The idea of a "the most boring day" is the the consolidated most boring day for all of mankind...not the most boring day for santax, the dude who thinks Cambridge should be studying what he finds interesting.. Given that mankind as a whole generally records what it finds interesting and relevant in history books, news casts, and other public / government documents you can assume the rest of the stuff is generally noise. It's not that something important didn't happen or that something influential didn't happen just that it wasn't noteworthy or interesting to the whole of mankind at the time that it happened... hence it was a boring day
Blah blah, theft, nice thief, should have backups etc....but I'm more concerned that he could fit 10 years of work on a single usb stick. I guess some jobs generate more data than others but that's pretty lean research work. I guess maybe some academics don't generate more than their own writing.
If you believe what the multi-billion dollar worth guy who owns the company which is making cash hand-over-fist while violating your privacy says about the roots of the website.
You couldn't get a more biased source.
Sure you could just go to a news site discussion forum filled with underachieving idealistic tech people who are jealous of the billionaire's success with a seemingly pointless piece of software that violates some of their core principles.
I made the switch about 18 months ago, bought an apple TV and an HD over the air antenna.
The antenna sucks now that they've all gone digital. The signals are weak and I regularly can't get one station or another and I live in the middle of one of the largest 5 cities in the states. Apple TV is so so being relatively expensive and not having everything I want to watch. Hulu, etc. is ok but I prefer to watch it on my 55 in Mitsu Diamond internal projection TV which I can't due to the fact that it is too old to have an HDMI so I'm left watching it on a 30 inch computer monitor.
The single biggest "sacrifice" for me personally is college football. Sports in general are an issue especially if you're a hockey fan since the networks ignore hockey now, but as a college football fan who used to watch probably 80% of my school's games via ESPN, FOX Sports, and Pay per View, I now see just the ones that make it to network television.
All of that siad I don't see myself going back to cable/sat unless their service, quality, price, etc. improve. Since I don't see that happening I'm more or less waiting for a live/on-demand hybrid to come to the web and include sports. Additionally, I expect as I upgrade my TVs over the years it will become easier and easier as the connection and format issues sort themselves out.
It's not that I forget it's that I don't care. If the value of your content (to me personally) outweighs the annoyance of your ads then I'll read. If not I won't. I usually don't bother blocking ads I just avoid sites with irritating advertising. That said I'd be happy to block ads if the content was valuable but the ads were bringing the annoyance factor to an unbearable point. The content is not the only part of the product you're putting out. The ads are part of your product and horrible ads lower the overall value of your product so if you have to have ads your total product is worth less to me. At some point if it becomes without value to a large number of your readers and you go out of business even if your content is top notch.
Another thing that content producers seem to "forget" is that there is plenty of competition out there and just because you put out the best content doesn't mean you deserve to survive or make a living off of it. If the other content is "good enough" and doesn't annoy the reader with ads the overall value of that content may be higher. Ad revenue is not an intrinsic birth right, it's the result of providing a high enough quality total product that people are willing to consume it. Just like all business models it will not last forever and those that don't adapt will either die or attempt to legislate themselves a living at the expense of their consumers.
since companies are mostly made up of greedy ass holes
So out of curiosity, what's the alternative to specialized labor performed by groups of trained people (aka companies) if you wish to create anything more complex than a plow? If profit isn't a motive how do you get widespread rampant cooperation so people will create complex items?
Companies (or more accurately the people running them) do sometimes act in a greedy and unethical way, just like individuals at all levels of society often act in a selfish and unethical way. It's not the fact that they're a company that makes them do this but the fact that they're a company makes them a bit like Godzilla...so big that seemingly small actions have big far reaching consequences and hence Tokyo....er....customers suffer.
My question would be if you're against companies as your comment above seems to suggest what is the alternative? If people shouldn't be allowed to form groups with recognized legal rights to pursue a common and complex goal how do you build things that are beyond the reach of a single man with generic skills? I think a better question would be how and to what extent should companies by viewed and regulated by law such that their negative actions dont have widely rippling unintended consequences but they are still a viable vehicle for progress?
