Well, I was thinking along similar lines -- it wouldn't seem to offer much if at most, you can power a factory, since a factory can already be easily powered via cords. But then I thought about aircraft (I work in aerospace). Remember that with aircraft, conserving weight is so important, and you basically have "skeletons in the sky". Since you have to send electrical wiring to many parts of the aircraft, that requires you to put holes through the frames (left-right spanning structural members), which weakens them and forces you to make up for it with more material elsewhere in the frame. Allowing electricity to be sent to all parts of the aircraft without having to put such holes in, would seem to allow for better, lighter designs.
If the PS3 does badly enough because of Sony's blunders, couldn't that take down IBM's reputation? I'm sure someone can point out how IBM's contribution to the PS3 product has nothing to do with any PS3 hardware issues that come up, but still, they could take a lot of the blame for Sony's problems, even if such accusations have no merit, right?
I hope this poster is right, that they market this to non-third-worlders at x2 or x3 of the price to cover a donation of one or two of them to a participating country. Get a cheap, versatile, low-power-consumption computer, and change a few kids lives forever. Sign me up! (And I'm on the more misanthropic side...)
I don't think the CEA "invented" the idea that fair use is a consumer concern. Whether you will be legally limited in reprinting (reposting?) or sharing some copyrighted work is pretty much the definition of a consumer concern about IP.
All I know is, whenever I ask on a forum why emulation is so hard if you have the specs for the thing you're emulating, and designed the emulating system and thus can "translate" the new OS commands, I get a vague explanation from "experts" on the matter. Then when I ask clarifying questions about the explanations, they take it as rudeness and refuse to give any information that would reveal understanding of console architecture.
I saw two college girls at Best Buy that were into Guitar Hero, and said that they played it at home. (I was only there because they were the last place in town to stock Red Octane dance pads.) When I told them about DDR, they seemed interested in that, too. Yes, I've already contemplated suicide for missing the opportunity.
Fortuny ruined marriages? You mean, the whole "soliciting other woman for romantic relationship while already married, often times rather graphically" didn't play a part?
(I'm not defending him, just highlighting what his responsibility really was.)
The summary says, "About the article, it is in Japanese." I heard that in Japanese, it's actually common to form sentences like this. If so, that would be kinda cool. Anyone want to correct me on this?
No one bats an eyelid? Even if they're making a mess?
I agree that eating on public transportation isn't, in and of itself, bad. However, in some places, a far too high proportion of such eaters WILL do it carelessly and will make it hard on the rest of us, and in such places, more stringent enforcement would be welcome.
I don't know how this got modded as "redundant". It's a good point, and I'm sure someone else didn't say ALL of that before he did on this story. (Although I think you meant September 2005 for the express versions -- I know I was using Visual C# Express in February of this year. And people don't generally say "back in" for something that happened just a few months ago.)
I was very pleased with the interface in VC#, and it was easier to find what I needed that in other open source IDE's. There definitely is a place for proprietary software, mainly where the work is the kind no one wants to do.
And about the Photoshop killer, re: the other comments, I think people underestimate the value of simplicity. For my personal needs, Paint can cover 80% of it, and with a very easy-to-use interface. Yes, easier than GIMP for what it can do.
In fact, there's a mathematical proof (Arrow's Impossibility Theorem [wikipedia.org]) which specifically states that there is no completely fair voting scheme.
Er, no, Arrow's Theorem doesn't "specifically state that there is no completely fair voting scheme". "Fair" is a moral term, and no mathematical theorem would say anything about that. What Arrow's Theorem says is that across 4 (?) criteria, which by the way most people consider fair, no voting system can satisfy them all.
You, however, felt the need to play up its significance and claim that it "specifically" says no voting system is "fair". But it doesn't say that. It says all voting systems have some aspect most people don't recognize as fair. Maybe you meant "basically" rather than "specifically"?
I bring this up, because as written, you're falsely construing what exactly mathematical theorems can demonstrate, and I don't want people to be mislead by your terminology, like when Charlie on Numb3rs explains stuff;-)
Actually, on a related matter, something I've always wondered about the court cases involving spammers is, why doesn't nature take its course? I'm not advocating illegal acts, just wondering why no one's gone vigilante. I mean, there you have a spammer and his lawyer, revealing their identities in court to everyone who reads the media. Seems odd that no one would try reprisals at that point.
I mean, I know a year or so ago there was that spammer in Russia who got killed, but that wasn't related to his spamming.
Well, I think a fair formula for "what the appropriate fine is" would be:
Cost of damage done divided by probability of detection*.
You divide by the probability of detection to cover the costs of those who don't get caught.
