What's funnier is that natural disasters all necessitate approximately the same type of preparedness: water, food, and electrical source. And yet, everybody treats it like some major disaster when in all cases, it really isn't.
The "mandatory evacuation" (because while it's "mandatory," the cops aren't going door-to-door asking people to leave, and while it's an evacuation, it usually involves going a couple of blocks up the street to the nearest school that's on slightly higher ground) is really just for flooding along coastal areas. When there's flooding, emergency vehicles might have trouble reaching people in need. I emphasize might. Some communities need it more than others; the people staring into the Atlantic are at greater risk than the people looking out at Brooklyn or New Jersey or even New York Harbor. Yet it's all treated the same. Again, getting emergency services to flooded areas is the problem, not necessarily the winds or the water itself.
Now, there are bigger problems in Jersey and Long Island. They live in real houses there, that are built mostly with wood. And there's still the problem with flooding, as most of the area is quite low and flat.
In the end, most of us hunker down, ride it out, laugh it off, and chalk it up to a changing world. It's as big a deal as it would be in other places that normally get hurricanes. The media would have you think otherwise, and by that, I mean we're running around flailing our arms and proclaiming the end of the world is nigh, but I'm pretty sure apart from the usual subway preachers working their usual lines, there's none of that here. In fact, we've had worst, with the microburst and tornadoes that ripped through the area some months ago. And we already had a recent period of 24-hour non-stop raining. It's just that we can and will be prepared this time around.
People die in these things, sometimes because they do something stupid like going out to surf the swells, but sometimes also because they're unlucky when a 200 year-old tree falls on top of them. It's not a matter to be snarky over. The goal is to minimize life loss, not to point and laugh when other people are trying to attain the goal.
That's not sufficient. Even though I lack a facebook account, I know for certain my picture is there. And I'm positive people have talked about or referenced me in some way, shape or form.
All it would take is one leak for an undercover cop to be blown. And in organized crime, I can't imagine that they won't use social engineering techniques to get those friends to say something "incriminating."
Cops will just have to go back to using informants, plea deals, and their normal tools to catch their crooks.
What would help is a button on the site somewhere that says "Squash bugs" or something more mundane like "Site feedback". Hide it somewhere so that the trolls won't get to it so easily (e.g. put it behind the login wall, make only accessible with a certain level of karma, etc.).
The thing is, most of us are either not comfortable with directly communicating any of our gripes with you, the editors (this is Slashdot after all, where all the awkward, anti-social, communication-challenged individuals congregate and find like minds), or we don't know who specifically to contact to address our issues, and end up either not contacting anyone or putting out an off-topic post that more often than not gets modded (and justifiably so) off topic.
After 14 years, the feedback process has improved by several orders of magnitude especially in regards to stories, dupes, and moderation, but there's still a ways to go in this respect.
Oh, and two pennies on any future site design changes: We're geeks--the same ones who love the command line, scripting, reading and writing in assembly and C if necessary in a plain text editor, doing things the way we've always been doing them, and finding elegance in simplicity. While it's always a good thing to improve the site by adding new functionality and giving it a more modern coat of paint, it's also important to acknowledge that there is still a place for the crude and awkward Web1.0 design. Nostalgia aside, it's functional--not perfect, but does the essentials and does it well. And that's what we geeks like best.
Do you want to resign at the top or the bottom? If popularity and public perception of you is important, you'd say the top. You'll want your successes to define you, not your failures. You'll want others to know you at your best, not at your worst.
Alas, while Steve Jobs certainly knows all of this, I think his resignation may be more due to his health than any matter of perception. Being CEO is a stressful job, and having remained as CEO all this time was not really doing his already-unwell body any favors. But from his resignation letter, it might be that his health has already deteriorated to the point where it's impacting his ability to perform his duties as CEO.
Still, I think it's time he was able to enjoy the life of a retiree. If his health holds, he could always do what Bill Gates does and involve himself in less stressful management activities.
Other companies price their tables "competitively" because they're playing Apple's high-priced game. There's an automatic association of a high-priced item with class and luxury. They're afraid that by pricing too low, it's going to cost their brand association with luxury goods, when in fact, they don't and probably will never have the brand association with luxury goods in the first place.
What they don't understand is that nobody is better at being Apple than Apple. If they want to win, they need to start playing the game by their own rules. And in particular, as they can't match Apple's marketing or brand status, they need to think of how to best use their own position to win.
