As a consumer I go to Google to obtain answers to my questions. If a website is an advertisement vehicle dressed as content but containing little substance then it isn't valuable to me. If it isn't valuable why would I want it at the top of my search results? If the company responsible for a web site has demonstrated it will do whatever it can to cheat it's way to the top of the results then it places the value of its content into question. Questionable content is also not valuable to me... why would I want it at the top of my search results? If Google catered to businesses trying to make a buck rather than its users, it wouldn't have any. Google's popularity stems from the value it provides its users. In both my eyes and Googles, the rank at which a web site deserves to be placed in search results should be based upon the value I would place in it's content. If you are not in the business of providing valuable content I don't want to see you in my results.
Having just taken a look at your web site (assuming it's your "homepage") I can tell you that I wouldn't want it to be at the top of my results. The sheer volume of advertisements (powered by Google I see) and the prominence of those advertisements relative to the content (the ads are in the center and the content squished to the left) not to mention those obnoxious "pop-overs" ruins it for me. If your rankings have fallen then I'd say their algorithms are doing their job serving me the consumer.
It's not that clear cut. Yes you can look at the algorithms, but that is not the whole issue. Also at issue is whether or not Google is a monopoly. If Google is not a monopoly then it doesn't matter if their algorithms give preference to Google products. I'm not entirely sure that Google can be said to be a monopoly since there's Bing and Baidu which claim a significant share of the search market and along with a sizable number of smaller providers. Consumers are free to choose whomever they like and competitors can readily enter the market.
I'm not sure what you mean. Don't kid yourself. Germany isn't the only one monitoring the communications of its citizens. In reality, it would be easier to come up with a list of countries that do NOT monitor. On that very, very short list you should not be surprised when you note the absence of the first world nations, nor that it is comprised almost entirely of third-world nations. The fact that Germany actually openly admits it is a feather in their cap. Everyone does it, Germany just has the decency to be forthright about it.
All an iPod is is an over priced flash drive. Who actually uses it for anything other than a music storage device? Most of the time you either "dock" it or you just use your smart phone instead when you're on the go.
If the entire planet was made of solid gold... It would cause the planet to have such a high mass as to make it impossible to attain escape velocity and return with it.
In this case the "car" analogy doesn't work. You might be able to get away with a tractor-trailer tire analogy where one tire on a dually blows but that's probably as close as you can get. The Falcon 9 is designed to complete successfully with multiple engine-outs. Late in first-stage flight they actually shut two of them down as part of normal operations to keep acceleration at 5Gs. You cannot however, drag your trailer around by the so-called "safety" chains let alone get to your destination that way.
There was nothing wrong with the insertion. The Falcon 9 actually shuts down two engines during late flight of the first stage so as to not exceed 5g acceleration anyway. The reason the sat didn't get into it's proper orbit is because they weren't permitted to perform the required re-igniting of the second-stage after sending Dragon on it's merry way due to rules placed upon them by NASA and co. the first-stage engine out (see above for links).
Actually there was nothing preventing the Orbcom sat from being inserted into the proper orbit but for rules by NASA and their ISS partners (Russians) that told them that they were not allowed to reignite the second stage because of the malfunction in the first stage.
What do you want/willing to do? It doesn't sound as if you really cared to be a software developer in the first place. You can't stand still with respect to your knowledge/skills and everyone knows (or at least should know) that. Presumably you went to school and/or read books, etc. to get the skills you presently have. If you want to get back into software development you're going to need to bury your nose in the books once more and then unlike before make a practice of keeping it there. Are you up for that?
The OP framed it as generally stupid, whereas you frame it specifically--to the capacity of present technology. I am not in disagreement with you, but I am with the OP.
Have you not considered that the shell itself is an inhabitable surface and if such a surface were inhabited that that population would have the same or similar energy per-capita requirements as us peons hanging out on our ball of mud?
Us "science types" are not the ones "using" atom bombs to destroy. Society's politicians, it's leaders are responsible for the utilization of such technology in detrimental ways. Us science types simply wish to expand the capability of humanity, to explore, to create, to improve. What a sad world we live in if we must condescend the rest of its inhabitants and treat them as naive children that shouldn't play with knives, fire, power tools.
Actually the more desirable targets (contrary to science fiction) would be the uninhabited worlds closer by. Why travel tens, hundreds, thousands of light-years when you can harvest the resources of your neighboring star systems. Further, whose to say their biological requirements are our own?
If a civilization is able to build a Dyson sphere then that would mean that they are no longer constrained to the limited resources of the ball of mud on which they were conceived. Our solution to the over-consumption of finite resources should not be to constrain our population but to push our technology. To reach out for the fruit that is not so low on the tree, and even as we do, we push our technology still further to learn how to plant our own life giving trees.
Just ignore him, he's one of those frustrating, myopic people that thinks we are limited to the resources of the ball of mud on which we presently live.
Most people that rail against unlimited growth do so with the idea that it must all be housed on Earth, which is to say within restrictions of limited resources. To suggest that that view is myopic would be a gross understatement. The only necessary governor on growth would be that which our technology enables us to sustain.
Slashdot Mirror
As a consumer I go to Google to obtain answers to my questions. If a website is an advertisement vehicle dressed as content but containing little substance then it isn't valuable to me. If it isn't valuable why would I want it at the top of my search results? If the company responsible for a web site has demonstrated it will do whatever it can to cheat it's way to the top of the results then it places the value of its content into question. Questionable content is also not valuable to me... why would I want it at the top of my search results? If Google catered to businesses trying to make a buck rather than its users, it wouldn't have any. Google's popularity stems from the value it provides its users. In both my eyes and Googles, the rank at which a web site deserves to be placed in search results should be based upon the value I would place in it's content. If you are not in the business of providing valuable content I don't want to see you in my results.
