Last time I checked we had a habit of voting in the first week of November in the US. I know there are more than a few elections being held around the country this year even though it is an odd year. If the voting company takes votes in the first week and then releases their source code in the last week; is that really progress? A lot of election results could likely be certified before we'd have time to see the code that counted the votes...
And of course if they did the same thing next year - after midterm 2010 elections - we could have an even more dramatic situation on our hands.
Slashdot programmers should now wait until H1N1 really builds up momentum now before they unleash the latest AJAX-ified, Web2.0ish, Javascripted mayhem on us. Then when the site goes down in a cloud of its own unusability they can instead claim
Itz teh guvmint! Teh POTUS shutz down teh slashdot! Our code iz setz up teh bomb!
And then the following day when they go back to the (better, but not really fully) working previous version we might even consider believing them...
What carriers charge, that didn't before, so I don't use them?
I have heard that NorthWorst (now Delta) airlines charges for soda, and pretzels, and probably pillows and blankets as well. Possibly seat belts, air, bathroom time, and tray tables too (or very soon). That is of course after you already paid for your luggage at the gate (which if you are lucky will make it to your destination at the same time as you).
There is a commercial for a railroad freight company (making the claims suspect, but whatever) that claims they move 1000 lbs of freight 400 miles on a gallon of fuel
I have always viewed those as likely to be based on a train that is already at its cruising (or whatever the railroad equivalent term is) speed, on a level and straight track.
I wish my car got that good of mileage!
Try coasting downhill in neutral? (disclaimer: you may need a really long hill)
I still have to pre-pay for soda and pretzels regardless of whether or not I consume them on the flights I'm on
That is all a matter of perspective. From my vantage point, if I can fly airline A from point F to point G (via point I) or airline B from point F to point G (via point J) or airline C from point F to point G (via point K), all for the same (or very nearly the same) price, and one gives me soda and pretzels for no additional charge on the way, then I consider those to be free soda and pretzels.
The airlines don't make the rules; the TSA would be the ones to outlaw batteries
That statement seems to hinge on the assumption that the TSA is free to take action without concern of the airline industry. The airline industry pays for the security theater that we are exposed to at the airports; if there were no airlines there would be no TSA.
(like how "complementary" half cans of coke were no longer free once liquids were banned).
I don't know what airline you are flying; I still get soda and pretzels for free on the flights I'm on; and they are all steerage (or as they say, "economy") class flights.
The airline industry makes too much money from business travelers - who are frequently carrying laptops and cell phones onto plates - to be willing to risk jeopardizing their customers. Sure we all know that the airlines screw us individual travelers extra hard when we fly "home" for the holidays, but it is the traveling business sector that keeps the airline industry going. If laptop batteries were banned there would be too much of an uproar, and if people started driving, traveling by train, or teleconferencing, instead of flying, then the airline death spiral would accelerate. And the airlines themselves have more than enough say in the security theater to prevent that from happening.
make users bring special plane chargers/buy one ($50) and charge a usage fee ($50)
A large number of planes in service today (at least for domestic flights within the US) aren't wired for electrical service to passenger seats. The airlines would lose more money in lost customers than they would make in revenue after considering what it would cost to add electrical service to the currently unwired planes.
Unless people feel that your death certificate is inadequate proof of your death, in which case you'll have to... ahhh, screw it they'll never be satisfied.
...oh, and I now remember *why* they're so annoying...it's because the shows have a tendency to summarise what happened before it broke for the ads, so when you don't have any actual ads, the summary is completely unnecessary...
No, the problem is worse than that. As I mentioned, the BBC shows are a full hour of content in the UK. When they come over for American broadcast, they trim out over 20 minutes of the show in order to make room for commercials. Sure, the ads suck, but the fact that we never get the content over here sucks even more. If you go to your favorite place to buy DVDs in America and buy Top Gear on DVD, you'll get the butchered version we see on BBC America (40 minutes per episode). If someone buys the same season of Top Gear in the UK, they get the full 1 hour episodes. Why BBC has decided that they won't sell us the full episodes at any price is beyond me.
Those of us who have BBC America are getting, generally, 2/3rds of the programming per show that our British counterparts get. This can be especially egregious in some Top Gear episodes where 20 minutes is removed to make room for commercials. And then to make matters worse they sell those same butchered episodes to us in American stores as well.
I would happily pay to see the full Top Gear episodes that I am missing, especially from the seasons that have never been shown in America. Are you listening, BBC?
