I believe it does work the other way around - that was the claim when Amazon was "caught" doing this. I think the problem was that people are used to getting deals - paying less than the usual price. No one makes a big deal when people with those grocery store cards save money on a can of soup, because we see them as saving money.
So I think it all has to do with the baseline price, or what most people pay. Saving money is good (even if you aren't the one saving), but if most people are paying $20 for something, but someone else gets charged $22, that shocking to some people. Instead of a bunch of people saving money, it's seen as one guy getting screwed.
That's why I didn't like the Amazon thing at first (I was slated to be someone that paid more), but when I thought about it, I realized there's nothing wrong with it. I just wasn't in the savers' group. And if I don't want to buy something for $22, then I don't.
Are LCDs ready to take over as the primary computer display
I think they have already. My last two monitors at home were LCD, as well as my work PC. The only reason CRTs are around in the consumer world is that some people haven't bought new computers in the last few years - or they wanted a really cheap system.
But that doesn't mean CRTs are dead. If your profession needs CRTs, someone will make them for you. You might have to pay a little more than you do now, but not more than when CRTs were really popular 5 years ago. Chances are as CRTs get more niche, you might even see an increase in the quality, as only pros would need them, rather than the stingy new-PC buyers, who will be getting crappy 15" LCDs soon.
I believe that the translation engine that's used in your link uses Google's old translation tech, which is based on Babelfish (I think - I could be wrong - but once Altavista went into obscurity, this translater popped up with the exact same interface). It's been around a while, and has a limited set of languages it can translate to. Google's new code is supposed to end up much better than this, but I have no idea how mature it is, so there's a good chance it's still not up to par with the Babelfish code.
With Google's purchase of Keyhole (a 3D satellite image mapping company), I've been waiting for Google to implement an angled view, and I'm surprised MSN got to it first. I'm pretty sure that within a year or two, Google Maps will let you do a virtual flyby of any mapped route in the U.S. So it'll show your start location, and then a camera will show you where to go from a low-altitude position.
they're going to end up with the ideal solution. And at about that point, you suddenly have a major problem; stagnation of the product range
I think that this could happen, but once you have an ideal product, what's wrong with stagnation? Looking around my desk, I see lots of products that haven't changed much lately. Low-tech things like staplers and whiteboards, or even products with more complexity like phones, computer speakers and wristwatches fit this.
The basic home telephone hasn't changed much in the last 40 years, save for the addition of cordless phones. It's a product with a simple purpose, and it should be easy to use. Even with additions like conference calling and caller ID, 99% of the time someone uses a phone, they pick up a handset, hit a few buttons, and begin talking to the person they want to talk to. With no new demands, there's no need to 'improve' the phone.
I'm not a theater guy at all - I'd seen one or two shows at the requests of girlfriends before, but I never really searched out plays before. When I heard about Spamalot, I looked into it and found out how funny and lighthearted the play was supposed to be, and that the cast was incredible.
So I went ahead and booked tickets for opening weekend on Broadway (note to non-theater people: they usually have a couple of weeks before the official 'opening night' where they tweak the show a little). Anywho, I just want to chime in that I also loved the show. The jokes are all there, and although you see a lot of it coming, it's still hilarious.
The play was an excellent ending to wonderful weekend I had in Manhattan - which was a much easier trip that I had expected. There's a Comfort Inn right in Times Square for $120-something a night, and the subway is the easiest thing in the world. Getting there is easy - just drive to one of the many ferries in New Jersey, park, and pay $11 for a round-trip ticket to Manhattan. Some even give you a free bus ride to whereever you need to go after that.
All in all, if you like Monty Python, and live somewhere near the east coast, go check out Spamalot. I loved my trip so much I'm heading back up to NYC this weekend (to see Avenue Q this time).
For what it's worth, I think the yes/no question put forth is provided by the phone whenever an install request is broadcast to it - and it only asks once. What's happening here (again, I may be wrong) is that the virus broadcasts itself every few seconds. So the potential victim's phone is simply asking yes/no each time it receives the virus data. The virus doesn't run (if the virus asked yes/no three times, then the virus would be running already) - the phone was engineered correctly to not run the virus. Of course, in hindsight, we see that a timeout should be in place, or possibly a 'no for subsequent requests' choice.
