"Few of us can remember any incidences in recent time when, say google.com or amazon.com or live.com was offline"
High-profile stuff goes down all the time. Often I can't ping google for a bit, and GMail has been unavilable multiple times in the last month. Slashdot occaisonally is out for a few secs here and there (often in wee hours at night).
None of this stuff is bulletproof, and even if it were, the network from them to me is not as reliable as POTS or the water company.
Due to a grave travesty of justice I'm not allowed to both moderate and post in the same discussion (*shakes fist at CmdrTaco and/. rules*), but next time I'll try to remember to put a [HUMOR] tag at the bottom of my post for the androids and Vulcans in the audience.
Well, since the project is BSD licensed, what's to stop you from fixing it?
For one, are they going to accept bugfixes? I'm going to guess that even if companies or governmental departments use this software, they will only use the "official" version. If outside developers' patches are generally denied, then this plugin could put people off from using ODF, which is the last thing we want to have happen...
If you look at the numbers, {1975, $150000}, {2006, $3500}, you can extrapolate that COST = -4725.8*YEAR + 9483455 (roughly speaking). By next year, they'll be paying people around $1200 just to take them off their hands...
How hard would it be to come up with a FOSS system to do the same thing? It sounds like the software makes up a good deal of the cost of the device -- with the proper patrons (like the NFB), perhaps you could come up with some system that would just cost as much as the hardware. I mean, heck, the NFB sunk $2 million into the project, and the blind will still have to pay $3500 for the device.
So you'd start with a good digital camera and a small handheld device. Then you need OCR -> text and text -> speech. What's the state of research or code that one could use in FOSS projects? It's been a year or so since I last checked, but AFAIK the current OCR software that's Free just doesn't stack up with that latest commercial products....
Out of all of the comments on this article, I believe that this one is the most telling.
After a bunch of people do all of this work -- who will benefit? Who will get money? Will the information be accesible under a free license and in an open file format in 5 years?
Wikipedia's template for software entries may not be as robust as this site's design, and on Wikipedia even legitimate articles about unique topics seem to be deleted left and right, but for my money that still seems like a better place to do this work, because at least I know their licensing terms and their commitment to making the data available.
What would be really cool would be a "backing-up editor" for sites like wikipedia or slashdot. You make a post or edit an entry on a remote site, and your editor simultaneously tosses that information into your local server and makes it known to the web (RSS feed/pokes Google to index it/whatever...). That way even if the remote site deletes the information, there is still a local copy of it on your server, tagged as being cross-posted to site blahblah.com. The editor should be smart enough to be able to extract licensing terms from the original content so that your local copy can reflect that license...
Funny you should ask... I've just been doing legwork to make sure that my company can distribute some fonts with our software.
A good place to start looking is debian packages like x11/xfonts-* and text/gs-fonts. Also look at http://www.gnome.org/fonts/. Just make sure that you can find explicit licensing by the copyright owner for the fonts you want to use (and make sure that the license is permissive enough for your application).
The URW fonts donated to ghostscript are GPLed, but others (like the bitstream Charter and Vera fonts) are available under their own license.
What does it have to do with the primary issues that he (1) parked there for 3 months, and (2) was using their WiFi without paying for it?
Was it the best dirt that KATU could dig up on him? Did the cops just "happen" to mention it to the reporters?
Report on the facts of the story, not extraneous information. Next we'll hear stories like: "Governor Joe Bloggs, once convicted for smoking weed, has introduced a new commision to the state government to protect construction workers from unpaid overtime." or "Suzy Q., who was in foster care for 5 years because her mother was a heroin addict, is now the mother of sextuplets...".
Go ahead and ask -- after checking some of the links above, so you don't duplicate questions he's answered in other interviews or in articles he's written.
...I don't want more fluffy orange velociraptors in tech...
Speak for yourself, man. I sure could use a couple of fluffy orange velociraptors in the office -- they'd blend in with the pastel-corporate decor, AND save us $$$ on tech support!
. o O (... Okay people, if you place three stupid calls to tech support during one month, we'll let the velociraptor eat you...)
