This device, or more accurately, its display, is going to finally convince me to buy into Apple's ecosystem. That 4:3 display, with close-to-paper aspect ratios and 260+ DPI, should finally offer a pleasant experience for viewing multi-column full colour PDFs.
If there was an Android competitor in the offing, I'd wait for it. But I can't find anything other than tech demos from Samsung, which they had no plans to turn into a consumer product. The best competitor appears to be a 1920x1200 tablet, but the widescreen form factor (aka narrowscreen in portrait mode) is nothing like as good for looking at documents.
My last two phones were Androids (HTC Desire, Motorola Atrix), but depending on how the iPad experience turns out, I think my next phone purchase might hop the fence. (I'm sick of buying premium phones that are abandoned by their manufacturers months later... the Atrix hardware is great, but I'm pissed that Motorola isn't going to give it Android 4).
When did Richard Dawkins start beating people up? Did you ever hear of Dawkins throwing Molotov cocktails into someone's home? How about threatening to kill someone? No? None of that?
You could say the same about any of the recent Popes. You can't assume that just because a leader behaves reasonably, that all of their followers will do likewise.
I seriously looked at getting a Nexus S, actually. IIRC its radio was not compatible with the frequency spectrum used by the best network around here in Australia (Telstra's NextG network).
The new Nexus Galaxy, happily, does support the UMTS/HSPA bands that are used by Telstra. (The Nexus Galaxy's LTE radio, on the other hand, is completely useless here. The Telstra NextG network LTE rollout has actually started with equipment in city centres and airports, but again, it's on a different frequency spectrum to that used by US carriers, and the Nexus Galaxy's radio isn't compatible. AFAIK no one else in Australia has actually deployed LTE yet).
I ended up with a Motorola Atrix. Its version of Android has nothing to recommend it over vanilla Android. And, when I bought it, there were articles in the news suggesting that it would shortly receive an unlocked bootloader, which has not come to pass to my annoyance. That annoyance is being greatly compounded by the fact that it appears Motorola can't be arsed releasing Ice Cream Sandwich for it.
On the other hand, it has a great screen and a gigantic 1850 mAh battery, which is awesome. Most of the other super phones on the market tend to have 1400-1500 mAh batteries by default. So I'm very happy with the hardware. It's just a damn shame that Motorola's control freakery and stinginess is turning it into a negative experience.
Anyway: next time, I'll either get a Nexus phone or an iPhone. I don't think I'll even consider anything else. Motorola can suck it.
Sounds like you need a US Code Repository, with bills published as changesets, but retaining the ability to pull a complete version of the legal framework that is actually in use.
But I, for one, am sick of getting no support from the manufacturers of my last two Android phones. Next time I'm up for a new phone, I am going to give the iPhone very serious consideration.
Maybe it's only nerds like me and other Slashdot posters who care about getting OS updates for their phones, rather than the general market... but it is a major shortcoming of the Android ecosystem when compared to Apple's offering.
I had to do some fiddling with my Win 7 install last night. I noticed that during the process, there was a period where my graphics drivers weren't installed properly. During that time, I observed exactly the kind of lagginess you're talking about.
Once I re-installed the graphics drivers, the problem went away completely. I'd suggest that you should check whether you have correctly installed & reasonably up to date drivers for your graphics hardware.
Moon didn't eschew CGI and other effects completely, but it *did* make use of more model work than most of the SF movies I've seen recently. I think it's one of the reasons why I liked it so much.
There's a certain something about model shots in movies that CGI just doesn't quite match. Possible the models are actually less "real looking" than the CGI in some way, but there's something undeniably real and tangible about a model shot that CGI can very rarely deliver.
Yes, certain words have conflated. But English is still capable of expressing the distinction between singular you and plural you; otherwise we wouldn't even be able to discuss the difference between them in English! I suppose this is a sort of weakly-anthropic Whorf principal.
For example, in a singular "you" context, I could name the person I'm referring to, or refer to them by means of some distinguishing characteristic relevant to the context. (e.g., "Michael, I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Saturday" when addressing a team meeting, vs "I'm going to have to go ahead and ask the team to come in on Saturday".) Perfectly unambiguous despite the lack of a thou/ye distinction. I doubt the manager addressing the meeting would even have to pause to think about it!
I agree that certain concepts have to be expressed somewhat less directly when certain elements of the language syntax merge over time, but those concepts can always still be expressed, albeit in a more verbose fashion, using modern English. Otherwise the only way to refer to such concepts would be to pepper writing & speech with <untranslatable concept n> placeholders (which presumably would end up becoming proper noun referents to the untranslatable concepts, anyway!).