The international edition of the iPlayer would include host of popular shows from the BBC's array, such as Torchwood, Doctor Who, and Top Gear, along with historical stuffs from the BBC archives
However it goes on to say
However, the international iteration of the iPlayer wouldn't show domestic content
One big difference between BBC and BBC America right now is commercials and their impact on what we see in America. If the international iPlayer still gives Americans the sliced-up 40-minute shows (as opposed to the 1-hour versions seen in the UK), then they aren't offering anything that isn't already offered in the US on cable (this could be considered "domestic").
Furthermore, those of us who are fans of Top Gear also know that we have missed a lot of episodes and seasons that have been shown; just not in the US. If we could view it through the iPlayer, that would be a win.
... they release this as the shuttle is about to be permanently retired, with no similar replacement due anytime soon. Granted we will still be sending plenty of astronauts up in rockets, but I suspect the shuttle launches generally drew more public attention.
I'm not really sure what the writer is trying to say with things like
the lack of a proper Marketplace,
Do you mean you can't connect to ebay, craigslist, or google shopping? What is a marketplace in relation to an operating system on a computer?
the poor implementation of both the inbuilt browser and Firefox
I presume this means built-in browser?
and the general pointlessness of it all
When did things need to have a point to be featured on slashdot? It wasn't that long ago there was a front page story here about running linux on the kindle. Though if you want a point in the general sense, try:
in its current incarnation as a quick-boot alternative
Because that is probably all the more point a lot of people need from it.
If these catch on, and are too easily left as open relays, we'll see shortly after a spike in development of botnet software for Snow Leopard. Considering how many of these will likely be left on 24x7, they would be ideal mail relay zombies for botnet operators and spammers.
people can set up relatively sophisticated services without the assistance of someone who actually knows what they are doing
I have never in my experiences encountered that problem; someone who wanted a server but didn't want it to be set up by a knowledgable person - or even worse wanted to set it up themselves without knowing what they were doing.
I know I for one would never want to board an aircraft being piloted by someone with a similarly cavalier attitude towards working knowledge.
Currently, button-mashing is pretty similar between the Sony and MS consoles. This makes it pretty easy to conceptually port a game from one of the two consoles to the other (which is probably part of why we so so many simultaneous releases for the two), even if the programming APIs are distinct. On the other hand, the Wii controller has very few buttons and is controlled more so by gestures and movements.
If Sony and MS start pushing for motion-driven controllers, instead of button-mashing, and they each design their own new controllers for that, what is the likelihood that the inputs will actually be similar? If a useful motion - say a forward stabbing motion - is interpreted dramatically different between the Sony and MS systems, this could potentially make cross-platform release more time and resource intensive for the game companies.
Which, one could conjecture, could potentially drive the game companies to release more games on just one platform, instead of both Sony and MS.
If a Website, even a maliciously crafted one, can crash your phone, then you have multiple problems with your phone.
If you for some reason took my comment to imply that the blackberry is the world's greatest web browsing experience(TM) than we are not communicating well. The blackberry browser has problems, for sure. However slashdot has problems-a-plenty of its own.
When a blackberry attempts to load the slashdot main page, the amount of scripting that the slashdot page sends to the client (in this case my unfortunate blackberry) is simply too much. My phone gets stuck in the infinite loop of shitty code left by some hacktacular programmer and eventually my phone has no resources left with which to save itself. The browser doesn't crash because it believes itself to be waiting for something (which it is). The OS doesn't kill the browser because the browser believes itself to be waiting and not crashing (which is true).
One solution would be to disable javascript anytime I want to read slashdot on my phone; but there are plenty of other sites that write javascript that works correctly and don't crash my phone.
Amazon Mechanical Turk, or MTurk for short, is a cloud computing platform that permits outsourcing of tasks to other users, using a built-in payment scheme to compensate users. People (often referred to as "Turkers") perform MTurk tasks, which are called Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs), and are paid just a few cents for completing them.
Although I'm still not sure what is mechanical or turkish about it. The Amazon part apparently refers to the fact that payment is made in way of credits to Amazon.com.
Slashdot is one of the worst for the mobile web. When I try to read slashdot on my blackberry (peal 8120) not only does it not render, it crashes first the browser and ultimately the phone itself. Just simply trying to load slashdot leaves me needing to pull the battery from my blackberry to execute a hard reboot.
Last time I asked, CmdrTaco's response was that slashdot is not concerned about development for mobile devices.
Slashdot Mirror
Last time I checked we had a habit of voting in the first week of November in the US. I know there are more than a few elections being held around the country this year even though it is an odd year. If the voting company takes votes in the first week and then releases their source code in the last week; is that really progress? A lot of election results could likely be certified before we'd have time to see the code that counted the votes...