I wonder if you could get them in Martha Stewart "Jumpsuit Orange"...
...that (it sounds like) in Germany, it is illegal to even discuss certain topics in an academic context.
As in US law, I'm sure it is forbidden to cause immediate harm by your words (Yelling "Fire" in a theater), or to incite people to riot or kill (Telling teenagers about how bad "the other people" are, repeatedly, and encouraging them to "do something (physical) about it"). But it sounds like in Germany, in a University, you couldn't even write a paper about the benefits of Nazis or what Hitler did to unify and build up Germany. 'Cause if you did, you'd be breaking the law...
By MacCauley (sp?). Best darn book ever and I need to go get it from my parent's house at some point so I have it with me. I mean, how can you beat the pictures of wooly mammoths who demonstrate basic mechanical properties?
I am a geek. I work on computers. A more flexible computer is better for me.
During the day I work on a multimedia engine that is currently Windows-only, but will soon be cross-platform. At night I hack on my linux boxes, surf the web on whatever webbrowser is on my couch, and laugh along with my friends at the Flash animations they show me. Generally speaking, it doesn't matter what OS I'm running as long as I can browse the web and ssh places.
But when someone asks me a question about OSX, I don't have a test machine to poke at. My lappy can dual-boot Linux and Windows, so if I need to I can switch from one to the other and poke at things. If I could just run one OS and emulate the others on top of it, that would be awesome, but I can't make that work (fast enough) on a laptop today (at least not one I could buy on my budget). So what if I had a triple-boot machine? That would be cool. Of course, being able to run OSX on stock hardware would be even cooler, but maybe Apple just can't handle that much coolness right now. Maybe soon... soon they will be able to be that awesome.
Though I still am wary of Apple's power cords. Too much breakage/sparking of them in the past to forgive and forget this soon.:-(
Hilton might be self-absorbed, barbie-brained, and out of touch with reality, but at least she's out there living...or soaping...it up. She's having fun with the Internet, and the Internet is having fun with her.
Lanier may have cool ideas, but if there's nothing to show for it, people just don't listen. Maybe it's a problem with attention span, but people think Google is cool because they went out and made Ajax shine. Google cast email in a (slightly) new paradigm. Google made things people do every day better. First suggest the change, then write the code to make it happen. That's how to get people to listen to you. (Well, that, or get video of soap + boobies)
Actually, many ergonomic keyboards are at an angle like that. If you hold your hands out straight, and let them feel relaxed, they'll probably end up with the palms facing down, angled inward. So ergonomically it could be nice....except for the fact that it's lopsided so that the lateral force from which ever hand is typing will shove the keyboard across your lap (the mousing hand is only exerting force straight down).
As for the problem of it being in your lap, just push the keyboard up on your thighs or get out the dremel and cut a hole in it. Just don't use the dremel while it's sitting on your lap. That could be bad. (Or get a girlfriend/boyfriend and drop the keyboard beside your pants on the floor...;-)
If you look at the picture in the article, it sure looks like there's a wire coming out of the mouse.
For a product from Infinium Labs, I'd expect both the keyboard and the mouse to be wireless. Hell, I'd expect the dang thing to READ your friggin' MIND and move itself around FOR you.
Besides, I heard that their CEO strangles puppies to get off. I mean, that's just something I heard somewhere.
As I understand it, RTF was a proprietary Microsoft format. They published (or left someplace people would find it) a spec for it, but there is no guarantee that Microsoft won't change the spec and/or try to exert control over it.
RTF does decently well, but just doesn't cut it. I think that ODF is going to make it as the primary document format for text with markup, but it will take some work to get it accepted.
Slashdot Mirror
"Few of us can remember any incidences in recent time when, say google.com or amazon.com or live.com was offline"
High-profile stuff goes down all the time. Often I can't ping google for a bit, and GMail has been unavilable multiple times in the last month. Slashdot occaisonally is out for a few secs here and there (often in wee hours at night).
None of this stuff is bulletproof, and even if it were, the network from them to me is not as reliable as POTS or the water company.
RNA has no chance to survive....take off every telomere for great justice...
