This isn't a flying car. It's a driveable aircraft. I think the main problem it solves is that with a conventional light aircraft, you drive to the airport, pre-flight your aircraft, take off, fly to your destination, land... and then you're stuck. Many light aircraft airports don't have car hire facilities nearby, and they're often some way from any place you actually want to be. With the Terrafugia, you can at least in principal land the thing at an airfield and then drive it to your final destination (eg a hotel or tourist landmark or business or whatever).
On the other hand I'm not sure how much I'd want to drive this thing on the road. Seems like it would be a great way to ruin your airplane. And, furthermore, you'd have to count on there being adequate garaging facilities at your destination; I don't think this vehicle would want to be outside in heavy weather.
"Action RPG" is the normal classification, I think. In the computer/video gaming world, "RPG" is defined more by the presence of character stats & game mechanics based around improving said stats, rather than anything to do with actually playing a character role.
Loaning a CD or DVD to a friend is not a violation of copyright. Copyright is the monopoly right to make copies which is reserved to the copyright owner. A copyright owner doesn't have any inherent entitlement to control what happens to the copies that are sold, apart from activities that would infringe on the owner's copyrights (eg public performances & unlicensed copying). Re-sales and loans do not infringe provided that no copies are made.
That's why the software industry came up with the insidious concept of "licensing" rather than selling the copies of software that they distribute. That's why EULAs are, unfortunately, enforceable in many jursidictions - because the EULA states that something that looks like an outright purchase is actually just a one-sided bullshit licence contract.
EULAs don't apply to books, CDs, or DVDs.... yet. That's one more reason why streaming services represent a corrosion of consumer rights - they replace irrevocable sales of a physical object with revocable licence agreements for services that carry a huge number of additional obligations and restrictions on the licensee.
Eclipse Phase is a somewhat more serious exploration of the same Charles Stross/Richard Morgan themes surrounding personality emulation, backup, transfer & forking.
Great setting, with lots of fantastic artwork. It has pretty horrible rules, though.
Sounds like there's a decent business plan there for someone. Implement a web service that calculates all the applicable tax rates for a given basket of purchases and charge web retail business a small monthly fee for access to the API (which would obviously be a deductable business expense).
No different than hiring an accountant to do your tax returns, really.
I mean, I imagine that it's really only capable of creating second-class apps compared to a complete dev environment like iOS developer tools, the Android SDK, or the Visual Studio for WP7. But I do admire the premise of the product. The sheer complexity of learning an entire dev stack from scratch is pretty difficult for a non-specialist to overcome; hopefully this thing is simple enough that it can act as a good starting point for neophytes who just want to add "one little feature" to their phone.
Nonsense. Agatha's far more powerful (albeit still less experienced) than Lucrezia Mongfish or the Heterodyne Boys. She made _mechanical Sparks_ as one of her very first projects! And she's clearly outclassing Gilgamesh and Tarvek, who are both first-rate Sparks in their own right.
I've been wanting to get to grips with PowerShell for those sort of applications (awk/sed/grep). Do you know of any good tutorials online? I've read MS's introduction to PowerShell, but I didn't really see how the various provided cmdlets are supposed to fit together.
MS should scrap the web front end for submitting game ratings.
Instead, it should only be possible to submit a game rating from the XBox itself, using an account that's unlocked at least one achievement from the game.
Since the XBLIG games are only accessible to people with an internet-enabled XBox and a Live account, that shouldn't disenfranchise anyone who's actually got a relevant opinion.
I find it interesting that market analysts consider _handset exclusivity_ to be a credible reason for a network operator to be an unsustainable business.
It's further evidence, in my opinion, that handset exclusivity is tremendously damaging to the health of the American mobile data/voice marketplace. In some countries, tying handset availability to specific network service providers is actually illegal under trade practices acts. It's pretty clear that the current toxic American phone marketplace is greatly advantageous to the oligopoly of top-tier incumbents, but it's very bad for the marketplace customers.
Yet again, we see the ironic result that the market badly needs more regulation, to make it more free. Customers are losing because the network providers aren't competing on the basis of network provision, and the phone makers aren't able to compete freely on their handset's merits because the customers of the handset makers are the network providers, not the actual phone users.
