OK. That is YOUR X-Ray (well, your friends). That doctor MUST give it to the doctor you ask for a second opinion from (I believe).
That said, an X-Ray is nothing more than a special transparency as far as scanning goes (that's my theory). So if you don't have a scanner that can do transparencies, then you have two options as far as I can think. Option one is to put a piece of white paper behind when you scan it. The black area will stay black, the transparent area will be white. Shouldn't be a problem.
The second option is Kinkos or some other such place. They should know how to scan a transparency like that, or at least have a copier that can make you a copy so you can scan it yourself.
But I don't see why the "white paper" method shouldn't work.
That's true, you've got some points. I don't think there is any evidence (perhaps yet), as it is supposed to be the "logical conclusion".
But you have to remember that MS is playing this like they passed a law saying "No MS software... ever... 'cause." In reality Massachusetts said something more like "We will use.txt files for everything" and MS just doesn't want to make their program read and write that format. They are free to do so. The spec isn't GPLed so they'd have to open up all of Office.
They just don't want to.
And it's their fault. If they made it so they could then they could argue against the switch quite effectively.
"Eveyone else uses our software, you'll still be able to open those things easily."
"Our software is designed to be usable by disabled people"
"You won't have to spend all that money and time retraining people on the new software"
"We'll GIVE YOU the software this year... just don't switch!"
etc.
They are putting themselves in this boat by being stubborn. MS is sticking it to themselves. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they stayed with Office if MS would just implement the format. And with their army of programmers, how long could it really take them to do that? A week tops?
Thanks. I saw someone else (maybe it was you) mention that elsewhere in this thread and I think I will. While I knew Forbes was a famous magazine and not just some little rag, I have to say I was blown away at the quality of the writing. I didn't think such intelligent magazines and such still existed (except as smaller circulation things, niche products, etc).
Don't let them tell you lies. There were no word processors before word. Why do you think it's called a "Word" processor? That's right, that name comes from MS Word. "WordStar" and "Word Perfect" didn't exist, you just think they did because they put something in your water and brainwashed you.
And don't tell me about typewriters. Typewriters were based off of the design for Microsoft Word. In the future a time machine will be invented which will be used to go back in time and give the man who invented the typewriter what it should look like to look like MS Word. Why do you think the longest word you can spell on the top row of letters on a keyboard is "typewriter"? That is EXACTLY the kind of easter egg people at Microsoft LOVE. They put it there when they gave the design of the QWERTY keyboard to the guy who designed it (note: I'm not using his name because due to this revisionist history, we don't know the real creator's name).
And how do I know all this? They told me next Tuesday. Right before they executed me. That wasn't a good day.
Radio threatened the Newspaper and took it's lunch money.
Broadcast TV beat it up.
Cable News kicked it while it was down (and then beat it up some more)
The internet is just finishing the job. The Newspaper has been killed by 3 previous mediums, and now a fourth is doing it. Newspapers will never go away, but they will never be what they were in before the 1950s again. As others have pointed out, Newspapers aren't what they used to be as the quality has declined and they are trying to more and more like gossip rags and 24 hour news channels which get printed once per day. Solid investigative reporting would keep them alive easily, instead we get AP wire reprints (which I already heard summarized on the radio and saw analyzed on TV). Now I can cut out the middle man and read these things off the wire online. Why do I need the paper for that.
And with wire stories like "New flash: President says he will name a new supreme court nominee at some point in the future" (there was one somewhat like that recently), I can't say much for their reporting.
Papers need to reorganize themselves and the kind of things they write/print if they want to become anything more than another local magazine. I'm sorry, but Newspapers are not in a good state right not (then again, neither is TV news).
The NYT is not "the paper of record" anymore, Edward R. Morrow and Walter Cronkite are gone from the in front of the camera. The entire news industry seems to be in a major crisis. They lost sight of reporting by realizing that they could just be the first to tell you something. 24 hour news channels hastened that problem. The internet and cell phones have taken it to it's logical conclusion.
I hope this all turns out well in a few years. I was getting mad at many of the magazines I used to love (gamer and computer magazines including GamePro, Nintendo Power, EGM, PC World, etc.) have fallen into the same trap so I've stopped reading most of them (I can get that info online for free, faster). I recently started reading a good magazine full of intelligent, insightful, and well researched articles: Forbes (yeah, different genre of magazines, but still). Newspapers (and TV news) need to go back to the same thing. They are all in a format of "Let's take that 1 minute news summary we did at the top of the hour and try to stretch it to 30 minutes" kind of "journalism", merged with "infotaiment" like Entertainment Tonight into one large affront to the intelligence of everyone.
