Do it all the time - I don't actually remember the last time a business had someone out front asking me to come in.
Haven't been to any red-light districts recently then I take it?
The question was "What the fuck is SAP?" The question was not "What does SAP stand for?". I don't know why you're talking about acronyms. If the poster wanted to know what SAP stands for, perhaps they could have phrased the question better.
The question is really, where do you draw the line with questions like this? If someone posted a question saying "What the fuck is Oracle?" how would you moderate it? As other posts have pointed out, SAP is a company in the IT field that is of almost the same size as Oracle. What would Slashdot be like if everyone asked such questions and they were modded up?
Besides, I don't know what you're complaining about - the ANSWERS to the question were modded up, so anyone who didn't know what SAP is will see the answer. Why do people have to read the question?
Well, there are certain things that Slashdot readers are assumed to know. The name of the third largest software company in the world is one of those things. Also, the rude, short post that could have been answered in a five second trip to google or wikipedia didn't help either. If I were moderating, I think I would have gone for Troll, though.
I agree that sex sells, but only for certain types of products.
The beer you drink reflects on you socially and if a beer has a "sexy" image, the drinker is seen as being "cooler". This works well is market spaces where it's difficult to tell between competing products which is the better quality or people couldn't care one way or the other. It worked with iPods - they have a sexy image and they sold like hot-cakes. But when people talk about what computer they own, they talk about specs, not brands. So the specification will win out over a stylish appearance.
I think the thing that stops the "sex-sells" from happening with computers is that most buyers are either businesses (not interested in sexy, but bang-for-buck), geeks, or are taking a geek-friends along to advise them.
The scary part of the story is the bit about Surface to Air Missiles. What are the chances do you think of it clearing customs in this world of Homeland Security?
A year or two ago, Patrick, through his connections in the surplus military equipment world, found himself at a "secret, but now defunct air force base in Poland," one that had been used by Warsaw Pact forces during the Cold War. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Soviet-era armaments began showing up on various black and not-so-black markets.
The men running the Polish air force base were trying to sell Patrick an SA-2 missile. This is the ubiquitous surface-to-air missile used by the Soviet Union and nearly all its military allies. It was an SA-2 that shot down Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane in 1960.
Not only were the guys at the air base trying to sell Patrick an SA-2, "they were saying, 'you want a MiG 21 (fighter jet)? I'll sell you two tanks and a MiG.' " .
"So they wanted $2,000 for the missile," Patrick said, "and I had a bottle of ouzo and after a while I got them down to a grand." He still hasn't got the 35-foot-long missile, but he does know what he'll do with it once it clears U.S. customs. (Good luck.)
I'd say this is targeted at home users (who don't mind having all their emails stored at gmail). But google could quite easily setup and run intranet-based versions of this for companies who value their privacy.
Of course, Google may implement some form of encryption so that documents are only readable by certain users or groups of users. This of course would bunk their targeted advertising, but I'd imagine that Google would charge companies for that sort of service. I could see some multinationals might want some sort of internationally-accessible document storage and search system if they don't want to set up their own VPN.
Doesn't matter too much about Hawai'i airport itself - there are a lot of routes that go above or near Hawai'i.
In fact if an aircraft is landing / taking off from Hawai'i, then unless it is circling around at high altitude waiting for a time to land then it's unlikely to leave vapour trails.
"Worthless" means that it isn't worth building them because they can only be used a small percentage of the time. No-one is suggesting that there will be 100% clouds over the earth - just enough clouds to make it a complete lottery to get a good night for observation.
Well - the US is racking up huge bills in Iraq, with no end in sight, not to mention the enormous current account deficit, so I guess NASA gets hit with the cost-cutting.
2. Doesn't matter the outcome of the legal case as it's all good publicity
3. Profit !!!
FTFA:
The legal action has seen The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail shoot up the Amazon.co.uk bestseller chart from number 173 at lunchtime, to 102 by 2.30pm and was at 53 late this afternoon.
As the statistics say (not very clearly), texting is far more popular in the UK (and I would assume Europe, too) than the US. Cue lots of americans saying it's expensive and crap and don't understand why it's so popular.
Reason is that texting is cheap and universal in Europe (inc. the UK) because of the GSM network prevalent there, plus all sorts of organisations jumping onto the texting bandwagon to encourage people to text more.
As soon as I read "magnetic flux" and "exponentially greater motive force than conventional motors" BS alerts went off all over the place. Every once in a while the editors like to throw a Perpetual Motion article into the Slashdot omelet to see who's awake....
Don't know about that one, but Australia's Department of Environment and Heritage has data, going back to around 1900 showing 12 to 16 cm increases in sea-levels in the 20th century.
Islands like Kiribati and Tuvalu in the Pacific ocean have already been experiencing rising sea-levels over a period of 13 years according to a tide-gauge project run by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology.
