In Fight Club, there is a scene in the beginning where Ed Norton is explaining how they determine the possibility of a car recall by tallying up the amount paid out to owners of faulty vehicles vs the total cost of recall. It turns out that the value they came up with for each life lost to the vehicle fault is very small.
The value of lousy IT and a data breach is less than the value of good IT and full protection, so it's cheaper to just stick with lousy IT and handle issues as they come than to face it all up front with the added costs involved. It's also why "IT professionals" are the lowest paid screwdriver monkeys in the business, at least compared to other programmers.
Their pay both pale in comparison to executive pay, but it's hard to compare the value of brains vs technical smarts.
Borderline stuff is the problem. How do you categorize Mapplethorpe's stuff? Worse, does the work of someone like Araki, which is frequently without any artistic sensibilities at all and very very lewd, get put into the xxx domain because it is sexually suggestive, or in the.com domain because it is art from a renowned artist?
I'd say a case by case scrutinization and judgement is necessary, but I don't know who I would trust on such a panel.
If the current is pulling all that energy from the warm waters up north and dissipating it in the process, what will happen to all the excess warmth if the current stops? Will it find another way to go? Maybe create a new current or even restart the same current again? That heat has to go somewhere, it is water after all.
Repossession is not a joke
on
High-Tech RepoMan
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Repo men, whatever you think about their profession, risk their lives daily in order to prevent auto theft, which in a way is what failing to pay car payments is.
It isn't even like loan companies send out the repo man after your first failure to pay. You typically get several months of haggling and pleading before the loan company has no other alternative but to send someone out to repossess the automobile. And the repo man is frequently in danger from people who don't have enough money to pay the loan companies but usually enough to buy bullets.
Using a technical measure to disable cars, making them useless to the owner, is a great idea. It works with drunk drivers and car thieves. Just kill the engine and the car isn't going anywhere. The loan company can then repossess the car at their leisure, along with adding extra pressure on the defaulting "owner" to pay.
The real bottom line is not to over-extend your finances. Try to buy large items like cars with cash. The worst monetary investment you can make is to take out a loan to pay for a car you can't afford.
I find the hot water running out after the fourth person hops out of the shower to be rather inconvenient. Gas is definitely the way to go if you can get it.
Microwave might also be good, but should water be superheated to 140 degrees? That's a Fark headline waiting to happen.
Whether or not "brightness == quality", the screens of Apple laptops that I've seen (I haven't seen them all, I admit) have been dimmer and less sharp than a comparable Windows laptop. In a word, the Mac laptop screens look outdated.
Maybe these screens are actually better. But my eyes tell me differently.
Could be a power management decision, but the 1997 LCD screen just looks bad, in my opinion.
When I look at them side by side, the PC laptop screen looks brighter, clearer, like I am looking out of a clear window. The Mac laptop looks like my old 8lbs Toshiba Satellite from years back.
Other than that, though, I don't really have any complaints, and mostly have high praise for the devices. Still, for a "premium" product, a better screen would be nice.
I just wish they'd use a better screen. Comparing Mac laptops to Windows laptops is like night and day, literally. The Mac laptops have such dim screens compared to the laptops that are available for Windows.
I suppose it keeps the cost down, but if there is one area that really ought not be skimped on (especially for machines meant to be used by graphic designers), the LCD monitor is it, in my opinion.
Re:GCC is the Key to Open Source's Success
on
GCC 4.1 Released
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Free Software is a subset of Open Source Software, so to say that GCC is Open Source is absolutely correct, if perhaps more general than RMS would prefer.
You would make the butt of jokes anyone who tried to demand that you call Roma tomatoes "Roma Tomatoes" every single time you referred to them instead of referring to them generally as tomatoes. It simply does not make any difference to anyone what you call them as long as you get the point across that the thing in question falls into a certain group. You can make that group as broad as you want or as narrow as you want, but there is a happy medium where the label is non-offensive and clear to any and all that hear it. Going too narrow may provide more information but at a loss of understanding to your audience.