To play the devil's advocate here, I'd define an "internal passport" as a document that is used to allow citizens to pass through areas within their own country.
Obviously, this is different from what's being proposed here. I didn't even RTFA and I'm reasonably sure that this ID will not be required to travel in the U.S. I'd bet that you can drive from Maine to California without ever showing your ID to anyone.
Flying will require this, but really, is it any different than how you fly now? Flying is not a right, it's a priviledge, and although I don't agree with the government's ability to force you to show your ID (remember, I'm playing devil's advocate), I would have no problem if the airlines themselves took the initiative and demanded ID. It's their planes, and the safety of their customers (and equipment) is a justifiable concern.
Anywho, I just wanted to point out this isn't some ID card we'll have to have on us at all times, and I don't envision checkpoints every 100 miles so big brother can track our movements.
I got in an argument with a creationst before, and he used the eye as an example to show that we must have a designer, because the eye is not only complex, but it's the perfect 'part' we needed to see. His tangent also went to say that we were created in God's image, and so God must have eyes... etc.
My reply to that was similar the argument in your post, with another point - the eye is nowhere near perfect. It's got a large spot on the retina that has no photoreceptors (the blind spot). Surely an eye can be fashioned to not have a blind spot in it, but we got stuck with the 'bad' eye model. Just goes to show that the eye evolved from something else. A creator would've given us the good eye to begin with. And our eye is so developed now that the process of getting a 'good' eye would involve the eyes de-evolving and kind of start from scratch (which would be bad for us, so it doesn't happen).
I watched Empire four days ago, and his feet were definitely stuck in the ice. But I did watch the special edition, so maybe that's one of the changes?
If you happen to find yourself hanging upside down in a cave, a lightsaber is the perfect tool to use to cut the rope.
I just want to be the first nerd to point out that Luke wasn't hanging by a rope - his feet were stuck in the ice. It bugged me because I fail to see how one swipe of his lightsaber could (safely) melt all that ice and free him.
While you're hitting on a good point (Intelligent Design concerns the the origins of live, evolutionary theory concerns how life progressed), there's still two things I need to mention:
we still have so little true understanding about the origins of life
True, which is why we shouldn't teach it! If astrophysicists saw a strange, completely unexplainable event in the next galaxy over, we wouldn't see explanations of the event in next year's textbooks. Scientific theories should only be taught after they have been tested (hypothesis, observation, test, conclusion, peer review). A theory that has passed these tests is considered to be fact, and so true that it would be perverse to think otherwise; that's when they pass from conjecture and hypothesis to a true scientific theory.
Dismissing Intelligent Design as not being science is the same as dismissing theories of a round world revolving around the sun as heresy
Intelligent Design doesn't belong in the same class as evolutionary theory because no scientists consider it a theory. The number of evolutionary scientists that give any sort of credit to Intelligent Design is almost nill. I know it's not a popularity contest, but let the scientists teach and endore science classes. If you want to teach Intelligent Design, teach it in a religion class - or even philosophy. Or any class that tries to tackle the origin of life itself - not how life progressed on earth.
The poster wasn't suggesting a warranty for a computer. The warranty comment was part of the car analogy. An analogous feature for a computer would be the long-term security and performance: with Windows, you need to antivirus patches, upgrade firewalls... etc. more often (and with more effort) than with OS X. I've never had a Windows OS last more than three years without a need for a reinstall, whereas OS X might last longer (I wouldn't know, I've only had a Mac for a month). Either way, it's a valid point.
I'd imagine other cities could benefit though - some cities are very good at keeping the grid design, so if a street or two is congested, one would just have to travel a few blocks to travel on a parallel street.
My area would also benefit - there are three roads that were built at various times that connect Baltimore to Washington DC, so if one gets congested, sometimes it's worth it to take one of the other parallel roads.
OS X, too. I guess by saying "Microsoft has broken new ground" it just means it's the first time Microsoft has done it with their OS. Out of the 3 major desktop OSes (OS X, any new Linux window manager, Windows), they're dead last.
Eek... I'm becoming a Mac fanboy (I just got my first Mac, sorry).