I hope things turn out well. In the mean time, I will just continue to avoid more and more news sources as they get worse and worse. Some are still good. NPR had FANTASTIC, JOURNALISTIC coverage and analysis of Justice Robert's hearings. I learned a TON about the process and many other things by listening to their clips of the questioning with intelligent analysis and explanations. They're not always perfect, but they are one of the few left who even seem to try.
We'll ignore the fact that I have an iPod (that I like), and a Windows Mobile handheld PDA (that I could use to listen to music) and occaisionally carry a PSP (which can also listen to music).
Instead, they want me to use my Sprint phone (I am a customer). So instead of paying $1 on iTunes, I can pay 2.5x as much to buy it from Sprint. Now I don't know anything about their DRM (although they MUST have it, they're Sprint).
So what can I listen to this on? They probably have specific phones (elluded to in the article above), but let's look at MY phone. I payed for a Bluetooth LG-325 (crippled, of course, but they forgot to remove DUN:). You know how much memory it conains? 1MB. That's right, 1MB. I bought this phone about a year ago. So at standard MP3 128k (which is about 1MB per minute), that would let me listen to... 1 minute of music. AMAZING.
Wait... no... I forgot about the OS and such. In reality I probably have about 600kb of user accessable memory. So that is... 35 seconds! That's... a ringer!
So I can pay $1 on iTunes and make my own ringer from that (not too hard), or pay $2.50 for something I can't listen to on my iPod, my PSP, or my PDA (I'm guessing), but I can listen to on my cruddy, over priced, crippled, Sprint phone.
Horray Sprint, another win for consumers!
The reviews of the ROKR may have been bad, but that is the discovery of FIRE compared to this deal.
PS: If you're wondering why I still use Sprint: great coverage in my area, and I don't pay for it (cell is through my job).
I'd suggest something even less partisan like Esperanto (which has never been an official language anywhere) but since no one speak Esperanto as their only language, I know that it (like any designed language) would change when real people started to speak it. Latin has already been through that.
Plus Latin used to be the "world language" back when all educated people spoke it an science was always done in it (witness Newton's "Principia Mathmatica", IIRC).
That's true, but their system was much more powerful. The first article made a quick mention of how "programmers try to make computers think like humans, while they were trying to make the computer work like a computer." I believe it said they were using statistics which (given enough source material) would eliminate those kind of problems. Seems like there was as article on Slashdot about that a while back.
But by combining it with grammatical analysis you could also fix those kind of errors. In the example you gave, pants (the clothes) is a noun, while pants (breathing) is a verb form. By figuring out which context the word is (noun or verb) then the computer can make a much better guess at the correct meaning. A system could adapt to the user's speech patterns which would probably help it decide too.
That said, you're looking at a free translation software offered on the internet. They have to do quick translations and they are ad supported at best. I'd image real translation software would be much better. SYSTRAN's little "try me" box on their site successfully translated "The dog was wearing pants. The cat pants loudly." to French using different words for the two pants (but then again so did Google and Babel Fish). Still their top of the line product is $900 so I would guess it would be rather good.
Don't forget, by the time users get their hands on a system like this, it will be a few years from now and you'll have increased memory capacity and processing power. Plus if you don't need to be silent (which is why they were using electrodes) then I'd imagine a video camera or two would work just fine for reading the muscles (you could use this easily in the UN).
Of course, maybe we should all just switch to Latin. You can't say we're playing favorites with a language if you choose a dead one.
You can understand why the computer did that in each case. They all make perfect sense.
The problem is that the ads run by keyword, so when you have a story about Microsoft software being unreliable, you get an add selling you... that Microsoft software (I've seen this before).
What they need is a way to tell the computer the context so it knows if a story is "good" or "bad". That way, when you have a story about VW cars blowing up randomly (fake example, obviously) instead of trying to sell you a VW car with the ads, you'd get a Ford ad instead.
The movie critics on a local radio show in my town keep a list of questions about zombies: like why are they always so stupid? Quite entreating.
But I'm writing to tell everyone of my favorite zombie movie: Shaun of the Dead.
It is hilarious. Two stoners wind up in the middle of a city full of zombies and decide to be action heros. But it doesn't work out quite perfectly. Check it out this Halloween.
I was looking forward to GTA: LCS because I thought they would finally fix the series problems (in my eyes). I've seen from the reviews that they haven't. But everyone is giving it great reviews (not 100%, but high up, 90s at least). But have you read the reviews? Read this Joystiq post to see what I'm talking about.
I realize that GTA has fans, and that this game is unlike ANYTHING that has ever been on a portable platform (self-made portable PS2 hacks notwithstanding). But how can a game with such terrible flaws (read the reviews) as no difficulty difference between early and ending missions (except for the fact your weapons are terrible at the start), a bad camera and terrible targeting system, and mind-numbingly boring/anoying missions get 90+% grades?
