By coincidence, I happened to just now look up Wikipedia's entry on Mike Wooten, the trooper of Palin's Troopergate, to find out the cause of the divorce.
Probably also could be done using Make, which is really an expert system in disguise. Ant-heads won't know what I'm talking about. (Mod to +5 Flamebait.)
"CDs and DVDs" always worked for me -- rolls off the tongue rather quickly. I suppose Blu-Ray breaks that list, though. But at least this particular article wasn't about Blu-Ray.
What really bugs me more than "optical disc", though, is "optical drive". Why not just refer to it as the highest level it can read, such as DVD drive?
First off, this blog post can hardly be called an analysis because it doesn't even take into account Google's quarterly financial reports. For 2008Q1, Wired was exuberant that Google's 2008Q1 revenue was 42 percent higher than 2007Q1, saying that online advertising was immune to the recession due to "desperate" companies needing "a multitude of ways to drill their messages into the public consciousness."
Fast forward to 2008Q2. Searchenginewatch.com reports a dismal 3% rise of 2008Q2 compared to 2008Q1. The weak ad revenue from housing, automobile, and finance sectors are blamed, as is Google's recent efforts to focus on ad quality rather than ad quantity.
Back to the subject of this post. Putting revenue aside, quinthar.com's "analysis" is upside down. Raising the threshold of minimum bids leads to reduced revenue just as raising the minimum wage leads to reduced employment. All it does is redirect business that would otherwise take place to the black market or competitors. Google knows this; they are not greedily seeking short-term gains as quinthar.com accuses. On the contrary, there are other reasons to force minimum prices, and in the case of Google, Google wants to improve ad quality in order to improve or maintain its brand image and realize long-term gains (or at least sustainability).
The Internet is not a bubble, it's a juggernaut. It has changed the world, but it has taken much longer than was imagined during the dot-com era (but in hindsight, it's still fast). Newspapers are on their last breath. But that doesn't make the Internet immune from the general economy. That's the main reason for Google's slower growth rate.
Why are we carrying around physical media, computer screens, and keyboards? How geeky can one get? Why hasn't the day arrived when everything on our hard drive exists on the cloud instead?
The clearest negative influence of Bill Gates upon Microsoft is BASIC. Expect VB.NET to give way fully to C# (if they can kill VB6, they can certainly kill VB.NET). Expect Python, Perl, JavaScript or something to live alongside VBA (you can kill of a geek's VB6 code -- a PHB's self-coded Excel spreadsheet is another matter).
BASIC was never a good language, even in the 1970's. Pascal or C would always have been better for personal computers. There's not even a clear advantage of BASIC over FORTRAN or even COBOL. The best thing that can be said about BASIC is that it is a higher level language than assembly. The best thing that can be said about Microsoft BASIC is that it is slightly closer to Pascal and C than BASIC was.
Oh, and this has nothing to do with the revolutionary component-based RAD developed by Simonyi. That was a work of genius. It's just too bad it was hobbled by Basic.
This illustrates by analogy why we don't need any new laws regarding identity theft. In this case with the laptops, theft of atoms has been a crime since the beginning of time, but the victim still can't get the police to do anything. The police don't have the resources to investigate anything other than murder, use of marijuana, and speeding five miles over the speed limit. Passing more laws on identity theft is not going to grant law enforcement any more resources.
As I've mentioned here in the past, I've been a victim twice of financial crimes -- both times made financially whole thanks to the financial institutions but no thanks to the FBI, which had jurisdiction since like most things in today's networked world, parties involved were across state lines. Both cases involved under $10,000, so the FBI told me they had no interest in pursuing the cases -- they said they were too busy chasing terrorists.
Passing identity theft laws is a way for politicians to grandstand -- what they really need to do is fund law enforcement to enforce the laws on the books. But they would rather fund the war in Iraq -- Republicans to fund defense contractors and establish world empire, and Democrats to use the Hegelian Dialectic to Obama elected.
I was going to post a link to a YouTube where Johnny Fever jumped behind a sofa to hide from the Phone Cops -- to illustrate to the youngun's how it was once illegal to have personally-owned phones that weren't leased from AT&T. It was to illustrate how society had changed.
But the YouTube link I found on Google says "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation". So now we have Video Cops instead of Phone Cops.
We can't even talk about monopolies of the past due to monopolies of the present.
