Rail is great..for rail companies. Unlike public roads, our rail system is essentially a monopoly, since they're private and we're not building any more of them.
but they're not sufficient, not by any chance. For each 1000 men with enough will to work hard, 999 will fail and return to being an employee (with luck without losing theirs or others' houses).
I quite agree. It's possible, with good planning and a solid business proposal to make an attempt at the golden ribbon, not a win, just an attempt, with quite a high chance of failure.
Just like tons of software developers (to put it into your perspective) spend their midnight hours at a startup vs the google engineers that actually got paid for it in stock options...the big difference is in the former case you're gambling essentially everything. In the latter you are still getting paid, at least up until they become completely insolvent. Bigger risk = bigger reward. I'm fine with that....At least up until the point where they're (and their corporations) paying less taxes due to political ah..'donations'..
I'd argue that big media is contributing roughly equally to both campaigns, though weighted more to Republicans these days thanks to Limbaugh's radio empire and News Corp. And frankly of the big special interest lobbies I like the unions the most: they're largely responsible for the 40 hour work week, child labor laws, and workplace safety, among other important rights that we take for granted these days
Big media meaning Hollywood/Disney/IP Law. Most special interests donate to both parties, it's just a question of ratios.
As for unions, I agree that in the past they were responsible for a lot of good things. But that was 50+ years ago. Now they are an anachronism. Unless you're a government employee the chances of you being in a union are 0.002%.
In my city police and firefighters are pulling in in excess of $110k and full (85% of full salary) pensions + medical for them and their spouses after 20 years. That's just retarded for jobs that don't even require a college degree. Our fire chief retired this year with $280k in retirement, and is now 'consulting' for the department at a rate of $200k as the intern chief.
There's plenty of prior art, but just to throw some gasoline on the fire, my Microsoft Sidewinder mouse has 11 buttons, customizable weighting, a scroll wheel, macros and an LCD display.
Once upon a time I had an Apple with a 1 button mouse and it was the best thing ever, but that was a Mac 512e (with 2 floppy drives!) and it was the year 1988. Times have changed.
Absolutely, thanks for correcting me on this. This is also why stealing phones is not a big issue (for most phones there is no easy way to spoof/update the IMEI)..see also Cloning
Look, Democrats aren't really all that "good" a party either; some of their constituencies, especially trial lawyers, frighten the heck out of me. But don't tell me the Democrats and Republicans are the same. I know better.
I didn't exactly say they were the same, except in that they're quite commonly rich lawyers in bed with corporate America/special interest groups.
On the Democratic side you have big media/unions, on the Republican side you have big oil/big pharma. Both of them would like to expand government and take away individual rights. Each party just wants to take away different ones.
How about instead of snark, you contact your senators and representative, and vote for liberals (that's liberals, not Democrats) whenever possible? There are people in government trying to block this, you know. Hell, it'd already be law if not for Senator Wyden.
My senators and representatives? What am I, Comcast?
There may be the odd politician that will throw us a bone, but given the current electoral vetting process you can be damn sure that most of them never even make it onto the ballot. I do vote, but when it comes down to it Democrats and Republicans are just two heads of the same hydra.
Because if they didn't there would be no decent dev handsets. The likes of Motorolla, Sumsung and HTC sure don't look to interested in platform building, they just want to shift some phones. You could say the fact Google has to release its own handsets shows the fragility of Android as a platform with only Google pushing the platform and their partners just pushing phones (and thus not caring about old versions, upgradeability, etc.)
I agree. They need legitimate dev phones. There certainly are plenty of non-Motorola android phones that can be flashed to a custom OS. But only after exploits are found... The EVO had one at release, the Incredible had one within what, 4 months? Samsung Galaxy didn't have one at it's European release but it had one before the North American release(as the Vibrant/Fascinate/Epic/etc)...all plenty powerful phones, but legitimate is not a word I would use to describe them.
In the GSM world, carriers don't get to decide which devices are allowed on their networks. They get to issue subscribers (people) with identification modules (SIM), which can be placed into any compatible device (phone, computer, or otherwise) and the device can then authenticate and talk to the network.
Yes and no. Yes you can take a SIM and plug it into any random GSM phone. BUT your model id is passed to the carrier when you use it. If they see an id that doesn't match your registered device/isn't one they support they can lock out your phone, send you bills, and/or whatever their craptastic EULA happens to say.
More importantly, you only need these dongles / hacked save-game states / mod-chips (how most consoles are unlocked) because we don't have a way to sign media as genuine. Once you have that then it's totally simple to root anything. Sony might still be able to blacklist your console from their store/network but other than that I don't see that they have any other cards left to play.