Language drift might result in the conflation of certain words or the mutation of set phrases, but I don't think it has ever actually reduced the expressiveness of the language as a whole.
I challenge you to provide an example of a concept which cannot be clearly expressed in modern English, but which could be expressed in any prior version of English.
I had a look at your link. Sorting by Popularity or Vitality shows a truly depressing perspective of FOSS gaming.
Apparently the most popular "games" in the database include things like a volleyball league management database, a character generation package for D&D 3rd edition which appears to lack support for _any_ character options outside the original core books (and is obsolete by 1.5 editions), compatibility frameworks & emulators to allow Linux users to play old commercial games originally written for commercial platforms (e.g. DOSBox, Nintendo emulators), game development tools of varying levels of name recognition (Blender I recognise. The "arianne" multiplayer online engine, not so much.), derivative clones of commercial games such as FreeCiv, and an ugly implementation of one of the worst board games ever (Risk). There is actually only *1* original game, Vega Strike, in the entire "top 10 most popular projects", and it doesn't exactly look like a blockbuster!
The "most vital" "games" includes a spell compendium database for AD&D second edition (which is now a nearly twenty-five-year old tabletop RPG, played only by a tiny community of grognards).
If that's the best Linux and BSD can do, I'm not surprised that people cite the quality and variety of entertainment software on commercial platforms as a major drawcard for those platforms.
I think the idea is that you relatively slowly charge up some kind of energy bank, eg ultracapacitors or something, using relatively low power. And then you discharge the bank very very fast - so you get 200 petawatts output, for a trillionth of a second, and then the energy banks are drained and need to be recharged.
It's possible that the energy capacitance is actually an inherent part of the laser physics rather than being stored electrically. I'm not really sure what the details are.
But, 200 PW for one trillionth of a second is actually only 200 kJ total energy if I've done the math correctly - ie about 9% of the dietary energy content of a Big Mac. This would not actually take very long for the world's total electrical generation capacity to deliver.:)
First to File does not override prior art. Patents must still be novel. First to File is only used to determine priority between two patents claiming the same novel invention; it has no effect on prior art at all.
The USPTO might still grant patents on obvious, non-novel stuff with prior art. But that's due to patent office incompetence and/or overloading, not First To File.
I see this misconception all the time on Slashdot.
Actually, the natives of Lisp already knew all about it. McCarthy was just the first person to show up with a flag, guns, germs & steel to claim Lisp for his homeland's empire.
So you're quite right... discoverer is a very patriarchal, hegemonic colonialist way of describing McCarthy./leftist historian mode:P
Probably people who want to order thousands of them (eg, one for every student). It's all very well being able to buy a handful of used PCs off eBay for the same price per unit, but it would be expensive to support a collection of 25,000 used PCs, all with different hardware configurations.
I love Girl Genius too, but I agree they need to spread the love.
I think Schlock Mercenary's format works against it. When you do daily strips in 3-to-4 panel format with a punchline at the end, your options for comic timing & interesting use of panel layout are greatly reduced compared to the graphic novel "long page" format used by Girl Genius. Howard Tayler's writing is reliably great, but his art just isn't at the same level as Phil Foglio's, either - and a Hugo for "Best Graphic Story" does need to take both into account. I have all the print volumes of both Shlock and GG, but I think I'd have to vote GG for the art. On the other hand, GG's storyline seems to have barely advanced in the recent volumes.
Now, here's a SF humour comic that deserves much better recognition: Spacetrawler. It's got an interesting storyline, wonderfully-written characters, and an art style that (for me) contributes a huge amount of humour. I love the facial expressions. I'd say it should appeal to fans of Firefly, Red Dwarf, and Hitchhiker's Guide - like Red Dwarf and Firefly, it derives much of its humour from the interplay between its characters. I'm disappointed that it apparently didn't even get a Hugo nomination... maybe next year.
Slashdot Mirror
This device, or more accurately, its display, is going to finally convince me to buy into Apple's ecosystem. That 4:3 display, with close-to-paper aspect ratios and 260+ DPI, should finally offer a pleasant experience for viewing multi-column full colour PDFs.
If there was an Android competitor in the offing, I'd wait for it. But I can't find anything other than tech demos from Samsung, which they had no plans to turn into a consumer product. The best competitor appears to be a 1920x1200 tablet, but the widescreen form factor (aka narrowscreen in portrait mode) is nothing like as good for looking at documents.
