Funny how when Orrin Hatch hires another company to run his website and that company violates copyright laws, it's Orrin Hatch's fault and he should be responsible.
But when the allegedly net-savvy Dean does the same, it's an honest mistake.
while the "minicd"-requirement may seem a bit stupid (hey, you could just use a regular cd, right?).. it fits just perfectly on a 128MB flash / smart media card -- perfect for that laptop without a harddisk.
there's a few other distros aiming for this, but mostly it tends to blow into giant proportions when it comes to the size requirement of an installed system:/
I work in tech support. I actually don't mind helping old people learn to use computers, because I am fortunate enough to work without a time limit. Most people are friendly if you are patient and don't talk down to them.
Just to iterate a bit further, after working 9 months part-time (while finishing off something similiar to a bit over high-school and before starting university), the people I really would like to get on the phone, was the old people. They knew what position they were in (they usually started out with "I dont know anything about computers.." etc, but they usually tell you everything they see, they follow your lead and things usually work out (and then they are _really_ thankful). The other type is those who think they know a lot, but don't and give the impression that they do. We worked quite freely without any scripts, so usually I would spot the ones who actually knew what they wanted and had the knowledge they needed. For the other people, i rather ended up saying "ok, thats fine, but how about you just tell me what the error message says now?"instead of them saying that "my connection is broken" etc.
I also worked as a technician at a local computer place (think circuit city / compusa) and doing "behind the scenes" repairs. I usually didn't have to talk much to the customers themselves, but the same pattern applied here. There was very different reactions from people when you told them that the problem was their own fault and that they had to pay for the service instead of a regular warranty reparation -- the ones who actually knew their own limits didn't mind paying one bit, but those who thought they controlled the whole world (hey, why didnt YOU fix the problem, then) usually made a rage about it and demanded to see the supervisor (i was 16 at the moment, something which probably didn't make it a whole lot easier for them:>).. the supervisor would come and set them straight -- and they would pay the bill. The older people always paid respect (and wanted to pay extra, a $5 or $10 bill just for helping them out.. politely saying no each time) and it was mostly just a charm.
The main "problem" may be that customers see their computer as an advanced TV.. how many of you has actually done something to your TV which required someone to have a look at it and set it up straight (ok, I've done my fair share of "do you see RGB on that menu?"-troubleshooting too)? People tend to thing of computers as a black box where they cannot destroy anything.. Things got a bit better after manufacturers started shipping recovery CDs with their computers (this wasn't something that was done earlier, one had to order special cds which restored the computers to their old state) and people could do their own quick recoveries.. This usually saved them from coming in with the equipment and provided a nice way to help them out from the situation..
I'm not trying to come down too harsh on modern games - I play and enjoy many of them. But sometimes I miss the simple challange of having to start over each game and trying to do better.
Two words: Icy Tower. This game really brought back that feeling (at least for me), and is surely one of the games that I've spent most time playing during the last months. Check it out!
I'm not sure I believe there's no recompression done to the cable signal. Are you really telling me that this is taking the digital signal, leaving it digital, and simply storing an MPEG-2 stream (or whatever it is) as it comes in through the cable on the hard drive?
There are several good reasons for just keeping the already preprocessed MPEG2 signal, since this leaves the engineers with a much simpler software design (no need to add an MPEG-4 encoder, cheaper to produce (something which probably matters a lot when its being pushed by a company without a cost for the end user)) -- there is really (as far as i can see) no technical reason for not just storing the MPEG2 stream. Since the device already has a 80 GB harddrive, the amount of recording mentioned should be possible without any big problems (keep in mind that it's market droid mumbo jumbo, "up to" etc). Broadcast NTSC quality should make up something in the area of 3 - 6 mbit/s, depending on the amount of action and detail in the original material:
80GB / 3mbit/s = 218.448s ~60 hrs
With a variable bitrate, there should really not be any problem with storing 50hrs of streamed MPEG2 content onto a 80GB disk -- depending on the type of program stored (and it's content). If this thing only could be available in norway soon..
well, believe it or not, but PIXARs success isn't really because of their rendering power -- true enough, the realism and rendering techniques used in their latest productions has contributed to making images better, but they've always had the edge when it comes down to the thing that matters: storytelling and keeping the audience interested. Look at their older shorts and their more recent feature films, the story is the main driving force.
