Gladwell is right. Poundstone is just showing off how much he knows about Microsoft. According to Gladwell, if you go into an interview and get every question wrong from start to finish, your chance of getting the job is not affected in any way. As soon as you sat down, the interview was over.
Agreed. But this is the wrong change. If there's a regulation that mandates proprietary solutions for whatever reason, that regulation should be removed. Adding another law or regulation to fix it gives you two bad regulations, instead of zero, which is what you want.
It is pretty easy to write a quine in the sense of "a program that prints its own source code", just open the file that contains the source code and dump it to stdout.
This is not what über-coders think of as a quine, because it is a cheat, but it is (probably) what you want if you're producing a nanomachine that replicates itself. You don't want to reproduce the current state (which would lead to evolution and inevitably, if you believe Scott McNealy, gray goo) but the original state.
The new computer with the Windows-licensed floppy drive now becomes the new computer. If anything in your new computer is transferred to your next new computer, that computer now has a Windows license.
Say. Is your computer connected to the Internet? No? How about the wall plug? Any electrons leaving your computer transfer the Windows license to the next computer that you build....ad infinitum...
Microsoft is obviously attempting to clone RMS's viral technology.
I know a Slashdot subscription isn't a lot of money, but what are you really getting? You need something to fill your life up with if you download a new distro release the second it's posted on here, and pay for that privilege.
A little knowledge of human nature and a smattering of statistics should tell you that this was almost guaranteed to happen, no matter what precautions (statutory or technological) were set against it.
Is Apple stupid for thinking this wouldn't happen, or did they plan on it?
It is typical for organizations to look for a "single vendor" solution, to reduce the complexity level, even when multiple vendors are more cost-effective on the surface; the costs incurred by consequence of complexity are hidden, and many organizations instinctively recognize that.
It's a lamentable fact of life that open projects do not have helpdesks, but third parties can provide the necessary support. What I would want to see in any bill of this sort is an acknowledgement of this state of affairs, and legislated willingness to look for a vendor for support in addition to evaluating the particular project for its suitability to the task.
As opposed as I am to owning a firearm of any type, security measures on guns are a big issue if you're a legitimate gun owner. This would allow you to keep a gun in your house. Hell, just keep it under the pillow. Kids can't shoot themselves, and your gun can't be used to shoot you.
There are other ways to do it that require less electronics, though.
Don't tell anyone I told you this, but you can cheat Python's indenting, and the purpose you're describing is a good reason to use it.
def foo(blah): do.some(buggy) # operation # the next line ends with a backslash to indicate the line continues \ print buggy return stuff
An unclosed piece of punctuation: (,[,{, etc. will also let you do this, but the backslash is probably what you want. After any kind of line continuation syntax (punctuation or backslash) the next indent doesn't matter.
Python's whitespace enforcement is nothing but a blessing. This from someone who's coded in C, C++, Perl, Java, and more.
You should probably note that that 9000x speedup is over _fully cached databases_ such as yours. The cost for looking up an object in a RAM is apparently huge, database storage having been implemented in a way that optimizes disk lookups.
Banks keep mum about what their real costs are, so I wouldn't know what they claim--those numbers are what we actually pay. Banks here have also started encouraging overdrafts so they can charge you astronomical interest.
MS sells addresses to spammers. MS observes spammers getting to spam their service for free by harvesting or dictionary-attacking hotmail. MS is not making money off of this.
Solution: Sue the spammers who are spamming for free! If you want to spam our users, you have to pay us!
Explain to me, o banks, why it costs you $2 to give me money from my own accout? Why it costs you $10 to wire transfer some money from one account to the other? Why it costs $1 to give me a balance statement? Why it's 75c to use your ATM card at anywhere but a supermarket? These are just the costs for consumer-visible transactions; the costs of using a credit card or ATM to the business owner must be similarly padded.
These are database transactions. They happen almost instantly and they consume resources at a tiny fraction of the cost we're being charged. It's electricity being sent over a wire; the marginal cost is so close to zero you need calculus to describe it. This is why micropayments don't work yet, and elaborate schemes like this randomization are even necessary at all. PayPal and similar systems have eliminated these costs, but "real" banks refuse to, because they make an assload of money off of charging for the movement of electrons.
I doubt even being a CIA operative is as sexy and exciting as the movies make it seem. I encourage this. Every once in a great while there is a moment in a fireman's life like "Backdraft" or in a meteorologist's life like "Twister"--not every meteorologist, and not every fireman. It attracts people to the field; their unrealistic expectations are not our problem. They will sort out expectations quickly (certainly before they're done with school, probably before they've even declared majors) and make a decision based on that whether to continue. If it weren't for unrealistic expectations we might get nobody in this field at all.
But then, my salary would be higher. STAMP OUT UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS!!
