Published before the parental controls were implemented... it's a big difference. I don't agree with parental controls, but some people do and to keep those people in peace and using the service we all have to tolerate some inconveniences.
I have been also looking at reports and studies from both sides, interestingly I do find many times the reports have contradictory evidence. Good example would be sun radiation increase myth, which if you look few actual measurement sites is in fact at it's lowest, not highest.
Besides if you look into the IPCC report (full report page 39) from 2007 the solar radiation increase from the average is accounted for. Unfortunately many of these aspects that affect climate are considered to have med/low level of scientific understanding on how the phenomena works, mostly measurements back up the fact that something is potentially going on in that area. When the "global warming is HOAX" sites receive any bit of information that they feel is beneficial in debunking the global warming story they immediately jump on it and create a report that explains everything, end of story. What I really like about IPCC report is that the whole report is full of uncertainties and highlights areas that needs to be researched more. I like that kind of openness in the face of extremely complex phenomena that is mostly observed as well as modeled with rough approximations so far, work is in progress to fine tune those estimates but it takes time. There are also some areas where level of scientific understanding is high, one of those areas is CO2. Ultimately the result of the IPCC report is that likelihood that human is causing climate change that is irreversible is very high and according to current known facts reducing green house gases is the most effective way to counter that.
There are strict laws about charity collection and those laws differ from state to state. You cannot collect for charity unless you have permission, Apple is just protecting the application developer from potential legal issue. Other aspects of the book can be true or false but they are not illegal to be published under free speech.
Finding Nemo worldwide revenue $864 mil. Cars worldwide revenue $461 mil. Monsters, Inc worldwide revenue $525 mil. The Incredibles worldwide revenue $631 mil. Ratatouille worldwide revenue $621 mil. Wall-E worldwide revenue $534 mil. Up worldwide revenue (not launched internationally) 149 mil.
I don't see Pixar being in trouble at all, this is very solid business and seems to me very predictable above $500mil. per movie business. All figures from wikipedia.
Or the Chinese coders do Topcoder, do well, get a job, quit Topcoder. The talent pool just might be larger than in the US and there are capable peers who are willing to invest their time and get a job in the future. Why would you automatically assume the life would be different over there than it's in here? Chinese top coders are not that poorly paid.
"Isn't life wonderful when we just let the government do things?"
I think there is nothing wrong in setting the minimum and maximum levels of ethanol in the fuel. Similarly I don't see anything wrong with government regulation on the average mileage of the cars. I'm all for lead free gas as well as mandatory catalytic converters on cars. These are things that I want government to do, regulate the marketplace. Sometimes the regulation makes mistakes, minimum ethanol requirement might be that, but then it's time to change that policy.
Problem comes when instead of regulating government starts subsidizing and deciding which way to produce ethanol is best. Of course this is mostly done because of protectionist nature of the country. Ethanol production needs to stay within US borders, otherwise the "get rid of oil dependency" would just changes into "get rid of ethanol dependency" mantra. Why change one evil to another, that's where less than ideal solutions with subsidy comes from.
Ethanol production and the subsidy has long term view of enabling US to produce significant portion of the energy within the country. Change and technologies don't come over few years and there won't be competitive ethanol ecosystem without government regulation. Without the subsidy there also won't be US based ethanol ecosystem to bridge the gap between current inefficient production and future efficient ethanol production. Whenever government subsidizes something there is always longer term view that is related to competitiveness, national security or similar non-tangible causes.
What all this means is that I believe government has important role in making sure of the long term survival of the country that doesn't always feel nice at the present. Regulation is the main tool along with taxation and subsidy. I expect government to use these tools to make the future brighter. Free market alone won't do it for us.
Was it the microwave, popcorn, butter, or the inhaling that caused the cancer? That reminds me of me, I shit every day and I don't have a colon cancer.
I think Sony is going for that with the PS2 development. One more price cut and one more hardware shrink and they are there with huge library of games.
Nothing is as simple as just saying "legalize it" but in my opinion the benefits of legalizing prostitution out weight the negatives in this case. Main thing for me personally is that police would have better resources to go after sexual slavery when they don't need to go after everyone. Additionally customers would have incentive to report criminal activity to police and steer towards voluntary prostitutes.
The downside that you mentioned about not having backup in case of trouble is real, but if the operation was legal there would always be a police to call. Similar to hair dresser whose customer refuses to pay because of bad service or whatever other reason. I would want to see that case go court where the customer demonstrates and explains how bad service they got from the prostitute.