We warned you to be silent. Don't make us come after you. We are all powerful, we are wealthy and we are anonymo....wait...oh crap, I'm logged in, never mind.
Actually I think their problem is that they think their product is more valuable than it is. Specifically when the world was less connected, they performed a service that few could and were a method of connecting people and information over great distances. The world is no longer as disconnected. Additionally, they can provide a very high quality service compared to competitors but if that difference in quality is not valued by the consumers it's just wasted.
Do they still provide value, absolutely, but it's not nearly as much value as they previously provided. Unfortunately they still have a cost structure in place that assumes that historic high value and hence revenue. If they don't change that somehow they're going to eventually die off. It's not really about relevance it's more about basic economics and the declining value of a service and the cost required to produce that service. They can charge all they want for online articles but its not going to help them if they don't have significant differentiators in value of their product and so far (at least to the casual observer) it seems like they're in denial about this fact.
I think the American argument would be it doesn't count if you crash land in a bog at the end...even if you don't die. Still chipping ice off manually in flight is pretty damn impressive.
Friends most certainly do let friends take their computers to Best Buy...especially if they don't want to be tech support for the rest of the friendship;)
I for one loved CS with all it's "camping lamers" as you put it. It forced you to learn maps and use terrain...especially if you were the assault team in the scenario. Don't get me wrong I played a crap load of Quake 2 in college and loved it too but they were different games and I don't think you have to worry about all the super space marine stuff going away anytime soon given our attention span and love of instant gratification. That said even though I played the Q2 and Q3 more than any human should have I now wish there were at least a handful of FPS/combat games that were deeper and required more thinking and strategy than twitch shooting.
Sadly I couldn't RTFA because of the good old Slashdot effect but the concept that efficiency can be determined by a direct correlation to performance metrics is just wrong.
For the sake of argument I'll confine my examples of why I believe this thinking is flawed to just the language vs language issue and not bring in any network, database, etc. issues. First, how many more computer hours did it take to build in C++ than PHP? Second if you build like for like functionality in C++ at a given point in time it probably isn't as flexible and maintainable so all maintenance takes longer. Now lets assume you do things "right" and build in all sorts of flexibility and injection points eventually you end up building a higher level abstraction (or perhaps even an full interpreted language) which has the same issues as PHP regarding performance.
The reason you accept performance declines associated with higher level abstractions is that it allows you to do more in a shorter amount of time at a still reasonable performance level and anyone who doesn't understand that and all the impacts of that certainly can't produce a legitimate analysis of power consumption based on languages. If the author really believes this he should program everything in assembly or even better build specialty hardware for every computing task or better yet simply quit using computers or electricity all together, that will definitely have a bigger impact.
stop being a tool, it was obvious it was not his only criteria. And in any marketplace it is an important one that will gain more users.
Do I see netbsd high in the usage ranks?
Actually I didn't think it was obvious.
As I read it the first guy was just saying he preferred mysql to PostreSQL and that one of the deciding factors in that decision was ease of use.
The second guy as I read it was trying to discount the original argument by showing that ease of use should not be considered because that means Access would win which we consider absurd knowing many of the weaknesses with Access.
I don't think that pointing out that that is absurd reasoning is "being a tool" but I am impressed with the way you somehow agreed with my original point while calling me a tool and being as abrasive as possible.
Oh I don't have a strong opinion on which is better, I've used both effectively.
I was just responding to the guy above who was claiming Access should win because your selection criteria was flawed.
Fair enough. People don't do things for the heck of it indefinitely.;)
At a more basic level without specialized labor (aka civilization) and hence trading, people only make one or two or a few copies of something so that they can use it. When you add profit as a motivator they then build things to trade for other things and we all enjoy the progress of the industrious and clever individuals among us.
Or market economics...turns out a lawnmower purchaser is not willing to pay the same for a battery that a laptop purchaser is or perhaps the lawnmower has cheaper non-lithium competitors it must compete with which drives down it's market price. I guess technically that's greed, charging what you can but without it where would we be?