What's funny is I just went to a stadium tonight and ended up getting lots of $x.50 in change - every time it was a 50 cent piece. No clue on why, but it was from several different vendors/cash registers, so I think they all had a tray for 50 cent pieces. Weird. It might be due to the fact that it was government - maybe they end up with the private-sector-unfriendly 50c pieces (this was a US Naval Acadamy lacrosse game).
As previous posters pointed out, the DST thing saves us 0.05% of oil.
As for the other calculation:
The average American drives 8000 miles per year (I think car owners drive 17,000 mi/year, so this average includes non-drivers)
Let's say the average car gets 28 mpg
The US has 296M people.
Each barrel of oil yeilds about 20 gallons of fuel.
So we have 8,000 miles/year * (1/28) gallons/mile = 285 gallons used by each American per year, or 285/20 = 14.25 barrels per year.
14.25 * 256M = 3.648 billion barrels used by cars in the US per year.
Now the same calculation getting 29 mpg, we get 3.531 billion barrels used, saving us 117 million barrels of oil per year, or 320,500 barrels per day.
But that would destroy any contextual use of time. Right now, when someone says "I get up at 5:00 to go to work", you know they get up early to go to work.
But if they said "I get up at midnight to go to work" when everyone used GMT, what would you think? You're only real frame of reference of what midnight is corresponds to the time zone you live in. So if it's your neighbor and you live on the east coast of the US, you'll know he gets up early in the morning (midnight EST is 05:00 GMT). So that's fine.
But what happens when you talk to someone and you're not sure where they are? What if you're reading a magazine article? Or a newspaper blurb? Or watching a movie? Or getting the information prior to the big day where everyone switched? If someone says "A bomb went off at 6:00 am in the market", you'll have no clue if that was the morning, evening, or anything. Unless you know both a) the location that they're talking about and b) the timezone that that city/country is in. Learning the 250+ countries of the world, plus their time zones, is out of the question. And that's not even counting fictional or hypothetical accounts, which are probably more common than you think.
So Rodriguez dropped out of the DGA. That move cost him the opportunity to direct Paramount's sci-fi adventure A Princess of Mars. (The union forbids non-members from signing onto projects already in the works at a member studio.) He can, however, make movies independently and distribute them through a studio. His friendship with Bob and Harvey Weinstein, who headed Miramax but split from Disney this week to start a new company, practically guarantees he will continue to direct movies.
So it looks like the old having-powerful-buddies thing will still happen for Rodriguez. Sure, it won't be as good as it would if he was in the DGA, but who knows.
Re:expect... No, they DO ask it all the time
on
Mac OS X Tiger Goes Gold
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· Score: 3, Informative
I just want to say that I agree with you - a lot of Mini buyers do know what Tiger is, and knew it was coming out soon. I should know, becase I'm one of them. And you hit it on the head "slightly geeky guy on a budget". For me, I'm a bit more than 'slightly' geeky, but at the same time, I wasn't really in the market for a new computer, I just got the Mini cause I always wanted to try OS X.
I'm basing some of this off of the fact I have seen zero Mac Mini commercials - most Mini buyers (in the eastern US anyway) probably heard about it by word of mouth (and internet) rather than a traditional media campaign - so they know at least a thing or two about OS X and what the releases mean.
I always wondered this:
If your computer is siezed, but the incriminating data is encrypted, do you have to give the password to decrypt it? I'd imagine not, since it would be self-incrimination. But it seems like a lot of people get caught with having illegal stuff on their hard drives. Are they just not encrypting their data? I can see someone not knowing how to encrypt a cache of internet files (kiddie porn or something), but wouldn't most people who attract this kind of attention just keep stuff locked up?
Anyone know how well Macs auto-encryption stands up (whenever you log out, all personal files are encrypted using a 256 bit key or something)? It's one feature I think is really neat with Mac OS X on my brand new Mini.
I'll try to gradually switch to Macs, but I'm sure I'll need Windows for certain things.
My Mac Mini got delivered today actually, and once I get back home, I'm going to stick my XP machine in my closet, and just use Remote Desktop (free from Microsoft - much faster than usual VNC stuff) to control it via the Mac. Right now, I know I need my PC for certain things, but they do have equivilants:
Photoshop - I have PS on WinXP. Like 99% people who own it, I use it for inserting pictures of my friends into gay pride parades and such - I don't need all the featrues. I plan on installing Mac Gimp, and using that once I'm better at it than PS.