I searched car for myself quite a bit and ended up getting Subaru Forester 2007, which is the smallest SUV I could find. I'm over 6 feet and had problem with low roofs that cut my view, Forester was perfect for me. Forester does get around 24-27mpg in real life depending on the engine.
What I heard is that those new "box" cars are getting quite roomy as well. I think the ability to seat taller person is more about interior design than the external size of the car.
I agree with you, even now there are applications where license plates can be detected using regular cameras on freeways. Expansion to this GPS tracking is to put license plate detection cameras on Freeways and on each exit, that way practically whole society would be under surveillance without huge cost. Since they are just following cars, it should be legal to do.
Next comes face recognition (iPhoto does search by face already) on streets and then we would slowly accept the fact that only criminals need to worry about surveillance so it's a really good thing...
Tell that to the Ford Pinto passengers. They shouldn't have been rear-ended in the first place. Pedestrian unsafe cars have similar design flaws as Ford Pinto, the flaw is just directed to pedestrians instead of the car passengers. I just cannot understand what goes on in the mind of people who are against modifications to the cars to make them safer to drive and be around. Please don't go to the extremes of proposing 10mph upper speed limit and full body airbags, because designing cars with pedestrians in mind isn't restricting the car performance or abilities in any significant way.
You are right, there is perceived freedom to download whatever you want. That doesn't mean much if there aren't any real world choices provided. Similar case is in TV providers, you are free to choose which provider you are going for but once locked in you are allowed to watch only the channels that are available. If you change the provider the odds are you still don't get the TV programs you wanted but have to stick with same channel selection only with minor differences. Ultimately you can go and put up your own antennae to receive whatever you want, but real world choices in that solution are still very limited. Freedom? Maybe yes. To have bragging rights for that perceived freedom over cable or directTV viewers? Definitely not.
I don't know how trademark law worked back then, but registering a trademark is not necessary to get it acknowledged. Only consistently maintain the trade name is enough, although it's much harder to prove when establishing the trademark happened without registration. Many worldwide brands and trade names are without registrations, especially in peripheral countries. I guess that's why they need to fight about it still...
I don't think WOW has any spectacular code in it, it's all about the game design, story, tools and polish. That's what makes knock offs appealing, the code is cheap compared to other aspects of the game project. Having example ready and being satisfied with minimal changes and feature reductions will make whole thing orders of magnitude easier.
When I was selling the game projects myself it was always hard to explain the customers that source code is not the most valuable asset. We needed to be able to reuse and redevelop the code, no point in making same simple algorithms or patterns over and over again or figure out "appendix" where pre-existing or reusable routines are listed. Game projects are all about the game design, audio, art, and the whole refinement of the project. With many genres we are already in a point where scripting and tools are the main code that is written. Very little engine development needs to be done, unless something differentiating on the engine front is needed.
Of course with WOW there is a lot of code and it's going to be hard to duplicate, but to focus on the code as the main asset is not necessarily true anymore...
I went to look for this porn from Blackberry appworld there isn't any! I feel cheated, where can I find porn apps for Blackberry? Remember that browsing the sites is already possible on Safari and zooming works much nicer than on Blackberry.
One of the major arguments was that there are various providers for torrent tracking, for example Google. Therefore if Google is not at fault in assisting piracy then Pirate Bay shouldn't be either. Pirate Bay believes it is essentially providing similar service than Google in a more convenient way. (http://www.google.com/search?q=x-men+origins+torrent)
Technicalities aside, we were discussing the effect of ice floating in the ocean and what happens when it melts. Once the ice melts it starts contributing the sea level rise through contraction/expansion caused by changing temperature. This effect is the same for all the water in the ocean. My original response was to counter the claim that melted sea ice doesn't have any effect at all to sea level rise, which is not true. It does and the reason it does is that the volume of water will change depending on the temperature once in liquid form.
You are wrong, water increases volume when heated up. Quite significant (read: small fraction) amount of sea level rise is attributed to water expanding in higher temperature.
Fair enough, let the developing countries have similar emissions as developed nations per capita. Guess what, China can still increase their emissions four times more until meeting the pollution levels set by the US citizens.
Loss Amtrak: 1.1 billion dollars Profit VR: 66 million euros
Ridership Amtrak: 29 million trips per year Ridership VR: 67 million trips per year
Some of this is because of government subsidy (although Amtrak seems to get quite a lot as well), but basically VR is government owned company that needs to make profit.