Wow I wasn't trying to do either...I actually agree with the part of the article that rips Eschenbach. I have a problem with the part of the article that acts like you have to have some sort of credential to participate.
One thing I will say even if we never find a point to agree on is I've enjoyed the conversation as it avoided the usual idiocy you find on slashdot. Thanks.
First of all you're not required to be a politician and if you seek that route I believe you're taking on a responsibility to be reasonably educated on the topics for which you're making policy. Also, I think you're misrepresenting what I mean by educate yourself and equating it with becoming a leading expert in every field. As for your example I would expect policy makers to be able to state why the chose each way in the scenarios you mention and back it up with logical reasoning. If their reasoning is because so-and-so told me to vote that way, I want a new policy maker. At some point you have to trust the data being presented, sure, but you shouldn't decide you position based on looking around at who else has taken that position and blindly following. You should decide based on rational arguments from data and you should make reasonable efforts to use good data or at least understand the conditions under which your data was collected, though this is the hardest part of the process.
You're putting good intent into author's the author's words. In my original reading of the article he actually states
One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand.
I think that's horrible. First of all it doesn't require a PhD in climate change studies to show statistical manipulation. It doesn't even require a degree in math. Shown how a junior high kid can apply basic digit frequency analysis and check it against a logarithmic chart (one example of how to find statistical manipulation in some data sets). Again I have no problem with this guy's defense of his global warming position or his dismembering of the other guys argument. I do have a problem with his proposed system for future analysis or lack thereof in deciding how he should act.
Fair enough that's where we disagree. I think if you don't have the time or ability to investigate and decide for yourself you shouldn't be acting in that sphere for fear of doing more harm that good.
As for paragraph 2 if you have read a 100 scientists opinions refuting Joe Blogger and you agree with their analysis isn't this educating yourself? The thing that scares me is the don't believe him or even take the time to look at his stuff because he's not part of the club mentality.
Slashdot Mirror
The idea of a "the most boring day" is the the consolidated most boring day for all of mankind...not the most boring day for santax, the dude who thinks Cambridge should be studying what he finds interesting.. Given that mankind as a whole generally records what it finds interesting and relevant in history books, news casts, and other public / government documents you can assume the rest of the stuff is generally noise. It's not that something important didn't happen or that something influential didn't happen just that it wasn't noteworthy or interesting to the whole of mankind at the time that it happened... hence it was a boring day
Blah blah, theft, nice thief, should have backups etc....but I'm more concerned that he could fit 10 years of work on a single usb stick. I guess some jobs generate more data than others but that's pretty lean research work. I guess maybe some academics don't generate more than their own writing.
If you believe what the multi-billion dollar worth guy who owns the company which is making cash hand-over-fist while violating your privacy says about the roots of the website. You couldn't get a more biased source.
Sure you could just go to a news site discussion forum filled with underachieving idealistic tech people who are jealous of the billionaire's success with a seemingly pointless piece of software that violates some of their core principles.
Verizon has to figure out some way to convince Apple that is it evil enough to deserve the iPhone...I'm guessing it went down something like this.
"I mean come on those things are cool, we want to sell them too...we can treat customers just as poorly as AT&T...watch this!!!"
I made the switch about 18 months ago, bought an apple TV and an HD over the air antenna.
The antenna sucks now that they've all gone digital. The signals are weak and I regularly can't get one station or another and I live in the middle of one of the largest 5 cities in the states. Apple TV is so so being relatively expensive and not having everything I want to watch. Hulu, etc. is ok but I prefer to watch it on my 55 in Mitsu Diamond internal projection TV which I can't due to the fact that it is too old to have an HDMI so I'm left watching it on a 30 inch computer monitor.
The single biggest "sacrifice" for me personally is college football. Sports in general are an issue especially if you're a hockey fan since the networks ignore hockey now, but as a college football fan who used to watch probably 80% of my school's games via ESPN, FOX Sports, and Pay per View, I now see just the ones that make it to network television.