Simple: no one wants to risk pissing off GTA lovers and losing them as readers/viewers/subscribers.
Don't get me wrong. I loved GTA 1 and 2. I played GTA 3 and found it fun to drive around but I didn't get far due to the terrible targeting. I loved Vice City even more (great soundtrack) and got farther, but I eventually dumped the game for the same reasons. The game was better, but it still wasn't there. I haven't played San An, and I don't intend to play LCS now.
Bugs and problems were OK for GTA 3, it was a first of it's kind (being a 3D world). Vice City was buggy and they should have done better. I don't know if the targeting was fixed for San An (I heard it was better) but I didn't care by that point. Then they release this game shortly after with all these problems. I realize it's the first on the platform for the series, and that the second analog stick is missing, but come one. You've made THREE OF THESE GAMES BY NOW, can't you fix some of this stuff?
They were rushing it, or they didn't care. Those are the only two reasons I can think of for having the same problems that put me off of GTA 3 four years ago this week.
The sandbox they created is fantastic. The stories and great, and the games have tons of replay value. But playing occaisionally makes me feel like I'm running towards $1,000,000 in a foot and a half of water. There is something great there, I can see it, but getting there is just so hard.
These days I'm getting less and less time to play games. My backlog is piling up. I just finished Pyschonauts (Great game, but the framerate on the PS2 version was a JOKE), and I'm in the middle of Sly 3 now (better than Sly 2!). If I was a freshman in highschool and had the time to commit, I may be able to play it. But at this point I don't need to fight a game to play it. There are a couple of games I've got RIGHT NOW that I know will be good that I won't have to do that for.
You know what I remember? I remember, back in the mists of time (lets say, '98) my computer had a TV tuner. It was part of an ATI All-In-Wonder card. That card did everything fantastic (except 3D). Anyway, when Windows 98 came out, it included a thing to let those with TV tuners watch TV on their computers. I think you could record too! The setup was arduous. It didn't work too well when you got it to work. I think it also had push content included (remember that?).
People have been pushing "Watch TV on your PC" for at least 7 years now, and I remember seeing it before that. It is getting feasible now to record and watch in a decent resolution (it would stress my CPU to record at QCIF resolution unless I recorded raw and encoded later).
I don't see it yet. I have a TiVo (DirecTV one) and it works great. Records two channels at once, all digital (straight off the satellite beam, no quality loss, includes Dolby Digital!). I see media center PCs a bit like large camper trailers that are tricked out with every option. Sure they work as both a house and a car. But a real house and car would be much nicer.
Microsoft has made some good efforts, and based on reviews and mentions here on Slashdot, the media center computers are getting much better (I considered them a joke when they first came out a few years ago). However the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none" will always apply. They are getting closer to the difference being nill, but they aren't there.
We already see that cable companies are trying to get everyone to use cable boxes (as they have been for the last however-many-years), and free DVRs is becoming one of their new ways to get people to use them. Why should I stick a computer in the living room and pay extra to have it record TV, when I'll soon be able to get something from my cable company that does the same thing. Only my way, when I want to watch TV and someone else wants to play Counter-Strike, we both can.
Sometimes convergence doesn't make a lot of sense. I'd rather have my computer, my TiVo, and some sort of super TiVo2go than a media center computer.
And that makes perfect sense. You can't get to be Wal-Mart's size and keep prices so low without some SERIOUS IT infrastructure to keep things going. They have just-in-time inventory, if I remember, among other things. They are one of the big pushers for RFID because it will help them so much.
Wal-Mart is way up front in technology for major retails in the US (and I would expect the world).
2.4 GHz is unlicensed, like 900 MHz and a few others (27 and 49 MHz are also, I think). As such, they only need to comply with part 15 (can't knowingly cause interference, and this device may cause unwanted interference), and I believe that there are other rules (I'm guessing can't use more than 500 mW of power, etc.).
In the same way that a cordless telephone may interfere with your WiFi, this is allowed to happen. When anyone is free to make anything use that band, stuff like this is bound to happen. It really isn't that bad. This is one reason why it is nice to have licensed frequencies where people can't go messing around (ex: FM and AM don't have that problem because they are protected).
In short, yes they are allowed to do that. Now I find it STUPID that this system wasn't tested before rolling out. I can't believe that if it was tested that they would miss such a problem.
Now if they used wired controllers (they are permanently attached so that shouldn't be a problem) then I would think that would solve it (WiFi is optional on the 360, IIRC). Now if doing that they STILL had problems, then I would start looking into if they really comply with Part 15.
The only other thing I can think of is that if entire books are indexed, it would be hard to prevent people from reading the books online in their entirety. This would mean less sales.