RMS is in error here, but not because he thinks that software designated Free Software ought not be referred to as Open Source software, but because he thinks that anyone cares.
Whatever happened to the good old days of pumping soldiers full of angel dust to rid them of fear?
The non-military uses for such a treatment are pretty far-reaching. Would it be able to cure people that suffer anxiety attacks? Could children with night terrors be cured?
If the rats don't feel fear, do they also lose understanding of danger? That would be a pretty bad mutation.
Exclusive licensing does not necessarily give the licensee the right to sublicense the work. Transfer of copyright means the transfer of all rights to the one on the receiving end.
Not to mention that exclusive licensing may also be limited to a particular country, thus allowing a copyright holder to sign exclusive licensing agreements with multiple partners in different countries and expanding royalty income while reducing his legal liability. The deals may (and often do) require that the licensee prosecute any unlicensed distribution within the covered country.
I don't think the Founding Fathers' opinion is relevant beyond the point that they believed that Speech ought to be Free.
In addition, money does not vote, nor does the abundance of money increase the number of votes allotted to any one citizen. The poor college student has the same one vote that the rich oil tycoon has.
What is it you want to prevent? Voter fraud? That has nothing to do with campaign financing.
If you are saying that monetary contributors to campaigns ought to be restricted because of the possibility of "buying politicians", then should you also go so far as to prevent those contributors from paying for advertisements themselves? Should you prevent anyone with a political opinion from distributing that opinion?
The key issue here is the erosion of the Freedom of Speech. It is not about the corruption of politicians. If you want to bring the opinions of the Founding Fathers into this, I think you will find that they were rather in favor of citizens being able to speak their opinions, especially political opinions, and created the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America in order to prevent the government from creating laws that restricted speech.
Because some people think that there ought to be limits to Free Speech, it is required that government define exactly what types of Free Speech are really free and which ones ought not be so free.
McCain/Feingold campaign finance laws, which limit the Freedom of Speech of anyone with a political opinion, forces us to define what types of speech should remain legal.
It's sad and disappointing.
Robust == Robust flavor? This is incorrect
on
Drink Decaf and Die
·
· Score: 5, Informative
From the article:
quote: "Whether coffee has caffeine is not the only thing that differentiates caffeinated from decaffeinated types," Superko said. "Caffeinated and decaffeinated coffees are often made from different species of beans. Caffeinated coffee, by and large, comes from a bean species called coffee Arabica, while many decaffeinated coffees are made from coffee Robusta. The decaffeination process can extract flavonoids and ingredients that give coffee flavor. So decaffeinated brands usually use a bean that has a more robust flavor." / end quote
Robusto is named not because it has a more robust flavor than Arabica, but because it is a hardier species. In fact, the taste of robusto coffee is so heinous that only people without the sense to drink freshly ground coffee are susceptible to this travesty. I suppose that also includes decaf drinkers, but it also includes those who drink freeze dried coffees and mass produced brown powder that comes in cans.
To be blunt, Starbucks coffee would actually be a step up in quality from robusto beans.
In the same way that you can train a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell, you can train people to react in certain ways to various stimuli. That's not drugs, that's Pavlov.
Gamers (and, dare I say it, many web surfers) have trained themselves to forego real work and real life in favor of a game. In fact, games are especially conducive to this kind of training. The reward/punishment system is more or less random which increases the players' propensity to keep at it in hopes of success.
Rats who are fed every time they press a button will only press the button when they are hungry. However rats that are fed sometimes and not fed other times when they press a button will press the button all day long.
Slashdot Mirror
In Fight Club, there is a scene in the beginning where Ed Norton is explaining how they determine the possibility of a car recall by tallying up the amount paid out to owners of faulty vehicles vs the total cost of recall. It turns out that the value they came up with for each life lost to the vehicle fault is very small.