All of that siad I don't see myself going back to cable/sat unless their service, quality, price, etc. improve. Since I don't see that happening I'm more or less waiting for a live/on-demand hybrid to come to the web and include sports. Additionally, I expect as I upgrade my TVs over the years it will become easier and easier as the connection and format issues sort themselves out.
It's not that I forget it's that I don't care. If the value of your content (to me personally) outweighs the annoyance of your ads then I'll read. If not I won't. I usually don't bother blocking ads I just avoid sites with irritating advertising. That said I'd be happy to block ads if the content was valuable but the ads were bringing the annoyance factor to an unbearable point. The content is not the only part of the product you're putting out. The ads are part of your product and horrible ads lower the overall value of your product so if you have to have ads your total product is worth less to me. At some point if it becomes without value to a large number of your readers and you go out of business even if your content is top notch.
Another thing that content producers seem to "forget" is that there is plenty of competition out there and just because you put out the best content doesn't mean you deserve to survive or make a living off of it. If the other content is "good enough" and doesn't annoy the reader with ads the overall value of that content may be higher. Ad revenue is not an intrinsic birth right, it's the result of providing a high enough quality total product that people are willing to consume it. Just like all business models it will not last forever and those that don't adapt will either die or attempt to legislate themselves a living at the expense of their consumers.
The biggest problem with Microsoft is badly-written software — the operating system allows you to write software badly unlike Mac or Linux
Please, I've written crappy software on all sorts of OSes...quit being a fanboy.
since companies are mostly made up of greedy ass holes
So out of curiosity, what's the alternative to specialized labor performed by groups of trained people (aka companies) if you wish to create anything more complex than a plow? If profit isn't a motive how do you get widespread rampant cooperation so people will create complex items?
Companies (or more accurately the people running them) do sometimes act in a greedy and unethical way, just like individuals at all levels of society often act in a selfish and unethical way. It's not the fact that they're a company that makes them do this but the fact that they're a company makes them a bit like Godzilla...so big that seemingly small actions have big far reaching consequences and hence Tokyo....er....customers suffer.
My question would be if you're against companies as your comment above seems to suggest what is the alternative? If people shouldn't be allowed to form groups with recognized legal rights to pursue a common and complex goal how do you build things that are beyond the reach of a single man with generic skills? I think a better question would be how and to what extent should companies by viewed and regulated by law such that their negative actions dont have widely rippling unintended consequences but they are still a viable vehicle for progress?
We warned you to be silent. Don't make us come after you. We are all powerful, we are wealthy and we are anonymo....wait...oh crap, I'm logged in, never mind.
Actually I think their problem is that they think their product is more valuable than it is. Specifically when the world was less connected, they performed a service that few could and were a method of connecting people and information over great distances. The world is no longer as disconnected. Additionally, they can provide a very high quality service compared to competitors but if that difference in quality is not valued by the consumers it's just wasted.
Do they still provide value, absolutely, but it's not nearly as much value as they previously provided. Unfortunately they still have a cost structure in place that assumes that historic high value and hence revenue. If they don't change that somehow they're going to eventually die off. It's not really about relevance it's more about basic economics and the declining value of a service and the cost required to produce that service. They can charge all they want for online articles but its not going to help them if they don't have significant differentiators in value of their product and so far (at least to the casual observer) it seems like they're in denial about this fact.
I think the American argument would be it doesn't count if you crash land in a bog at the end...even if you don't die. Still chipping ice off manually in flight is pretty damn impressive.
Huh, seems like my system has an added bonus of culling the more needy of my friends. I stand by my advice ;)
Friends most certainly do let friends take their computers to Best Buy...especially if they don't want to be tech support for the rest of the friendship ;)
I for one loved CS with all it's "camping lamers" as you put it. It forced you to learn maps and use terrain...especially if you were the assault team in the scenario. Don't get me wrong I played a crap load of Quake 2 in college and loved it too but they were different games and I don't think you have to worry about all the super space marine stuff going away anytime soon given our attention span and love of instant gratification. That said even though I played the Q2 and Q3 more than any human should have I now wish there were at least a handful of FPS/combat games that were deeper and required more thinking and strategy than twitch shooting.
