I know parent is just trolling, but it does raise an inetresting question. Why is killing for reason x better or worse than for reason y?
Reasons may be that the victim wore cool sneakers, wore ugly clothes, had an incorrect sexual orientation, had insulted perpetrators distant relatives, was an enemy of the state, was of the wrong race, might become a suicide bomber, had parents who had received a university education and so forth.
Which of these reasons for comitting murder would result in more or less lenient punishment than an "average" murder? Why?
Give it a couple decades, and you will be only shopping online, getting stuff sent to you, and never seeing a single shop on the street,having all property given over to appartments and dwellings, which may be a good thing considering the population increase.
Nope, aint gonna happen, for the same reason cinemas didn't disappear with the advent of TV or newspapers and books didn't disappear with the advent of the internet. There will be changes, defiitely, and some shops will go bust. In fact, some shops have gone bust already. But it's not like all of them will. Not now, not in a hundred years.
A labour union, for example, is an association of workers, working for the benefit of its members, the workers.
And that benefit is something else than making more money? I know that in marxist vocabulary, "profit" has connotations of exploitation, devils and other weird stuff, but in proper english, the meaning is quite different. And in the real world, unions exist to make workers' jobs more profitable. Nothing wrong with that, of course. They have every right to do that and would be stupid not to do it, but that doesn't make it any different from a regular business.
And as much as everyone likes to say that there are businesses whose goals are not to make a profit, these are so few as to hardly make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
The obscenely rich don't deserve credit for philanthropy. Don't forget that it's the rest of society they took such huge masses of wealth from in the first place.
Oh, I didn't know the economy was a zero sum game where one person's gain was another person's loss. Thanks for enlightening me!
On a more serious note, has it truly never occured to you that the world as a whole is incredibly much richer now than at any point in history? I would have to think that this is because some people actually created wealth. And I also think that not everyone created equally much wealth. I, finally, think that people who achieve better results in creating wealth deserve more of that wealth than those who create less. I do realize that makes me a bad communist.
I don't know how unions work where you live, but over here they represent the workers, try to empower them and give them a voice in negotiations with government and employers.
Oh, you live on Mars, do you? Is the weather nice there?
Their goal is to give workers the same power that "kings" (well, employers and governments) have, not to keep them in their place.
Their goal is exactly the same as Microsoft's (and any other business): using whatever means they have to get richer themselves, as opposed to making other people richer (other people in this case being owners, customers and other workers who would be prepared to accept the job for slightly less money).
There is nothing inherently wrong about this, but it's sort of funny that when MS tries to make money, they are the scum of the earth here, but when unions use slightly more shady practices, all is fine and well...
I think that it is a bit premature to call the sport who draws the most people "dying". Not doing as well as it used to? Absolutely. Dying? Not by a long shot.
This month on my private site so far I got 1400 incoming links vom Google and 30 from MSN (the next runner up), 27 from Yahoo
I think your numbers are less representative than most, but even so, I find Google "only" having 50% to be strange. On our site and for June only: Google 75.5%, MSN 11.8%, Yahoo 4%, Kvasir 3.1%, Google (Images) 2%, Altavista 2%, everyone else 0.2% or less.
Since we are based in northern Europe, Kvasir (a Norweigan search engine) is obviously having a much higher share than for most other sites, but my gut feeling of Google at 75% seems reasonable.
So there is some money to be made in "learning" search engines that tailor themselves to the user (...)
Google supposedly does that, or will in the near future, assuming that you are logged in. From what I understand, most of the/. crowd considers that to be a fairly big integrity issue and don't search while logged in. (Or maybe they are just a vocal minority?)
Actually, since the two accounts were created consecutively, I'd have to guess that this is only one person, so it'd be a sort of "fight club" scenario.
Remember, Microsoft is one of the most hated companies for a reason... they didn't get that way overnight. It took a couple of decades of abuse
First of all, Microsoft isn't "one of the most hated companies". They are "one of the most hated companies by Linux geeks and other people who are not necessarily representative for the population at large". (Maybe them geeks *should* be representative, but that's another issue.)
Secondly, it didn't take "a couple of decades". When I started studying Computer Science in 1989, we all hated MS with a vengeance. MS wasn't two decades old at the time, and the MS hating was nothing new at the time.
But they're already certified by Microsoft, which is supposed to mean something. Since they're asking you to submit bug reports on drivers they've already certified, it makes you wonder just what the point of driver certification is, if not to ensure driver quality.
Interesting idea about how to measure product quality. I am *definitely* happy that you are not in charge of car safety standards.
Can you see the point of gathering actual, real life data on quality issues with cars, even though they have passed a zillion internal and external quality controls prior to launch?
Please tell me what company you work for. I'd love to buy your products since they obviously come with a complete guarantee that they will be flawless under any and all circumstances.
(I assume you meant "their previous customers", not "you". I sure as hell have never paid for sex.)
So women who are forced to prostitution feel contempt towards the idiots who buy their bodies, and my sympathies are supposed to be with the idiots? Please...
As mad as the world is right now, the strange fact is that it has never been more sane.