Unfortunately, it may be a little too late for everyone. The $100 market is saturated with HP WebOS tablets now. If anything, it's HP's loss that they're not continuing WebOS hardware, because it is in a much stronger position that any other non-Apple tablet. If enough developers looking for a quick buck start developing for it, it might even have a chance in the smartphone arena. But developers won't write for a dead-end OS, so the best thing HP could do to capitalize on this right now is start leaking next-generation WebOS device information.
Alas, I have a feeling they're just going to squander away their unexpected change in fortune by exiting the industry entirely.
The rock is also solid as hell. It's great for holding up tall buildings, but then the buildings have to be designed to absorb any and all of the shock as well.
But 12, 14, and 16 bits per channel is absolutely necessary to properly process RAW files. Until they have this support, it'll never be taken seriously by anyone who works with photographs. They'll need it if they want to be an actual competitor to Photoshop instead of a free but not-very-useful photo editing software.
32-bit channels is a bit excessive, but there's a use for it, albeit rare. They don't necessarily need to support 32-bit channels immediately, but if they're going to (eventually have to) add support for 16-bit channels, I don't a reason why they couldn't add 32-bit at the same time. However, combine the demand for 32-bits channels with the demand for 20- and 24-bit channels, and 32-bits is no longer quite that overkill.
Immediately, though, they really need full support of the ranges between 8-bit and 16-bit channels. There's no excuse not to have it after 16+ years of development.
I'd argue that trolling as a business model is nastier.
That's like saying you'd like to be just killed, as opposed to being raped and killed.
The analogy's a bit extreme, but that's effectively what patent trolls and patent aggressors (and arguably abusers) like Apple are doing; Apple's using their patents to kill any and all potential competitors, and patent trolls are raping the industry first before killing the product. A big company might shell out the extra cost of the "license" to a patent troll, but a smaller company has no chance.
In my book, both are wrong. I'm not saying there's any particular large company that's done right by the patent situation. But there's certainly a difference between offensive and defensive patent holders. Clearly, I'd prefer the (up until now anyway) latter, and I vote that way every day with my wallet.
Yes, there are legitimate patent lawsuits, and defensive patent holders can initiate them legitimately, but it's my opinion that any software patents are illegitimate, acquired via a broken system.
And then there are the passive-aggressive companies like Microsoft who stand there with a very large club threateningly while you're expected to turn around and bend over for them.
Anyway, this I think is a trademark issue, which is far more black and white than the quagmire that is patents. And when trademarks (the naming of goods) are simpler than patents (the actual goods) to deal with, there's a major problem with the underlying system for the latter.
IBM had the most successful strategy against Job's Apple, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that the same strategy would still work even today. Once the other tablet players have command of a user and developer base, they can then go ahead and up their prices as well as their tech specs.
Everybody's trying to compete with Apple on its terms, without realizing that nobody can be Apple but Apple. But that doesn't mean they can't compete with Apple at all.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall. It's all about timing and opportunity.
People thought Facebook was untouchable at some point too. Google+ is proving that sentiment wrong. If Google had released their thing a year earlier, it would have certainly flopped. If Google released their thing a year later, who knows how many other players would be out there diluting the market.
To further your boxing analogy, you might not be able to get into the ring with Apple, but that's why you draw them into the octagon and fight them there (assuming you're say, GSP).
You make a valid point, but there is a place for these articles. When marketing makes a false dichotomy by placing the iPad next to a (portable) computer and then claiming that the iPad will replace said computer, then there needs to be articles like this that remind people any comparisons between the iPad and a computer is just marketing bullcrap.
It's not a joke, or at least, it's a very real phenomenon. IT is the bastard red-headed step child of every non-technical company. Half the people view IT as a cost center. The other half thinks IT exists only to get in their way of them installing that fancy new screen saver they want on their computer.
IT is last to know because IT is never included in business meetings, never involved in any business decisions, even though IT is still somehow expected to produce the results promised from those meetings. IT is not viewed as a part of the core business, but as a luxury that can be afforded or discarded on a whim. And while corporate culture is changing, the people at the top are still as clueless as they were 30 years ago.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Cops have enormous power with little to no accountability on a normal day, and a license to kill on a good day.
It's hard to find a cop that's not corrupt in some way, shape, or form. Not to mention that there's an entire culture of cops protecting other cops, and if you don't play the same game, expect to take the fall for something you didn't do.
There are no clean cops out there, and any who go into the force with those notions are weeded out and removed quickly.
That's not to say that they aren't good people. They're just people.
This particular guy only stood by watching it happen.
I don't think you would've gotten a 45-day jail sentence if you stood by watching a cop get beaten up.
But for a cop, standing around and doing nothing while somebody gets hurt is effectively not doing his job, so that merits disciplinary measures, which the 45-day suspension was. I think he got off light, but that's because I (and everyone else should) hold them to a much higher standard of conduct considering their training and their profession in general.