If you apply that to littering, the cost is (since there are fixed costs to setting up the janitorial service and policing) the quotal share of that litter against the total cleanup costs. What magnifies it, however, is the probability of detection. Since very few people are going to be caught, you have to charge what seem like high fines, to get litterers to carry their full burden. If it turns out that the people who get caught tend to not have the money or otherwise evade payment, then it would make sense to step up punishments in other ways, which Singapore had been willing to do.
*You'll note that probability of detection probably isn't the right number to use, but rather the recovery rate, i.e., the fraction of dollar damages recovered by the authorities. That way, you give weight to the relative severity of the unsolved crimes.
Most of those policies I disagree with. But seriously, I'm glad SOMEWHERE they take care off assholes that use the world as their trashcan. I'm referring to their huge fines for people who don't follow the "no eating on subway" and similiar rules. I mean, every where you go, where there's public transportation, or even a public place, people abuse it. How many of you remember finding gum stuck under your desk? What assholes do that? And why should they get away with it?
It's true that you can hire more janitorial staff to get that stuff cleaned up. And they do. But as for the *costs* of doing so, it just seems a lot more fair for the people actually making it messy to pay.
If you know a better way to keep the trains clean, we'd all love to hear it. But until then, you might want to think about whether you're (you in the general sense, not parent) the cause of these policies in the first place. I'm sorry if your INALIENABLE RIGHT to leave your gum on someone's seat is being violated.
Confession: My ears are very sensitive. (People look at me funny when I claim to be hearing some sound until I take them down the street to show where it's coming from.) I get easily distracted by noises. Earplugs don't work for me. Not because they don't block out sound -- they do block out sound. But then they essentially amplify the sound of my own breathing, which is worse, and more penetrating, because it's coming from within my body.
My brother got me noise-canceling headphones for Christmas one time. They didn't seem to have much of an effect on background noise. It definitely did something different to the sound that simple headphones don't do, but they still weren't very effective. I'll have to save this thread for later to see what the best options are. And if anyone has advice for me, that would be great too;-)
According to Slashdot, this story has ~350 comments at threshold 1. I just did a quick count of the comments (about five visible on the screen, paged down and counted how many visible on screen) and got 90, tops.
Why does it say there are 350 posts when there aren't nearly that many? Just another Slashcode screwup, I guess.
...by how the summary involves GameSpot reporting about GameStop? I mean, obviously the summarizer can't help it, but you have to wonder if this was ever a consideration for either organization.
I've always assumed video game makers in France were receiving some kind of special treatment. If you actually look at French labor law, there's no way you could produce e.g. Splinter Cell* (developed in France) if you seriously kept every developer from being in the office more than 35 hours/week, having to keep incompetent employees on for two years, etc. So I figure they've got some loophole.
*Did anyone catch how in the original Splinter Cell, your boss urges you to collect more evidence because "If we're going to go to war over this, the evidence needs to be SOLID" ? Yes, France, we get it.
Actually, I think it should be decided by which side has the most power. If the plaintiff is wealthy, yeah, string him up. But if the plaintiff is poor, he shouldn't have to provide shit.
Well, as a non-(inner-workings-of-email)-savvy guy, it just seems like a moot point. Even if it was stored, so what? The lawsuit has long since started, and the plaintiff's hard drive was not seized at that time. So he's had plenty of time to manipulate his hard drive to add or delete anything he wants, right? So what's the point of admitting it as evidence, when it can't really prove anything?
Some lawyer can probably fill in the blanks about chain-of-custody issues.
I thought slate had an article saying that democrats were better investors recently ? Too lazy to search, sorry.
I think you're referring to the claim that companies with "blue" managers outperformed others significantly. I don't have the Slate article, but this is the prospectus for the fund.
Now, here's why you shouldn't buy it (the argument, or the fund):
1) They've based this on FIVE YEARS of market history. In terms of the stock market's history, that's nothing. The last five years are not representative of the market's performance. For example, the S&P's historical return is over 10 percent, but in the last five years it was ~6.5%, about the same as bonds.
2) The fund promoter doesn't seem to understand what would count as a valid explanation for the perceived phenomenon (which, again, they got from only five years). The prospectus proposes that democrat-leaning CEO's "better understand employee needs" and crap like that, but that would't explain excess returns. To explain excess returns you would need to explain why that better management *is not already accounted for in the stock's price*. Even if that has historically happened, how do you know investors haven't "learned their lesson" by now and quit undervaluing that kind of manager? It's common for theories to backtest well and blow up when you try them.
If you really want to invest in "socially responsible" companies, go to vanguard.com and look up their "social index fund" (under stock funds). You get the benefits of low-cost indexing, plus you'll only be investing in companies that were pre-screened for social and environmental criteria. But don't expect to do consistently better than the rest of the market.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I was thinking along similar lines -- it wouldn't seem to offer much if at most, you can power a factory, since a factory can already be easily powered via cords. But then I thought about aircraft (I work in aerospace). Remember that with aircraft, conserving weight is so important, and you basically have "skeletons in the sky". Since you have to send electrical wiring to many parts of the aircraft, that requires you to put holes through the frames (left-right spanning structural members), which weakens them and forces you to make up for it with more material elsewhere in the frame. Allowing electricity to be sent to all parts of the aircraft without having to put such holes in, would seem to allow for better, lighter designs.