I guess that's why the documentation for the 2007/2010 (transitional) and future (strict) versions of the.docx/.xlsx/etc Office formats takes 6,000 pages - it's all so obfuscated, vague, and proprietary.
The Windows 7 taskbar integration is... idiosyncratic at best.
I started out by launching Writer and Calc and pinning both to the taskbar. When I open a document, the taskbar shows a task with the appropriate app. When I open another LibreOffice document, a second window is added to whichever program I started - even it's a Calc document and I launched Writer the first time.
That's what happens if I launch an app first and then load documents.
If I just cold-start an app by opening a document when nothing's running, a third, new icon that I haven't seen before will be added to the taskbar *in addition* to the two that I pinned after launching the Writer & Calc earlier.
It's not a very nice experience when you can't predict which taskbar icon a given document will be associated with - or pin an app in a reasonably standard way.:(
This is the same behaviour as OpenOffice.org. It sucked then and it still sucks now. It probably works OK with Windows XP/Vista taskbar behaviour, but it's terrible on Win 7 - and Win 7's awesome taskbar is one of its best features.
I'll install this thing over the top of OpenOffice 3.2 on my home computer. But I suspect it won't stop my secret, shameful lust for Office 2010 (which I've been using at work).
So, what are the differences between OO.o and LibreOffice?
I've read the new features page. Are there any OpenOffice.org features or bug fixes that won't be included in LibreOffice? Does Oracle still have anything useful to offer or is OO.o effectively obsolete?
Slashdot Mirror
The FA states that the new game will have "more varied environments" - and that it's still on Pandora.
Hopefully that doesn't just mean "brown and grey, in exciting new shapes."
Huh, really? I thought it included PS 1.
My bad.
If you can't beat 'em, monetise 'em.
I guess in principle it's probably not _all_ that evil.
Still, it makes me think the gameplay experience will be like a Free To Play game... but with a $60 USD (or $90 AUD, grrrr) barrier to entry.
PowerShell is the stock command line if you're using a version of Windows that's less than 10 years old.
This isn't a flying car. It's a driveable aircraft. I think the main problem it solves is that with a conventional light aircraft, you drive to the airport, pre-flight your aircraft, take off, fly to your destination, land... and then you're stuck. Many light aircraft airports don't have car hire facilities nearby, and they're often some way from any place you actually want to be. With the Terrafugia, you can at least in principal land the thing at an airfield and then drive it to your final destination (eg a hotel or tourist landmark or business or whatever).
On the other hand I'm not sure how much I'd want to drive this thing on the road. Seems like it would be a great way to ruin your airplane. And, furthermore, you'd have to count on there being adequate garaging facilities at your destination; I don't think this vehicle would want to be outside in heavy weather.
"Action RPG" is the normal classification, I think. In the computer/video gaming world, "RPG" is defined more by the presence of character stats & game mechanics based around improving said stats, rather than anything to do with actually playing a character role.
Ah, it all becomes clear. The Duke Nukem Forever release has just been waiting until Australia gets an R18+ rating!
Loaning a CD or DVD to a friend is not a violation of copyright. Copyright is the monopoly right to make copies which is reserved to the copyright owner. A copyright owner doesn't have any inherent entitlement to control what happens to the copies that are sold, apart from activities that would infringe on the owner's copyrights (eg public performances & unlicensed copying). Re-sales and loans do not infringe provided that no copies are made.
That's why the software industry came up with the insidious concept of "licensing" rather than selling the copies of software that they distribute. That's why EULAs are, unfortunately, enforceable in many jursidictions - because the EULA states that something that looks like an outright purchase is actually just a one-sided bullshit licence contract.
EULAs don't apply to books, CDs, or DVDs.... yet. That's one more reason why streaming services represent a corrosion of consumer rights - they replace irrevocable sales of a physical object with revocable licence agreements for services that carry a huge number of additional obligations and restrictions on the licensee.
Eclipse Phase is a somewhat more serious exploration of the same Charles Stross/Richard Morgan themes surrounding personality emulation, backup, transfer & forking.
Great setting, with lots of fantastic artwork. It has pretty horrible rules, though.
Sounds like there's a decent business plan there for someone. Implement a web service that calculates all the applicable tax rates for a given basket of purchases and charge web retail business a small monthly fee for access to the API (which would obviously be a deductable business expense).
No different than hiring an accountant to do your tax returns, really.