And of course if they did the same thing next year - after midterm 2010 elections - we could have an even more dramatic situation on our hands.
Itz teh guvmint! Teh POTUS shutz down teh slashdot! Our code iz setz up teh bomb!
And then the following day when they go back to the (better, but not really fully) working previous version we might even consider believing them...
What carriers charge, that didn't before, so I don't use them?
I have heard that NorthWorst (now Delta) airlines charges for soda, and pretzels, and probably pillows and blankets as well. Possibly seat belts, air, bathroom time, and tray tables too (or very soon). That is of course after you already paid for your luggage at the gate (which if you are lucky will make it to your destination at the same time as you).
There is a commercial for a railroad freight company (making the claims suspect, but whatever) that claims they move 1000 lbs of freight 400 miles on a gallon of fuel
I have always viewed those as likely to be based on a train that is already at its cruising (or whatever the railroad equivalent term is) speed, on a level and straight track.
I wish my car got that good of mileage!
Try coasting downhill in neutral? (disclaimer: you may need a really long hill)
I still have to pre-pay for soda and pretzels regardless of whether or not I consume them on the flights I'm on
That is all a matter of perspective. From my vantage point, if I can fly airline A from point F to point G (via point I) or airline B from point F to point G (via point J) or airline C from point F to point G (via point K), all for the same (or very nearly the same) price, and one gives me soda and pretzels for no additional charge on the way, then I consider those to be free soda and pretzels.
And damn it, I will opt to consume them.
The airlines don't make the rules; the TSA would be the ones to outlaw batteries
That statement seems to hinge on the assumption that the TSA is free to take action without concern of the airline industry. The airline industry pays for the security theater that we are exposed to at the airports; if there were no airlines there would be no TSA.
(like how "complementary" half cans of coke were no longer free once liquids were banned).
I don't know what airline you are flying; I still get soda and pretzels for free on the flights I'm on; and they are all steerage (or as they say, "economy") class flights.
The airline industry makes too much money from business travelers - who are frequently carrying laptops and cell phones onto plates - to be willing to risk jeopardizing their customers. Sure we all know that the airlines screw us individual travelers extra hard when we fly "home" for the holidays, but it is the traveling business sector that keeps the airline industry going. If laptop batteries were banned there would be too much of an uproar, and if people started driving, traveling by train, or teleconferencing, instead of flying, then the airline death spiral would accelerate. And the airlines themselves have more than enough say in the security theater to prevent that from happening.
make users bring special plane chargers/buy one ($50) and charge a usage fee ($50)
A large number of planes in service today (at least for domestic flights within the US) aren't wired for electrical service to passenger seats. The airlines would lose more money in lost customers than they would make in revenue after considering what it would cost to add electrical service to the currently unwired planes.
A registered death certificate is proof of death
Unless people feel that your death certificate is inadequate proof of your death, in which case you'll have to ... ahhh, screw it they'll never be satisfied.
Is that a javascript'ed blink "tag" they are using? I thought most browsers didn't acknowledge that tag in HTML anymore...
And why on earth am I seeing a banner ad here on the slashdot comment page that says geocities?
...oh, and I now remember *why* they're so annoying...it's because the shows have a tendency to summarise what happened before it broke for the ads, so when you don't have any actual ads, the summary is completely unnecessary...
No, the problem is worse than that. As I mentioned, the BBC shows are a full hour of content in the UK. When they come over for American broadcast, they trim out over 20 minutes of the show in order to make room for commercials. Sure, the ads suck, but the fact that we never get the content over here sucks even more. If you go to your favorite place to buy DVDs in America and buy Top Gear on DVD, you'll get the butchered version we see on BBC America (40 minutes per episode). If someone buys the same season of Top Gear in the UK, they get the full 1 hour episodes. Why BBC has decided that they won't sell us the full episodes at any price is beyond me.
Those of us who have BBC America are getting, generally, 2/3rds of the programming per show that our British counterparts get. This can be especially egregious in some Top Gear episodes where 20 minutes is removed to make room for commercials. And then to make matters worse they sell those same butchered episodes to us in American stores as well.
I would happily pay to see the full Top Gear episodes that I am missing, especially from the seasons that have never been shown in America. Are you listening, BBC?
The international edition of the iPlayer would include host of popular shows from the BBC's array, such as Torchwood, Doctor Who, and Top Gear, along with historical stuffs from the BBC archives
However it goes on to say
However, the international iteration of the iPlayer wouldn't show domestic content
One big difference between BBC and BBC America right now is commercials and their impact on what we see in America. If the international iPlayer still gives Americans the sliced-up 40-minute shows (as opposed to the 1-hour versions seen in the UK), then they aren't offering anything that isn't already offered in the US on cable (this could be considered "domestic").