My last two phones were Androids (HTC Desire, Motorola Atrix), but depending on how the iPad experience turns out, I think my next phone purchase might hop the fence. (I'm sick of buying premium phones that are abandoned by their manufacturers months later... the Atrix hardware is great, but I'm pissed that Motorola isn't going to give it Android 4).
The funniest part is that Dr Seuss (or rather, the artist pen name) actually did a number of propaganda posters in WW2.
When did Richard Dawkins start beating people up? Did you ever hear of Dawkins throwing Molotov cocktails into someone's home? How about threatening to kill someone? No? None of that?
You could say the same about any of the recent Popes. You can't assume that just because a leader behaves reasonably, that all of their followers will do likewise.
No graphical banner ads.
Even better, a readable copy of the story "Harrison Bergeron".
I seriously looked at getting a Nexus S, actually. IIRC its radio was not compatible with the frequency spectrum used by the best network around here in Australia (Telstra's NextG network).
The new Nexus Galaxy, happily, does support the UMTS/HSPA bands that are used by Telstra. (The Nexus Galaxy's LTE radio, on the other hand, is completely useless here. The Telstra NextG network LTE rollout has actually started with equipment in city centres and airports, but again, it's on a different frequency spectrum to that used by US carriers, and the Nexus Galaxy's radio isn't compatible. AFAIK no one else in Australia has actually deployed LTE yet).
I ended up with a Motorola Atrix. Its version of Android has nothing to recommend it over vanilla Android. And, when I bought it, there were articles in the news suggesting that it would shortly receive an unlocked bootloader, which has not come to pass to my annoyance. That annoyance is being greatly compounded by the fact that it appears Motorola can't be arsed releasing Ice Cream Sandwich for it.
On the other hand, it has a great screen and a gigantic 1850 mAh battery, which is awesome. Most of the other super phones on the market tend to have 1400-1500 mAh batteries by default. So I'm very happy with the hardware. It's just a damn shame that Motorola's control freakery and stinginess is turning it into a negative experience.
Anyway: next time, I'll either get a Nexus phone or an iPhone. I don't think I'll even consider anything else. Motorola can suck it.
Sounds like you need a US Code Repository, with bills published as changesets, but retaining the ability to pull a complete version of the legal framework that is actually in use.
Well, Android is selling like cocaine hotcakes.
But I, for one, am sick of getting no support from the manufacturers of my last two Android phones. Next time I'm up for a new phone, I am going to give the iPhone very serious consideration.
Maybe it's only nerds like me and other Slashdot posters who care about getting OS updates for their phones, rather than the general market... but it is a major shortcoming of the Android ecosystem when compared to Apple's offering.
I had to do some fiddling with my Win 7 install last night. I noticed that during the process, there was a period where my graphics drivers weren't installed properly. During that time, I observed exactly the kind of lagginess you're talking about.
Once I re-installed the graphics drivers, the problem went away completely. I'd suggest that you should check whether you have correctly installed & reasonably up to date drivers for your graphics hardware.
How about.... BRIAN BLESSED?
You can get a BRIAN BLESSED voice for Tom Tom navigators. Check out this sample:
http://brianblessed.tomtom.com/index-brianblessed.php?Lid=1
Moon didn't eschew CGI and other effects completely, but it *did* make use of more model work than most of the SF movies I've seen recently. I think it's one of the reasons why I liked it so much.
There's a certain something about model shots in movies that CGI just doesn't quite match. Possible the models are actually less "real looking" than the CGI in some way, but there's something undeniably real and tangible about a model shot that CGI can very rarely deliver.
Yes, certain words have conflated. But English is still capable of expressing the distinction between singular you and plural you; otherwise we wouldn't even be able to discuss the difference between them in English! I suppose this is a sort of weakly-anthropic Whorf principal.
For example, in a singular "you" context, I could name the person I'm referring to, or refer to them by means of some distinguishing characteristic relevant to the context. (e.g., "Michael, I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Saturday" when addressing a team meeting, vs "I'm going to have to go ahead and ask the team to come in on Saturday".) Perfectly unambiguous despite the lack of a thou/ye distinction. I doubt the manager addressing the meeting would even have to pause to think about it!
I agree that certain concepts have to be expressed somewhat less directly when certain elements of the language syntax merge over time, but those concepts can always still be expressed, albeit in a more verbose fashion, using modern English. Otherwise the only way to refer to such concepts would be to pepper writing & speech with <untranslatable concept n> placeholders (which presumably would end up becoming proper noun referents to the untranslatable concepts, anyway!).
Language drift might result in the conflation of certain words or the mutation of set phrases, but I don't think it has ever actually reduced the expressiveness of the language as a whole.