If wireframes were copyrightable, then an evil version of Project Gutenberg (perhaps Google Books?) could recopyright old books in perpetuity, with the only versions not retaining copyright being the physical ones that are turning into dust.
Yellow journalism is a pejorative reference to journalism that features sex scandals, scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or other unethical or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists. It has been loosely defined as "not quite libel".
If you think the blogging version of ^that^ has produced a more informed populace...
Then you must be using a different definition.
No, that's pretty much it. The difference is the need to read blogs from opposite ends of the spectrum, rather than just trying to get all one's news from a single "newspaper of record" or one evening news show.
Example: Barack Obama is a muslim
As of this posting, about half on the front page say he is and half say he isn't
Good example. Because of blogs and chain e-mail, 1) the issue has been brought to the forefront, and 2) we can gather needed facts from those with an agenda to bring those facts to light (from each side) and then draw our own conclusions.
In case you haven't noticed, we're better informed now in the 21st century thanks to yellow blogs. It's the 20th century supposedly unbiased news sources that kept us dumbed down -- the populace places too much trust in the mass media and consequently the mass media has become a puppet of the power elite.
The so-called "neutral point of view" came out of the Progressive Era, and like so many things of that era sold as a way to help the little guy, ended up being an instrument of The Man. Give me bias -- explicitly stated bias -- any day. It's a lot easier to understand that way.
"Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see," he said. "It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context."
That would be fine if controversial news didn't disappear off websites.
I had several such examples on my underreported.com blog where I had to take screenshots because I knew it would soon get "disappeared" (or I just happened to still have it open in one of the 20 browser windows I had open and when surfing to the news item again to ponder it, it was "hey, wait a minute.") I certainly wasn't the only one who had to do it.
He also admitted that the 5-year release cycle wasn't a good idea
Windows was complete when NT 4.0 came out in 1996 -- 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking with a normal user interface (i.e. no Program Manager). With the possible exception of Active Directory, everything else could have been a service pack or patch: USB, WiFi, CD-R. When the calendar drives a release schedule rather than needed features, Microsoft is not only acting just to fill its coffers, but it costs companies massive admin overhead.
Ballmer is right -- it shouldn't be a five-year release cycle. It should be 10 years. 64-bit is a good reason to have a new release after NT 4.0.
It's just one of the many things that makes GenY so cynical: Bill Clinton lying about sex, GW Bush lying about WMD, low salaries, multi-national corporations, hypocrisy of suburbia (enshrined in American Beauty, the anthem movie of GenY).
This point was really driven home to me on discussion list recently. All the GenY members were defending graffiti as an artform whereas all the older members were condemning it as vandalism. GenY seems to think vandalism is OK as long as it is done against large corporations. I blame the RIAA in part for this. I blame the RIAA in part for the increase in graffiti.
JO: Your Honor, we re-new our objection to Commander Stone's testimony, and ask that it be stricken from the record. And we further ask that the Court instruct the jury to lend no weight to this witness's testimony.
RANDOLPH: The objection's overruled, counsel.
JO: Sir, the defense strenuously objects and requests a meeting in chambers so that his honor might have an opportunity to hear discussion before ruling on the objection.
RANDOLPH: The objection of the defense has been heard and overruled.
Then there is that result from anthropology (sorry, can't find it right now -- I think it was reported in some British newspaper) that says that women mate with the alpha male and then find a nice guy to marry to raise the resulting children.
These computers had a large assortment of "Intelligent" peripherals which communicated through a custom bus called the "SIO" (Serial I/O) which compared to today standards is a rather simplistic version of the USB (Universal Serial Bus). In fact the USB and the Atari SIO have a lot more in common then many would think. One of Atari's original computer engineers, Joe Decuir who created the Atari SIO bus is also one of the team of engineers at Microsoft to help design and holds patents on the USB.
150 comments so far and no one's mentioned this yet from 2002?
Americans undergoing radioactive medical treatments risk setting off anti-terrorism sensors in public places, and subsequent strip searches by police, warn doctors at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
Slashdot Mirror
It's marked for deletion!
Probably also could be done using Make, which is really an expert system in disguise. Ant-heads won't know what I'm talking about. (Mod to +5 Flamebait.)
What really bugs me more than "optical disc", though, is "optical drive". Why not just refer to it as the highest level it can read, such as DVD drive?
Am I the only one who thinks "optical disc" should not apply to CDs and DVDs because it was once nearly synonymous with magneto-optical?