(sorry, I just had to say it)
Due to a grave travesty of justice I'm not allowed to both moderate and post in the same discussion (*shakes fist at CmdrTaco and /. rules*), but next time I'll try to remember to put a [HUMOR] tag at the bottom of my post for the androids and Vulcans in the audience.
[HUMOR]
For one, are they going to accept bugfixes? I'm going to guess that even if companies or governmental departments use this software, they will only use the "official" version. If outside developers' patches are generally denied, then this plugin could put people off from using ODF, which is the last thing we want to have happen...
Oh, don't worry about it --
If you look at the numbers, {1975, $150000}, {2006, $3500}, you can extrapolate that COST = -4725.8*YEAR + 9483455 (roughly speaking). By next year, they'll be paying people around $1200 just to take them off their hands...
How hard would it be to come up with a FOSS system to do the same thing? It sounds like the software makes up a good deal of the cost of the device -- with the proper patrons (like the NFB), perhaps you could come up with some system that would just cost as much as the hardware. I mean, heck, the NFB sunk $2 million into the project, and the blind will still have to pay $3500 for the device.
So you'd start with a good digital camera and a small handheld device. Then you need OCR -> text and text -> speech. What's the state of research or code that one could use in FOSS projects? It's been a year or so since I last checked, but AFAIK the current OCR software that's Free just doesn't stack up with that latest commercial products....
Out of all of the comments on this article, I believe that this one is the most telling.
After a bunch of people do all of this work -- who will benefit? Who will get money? Will the information be accesible under a free license and in an open file format in 5 years?
Wikipedia's template for software entries may not be as robust as this site's design, and on Wikipedia even legitimate articles about unique topics seem to be deleted left and right, but for my money that still seems like a better place to do this work, because at least I know their licensing terms and their commitment to making the data available.
What would be really cool would be a "backing-up editor" for sites like wikipedia or slashdot. You make a post or edit an entry on a remote site, and your editor simultaneously tosses that information into your local server and makes it known to the web (RSS feed/pokes Google to index it/whatever...). That way even if the remote site deletes the information, there is still a local copy of it on your server, tagged as being cross-posted to site blahblah.com. The editor should be smart enough to be able to extract licensing terms from the original content so that your local copy can reflect that license...
Didn't you get the internet I sent you at 10 o'clock last friday?
Funny you should ask... I've just been doing legwork to make sure that my company can distribute some fonts with our software.
A good place to start looking is debian packages like x11/xfonts-* and text/gs-fonts. Also look at http://www.gnome.org/fonts/. Just make sure that you can find explicit licensing by the copyright owner for the fonts you want to use (and make sure that the license is permissive enough for your application).
The URW fonts donated to ghostscript are GPLed, but others (like the bitstream Charter and Vera fonts) are available under their own license.
--R
Hmm... I wonder what gets classified as a tunnel, because I'd guess that (on average) there were at least 2 tunnels per state on interstate roads.
I mean, hypothetically if you rootkitted the wireless router or something, you could use it transparently... but that's a pretty big 'if'.
;-)
What does it have to do with the primary issues that he (1) parked there for 3 months, and (2) was using their WiFi without paying for it?
Was it the best dirt that KATU could dig up on him? Did the cops just "happen" to mention it to the reporters?
Report on the facts of the story, not extraneous information. Next we'll hear stories like: "Governor Joe Bloggs, once convicted for smoking weed, has introduced a new commision to the state government to protect construction workers from unpaid overtime." or "Suzy Q., who was in foster care for 5 years because her mother was a heroin addict, is now the mother of sextuplets...".
if the heat doesn't get to your nads, the falling foam sure will...
Duplicates? On Slashdot? Surely you jest, sir!
Speak for yourself, man. I sure could use a couple of fluffy orange velociraptors in the office -- they'd blend in with the pastel-corporate decor, AND save us $$$ on tech support!
. o O (... Okay people, if you place three stupid calls to tech support during one month, we'll let the velociraptor eat you...)
I wonder if you could get them in Martha Stewart "Jumpsuit Orange"...
...that (it sounds like) in Germany, it is illegal to even discuss certain topics in an academic context.