The problems with this are with books that aren't available to buy. I can go down to my public library right now and read all the books I want for free. I can even take 'em home. And I won't go through the fact that I (and I assume most people) would rather read a physical book than stuff off my computer screen. Besides, how many people do you think would "abuse" this service that way.
If this ends up letting books on demand live, that would be fine with me. I wanted a book ("Growing Up With Lucy" by Steve Grand, a cool book) but it was published in the UK. To get it I would have had to order it from Amazon UK and have it shipped to me here in the states. That would have been $50-$60. So instead I had to wait almost a year for Amazon US to carry it (where I could purchase it for a reasonable price). Now the market for that particular book was not large in the first place. I would love to see more books like it (and not have problems like the one I mentioned above). If this would move publishers towards that, that would be fine with me.
On a different note, I would LOVE to be able to search books for something. There are many times I have to look through many books in my collection (I'm talking about computer books) to find something specific. To be able to type it into Google and have it tell me which book on which page could be a MAJOR time savor some times.
That is why I didn't want to get into this (and the -1 I got for my troubles confirms that). I have marked an occasional post I've seen that I disagreed with +1 insightful. It's sad I was marked as flamebait though. I didn't insult anyone. I just simply and calmly tried to explain my point of view without name calling or any such (notice I went though the trouble of often adding "in my opinion" or "that is how I see it"). My moderations were really "-1 Anti-abortion" probably.
Anything political on Slashdot suffers from the same problems as anything political in the US. There isn't much discussion. It is yelling and name calling. Most people have given up on real discussion and just argue. This isn't helped by the media always choosing the "extremists" on sides, and not more moderate supporters. Makes for good arguing on TV, but not for good political discussion.
Thanks for reading my comment. I can only hope that others find comments like yours that still have points, and hit the "parent" link. That and that there are some metamoderators that call some of those moderations unfair.
I feel like entering into this today. Normally I wouldn't (given my views vs. those of the average slashdotter).
I am pro-life. I am against embryonic stem cells. Now I'll admit that I am not dead set on this. On the one hand, as long as you have murdered someone (make no mistake, that is how I see abortion) then perhaps we should take what good we can from that to make the best of the terrible situation. A bit like another poster put taking the cells from miscarried babies: post-mortum organ donation.
On the other hand, there is the part of me that say we shouldn't allow this to happen because of what it means. It could mean a market for aborted children (need money? Get pregnant by some one-night-stand and sell the remains!). It also provides a rationalization (and if they can cure cancer with this or some such, a STRONG one) for why a woman would be willing to have an abortion.
Now I have many issues with abortion (Planned Parenthood makes a living off of killing people, not letting parents to be see their child via sonogram before the "procedure", taking advantage of the lack of judgement such an emotional situation can bring, not telling "patients" about the psychological after-effects, Planed Parenthood still hasn't apologized for their original mission statement about preventing the births of minorities).
All of this makes it a tough call. That said, when something like this comes up, sticking with the status quo (no cells from aborted children) is best. Take this situation. There is a married couple. One wants a kid, the other doesn't. So what should they do? Do they not have a kid (one adult isn't happy), or do they have it (the other one isn't happy, but a child is produced who has a parent who never even wanted them to exist). In that situation (and other situations like it), the "Nay" vote (the status quo) should win.
I would contend that legalizing abortion was the same thing and the status quo should have been followed (not legalizing it) because of the negative implications, but that's another discussion.
If I had a kid with a terrible disease like that, I can't say I wouldn't switch sides on the issue (as I said, I'm on the fence now, even though I am leaning hard to one side). I think there are other options now though. We have cells from umbilical cords. They could use discarded IVF cells (that's fine with me, others draw the line on that one) to get the cells. There are adult stem cells. I realize none of those (except the IVF cells) are supposed to be as good, but they are there and don't have the moral quandary attached.
I'll end on this. Remember that movie a few years ago about a man who took a hospital hostage to help his kid. Was that justified? What if your kid needed a transplant to live and everyone you know (family included) didn't match. In saving your kid would it be justified to shoot someone on the street to death incase they may match? That is the same thing from my point of view. Would it be OK to kill everyone ahead of your child on the AFIS list, or hold the AFIS people hostage until they let your kid live? I see that as the same thing. I realize many won't agree. I'm not trying to start an argument with my post, I'm just trying to get my viewpoint across so others can see where I (and many others) are coming from; as opposed to that "bible thumper" idea the media often gives, just as parts of the media often portray all abortion advocates as blood-thirsty or anti-war people as radical communists.