I challenge you to provide an example of a concept which cannot be clearly expressed in modern English, but which could be expressed in any prior version of English.
I had a look at your link. Sorting by Popularity or Vitality shows a truly depressing perspective of FOSS gaming.
Apparently the most popular "games" in the database include things like a volleyball league management database, a character generation package for D&D 3rd edition which appears to lack support for _any_ character options outside the original core books (and is obsolete by 1.5 editions), compatibility frameworks & emulators to allow Linux users to play old commercial games originally written for commercial platforms (e.g. DOSBox, Nintendo emulators), game development tools of varying levels of name recognition (Blender I recognise. The "arianne" multiplayer online engine, not so much.), derivative clones of commercial games such as FreeCiv, and an ugly implementation of one of the worst board games ever (Risk). There is actually only *1* original game, Vega Strike, in the entire "top 10 most popular projects", and it doesn't exactly look like a blockbuster!
The "most vital" "games" includes a spell compendium database for AD&D second edition (which is now a nearly twenty-five-year old tabletop RPG, played only by a tiny community of grognards).
If that's the best Linux and BSD can do, I'm not surprised that people cite the quality and variety of entertainment software on commercial platforms as a major drawcard for those platforms.
Dilbert? Is that you?
"I never thought I'd see a resonance cascade, let alone create one."
- Dr Rosenberg, head of ELI research, February 2015
I think the idea is that you relatively slowly charge up some kind of energy bank, eg ultracapacitors or something, using relatively low power. And then you discharge the bank very very fast - so you get 200 petawatts output, for a trillionth of a second, and then the energy banks are drained and need to be recharged.
It's possible that the energy capacitance is actually an inherent part of the laser physics rather than being stored electrically. I'm not really sure what the details are.
But, 200 PW for one trillionth of a second is actually only 200 kJ total energy if I've done the math correctly - ie about 9% of the dietary energy content of a Big Mac. This would not actually take very long for the world's total electrical generation capacity to deliver. :)
First to File does not override prior art. Patents must still be novel. First to File is only used to determine priority between two patents claiming the same novel invention; it has no effect on prior art at all.
The USPTO might still grant patents on obvious, non-novel stuff with prior art. But that's due to patent office incompetence and/or overloading, not First To File.
I see this misconception all the time on Slashdot.
Actually, the natives of Lisp already knew all about it. McCarthy was just the first person to show up with a flag, guns, germs & steel to claim Lisp for his homeland's empire.
So you're quite right... discoverer is a very patriarchal, hegemonic colonialist way of describing McCarthy. /leftist historian mode :P
Mod up: This post has been inaccurately modded troll. There's nothing troll-y about it. Hopefully someone with a mod point will fix this injustice.
They're letter codes with a dessert theme. The first letter of the name is in alphabetical order.
C = Cupcake = 1.something
D = Donut = 2.0
E = Eclair = 2.1
F = FroYo = 2.2
G = Gingerbread = 2.3
H = Honeycomb = 3.0
I = Ice Cream Sandwich = 4.0
I'm not sure what the B version was called. The next version will presumably start with J. Jelly maybe?
What do you mean perspective? That's literally an exhibition of two t-rex skeletons in a reconstructed mating position. It's quite intentional.
Not needing to do text parsing on the results of commands?
I find PowerShell's use of an actual object model as opposed to text streams to be quite convenient.
Probably people who want to order thousands of them (eg, one for every student). It's all very well being able to buy a handful of used PCs off eBay for the same price per unit, but it would be expensive to support a collection of 25,000 used PCs, all with different hardware configurations.
I love Girl Genius too, but I agree they need to spread the love.
I think Schlock Mercenary's format works against it. When you do daily strips in 3-to-4 panel format with a punchline at the end, your options for comic timing & interesting use of panel layout are greatly reduced compared to the graphic novel "long page" format used by Girl Genius. Howard Tayler's writing is reliably great, but his art just isn't at the same level as Phil Foglio's, either - and a Hugo for "Best Graphic Story" does need to take both into account. I have all the print volumes of both Shlock and GG, but I think I'd have to vote GG for the art. On the other hand, GG's storyline seems to have barely advanced in the recent volumes.
Now, here's a SF humour comic that deserves much better recognition: Spacetrawler. It's got an interesting storyline, wonderfully-written characters, and an art style that (for me) contributes a huge amount of humour. I love the facial expressions. I'd say it should appeal to fans of Firefly, Red Dwarf, and Hitchhiker's Guide - like Red Dwarf and Firefly, it derives much of its humour from the interplay between its characters. I'm disappointed that it apparently didn't even get a Hugo nomination... maybe next year.