Consider that the cost of prime has increased, delivery delays have increased, time before actual shipping has increased, the number of items subject to prime shipping has decreased, some "prime" shipping is now not two-day, their search turns up more and more items that are not reasonable results for the search terms you enter, which significantly inconveniences shoppers. They now spam searches with paid insertions. You can't specify things like "heaters -electric" to get a listing of heaters but not electric heaters (nor does searching for "gas heaters" eliminate listings of electric heaters), which increases non-win search results... their search really is pretty terrible; that, at least, is an area they could do something about, but generally, they're reducing functionality, not improving it, so I wouldn't hold my breath for a quality search engine.
One of the problems with stock-price-driven "we must grow so our stock can be traded up" as opposed to dividend-producing-driven "we must continue to make a profit so our stockholders earn from holding and buying more" is that there is little incentive to avoid trimming anything that can save costs in order to fluff the bottom line.
Eventually this kind of thing reaches a tipping point. EBay, in fact, is a good example. Auction posting difficulty is way, way up, the original reputation system has been nerfed beyond all recognition (and into near-zero functionality), auction and related auction feedback records have been lost/tossed, payment systems less and less dependable and timely... this kind of attempt-to-profit degradation will always eventually give the golden goose a nasty case of bird flu.
I think that's exactly what we're seeing with Amazon. They're trimming back the very things that made them attractive to their customer base, while not addressing functional shortcomings like the search tools, all in a quest to report "earnings growth" in order to fluff their stock value. Eventually, those policies will reveal themselves as a cancer that is eating the company from the inside. You can only cut costs and features and service so long before you aren't at all what you used to be.
Leading scientists have called for a global moratorium on the use of powerful DNA editing tools to make genetically modified children. The move is intended to send a clear signal to maverick researchers, and the scientific community more broadly, that any attempt to rewrite the DNA of sperm, eggs or embryos destined for live births is not acceptable.
All this will do is create a(nother) black market. Just as the "war on drugs" and "war on prostitution" have done, and for exactly the same reasons: This is something people will really want because there are obvious and significant benefits to be had, and in the long run, such a thing won't take significant resources to accomplish.
Enjoy paying $100 or so per month for basic search. Be careful what you wish for.
Yes. We'd have to go back to those things... what were they called? Oh yes... links, placed on purpose by the site owners after choosing what they wanted to represent. Without selling our data to anyone.
Biometric credentials stored in cleartext give me the heebie-jeebies.
It's biometric credentials stored in the refrigerator that should give you the heebie-jeebies.
"So, I need the owner's finger to unlock this?" [gets out knife]
"So, I need the owner's face to unlock this?" [gets out bigger knife]
...and then there's the old...
"So, the owner has to be alive?" [gets out bottle of chloroform and a washcloth] and [hey Larry, you still have that pipe wrench?] and of course [that's a nice/noun/ you have there... be a shame if something happened to/pronoun/.]
The name is perfect, though. Zero is the amount of money they'll ever get from me for such a design; zero is the amount of interest I have in anyone else imitating them; zero is the amount of respect I have for the company for choosing this path; and zero is the score I give the designers for coming up with this in the first place.
So, criminal buys fancy license plate so state knows they've got one.
Uses maker skills (theirs or someone else's) to make plate visually identical (for considerably less money, as the price of this thing is crazy, but anyway...) then programs it to display license number YRT387 as per usual.
But on Tuesday, alters plate number to HFG221. Does crime. Drives off. Alters plate number back to YRT387. Cops are looking for HFG221.
Does it do syntax highlighting well, by using an external program / library
No. The external program does it. Well or otherwise.
Why should each editor separately implement parsing of every version of every language
That's not what is at issue here. This is user-defined parsing of simple formatted text, using facilities provided by the editor. As to why this is a good idea (and why BBEdit does it, albeit poorly), [a] there are basically an infinite number of structured formatting possibilities for text, even just the simple ones, and [b] not all people editing text and desiring highlighting are programmers.
Simple parsing, IMHO anyway, shouldn't require external code. It's almost certainly slower, it is definitely clumsier, and it is indirect. It requires a level of knowledge far beyond that of "a person who edits text", and frankly, it's simply unnecessary if some basic tools are available.
...even creaky old mcedit, a component of midnight commander, can handle that easily with a simple syntax definition that produces this:
o square braces color 1 o left-square-brace-adjacent keywords color 2 o sqiggly braces color 3 o left-sqiggly-brace-adjacent keywords color 4 o content of squiggly braces color 5 o content of square braces color 6
or even a larger one some confused astronomers call Planet nine
FTFTFS
Pluto is a planet, has been for a very long time and will remain so, despite an unfortunate mutual bewilderment that afflicted attendees at an IAU meeting.
Sadly, I suspect my sig has no meaning to a lot of people, especially anyone under ~30. If you asked most people what "33 1/3rd" meant or what it had to do with, they'd draw a blank.