PS: I find your comment about "being thrown back in their faces" sad. You would have had a perfectly good post without that. Seems only there to incite something to me. I don't see that as hypocrisy at all. Being against abortion is preventing a murder (my viewpoint, and that of pro-lifers). Saying no to embryonic stem-cells is not a murder sentence for these children with this disease. At worst it is preserving the status quo. And given the options mentioned two paragraphs ago, I don't think it so bad. It is very sad,
I could understand that (although I wouldn't be happy about it). That said, the unit looks EXACTLY like the slim PS2 only with a different color. Since I haven't heard of any problems with the slim PS2, why would this unit (which looks exactly like a slim PS2 with a different coat of paint) have problems? That just doesn't add up.
I bought a US PS2 on day one. I had it reserved. I actually had two reserved by accident and told the store "never mind" on the second one. I am still kicking myself on that as I could have bad $300 EASY on eBay with that one.
Any way, my PS2 plays DVDs, and PS1 games. It has no problems at all. I pre-ordered it (as I said above). I don't know WHAT you are talking about with PS1 games.
What's that, you mean Japanese PS2s? Wrong again. They played PS1 games (I rented one from a local company that imports stuff just after the Japanese launch). It could play PS1 games (I tried it!). It could play DVDs, but the DVD player software had to be stored on a memory card (they gave you the software with the system). This software was built-in to the BIOS by the time the PS2 came to the US.
I'm sorry, but I don't know what you are talking about.
Side notes about the PS2:
Horizontal Stand: Lay it flat (default position) for only $20. Huh?
The new silver PS2: Looks great, but has problems playing some games. Didn't they just take the slim-line PS2 and change the case color? What happened?
My biggest PS2 complaint? Why couldn't they make it so I could save PS1 saves to PS2 memory cards? I don't think that should be that hard. Oh well.
In the case of the breathalyzer, it is much more convenient and portable than any blood test (that I know of). What we need is something akin to a glucose meter for testing BAC.
I think the breathalyzer is a fine tool. That said, if you test someone with it and arrest them, I think the first thing the police should do is take a blood sample. This would prevent this argument, because we would know for sure if the person was legally drunk or not.
As for the LIDAR gun, I would hope they would have some kind of correction (for example, an internal accelerometer which could be used to factor out movement of the gun). But I guess that would be one good reason to "open" the device. Then such an issue could be argued easier, and a conclusion reached.
I'd have to agree. As each OS adds something (like randomizing the starting number (can't remember right name now) for TCP a few years ago in one of the BSDs), the others look at it and add it. It can take some time because the code can't be directly lifted due to the differences that exist at the kernel level (unlike user-space where a port between Linux and FreeBSD may require VERY little work). I remember talk about Linux's TCP/IP implementation not being up to snuff with some of the BSD stacks. They are quire competitive now, I think. I remember comparisons about how slow threads were to start in Linux compared to other OSes (although Windows is even worse, I think). But that lead to (or at least put a fire under) the NPTL project (and the others doing the same thing). I image that FreeBSD worked on their version of the Big Kernel Lock and SMP support because of Linux having better and better SMP support in the last few years, and working to remove Linux's Big Kernel Lock (still remains to some degrees).
The system has been working very good. Plus there are obvious connections. FreeBSD (and I assume Solaris) can both read ext2 (and I assume 3). Both have DevFS (which Linux has had, at least in some form, I don't know how close/far apart they were). So code which can be easily adapted does get moved. I would be VERY surprised if there were only a handful of drivers for FreeBSD that said something along the lines of "Based on the Linux driver by Mr. Reverse Engineer", and I'd imagine there are drivers that go the other way too (I'm not nearly as familiar with FreeBSD as I am with Linux).
This was an interesting little article, I read it earlier today when I saw a link from OSNews. But one thing struck me as odd (there were a few others, but this was the one I was sure about).
For hyperthreaded CPUs, FreeBSD has a mechanism to help keep threads on the same CPU node (though possibly a different hyperthread). Solaris has a similar mechanism, but it is under control of the user and application, and is not restricted to hyperthreads (called "processor sets" in Solaris and "processor groups" in FreeBSD).
I am positive that the 2.6 kernel understands hyperthreading and does something similar to FreeBSD. Why wasn't that mentioned? Did the author not know that?
Overall through, it was interesting. I'd read it as a longer series, if they had one. This is an area that I'm interested in. I read kernel-traffic, and subscribe to LWN (you should to!) almost entirely to read the kernel page. I've learned so much about operating systems and computers from reading about the improvements in the Linux kernel, why the old version wasn't good enough, etc. While I no longer use Linux since I got my Mac (OS X fills all my needs), I continue to learn a large amount about computer architecture and operating system concepts from it.