The value of lousy IT and a data breach is less than the value of good IT and full protection, so it's cheaper to just stick with lousy IT and handle issues as they come than to face it all up front with the added costs involved. It's also why "IT professionals" are the lowest paid screwdriver monkeys in the business, at least compared to other programmers.
Their pay both pale in comparison to executive pay, but it's hard to compare the value of brains vs technical smarts.
Borderline stuff is the problem. How do you categorize Mapplethorpe's stuff? Worse, does the work of someone like Araki, which is frequently without any artistic sensibilities at all and very very lewd, get put into the xxx domain because it is sexually suggestive, or in the .com domain because it is art from a renowned artist?
I'd say a case by case scrutinization and judgement is necessary, but I don't know who I would trust on such a panel.
General Franco STILL DEAD!
The guy walks from DC to New York in one day, in the snow, uphill, both ways to rescue his son.
If the current is pulling all that energy from the warm waters up north and dissipating it in the process, what will happen to all the excess warmth if the current stops? Will it find another way to go? Maybe create a new current or even restart the same current again? That heat has to go somewhere, it is water after all.
Repo men, whatever you think about their profession, risk their lives daily in order to prevent auto theft, which in a way is what failing to pay car payments is.
It isn't even like loan companies send out the repo man after your first failure to pay. You typically get several months of haggling and pleading before the loan company has no other alternative but to send someone out to repossess the automobile. And the repo man is frequently in danger from people who don't have enough money to pay the loan companies but usually enough to buy bullets.
Using a technical measure to disable cars, making them useless to the owner, is a great idea. It works with drunk drivers and car thieves. Just kill the engine and the car isn't going anywhere. The loan company can then repossess the car at their leisure, along with adding extra pressure on the defaulting "owner" to pay.
The real bottom line is not to over-extend your finances. Try to buy large items like cars with cash. The worst monetary investment you can make is to take out a loan to pay for a car you can't afford.
My mistake. I never thought I'd see Farenheit used on a technical message board, so I automatically thought 140 degrees was superheated water.
That'll learn me to pay attention.
I find the hot water running out after the fourth person hops out of the shower to be rather inconvenient. Gas is definitely the way to go if you can get it.
Microwave might also be good, but should water be superheated to 140 degrees? That's a Fark headline waiting to happen.
Whether or not "brightness == quality", the screens of Apple laptops that I've seen (I haven't seen them all, I admit) have been dimmer and less sharp than a comparable Windows laptop. In a word, the Mac laptop screens look outdated.
Maybe these screens are actually better. But my eyes tell me differently.
Could be a power management decision, but the 1997 LCD screen just looks bad, in my opinion.
When I look at them side by side, the PC laptop screen looks brighter, clearer, like I am looking out of a clear window. The Mac laptop looks like my old 8lbs Toshiba Satellite from years back.
Other than that, though, I don't really have any complaints, and mostly have high praise for the devices. Still, for a "premium" product, a better screen would be nice.
I just wish they'd use a better screen. Comparing Mac laptops to Windows laptops is like night and day, literally. The Mac laptops have such dim screens compared to the laptops that are available for Windows.
I suppose it keeps the cost down, but if there is one area that really ought not be skimped on (especially for machines meant to be used by graphic designers), the LCD monitor is it, in my opinion.
Free Software is a subset of Open Source Software, so to say that GCC is Open Source is absolutely correct, if perhaps more general than RMS would prefer.
You would make the butt of jokes anyone who tried to demand that you call Roma tomatoes "Roma Tomatoes" every single time you referred to them instead of referring to them generally as tomatoes. It simply does not make any difference to anyone what you call them as long as you get the point across that the thing in question falls into a certain group. You can make that group as broad as you want or as narrow as you want, but there is a happy medium where the label is non-offensive and clear to any and all that hear it. Going too narrow may provide more information but at a loss of understanding to your audience.