That's just their AJAX unable to keep up with your typing. It registers the \n before it finishes registering the last few characters of your query.
It happens a lot to me. I don't use the search form on the page anymore. Instead, I use the search box in Firefox.
Google's taken a wrong turn in its user interface. It's one thing to include results from other relevant features in the search results itself, but a completely other thing to lay out all of their services all over their page (top and side) even when they're completely irrelevant to your current search. It needs to go back to the clean, uncluttered look and feel it used to have. Otherwise, people will (and I imagine already have) start looking for alternatives.
I find that there's no replacement for a notebook and pencil combo. You can't quite scribble or doodle on electronic screens the same way.
Other than that, everything else I regularly use on your list has been completely replaced by my phone. It's not even a smartphone, just a full-featured 2-year old phone.
Granted, I don't need or use the internet while I'm on the go, and I don't need or use a GPS in general, but other than those two specific features, even a smartphone isn't necessary.
I'll bring a nicer camera than my phone if I'm looking to take decent pictures, but that's certainly not every day or even every weekend.
But the handheld game market maybe isn't for your everyday commute. I see people play with their DS at home as much if not more than on the go. Usually, the TV is too big, occupied, or simply not personal for the kind of games that people play on their DS. And multiplayer on the TV requires players to sit in front of and stare at their little section of the TV screen, while with the DS, the same people can sit wherever they want (within a certain physical distance), with their own screen.
Handhelds sit somewhere between the ultra portable phone and the TV-attached console. I'm fairly certain these are three different markets, and there's enough distinction out there for all three to exist at the same time. Maybe in the future, smartphone and handhelds will eventually meld, but a part of me doubts it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not New York. It's DC. It's a sign somebody is unhappy with what's going on there.
New York and the rest of the eastern seaboard is just collateral damage.
I don't like reply to myself, but I forgot to clarify: They are not the same thing.
There's snow on the mountain. And then there's snow on your roof.
What's funnier is that natural disasters all necessitate approximately the same type of preparedness: water, food, and electrical source. And yet, everybody treats it like some major disaster when in all cases, it really isn't.
The "mandatory evacuation" (because while it's "mandatory," the cops aren't going door-to-door asking people to leave, and while it's an evacuation, it usually involves going a couple of blocks up the street to the nearest school that's on slightly higher ground) is really just for flooding along coastal areas. When there's flooding, emergency vehicles might have trouble reaching people in need. I emphasize might. Some communities need it more than others; the people staring into the Atlantic are at greater risk than the people looking out at Brooklyn or New Jersey or even New York Harbor. Yet it's all treated the same. Again, getting emergency services to flooded areas is the problem, not necessarily the winds or the water itself.
Now, there are bigger problems in Jersey and Long Island. They live in real houses there, that are built mostly with wood. And there's still the problem with flooding, as most of the area is quite low and flat.
In the end, most of us hunker down, ride it out, laugh it off, and chalk it up to a changing world. It's as big a deal as it would be in other places that normally get hurricanes. The media would have you think otherwise, and by that, I mean we're running around flailing our arms and proclaiming the end of the world is nigh, but I'm pretty sure apart from the usual subway preachers working their usual lines, there's none of that here. In fact, we've had worst, with the microburst and tornadoes that ripped through the area some months ago. And we already had a recent period of 24-hour non-stop raining. It's just that we can and will be prepared this time around.
People die in these things, sometimes because they do something stupid like going out to surf the swells, but sometimes also because they're unlucky when a 200 year-old tree falls on top of them. It's not a matter to be snarky over. The goal is to minimize life loss, not to point and laugh when other people are trying to attain the goal.
That's not sufficient. Even though I lack a facebook account, I know for certain my picture is there. And I'm positive people have talked about or referenced me in some way, shape or form.
All it would take is one leak for an undercover cop to be blown. And in organized crime, I can't imagine that they won't use social engineering techniques to get those friends to say something "incriminating."
Cops will just have to go back to using informants, plea deals, and their normal tools to catch their crooks.
What would help is a button on the site somewhere that says "Squash bugs" or something more mundane like "Site feedback". Hide it somewhere so that the trolls won't get to it so easily (e.g. put it behind the login wall, make only accessible with a certain level of karma, etc.).
The thing is, most of us are either not comfortable with directly communicating any of our gripes with you, the editors (this is Slashdot after all, where all the awkward, anti-social, communication-challenged individuals congregate and find like minds), or we don't know who specifically to contact to address our issues, and end up either not contacting anyone or putting out an off-topic post that more often than not gets modded (and justifiably so) off topic.
