It's like all those little sushi restaurants that crowd together. I have noticed it, in the area where we live there was very little happening until about 5 years ago, one sushi restaurant opened up. Then within a year 3 more appeared within 50 METERS of each other. That's what MS is - trying to get a cut of that sushi money.
It's called 'Hotelling', after Harold Hotelling, an Australian(?) economist. He used to go for a swim everyday, and on the long beach where he swam there were two icecream stands. Each icecream stand was positioned so they had half the beach as a market - there was always an icecream stand reasonably close. One of the stands moved towards the centre of the beach, so his customers (from 'his' the end of the beach) had to walk further for an icecream - BUT he also ate into the other icecream stands customers, as there was now a closer icecream stand. This prompted the second icecream stand to also move into the centre of the beach, in order to protect his market share. What you end with is a long beach, with two icecream stands next to each other in the middle of the beach.
You can also see this happen with political parties - both 'left' and 'right' parties move towards the middle of the electorate, hoping to capture more market (votes) from the 'other' side. Occaisionally, an extreme left or right wing party will come along (e.g. One Nation in Australia) and get a lot of press coverage (and some votes). This has the effect of upsetting the balance of the centre, pulling the centre parties off towards the extreme left or right. Hotelling is reason (IMHO) that there is very little difference between major political parties.
To bring this to the/. readers space, the IT market (desktop in particular) is very unbalanced, with an 800lb Gorilla only being balanced by very small competitors - although there are a lot of them. Even that 800lb gorilla can be moved from its current position by insects - if there are enough of them, and they continually nip at the gorilla (I couldn't think of a car analogy sorry). Linux on the desktop does appear to be (slowly) moving MS, or at least making them take swipes at the infuriating hordes. This probably isn't the year of Linux on the desktop, but one year it will be.
Can someone with a better knowledge of XML can explain to me (I'm an infrastructure guy) why the OOXML 'standard' is 6000 pages? Surely a DTD defining a document format should be relatively simple - Doc Title goes here, body text here, format info here, etc.
I thought the whole point of XML is that it's effectively self documenting - simply publishing the XML DTD should suffice. I can't see how this should be more than 10's of pages. Am I being too simplistic?
such that the overall number of road deaths increased
Humans need some level of risk. My fear is that by wrapping our children in bubblewrap we are creating a generation that has no concept of realising the danger that they may be placing themselves in - because they have never learned those valuable lessons that come from hurting yourself. As they say, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Jeremy Clarkson said it best:-
Instead of having an airbag coming out of the steering wheel in an accident to save your head hitting the steering wheel, I favour having a large metal spike come out instead.
If we knew that 0.3 seconds after an impact a large metal spike would stab us through the face then IMO driving standards would drastically improve immediately.
Modern cars make us feel so safe that we feel we can drive like idiots and if we crash our cars safety features will save us, not so with my method.
Simple psychology dictates that the survival instinct would kick in and make us all drive like Mary Poppins.
Could be an urban legend, but I'd heard that a U.K. branch of Siemens got in trouble with the German head office people for not answering the phone correctly. The company 'standard' was "Siemens Berlin" for the berlin office - "Siemens Singapore" for Singapore etc.
The branch office that got in trouble for not answering their phones correctly - Staines
I asked myself the exact same question - I'm no scientist, but my first thought was that the comet hit an atmosphere. I wonder if there are any instruments / measurements that could be taken to determine what that atmosphere is made up of?
The whole system of food production and distribution is fundamentally flawed - we use far more calories in production and distribution than are available to us in the food produced. That is always a losing game! From http://www.cias.wisc.edu/foodshed/pubsntools/meal1 .htm
Today a big proportion of the energy going into food production and distribution is fossil fuel energy. Fossil fuel energy is a finite resource, and its use in food isn't always easy to see. As with other resources, we in the U.S. consume more than our share. Here's some facts:
The U.S. expends three times as much energy per person for food than developing nations expend per person for ALL energy activities. And fossil fuel energy inputs into food production and distribution increased dramatically in the second half of the twentieth century.
The modern production and distribution system expends 10-15 calories of energy for every calories of food energy produced.
Chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides are based on petrochemicals. Between 1960 and 1980, chemical fertilizer use in the U.S. expanded three times, and herbicide use, over 4.5 times.
Chemical fertilizers alone accounted for 30% of energy use in agriculture in 1974.
Different food sectors use different amounts of the total fossil fuel energy used in food production and distribution: on-farm production represents just 17.5 percent of the whole, while processing accounts for 28.1 percent, distribution for 9, transportation for 11, restaurants for 15.9 percent, and home preparation for 25 percent.
I live in Australia, and was living in New Zealand when they privatised Telecom NZ (before the Telstra sale). I would have thought that the Australian Government would have taken some lessons from the Telecom NZ sale, and kept the copper network. If Telstra, and any competitors, were able to get access to the copper network equally, then competition would have provided enormous benefit to the Aussie household.
In NZ, Telecom (who 'own' the copper network) were saying that it costs them as enormous amount of money to maintain it - when Clear (their major competitor) offered to take this loss making asset off their hands (for a dollar), Telecom refused - I wonder why!
Of the whole operations group I drew the highest card out of the deck, and got to decommission our IBM 370/125 by pulling the EPO (on the console) - it didn't work, but the big red button finally killed it!
I did, however, manage to power-down an IBM 4331 (the chest freezer shaped one) by leaning against the end of it - the power switch is exactly at hip height!
Here in Victoria, Australia, they were considering building a fast train line using German engineered trains. In 'town meetings' along the proposed route they said that they would need to fence off the tracks to stop wandering cattle / kangaroos etc.
A friend of mine who was at one of these meetings asked a german train driver guy 'What happens if you hit a cow at 300Kph?'. The answer? 'I turn on ze vindscreen vipers'
A reporter was on a high point at one stage, not even a day later it colapsed and fell into the water.
I'm in Australia, and I saw a piece about that on our breakfast telly. The helicopter that dropped the guy off didn't touch down fully, but stayed very light on its skids. I wonder if the noise/vibration from the chopper had anything to do with the collapse?
Also, the reporter freely admits that he sent his cameraman out first!
some people, always from the same one or two companies, put the oddest colloqualisms in their emails.
I've noticed exactly the same thing - Satyam staff always seem to put 'Please do the needful' at the end of every email in which they are asking for action/information. I've never figured out exactly where they got that from - probably their CEO!
I was asked by a secretary to do a restore off a 5 1/4" disk (she'd been dutifully backing everything up - just as we told her to), she said "the data is on this" - taking the disk from where she'd stuck it to the magnetic whiteboard.
Slashdot Mirror
What's a fur seals favourite drink?
Canadian Club on the rocks
If your pee is thready, I suggest seeing a Urologist
Wikipedia might confirm it, but does Netcraft?
It's called 'Hotelling', after Harold Hotelling, an Australian(?) economist. He used to go for a swim everyday, and on the long beach where he swam there were two icecream stands. Each icecream stand was positioned so they had half the beach as a market - there was always an icecream stand reasonably close. One of the stands moved towards the centre of the beach, so his customers (from 'his' the end of the beach) had to walk further for an icecream - BUT he also ate into the other icecream stands customers, as there was now a closer icecream stand. This prompted the second icecream stand to also move into the centre of the beach, in order to protect his market share. What you end with is a long beach, with two icecream stands next to each other in the middle of the beach.
You can also see this happen with political parties - both 'left' and 'right' parties move towards the middle of the electorate, hoping to capture more market (votes) from the 'other' side. Occaisionally, an extreme left or right wing party will come along (e.g. One Nation in Australia) and get a lot of press coverage (and some votes). This has the effect of upsetting the balance of the centre, pulling the centre parties off towards the extreme left or right. Hotelling is reason (IMHO) that there is very little difference between major political parties.
To bring this to the
Did they land on their feet, or did they have buttered toast strapped to their backs?
It Worked!
.....are essentially embedded in our wetware.Eeewwwwww!
Can someone with a better knowledge of XML can explain to me (I'm an infrastructure guy) why the OOXML 'standard' is 6000 pages? Surely a DTD defining a document format should be relatively simple - Doc Title goes here, body text here, format info here, etc.
