last time i checked "m/s" was "microns per second", so 200,000m/s would be a little under half a mile per hour, which i think the average 747 can manage taxiing...
and on my TRS-80 model 1, once i installed the correct socket:)
Re:Anyone else fear a "Halloween" situation?
on
The PS2 Experience
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· Score: 1
...all that they do is buy animé magazines and surf to hentai sites...
argh! i've spent the past few years only buying anime magazines and only surfing to hentai sites, and now sony with their mind-control ps2s go and make it trendy?! great. now the demand will go up, prices will soar, and i'm going to have to turn to a life of crime to support my habit...
i just know i'm being too pedantic, but it's GATTACA not GATTICA. remember, you only get to use the letters A, C, G and T...
this message comes to you via my new keyboard, which replaced the old one that attempted to excede my own daily caffeinated beverage intake last week...
inverse video? how i dream of inverse video. in my lynx, the links are underlined (as is any bold/italic text) and the selected link isn't (as is any plain text)...
...sounds like a really inefficient use of electricity...
actually, it isn't. you see, the reason they need such a big-ass heatsink is 'cos it isn't air cooled - it's water cooled! they use it to drive a small steam turbine, generating extra power to feed back into the system. this is why you need a new power supply (to take the power from the turbine), a new case (for the high pressure steam plumbing), and a pile of coal to get the machine up to operating temperture from a cold start...
...until someone develops a programming language specifically suited for voice recognition...
already been done - it's called COBOL. while not specifically designed for dictation, it sure looks like it was.
disclaimer: i haven't touched or even looked at cobol since they tried to teach it to me back in the dark ages, and a misspelling of the word environment caused the compiler to spit out two errors for each line of source code...
things may have changed since then.
and a little extra to make the threat bigger (put this in the conditions of use/AUP) : if an attendant notices someone browsing pr0n, they shut down all terminals for, say, 5 minutes, and let all the other users know who was to blame for the outage. peer pressure should do the rest...
Umm, no it's not, since both gas and brake are essential to making a car run properly
...sure "gas" and "brake" are required, but the pedals aren't. imagine a lever. you push it forwards to go forwards. you pull it back to go backwards. the further you move the lever from centre, the greater the speed you require. add some force feedback so the car can say, "whoah dude! don't wanna do that!" voila! not brake pedal, no gas pedal, no gear selector thingy. just a stick for the left/right hand, and a wheel for the right/left.
of course, the preferred option is to use the trackball in the armrest to point to a destination on the navigation map, then sit back and read slashdot/watch dvds/whatever while the car does all the dirty work itself. (and don't get me started on slaving auto-pilot cars to eachother on highways, driving at high speed a couple of inches apart, to remain in their slipstreams...)
but back to the topic: mouse buttons. why have mouse buttons at all? how about a touch-sensitive mouse. the pointer is enabled/visible when the mouse is touched. when the pointer stops moving a virtual click occurs, bringing up a context menu. if the pointer stops moving inside a context menu, execute that option. power users can use a keyboard modifier (ctrl/shift/alt/meta) to force a virtual click. --
All the author has to do is scrap the '%-honest' requirement...
you think he doesn't know that? and yet the '%-honest' requirement is there. either he is serious, but doesn't realise the potential for someone deciding how small '%-honest' is going to be, or (more likely) he isn't really serious, and just want to see what happens ('What happens if I poke my fans "here"?')
...why should he worry about all the other downloads?
exactly! and yet the '%-honest' requirement is there.
...this is a risk of serialization that has little or nothing to do with online distribution
online distribution gives instant feedback on the popularity. compare 'How many paid downloads so far?' with 'How many books are still sitting on the shelves of bookstores?'. 'Hmm... Not enough downloads today. Too bad, suckers! That story's not making me enough money. Here, have the first installment of the next one!' also, with traditional distribution of serialised stuff, the serialised bits are usually part of a periodical/magazine/whatever. there's too much extra baggage to use the sales of the periodical to accurately gauge the popularity of the serial. certainly nothing like reading the hit count on your server...
...if the first novel of a trilogy sells poorly enough, the remainder of the series might be cancelled
but this isn't a trilogy under construction. it's is a finished, 20,000ish word novelette, in three parts.
wait until the entire series is complete
which won't happen if the author is waiting for the magic cash threshold before finishing, and we're waiting for the series to finish before buying it...
...if it sucks, no one will care about the third episode.
that's what concerns me about this. even if i like the story, and buy each installment (multiple times if i really like it), i'm at the mercy of everyone else. if they don't like it, i don't get the ending! argh! now books are going to be blandized as well as tv/radio/movies (blandized == made bland, as a result of letting the end users have too much control over the creative process - story-telling by committee...:( )
on another point, what protects me and other honest purchasers of installments, from some rabid programmer with a net connection and a grudge against the author - script-based downloading of thousands of copies to stack the odds against the final installment appearing?
i really hope that if this does catch on, they'll at least still print real books, for those of us willing to pay vast amount for the entire story (& support the middle man...)