Fast forward to 2008Q2. Searchenginewatch.com reports a dismal 3% rise of 2008Q2 compared to 2008Q1. The weak ad revenue from housing, automobile, and finance sectors are blamed, as is Google's recent efforts to focus on ad quality rather than ad quantity.
Back to the subject of this post. Putting revenue aside, quinthar.com's "analysis" is upside down. Raising the threshold of minimum bids leads to reduced revenue just as raising the minimum wage leads to reduced employment. All it does is redirect business that would otherwise take place to the black market or competitors. Google knows this; they are not greedily seeking short-term gains as quinthar.com accuses. On the contrary, there are other reasons to force minimum prices, and in the case of Google, Google wants to improve ad quality in order to improve or maintain its brand image and realize long-term gains (or at least sustainability).
The Internet is not a bubble, it's a juggernaut. It has changed the world, but it has taken much longer than was imagined during the dot-com era (but in hindsight, it's still fast). Newspapers are on their last breath. But that doesn't make the Internet immune from the general economy. That's the main reason for Google's slower growth rate.
Why are we carrying around physical media, computer screens, and keyboards? How geeky can one get? Why hasn't the day arrived when everything on our hard drive exists on the cloud instead?
BASIC was never a good language, even in the 1970's. Pascal or C would always have been better for personal computers. There's not even a clear advantage of BASIC over FORTRAN or even COBOL. The best thing that can be said about BASIC is that it is a higher level language than assembly. The best thing that can be said about Microsoft BASIC is that it is slightly closer to Pascal and C than BASIC was.
Oh, and this has nothing to do with the revolutionary component-based RAD developed by Simonyi. That was a work of genius. It's just too bad it was hobbled by Basic.
As I've mentioned here in the past, I've been a victim twice of financial crimes -- both times made financially whole thanks to the financial institutions but no thanks to the FBI, which had jurisdiction since like most things in today's networked world, parties involved were across state lines. Both cases involved under $10,000, so the FBI told me they had no interest in pursuing the cases -- they said they were too busy chasing terrorists.
Passing identity theft laws is a way for politicians to grandstand -- what they really need to do is fund law enforcement to enforce the laws on the books. But they would rather fund the war in Iraq -- Republicans to fund defense contractors and establish world empire, and Democrats to use the Hegelian Dialectic to Obama elected.
But the YouTube link I found on Google says "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation". So now we have Video Cops instead of Phone Cops.
We can't even talk about monopolies of the past due to monopolies of the present.
Sounds like an xkcd title.
If wireframes were copyrightable, then an evil version of Project Gutenberg (perhaps Google Books?) could recopyright old books in perpetuity, with the only versions not retaining copyright being the physical ones that are turning into dust.
As a wise old man once told me, "To get ahead in life, you have to skirt the rules just enough to not get caught."
P.S. While recognizing the truth of the statement, I don't live by it.
If only they'd had log4baby they could've tried factoring more interesting numbers.
The so-called "neutral point of view" came out of the Progressive Era, and like so many things of that era sold as a way to help the little guy, ended up being an instrument of The Man. Give me bias -- explicitly stated bias -- any day. It's a lot easier to understand that way.
I had several such examples on my underreported.com blog where I had to take screenshots because I knew it would soon get "disappeared" (or I just happened to still have it open in one of the 20 browser windows I had open and when surfing to the news item again to ponder it, it was "hey, wait a minute.") I certainly wasn't the only one who had to do it.
Ballmer is right -- it shouldn't be a five-year release cycle. It should be 10 years. 64-bit is a good reason to have a new release after NT 4.0.
This point was really driven home to me on discussion list recently. All the GenY members were defending graffiti as an artform whereas all the older members were condemning it as vandalism. GenY seems to think vandalism is OK as long as it is done against large corporations. I blame the RIAA in part for this. I blame the RIAA in part for the increase in graffiti.
RANDOLPH: The objection's overruled, counsel.
JO: Sir, the defense strenuously objects and requests a meeting in chambers so that his honor might have an opportunity to hear discussion before ruling on the objection.
RANDOLPH: The objection of the defense has been heard and overruled.
JO: Exception.
RANDOLPH: Noted.
Then there is that result from anthropology (sorry, can't find it right now -- I think it was reported in some British newspaper) that says that women mate with the alpha male and then find a nice guy to marry to raise the resulting children.
So now if you develop a search engine, you get your computer confiscated?