RMS is in error here, but not because he thinks that software designated Free Software ought not be referred to as Open Source software, but because he thinks that anyone cares.
quote
what (if any) implications will this have on OO.o?
/ quote
You probably won't be able to link it anymore. You'll have to rebuild from source.
You'd never know it by the link provided that there was anything special about this release.
I am interested in how well it supports ARM5, seeing as how it was dropped as the recommended compiler for certain platforms.
1. Yes.
2. Office Depot
It's the process of dissolving the PCP into a liquid form (for injection or other use) that is a fire hazard.
http://www.drugs.com/PCP/
http://healthinmind.com/english/PCPabuse.htm
Whatever happened to the good old days of pumping soldiers full of angel dust to rid them of fear?
The non-military uses for such a treatment are pretty far-reaching. Would it be able to cure people that suffer anxiety attacks? Could children with night terrors be cured?
If the rats don't feel fear, do they also lose understanding of danger? That would be a pretty bad mutation.
Exclusive licensing does not necessarily give the licensee the right to sublicense the work. Transfer of copyright means the transfer of all rights to the one on the receiving end.
Not to mention that exclusive licensing may also be limited to a particular country, thus allowing a copyright holder to sign exclusive licensing agreements with multiple partners in different countries and expanding royalty income while reducing his legal liability. The deals may (and often do) require that the licensee prosecute any unlicensed distribution within the covered country.
I don't think the Founding Fathers' opinion is relevant beyond the point that they believed that Speech ought to be Free.
In addition, money does not vote, nor does the abundance of money increase the number of votes allotted to any one citizen. The poor college student has the same one vote that the rich oil tycoon has.
What is it you want to prevent? Voter fraud? That has nothing to do with campaign financing.
If you are saying that monetary contributors to campaigns ought to be restricted because of the possibility of "buying politicians", then should you also go so far as to prevent those contributors from paying for advertisements themselves? Should you prevent anyone with a political opinion from distributing that opinion?
The key issue here is the erosion of the Freedom of Speech. It is not about the corruption of politicians. If you want to bring the opinions of the Founding Fathers into this, I think you will find that they were rather in favor of citizens being able to speak their opinions, especially political opinions, and created the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America in order to prevent the government from creating laws that restricted speech.
How's that First Amendment working out for us?
Because some people think that there ought to be limits to Free Speech, it is required that government define exactly what types of Free Speech are really free and which ones ought not be so free.
McCain/Feingold campaign finance laws, which limit the Freedom of Speech of anyone with a political opinion, forces us to define what types of speech should remain legal.
It's sad and disappointing.
From the article:
quote:
"Whether coffee has caffeine is not the only thing that differentiates caffeinated from decaffeinated types," Superko said. "Caffeinated and decaffeinated coffees are often made from different species of beans. Caffeinated coffee, by and large, comes from a bean species called coffee Arabica, while many decaffeinated coffees are made from coffee Robusta. The decaffeination process can extract flavonoids and ingredients that give coffee flavor. So decaffeinated brands usually use a bean that has a more robust flavor."
/ end quote
Robusto is named not because it has a more robust flavor than Arabica, but because it is a hardier species. In fact, the taste of robusto coffee is so heinous that only people without the sense to drink freshly ground coffee are susceptible to this travesty. I suppose that also includes decaf drinkers, but it also includes those who drink freeze dried coffees and mass produced brown powder that comes in cans.
To be blunt, Starbucks coffee would actually be a step up in quality from robusto beans.
In the same way that you can train a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell, you can train people to react in certain ways to various stimuli. That's not drugs, that's Pavlov.
Gamers (and, dare I say it, many web surfers) have trained themselves to forego real work and real life in favor of a game. In fact, games are especially conducive to this kind of training. The reward/punishment system is more or less random which increases the players' propensity to keep at it in hopes of success.
Rats who are fed every time they press a button will only press the button when they are hungry. However rats that are fed sometimes and not fed other times when they press a button will press the button all day long.