OK, this is kind of dumb. As others point out, most of these questions have reasonable explanations. But I think this (http://i.imgur.com/EYY9.png) is actually interesting.
The way someone words his question appears to be correlated to how educated the question actually is.
The system doesn't assume "everyone" does anything. Statistically, only a small sample is necessary.
FTFA: "People who don't want to do it or don't care can completely ignore it," Chaum said. "We only need 3 to 5 percent of people to verify their votes [to make it effective], depending on how close the contest is. If it becomes close, then you need a larger percentage to get the same level of confidence."
I would make the fairly obvious argument that the number of scientists is largely irrelevant compared to the amount of work they produce. A single Einstein is worth an infinite number of mediocre physicists who never end up producing any work in their careers. This is important, because (at least in my experience in academia), 95% of academic scientists and maybe 80% of engineers produce nothing useful in their lifetimes.
While there may be a glut of scientists, there is no glut of *good* scientists; we always need those. Let's not kid ourselves - the number of possible problems scientists and engineers can solve has not gone down over time. If anything, it has gone way up.
According to this media journalist (http://gizmodo.com/5388745/how-a-paid-hulu-would-work):
"Hulu, the joint venture between News Corp.'s Fox, GE's NBC Universal and Disney's ABC, doesn't plan on charging people to watch the stuff it's currently airing on the site-a mix of first-run shows from broadcast TV, a limited number of cable TV shows and a smattering of movies. But Hulu is trying to figure out how to create some kind of premium offering where you'll pay for stuff that isn't on the site right now."
If true, I think that is completely OK. A mix of free ad-supported content with premium high-quality content people are willing to pay for. Not sure how that would work currently, but HBO has proven people are happy to pay for *quality* programming.
This is largely the point; phone companies gather 100s of patents that cover every aspect of their phones. These patents are often so broad that courts will not uphold them or will force them to be narrowed.
Still, the lawyers use these patents as a sort of negotiation tool. In this and many other industries, patent lawyers aren't lawyers as much as strategists; for all we know, Nokia is doing this as a defensive method because they know they are infringing on some Apple IP. Or, perhaps, they want some cool multitouch features in their next phone.
See this article for a fascinating analysis of Apple and Palm's patent war:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/28/apple-vs-palm-the-in-depth-analysis/
I would have agreed with you until I got a Kindle as a present. I have started reading a lot more because of it. Its e-ink screen is much better than an iPhone (I don't want a flashlight shining directly into my eyes when I read at night). When I travel, its size is great (fits in my bag much more easily than a paperback).
Also, I find downloading e-books more convenient than acquiring physical copies of books.
You are right, this just indicates that youth are starting to get used to the artifacts of digital compression and are starting to prefer it.
A professor at Stanford ran some informal experiments on this (http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=25288) where he shows that each year young people prefer the sound of MP3 over lossless more.
Whatever, Batman has been doing it for years.
"they should be encouraged to release hand coded or special drivers to improve performance in specific games."
Games, sure - but it defeats the point of benchmarks by introducing a new useless variable: how optimized the driver is for that benchmark. I mean, why should 3dMarkVintage.exe be 30% slower than 3dMarkVantage.exe? How does this help anyone except Intel?
Also, don't forget that the XBox is considered income and will be taxed as such. It could cost you up to 100 dollars to keep it or sell it (assuming you do your taxes honestly - I believe here in the US the IRS has been known to go after people who don't declare their prizes). So, if you sell it you only get 100-150 dollars - not too much.
If you give it to charity it is no longer income, and won't be taxed. I think this is the best way to go - the IRS can't tax karma
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.
If we assume that 15% of people have a mac and the other 85% have a windows (I know, a terribly insulting assumption on Slashdot!), and that everyone's computer choice is independent of the other computers in their household, then statistically a 2 computer household with 1 mac will have an 85% chance of having at least one windows computer. A 3 computer household - almost 98%. Likewise, a 2 computer household with 1 windows computer is only 15% likely to have at least one mac.
The one thing all this does not explain is why mac households have more computers than windows households. Maybe younger, more techy people own macs (college students and 20 something geeks) than windows (grandmothers).
I actually think the *way* MSFT killed Palm was the problem.
Palm provided exactly what a lot of people wanted 12 years ago: great battery life, an intuitive touch screen interface, and a closed but well-functioning set of standard programs.
Microsoft came in and made your PDA feel like a desktop. They increased Palm Pilot's CPU speed 10-fold, but replaced the lightweight OS with a monster so everything felt slower. Everything became less stable, and the battery life went down to less than a day. Still, people bought it because it felt more like a computer in your pocket.
I believe this has been the unfortunate path of mobile devices since, until Apple reverted everything. The iPhone was built on the same principles that made Palm great: a controlled environment, simple interface, and lightweight but functional built-in applications that are highly integrated with each other.
"I recall Street Fighter having some of the most insane markups. I think SFII topped out at $80 for the SNES."
This price point was an anomaly that signified the death of the arcade.
My friends and I used to play Street Fighter in the arcade all the time - at 50 cents a game (after the first game winner plays for free), we realized it made more sense to just buy the game for the SNES. Capcom realized that the SNES would cut into their lucrative arcade sales, and jacked the price up; it was still worth it for us to buy the game at 70/80 dollars (which I think is like 200,000 dollars in today's money).
Eventually, arcades starting going out of business, and the prices had to fall back into line with what people would pay. While I think 60 dollars is a bargain for an infinitely repayable game like SFII, I don't get why people pay that much for games that take 10 hours to beat.
Hah whoops, I guess that weakens my football analogy, but I stick to my point.
And it's not really about the money - a million dollars is nothing when you split it between the companies sponsoring the teams, but the right to say you won the contest means a lot. The 20 minutes realistically had nothing to do with winning or losing.
The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation. -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