Another poster pointed out that this is required for all animals (or at least dogs and cats) in Australia. That'd be fine with me. My dog has one. I would fully support requiring it for all licensed animals (and, of course, all animals require a license). To be able to easily identify the owner of a dog that has been abused (ostensibly by its owner) would be a great thing. It would then also be possible to identify the facilitators of other crimes (like the owners of vicious pit-bulls who either don't socialize or train them to attack then let them run free). Dog gets eaten by an alligator in the neighborhood pond? Now we could find out who owned it and fine them (or whatever) for "improper disposal".
As for any cost of the chips (I don't know what it costs, and my dog was chipped about 6 years ago so I'd imagine it has changed since anyway), by requiring all pets (except, perhaps, rodents like mice, hamsters, and ferrets; as well as small birds and small fish) to be chipped would drive the price down (economies of scale and what not).
It could also be used to track down puppy mills. If breeders are required to chip their animals, it would be pretty trivial to find the puppy mills (or at least many of them) and shut them down if they deserve it. I suppose it would also make tracking of pedigree bloodlines easier.
This is something to think about. Things would have been different 10+ years ago, but the situation is clear for me now. I'm 22, and I drive a mini-van. I'd hate to drive a compact or something because of all the headlights in my eyes (as mentioned, by the trucks, mini-vans, and SUVs). I'd be terrified if I was in a crash (honda civic + hummer + 70 mph = dented hummer + hunk of scrap). I wouldn't feel safe buying a small car (even a volvo or something like that) because of this fact.
Now thanks to the laws of physics, smaller cars will always get better mileage. As the price of gas continues to climb (that's what I expect, and I assume most others too), that will be a bigger and bigger factor pushing people back to smaller cars (as well as things like ease of parking, etc).
I'd like to add that for Excursion was just taken off the market. With its 44 gallon fuel tank that takes over $100 to fill up and it's gargantuan size (harder to find parking spots, fit in garages, etc) and it's amazing 12 MPG (if you're lucky), no one was buying them.
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That said, an X-Ray is nothing more than a special transparency as far as scanning goes (that's my theory). So if you don't have a scanner that can do transparencies, then you have two options as far as I can think. Option one is to put a piece of white paper behind when you scan it. The black area will stay black, the transparent area will be white. Shouldn't be a problem.
The second option is Kinkos or some other such place. They should know how to scan a transparency like that, or at least have a copier that can make you a copy so you can scan it yourself.
But I don't see why the "white paper" method shouldn't work.
But you have to remember that MS is playing this like they passed a law saying "No MS software... ever... 'cause." In reality Massachusetts said something more like "We will use .txt files for everything" and MS just doesn't want to make their program read and write that format. They are free to do so. The spec isn't GPLed so they'd have to open up all of Office.
They just don't want to.
And it's their fault. If they made it so they could then they could argue against the switch quite effectively.
They are putting themselves in this boat by being stubborn. MS is sticking it to themselves. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they stayed with Office if MS would just implement the format. And with their army of programmers, how long could it really take them to do that? A week tops?
Thanks for the tip.
<crazyRant>
Word processing IS Microsoft Word.
It was the first word processor.
Don't let them tell you lies. There were no word processors before word. Why do you think it's called a "Word" processor? That's right, that name comes from MS Word. "WordStar" and "Word Perfect" didn't exist, you just think they did because they put something in your water and brainwashed you.
And don't tell me about typewriters. Typewriters were based off of the design for Microsoft Word. In the future a time machine will be invented which will be used to go back in time and give the man who invented the typewriter what it should look like to look like MS Word. Why do you think the longest word you can spell on the top row of letters on a keyboard is "typewriter"? That is EXACTLY the kind of easter egg people at Microsoft LOVE. They put it there when they gave the design of the QWERTY keyboard to the guy who designed it (note: I'm not using his name because due to this revisionist history, we don't know the real creator's name).
And how do I know all this? They told me next Tuesday. Right before they executed me. That wasn't a good day.
</crazyRant>
Radio threatened the Newspaper and took it's lunch money.
Broadcast TV beat it up.
Cable News kicked it while it was down (and then beat it up some more)
The internet is just finishing the job. The Newspaper has been killed by 3 previous mediums, and now a fourth is doing it. Newspapers will never go away, but they will never be what they were in before the 1950s again. As others have pointed out, Newspapers aren't what they used to be as the quality has declined and they are trying to more and more like gossip rags and 24 hour news channels which get printed once per day. Solid investigative reporting would keep them alive easily, instead we get AP wire reprints (which I already heard summarized on the radio and saw analyzed on TV). Now I can cut out the middle man and read these things off the wire online. Why do I need the paper for that.
And with wire stories like "New flash: President says he will name a new supreme court nominee at some point in the future" (there was one somewhat like that recently), I can't say much for their reporting.