If the PS3 does badly enough because of Sony's blunders, couldn't that take down IBM's reputation? I'm sure someone can point out how IBM's contribution to the PS3 product has nothing to do with any PS3 hardware issues that come up, but still, they could take a lot of the blame for Sony's problems, even if such accusations have no merit, right?
I hope this poster is right, that they market this to non-third-worlders at x2 or x3 of the price to cover a donation of one or two of them to a participating country. Get a cheap, versatile, low-power-consumption computer, and change a few kids lives forever. Sign me up! (And I'm on the more misanthropic side...)
I don't think the CEA "invented" the idea that fair use is a consumer concern. Whether you will be legally limited in reprinting (reposting?) or sharing some copyrighted work is pretty much the definition of a consumer concern about IP.
All I know is, whenever I ask on a forum why emulation is so hard if you have the specs for the thing you're emulating, and designed the emulating system and thus can "translate" the new OS commands, I get a vague explanation from "experts" on the matter. Then when I ask clarifying questions about the explanations, they take it as rudeness and refuse to give any information that would reveal understanding of console architecture.
They knew about DDR; they just didn't know all the specifics. ("Is it expensive", "is it good exercise", "is it hard to learn", etc.)
I saw two college girls at Best Buy that were into Guitar Hero, and said that they played it at home. (I was only there because they were the last place in town to stock Red Octane dance pads.) When I told them about DDR, they seemed interested in that, too. Yes, I've already contemplated suicide for missing the opportunity.
Fortuny ruined marriages? You mean, the whole "soliciting other woman for romantic relationship while already married, often times rather graphically" didn't play a part?
(I'm not defending him, just highlighting what his responsibility really was.)
The summary says, "About the article, it is in Japanese." I heard that in Japanese, it's actually common to form sentences like this. If so, that would be kinda cool. Anyone want to correct me on this?
Is it too much to ask that a summary say what this is a Top 50 of?
No one bats an eyelid? Even if they're making a mess?
I agree that eating on public transportation isn't, in and of itself, bad. However, in some places, a far too high proportion of such eaters WILL do it carelessly and will make it hard on the rest of us, and in such places, more stringent enforcement would be welcome.
I don't know how this got modded as "redundant". It's a good point, and I'm sure someone else didn't say ALL of that before he did on this story. (Although I think you meant September 2005 for the express versions -- I know I was using Visual C# Express in February of this year. And people don't generally say "back in" for something that happened just a few months ago.)
I was very pleased with the interface in VC#, and it was easier to find what I needed that in other open source IDE's. There definitely is a place for proprietary software, mainly where the work is the kind no one wants to do.
And about the Photoshop killer, re: the other comments, I think people underestimate the value of simplicity. For my personal needs, Paint can cover 80% of it, and with a very easy-to-use interface. Yes, easier than GIMP for what it can do.
What about the rumors that Apple will record your phone calls and sell them on iTunes for 99 cents to $4.99, depending on the level of intimacy?
In fact, there's a mathematical proof (Arrow's Impossibility Theorem [wikipedia.org]) which specifically states that there is no completely fair voting scheme.
;-)
Er, no, Arrow's Theorem doesn't "specifically state that there is no completely fair voting scheme". "Fair" is a moral term, and no mathematical theorem would say anything about that. What Arrow's Theorem says is that across 4 (?) criteria, which by the way most people consider fair, no voting system can satisfy them all.
You, however, felt the need to play up its significance and claim that it "specifically" says no voting system is "fair". But it doesn't say that. It says all voting systems have some aspect most people don't recognize as fair. Maybe you meant "basically" rather than "specifically"?
I bring this up, because as written, you're falsely construing what exactly mathematical theorems can demonstrate, and I don't want people to be mislead by your terminology, like when Charlie on Numb3rs explains stuff
Actually, on a related matter, something I've always wondered about the court cases involving spammers is, why doesn't nature take its course? I'm not advocating illegal acts, just wondering why no one's gone vigilante. I mean, there you have a spammer and his lawyer, revealing their identities in court to everyone who reads the media. Seems odd that no one would try reprisals at that point.
I mean, I know a year or so ago there was that spammer in Russia who got killed, but that wasn't related to his spamming.
Well, I think a fair formula for "what the appropriate fine is" would be:
Cost of damage done divided by probability of detection*.
You divide by the probability of detection to cover the costs of those who don't get caught.