While Final Fantasy looked quite amazing, the story and the movie just didn't fit in like most of the PIXAR movies. PIXAR makes movies for the whole family which people enjoy on different levels (best example, toy story 2) -- Shrek was a very welcome break from the PIXAR dominance, but not because it wasn't made by pixar, more because of a great story supported by a nice screenplay and good animation (it's more about how you use the tools, not that the end result has been raytraced with molecular precision)..
If they're able to produce films that would be entertaining even if they were hand drawn by a five year old, then the rendering power comes to good use; not the other way around.
This is the furst guy to do something like this with IPv6.
Have a look at media.hiof.no -- where people have been providing streams of norwegian radio for quite some time now; available both on IPv4 and IPv6. There's probably a few good channels for those of you that don't want to listen to the technotrancemumbojumbo on the mentioned link in the submission:>
A common technique in web development is to serve things in a compressed format. Virtually all browsers support this by transparently decompressing the files after they are recieved. This is part of HTTP (content-encoding).
In addition, most plugins (at least which I have tried) also support SVGZ directly (standard gzip'ed SVG), both from the local disk and from the internet. Normally this compresses somewhere in the ratio of 80-90% (there is however still a few problems with large SVG-files in the plugins, so I would not recommend files with a native size over 1-2MB)..
Until now, I've had to say you can use IE, then get an addon from Adobe. "What? Why doesn't MS support this SVG thing natively? What if Adobe decides to drop support for SVG; then what happens?..."
Sorrowly, this has already happened; Adobe hasn't updated their plugin since 2001 and is lacking support for everything newer than the 1.0 standard. The most promising plugin at the moment is with no doubt the Corel SVG Viewer which looks and handles really neat. We've tried the mozilla native support in earlier editions (mainly about ~3 months ago) and the implementation was currently very lacking of needed features.
One point I would like to make; the first plugin (or browser) to support the upcoming SVG 1.2 standard is going to get a quite instant userbase, the interest for SVG is only growing -- something which SVG Open just showed (I was a coauthor for one of the papers, Distributed GML Management with SVG Tools).
What database are you going to recommend that allows you to embed C# (C++, whatever) programs in the database itself?
PostgreSQL supports loading of functions from shared libraries, see the manual for more information. This allows you to create fairly complex functions that can be embedded into your database application. If I remember correctly, even PL/pgSQL is implemented in this way (requiring you to load the shared library for PL/pgSQL first).
The main point is that you can separate the database logic (and small functions to support that logic) completly from your regular application (but you probably already understood that, just mentioning it for the ones who didn't).
If that's all that it does (the page is slashdotted), then I would suggest that everyone using Internet Explorer takes a look at The Google Toolbar which provides this functionality, in addition to loads of other neat features (popup blocker, one-click images/groups/news/google-search, automagical "find searched word in page" and "highlight searchwords in page" and auto complete for forms)..
As others has pointed out, the numbers in the summary is wrong -- and if you had read the article (but hey, this is slashdot) -- you would have seen that quite fast.
Introduction: 6305 mails in (basically) one day We received 5880 bounces and forwards We received 12 spams for @cyberangels We received 40 attempts to annoy Cyberangels We received 371 complaints about Cyberangels We received 2 business mails
I'll leave it up the regular reader to multiply by three:p
What? All males? Can't be right.. I got this one as soon as i started:
F/18 Im into threesome, lesbian and oral sex. Anytime anywhere.
trepia, here i come:>
could be something to look forward to..
on
The Sims 2 Announced
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I played the first one for a couple of days straight when it was just hot and fresh and were really impressed. It was fun in a strange way and I enjoyed creatinge and setting up this little family.. but after a while things just got boring and you kinda could anticipate what was going to happen.. I hope they make each experience more unique and probably a bit more evolving than the first edition, but sure, the "simplicity" (i'm not calling it a simple game, that would be plain wrong) may have been the reason why it has sold so well and attracted so many non-regular gamers.