As in US law, I'm sure it is forbidden to cause immediate harm by your words (Yelling "Fire" in a theater), or to incite people to riot or kill (Telling teenagers about how bad "the other people" are, repeatedly, and encouraging them to "do something (physical) about it"). But it sounds like in Germany, in a University, you couldn't even write a paper about the benefits of Nazis or what Hitler did to unify and build up Germany. 'Cause if you did, you'd be breaking the law...
Is this true?
By MacCauley (sp?). Best darn book ever and I need to go get it from my parent's house at some point so I have it with me. I mean, how can you beat the pictures of wooly mammoths who demonstrate basic mechanical properties?
Genius. Beautiful genius.
Here's the new edition on Amazon: The New Way Things Work
I am a geek. I work on computers. A more flexible computer is better for me.
:-(
During the day I work on a multimedia engine that is currently Windows-only, but will soon be cross-platform. At night I hack on my linux boxes, surf the web on whatever webbrowser is on my couch, and laugh along with my friends at the Flash animations they show me. Generally speaking, it doesn't matter what OS I'm running as long as I can browse the web and ssh places.
But when someone asks me a question about OSX, I don't have a test machine to poke at. My lappy can dual-boot Linux and Windows, so if I need to I can switch from one to the other and poke at things. If I could just run one OS and emulate the others on top of it, that would be awesome, but I can't make that work (fast enough) on a laptop today (at least not one I could buy on my budget). So what if I had a triple-boot machine? That would be cool. Of course, being able to run OSX on stock hardware would be even cooler, but maybe Apple just can't handle that much coolness right now. Maybe soon... soon they will be able to be that awesome.
Though I still am wary of Apple's power cords. Too much breakage/sparking of them in the past to forgive and forget this soon.
Paris Hilton pretends to eat hamburgers while washing cars with her butt. Lanier...imagines what it would be like to have interactive VR or a neat new paradigm for an operating system or for storing data in computers.
Hilton might be self-absorbed, barbie-brained, and out of touch with reality, but at least she's out there living...or soaping...it up. She's having fun with the Internet, and the Internet is having fun with her.
Lanier may have cool ideas, but if there's nothing to show for it, people just don't listen. Maybe it's a problem with attention span, but people think Google is cool because they went out and made Ajax shine. Google cast email in a (slightly) new paradigm. Google made things people do every day better. First suggest the change, then write the code to make it happen. That's how to get people to listen to you. (Well, that, or get video of soap + boobies)
$110 Canadian? :-)
Actually, many ergonomic keyboards are at an angle like that. If you hold your hands out straight, and let them feel relaxed, they'll probably end up with the palms facing down, angled inward. So ergonomically it could be nice....except for the fact that it's lopsided so that the lateral force from which ever hand is typing will shove the keyboard across your lap (the mousing hand is only exerting force straight down).
;-)
As for the problem of it being in your lap, just push the keyboard up on your thighs or get out the dremel and cut a hole in it. Just don't use the dremel while it's sitting on your lap. That could be bad. (Or get a girlfriend/boyfriend and drop the keyboard beside your pants on the floor...
If you look at the picture in the article, it sure looks like there's a wire coming out of the mouse.
For a product from Infinium Labs, I'd expect both the keyboard and the mouse to be wireless. Hell, I'd expect the dang thing to READ your friggin' MIND and move itself around FOR you.
Besides, I heard that their CEO strangles puppies to get off.
I mean, that's just something I heard somewhere.
http://mirrordot.org/stories/a7ce6574b1474bff07ebf feb96dd0e35/index.html
Yeah, I agree with the guy who said it looks like a Zebra printer. Still, now I'm really tempted to grab an old inkjet and try to mock one up...
It looks like Slashdot, Digg, and Wired were all doing shots, and Wired just fell under the table...
As I understand it, RTF was a proprietary Microsoft format. They published (or left someplace people would find it) a spec for it, but there is no guarantee that Microsoft won't change the spec and/or try to exert control over it.
RTF does decently well, but just doesn't cut it. I think that ODF is going to make it as the primary document format for text with markup, but it will take some work to get it accepted.