Worrying, isn't it.
Actually, no, it's pretty comforting. Despite the fact that people were even more nutty previously than they are today, we have come this far. That should really instill some hope for the future.
And no, I'm not sarcastic. I really do think this is the case.
In fact, one of the biggest scams in Thailand is the army of bar girls (that's what prostitutes are called here) that spend the afternoons sending love spam to all their previous customers after they return to the west after their vacations in the Land of Smiles.
How is a girl who asks for money becuase she wants money a "scam"? If that is what we all shuold be protected from, we are truly doomed...
Common sense... the world is losing it all too fast in my opinion.
So, pray tell, when was exactly that glorious time when common sense did prevail? Did it coincide with the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem witch burnings? Or perhaps with slavery?
As mad as the world is right now, the strange fact is that it has never been more sane.
Yeah, this new Office might be "improved" for you, but what about people who are not comfortable using computers? That's the majority of the population, last time I checked, by the way...
The majority of people in the world are definitely not comfortable using a computer. However, the majority of users of Office 2K7 are, in fact, reasonably comfortable using computers. That's what counts, and what a billion chinese think of the matter isn't important.
I read the article. I just don't trust the source.
Not trusting the source is fine. Not thinking critically isn't, I'm afraid. I'll just repeat: what management company will allow TM to charge the customers $1K for a ticket and give them less than $100? Do you really see that happening?
If that ticket sells for $1,000 I bet a big chunk of that extra money (if not all) will go to Ticketmaster.
I'll take that bet for $100. Since you are, of course, dead wrong, economically illiterate and didn't bother to RTFA, I win the bet. Please send the money immediately. Thanks!
I know you all hate Ticketmaster, and for all I know you may have perfectly good reasons to. (I don't live in the US, so I don't have an opinion either way.) But how hard is it really to think this through one second before posting? Why would any management company agree to let TM sell a ticket for $1000 and only get $40 or whatever themselves? Do you really, honestly, think that all management companies are completely clueless and run by idiots?
Good question. (Minor nitpick: It's not "I", it's the community/power users, in order to switch to Linux.)
The answer is: everything Excel is used for, which is a lot more than a "plain" spreadsheet. MS found that out ten years ago. They thought pepople wanted more built-in formulas for maths, but they wanted better list management etc. Excel is used for a huge variety of things, and that is the strength of it.
No, I chose one of the several functions that are absolutely essential if one ever hopes to replace Excel. And, to get back to the original argument, that is essential if one ever hopes to replace MS applications and, in the longer run, Windows. (Also, I have a very firm feeling this isn't "the one" function Gnumeric lacks...)
As for the statistics bugs, they are obviously not good. That said, they don't affect very many people, or they would be fixed, because one of the things that the MS Office team does surprisingly well is actually looking at how their apps are actually used in practice. (This may sometimes be a privacy concern, which is another legitimate and interesting thread, but let's not go there now.)
Have a look at the Excel blog and other Office 12 blogs and be surprised at the frequent mentions of "customers" and "users".
I admit that I haven't run Gnumeric, but, according to Wikipedia, it doesn't support pivot tables. If that is true, I'm afraid I'll have to say that your claim that it is better than Excel is simultaneously laughable and sad.
Until WINE is to the point where you don't have to fiddle with it to get it to load Office and run Office flawlessly, we're going to be getting these whiny criticisms.
You had me convinced until "whiny". Wanting to actually get things done without having to be a software engineer isn't "whining", it's reasonable.
Usability counts, and now that the best programs are actually quite useable, it's almost the only thing that counts.
Slashdot Mirror
Reasons may be that the victim wore cool sneakers, wore ugly clothes, had an incorrect sexual orientation, had insulted perpetrators distant relatives, was an enemy of the state, was of the wrong race, might become a suicide bomber, had parents who had received a university education and so forth.
Which of these reasons for comitting murder would result in more or less lenient punishment than an "average" murder? Why?
Nope, aint gonna happen, for the same reason cinemas didn't disappear with the advent of TV or newspapers and books didn't disappear with the advent of the internet. There will be changes, defiitely, and some shops will go bust. In fact, some shops have gone bust already. But it's not like all of them will. Not now, not in a hundred years.
And that benefit is something else than making more money? I know that in marxist vocabulary, "profit" has connotations of exploitation, devils and other weird stuff, but in proper english, the meaning is quite different. And in the real world, unions exist to make workers' jobs more profitable. Nothing wrong with that, of course. They have every right to do that and would be stupid not to do it, but that doesn't make it any different from a regular business.
And as much as everyone likes to say that there are businesses whose goals are not to make a profit, these are so few as to hardly make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
Oh, I didn't know the economy was a zero sum game where one person's gain was another person's loss. Thanks for enlightening me!
On a more serious note, has it truly never occured to you that the world as a whole is incredibly much richer now than at any point in history? I would have to think that this is because some people actually created wealth. And I also think that not everyone created equally much wealth. I, finally, think that people who achieve better results in creating wealth deserve more of that wealth than those who create less. I do realize that makes me a bad communist.
