Sometimes there are simply no good alternatives to binary blobs available. Case in point, the nvidia closed source graphics drivers. As it stands nvidia currently produce the best graphics drivers available for linux hands down. The intel open source drivers don't even come close
And yet my expensive nVidia graphics card in my gaming pc does a lousy job when it comes to compositing effects in KDE 4, while the same effects work flawlessly on my cheap, underpowered netbook with a intel grapics chip...
I have spent quite a lot of time with autists (worked at a school for disabled children), and they are generally not happy people. (By pointing that out I am not trying to support the gp's point!)
You're right about people with Down's syndrome though.
If we all are happily nit-picking, I think you should have a look at the Cern member states . While you are right, major parts of Cern are located in Switzerland, the majority of taxpaid $currency used for its funding is definitely Euro, not Franc (and saying that "some of the LHC's funding does come from the Eurozone countries" is a ridiculous understatement...)
I haven't read tfa (of course), but the summary only talks about sequential read/write speeds and says nothing about the latency, which is the more important thing about RAM.
To illustrate the point: an oil tanker full of dvds can probably transport hundreds of gigabytes / second, but that does not mean that you can access random data quickly that way. Just that you can (on average!) transport much data per unit of time
I know that this is rather off-topic, but can anyone recommend a decent mp3-player that is similar to the ipod classic (i.e. at least 30gb storage, preferably more, not too expensive, acceptable battery) ?
My creative player died this week and I would like to replace it with something that can hold all my music files. The ipod classic really appeals to me , but the fact that apple tries to force their software upon customers makes me want to avoid their products like the plague.
So I would be really grateful if somebody could give me a pointer, I can't seem to find anything that is on par with the ipod (feature and price-wise).
I don't really know anything about graphics card/drivers, so can somebody more knowledgeable tell me if this means nVidia's drivers will finally stop sucking?
I like to bash MS/Ballmer as much as the next slashdotter, but I don't think that's true. He admits that it is a good idea. And his comments about "not much money being made" simply show the difference between his definition and your definition of "much money".
I haven't read tfa, but since it's talking about OS X it's probably about Amarok 2, which has neither a "Engage" menu nor a default visualiser (come to think of it, I'm not sure it has a visualiser at all. yet).
Oh for fuck's sake. Not that I'm a friend of this kind of legislation (or the German government for that matter), but those rules were forced upon Germany by the allied forces after the war. So, according to you, they are a bunch of Nazis as well?
If banks can transfer billions of dollars every day safely and securely (in many cases without even a paper trail), there is no reason why a decent electronic voting system can't be made.
Wow, that's a pretty terrible non-sequitur. The requirements for banking and voting are completely different. An ATM does not have to make sure that you cannot prove to anybody what you did when you used it. It does not have to prevent other people from tracing any action back to you. And if something goes wrong or someone tampers with the machine, you will know it sooner or later and can complain to your bank.
I want my turing test to be done over an actual instant messenger program. Let's see how your Markov chain reacts, when I send a photo and ask a dead simple question such as "describe what you see in the photo
Turing explicitly restricted the communication for the test to text. So what you describe would, albeit interesting, not actually be the Turing test.
There is such a huge difference in features and usability that there is no way that OpenOffice would gain any ground over Microsoft, in my opinion.
I'm not a big fan of OpenOffice myself and I can't really say anything about features, but to praise MS Office's usability seems utterly absurd to me.
I am reasonably computer-savy, but if I have to do anything more complicated than typing a really simple letter, Word drives me up the wall. It constantly feels like I have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me.
Same thing in Excel: I'd rather use pencil & paper or write my own scripts instead for every calculation I have to do, than trying to get Excel to do anything that even remotely resembles what I want it to do
Mind you, I'm not saying OO is any better in that respect. I'm just saying it can hardly be any worse
My linux box doesn't have ruby or python installed, and I haven't had any problems. Try deleting perl from yours!
What distribution are you running? Every distribution I've used had Python installed by default for years (and would break terribly if you tried to remove it).
Slashdot Mirror
That's why!
But it has nothing to do with programming. So what's your point?
Sometimes there are simply no good alternatives to binary blobs available. Case in point, the nvidia closed source graphics drivers. As it stands nvidia currently produce the best graphics drivers available for linux hands down. The intel open source drivers don't even come close
And yet my expensive nVidia graphics card in my gaming pc does a lousy job when it comes to compositing effects in KDE 4, while the same effects work flawlessly on my cheap, underpowered netbook with a intel grapics chip...
US researchers have found that prenatal treatment for Down syndrome works in mice.
Today is a happy day for all mousekind!