If you apply that to littering, the cost is (since there are fixed costs to setting up the janitorial service and policing) the quotal share of that litter against the total cleanup costs. What magnifies it, however, is the probability of detection. Since very few people are going to be caught, you have to charge what seem like high fines, to get litterers to carry their full burden. If it turns out that the people who get caught tend to not have the money or otherwise evade payment, then it would make sense to step up punishments in other ways, which Singapore had been willing to do.
*You'll note that probability of detection probably isn't the right number to use, but rather the recovery rate, i.e., the fraction of dollar damages recovered by the authorities. That way, you give weight to the relative severity of the unsolved crimes.
Most of those policies I disagree with. But seriously, I'm glad SOMEWHERE they take care off assholes that use the world as their trashcan. I'm referring to their huge fines for people who don't follow the "no eating on subway" and similiar rules. I mean, every where you go, where there's public transportation, or even a public place, people abuse it. How many of you remember finding gum stuck under your desk? What assholes do that? And why should they get away with it?
It's true that you can hire more janitorial staff to get that stuff cleaned up. And they do. But as for the *costs* of doing so, it just seems a lot more fair for the people actually making it messy to pay.
If you know a better way to keep the trains clean, we'd all love to hear it. But until then, you might want to think about whether you're (you in the general sense, not parent) the cause of these policies in the first place. I'm sorry if your INALIENABLE RIGHT to leave your gum on someone's seat is being violated.
No, I really think he was making a deeper statement about Sony being its own enemy.
Confession: My ears are very sensitive. (People look at me funny when I claim to be hearing some sound until I take them down the street to show where it's coming from.) I get easily distracted by noises. Earplugs don't work for me. Not because they don't block out sound -- they do block out sound. But then they essentially amplify the sound of my own breathing, which is worse, and more penetrating, because it's coming from within my body.
;-)
My brother got me noise-canceling headphones for Christmas one time. They didn't seem to have much of an effect on background noise. It definitely did something different to the sound that simple headphones don't do, but they still weren't very effective. I'll have to save this thread for later to see what the best options are. And if anyone has advice for me, that would be great too
Well, Sony isn't the only one astro-turfing.
According to Slashdot, this story has ~350 comments at threshold 1. I just did a quick count of the comments (about five visible on the screen, paged down and counted how many visible on screen) and got 90, tops.
Why does it say there are 350 posts when there aren't nearly that many? Just another Slashcode screwup, I guess.
...by how the summary involves GameSpot reporting about GameStop? I mean, obviously the summarizer can't help it, but you have to wonder if this was ever a consideration for either organization.
I've always assumed video game makers in France were receiving some kind of special treatment. If you actually look at French labor law, there's no way you could produce e.g. Splinter Cell* (developed in France) if you seriously kept every developer from being in the office more than 35 hours/week, having to keep incompetent employees on for two years, etc. So I figure they've got some loophole.
*Did anyone catch how in the original Splinter Cell, your boss urges you to collect more evidence because "If we're going to go to war over this, the evidence needs to be SOLID" ? Yes, France, we get it.
Actually, I think it should be decided by which side has the most power. If the plaintiff is wealthy, yeah, string him up. But if the plaintiff is poor, he shouldn't have to provide shit.
Right? Isn't that how you think it should work?
Well, as a non-(inner-workings-of-email)-savvy guy, it just seems like a moot point. Even if it was stored, so what? The lawsuit has long since started, and the plaintiff's hard drive was not seized at that time. So he's had plenty of time to manipulate his hard drive to add or delete anything he wants, right? So what's the point of admitting it as evidence, when it can't really prove anything?
Some lawyer can probably fill in the blanks about chain-of-custody issues.
I thought slate had an article saying that democrats were better investors recently ? Too lazy to search, sorry.
I think you're referring to the claim that companies with "blue" managers outperformed others significantly. I don't have the Slate article, but this is the prospectus for the fund.
Now, here's why you shouldn't buy it (the argument, or the fund):
1) They've based this on FIVE YEARS of market history. In terms of the stock market's history, that's nothing. The last five years are not representative of the market's performance. For example, the S&P's historical return is over 10 percent, but in the last five years it was ~6.5%, about the same as bonds.
2) The fund promoter doesn't seem to understand what would count as a valid explanation for the perceived phenomenon (which, again, they got from only five years). The prospectus proposes that democrat-leaning CEO's "better understand employee needs" and crap like that, but that would't explain excess returns. To explain excess returns you would need to explain why that better management *is not already accounted for in the stock's price*. Even if that has historically happened, how do you know investors haven't "learned their lesson" by now and quit undervaluing that kind of manager? It's common for theories to backtest well and blow up when you try them.
If you really want to invest in "socially responsible" companies, go to vanguard.com and look up their "social index fund" (under stock funds). You get the benefits of low-cost indexing, plus you'll only be investing in companies that were pre-screened for social and environmental criteria. But don't expect to do consistently better than the rest of the market.