Furthermore, those of us who are fans of Top Gear also know that we have missed a lot of episodes and seasons that have been shown; just not in the US. If we could view it through the iPlayer, that would be a win.
... they release this as the shuttle is about to be permanently retired, with no similar replacement due anytime soon. Granted we will still be sending plenty of astronauts up in rockets, but I suspect the shuttle launches generally drew more public attention.
You'll be lucky if we comprehend the summary, let alone FTFA.
Wow, FTFA ? People are generally asked to (though seldom actually do) RTFA. I'm not sure what would entail FTFA.
maybe try it out for yourselves, and exercise some independent thought for once?
This is slashdot. We don't do that around here anymore, you must be new here.
the lack of a proper Marketplace,
Do you mean you can't connect to ebay, craigslist, or google shopping? What is a marketplace in relation to an operating system on a computer?
the poor implementation of both the inbuilt browser and Firefox
I presume this means built-in browser?
and the general pointlessness of it all
When did things need to have a point to be featured on slashdot? It wasn't that long ago there was a front page story here about running linux on the kindle. Though if you want a point in the general sense, try:
in its current incarnation as a quick-boot alternative
Because that is probably all the more point a lot of people need from it.
...are thanking you for that question.
If these catch on, and are too easily left as open relays, we'll see shortly after a spike in development of botnet software for Snow Leopard. Considering how many of these will likely be left on 24x7, they would be ideal mail relay zombies for botnet operators and spammers.
people can set up relatively sophisticated services without the assistance of someone who actually knows what they are doing
I have never in my experiences encountered that problem; someone who wanted a server but didn't want it to be set up by a knowledgable person - or even worse wanted to set it up themselves without knowing what they were doing.
I know I for one would never want to board an aircraft being piloted by someone with a similarly cavalier attitude towards working knowledge.
Do weird people naturally become software developers?
Currently, button-mashing is pretty similar between the Sony and MS consoles. This makes it pretty easy to conceptually port a game from one of the two consoles to the other (which is probably part of why we so so many simultaneous releases for the two), even if the programming APIs are distinct. On the other hand, the Wii controller has very few buttons and is controlled more so by gestures and movements.
If Sony and MS start pushing for motion-driven controllers, instead of button-mashing, and they each design their own new controllers for that, what is the likelihood that the inputs will actually be similar? If a useful motion - say a forward stabbing motion - is interpreted dramatically different between the Sony and MS systems, this could potentially make cross-platform release more time and resource intensive for the game companies.
Which, one could conjecture, could potentially drive the game companies to release more games on just one platform, instead of both Sony and MS.
If a Website, even a maliciously crafted one, can crash your phone, then you have multiple problems with your phone.
If you for some reason took my comment to imply that the blackberry is the world's greatest web browsing experience(TM) than we are not communicating well. The blackberry browser has problems, for sure. However slashdot has problems-a-plenty of its own.
When a blackberry attempts to load the slashdot main page, the amount of scripting that the slashdot page sends to the client (in this case my unfortunate blackberry) is simply too much. My phone gets stuck in the infinite loop of shitty code left by some hacktacular programmer and eventually my phone has no resources left with which to save itself. The browser doesn't crash because it believes itself to be waiting for something (which it is). The OS doesn't kill the browser because the browser believes itself to be waiting and not crashing (which is true).
One solution would be to disable javascript anytime I want to read slashdot on my phone; but there are plenty of other sites that write javascript that works correctly and don't crash my phone.
Amazon Mechanical Turk, or MTurk for short, is a cloud computing platform that permits outsourcing of tasks to other users, using a built-in payment scheme to compensate users. People (often referred to as "Turkers") perform MTurk tasks, which are called Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs), and are paid just a few cents for completing them.
Although I'm still not sure what is mechanical or turkish about it. The Amazon part apparently refers to the fact that payment is made in way of credits to Amazon.com.
If it crashes your phone, there's something wrong with your phone, not the site.
Because clearly, when so many other pages work, and this one particular site causes my phone to crash, the fault is with my phone.
Slashdot is one of the worst for the mobile web. When I try to read slashdot on my blackberry (peal 8120) not only does it not render, it crashes first the browser and ultimately the phone itself. Just simply trying to load slashdot leaves me needing to pull the battery from my blackberry to execute a hard reboot.
Last time I asked, CmdrTaco's response was that slashdot is not concerned about development for mobile devices.