I thought the whole point of XML is that it's effectively self documenting - simply publishing the XML DTD should suffice. I can't see how this should be more than 10's of pages. Am I being too simplistic?
Humans need some level of risk. My fear is that by wrapping our children in bubblewrap we are creating a generation that has no concept of realising the danger that they may be placing themselves in - because they have never learned those valuable lessons that come from hurting yourself. As they say, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Jeremy Clarkson said it best:-
Instead of having an airbag coming out of the steering wheel in an accident to save your head hitting the steering wheel, I favour having a large metal spike come out instead. If we knew that 0.3 seconds after an impact a large metal spike would stab us through the face then IMO driving standards would drastically improve immediately. Modern cars make us feel so safe that we feel we can drive like idiots and if we crash our cars safety features will save us, not so with my method. Simple psychology dictates that the survival instinct would kick in and make us all drive like Mary Poppins.
New York to Tokyo in 2 hours? With all the airport security delays I'll just wait for my flying car and drive there!
Could be an urban legend, but I'd heard that a U.K. branch of Siemens got in trouble with the German head office people for not answering the phone correctly. The company 'standard' was "Siemens Berlin" for the berlin office - "Siemens Singapore" for Singapore etc.
The branch office that got in trouble for not answering their phones correctly - Staines
I asked myself the exact same question - I'm no scientist, but my first thought was that the comet hit an atmosphere. I wonder if there are any instruments / measurements that could be taken to determine what that atmosphere is made up of?
Actually, it would be 'Pedant Olympics'
Indeed they did!
Oh....that's not what you meant?
This is /. - we're likely to be the last of our family lines!
Today a big proportion of the energy going into food production and distribution is fossil fuel energy. Fossil fuel energy is a finite resource, and its use in food isn't always easy to see. As with other resources, we in the U.S. consume more than our share. Here's some facts:
I live in Australia, and was living in New Zealand when they privatised Telecom NZ (before the Telstra sale). I would have thought that the Australian Government would have taken some lessons from the Telecom NZ sale, and kept the copper network. If Telstra, and any competitors, were able to get access to the copper network equally, then competition would have provided enormous benefit to the Aussie household.
In NZ, Telecom (who 'own' the copper network) were saying that it costs them as enormous amount of money to maintain it - when Clear (their major competitor) offered to take this loss making asset off their hands (for a dollar), Telecom refused - I wonder why!
Of the whole operations group I drew the highest card out of the deck, and got to decommission our IBM 370/125 by pulling the EPO (on the console) - it didn't work, but the big red button finally killed it! I did, however, manage to power-down an IBM 4331 (the chest freezer shaped one) by leaning against the end of it - the power switch is exactly at hip height!
Here in Victoria, Australia, they were considering building a fast train line using German engineered trains. In 'town meetings' along the proposed route they said that they would need to fence off the tracks to stop wandering cattle / kangaroos etc. A friend of mine who was at one of these meetings asked a german train driver guy 'What happens if you hit a cow at 300Kph?'. The answer? 'I turn on ze vindscreen vipers'
A reporter was on a high point at one stage, not even a day later it colapsed and fell into the water.
I'm in Australia, and I saw a piece about that on our breakfast telly. The helicopter that dropped the guy off didn't touch down fully, but stayed very light on its skids. I wonder if the noise/vibration from the chopper had anything to do with the collapse?
Also, the reporter freely admits that he sent his cameraman out first!
some people, always from the same one or two companies, put the oddest colloqualisms in their emails.
I've noticed exactly the same thing - Satyam staff always seem to put 'Please do the needful' at the end of every email in which they are asking for action/information. I've never figured out exactly where they got that from - probably their CEO!
The only new thing is using fish instead of birds
Yeah, when they tested the water using birds the only conclusion was 'That must be REALLY poisoned water!'
Know, it will knot!
I was asked by a secretary to do a restore off a 5 1/4" disk (she'd been dutifully backing everything up - just as we told her to), she said "the data is on this" - taking the disk from where she'd stuck it to the magnetic whiteboard.
Is the water level lowering or is the Antarctict techtonic plate rising? Or is the earth growing fatter (around the equator, that is) and shorter?
Dunno about the Earth, but I'm getting fatter and shorter!