And I'll agree to a point. Sony didn't lock out otherOS until developers came up with a way of running iso images from it. Either way I expect to see some damn nice emulators in the next 12 months and I totally owe those guys a beer.
Okay, I'll give you 12 months. The difference is negligible. The techniques used to root the PS3 are so fundamental and well-known that it was largely a matter of trying them out. There was nothing revolutionary here, it was just a matter of people with sufficient expertise and resources becoming motivated to spend the time to do the necessary work.
I'll agree that this happens, but that's not what I'm referring to. We're talking upwards of 50% more for the same exact drugs. If we had single payer health care there is no way that would stand.
Thats because of insurance. A simple example of this is is a case where two different drugs have both proven effective against a specific medical problem. Lets use antibiotics. One antibiotic might be just slightly more effective than another at the specific infection, so the doctor always prescribes that one regardless of the cost differential between them because he is covering his own ass.
Its not his dime and its not your dime.. its a corporations dime.. probably located in Connecticut.. and that corporation spreads the inefficiency out over all of its customers.. a tragedy of the commons.
I agree that insurance hides the true cost of medical care. I'll also point out that that cost is inflated to subsidize the medicare system, since they pay a fraction of the true 'market rate'.
Unfortunately there are several problems here.
1. Drug companies can charge high premiums for products in the United States. Other countries pay less than 50% of our cost for the same medication. This should have been part of the bill, but Obama made a deal with the devil (big Pharma) to get this passed in the first place.
2. In countries with socialized medicine wouldn't the same thing be true? The only reason costs are so high here is because multiple-payer systems allow for it. My co-pays have gone up enough ($30/visit) that I won't see a doctor on an idle whim (not that I ever did to begin with).
Incidentally, countries with socialized medicine have no problem bearing the burden of terminal diseases since everyone pays into the system and they've eliminated the middlemen...aka drug company surcharges and private insurers.
3. If it weren't profitable, why would insurance companies choose to operate now? It's not mandatory. I'll agree that the law should have the clause that requires insurance, but if you're saying they should be able to drop people because they get an expensive disease (cancer, aids, etc) that's a really hard sell for me.
The problem is insurance itself. I go to the doctor.. I dont ask how much it costs.. I only ask how much it costs me, because I paid my premiums and goddamnit I'm not shopping around for lower costs when my co-pay is going to be exactly the same regardless of who I go to. Another test? Sure why the fuck not. Hey.. my elbow has also been bothering me.. can you take a look? Then I head off to the pharmacy and against I dont bother generic vs non-generic.. my co-pay is the same.. gimme the name brand..
Probably the bit about invalidating the entire law and not just sections of it. It's completely unreasonable that insurance companies can drop coverage once they consider you a 'bad risk'. If you get cancer that shouldn't bankrupt you and your whole family just so they can post bigger profits. That's why you bought insurance in the first place right?
But oh nos! Consumer rights=socialism.
Yet in a bizarre twist, this "young Republican" struck down the part of the law inserted for the benefit of the insurance companies. So the rest of the bill stands and people cannot be turned down due to pre-existing conditions, but they don't have to buy insurance until they are sick. Or am I not getting something?
So you're planning to fire Guido van Rossum too? He and Brian Reid should form a club/class action suit.
Carousel is a lie, there is no renewal!
It's hilarious how clueless you and most of Slashdot are. At Google, we're actually writing more Java code than ever, and Python is slowly being phased out.
This is in fact no different than europe->n. america. For a long time we didn't have any proper foundries in the united states, so all of our steel tools had to come from europe.
On the other hand, sending a lot of stuff by ship is a heck of a lot easier than boosting it into orbit. At $15000 per pound of payload that adds up kind of quick.
becomes: "Without constant shipments of food, and many other supplies;"
plenty of base elements to grow food; iron, calcium, potassium, in martian soil
becomes: "Without constant shipments of many other supplies;"
well yes they can't make everything. I agree that the europe->n. america was a much easier jump than earth -> mars... but it can be done. It is a question of WILL.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that HD-DVD wasn't Microsoft's invention and the BluRay/HD war was in full swing when they designed their console. It's just that their format lost and Sony's won.
This is no different in principal than the PS3 motion controls. They're both trying to capitalize on the light-gun/motion controller market since that is extinct since the CRT/owned by the Wii.
I am by no means a fanboy of any console, but Microsoft is at least trying to do something much cooler than the 6-axis. I for one would love to see a modern console with proper motion controls
(sorry Wii, but you're essentially a Gamecube with a reworked power-glove. Control is great, but CPU/Video performance-wise it isn't even comparable)
Both consoles lack compelling titles since they are expensive add-ons that people won't necessarily buy. It's like the Sega 32x all over again. Addons create console fragmentation and developers won't cater to it since they won't be guaranteed sufficient customers to make a profit.