Burning DVDs - It's actually easier on a PC thanks to some great freeware. Removing menus/extra crap from movies is easy, and DeCSS is all built in
Programming languages - Can't get some of my languages on a Mac, so I'll need my PC for that.
So I plan on remotely my PC a few times a week for a while, but hopefully I'll only need it once in a blue moon after a year or so, depending on how much software there is for the Mac and how easy it is to find.
It's not too uncommon to see things like the RSA SecurID fob in the DC area - it's just a pseudo-random number generator, that has a counterpart on the server's side (software with the same algorithm and the same seed to start with). Every couple hundred of seconds it cycles to the next number on it's list, so when you log in, you type in your password, and the number on your fob, which then has to match the server's number.
Very cool. For what it's worth, and you might already realize this, I believe you can scribble white on areas you don't want re-colored. So it'd be easier to change just your shirt color and the birds in the 2nd photo.
Slashdot Mirror
So I think it all has to do with the baseline price, or what most people pay. Saving money is good (even if you aren't the one saving), but if most people are paying $20 for something, but someone else gets charged $22, that shocking to some people. Instead of a bunch of people saving money, it's seen as one guy getting screwed.
That's why I didn't like the Amazon thing at first (I was slated to be someone that paid more), but when I thought about it, I realized there's nothing wrong with it. I just wasn't in the savers' group. And if I don't want to buy something for $22, then I don't.
I think they have already. My last two monitors at home were LCD, as well as my work PC. The only reason CRTs are around in the consumer world is that some people haven't bought new computers in the last few years - or they wanted a really cheap system.
But that doesn't mean CRTs are dead. If your profession needs CRTs, someone will make them for you. You might have to pay a little more than you do now, but not more than when CRTs were really popular 5 years ago. Chances are as CRTs get more niche, you might even see an increase in the quality, as only pros would need them, rather than the stingy new-PC buyers, who will be getting crappy 15" LCDs soon.
I believe that the translation engine that's used in your link uses Google's old translation tech, which is based on Babelfish (I think - I could be wrong - but once Altavista went into obscurity, this translater popped up with the exact same interface). It's been around a while, and has a limited set of languages it can translate to. Google's new code is supposed to end up much better than this, but I have no idea how mature it is, so there's a good chance it's still not up to par with the Babelfish code.
With Google's purchase of Keyhole (a 3D satellite image mapping company), I've been waiting for Google to implement an angled view, and I'm surprised MSN got to it first. I'm pretty sure that within a year or two, Google Maps will let you do a virtual flyby of any mapped route in the U.S. So it'll show your start location, and then a camera will show you where to go from a low-altitude position.
I think that this could happen, but once you have an ideal product, what's wrong with stagnation? Looking around my desk, I see lots of products that haven't changed much lately. Low-tech things like staplers and whiteboards, or even products with more complexity like phones, computer speakers and wristwatches fit this.
The basic home telephone hasn't changed much in the last 40 years, save for the addition of cordless phones. It's a product with a simple purpose, and it should be easy to use. Even with additions like conference calling and caller ID, 99% of the time someone uses a phone, they pick up a handset, hit a few buttons, and begin talking to the person they want to talk to. With no new demands, there's no need to 'improve' the phone.
So I went ahead and booked tickets for opening weekend on Broadway (note to non-theater people: they usually have a couple of weeks before the official 'opening night' where they tweak the show a little). Anywho, I just want to chime in that I also loved the show. The jokes are all there, and although you see a lot of it coming, it's still hilarious.
The play was an excellent ending to wonderful weekend I had in Manhattan - which was a much easier trip that I had expected. There's a Comfort Inn right in Times Square for $120-something a night, and the subway is the easiest thing in the world. Getting there is easy - just drive to one of the many ferries in New Jersey, park, and pay $11 for a round-trip ticket to Manhattan. Some even give you a free bus ride to whereever you need to go after that.
All in all, if you like Monty Python, and live somewhere near the east coast, go check out Spamalot. I loved my trip so much I'm heading back up to NYC this weekend (to see Avenue Q this time).
