Comment So, in a few years time... (Score 2) 379
...Perl will just as dead as Fortran and COBOL.
The standard length for plywood, sheetrock and "stick" lumber is 8 feet. Who's going to buy something that's 2.4384m long? Sure they could make them 2.4m long, but it's 1.5 inches short. That's just not workable.
I am Danish and my dad was a carpenter. Back when I was a kid (i.e. about 40 years ago), a sheet of plywood (and all the rest that you mention) was 244 cm long. Now they are 240 cm long and no-one has any problems with that.
Familiarity can - and will - change. It did so for us, it can and will for you too.
kg are not a unit of weight. Newton is the unit of weight in SI.
Ahem... Newton is the unit of force - which is not the same as weight.
Or just let the consumer buy online from a non-EU retailer.
When buying from sources outside the EU and when the price is above a certain limit (which the price for any high-end graphics card exceeds), one usually has to pay customs and for the handling by the customs authorities. In the cases that I have encountered, this added about $50 to the original price.
And unlike mind mapping, you don't need some fancy software to do it with, I doodle my ideas on paper napkins, pizza boxes, and unopened envelopes all the time.
Ahem...
Mind mapping is perfectly possible using pen and paper. Actually, IMNSHO it is much better than using a program as there are no constraints on how you make the mind map. You might call it structured doodling
The problem here boils down to "we make more money with this scheme than your piddly little fines can ever hope to 'punish' us",
Piddly as in what Microsoft faced in 2006? Admittedly, that situation was different but that kind of fines are not what I think of as "piddly".
and "we're not even based in your country, so your laws mean precisely as much as we allow them to"
How come Google are bending over backwards to follow chinese censoring laws? Google is based in US too and by your argument the should not have to care about those laws at all - yet they do.
Agreed - and that is indeed why I do not have a Facebook login.
What should I say to him when we talk about this again?
That should at least give you:
Can I drop a hint about the patent office having no credibility any more?
Actually , the Patent Office does have crecibility in a few places. Unfortunately, courts of law are among them...
I used OS/2 for a while. When I set up shop as an independent contractor in early 1995, I needed an OS that was:
At that time there was exactly one candidate.
I got a chess set when I was about ten. I learned the moves and when a chess-club was created at school, I joined immediately. Here I got an opponent that was a couple of years older and who beat ten times out of ten. This is not very enjoyable when you are ten years old so I dropped out and have not played chess since.
Lego on the other hand... I got my first Lego bricks when I was about three years old and I played with Lego at times almost daily until I was about sixteen. I built anything from Lego: planes, spacecraft, cars, you name it. I still have all my Lego from back then and I'm at it again at the ripe age of 54 - I've got two Lego Mindstorms sets.
This is not to belittle chess, which is indeed a very challenging game. But you run the risk of putting the kid in a situation where he loses all the time which is not very good for that kid's self confidence.
Your hypothesis IS interesting, but doesn't seem supported by the facts. Apple does wield a lot of control over apps on iPhones, but they do it as a differentiator to make customers happy and sell more hardware. Apple doesn't limit apps because app sales are so profitable. They do it because people who aren't geeks don't want to have to go multiple places to get apps, don't want to deal with malware apps, don't want to worry about security, don't want their kids having access to porn apps, etc.
But in doing that, they impose American morals and standards on the rest of the world. There is a Danish tabloid newspaper (Ekstrabladet) that has had to censor their iPhone app in order to get it approved. This paper has for last thirty years or so published a picture of a very lightly dressed girl on page nine in every issue (known as "the page nine girl") and no one in Denmark takes offense of that. But you won't find a "page nine girl" in their iPhone app - because Cupertino doesn't like that.
The real question is: what will Apple block next? Unfavorable descriptions of Apple products? Articles that are critical of US politics?
I'd say that you Americans should be worried about how Apple may limit your free speech - because in my opinion, they are well on their way.
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