After 14 years, the feedback process has improved by several orders of magnitude especially in regards to stories, dupes, and moderation, but there's still a ways to go in this respect.
Oh, and two pennies on any future site design changes: We're geeks--the same ones who love the command line, scripting, reading and writing in assembly and C if necessary in a plain text editor, doing things the way we've always been doing them, and finding elegance in simplicity. While it's always a good thing to improve the site by adding new functionality and giving it a more modern coat of paint, it's also important to acknowledge that there is still a place for the crude and awkward Web1.0 design. Nostalgia aside, it's functional--not perfect, but does the essentials and does it well. And that's what we geeks like best.
So that's why Cowboy Neal hasn't been an option in the polls anymore.
Do you want to resign at the top or the bottom? If popularity and public perception of you is important, you'd say the top. You'll want your successes to define you, not your failures. You'll want others to know you at your best, not at your worst.
Alas, while Steve Jobs certainly knows all of this, I think his resignation may be more due to his health than any matter of perception. Being CEO is a stressful job, and having remained as CEO all this time was not really doing his already-unwell body any favors. But from his resignation letter, it might be that his health has already deteriorated to the point where it's impacting his ability to perform his duties as CEO.
Still, I think it's time he was able to enjoy the life of a retiree. If his health holds, he could always do what Bill Gates does and involve himself in less stressful management activities.
He was trying to tackle global warming via cold, hard math.
Other companies price their tables "competitively" because they're playing Apple's high-priced game. There's an automatic association of a high-priced item with class and luxury. They're afraid that by pricing too low, it's going to cost their brand association with luxury goods, when in fact, they don't and probably will never have the brand association with luxury goods in the first place.
What they don't understand is that nobody is better at being Apple than Apple. If they want to win, they need to start playing the game by their own rules. And in particular, as they can't match Apple's marketing or brand status, they need to think of how to best use their own position to win.
Unfortunately, it may be a little too late for everyone. The $100 market is saturated with HP WebOS tablets now. If anything, it's HP's loss that they're not continuing WebOS hardware, because it is in a much stronger position that any other non-Apple tablet. If enough developers looking for a quick buck start developing for it, it might even have a chance in the smartphone arena. But developers won't write for a dead-end OS, so the best thing HP could do to capitalize on this right now is start leaking next-generation WebOS device information.
Alas, I have a feeling they're just going to squander away their unexpected change in fortune by exiting the industry entirely.
That's what happens when there's no competition.
And for the humorously inclinde, yes, I am being tongue-in-cheek.
The rock is also solid as hell. It's great for holding up tall buildings, but then the buildings have to be designed to absorb any and all of the shock as well.
64-bit channels is plain ridiculous.
But 12, 14, and 16 bits per channel is absolutely necessary to properly process RAW files. Until they have this support, it'll never be taken seriously by anyone who works with photographs. They'll need it if they want to be an actual competitor to Photoshop instead of a free but not-very-useful photo editing software.
32-bit channels is a bit excessive, but there's a use for it, albeit rare. They don't necessarily need to support 32-bit channels immediately, but if they're going to (eventually have to) add support for 16-bit channels, I don't a reason why they couldn't add 32-bit at the same time. However, combine the demand for 32-bits channels with the demand for 20- and 24-bit channels, and 32-bits is no longer quite that overkill.
Immediately, though, they really need full support of the ranges between 8-bit and 16-bit channels. There's no excuse not to have it after 16+ years of development.
I'd argue that trolling as a business model is nastier.
That's like saying you'd like to be just killed, as opposed to being raped and killed.
The analogy's a bit extreme, but that's effectively what patent trolls and patent aggressors (and arguably abusers) like Apple are doing; Apple's using their patents to kill any and all potential competitors, and patent trolls are raping the industry first before killing the product. A big company might shell out the extra cost of the "license" to a patent troll, but a smaller company has no chance.
In my book, both are wrong. I'm not saying there's any particular large company that's done right by the patent situation. But there's certainly a difference between offensive and defensive patent holders. Clearly, I'd prefer the (up until now anyway) latter, and I vote that way every day with my wallet.
Yes, there are legitimate patent lawsuits, and defensive patent holders can initiate them legitimately, but it's my opinion that any software patents are illegitimate, acquired via a broken system.
And then there are the passive-aggressive companies like Microsoft who stand there with a very large club threateningly while you're expected to turn around and bend over for them.
Anyway, this I think is a trademark issue, which is far more black and white than the quagmire that is patents. And when trademarks (the naming of goods) are simpler than patents (the actual goods) to deal with, there's a major problem with the underlying system for the latter.