Oh, you live on Mars, do you? Is the weather nice there?
Their goal is to give workers the same power that "kings" (well, employers and governments) have, not to keep them in their place.
Their goal is exactly the same as Microsoft's (and any other business): using whatever means they have to get richer themselves, as opposed to making other people richer (other people in this case being owners, customers and other workers who would be prepared to accept the job for slightly less money).
There is nothing inherently wrong about this, but it's sort of funny that when MS tries to make money, they are the scum of the earth here, but when unions use slightly more shady practices, all is fine and well...
Try not to misspell 'entitled' in your cover letters.
True, after an attack the pizza and soda stains may never go away.
I think that it is a bit premature to call the sport who draws the most people "dying". Not doing as well as it used to? Absolutely. Dying? Not by a long shot.
I think your numbers are less representative than most, but even so, I find Google "only" having 50% to be strange. On our site and for June only: Google 75.5%, MSN 11.8%, Yahoo 4%, Kvasir 3.1%, Google (Images) 2%, Altavista 2%, everyone else 0.2% or less.
Since we are based in northern Europe, Kvasir (a Norweigan search engine) is obviously having a much higher share than for most other sites, but my gut feeling of Google at 75% seems reasonable.
Google supposedly does that, or will in the near future, assuming that you are logged in. From what I understand, most of the /. crowd considers that to be a fairly big integrity issue and don't search while logged in. (Or maybe they are just a vocal minority?)
Actually, since the two accounts were created consecutively, I'd have to guess that this is only one person, so it'd be a sort of "fight club" scenario.
First of all, Microsoft isn't "one of the most hated companies". They are "one of the most hated companies by Linux geeks and other people who are not necessarily representative for the population at large". (Maybe them geeks *should* be representative, but that's another issue.)
Secondly, it didn't take "a couple of decades". When I started studying Computer Science in 1989, we all hated MS with a vengeance. MS wasn't two decades old at the time, and the MS hating was nothing new at the time.
Interesting idea about how to measure product quality. I am *definitely* happy that you are not in charge of car safety standards.
Can you see the point of gathering actual, real life data on quality issues with cars, even though they have passed a zillion internal and external quality controls prior to launch?
Please tell me what company you work for. I'd love to buy your products since they obviously come with a complete guarantee that they will be flawless under any and all circumstances.
(I assume you meant "their previous customers", not "you". I sure as hell have never paid for sex.)
So women who are forced to prostitution feel contempt towards the idiots who buy their bodies, and my sympathies are supposed to be with the idiots? Please...
Worrying, isn't it.
Actually, no, it's pretty comforting. Despite the fact that people were even more nutty previously than they are today, we have come this far. That should really instill some hope for the future.
And no, I'm not sarcastic. I really do think this is the case.
How is a girl who asks for money becuase she wants money a "scam"? If that is what we all shuold be protected from, we are truly doomed...
So, pray tell, when was exactly that glorious time when common sense did prevail? Did it coincide with the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem witch burnings? Or perhaps with slavery?
As mad as the world is right now, the strange fact is that it has never been more sane.
The majority of people in the world are definitely not comfortable using a computer. However, the majority of users of Office 2K7 are, in fact, reasonably comfortable using computers. That's what counts, and what a billion chinese think of the matter isn't important.
Not trusting the source is fine. Not thinking critically isn't, I'm afraid. I'll just repeat: what management company will allow TM to charge the customers $1K for a ticket and give them less than $100? Do you really see that happening?
I'll take that bet for $100. Since you are, of course, dead wrong, economically illiterate and didn't bother to RTFA, I win the bet. Please send the money immediately. Thanks!
I know you all hate Ticketmaster, and for all I know you may have perfectly good reasons to. (I don't live in the US, so I don't have an opinion either way.) But how hard is it really to think this through one second before posting? Why would any management company agree to let TM sell a ticket for $1000 and only get $40 or whatever themselves? Do you really, honestly, think that all management companies are completely clueless and run by idiots?
Good question. (Minor nitpick: It's not "I", it's the community/power users, in order to switch to Linux.)
The answer is: everything Excel is used for, which is a lot more than a "plain" spreadsheet. MS found that out ten years ago. They thought pepople wanted more built-in formulas for maths, but they wanted better list management etc. Excel is used for a huge variety of things, and that is the strength of it.
As for the statistics bugs, they are obviously not good. That said, they don't affect very many people, or they would be fixed, because one of the things that the MS Office team does surprisingly well is actually looking at how their apps are actually used in practice. (This may sometimes be a privacy concern, which is another legitimate and interesting thread, but let's not go there now.)
Have a look at the Excel blog and other Office 12 blogs and be surprised at the frequent mentions of "customers" and "users".
I admit that I haven't run Gnumeric, but, according to Wikipedia, it doesn't support pivot tables. If that is true, I'm afraid I'll have to say that your claim that it is better than Excel is simultaneously laughable and sad.
You had me convinced until "whiny". Wanting to actually get things done without having to be a software engineer isn't "whining", it's reasonable.
Usability counts, and now that the best programs are actually quite useable, it's almost the only thing that counts.