That's only because they didn't find any container ships to ransom. Oh wait, we're not talking about Somalia are we?
Hardly any pirates ever commanded a ship that big or well-armed... excepting outliers like Morgan, Drake or Teach (and, frankly, they mostly fit the bill as well) virtually all of them were low-rent criminals and thugs going after small un-armed merchant craft just to keep the crew from starvation. Few of them were particularly competent fighters or sailors, and the majority died swift, painful deaths after a very brief career.
Of course, it makes for a much less compelling movie if you've only got 5-10 half-starved men on a small boat carrying 2 guns and only enough powder and shot for one and a half volleys, running away from anything that has an actual soldier aboard and mostly plundering ships that immediately surrender because they are simply too small to fight and fail to run away. The reality isn't even approximate to the fantasy.
"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw light upon their crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe."
Abraham Lincoln
It is unfortunate that the people in power are also merchants and accountants. They will be more apt to respect the chess moves; while those of us who see the larger game in Go-- looking at the whole of the board, seeing how this move doesn't just change this area for the next few moves but alters future positions until the very end of the game dozens of moves later-- will see these chess moves as short-sighted self-serving drivel, and see the larger game taking better shape only if more care and consideration is taken before playing any move
The wildlife biologists have been struggling with what to do about the white-nose syndrome fungus that is wiping out bat populations for years.
Not much good news on either front.
I expect that if the existing bat populations succumb we can import foreign bats to fill their missing niche. The question is how long it will take for that to happen.
Likewise in the case of bees, there are plenty of other insects that can pollinate plants, bees just happen to be the most convenient since they all congregate back in their hive/box for easy transportation. There are other options, they just aren't as cheap...
We didn't have modern graphics cards back then, so building things out of triangles on the fly was not going to happen. Plus Half-Life doesn't have any chainsaws, so it loses by default.
Doom looks like a bunch of cardboard cutouts anymore. Quaint? Surely. But to say that something like Doom 3 or Half-Life is not superior then I think you must have a really funny idea
You could also pay around $100 for a Athlon X4. Price wise AMD is a huge bargain, but an Intel i5 (with a mere 4 cores and no hyper-threading) is still faster.
So essentially you pay $205 to get a 6-core CPU and a new motherboard. That's a very good price to make the leap to 6-cores.
Slashdot Mirror
Rail is great..for rail companies. Unlike public roads, our rail system is essentially a monopoly, since they're private and we're not building any more of them.
That's right. First you're downloading pirated video games and then you're dealing crack and running over little kids. It's a gateway crime.
I quite agree. It's possible, with good planning and a solid business proposal to make an attempt at the golden ribbon, not a win, just an attempt, with quite a high chance of failure. Just like tons of software developers (to put it into your perspective) spend their midnight hours at a startup vs the google engineers that actually got paid for it in stock options...the big difference is in the former case you're gambling essentially everything. In the latter you are still getting paid, at least up until they become completely insolvent. Bigger risk = bigger reward. I'm fine with that. ...At least up until the point where they're (and their corporations) paying less taxes due to political ah..'donations'..
Big media meaning Hollywood/Disney/IP Law. Most special interests donate to both parties, it's just a question of ratios.
As for unions, I agree that in the past they were responsible for a lot of good things. But that was 50+ years ago. Now they are an anachronism. Unless you're a government employee the chances of you being in a union are 0.002%.
In my city police and firefighters are pulling in in excess of $110k and full (85% of full salary) pensions + medical for them and their spouses after 20 years. That's just retarded for jobs that don't even require a college degree. Our fire chief retired this year with $280k in retirement, and is now 'consulting' for the department at a rate of $200k as the intern chief.
There's plenty of prior art, but just to throw some gasoline on the fire, my Microsoft Sidewinder mouse has 11 buttons, customizable weighting, a scroll wheel, macros and an LCD display.
Once upon a time I had an Apple with a 1 button mouse and it was the best thing ever, but that was a Mac 512e (with 2 floppy drives!) and it was the year 1988. Times have changed.
Absolutely, thanks for correcting me on this. This is also why stealing phones is not a big issue (for most phones there is no easy way to spoof/update the IMEI)..see also Cloning
I didn't exactly say they were the same, except in that they're quite commonly rich lawyers in bed with corporate America/special interest groups.
On the Democratic side you have big media/unions, on the Republican side you have big oil/big pharma. Both of them would like to expand government and take away individual rights. Each party just wants to take away different ones.