The Verge points out that YouTube "does own a limited license to people's videos, so legally, the company can take Hevesh's content and upload it to its Twitter account.
What part of "you are the product" do these people not understand?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm
That signature really clicked with me. I mean, it just pops. It even made my stomach rumble and flutter... oh, wow!
I hope you're not tracking my errors here. I admit to lowering the signal to noise ratio, but really, I was just needling you, so feel free to turn the tables and dust me in return.
Users have some control over this with what they submit and how they vote in the firehose.
The firehose is basically a placebo. I repeatedly saw stories voted way up, and never post to the site, while really junky stories with lowball firehose rankings got posted.
That's why I never bother with it. Just a waste of time.
You're looking at it backwards. From the designer's point of view, the beauty of breaking the phone is that someone gets to sell you a new one. If everyone jumps on the bandwagon, even changing vendors won't help. And you'll note that even Samsung and Google are beginning to suck down this particular mug of koolaid. Either you go without a phone (which most people won't do) or there's a brand new cause of planned obsolescence, plus they get to sell you more dongles, batteries, chargers, etc.
Follow the money. Pretty much always works. Also keep in mind that companies are like people: the people they are like are sociopaths and psychopaths.
And take Jony Ive with his simple mindedness (who needs upgradability and ports and good-looking 3D icons and lovely desktops and Mac Pros that are upgradable?) with you!
FTFY
Jony Ive is a suppurating cancer on the face of every product / artwork he's ever touched at Apple.
But this new technology poses new questions for people who typically avoid meat for religious or ethical reasons.
As far as ethics goes, I see growing a cell culture for food as entirely ethically positive. I see killing an animal for food as ethically dubious on its very best day. I have zero problem with cultured meat; no ethical dithering arises there at all. Make it practical, reasonably edible, and bring it on. The follow-on economic consequences, such as fewer farms where animals are packed like sardines in order to maximize production, look to me to be broadly positive. That the operators of such enterprises will suffer when they fail seems to me to be entirely appropriate.
As to the other, I'm not religious. I have no idea how this will play out in that area.
Sure it did. It got us the electoral collage, which in turn got us Trump. It got us a constitution with zero penalties for violating it, which in turn got us continuous violations of the "highest law in the land." It also got us a supreme court that does whatever it likes WRT the constitution instead of requiring actual adherence to what article five says is required for changes to the document. It got us the drug war, into all manner of hot wars, brought us slavery and repression of women and a trickle-up financial environment and so, so much more.
Short-sightedness is clearly a powerful engine for change.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider that the cost of prime has increased, delivery delays have increased, time before actual shipping has increased, the number of items subject to prime shipping has decreased, some "prime" shipping is now not two-day, their search turns up more and more items that are not reasonable results for the search terms you enter, which significantly inconveniences shoppers. They now spam searches with paid insertions. You can't specify things like "heaters -electric" to get a listing of heaters but not electric heaters (nor does searching for "gas heaters" eliminate listings of electric heaters), which increases non-win search results... their search really is pretty terrible; that, at least, is an area they could do something about, but generally, they're reducing functionality, not improving it, so I wouldn't hold my breath for a quality search engine.
One of the problems with stock-price-driven "we must grow so our stock can be traded up" as opposed to dividend-producing-driven "we must continue to make a profit so our stockholders earn from holding and buying more" is that there is little incentive to avoid trimming anything that can save costs in order to fluff the bottom line.
Eventually this kind of thing reaches a tipping point. EBay, in fact, is a good example. Auction posting difficulty is way, way up, the original reputation system has been nerfed beyond all recognition (and into near-zero functionality), auction and related auction feedback records have been lost/tossed, payment systems less and less dependable and timely... this kind of attempt-to-profit degradation will always eventually give the golden goose a nasty case of bird flu.
I think that's exactly what we're seeing with Amazon. They're trimming back the very things that made them attractive to their customer base, while not addressing functional shortcomings like the search tools, all in a quest to report "earnings growth" in order to fluff their stock value. Eventually, those policies will reveal themselves as a cancer that is eating the company from the inside. You can only cut costs and features and service so long before you aren't at all what you used to be.
All this will do is create a(nother) black market. Just as the "war on drugs" and "war on prostitution" have done, and for exactly the same reasons: This is something people will really want because there are obvious and significant benefits to be had, and in the long run, such a thing won't take significant resources to accomplish.
Yes. We'd have to go back to those things... what were they called? Oh yes... links, placed on purpose by the site owners after choosing what they wanted to represent. Without selling our data to anyone.
I totally agree. That would be terrible. /s
FTFY
But not to worry. They stopped using it.
It's biometric credentials stored in the refrigerator that should give you the heebie-jeebies.
"So, I need the owner's finger to unlock this?" [gets out knife]
"So, I need the owner's face to unlock this?" [gets out bigger knife]
"So, the owner has to be alive?" [gets out bottle of chloroform and a washcloth] and [hey Larry, you still have that pipe wrench?] and of course [that's a nice /noun/ you have there... be a shame if something happened to /pronoun/.]