The rate of about 6mm (0.236 inches) per year is quite slow, but it is significant for low-lying islands like these ones.
The HD-DVD standard will offer compatibility with the discs you already own, and TV addicts will need to splash out on expensive high-definition TV sets before the difference is noticeable.
Well, actually "TV addicts" will have to splash out on a HDMI-compliant HD TV if they want to play any HD-DVDs (not just to get the resolution improvements) because the players only offer HDMI output. I don't think people will be buying a new TV for a small picture quality improvement - look at all the fuss over people having to buy new TVs or Digital->Analogue coverters when analogue TV signals get shut down. Besides, they'll have to make room for the behemoth somewhere.
An alternative to http downloads WOULD be a good plug-in for firefox. So instead of downloading a large file from a web-site through HTTP or FTP, a web-site would have a link to a p2p file that initiates this plug-in which would download the file in a P2P fashion. I guess this is equivalent to having torrents and BitTorrent installed, but if firefox had a plugin then maybe more web-sites would accomodate this type of download.
This would obviously be beneficial to both users (quicker downloads) and web-site owners (reduces their bandwidth charges). I would think that the web-site would have to still host the file so that at least one source of the file is always available for not-so-popular files.
I don't think this plugin achieves that as it seems to be more to do with sharing files between users.
The latest General Electric 3MW turbines are so big they're only being considered for offshore installation
I'm not sure if they're GE turbines, but the proposed wind farm near Wellington, New Zealand seems to have 3MW turbines (70 turbines, producing 210MW). They're 125 metres (375 feet?) tall.
Luckily, New Zealand has large hydro-electric power plants and lots of wind so wind-power is quite a viable clean energy source. The theory is that when the wind is blowing, the dams can fill up, storing energy and when the wind is not blowing, the hydro-electric plants can run.
Slashdot Mirror
Do it all the time - I don't actually remember the last time a business had someone out front asking me to come in. Haven't been to any red-light districts recently then I take it?
The question was "What the fuck is SAP?" The question was not "What does SAP stand for?". I don't know why you're talking about acronyms. If the poster wanted to know what SAP stands for, perhaps they could have phrased the question better. The question is really, where do you draw the line with questions like this? If someone posted a question saying "What the fuck is Oracle?" how would you moderate it? As other posts have pointed out, SAP is a company in the IT field that is of almost the same size as Oracle. What would Slashdot be like if everyone asked such questions and they were modded up? Besides, I don't know what you're complaining about - the ANSWERS to the question were modded up, so anyone who didn't know what SAP is will see the answer. Why do people have to read the question?
Well, there are certain things that Slashdot readers are assumed to know. The name of the third largest software company in the world is one of those things. Also, the rude, short post that could have been answered in a five second trip to google or wikipedia didn't help either. If I were moderating, I think I would have gone for Troll, though.
Hmmmm - I'd rather take the risk of 21% oxygen than having hydrogen tanks sitting there in the server room....
Yip - http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=49&To picId=12080
I agree that sex sells, but only for certain types of products.
The beer you drink reflects on you socially and if a beer has a "sexy" image, the drinker is seen as being "cooler". This works well is market spaces where it's difficult to tell between competing products which is the better quality or people couldn't care one way or the other. It worked with iPods - they have a sexy image and they sold like hot-cakes. But when people talk about what computer they own, they talk about specs, not brands. So the specification will win out over a stylish appearance.
I think the thing that stops the "sex-sells" from happening with computers is that most buyers are either businesses (not interested in sexy, but bang-for-buck), geeks, or are taking a geek-friends along to advise them.
The scary part of the story is the bit about Surface to Air Missiles. What are the chances do you think of it clearing customs in this world of Homeland Security?
A year or two ago, Patrick, through his connections in the surplus military equipment world, found himself at a "secret, but now defunct air force base in Poland," one that had been used by Warsaw Pact forces during the Cold War. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Soviet-era armaments began showing up on various black and not-so-black markets.
The men running the Polish air force base were trying to sell Patrick an SA-2 missile. This is the ubiquitous surface-to-air missile used by the Soviet Union and nearly all its military allies. It was an SA-2 that shot down Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane in 1960.
Not only were the guys at the air base trying to sell Patrick an SA-2, "they were saying, 'you want a MiG 21 (fighter jet)? I'll sell you two tanks and a MiG.' " .
"So they wanted $2,000 for the missile," Patrick said, "and I had a bottle of ouzo and after a while I got them down to a grand." He still hasn't got the 35-foot-long missile, but he does know what he'll do with it once it clears U.S. customs. (Good luck.)
a tight parking spot You must be joking - you could fit a Hummer in that spot.