There's a good chance that this DNA-feature will make the sims a better, lasting game which kinda never stops and still evolves.. we'll see.
How about teaming up with some local ISP for the internet-part? The technical divison of the town could take care of running the fiber network while most of the other issues you mentioned could be outsourced to another company which actually know what they're doing.. My former university (~30k students) ran a city (150k citizens) wide network covering most of their installments in the city and they made it work like a charm. I'm suspecting that this was in cooperation with the local telco, but its absolutly doable.
ok, i couldnt find the original strip, but here goes from memory:
accounting troll: this is our random number generator troll: 9 troll: 9 troll: 9 dilbert: are you sure that's random? accounting troll: thats the problem with randomness, you really can't be sure.
.. and maybe that holds for your calculator too:-)
As says George Eleftheriades, the Toronto professor, "This is new physics."
Well, we all know the "new economy" that was implied in the.com-area..
1. discover something strange 2. ??? 3. Profit!
and this could actually work.
Re:so it can transfer a lot of data quickly....
on
Net Speed Record Smashed
·
· Score: 3, Informative
10,978Km / c (speed of light) = (about) 0.0036 s At least 3.6ms latency. Likley in the 5ms range tho, considering cut-through times and propegation delays.
I just started playing metroid (the original, 8-bit version) again.. and for the first time in years, i actually got goosebumps from playing a game again!:) The feeling I get from the creepy parts in metroid is.. aggh. truly one of the best games ever. I'd suggest that everyone whose able to play the original to do just that, get it out and have fun (in a non-sexual way:pp):-) Emulate it if you need to, but don't miss out.
"What really happened" has been discussed in the court for a week, just try to find someone who has translated the happennings into english:) You could try EFN.
While the point about buying from whomever decide to provide the software in their language is quite valid, there really isn't much software that support nynorsk - and even less that support the third language used in some northern parts of Norway, 'Lappish' or 'Samisk'. The main point here being that schools wasn't even going to *CONSIDER* buying MS software unless they got support for 'Nynorsk' in the software packages, and while it still remains up to each and single school to choose what software they want to use, it will still make sure that the 'Nynorsk' language gets preserved in those cases where they DO select to use Microsoft software. As the article also states, this may give hope to other "small" languages a bit more acceptance and usage, giving Catalan as an example.
The trend in Norway is however quite the opposite, more and more schools are realizing that there is several good alternatives, Linux being one of them. Norway is (afaik) one of the few countries that has their own Linux distro just for schools - which support regular Norwegian, Nynorsk ("New Norwegian") and Samisk (Lappish). read more about it (in norwegian!:-)) here.. It's gotten support from the department of education and science and all the work are done on a volountarily basis. It's quite amazing to see that several schools now are switching and several others are considering the same.
Slashdot Mirror
You must be new here.
while the "minicd"-requirement may seem a bit stupid (hey, you could just use a regular cd, right?) .. it fits just perfectly on a 128MB flash / smart media card -- perfect for that laptop without a harddisk.
:/
there's a few other distros aiming for this, but mostly it tends to blow into giant proportions when it comes to the size requirement of an installed system
Just to iterate a bit further, after working 9 months part-time (while finishing off something similiar to a bit over high-school and before starting university), the people I really would like to get on the phone, was the old people. They knew what position they were in (they usually started out with "I dont know anything about computers.." etc, but they usually tell you everything they see, they follow your lead and things usually work out (and then they are _really_ thankful). The other type is those who think they know a lot, but don't and give the impression that they do. We worked quite freely without any scripts, so usually I would spot the ones who actually knew what they wanted and had the knowledge they needed. For the other people, i rather ended up saying "ok, thats fine, but how about you just tell me what the error message says now?"instead of them saying that "my connection is broken" etc.