For what it's worth, I think the yes/no question put forth is provided by the phone whenever an install request is broadcast to it - and it only asks once. What's happening here (again, I may be wrong) is that the virus broadcasts itself every few seconds. So the potential victim's phone is simply asking yes/no each time it receives the virus data. The virus doesn't run (if the virus asked yes/no three times, then the virus would be running already) - the phone was engineered correctly to not run the virus. Of course, in hindsight, we see that a timeout should be in place, or possibly a 'no for subsequent requests' choice.
Not that interesting - that's exactly what's expected. I guess the submitter is trying to say that's an indication of how many machines are unpatched?
Obviously, this is different from what's being proposed here. I didn't even RTFA and I'm reasonably sure that this ID will not be required to travel in the U.S. I'd bet that you can drive from Maine to California without ever showing your ID to anyone.
Flying will require this, but really, is it any different than how you fly now? Flying is not a right, it's a priviledge, and although I don't agree with the government's ability to force you to show your ID (remember, I'm playing devil's advocate), I would have no problem if the airlines themselves took the initiative and demanded ID. It's their planes, and the safety of their customers (and equipment) is a justifiable concern.
Anywho, I just wanted to point out this isn't some ID card we'll have to have on us at all times, and I don't envision checkpoints every 100 miles so big brother can track our movements.
My reply to that was similar the argument in your post, with another point - the eye is nowhere near perfect. It's got a large spot on the retina that has no photoreceptors (the blind spot). Surely an eye can be fashioned to not have a blind spot in it, but we got stuck with the 'bad' eye model. Just goes to show that the eye evolved from something else. A creator would've given us the good eye to begin with. And our eye is so developed now that the process of getting a 'good' eye would involve the eyes de-evolving and kind of start from scratch (which would be bad for us, so it doesn't happen).
I watched Empire four days ago, and his feet were definitely stuck in the ice. But I did watch the special edition, so maybe that's one of the changes?
If you happen to find yourself hanging upside down in a cave, a lightsaber is the perfect tool to use to cut the rope.
I just want to be the first nerd to point out that Luke wasn't hanging by a rope - his feet were stuck in the ice. It bugged me because I fail to see how one swipe of his lightsaber could (safely) melt all that ice and free him.
we still have so little true understanding about the origins of life
True, which is why we shouldn't teach it! If astrophysicists saw a strange, completely unexplainable event in the next galaxy over, we wouldn't see explanations of the event in next year's textbooks. Scientific theories should only be taught after they have been tested (hypothesis, observation, test, conclusion, peer review). A theory that has passed these tests is considered to be fact, and so true that it would be perverse to think otherwise; that's when they pass from conjecture and hypothesis to a true scientific theory.
Dismissing Intelligent Design as not being science is the same as dismissing theories of a round world revolving around the sun as heresy
Intelligent Design doesn't belong in the same class as evolutionary theory because no scientists consider it a theory. The number of evolutionary scientists that give any sort of credit to Intelligent Design is almost nill. I know it's not a popularity contest, but let the scientists teach and endore science classes. If you want to teach Intelligent Design, teach it in a religion class - or even philosophy. Or any class that tries to tackle the origin of life itself - not how life progressed on earth.
The poster wasn't suggesting a warranty for a computer. The warranty comment was part of the car analogy. An analogous feature for a computer would be the long-term security and performance: with Windows, you need to antivirus patches, upgrade firewalls... etc. more often (and with more effort) than with OS X. I've never had a Windows OS last more than three years without a need for a reinstall, whereas OS X might last longer (I wouldn't know, I've only had a Mac for a month). Either way, it's a valid point.
My area would also benefit - there are three roads that were built at various times that connect Baltimore to Washington DC, so if one gets congested, sometimes it's worth it to take one of the other parallel roads.
OS X, too. I guess by saying "Microsoft has broken new ground" it just means it's the first time Microsoft has done it with their OS. Out of the 3 major desktop OSes (OS X, any new Linux window manager, Windows), they're dead last. Eek... I'm becoming a Mac fanboy (I just got my first Mac, sorry).