I'd say this is targeted at home users (who don't mind having all their emails stored at gmail). But google could quite easily setup and run intranet-based versions of this for companies who value their privacy.
Of course, Google may implement some form of encryption so that documents are only readable by certain users or groups of users. This of course would bunk their targeted advertising, but I'd imagine that Google would charge companies for that sort of service. I could see some multinationals might want some sort of internationally-accessible document storage and search system if they don't want to set up their own VPN.
Doesn't matter too much about Hawai'i airport itself - there are a lot of routes that go above or near Hawai'i. In fact if an aircraft is landing / taking off from Hawai'i, then unless it is circling around at high altitude waiting for a time to land then it's unlikely to leave vapour trails.
"Worthless" means that it isn't worth building them because they can only be used a small percentage of the time. No-one is suggesting that there will be 100% clouds over the earth - just enough clouds to make it a complete lottery to get a good night for observation.
Well - the US is racking up huge bills in Iraq, with no end in sight, not to mention the enormous current account deficit, so I guess NASA gets hit with the cost-cutting.
Correction, now at number 12: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/stat ic/-/books/amazon-bestsellers/ed_best_h__h/203-309 0677-3971925
1. Sue world-famous author
2. Doesn't matter the outcome of the legal case as it's all good publicity
3. Profit !!!
FTFA:
The legal action has seen The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail shoot up the Amazon.co.uk bestseller chart from number 173 at lunchtime, to 102 by 2.30pm and was at 53 late this afternoon.
As the statistics say (not very clearly), texting is far more popular in the UK (and I would assume Europe, too) than the US. Cue lots of americans saying it's expensive and crap and don't understand why it's so popular.
Reason is that texting is cheap and universal in Europe (inc. the UK) because of the GSM network prevalent there, plus all sorts of organisations jumping onto the texting bandwagon to encourage people to text more.
As soon as I read "magnetic flux" and "exponentially greater motive force than conventional motors" BS alerts went off all over the place. Every once in a while the editors like to throw a Perpetual Motion article into the Slashdot omelet to see who's awake....
Saw a license plate the other day that made me laugh - "OMGWTF".
Don't know about that one, but Australia's Department of Environment and Heritage has data, going back to around 1900 showing 12 to 16 cm increases in sea-levels in the 20th century.
Islands like Kiribati and Tuvalu in the Pacific ocean have already been experiencing rising sea-levels over a period of 13 years according to a tide-gauge project run by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology.
The rate of about 6mm (0.236 inches) per year is quite slow, but it is significant for low-lying islands like these ones.
The Toxoplasma are our friends. They only need a safe warm home to... HELP!!!! [NO CARRIER]
From TFA:
[Agent Smith Voice]We are not merely a disease; we are, through our intelligence and communication, the nervous system of the planet.
[/Agent Smith Voice]A disease on this planet??? - reminds me of a movie I saw a while ago:-) Maybe this is how the skynet starts?
the researchers forced the bees to fly in a small chamber filled with a mixture of oxygen and helium
What I really want to know is what the bees sounded like after breathing in that helium. Biiiiiiiiiiizzzzzz?
The HD-DVD standard will offer compatibility with the discs you already own, and TV addicts will need to splash out on expensive high-definition TV sets before the difference is noticeable.
Well, actually "TV addicts" will have to splash out on a HDMI-compliant HD TV if they want to play any HD-DVDs (not just to get the resolution improvements) because the players only offer HDMI output. I don't think people will be buying a new TV for a small picture quality improvement - look at all the fuss over people having to buy new TVs or Digital->Analogue coverters when analogue TV signals get shut down. Besides, they'll have to make room for the behemoth somewhere.
An alternative to http downloads WOULD be a good plug-in for firefox. So instead of downloading a large file from a web-site through HTTP or FTP, a web-site would have a link to a p2p file that initiates this plug-in which would download the file in a P2P fashion. I guess this is equivalent to having torrents and BitTorrent installed, but if firefox had a plugin then maybe more web-sites would accomodate this type of download.
This would obviously be beneficial to both users (quicker downloads) and web-site owners (reduces their bandwidth charges). I would think that the web-site would have to still host the file so that at least one source of the file is always available for not-so-popular files.
I don't think this plugin achieves that as it seems to be more to do with sharing files between users.
The latest General Electric 3MW turbines are so big they're only being considered for offshore installation
I'm not sure if they're GE turbines, but the proposed wind farm near Wellington, New Zealand seems to have 3MW turbines (70 turbines, producing 210MW). They're 125 metres (375 feet?) tall.
Luckily, New Zealand has large hydro-electric power plants and lots of wind so wind-power is quite a viable clean energy source. The theory is that when the wind is blowing, the dams can fill up, storing energy and when the wind is not blowing, the hydro-electric plants can run.