valid license may want to play online but be unable or unwilling to use bnet. I own a legit copy of war3 but I'd definitely rather play with friends on a private server.
3) Blizzard's (well, I think it's Vivendi's) management and legal department already had a reputation among a lot of people for being grand assholes, so people weren't inclined to give them any benefit of the doubt.
I'll agree it's not the WORST use of the DMCA, but it's still pretty indefensible. People have a reason for holding this particular grudge.
What the Bachus-Naur form is, I have no idea. I can with relative certainty say that it wasn't in any of the books on my curriculum during my 5 years of university. I just finished, and I read pretty much everything cover-to-cover regrardless of how little of the book we were supposed to read (and it's not on wikipedia, which means it doesn't exist).
That's because it's misspelt. Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus-Naur_form
Brain fart. I forgot that plants have mitochondria too. What can I say, I'm not a biologist. :(
Error control mechanisms, at the very least, would very much run against the flow of blind Darwinian processes.
No, error correction would counter the mutation process. Given that, generally, more mutations are harmful than beneficial, error-correcting genetics would be a short-term benefit in reducing genetic disorders. The downside would come if another species with a higher mutation rate evolves into a more successful form and crowds out the now-obsolete organism with rigid genetics. The overall winners would likely be organisms within some range of error-correction--neither a total free-for-all, nor a very rigid genome. This seems pretty well reflected in real life, unsurprisingly.
Yes, this discovery does not hurt the ID movement at all.
This is also true; no scientific discovery will hurt the ID movement, since it has precisely nothing to do with science...
So did we finally discover the Midichlorians that Qui-Gon was rambling about?
No, we already knew about those. They're called mitochondria, they provide the energy that powers the machinery of our cells, and they're descended from independent microscopic life forms that long ago entered a symbiotic relationship with animals.
In plants, chloroplasts fill a similar role.
rule of thumb?!
Did you do in the late 19th century it was legal for husbands to beat their wives as long as they used a stick no wider than their thumb!
This is factually incorrect, derived from a series of misunderstandings; the phrase has nothing to do with wife-beating. Now you know. Please join the crusade against silly urban legends!
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000512.html
Good'oh, now we are all friends again we can go for a cooling pint down the pub eh?
:D
And us Gentoo folk can even be generous and buy a round or two, using the money we've saved by not spending huge wads of cash to buy Windows licenses!
And therefore using Gentoo is like running a bot? I don't want to get kicked out of life for cheating.
Obligatory: "Probably, but this is unlikely to be enforced, since the number of Gentoo users with lives to be kicked out of is vanishingly small."
Stop to consider what the chances are of someone that flawlessly foolish even knowing /. exists?
Don't waste your time; that was almost certainly a calculated troll, trying to hit every negative stereotype of humanities majors to provoke reactions.
Uhm. Since when is school the only place for kids to socialize?
Not to mention, that a harmful social environment is potentially worse than no socialization at all. It's fairly easy for a public school to become a Lord of the Flies scenario, with a combination of kids who have to be there, a self-contained social structure with no goal or purpose, and administrators who don't care.
School is supposed to be for learning, anyhow. Let the kids socialize on their own time. Maybe if they actually taught kids things in school instead of "socializing" them, things would work better in the first place.
There's more involved in a university environment than just the final degree. A lot of the value is in being surrounded by other intelligent folks and interacting with professors who know their stuff. In a middle school kids are forced to be there, so there's less benefit (if any) from peer groups, and we all know what happens when you have math or science being taught by someone whose only degree is in "education".
Actually, with all the potential for abuse an online program could have, as with home schooling, if someone comes from that sort of background and still knows their stuff (scores well on standardized tests, etc.) they're probably smarter and/or more self-motivated than someone with an equivalent score from a regular school.
Yes, but...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google/
It seems the tables have turned!
I'd be very doubtful of the value of this for conventional mice and single-user computers. Mice are best used for highly position sensitive input with limited input types... drawing lines, selecting groups of items, and other things where the location of the input is important and the limited range of input values (left or right click) isn't a hinderance. Adding multiple mice allows more input of this type, but at the expense input of other types.
Not many applications are likely to require a lot of mouse-type input, and ones that do (3d modelling, image manipulation...) are likely to either demand enough attention to detail that most people would only be able to work effectively with one pointer or the other at a time, or to require a substantial amount of input with a much richer range of values than a mouse provides, which will result in either sub-optimal mouse use (agonizingly slow hunt-and-click toolbar use) or switching hands from one mouse onto the keyboard or some other input device (which gets awkward).
Not to mention that the vast majority of applications being used regularly (email, IM, word processing...) require mostly keyboard-type input; people already often use the mouse for things it isn't best suited for, such as using mouse-driven toolbars or menus for common operations when keyboard shortcuts would be more appropriate.
On the other hand, this could potentially be very interesting for multi-user or otherwise non-traditional applications, with an interface designed around the concept, which I assume is where they're going with this and just using normal desktops as demonstrations right now.
I wish them luck, but definitely won't be plugging anymore mice into my desktop.
Are you making a joke by implying that Slashdot's servers are insecure, by implying that Slashdot's servers run on Windows, or by implying that most Slashdot users run Linux?
Because I'm pretty sure all three are unlikely, but potentially humorous.
Continually modded up. Think carefully about what that means for a second.
So... you're saying that the community has an ideological bias towards complaining about Slashdot's moderation system?
Wait, no, because your comment got modded up, too. Argh! Now I'm confused, which way is the bias?!
Unfortunately for you, the "militant weirdos" have mostly won, as neutral "he" is on the way out and won't be back. The better approach is for purists to remove the stick from their hindquarters, accept the fluidity and evolution of the language, and acknowledge that the abuse of the plural "they" to stand in for gender-ambiguous singular is winning out, and will likely be taught as correct within a few decades.
Actually, it is commonly accepted that Google's name does in fact come from the word googol, which means 10^100; generally taken as a reference to the staggering amount of data availible on the web (see Wikipedia's Google article, etc.). I'm not aware of any official source for that, though I would expect that were it incorrect some Google employee would have fixed the Wikipedia page by now. :) Either way, both meanings may have been intentional; the combination of "to look" and "gigantic number" does sum up the idea of web searching pretty well.
That leaves Vista a very close second then, doesn't it? ;)
He was making a joke. The recent movie V for Vendetta is, with a few tweaks to make nods to current events, based on a comic from the 80s by, I think, the same author as Watchmen, the "dated" material being referred to.
Humor through sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek faux-hypocracy.
Isn't that what Dance Dance Revolution already does?
Consider http://www.getupmove.com/weightloss.asp for instance...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Matter#Compositi on
...short answer is: yes it has been considered, but current models of neutrino formation suggest they can't account for all dark matter (or even a significant component of it).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dark_matter
Not really; consider a photon. Just because something is a particle does not mean it's necessarily what you think of as "matter".
Hunh. I've not used Ubuntu specifically, but I run pure linux on my home machines and I've found package management systems like apt-get and emerge to be incredibly easy and pleasant to use compared to the hassle of various downloads and "install wizards" that you deal with on Windows.
Personally, the ease of installing applications on linux is one of the main reasons I'll never go back to Windows!