Having just taken a look at your web site (assuming it's your "homepage") I can tell you that I wouldn't want it to be at the top of my results. The sheer volume of advertisements (powered by Google I see) and the prominence of those advertisements relative to the content (the ads are in the center and the content squished to the left) not to mention those obnoxious "pop-overs" ruins it for me. If your rankings have fallen then I'd say their algorithms are doing their job serving me the consumer.
It's not that clear cut. Yes you can look at the algorithms, but that is not the whole issue. Also at issue is whether or not Google is a monopoly. If Google is not a monopoly then it doesn't matter if their algorithms give preference to Google products. I'm not entirely sure that Google can be said to be a monopoly since there's Bing and Baidu which claim a significant share of the search market and along with a sizable number of smaller providers. Consumers are free to choose whomever they like and competitors can readily enter the market.
And so a pedantic twit get's to put another notch on his belt...
I'm not sure what you mean. Don't kid yourself. Germany isn't the only one monitoring the communications of its citizens. In reality, it would be easier to come up with a list of countries that do NOT monitor. On that very, very short list you should not be surprised when you note the absence of the first world nations, nor that it is comprised almost entirely of third-world nations. The fact that Germany actually openly admits it is a feather in their cap. Everyone does it, Germany just has the decency to be forthright about it.
All an iPod is is an over priced flash drive. Who actually uses it for anything other than a music storage device? Most of the time you either "dock" it or you just use your smart phone instead when you're on the go.
Look at what is on offer in Japan or South Korea... Just because American's drank the Kool-Aid doesn't mean everyone else has.
If the entire planet was made of solid gold... It would cause the planet to have such a high mass as to make it impossible to attain escape velocity and return with it.
In this case the "car" analogy doesn't work. You might be able to get away with a tractor-trailer tire analogy where one tire on a dually blows but that's probably as close as you can get. The Falcon 9 is designed to complete successfully with multiple engine-outs. Late in first-stage flight they actually shut two of them down as part of normal operations to keep acceleration at 5Gs. You cannot however, drag your trailer around by the so-called "safety" chains let alone get to your destination that way.
More orderly? You mean like this NASA guy?
There was nothing wrong with the insertion. The Falcon 9 actually shuts down two engines during late flight of the first stage so as to not exceed 5g acceleration anyway. The reason the sat didn't get into it's proper orbit is because they weren't permitted to perform the required re-igniting of the second-stage after sending Dragon on it's merry way due to rules placed upon them by NASA and co. the first-stage engine out (see above for links).
Actually there was nothing preventing the Orbcom sat from being inserted into the proper orbit but for rules by NASA and their ISS partners (Russians) that told them that they were not allowed to reignite the second stage because of the malfunction in the first stage.
We already ship our e-waste to China, why would that be any different.
What do you want/willing to do? It doesn't sound as if you really cared to be a software developer in the first place. You can't stand still with respect to your knowledge/skills and everyone knows (or at least should know) that. Presumably you went to school and/or read books, etc. to get the skills you presently have. If you want to get back into software development you're going to need to bury your nose in the books once more and then unlike before make a practice of keeping it there. Are you up for that?
The OP framed it as generally stupid, whereas you frame it specifically--to the capacity of present technology. I am not in disagreement with you, but I am with the OP.
While I'm not a huge fan of patents in general, I would have to agree. This one actually makes sense as a patent.
Have you not considered that the shell itself is an inhabitable surface and if such a surface were inhabited that that population would have the same or similar energy per-capita requirements as us peons hanging out on our ball of mud?
Have you never heard of a "pretext"?
Actually within the Star Trek universe the use of fusion technology is wide-spread. The use of matter-antimatter reactions is primarily with warp/primary power on most (but not all, see Romulans) star ships and weapon systems. I would recommend adhering to your own advice.
Us "science types" are not the ones "using" atom bombs to destroy. Society's politicians, it's leaders are responsible for the utilization of such technology in detrimental ways. Us science types simply wish to expand the capability of humanity, to explore, to create, to improve. What a sad world we live in if we must condescend the rest of its inhabitants and treat them as naive children that shouldn't play with knives, fire, power tools.
Actually the more desirable targets (contrary to science fiction) would be the uninhabited worlds closer by. Why travel tens, hundreds, thousands of light-years when you can harvest the resources of your neighboring star systems. Further, whose to say their biological requirements are our own?
If a civilization is able to build a Dyson sphere then that would mean that they are no longer constrained to the limited resources of the ball of mud on which they were conceived. Our solution to the over-consumption of finite resources should not be to constrain our population but to push our technology. To reach out for the fruit that is not so low on the tree, and even as we do, we push our technology still further to learn how to plant our own life giving trees.
Just ignore him, he's one of those frustrating, myopic people that thinks we are limited to the resources of the ball of mud on which we presently live.
Most people that rail against unlimited growth do so with the idea that it must all be housed on Earth, which is to say within restrictions of limited resources. To suggest that that view is myopic would be a gross understatement. The only necessary governor on growth would be that which our technology enables us to sustain.
*shhh* someone's looking for means of funding their institution. Don't spoil it for them.
What no pictures of the girlfriend?