That would be Eugene by Greg Egan, which can be found his collection of short stories, Axiomatic. His stuff is some of the best science fiction I've found, and I suspect the average/. reader would appreciate it...
And The Moral Virologist (also found in Axiomatic) still makes me uneasy...
Whenever I play nethack, I must play a female character (whatever class). Not for the really cool, sexy curves of my text display, but for a genuine (if remote) advantage. It's possible to be polymorphed into an egg-laying monster. If you're female, you get to lay eggs (if you're male, you don't). If you keep the eggs, they'll hatch...
Fighting alongside your own reptilian offspring is a pretty, umm... different way to pass the time.:)
Slashdot Mirror
last time i checked "m/s" was "microns per second", so 200,000m/s would be a little under half a mile per hour, which i think the average 747 can manage taxiing...
umm... haven't you just described google?
hey, if you find the url, let me know! damn i need that game.
yeah, the ultra violent shoot-em-up fantasies have been fun, but damnit, i need to fulfil my mischevious kitten fantasy!
bastards...
you know, i think i'd prefer "MPAA & RIAA meet Diablo"...
this message comes to you via my new keyboard, which replaced the old one that attempted to excede my own daily caffeinated beverage intake last week...
disclaimer: i haven't touched or even looked at cobol since they tried to teach it to me back in the dark ages, and a misspelling of the word environment caused the compiler to spit out two errors for each line of source code...
things may have changed since then.
yeah, but i figure that's ok, since the government's run by aliens anyway
now if they could just point that big dish at arecibo at washington, maybe they'd start getting some results...
and a little extra to make the threat bigger (put this in the conditions of use/AUP) : if an attendant notices someone browsing pr0n, they shut down all terminals for, say, 5 minutes, and let all the other users know who was to blame for the outage. peer pressure should do the rest...
of course, the preferred option is to use the trackball in the armrest to point to a destination on the navigation map, then sit back and read slashdot/watch dvds/whatever while the car does all the dirty work itself. (and don't get me started on slaving auto-pilot cars to eachother on highways, driving at high speed a couple of inches apart, to remain in their slipstreams...)
but back to the topic: mouse buttons.
why have mouse buttons at all? how about a touch-sensitive mouse. the pointer is enabled/visible when the mouse is touched. when the pointer stops moving a virtual click occurs, bringing up a context menu. if the pointer stops moving inside a context menu, execute that option. power users can use a keyboard modifier (ctrl/shift/alt/meta) to force a virtual click.
--
exactly! and yet the '%-honest' requirement is there.
online distribution gives instant feedback on the popularity. compare 'How many paid downloads so far?' with 'How many books are still sitting on the shelves of bookstores?'. 'Hmm... Not enough downloads today. Too bad, suckers! That story's not making me enough money. Here, have the first installment of the next one!'
also, with traditional distribution of serialised stuff, the serialised bits are usually part of a periodical/magazine/whatever. there's too much extra baggage to use the sales of the periodical to accurately gauge the popularity of the serial. certainly nothing like reading the hit count on your server...
but this isn't a trilogy under construction. it's is a finished, 20,000ish word novelette, in three parts.
which won't happen if the author is waiting for the magic cash threshold before finishing, and we're waiting for the series to finish before buying it...
on another point, what protects me and other honest purchasers of installments, from some rabid programmer with a net connection and a grudge against the author - script-based downloading of thousands of copies to stack the odds against the final installment appearing?
i really hope that if this does catch on, they'll at least still print real books, for those of us willing to pay vast amount for the entire story (& support the middle man...)
go to your browser prefs, and enable the Automatically load text option.
:)
you'll find the captions identify it as a rottweiler.
... stick Windows on there and let it go around killing people and terrorizing the city ...
yeah, but only when it isn't lying on the ground, immobile or twitching randomly and turning blue...
I didn't get any pop-up at all...
:)
i didn't either... also, not much in the way of ads. i guess my squid doesn't like them
trust the acl. the acl is your friend.
That would be Eugene by Greg Egan, which can be found his collection of short stories, Axiomatic . His stuff is some of the best science fiction I've found, and I suspect the average /. reader would appreciate it...
And The Moral Virologist (also found in Axiomatic) still makes me uneasy...
nothing like paying 25 australian cents for a four week call, either... :)
Ahh... Nethack... :)
:)
Whenever I play nethack, I must play a female character (whatever class). Not for the really cool, sexy curves of my text display, but for a genuine (if remote) advantage. It's possible to be polymorphed into an egg-laying monster. If you're female, you get to lay eggs (if you're male, you don't). If you keep the eggs, they'll hatch...
Fighting alongside your own reptilian offspring is a pretty, umm... different way to pass the time.