I also worked as a technician at a local computer place (think circuit city / compusa) and doing "behind the scenes" repairs. I usually didn't have to talk much to the customers themselves, but the same pattern applied here. There was very different reactions from people when you told them that the problem was their own fault and that they had to pay for the service instead of a regular warranty reparation -- the ones who actually knew their own limits didn't mind paying one bit, but those who thought they controlled the whole world (hey, why didnt YOU fix the problem, then) usually made a rage about it and demanded to see the supervisor (i was 16 at the moment, something which probably didn't make it a whole lot easier for them
The main "problem" may be that customers see their computer as an advanced TV
Ok, enough rambling
Two words: Icy Tower. This game really brought back that feeling (at least for me), and is surely one of the games that I've spent most time playing during the last months. Check it out!
There are several good reasons for just keeping the already preprocessed MPEG2 signal, since this leaves the engineers with a much simpler software design (no need to add an MPEG-4 encoder, cheaper to produce (something which probably matters a lot when its being pushed by a company without a cost for the end user)) -- there is really (as far as i can see) no technical reason for not just storing the MPEG2 stream. Since the device already has a 80 GB harddrive, the amount of recording mentioned should be possible without any big problems (keep in mind that it's market droid mumbo jumbo, "up to" etc). Broadcast NTSC quality should make up something in the area of 3 - 6 mbit/s, depending on the amount of action and detail in the original material:
80GB / 3mbit/s = 218.448s ~60 hrs
With a variable bitrate, there should really not be any problem with storing 50hrs of streamed MPEG2 content onto a 80GB disk -- depending on the type of program stored (and it's content). If this thing only could be available in norway soon
well, believe it or not, but PIXARs success isn't really because of their rendering power -- true enough, the realism and rendering techniques used in their latest productions has contributed to making images better, but they've always had the edge when it comes down to the thing that matters: storytelling and keeping the audience interested. Look at their older shorts and their more recent feature films, the story is the main driving force.
While Final Fantasy looked quite amazing, the story and the movie just didn't fit in like most of the PIXAR movies. PIXAR makes movies for the whole family which people enjoy on different levels (best example, toy story 2) -- Shrek was a very welcome break from the PIXAR dominance, but not because it wasn't made by pixar, more because of a great story supported by a nice screenplay and good animation (it's more about how you use the tools, not that the end result has been raytraced with molecular precision)..
If they're able to produce films that would be entertaining even if they were hand drawn by a five year old, then the rendering power comes to good use; not the other way around.
Have a look at media.hiof.no -- where people have been providing streams of norwegian radio for quite some time now; available both on IPv4 and IPv6. There's probably a few good channels for those of you that don't want to listen to the technotrancemumbojumbo on the mentioned link in the submission
In addition, most plugins (at least which I have tried) also support SVGZ directly (standard gzip'ed SVG), both from the local disk and from the internet. Normally this compresses somewhere in the ratio of 80-90% (there is however still a few problems with large SVG-files in the plugins, so I would not recommend files with a native size over 1-2MB)..
Sorrowly, this has already happened; Adobe hasn't updated their plugin since 2001 and is lacking support for everything newer than the 1.0 standard. The most promising plugin at the moment is with no doubt the Corel SVG Viewer which looks and handles really neat. We've tried the mozilla native support in earlier editions (mainly about ~3 months ago) and the implementation was currently very lacking of needed features.
One point I would like to make; the first plugin (or browser) to support the upcoming SVG 1.2 standard is going to get a quite instant userbase, the interest for SVG is only growing -- something which SVG Open just showed (I was a coauthor for one of the papers, Distributed GML Management with SVG Tools).
PostgreSQL supports loading of functions from shared libraries, see the manual for more information. This allows you to create fairly complex functions that can be embedded into your database application. If I remember correctly, even PL/pgSQL is implemented in this way (requiring you to load the shared library for PL/pgSQL first).
The main point is that you can separate the database logic (and small functions to support that logic) completly from your regular application (but you probably already understood that, just mentioning it for the ones who didn't).
If that's all that it does (the page is slashdotted), then I would suggest that everyone using Internet Explorer takes a look at The Google Toolbar which provides this functionality, in addition to loads of other neat features (popup blocker, one-click images/groups/news/google-search, automagical "find searched word in page" and "highlight searchwords in page" and auto complete for forms) ..
