It seems to me that the major deficiency is in your public transport system. Fixing / building well-interconnected rail, bus and bicycle routes would mitigate your traffic problems in a much more sensible way than somehow modifying your highway system, car technology or road laws.
Turning your engine off only saves petrol if the engine is going to be off for more than about 30 seconds. Idling uses only a little fuel. Starting an engine uses a much larger amount, and then replacing the energy drawn from the battery to spin the starter also takes fuel.
E=IR. P=IE. L=486/f. That's about all the math you need.
L=486/f? What on earth is that? My google-fu must be weak this morning, because it turns up nothing. It looks like the wavelength is a material with a relative permeability of 1.62×10^-6.
Not only are non-verbal cues (the majority of communication) lost over a phone, the audio quality is much lower and the brain has to work quite a bit harder to comprehend.
No, really. I did. I still have a few sitting around in my shed. I have large hands, and I found that the mouse fit quite nicely in the cage of my fingers. I'd rest my wrist on the mouse pad and just use my fingers to move the mouse for most actions. I found it pretty good for fine control - the Logitec and MS mouses of the time were predominately those monstrosities that were moulded to your hand, so you had to move your whole arm to move the mouse. The puck had a nice weight for its size, making motion feel "inertially correct". With the Apple's current tampon mouse, pulling down often results in the arse of the mouse hitting my palm, requiring me to move my whole arm out of the way.
Of course, I probably couldn't go back to using a puck these days - I am too in love with the invention that is the scroll wheel.
Voting is not compulsory in Australia! Attendance on polling day is. What you do once you get in the booth is entirely your business. You may vote, or you may draw a pretty picture of a cow on your ballot. You may even right out 100 times "I don't have a basic understanding of my electoral rights" if it gives you the jollies.
It's pretty damn easy to use as an app launcher now - hit apple-space to open it up, type the first few letters of the app's name in, then hit apple-return to open the top hit. Out of interest, how would you suggest it be made better?
What are you going on about? Most detonators are simply small bits of wire that heat up when you pass current through, covered in something like phosphorus. Building an inverter or a boost converter is ridiculously unnecessary. Connecting the detonator straight across the 9V battery is more than sufficient for most detonators. I'd expect far better from the geeks of slashdot.
It is possible they could have had explosives, granted. It is also possible they could have been emissaries from Her Holiness The Flying Spaghetti Monster sent to Earth to speak to the leaders of the planet about the proper way to worship meatballs.
Neither of these is a reasonable expectation, though. I expect my police force to be calm, moderated and reasonable in their dealings. They're meant to be sensible in the performance of they duties. Arresting these guys may have been legally justified, but I don't feel it was a measured response. It is not sensible to believe these particular individuals meant to do physical damage to persons or property. The measured response would have been to lead them outside the security zone and to give them a bit of a lecture about being funny buggers around jumpy US secret service goons who think they have the right to shoot first and ask questions later.
I feel that it was utterly un-Australian to arrest these guys. It was a complete waste of police & justice system resources, and really only a pathetic attempt to legitimise the $170 million spent on the ridiculous security theatre show borking up Sydney's CBD.
It is certainly possible you are correct. It is also possible this is not the law that I am thinking of - I simply took the first google link that looked about right. My source was this cnet news story. The money quote:
"Legal experts say LiveJournal is clearly not liable for fictional stories and related discussions posted by its users, thanks to a 1996 federal law immunizing Web-based discussion forums from lawsuits. "If the content is otherwise legal, then LiveJournal has no obligation to police its site or remove any legal content it finds," said Eric Goldman, who teaches at the Santa Clara University School of Law."
I recall reading when this issue first came up that the US has a law that protects website hosts from liability resulting from user-posted content. (Section 509 of the Communications Decency Act as codified at 47 U.S.C. Section 230.)
Six Apart is enforcing these rules not out of a desire to be shutdown, but as a choice to impose their sense of morality on their users.
1. LiveJournal automagically turns plaintext URLs into links.
2. That just changes the link URL, not the fact that LiveJournal still holds you accountable for the content linked to.
3. LiveJournal, more than many similar services, has its primary value not as a blogging service but as a social network. Without all your friends also moving, a new blogging service is a significantly different experience.
I don't buy your assertion that Apple ruthlessly enforces its UI standards. In fact, Apple Inc. seems quite intent on throwing its own human interface guidelines to the wind. The do provide an API and toolset that makes it easy to create a passable interface, and they do give out industry awards, but I'd be very surprised to hear of an example of them ever telling a developer their interface wasn't up to scratch.
The consistency of user interface across the software running under Mac OS X is the result of a developer culture that cares about these things, and a user base that expects consistently high UI standards. Changing Linux developer and user culture to implement the same sort of thing would be quite the challenge - culture has a massive amount of inertia, and rarely responds to orders.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that the major deficiency is in your public transport system. Fixing / building well-interconnected rail, bus and bicycle routes would mitigate your traffic problems in a much more sensible way than somehow modifying your highway system, car technology or road laws.
Uh, you're a day late. 10:1 you're an American and forgot you're half a day behind the rest of the world.
Turning your engine off only saves petrol if the engine is going to be off for more than about 30 seconds. Idling uses only a little fuel. Starting an engine uses a much larger amount, and then replacing the energy drawn from the battery to spin the starter also takes fuel.
Construction of the the Basslink cable has long since been completed - it's been in operation for about a year and a half now.