IBM had the most successful strategy against Job's Apple, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that the same strategy would still work even today. Once the other tablet players have command of a user and developer base, they can then go ahead and up their prices as well as their tech specs.
Everybody's trying to compete with Apple on its terms, without realizing that nobody can be Apple but Apple. But that doesn't mean they can't compete with Apple at all.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall. It's all about timing and opportunity.
People thought Facebook was untouchable at some point too. Google+ is proving that sentiment wrong. If Google had released their thing a year earlier, it would have certainly flopped. If Google released their thing a year later, who knows how many other players would be out there diluting the market.
To further your boxing analogy, you might not be able to get into the ring with Apple, but that's why you draw them into the octagon and fight them there (assuming you're say, GSP).
It was prophesied to happen.
You make a valid point, but there is a place for these articles. When marketing makes a false dichotomy by placing the iPad next to a (portable) computer and then claiming that the iPad will replace said computer, then there needs to be articles like this that remind people any comparisons between the iPad and a computer is just marketing bullcrap.
(Jokes about IT being the last to know aside)
It's not a joke, or at least, it's a very real phenomenon. IT is the bastard red-headed step child of every non-technical company. Half the people view IT as a cost center. The other half thinks IT exists only to get in their way of them installing that fancy new screen saver they want on their computer.
IT is last to know because IT is never included in business meetings, never involved in any business decisions, even though IT is still somehow expected to produce the results promised from those meetings. IT is not viewed as a part of the core business, but as a luxury that can be afforded or discarded on a whim. And while corporate culture is changing, the people at the top are still as clueless as they were 30 years ago.
Equal opportunity for Microsoft just means when they shaft their partners over (which they've done time and again), they shaft everyone over equally.
The smart executive has a contingency plan in place. The not-so-smart executive dives head-first into the bullsh--I mean koolaid.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Cops have enormous power with little to no accountability on a normal day, and a license to kill on a good day.
It's hard to find a cop that's not corrupt in some way, shape, or form. Not to mention that there's an entire culture of cops protecting other cops, and if you don't play the same game, expect to take the fall for something you didn't do.
There are no clean cops out there, and any who go into the force with those notions are weeded out and removed quickly.
That's not to say that they aren't good people. They're just people.
This particular guy only stood by watching it happen.
I don't think you would've gotten a 45-day jail sentence if you stood by watching a cop get beaten up.
But for a cop, standing around and doing nothing while somebody gets hurt is effectively not doing his job, so that merits disciplinary measures, which the 45-day suspension was. I think he got off light, but that's because I (and everyone else should) hold them to a much higher standard of conduct considering their training and their profession in general.
"Showing results for "unted states weather ra"
That's just their AJAX unable to keep up with your typing. It registers the \n before it finishes registering the last few characters of your query.
It happens a lot to me. I don't use the search form on the page anymore. Instead, I use the search box in Firefox.
Google's taken a wrong turn in its user interface. It's one thing to include results from other relevant features in the search results itself, but a completely other thing to lay out all of their services all over their page (top and side) even when they're completely irrelevant to your current search. It needs to go back to the clean, uncluttered look and feel it used to have. Otherwise, people will (and I imagine already have) start looking for alternatives.
Guess I better stop riding and turn into an obese blob for the sake of the environment.
For the sake of the environment, you'd need to stop eating too, since that has a carbon footprint.
The whole idea is ridiculous because all paths lead to the ultimate conclusion of ending it all and saving the world from your carbon footsteps.
I find that there's no replacement for a notebook and pencil combo. You can't quite scribble or doodle on electronic screens the same way.
Other than that, everything else I regularly use on your list has been completely replaced by my phone. It's not even a smartphone, just a full-featured 2-year old phone.
Granted, I don't need or use the internet while I'm on the go, and I don't need or use a GPS in general, but other than those two specific features, even a smartphone isn't necessary.
I'll bring a nicer camera than my phone if I'm looking to take decent pictures, but that's certainly not every day or even every weekend.
But the handheld game market maybe isn't for your everyday commute. I see people play with their DS at home as much if not more than on the go. Usually, the TV is too big, occupied, or simply not personal for the kind of games that people play on their DS. And multiplayer on the TV requires players to sit in front of and stare at their little section of the TV screen, while with the DS, the same people can sit wherever they want (within a certain physical distance), with their own screen.
Handhelds sit somewhere between the ultra portable phone and the TV-attached console. I'm fairly certain these are three different markets, and there's enough distinction out there for all three to exist at the same time. Maybe in the future, smartphone and handhelds will eventually meld, but a part of me doubts it.