6) Toolbars are spyware. That's the point. Most of them are adware too. How do you think they pay for the development of Free Nifty[tm] Toolbars? By selling your personal data.
7) Why should I fear it then? I am a browser, not a webmaster. Anyway, I'll let the courts decide this. If you don't want questionable material showing up in Google's cache, don't put it on your site in the first place. If someone else did it, you deleted it, and it still ends up in the Google cache, A: you didn't create the content and B: you're not hosting the content (Google is). So you're not responsible.
8) I guess I'll have to stop going over to Google's house, then. I thought he really liked me. Seriously, so what? Google is a private enterprise, not a government entity. If they want to stop people from cheating, let them use any means in their power.
9) This is a valid concern, but if you did (1), (2), or (3), you're not involved.
Dude, you're the CEO of a company, making a major PR statement (which is what this amounts to), and you can't be bothered to spell I to am pluralize salarys of my stuff or capitalize public access unix correctly?
Your statement makes sense, but you should fire yourself as PR jockey.
In this detailed analysis, George Ziemann argues that the record industry released 11,900 fewer titles in 2000 than it released in 1999, a 25% decrease, yet the total number of units shipped decreased only 10.3% and the dollar value of these units fell by only 4.1%. It seems that the RIAA is misinterpreting its own statistics.
Misinterpreting? No... they're interpreting the statistics exactly the way they mean to.
"Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence"... doesn't apply here. The music industry knows exactly how many new albums it released, what number of sales that should add up to, and how to calculate a representative statistic based on that data. They choose not to do so because of their malice toward the customer.
I mean, really, what's so damn hard about producing a nice box and manual? The cost of entry to writing documentation is zero, after all, and the cost of printing it is, while certainly greater than the cost of writing the CD, not high on a per-unit basis.
And if you really can't afford to do either of these things, try to partner with an established marketing company that can. Cut them in for a % - probably a fat %. Make sure you can get out the next time you produce a game, because for game #2, you'll have money in your pocket to produce (or hire to have produced) these things on your own, and your established rep will give you more market share.
Slashdot Mirror
Gladwell is right. Poundstone is just showing off how much he knows about Microsoft. According to Gladwell, if you go into an interview and get every question wrong from start to finish, your chance of getting the job is not affected in any way. As soon as you sat down, the interview was over.
change is necessary
Agreed. But this is the wrong change. If there's a regulation that mandates proprietary solutions for whatever reason, that regulation should be removed. Adding another law or regulation to fix it gives you two bad regulations, instead of zero, which is what you want.
Got my Sun Microsystems crackheads mixed up.
Sorry, today I thought I'd be anti-AOL instead of anti-spammer.
It is pretty easy to write a quine in the sense of "a program that prints its own source code", just open the file that contains the source code and dump it to stdout.
This is not what über-coders think of as a quine, because it is a cheat, but it is (probably) what you want if you're producing a nanomachine that replicates itself. You don't want to reproduce the current state (which would lead to evolution and inevitably, if you believe Scott McNealy, gray goo) but the original state.
The new computer with the Windows-licensed floppy drive now becomes the new computer. If anything in your new computer is transferred to your next new computer, that computer now has a Windows license.
...ad infinitum...
Say. Is your computer connected to the Internet? No? How about the wall plug? Any electrons leaving your computer transfer the Windows license to the next computer that you build.
Microsoft is obviously attempting to clone RMS's viral technology.
I know a Slashdot subscription isn't a lot of money, but what are you really getting? You need something to fill your life up with if you download a new distro release the second it's posted on here, and pay for that privilege.
A little knowledge of human nature and a smattering of statistics should tell you that this was almost guaranteed to happen, no matter what precautions (statutory or technological) were set against it.
Is Apple stupid for thinking this wouldn't happen, or did they plan on it?
It is typical for organizations to look for a "single vendor" solution, to reduce the complexity level, even when multiple vendors are more cost-effective on the surface; the costs incurred by consequence of complexity are hidden, and many organizations instinctively recognize that.
It's a lamentable fact of life that open projects do not have helpdesks, but third parties can provide the necessary support. What I would want to see in any bill of this sort is an acknowledgement of this state of affairs, and legislated willingness to look for a vendor for support in addition to evaluating the particular project for its suitability to the task.
As opposed as I am to owning a firearm of any type, security measures on guns are a big issue if you're a legitimate gun owner. This would allow you to keep a gun in your house. Hell, just keep it under the pillow. Kids can't shoot themselves, and your gun can't be used to shoot you.
There are other ways to do it that require less electronics, though.
Don't tell anyone I told you this, but you can cheat Python's indenting, and the purpose you're describing is a good reason to use it.
def foo(blah):
do.some(buggy) # operation
# the next line ends with a backslash to indicate the line continues
\
print buggy
return stuff
An unclosed piece of punctuation: (,[,{, etc. will also let you do this, but the backslash is probably what you want. After any kind of line continuation syntax (punctuation or backslash) the next indent doesn't matter.
