Posts by Phalamir

Re: You know...

There is no "Cisco's side of things". 'You must go somewhere out in the internet to use the thing sitting _right the f*ck over there_" is stupid on just about every level there is. And "people got worked up about this, so I will think Cisco is somewhat justified" is stupid. I don't care how frothing some guy gets, that doesn't then retroactively mean Cisco's actions are in any way okay. If someone shoots your mother in the face, the fact your father wants to murder all the shooter's relatives and the relatives of anyone the shooter has ever met doesn't then mean the original shooting was sorta justified. the action was unjust (and so stupid as to make one wonder if Cisco isn't being run by congenitally defective cocker spaniels) - no amount of frothing can cause space-time to bend enough to make the original action achieve a glow of righteousness.

You do realize that textbook publishers are already offering their newer titles in electronic formats, right? The problem is that they want the same price as the print editions (an exception: McGraw Hill offered the book I assign for my classes for Kindle for $9.99). They've even been offering to cut-n-paste chapters together (and in some instance chapter sub-sections) for you for at least 6 years. Again, the problem is that it isn't cost effective, not that they don't offer it.

Not to mention that letting just anyone produce a "textbook" is asking for trouble. The offerings are crappy enough with the system now, where actual academics sell their souls to collaborate on creating the Dumb-and-Dumber Guide to Subject X. Having seen the complete crackpots that inhabit the self-publishing fever-swamp ("I'm an expert because I've read every Time-Life book on Subject X and forgot to take my medication again!"), I shudder at crowd-sourcing textbooks. Even with the "vetted" stuff, my kids manage to drop steaming turds into my Inbox every semester; now we're gonna get textbooks developed by every armchair fanboi?

World Domination?

They can barely master their own domain - and considering how Pooty-poot seems to be stroking his ego 24/7, not even that

Umm, you can

Having less drives means you can only make so many computers. So sales are going to be depressed just from not having enough computers to sell to meet the numbers expected, i.e. if they said you would sell 35 computers, but you only have 27, you cannot reach the stated goal without some really, really new math.

But if people are not going to buy the computers anyway, the actual number of computers won't change that. Lets say some number (7) of our projected 35 computer buyers are going to not buy because they are either (1) moving into a refrigerator box this February, or (2) have decided they would rather buy a fondleslab since it meets their needs/wants better, or (3) both. So, you are going to sell at most 28 computers - less than the 35 predicted

Either condition (or both) could be the cause of the missed forecast - you cannot in absolute terms actually make the forecast because you don't have the physical objects to sell; and even if you did, you don't have the customers to sell them to. Voila, both conditions mean you will not meet the forecast numbers.

Having a scarcity does not in any way negate desire to buy, nor does having no desire to buy affect a scarcity (excepting De Beers, of course). Despite what the name implies, the Law of Supply and Demand does not mean they are part of a zero-sum game. They may interact to decide price, but they do not, in and of themselves, cancel each other out like matter and antimatter

My favorite point is that he goes out of his way to say he won't treat them as bad as Stalin would. "I will never give a man 100 lashes", with an unspoken "though maybe 99 lashes on 6-7 occasions - but never 100!" When you feel it necessary to bring up the fact you won't pull a Stalin, you have magnificiently telegraphed that you still plan to commit genocide on the scientists' ethic group.

Well, the theory is generally right

Relativity is amazingly reliable in predicting results. Even if the "nothing goes faster than lightspeed" part turns out to be iffy, that doesn't mean relativity and all its ideas are automatically scrapped. Newton said [insert English -accented gobbledigook here]. In certain circumstances said pile of gobbledigook was seen to be breaking down. Einstein says [insert German-accented gobshite] that fixes the problem. But it still had to conform to what Newton said in the non-broken parts (it wasn't like Jupiter suddenly started changing its orbit or anything). So, even if we have super-luminal neutrinos, they ought to act reasonably like we expect, because any new theory has to be "backwards compatible" with both Einstein and Newton (as those two can pretty well spot-on explain what they say they explain). So, these particles ought to act like we expect basically right up until their little bald leader says "Engage"; if they are not, it suggests that they may not be actually traveling FTL It may turn out that FTL neutrinos act really weird, but the onus is on the new to prove itself, not for the old to be just ignored because it isn't shiny. I for one am hoping that we just took physics out behind the woodshed and beat the ever-living tar out of it, but after the letdown with the whole cold-fusion debacle back when I was in school, I am much more wary of being too happy before someone conclusively replicates the experiment and innately assume there was error

Why do I feel that will be used to slash pay? 'We have determined that subjecting you to constant observation and judgement of all facial tics is a form of compensation to you. As such, we are reducing your take-home pay by half, since being our personal meat-Muppet is pay-raise, and you have done nothing to warrant such a raise. Remember: not orgasming at this news shows up as anti-social behavior on the monitors, so act accordingly; of course orgasming at the news is a benefit to you, so we will have to dock you for that too.

Are you serious?

It's 400m across - well within "Put a Major Hurting on" but well below "Vaporize all of Blighty"

Not really

Even if you were to try to look for them specifically, are you saying you wold see bluebottles out in the yard or when they buzz your head.. Unless we are willing to heft some pretty massive detection equipment into orbit, we will always be scanning the cosmos in a way analogous to peering through a drinking straw to see bullets flying at the Battle of Verdun. "You only saw them after they went past!" "You gonna give me more money so I can do a proper job?" "Hell No!" "Then drinking straw it is."

That's more inflammatory

What Apple is saying is that it has a legal right to every possible consumer, and that the Australian government has an obligation to make sure everyone can only buy Apple. "We may lose customers" is called competition. I am sorry if I cannot remember when we all owed Apple total allegience just for them being there, and anyone else is a dirty criminal for daring to offer a competing product

They did compare like to like

It was a comparison of smartphone operating systems, not the phones themselves. That Android has taken a shotgun approach to dispersement while Symbian has decided to restrict itself to only one manufacturer (well until Nokia carries it outside behind the barn for some one-on-ax-handle time) is a variance in strategy, but discussing the growth or loss of one OS to another is perfectly valid. Now, if the comparison had been "phones that have X specs and features", then yes, comparing Nokia to all the Android ones en masse would be apples and oranges, but this is Grannysmith vs. Red Delicious.

Not peculiar

3/4 of Shakespeare's plays fit that description. The existence of a feature is not the only thing that matters - the use and quality of that feature are also important.

Duke Nukem played with a turd; my dog played with his turds - my dog was still a better way to spend my time than DNF

Yes

Australia should not seek to express what is best and brightest about the Enlightenment democratic ideal, but seek to be just a hair better than a gulag. Why work for excellence when you can be slightly more competent than George W Bush. By this logic, Australia's top athletes ought to wait and compete in the Special Olympics, since actually showing the will to go above and beyond to show world-class form is not worth it if you can just outrun the Downs kid.