Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Terrible (Score 1) 380

In Australia, our recently introduced carbon tax / emissions trading scheme ties the taxation to stuff that can't be "taken elsewhere": electricity and resource extraction. Power companies can't generate off-shore, and resources can't be extracted elsewhere. Of course, the increased tax will be passed through to the end-user, but that's where the feedback loop of capitalism is supposed to kick in and eventually move to lower cost options.

Comment Re:Why would this be a surprise? (Score 1) 267

This is not a biological evolution. We aren't born pacifists; quite the opposite, actually. A society certainly can evolve, and so does the "Life" game in a computer. This has nothing to do with biological evolution as people understand it. The rules of the enlightened society are not living in genes. At best our genetic tendency to form societies is not much different from the desire of dogs to form packs. Both are in genes because they are advantageous.

Society is a meme, not a gene. (and not a meme in the cat-picture sense). Humans have evolved the genetic ability to communicate and apply memes on top of genes; another plus is that memetic evolution is faster than genetic evolution.

So yes, you would fail a strict gene-only-evolution test, but that's not the only story going on here.

Comment Re:No iPhone 5, just iPhone 4s (Score 1) 392

3G -> 4S is a bigger upgrade than many considering this who are on 3GS or 4 - the 3GS upgrade path is reasonable one, the upgrade from 4 much less distinct, but one that's hedged by those who didn't like the current design (like me). The design might be selling like hotcakes, but that doesn't mean everyone likes it - and some of us got our hopes up with rumors of a redesign.

Yes, yes, Apple didn't promise anything, but nonetheless it left this presentation a little underwhelming.

Chrome

Chrome Set To Take No. 2 Spot From Firefox 585

CWmike writes "Google's Chrome is on the brink of replacing Firefox as the second-most-popular browser, says the Web statistics firm StatCounter, which shows that Chrome will pass Firefox to take the No. 2 spot behind Microsoft's IE no later than December. As of Wednesday, Chrome's global average user share for September was 23.6%, while Firefox's stood at 26.8%. IE, meanwhile, was at 41.7%. The climb of Chrome during 2011 has been astonishing: It has gained eight percentage points since January 2011, representing a 50% increase. During that same period, Firefox has dropped almost four percentage points, a decline of about 13%, while IE has also fallen four points, a 9% dip. That means Chrome is essentially reaping all the defections from Firefox and IE."

Comment Re:Oh no! (Score 1) 301

Just because there's a technology which winds back the ability to be "lost in the crowd" doesn't mean that you have/had an automatic assumption to privacy. It's like saying that the police shouldn't be able to track a fugitive on the run logging in to his facebook account because that technology to find someone 2 states away didn't exist when we first established the FBI.

Slashdot Top Deals

You do not have mail.

Working...