In short term it's lifestyle issue where many people prefer suburbs over dense residential areas, but in long term that does not necessarily need to be so. Rising energy costs and unsustainable ecological footprint will force society to adapt and find more ecological ways to live. Rails are not going to be viable across the nation, but those areas that were identified in the article will have a chance to grow up to become rail friendly areas. Some areas will fail the task and rail will be forgotten but others have a chance to attract enough development to truly take advantage of the new infrastructure.
I have tried 3 times Amtrak from San Diego to Los Angeles to catch a flight from LAX. The least the train has been delayed was 30min and most was 4 hours. Fortunately on that 4 hour delay I had reserved 6 hours of extra time so I could go and see some things in downtown LA. In all of these cases I barely made my flights and since then I have never used the train here. This kind of reliability just isn't acceptable.
Public transport is not for everyone, and not for every day use. In case I have a computer (desktop) to carry to work I won't be going to a train, I take my car or taxi.
Some jobs and residental areas are just inaccessible by the train, and that is the fact even in Europe. Once working train/bus connections form between major residental areas and office/factory locations big portion of the residents will have option to take the train and save money (reduce the amount of cars owned and paid for) and/or focus on daily news instead of watching the road. This frees up current roads to those people who are not able to utilize the system for whatever reason, personal or otherwise. I think this is and should be always the goal of public transportation.
I lived in Finland and never owned a car there, shop was quarter mile away, for work I had to walk to bus and from bus to offices about 10 minutes total. That's all. In case I had a day that I wanted to go to gym I took gym clothes with me (gym in the office building) or even biked or skated eight miles to work (showers provided at office) and took that as a workout. I spent about 30 EUR per month for month ticket and no other expenses, car would have saved me 10 min of time each day though. Now that I'm in US I do have a car and drive every day, and I see lots of reasons to do so. It's not about lazy like many people here say, it's just impossible to justify hours of travel on the bus even for minor trip.
Slashdot Mirror
Published before the parental controls were implemented... it's a big difference. I don't agree with parental controls, but some people do and to keep those people in peace and using the service we all have to tolerate some inconveniences.
I have been also looking at reports and studies from both sides, interestingly I do find many times the reports have contradictory evidence. Good example would be sun radiation increase myth, which if you look few actual measurement sites is in fact at it's lowest, not highest.
Couple examples:
http://acrim.com/Index.htm
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm
I know NASA is not nearly as credible as:
http://www.federaljack.com/2009/06/06/nasa-study-acknowledges-solar-cycle-not-man-responsible-for-warming-of-the-planet/
Besides if you look into the IPCC report (full report page 39) from 2007 the solar radiation increase from the average is accounted for. Unfortunately many of these aspects that affect climate are considered to have med/low level of scientific understanding on how the phenomena works, mostly measurements back up the fact that something is potentially going on in that area. When the "global warming is HOAX" sites receive any bit of information that they feel is beneficial in debunking the global warming story they immediately jump on it and create a report that explains everything, end of story. What I really like about IPCC report is that the whole report is full of uncertainties and highlights areas that needs to be researched more. I like that kind of openness in the face of extremely complex phenomena that is mostly observed as well as modeled with rough approximations so far, work is in progress to fine tune those estimates but it takes time. There are also some areas where level of scientific understanding is high, one of those areas is CO2. Ultimately the result of the IPCC report is that likelihood that human is causing climate change that is irreversible is very high and according to current known facts reducing green house gases is the most effective way to counter that.
There are strict laws about charity collection and those laws differ from state to state. You cannot collect for charity unless you have permission, Apple is just protecting the application developer from potential legal issue. Other aspects of the book can be true or false but they are not illegal to be published under free speech.
Finding Nemo worldwide revenue $864 mil.
Cars worldwide revenue $461 mil.
Monsters, Inc worldwide revenue $525 mil.
The Incredibles worldwide revenue $631 mil.
Ratatouille worldwide revenue $621 mil.
Wall-E worldwide revenue $534 mil.
Up worldwide revenue (not launched internationally) 149 mil.
I don't see Pixar being in trouble at all, this is very solid business and seems to me very predictable above $500mil. per movie business. All figures from wikipedia.
Or the Chinese coders do Topcoder, do well, get a job, quit Topcoder. The talent pool just might be larger than in the US and there are capable peers who are willing to invest their time and get a job in the future. Why would you automatically assume the life would be different over there than it's in here? Chinese top coders are not that poorly paid.
"Isn't life wonderful when we just let the government do things?"
