Slashdot Mirror

I've been doing some text-to-speech reading of web pages (so I could have fun with the MS Agent characters) and I know what you mean about brittle. In fact, sed/awk might be a more general solution for me. ;)

With RSS, I expect it to be a lot better and be much easier to get a non-kludge working. That's my next addition planned after some speech input.

Dude! You were just using the wrong TV Mind you, colour would have been nice. (No, the mouse isn't connected to the MC-10.)

I used an Intel chip with a wooden case. Of course, it was a 3 MHz 8085...

You mean like this MC-10? :^) There's a wiki for OS-9.

They've been dead for quite some time. Those zombies certainly haven't found any brains, so they need to lie down and shut up.

Can't build more than one floor.

Looks like shit.

Straw bale houses are usually finished with stucco, which has been a popular exterior for a long long time.

Will fall over upon application of very little lateral force -- no matter how strong you say it is... Dissolves in the rain.

How much lateral force does a typical home get exposed to? These straw bale houses have survived for over 60 years, and some from the 1800s are still standing in Nebraska. They're strong enough, and obviously they don't dissolve in the rain.

One word: "Malaria".

WTF are you talking about?

Not sure why this is such a big deal. The VoIP providers up here in Canada already let you choose the area code you want. In fact, it's one of their big selling features for home-based businesses or for people who have family and friends in different area codes. The selection of area codes isn't unlimited, but it covers all the big urban areas.

Perhaps. The Agent API is quite powerful with text to speech and speech recognition supported. But the best that's been managed is stuff like Clippy, CyberBuddy, and add ons for Power Point presentations. Not a stunning record after 8 years. Cute is easy, but doesn't stay cute long. Useful is hard. (And using it for a help or search function wasn't useful.)

Primus also offers VoIP, and it seems their rates http://primus.ca/en/residential/talkbroadband/bund les.html are in line with AOL's.

I've been using Primus' TalkBroadband for about 2 months now, and the only problems I've encountered occur when I've got a torrent running--the bandwidth strain degrades the sound quality considerably. Still, a small price to pay considering what I'm saving by getting rid of Bell.

Another popular provider on the market is primus. There local package is 19.95/month , (15.95/month if you have the hardware) going up to 45.95/month (or 41.95/month if you have the hardware) for there unlimited package , with many stops in between .

Want sound effects for ZoneAlarm? (Shameless plug.)

From the look of this Scientology Org, they want people to take the Personality Test.

Some rainy day, I've been meaning to whip up a light local server to return cute cat pictures instead of banner ads. Now that I've done my sound effects for Zone Alarm program, maybe it'll get to the top of my silly program queue.

Last time I looked Cybertown and NeoPets were heavily into the Happy (un)Fun Cult. (Neopets are also marketing survery spammers.)

Cheap.

Works with regular phones, and it actually works pretty good.

Says #$&@ you to the local @*&!@ telco monopoly.

The Bad

Can't use your regular house phone jacks (although if you need a phone in every room you can get one of those multi-set cordless base phones).

The service isn't perfect. (A couple of times someone has called, and before I could pick it up, the system hung up on them). But let's be realistic, this is pretty new technology.

All in all, I'm happy I decided to try out the VoIP phone. It saves me $10-15 / month, and lets me call way more long distance to boot. And I'm a no frills user. No calling features, no call display, I don't really call long distance. For someone who has a big calling feature pack and calls long distance, I could see a VoIP phone saving them a TON of cash.

They're even moving in to Canada. Lately buying the New Yorker Theatre in Toronto. (Maybe they got confused by the name?) A branch of the Blue Man Group will be moving in, right across from Scientology's Martian Embassy. (Sometimes that's funny.)

EXPLORER-85 VER 1.4
COPYRIGHT 1979
NETRONICS R&D
NEW MILFORD, CT.

My computer from 1980 still works, why would I replace anything? Some people just have to have the latest and greatest...

Of course, you have to pick your battles. You have to be careful when you poke a large organization with lots of lawyers and no sense of humour. (Note to self: fix up site to be "more poking".)

I'm surprised the G&M guy didn't bitch about the damned bright outdoor signs. Those are literally an eye-sore. Especially when it's Elron Hubbard on the side a Cthurch or pictures of happy Dianetics users.

I'm surprised the G&M guy didn't bitch about the damned bright outdoor signs. Those are literally an eye-sore. Especially when it's Elron Hubbard on the side a Cthurch or pictures of happy Dianetics users.

Oh yeah, there's a whole lot more where that came from. I try not to ramble on about it too much outside ARS and other places. (Updated soon! :^) There were a few jokes that Robotic Parking used Scientologists to park the cars...

I don't think Microsoft has had much luck. Otherwise they would have made use of the text-to-speech and voice command capabilities built into Clippy's agent software. (Or it was just even more a pain in the ass than now. Wow .. imagine, a Clippy even more annoying than it is now! Who says Microsoft doesn't advance the state of the art?)

Got a problem with that? :^P

(The scary part is that I started to think of how I would actually write that...)

- A free Motorola C350

- A free DVD Player

- Free airtime for 4 months.

I am also switching my Bell landline to a Primus Broadband VoIP line. Check it out: www.primus.ca

Do you mean this one?

Whereas it is true that there is quite a bit of competition in the DSL market, the two biggest broadband providers by far are the Local Phone Company (supplying DSL) and the Local Cable Company. The vast majority of Canadians are completely unaware of the independent DSL providers because they hardly advertise. I have only seen one TV commercial for an independent DSL provider, and that provider was Primus. True, other smaller fish place ads in pulications like The Computer Paper, but those have a very low readership.

Furthermore, while high speed Internet is cheaper in Canada in terms of raw figures, you have to take into account Canadians' lower average income. Once that difference is factored in, I believe that broadband access in Canada works out to the same percentage of one's income as broadband access in the US.

All these facts make the fairly wide gap between the levels of broadband (and even Internet) adoption in Canada and the US even more confounding.