Papers need to reorganize themselves and the kind of things they write/print if they want to become anything more than another local magazine. I'm sorry, but Newspapers are not in a good state right not (then again, neither is TV news).
The NYT is not "the paper of record" anymore, Edward R. Morrow and Walter Cronkite are gone from the in front of the camera. The entire news industry seems to be in a major crisis. They lost sight of reporting by realizing that they could just be the first to tell you something. 24 hour news channels hastened that problem. The internet and cell phones have taken it to it's logical conclusion.
I hope this all turns out well in a few years. I was getting mad at many of the magazines I used to love (gamer and computer magazines including GamePro, Nintendo Power, EGM, PC World, etc.) have fallen into the same trap so I've stopped reading most of them (I can get that info online for free, faster). I recently started reading a good magazine full of intelligent, insightful, and well researched articles: Forbes (yeah, different genre of magazines, but still). Newspapers (and TV news) need to go back to the same thing. They are all in a format of "Let's take that 1 minute news summary we did at the top of the hour and try to stretch it to 30 minutes" kind of "journalism", merged with "infotaiment" like Entertainment Tonight into one large affront to the intelligence of everyone.
I hope things turn out well. In the mean time, I will just continue to avoid more and more news sources as they get worse and worse. Some are still good. NPR had FANTASTIC, JOURNALISTIC coverage and analysis of Justice Robert's hearings. I learned a TON about the process and many other things by listening to their clips of the questioning with intelligent analysis and explanations. They're not always perfect, but they are one of the few left who even seem to try.
Instead, they want me to use my Sprint phone (I am a customer). So instead of paying $1 on iTunes, I can pay 2.5x as much to buy it from Sprint. Now I don't know anything about their DRM (although they MUST have it, they're Sprint).
So what can I listen to this on? They probably have specific phones (elluded to in the article above), but let's look at MY phone. I payed for a Bluetooth LG-325 (crippled, of course, but they forgot to remove DUN :). You know how much memory it conains? 1MB. That's right, 1MB. I bought this phone about a year ago. So at standard MP3 128k (which is about 1MB per minute), that would let me listen to... 1 minute of music. AMAZING.
Wait... no... I forgot about the OS and such. In reality I probably have about 600kb of user accessable memory. So that is... 35 seconds! That's... a ringer!
So I can pay $1 on iTunes and make my own ringer from that (not too hard), or pay $2.50 for something I can't listen to on my iPod, my PSP, or my PDA (I'm guessing), but I can listen to on my cruddy, over priced, crippled, Sprint phone.
Horray Sprint, another win for consumers!
The reviews of the ROKR may have been bad, but that is the discovery of FIRE compared to this deal.
PS: If you're wondering why I still use Sprint: great coverage in my area, and I don't pay for it (cell is through my job).
I'd suggest something even less partisan like Esperanto (which has never been an official language anywhere) but since no one speak Esperanto as their only language, I know that it (like any designed language) would change when real people started to speak it. Latin has already been through that.
Plus Latin used to be the "world language" back when all educated people spoke it an science was always done in it (witness Newton's "Principia Mathmatica", IIRC).
But for the Hebrew thing, that's very neat.
But by combining it with grammatical analysis you could also fix those kind of errors. In the example you gave, pants (the clothes) is a noun, while pants (breathing) is a verb form. By figuring out which context the word is (noun or verb) then the computer can make a much better guess at the correct meaning. A system could adapt to the user's speech patterns which would probably help it decide too.
That said, you're looking at a free translation software offered on the internet. They have to do quick translations and they are ad supported at best. I'd image real translation software would be much better. SYSTRAN's little "try me" box on their site successfully translated "The dog was wearing pants. The cat pants loudly." to French using different words for the two pants (but then again so did Google and Babel Fish). Still their top of the line product is $900 so I would guess it would be rather good.
Don't forget, by the time users get their hands on a system like this, it will be a few years from now and you'll have increased memory capacity and processing power. Plus if you don't need to be silent (which is why they were using electrodes) then I'd imagine a video camera or two would work just fine for reading the muscles (you could use this easily in the UN).
Of course, maybe we should all just switch to Latin. You can't say we're playing favorites with a language if you choose a dead one.
You can understand why the computer did that in each case. They all make perfect sense.
The problem is that the ads run by keyword, so when you have a story about Microsoft software being unreliable, you get an add selling you... that Microsoft software (I've seen this before).
What they need is a way to tell the computer the context so it knows if a story is "good" or "bad". That way, when you have a story about VW cars blowing up randomly (fake example, obviously) instead of trying to sell you a VW car with the ads, you'd get a Ford ad instead.