The name is perfect, though. Zero is the amount of money they'll ever get from me for such a design; zero is the amount of interest I have in anyone else imitating them; zero is the amount of respect I have for the company for choosing this path; and zero is the score I give the designers for coming up with this in the first place.
I consider it one of the modern versions of stocks.
And to be clear, I don't think this is a good thing at all.
So, criminal buys fancy license plate so state knows they've got one.
Uses maker skills (theirs or someone else's) to make plate visually identical (for considerably less money, as the price of this thing is crazy, but anyway...) then programs it to display license number YRT387 as per usual.
But on Tuesday, alters plate number to HFG221. Does crime. Drives off. Alters plate number back to YRT387. Cops are looking for HFG221.
Yes, these are definitely a great idea. /s
Well, a pole does point in one direction. It points up, typically.
[runs off, cackling]
I said simple parsing, and I didn't say a single word about Perl. So your post... into the bit bucket.
Next time, try addressing the points that were actually made.
Tell it to the author of TFA, and TFS. They started this. :)
No. The external program does it. Well or otherwise.
That's not what is at issue here. This is user-defined parsing of simple formatted text, using facilities provided by the editor. As to why this is a good idea (and why BBEdit does it, albeit poorly), [a] there are basically an infinite number of structured formatting possibilities for text, even just the simple ones, and [b] not all people editing text and desiring highlighting are programmers.
Simple parsing, IMHO anyway, shouldn't require external code. It's almost certainly slower, it is definitely clumsier, and it is indirect. It requires a level of knowledge far beyond that of "a person who edits text", and frankly, it's simply unnecessary if some basic tools are available.
BBEdit falls short of being able to do simple syntax highlighting without helper applications.
It's unable to deal with simple nesting. For example, it can't properly highlight the following, even on a single line...
{keyword [keyword {keyword content} thing] content}
...even creaky old mcedit, a component of midnight commander, can handle that easily with a simple syntax definition that produces this:
o square braces color 1
o left-square-brace-adjacent keywords color 2
o sqiggly braces color 3
o left-sqiggly-brace-adjacent keywords color 4
o content of squiggly braces color 5
o content of square braces color 6
FTFTFS
Pluto is a planet, has been for a very long time and will remain so, despite an unfortunate mutual bewilderment that afflicted attendees at an IAU meeting.
Us old guys gotta click together.
What part of "you are the product" do these people not understand?
That signature really clicked with me. I mean, it just pops. It even made my stomach rumble and flutter... oh, wow!
I hope you're not tracking my errors here. I admit to lowering the signal to noise ratio, but really, I was just needling you, so feel free to turn the tables and dust me in return.
The firehose is basically a placebo. I repeatedly saw stories voted way up, and never post to the site, while really junky stories with lowball firehose rankings got posted.
That's why I never bother with it. Just a waste of time.
They have a life.
I have a life.
The presumption that I have the right to take theirs to prolong mine is where the dubious line is. Simple enough.
You're looking at it backwards. From the designer's point of view, the beauty of breaking the phone is that someone gets to sell you a new one. If everyone jumps on the bandwagon, even changing vendors won't help. And you'll note that even Samsung and Google are beginning to suck down this particular mug of koolaid. Either you go without a phone (which most people won't do) or there's a brand new cause of planned obsolescence, plus they get to sell you more dongles, batteries, chargers, etc.
Follow the money. Pretty much always works. Also keep in mind that companies are like people: the people they are like are sociopaths and psychopaths.
FTFY
Jony Ive is a suppurating cancer on the face of every product / artwork he's ever touched at Apple.
As far as ethics goes, I see growing a cell culture for food as entirely ethically positive. I see killing an animal for food as ethically dubious on its very best day. I have zero problem with cultured meat; no ethical dithering arises there at all. Make it practical, reasonably edible, and bring it on. The follow-on economic consequences, such as fewer farms where animals are packed like sardines in order to maximize production, look to me to be broadly positive. That the operators of such enterprises will suffer when they fail seems to me to be entirely appropriate.
As to the other, I'm not religious. I have no idea how this will play out in that area.
I vote every time. I am politically active in other ways as well.
Humanity's been around watching birds fly for tens of thousands of years.
But we've only had significant flight capability for about a century.
Seems to me it might be a little premature to be saying "This isn't the technology you're looking for. Move along. Move along."
Sure it did. It got us the electoral collage, which in turn got us Trump. It got us a constitution with zero penalties for violating it, which in turn got us continuous violations of the "highest law in the land." It also got us a supreme court that does whatever it likes WRT the constitution instead of requiring actual adherence to what article five says is required for changes to the document. It got us the drug war, into all manner of hot wars, brought us slavery and repression of women and a trickle-up financial environment and so, so much more.
Short-sightedness is clearly a powerful engine for change.