Sorry, my bad. L = 468 / f.
It's the length in feet of a half-wave dipole antenna where f is frequency in MHz.
The 19th century called. They want their system of units back.
E=IR. P=IE. L=486/f. That's about all the math you need.
L=486/f? What on earth is that? My google-fu must be weak this morning, because it turns up nothing. It looks like the wavelength is a material with a relative permeability of 1.62×10^-6.
Not only are non-verbal cues (the majority of communication) lost over a phone, the audio quality is much lower and the brain has to work quite a bit harder to comprehend.
I liked the puck mouse.
No, really. I did. I still have a few sitting around in my shed. I have large hands, and I found that the mouse fit quite nicely in the cage of my fingers. I'd rest my wrist on the mouse pad and just use my fingers to move the mouse for most actions. I found it pretty good for fine control - the Logitec and MS mouses of the time were predominately those monstrosities that were moulded to your hand, so you had to move your whole arm to move the mouse. The puck had a nice weight for its size, making motion feel "inertially correct". With the Apple's current tampon mouse, pulling down often results in the arse of the mouse hitting my palm, requiring me to move my whole arm out of the way.
Of course, I probably couldn't go back to using a puck these days - I am too in love with the invention that is the scroll wheel.
Voting is not compulsory in Australia! Attendance on polling day is. What you do once you get in the booth is entirely your business. You may vote, or you may draw a pretty picture of a cow on your ballot. You may even right out 100 times "I don't have a basic understanding of my electoral rights" if it gives you the jollies.
It's pretty damn easy to use as an app launcher now - hit apple-space to open it up, type the first few letters of the app's name in, then hit apple-return to open the top hit. Out of interest, how would you suggest it be made better?
Pah. Call me when John Siracusa has posted his in-depth review up over at ars.
Also, single-page link for the ComputerWorld Article:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9043838
One thing that's missing TFA is that online play can feature 12 players at the same time.
Words simply cannot express how badly I want this. Instead of making 3 people hate me I'll make 11 people hate me. >:)
I already think you're a bit of a prat.
Also, Apple released launchd under the Apache licence specifically to make it easier for other systems to adopt.
NT means Ninja Turtles.
What are you going on about? Most detonators are simply small bits of wire that heat up when you pass current through, covered in something like phosphorus. Building an inverter or a boost converter is ridiculously unnecessary. Connecting the detonator straight across the 9V battery is more than sufficient for most detonators. I'd expect far better from the geeks of slashdot.
It is possible they could have had explosives, granted. It is also possible they could have been emissaries from Her Holiness The Flying Spaghetti Monster sent to Earth to speak to the leaders of the planet about the proper way to worship meatballs.
Neither of these is a reasonable expectation, though. I expect my police force to be calm, moderated and reasonable in their dealings. They're meant to be sensible in the performance of they duties. Arresting these guys may have been legally justified, but I don't feel it was a measured response. It is not sensible to believe these particular individuals meant to do physical damage to persons or property. The measured response would have been to lead them outside the security zone and to give them a bit of a lecture about being funny buggers around jumpy US secret service goons who think they have the right to shoot first and ask questions later.
I feel that it was utterly un-Australian to arrest these guys. It was a complete waste of police & justice system resources, and really only a pathetic attempt to legitimise the $170 million spent on the ridiculous security theatre show borking up Sydney's CBD.
I have nothing further to add to this discussion except that it's only 8:45PM where I am, (you insensitive clod!)
It is certainly possible you are correct. It is also possible this is not the law that I am thinking of - I simply took the first google link that looked about right. My source was this cnet news story. The money quote:
"Legal experts say LiveJournal is clearly not liable for fictional stories and related discussions posted by its users, thanks to a 1996 federal law immunizing Web-based discussion forums from lawsuits. "If the content is otherwise legal, then LiveJournal has no obligation to police its site or remove any legal content it finds," said Eric Goldman, who teaches at the Santa Clara University School of Law."
I recall reading when this issue first came up that the US has a law that protects website hosts from liability resulting from user-posted content. (Section 509 of the Communications Decency Act as codified at 47 U.S.C. Section 230.)
Six Apart is enforcing these rules not out of a desire to be shutdown, but as a choice to impose their sense of morality on their users.
1. LiveJournal automagically turns plaintext URLs into links.
2. That just changes the link URL, not the fact that LiveJournal still holds you accountable for the content linked to.
3. LiveJournal, more than many similar services, has its primary value not as a blogging service but as a social network. Without all your friends also moving, a new blogging service is a significantly different experience.
Africa is a continent, not a crisis.
I don't buy your assertion that Apple ruthlessly enforces its UI standards. In fact, Apple Inc. seems quite intent on throwing its own human interface guidelines to the wind. The do provide an API and toolset that makes it easy to create a passable interface, and they do give out industry awards, but I'd be very surprised to hear of an example of them ever telling a developer their interface wasn't up to scratch.
The consistency of user interface across the software running under Mac OS X is the result of a developer culture that cares about these things, and a user base that expects consistently high UI standards. Changing Linux developer and user culture to implement the same sort of thing would be quite the challenge - culture has a massive amount of inertia, and rarely responds to orders.
I actually don't know if I'd mod you up or down, but it's moot anyway as I don't have the points, so I'll simply pass the responsibility to others.
Sorry mate, I think your humour is just a little too clever for slashdot. Perhaps you could try again with "overlords" in there somewhere.