Sadly I couldn't RTFA because of the good old Slashdot effect but the concept that efficiency can be determined by a direct correlation to performance metrics is just wrong.
For the sake of argument I'll confine my examples of why I believe this thinking is flawed to just the language vs language issue and not bring in any network, database, etc. issues. First, how many more computer hours did it take to build in C++ than PHP? Second if you build like for like functionality in C++ at a given point in time it probably isn't as flexible and maintainable so all maintenance takes longer. Now lets assume you do things "right" and build in all sorts of flexibility and injection points eventually you end up building a higher level abstraction (or perhaps even an full interpreted language) which has the same issues as PHP regarding performance.
The reason you accept performance declines associated with higher level abstractions is that it allows you to do more in a shorter amount of time at a still reasonable performance level and anyone who doesn't understand that and all the impacts of that certainly can't produce a legitimate analysis of power consumption based on languages. If the author really believes this he should program everything in assembly or even better build specialty hardware for every computing task or better yet simply quit using computers or electricity all together, that will definitely have a bigger impact.
stop being a tool, it was obvious it was not his only criteria. And in any marketplace it is an important one that will gain more users.
Do I see netbsd high in the usage ranks?
Actually I didn't think it was obvious.
As I read it the first guy was just saying he preferred mysql to PostreSQL and that one of the deciding factors in that decision was ease of use.
The second guy as I read it was trying to discount the original argument by showing that ease of use should not be considered because that means Access would win which we consider absurd knowing many of the weaknesses with Access.
I don't think that pointing out that that is absurd reasoning is "being a tool" but I am impressed with the way you somehow agreed with my original point while calling me a tool and being as abrasive as possible.
Oh I don't have a strong opinion on which is better, I've used both effectively. I was just responding to the guy above who was claiming Access should win because your selection criteria was flawed.
counts for something != counts for everything but nice try
Fair enough. People don't do things for the heck of it indefinitely. ;)
At a more basic level without specialized labor (aka civilization) and hence trading, people only make one or two or a few copies of something so that they can use it. When you add profit as a motivator they then build things to trade for other things and we all enjoy the progress of the industrious and clever individuals among us.
Unlikely, people don't do things for the heck of it.
Or market economics...turns out a lawnmower purchaser is not willing to pay the same for a battery that a laptop purchaser is or perhaps the lawnmower has cheaper non-lithium competitors it must compete with which drives down it's market price. I guess technically that's greed, charging what you can but without it where would we be?
Wow I wasn't trying to do either...I actually agree with the part of the article that rips Eschenbach. I have a problem with the part of the article that acts like you have to have some sort of credential to participate.
One thing I will say even if we never find a point to agree on is I've enjoyed the conversation as it avoided the usual idiocy you find on slashdot. Thanks.
You're putting good intent into author's the author's words. In my original reading of the article he actually states
One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand.
I think that's horrible. First of all it doesn't require a PhD in climate change studies to show statistical manipulation. It doesn't even require a degree in math. Shown how a junior high kid can apply basic digit frequency analysis and check it against a logarithmic chart (one example of how to find statistical manipulation in some data sets). Again I have no problem with this guy's defense of his global warming position or his dismembering of the other guys argument. I do have a problem with his proposed system for future analysis or lack thereof in deciding how he should act.
Fair enough that's where we disagree. I think if you don't have the time or ability to investigate and decide for yourself you shouldn't be acting in that sphere for fear of doing more harm that good.
As for paragraph 2 if you have read a 100 scientists opinions refuting Joe Blogger and you agree with their analysis isn't this educating yourself? The thing that scares me is the don't believe him or even take the time to look at his stuff because he's not part of the club mentality.