What's funny is I just went to a stadium tonight and ended up getting lots of $x.50 in change - every time it was a 50 cent piece. No clue on why, but it was from several different vendors/cash registers, so I think they all had a tray for 50 cent pieces. Weird. It might be due to the fact that it was government - maybe they end up with the private-sector-unfriendly 50c pieces (this was a US Naval Acadamy lacrosse game).
As for the other calculation:
The average American drives 8000 miles per year (I think car owners drive 17,000 mi/year, so this average includes non-drivers)
Let's say the average car gets 28 mpg
The US has 296M people.
Each barrel of oil yeilds about 20 gallons of fuel.
So we have 8,000 miles/year * (1/28) gallons/mile = 285 gallons used by each American per year, or 285/20 = 14.25 barrels per year.
14.25 * 256M = 3.648 billion barrels used by cars in the US per year.
Now the same calculation getting 29 mpg, we get 3.531 billion barrels used, saving us 117 million barrels of oil per year, or 320,500 barrels per day.
But if they said "I get up at midnight to go to work" when everyone used GMT, what would you think? You're only real frame of reference of what midnight is corresponds to the time zone you live in. So if it's your neighbor and you live on the east coast of the US, you'll know he gets up early in the morning (midnight EST is 05:00 GMT). So that's fine.
But what happens when you talk to someone and you're not sure where they are? What if you're reading a magazine article? Or a newspaper blurb? Or watching a movie? Or getting the information prior to the big day where everyone switched? If someone says "A bomb went off at 6:00 am in the market", you'll have no clue if that was the morning, evening, or anything. Unless you know both a) the location that they're talking about and b) the timezone that that city/country is in. Learning the 250+ countries of the world, plus their time zones, is out of the question. And that's not even counting fictional or hypothetical accounts, which are probably more common than you think.
So Rodriguez dropped out of the DGA. That move cost him the opportunity to direct Paramount's sci-fi adventure A Princess of Mars. (The union forbids non-members from signing onto projects already in the works at a member studio.) He can, however, make movies independently and distribute them through a studio. His friendship with Bob and Harvey Weinstein, who headed Miramax but split from Disney this week to start a new company, practically guarantees he will continue to direct movies.
So it looks like the old having-powerful-buddies thing will still happen for Rodriguez. Sure, it won't be as good as it would if he was in the DGA, but who knows.
I'm basing some of this off of the fact I have seen zero Mac Mini commercials - most Mini buyers (in the eastern US anyway) probably heard about it by word of mouth (and internet) rather than a traditional media campaign - so they know at least a thing or two about OS X and what the releases mean.
I always wondered this: If your computer is siezed, but the incriminating data is encrypted, do you have to give the password to decrypt it? I'd imagine not, since it would be self-incrimination. But it seems like a lot of people get caught with having illegal stuff on their hard drives. Are they just not encrypting their data? I can see someone not knowing how to encrypt a cache of internet files (kiddie porn or something), but wouldn't most people who attract this kind of attention just keep stuff locked up? Anyone know how well Macs auto-encryption stands up (whenever you log out, all personal files are encrypted using a 256 bit key or something)? It's one feature I think is really neat with Mac OS X on my brand new Mini.
Photoshop - I have PS on WinXP. Like 99% people who own it, I use it for inserting pictures of my friends into gay pride parades and such - I don't need all the featrues. I plan on installing Mac Gimp, and using that once I'm better at it than PS.
Burning DVDs - It's actually easier on a PC thanks to some great freeware. Removing menus/extra crap from movies is easy, and DeCSS is all built in
Programming languages - Can't get some of my languages on a Mac, so I'll need my PC for that.
So I plan on remotely my PC a few times a week for a while, but hopefully I'll only need it once in a blue moon after a year or so, depending on how much software there is for the Mac and how easy it is to find.
It's not too uncommon to see things like the RSA SecurID fob in the DC area - it's just a pseudo-random number generator, that has a counterpart on the server's side (software with the same algorithm and the same seed to start with). Every couple hundred of seconds it cycles to the next number on it's list, so when you log in, you type in your password, and the number on your fob, which then has to match the server's number.
Very cool. For what it's worth, and you might already realize this, I believe you can scribble white on areas you don't want re-colored. So it'd be easier to change just your shirt color and the birds in the 2nd photo.