Python's whitespace enforcement is nothing but a blessing. This from someone who's coded in C, C++, Perl, Java, and more.
You should probably note that that 9000x speedup is over _fully cached databases_ such as yours. The cost for looking up an object in a RAM is apparently huge, database storage having been implemented in a way that optimizes disk lookups.
You'll know what I'm talking about when the time arrives.
Banks keep mum about what their real costs are, so I wouldn't know what they claim--those numbers are what we actually pay. Banks here have also started encouraging overdrafts so they can charge you astronomical interest.
MS sells addresses to spammers. MS observes spammers getting to spam their service for free by harvesting or dictionary-attacking hotmail. MS is not making money off of this.
Solution: Sue the spammers who are spamming for free! If you want to spam our users, you have to pay us!
Explain to me, o banks, why it costs you $2 to give me money from my own accout? Why it costs you $10 to wire transfer some money from one account to the other? Why it costs $1 to give me a balance statement? Why it's 75c to use your ATM card at anywhere but a supermarket? These are just the costs for consumer-visible transactions; the costs of using a credit card or ATM to the business owner must be similarly padded.
These are database transactions. They happen almost instantly and they consume resources at a tiny fraction of the cost we're being charged. It's electricity being sent over a wire; the marginal cost is so close to zero you need calculus to describe it. This is why micropayments don't work yet, and elaborate schemes like this randomization are even necessary at all. PayPal and similar systems have eliminated these costs, but "real" banks refuse to, because they make an assload of money off of charging for the movement of electrons.
'nuff said. I would like to keep my brain from atrophying, thanks.
I doubt even being a CIA operative is as sexy and exciting as the movies make it seem. I encourage this. Every once in a great while there is a moment in a fireman's life like "Backdraft" or in a meteorologist's life like "Twister"--not every meteorologist, and not every fireman. It attracts people to the field; their unrealistic expectations are not our problem. They will sort out expectations quickly (certainly before they're done with school, probably before they've even declared majors) and make a decision based on that whether to continue. If it weren't for unrealistic expectations we might get nobody in this field at all.
But then, my salary would be higher. STAMP OUT UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS!!
aside: Wow, 9 Office Space posts already.
1) Block the cookie.
2) Block the cookie. Whoops, are you using IE?
3) Block the cookie.
4) Hand-waving.
5) Hand-waving.
6) Toolbars are spyware. That's the point. Most of them are adware too. How do you think they pay for the development of Free Nifty[tm] Toolbars? By selling your personal data.
7) Why should I fear it then? I am a browser, not a webmaster. Anyway, I'll let the courts decide this. If you don't want questionable material showing up in Google's cache, don't put it on your site in the first place. If someone else did it, you deleted it, and it still ends up in the Google cache, A: you didn't create the content and B: you're not hosting the content (Google is). So you're not responsible.
8) I guess I'll have to stop going over to Google's house, then. I thought he really liked me. Seriously, so what? Google is a private enterprise, not a government entity. If they want to stop people from cheating, let them use any means in their power.
9) This is a valid concern, but if you did (1), (2), or (3), you're not involved.
The only thing worse than a game that trods on a legacy blah blah blah, is a review that doesn't include any damn SCREENSHOTS.
Dude, you're the CEO of a company, making a major PR statement (which is what this amounts to), and you can't be bothered to spell I to am pluralize salarys of my stuff or capitalize public access unix correctly?
Your statement makes sense, but you should fire yourself as PR jockey.
You want /.ers to post URLS leading to interesting data found on the Internet?
I don't see how this could possibly work. Try AOL maybe?
In this detailed analysis, George Ziemann argues that the record industry released 11,900 fewer titles in 2000 than it released in 1999, a 25% decrease, yet the total number of units shipped decreased only 10.3% and the dollar value of these units fell by only 4.1%. It seems that the RIAA is misinterpreting its own statistics.
... doesn't apply here. The music industry knows exactly how many new albums it released, what number of sales that should add up to, and how to calculate a representative statistic based on that data. They choose not to do so because of their malice toward the customer.
Misinterpreting? No... they're interpreting the statistics exactly the way they mean to.
"Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence"
2.x
- 1.x
-----
1.0
Duh.
I mean, really, what's so damn hard about producing a nice box and manual? The cost of entry to writing documentation is zero, after all, and the cost of printing it is, while certainly greater than the cost of writing the CD, not high on a per-unit basis.
And if you really can't afford to do either of these things, try to partner with an established marketing company that can. Cut them in for a % - probably a fat %. Make sure you can get out the next time you produce a game, because for game #2, you'll have money in your pocket to produce (or hire to have produced) these things on your own, and your established rep will give you more market share.