My senators and representatives? What am I, Comcast?
There may be the odd politician that will throw us a bone, but given the current electoral vetting process you can be damn sure that most of them never even make it onto the ballot. I do vote, but when it comes down to it Democrats and Republicans are just two heads of the same hydra.
I agree. They need legitimate dev phones. There certainly are plenty of non-Motorola android phones that can be flashed to a custom OS. But only after exploits are found... The EVO had one at release, the Incredible had one within what, 4 months? Samsung Galaxy didn't have one at it's European release but it had one before the North American release(as the Vibrant/Fascinate/Epic/etc)...all plenty powerful phones, but legitimate is not a word I would use to describe them.
Yes and no. Yes you can take a SIM and plug it into any random GSM phone. BUT your model id is passed to the carrier when you use it. If they see an id that doesn't match your registered device/isn't one they support they can lock out your phone, send you bills, and/or whatever their craptastic EULA happens to say.
Soylent Green is weevil
And I'll agree to a point. Sony didn't lock out otherOS until developers came up with a way of running iso images from it. Either way I expect to see some damn nice emulators in the next 12 months and I totally owe those guys a beer.
Unfortunately there are several problems here.
1. Drug companies can charge high premiums for products in the United States. Other countries pay less than 50% of our cost for the same medication. This should have been part of the bill, but Obama made a deal with the devil (big Pharma) to get this passed in the first place.
2. In countries with socialized medicine wouldn't the same thing be true? The only reason costs are so high here is because multiple-payer systems allow for it. My co-pays have gone up enough ($30/visit) that I won't see a doctor on an idle whim (not that I ever did to begin with).
Incidentally, countries with socialized medicine have no problem bearing the burden of terminal diseases since everyone pays into the system and they've eliminated the middlemen...aka drug company surcharges and private insurers.
3. If it weren't profitable, why would insurance companies choose to operate now? It's not mandatory. I'll agree that the law should have the clause that requires insurance, but if you're saying they should be able to drop people because they get an expensive disease (cancer, aids, etc) that's a really hard sell for me.
But oh nos! Consumer rights=socialism.
Carousel is a lie, there is no renewal!
On the other hand, sending a lot of stuff by ship is a heck of a lot easier than boosting it into orbit. At $15000 per pound of payload that adds up kind of quick.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that HD-DVD wasn't Microsoft's invention and the BluRay/HD war was in full swing when they designed their console. It's just that their format lost and Sony's won.
This is no different in principal than the PS3 motion controls. They're both trying to capitalize on the light-gun/motion controller market since that is extinct since the CRT/owned by the Wii.
I am by no means a fanboy of any console, but Microsoft is at least trying to do something much cooler than the 6-axis. I for one would love to see a modern console with proper motion controls (sorry Wii, but you're essentially a Gamecube with a reworked power-glove. Control is great, but CPU/Video performance-wise it isn't even comparable)
Both consoles lack compelling titles since they are expensive add-ons that people won't necessarily buy. It's like the Sega 32x all over again. Addons create console fragmentation and developers won't cater to it since they won't be guaranteed sufficient customers to make a profit.
Hardly any pirates ever commanded a ship that big or well-armed... excepting outliers like Morgan, Drake or Teach (and, frankly, they mostly fit the bill as well) virtually all of them were low-rent criminals and thugs going after small un-armed merchant craft just to keep the crew from starvation. Few of them were particularly competent fighters or sailors, and the majority died swift, painful deaths after a very brief career.
Of course, it makes for a much less compelling movie if you've only got 5-10 half-starved men on a small boat carrying 2 guns and only enough powder and shot for one and a half volleys, running away from anything that has an actual soldier aboard and mostly plundering ships that immediately surrender because they are simply too small to fight and fail to run away. The reality isn't even approximate to the fantasy.
Abraham Lincoln
It is unfortunate that the people in power are also merchants and accountants. They will be more apt to respect the chess moves; while those of us who see the larger game in Go-- looking at the whole of the board, seeing how this move doesn't just change this area for the next few moves but alters future positions until the very end of the game dozens of moves later-- will see these chess moves as short-sighted self-serving drivel, and see the larger game taking better shape only if more care and consideration is taken before playing any move
I expect that if the existing bat populations succumb we can import foreign bats to fill their missing niche. The question is how long it will take for that to happen. Likewise in the case of bees, there are plenty of other insects that can pollinate plants, bees just happen to be the most convenient since they all congregate back in their hive/box for easy transportation. There are other options, they just aren't as cheap...
A. largely tied to GPU, not CPU performance
B. largely single/dual threaded
But it's a free country, feel free to overcompensate...