That is actually pretty damn cool.
I mean, I imagine that it's really only capable of creating second-class apps compared to a complete dev environment like iOS developer tools, the Android SDK, or the Visual Studio for WP7. But I do admire the premise of the product. The sheer complexity of learning an entire dev stack from scratch is pretty difficult for a non-specialist to overcome; hopefully this thing is simple enough that it can act as a good starting point for neophytes who just want to add "one little feature" to their phone.
Are you talking about Fukushima, or chemical heavy industry?
Just off the top of my head:
Hell, maybe consider taking a look at this little list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_disaster
Makes the nuclear power industry in general look pretty good... although Chernobyl is a true horror.
I assumed that "exhaust data" is the data that gets discarded by a lossy compression engine. I mean, that data's gotta go somewhere, right?
And that's why the air coming out of desktop computers smells faintly of ozone.
Nonsense. Agatha's far more powerful (albeit still less experienced) than Lucrezia Mongfish or the Heterodyne Boys. She made _mechanical Sparks_ as one of her very first projects! And she's clearly outclassing Gilgamesh and Tarvek, who are both first-rate Sparks in their own right.
I've been wanting to get to grips with PowerShell for those sort of applications (awk/sed/grep). Do you know of any good tutorials online? I've read MS's introduction to PowerShell, but I didn't really see how the various provided cmdlets are supposed to fit together.
MS should scrap the web front end for submitting game ratings.
Instead, it should only be possible to submit a game rating from the XBox itself, using an account that's unlocked at least one achievement from the game.
Since the XBLIG games are only accessible to people with an internet-enabled XBox and a Live account, that shouldn't disenfranchise anyone who's actually got a relevant opinion.
Cool, thanks. Very informative.
Can anyone comment on what the blog post author means by the "Processing" community? What's he talking about?
I find it interesting that market analysts consider _handset exclusivity_ to be a credible reason for a network operator to be an unsustainable business.
It's further evidence, in my opinion, that handset exclusivity is tremendously damaging to the health of the American mobile data/voice marketplace. In some countries, tying handset availability to specific network service providers is actually illegal under trade practices acts. It's pretty clear that the current toxic American phone marketplace is greatly advantageous to the oligopoly of top-tier incumbents, but it's very bad for the marketplace customers.
Yet again, we see the ironic result that the market badly needs more regulation, to make it more free. Customers are losing because the network providers aren't competing on the basis of network provision, and the phone makers aren't able to compete freely on their handset's merits because the customers of the handset makers are the network providers, not the actual phone users.
Probably they're selling to OEMs based on the OEM's specs.
Still... if you're an OEM, or planning to scratch build a system, it looks emptor had better caveat pretty carefully...
Yeah, you're probably right.
I guess that's why the documentation for the 2007/2010 (transitional) and future (strict) versions of the .docx/.xlsx/etc Office formats takes 6,000 pages - it's all so obfuscated, vague, and proprietary.
(Overcomplicated, I'll grant you...)
The Windows 7 taskbar integration is... idiosyncratic at best.
I started out by launching Writer and Calc and pinning both to the taskbar. When I open a document, the taskbar shows a task with the appropriate app. When I open another LibreOffice document, a second window is added to whichever program I started - even it's a Calc document and I launched Writer the first time.
That's what happens if I launch an app first and then load documents.
If I just cold-start an app by opening a document when nothing's running, a third, new icon that I haven't seen before will be added to the taskbar *in addition* to the two that I pinned after launching the Writer & Calc earlier.
It's not a very nice experience when you can't predict which taskbar icon a given document will be associated with - or pin an app in a reasonably standard way. :(
This is the same behaviour as OpenOffice.org. It sucked then and it still sucks now. It probably works OK with Windows XP/Vista taskbar behaviour, but it's terrible on Win 7 - and Win 7's awesome taskbar is one of its best features.
Doesn't look like it.
I'll install this thing over the top of OpenOffice 3.2 on my home computer. But I suspect it won't stop my secret, shameful lust for Office 2010 (which I've been using at work).
That would be kind of awesome actually.
So, what are the differences between OO.o and LibreOffice?
I've read the new features page. Are there any OpenOffice.org features or bug fixes that won't be included in LibreOffice? Does Oracle still have anything useful to offer or is OO.o effectively obsolete?