I think there is nothing wrong in setting the minimum and maximum levels of ethanol in the fuel. Similarly I don't see anything wrong with government regulation on the average mileage of the cars. I'm all for lead free gas as well as mandatory catalytic converters on cars. These are things that I want government to do, regulate the marketplace. Sometimes the regulation makes mistakes, minimum ethanol requirement might be that, but then it's time to change that policy.
Problem comes when instead of regulating government starts subsidizing and deciding which way to produce ethanol is best. Of course this is mostly done because of protectionist nature of the country. Ethanol production needs to stay within US borders, otherwise the "get rid of oil dependency" would just changes into "get rid of ethanol dependency" mantra. Why change one evil to another, that's where less than ideal solutions with subsidy comes from.
Ethanol production and the subsidy has long term view of enabling US to produce significant portion of the energy within the country. Change and technologies don't come over few years and there won't be competitive ethanol ecosystem without government regulation. Without the subsidy there also won't be US based ethanol ecosystem to bridge the gap between current inefficient production and future efficient ethanol production. Whenever government subsidizes something there is always longer term view that is related to competitiveness, national security or similar non-tangible causes.
What all this means is that I believe government has important role in making sure of the long term survival of the country that doesn't always feel nice at the present. Regulation is the main tool along with taxation and subsidy. I expect government to use these tools to make the future brighter. Free market alone won't do it for us.
Was it the microwave, popcorn, butter, or the inhaling that caused the cancer? That reminds me of me, I shit every day and I don't have a colon cancer.
I think Sony is going for that with the PS2 development. One more price cut and one more hardware shrink and they are there with huge library of games.
Nothing is as simple as just saying "legalize it" but in my opinion the benefits of legalizing prostitution out weight the negatives in this case. Main thing for me personally is that police would have better resources to go after sexual slavery when they don't need to go after everyone. Additionally customers would have incentive to report criminal activity to police and steer towards voluntary prostitutes.
The downside that you mentioned about not having backup in case of trouble is real, but if the operation was legal there would always be a police to call. Similar to hair dresser whose customer refuses to pay because of bad service or whatever other reason. I would want to see that case go court where the customer demonstrates and explains how bad service they got from the prostitute.
I searched car for myself quite a bit and ended up getting Subaru Forester 2007, which is the smallest SUV I could find. I'm over 6 feet and had problem with low roofs that cut my view, Forester was perfect for me. Forester does get around 24-27mpg in real life depending on the engine.
What I heard is that those new "box" cars are getting quite roomy as well. I think the ability to seat taller person is more about interior design than the external size of the car.
I agree with you, even now there are applications where license plates can be detected using regular cameras on freeways. Expansion to this GPS tracking is to put license plate detection cameras on Freeways and on each exit, that way practically whole society would be under surveillance without huge cost. Since they are just following cars, it should be legal to do.
Next comes face recognition (iPhoto does search by face already) on streets and then we would slowly accept the fact that only criminals need to worry about surveillance so it's a really good thing...
Tell that to the Ford Pinto passengers. They shouldn't have been rear-ended in the first place. Pedestrian unsafe cars have similar design flaws as Ford Pinto, the flaw is just directed to pedestrians instead of the car passengers. I just cannot understand what goes on in the mind of people who are against modifications to the cars to make them safer to drive and be around. Please don't go to the extremes of proposing 10mph upper speed limit and full body airbags, because designing cars with pedestrians in mind isn't restricting the car performance or abilities in any significant way.
You are right, there is perceived freedom to download whatever you want. That doesn't mean much if there aren't any real world choices provided. Similar case is in TV providers, you are free to choose which provider you are going for but once locked in you are allowed to watch only the channels that are available. If you change the provider the odds are you still don't get the TV programs you wanted but have to stick with same channel selection only with minor differences. Ultimately you can go and put up your own antennae to receive whatever you want, but real world choices in that solution are still very limited. Freedom? Maybe yes. To have bragging rights for that perceived freedom over cable or directTV viewers? Definitely not.
I don't know how trademark law worked back then, but registering a trademark is not necessary to get it acknowledged. Only consistently maintain the trade name is enough, although it's much harder to prove when establishing the trademark happened without registration. Many worldwide brands and trade names are without registrations, especially in peripheral countries. I guess that's why they need to fight about it still...
I don't think WOW has any spectacular code in it, it's all about the game design, story, tools and polish. That's what makes knock offs appealing, the code is cheap compared to other aspects of the game project. Having example ready and being satisfied with minimal changes and feature reductions will make whole thing orders of magnitude easier.