:)
If you haven't checked it out yet, do it now
As others has pointed out, the numbers in the summary is wrong -- and if you had read the article (but hey, this is slashdot) -- you would have seen that quite fast.
:p
Introduction: 6305 mails in (basically) one day
We received 5880 bounces and forwards
We received 12 spams for @cyberangels
We received 40 attempts to annoy Cyberangels
We received 371 complaints about Cyberangels
We received 2 business mails
I'll leave it up the regular reader to multiply by three
What? All males? Can't be right.. I got this one as soon as i started:
:>
F/18
Im into threesome, lesbian and oral sex. Anytime anywhere.
trepia, here i come
I played the first one for a couple of days straight when it was just hot and fresh and were really impressed. It was fun in a strange way and I enjoyed creatinge and setting up this little family .. but after a while things just got boring and you kinda could anticipate what was going to happen .. I hope they make each experience more unique and probably a bit more evolving than the first edition, but sure, the "simplicity" (i'm not calling it a simple game, that would be plain wrong) may have been the reason why it has sold so well and attracted so many non-regular gamers.
:-)
There's a good chance that this DNA-feature will make the sims a better, lasting game which kinda never stops and still evolves.. we'll see.
Looking forward to the E3, at least.
You do of course realize that you are reading slashdot?
I think that will be the last problem to cross anyones mind.
What? You mean like this ?
How about teaming up with some local ISP for the internet-part? The technical divison of the town could take care of running the fiber network while most of the other issues you mentioned could be outsourced to another company which actually know what they're doing.. My former university (~30k students) ran a city (150k citizens) wide network covering most of their installments in the city and they made it work like a charm. I'm suspecting that this was in cooperation with the local telco, but its absolutly doable.
Wouldnt want one of those cooling fans close to my apartment (or my planet for that matter) :p
ok, i couldnt find the original strip, but here goes from memory:
.. and maybe that holds for your calculator too :-)
accounting troll: this is our random number generator
troll: 9
troll: 9
troll: 9
dilbert: are you sure that's random?
accounting troll: thats the problem with randomness, you really can't be sure.
Well, we all know the "new economy" that was implied in the
1. discover something strange
2. ???
3. Profit!
and this could actually work.
or if you do it the right way (tm):
10.978.000 / 300.000.000 =
10.978 / 300.000 ~= 0,036593 -> 36.59ms
(and you should probably get a better measure for both the distance and the speed of light
So, the slayer got slayed?
I just started playing metroid (the original, 8-bit version) again .. and for the first time in years, i actually got goosebumps from playing a game again! :) The feeling I get from the creepy parts in metroid is .. aggh. truly one of the best games ever. I'd suggest that everyone whose able to play the original to do just that, get it out and have fun (in a non-sexual way :pp) :-) Emulate it if you need to, but don't miss out.
"What really happened" has been discussed in the court for a week, just try to find someone who has translated the happennings into english :) You could try EFN.
While the point about buying from whomever decide to provide the software in their language is quite valid, there really isn't much software that support nynorsk - and even less that support the third language used in some northern parts of Norway, 'Lappish' or 'Samisk'. The main point here being that schools wasn't even going to *CONSIDER* buying MS software unless they got support for 'Nynorsk' in the software packages, and while it still remains up to each and single school to choose what software they want to use, it will still make sure that the 'Nynorsk' language gets preserved in those cases where they DO select to use Microsoft software. As the article also states, this may give hope to other "small" languages a bit more acceptance and usage, giving Catalan as an example.
:-)) here .. It's gotten support from the department of education and science and all the work are done on a volountarily basis. It's quite amazing to see that several schools now are switching and several others are considering the same.
The trend in Norway is however quite the opposite, more and more schools are realizing that there is several good alternatives, Linux being one of them. Norway is (afaik) one of the few countries that has their own Linux distro just for schools - which support regular Norwegian, Nynorsk ("New Norwegian") and Samisk (Lappish). read more about it (in norwegian!