I have spent quite a lot of time with autists (worked at a school for disabled children), and they are generally not happy people. (By pointing that out I am not trying to support the gp's point!)
You're right about people with Down's syndrome though.
Amen. I'm not a biology geek, but that is one of the coolest things I have seen in a while.
If we all are happily nit-picking, I think you should have a look at the Cern member states . While you are right, major parts of Cern are located in Switzerland, the majority of taxpaid $currency used for its funding is definitely Euro, not Franc (and saying that "some of the LHC's funding does come from the Eurozone countries" is a ridiculous understatement...)
They want to be the new cultural center for science.
You do realise that CERN has been a "cultural center for science" (whatever that means) long before the LHC?
"The New York Times reports on research to develop autonomous battlefield robots that would 'behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans.'
Maybe I'm being a bit pedantic here, but "ethics" is a professional code
I'm sorry, but that is simply not true. Look up "ethics" on wikipedia or, if you prefer in a dictionary.
I haven't read tfa (of course), but the summary only talks about sequential read/write speeds and says nothing about the latency, which is the more important thing about RAM.
To illustrate the point: an oil tanker full of dvds can probably transport hundreds of gigabytes / second, but that does not mean that you can access random data quickly that way. Just that you can (on average!) transport much data per unit of time
I know that this is rather off-topic, but can anyone recommend a decent mp3-player that is similar to the ipod classic (i.e. at least 30gb storage, preferably more, not too expensive, acceptable battery) ?
My creative player died this week and I would like to replace it with something that can hold all my music files. The ipod classic really appeals to me , but the fact that apple tries to force their software upon customers makes me want to avoid their products like the plague.
So I would be really grateful if somebody could give me a pointer, I can't seem to find anything that is on par with the ipod (feature and price-wise).
What? Is terrorism already burned out?
Someone (I think it was Neil Gaiman) once said that "graphic novel" is to comic what "lady of the night" is to prostitute.
An update addressing one of the most important shortcomings of one of the most important web browsers;
We really need sarcasm tags.
I don't really know anything about graphics card/drivers, so can somebody more knowledgeable tell me if this means nVidia's drivers will finally stop sucking?
I'm not saying you're wrong, but if you lived in Nazi Germany, you'd never hear of disappearances either.
Yes, you would, you would just pretend not to notice. You cannot make millions of people, mostly from urban areas, disappear without anyone noticing.
I like to bash MS/Ballmer as much as the next slashdotter, but I don't think that's true. He admits that it is a good idea. And his comments about "not much money being made" simply show the difference between his definition and your definition of "much money".
I haven't read tfa, but since it's talking about OS X it's probably about Amarok 2, which has neither a "Engage" menu nor a default visualiser (come to think of it, I'm not sure it has a visualiser at all. yet).
Oh for fuck's sake, it's a joke. Why does every second post here have to prove that its poster is humour-impaired?
Oh for fuck's sake. Not that I'm a friend of this kind of legislation (or the German government for that matter), but those rules were forced upon Germany by the allied forces after the war. So, according to you, they are a bunch of Nazis as well?
If banks can transfer billions of dollars every day safely and securely (in many cases without even a paper trail), there is no reason why a decent electronic voting system can't be made.
Wow, that's a pretty terrible non-sequitur. The requirements for banking and voting are completely different. An ATM does not have to make sure that you cannot prove to anybody what you did when you used it. It does not have to prevent other people from tracing any action back to you. And if something goes wrong or someone tampers with the machine, you will know it sooner or later and can complain to your bank.
I want my turing test to be done over an actual instant messenger program. Let's see how your Markov chain reacts, when I send a photo and ask a dead simple question such as "describe what you see in the photo
Turing explicitly restricted the communication for the test to text. So what you describe would, albeit interesting, not actually be the Turing test.
There is such a huge difference in features and usability that there is no way that OpenOffice would gain any ground over Microsoft, in my opinion.
I'm not a big fan of OpenOffice myself and I can't really say anything about features, but to praise MS Office's usability seems utterly absurd to me.
I am reasonably computer-savy, but if I have to do anything more complicated than typing a really simple letter, Word drives me up the wall. It constantly feels like I have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me.
Same thing in Excel: I'd rather use pencil & paper or write my own scripts instead for every calculation I have to do, than trying to get Excel to do anything that even remotely resembles what I want it to do
Mind you, I'm not saying OO is any better in that respect. I'm just saying it can hardly be any worse
I cannot think of any sensible definition of "good design" that includes preventing the user from changing the battery.
My linux box doesn't have ruby or python installed, and I haven't had any problems. Try deleting perl from yours!
What distribution are you running? Every distribution I've used had Python installed by default for years (and would break terribly if you tried to remove it).