When I was selling the game projects myself it was always hard to explain the customers that source code is not the most valuable asset. We needed to be able to reuse and redevelop the code, no point in making same simple algorithms or patterns over and over again or figure out "appendix" where pre-existing or reusable routines are listed. Game projects are all about the game design, audio, art, and the whole refinement of the project. With many genres we are already in a point where scripting and tools are the main code that is written. Very little engine development needs to be done, unless something differentiating on the engine front is needed.
Of course with WOW there is a lot of code and it's going to be hard to duplicate, but to focus on the code as the main asset is not necessarily true anymore...
I went to look for this porn from Blackberry appworld there isn't any! I feel cheated, where can I find porn apps for Blackberry? Remember that browsing the sites is already possible on Safari and zooming works much nicer than on Blackberry.
One of the major arguments was that there are various providers for torrent tracking, for example Google. Therefore if Google is not at fault in assisting piracy then Pirate Bay shouldn't be either. Pirate Bay believes it is essentially providing similar service than Google in a more convenient way. (http://www.google.com/search?q=x-men+origins+torrent)
Technicalities aside, we were discussing the effect of ice floating in the ocean and what happens when it melts. Once the ice melts it starts contributing the sea level rise through contraction/expansion caused by changing temperature. This effect is the same for all the water in the ocean. My original response was to counter the claim that melted sea ice doesn't have any effect at all to sea level rise, which is not true. It does and the reason it does is that the volume of water will change depending on the temperature once in liquid form.
After that God will go ahead and ask: "Are you Knights Templar and did you wage war against infidels and reclaim the holy land?".
You are wrong, water increases volume when heated up. Quite significant (read: small fraction) amount of sea level rise is attributed to water expanding in higher temperature.
Fair enough, let the developing countries have similar emissions as developed nations per capita. Guess what, China can still increase their emissions four times more until meeting the pollution levels set by the US citizens.
"Which means they're very unprofitable, if the government has to subsidize them that heavily. It's not a number to be proud of."
Finland has 5 million people, main rail company is VR and here are some financial data compared to Amtrak:
Revenues Amtrak: 2.5 billion dollars
Revenues VR: 1.3 billion euros
Loss Amtrak: 1.1 billion dollars
Profit VR: 66 million euros
Ridership Amtrak: 29 million trips per year
Ridership VR: 67 million trips per year
Some of this is because of government subsidy (although Amtrak seems to get quite a lot as well), but basically VR is government owned company that needs to make profit.
http://www.vrgroup.fi/index/VRGroup/Financialinformation.html
In short term it's lifestyle issue where many people prefer suburbs over dense residential areas, but in long term that does not necessarily need to be so. Rising energy costs and unsustainable ecological footprint will force society to adapt and find more ecological ways to live. Rails are not going to be viable across the nation, but those areas that were identified in the article will have a chance to grow up to become rail friendly areas. Some areas will fail the task and rail will be forgotten but others have a chance to attract enough development to truly take advantage of the new infrastructure.
I have tried 3 times Amtrak from San Diego to Los Angeles to catch a flight from LAX. The least the train has been delayed was 30min and most was 4 hours. Fortunately on that 4 hour delay I had reserved 6 hours of extra time so I could go and see some things in downtown LA. In all of these cases I barely made my flights and since then I have never used the train here. This kind of reliability just isn't acceptable.
Public transport is not for everyone, and not for every day use. In case I have a computer (desktop) to carry to work I won't be going to a train, I take my car or taxi.
Some jobs and residental areas are just inaccessible by the train, and that is the fact even in Europe. Once working train/bus connections form between major residental areas and office/factory locations big portion of the residents will have option to take the train and save money (reduce the amount of cars owned and paid for) and/or focus on daily news instead of watching the road. This frees up current roads to those people who are not able to utilize the system for whatever reason, personal or otherwise. I think this is and should be always the goal of public transportation.
I lived in Finland and never owned a car there, shop was quarter mile away, for work I had to walk to bus and from bus to offices about 10 minutes total. That's all. In case I had a day that I wanted to go to gym I took gym clothes with me (gym in the office building) or even biked or skated eight miles to work (showers provided at office) and took that as a workout. I spent about 30 EUR per month for month ticket and no other expenses, car would have saved me 10 min of time each day though. Now that I'm in US I do have a car and drive every day, and I see lots of reasons to do so. It's not about lazy like many people here say, it's just impossible to justify hours of travel on the bus even for minor trip.