But I'm writing to tell everyone of my favorite zombie movie: Shaun of the Dead.
It is hilarious. Two stoners wind up in the middle of a city full of zombies and decide to be action heros. But it doesn't work out quite perfectly. Check it out this Halloween.
I realize that GTA has fans, and that this game is unlike ANYTHING that has ever been on a portable platform (self-made portable PS2 hacks notwithstanding). But how can a game with such terrible flaws (read the reviews) as no difficulty difference between early and ending missions (except for the fact your weapons are terrible at the start), a bad camera and terrible targeting system, and mind-numbingly boring/anoying missions get 90+% grades?
Simple: no one wants to risk pissing off GTA lovers and losing them as readers/viewers/subscribers.
Don't get me wrong. I loved GTA 1 and 2. I played GTA 3 and found it fun to drive around but I didn't get far due to the terrible targeting. I loved Vice City even more (great soundtrack) and got farther, but I eventually dumped the game for the same reasons. The game was better, but it still wasn't there. I haven't played San An, and I don't intend to play LCS now.
Bugs and problems were OK for GTA 3, it was a first of it's kind (being a 3D world). Vice City was buggy and they should have done better. I don't know if the targeting was fixed for San An (I heard it was better) but I didn't care by that point. Then they release this game shortly after with all these problems. I realize it's the first on the platform for the series, and that the second analog stick is missing, but come one. You've made THREE OF THESE GAMES BY NOW, can't you fix some of this stuff?
They were rushing it, or they didn't care. Those are the only two reasons I can think of for having the same problems that put me off of GTA 3 four years ago this week.
The sandbox they created is fantastic. The stories and great, and the games have tons of replay value. But playing occaisionally makes me feel like I'm running towards $1,000,000 in a foot and a half of water. There is something great there, I can see it, but getting there is just so hard .
These days I'm getting less and less time to play games. My backlog is piling up. I just finished Pyschonauts (Great game, but the framerate on the PS2 version was a JOKE), and I'm in the middle of Sly 3 now (better than Sly 2!). If I was a freshman in highschool and had the time to commit, I may be able to play it. But at this point I don't need to fight a game to play it. There are a couple of games I've got RIGHT NOW that I know will be good that I won't have to do that for.
Sorry Rockstar. Try harder, huh?
-- A guy who wants to love GTA
People have been pushing "Watch TV on your PC" for at least 7 years now, and I remember seeing it before that. It is getting feasible now to record and watch in a decent resolution (it would stress my CPU to record at QCIF resolution unless I recorded raw and encoded later).
I don't see it yet. I have a TiVo (DirecTV one) and it works great. Records two channels at once, all digital (straight off the satellite beam, no quality loss, includes Dolby Digital!). I see media center PCs a bit like large camper trailers that are tricked out with every option. Sure they work as both a house and a car. But a real house and car would be much nicer.
Microsoft has made some good efforts, and based on reviews and mentions here on Slashdot, the media center computers are getting much better (I considered them a joke when they first came out a few years ago). However the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none" will always apply. They are getting closer to the difference being nill, but they aren't there.
We already see that cable companies are trying to get everyone to use cable boxes (as they have been for the last however-many-years), and free DVRs is becoming one of their new ways to get people to use them. Why should I stick a computer in the living room and pay extra to have it record TV, when I'll soon be able to get something from my cable company that does the same thing. Only my way, when I want to watch TV and someone else wants to play Counter-Strike, we both can.
Sometimes convergence doesn't make a lot of sense. I'd rather have my computer, my TiVo, and some sort of super TiVo2go than a media center computer.
Wal-Mart is way up front in technology for major retails in the US (and I would expect the world).
In the same way that a cordless telephone may interfere with your WiFi, this is allowed to happen. When anyone is free to make anything use that band, stuff like this is bound to happen. It really isn't that bad. This is one reason why it is nice to have licensed frequencies where people can't go messing around (ex: FM and AM don't have that problem because they are protected).
In short, yes they are allowed to do that. Now I find it STUPID that this system wasn't tested before rolling out. I can't believe that if it was tested that they would miss such a problem.
Now if they used wired controllers (they are permanently attached so that shouldn't be a problem) then I would think that would solve it (WiFi is optional on the 360, IIRC). Now if doing that they STILL had problems, then I would start looking into if they really comply with Part 15.
The problems with this are with books that aren't available to buy. I can go down to my public library right now and read all the books I want for free. I can even take 'em home. And I won't go through the fact that I (and I assume most people) would rather read a physical book than stuff off my computer screen. Besides, how many people do you think would "abuse" this service that way.
If this ends up letting books on demand live, that would be fine with me. I wanted a book ("Growing Up With Lucy" by Steve Grand, a cool book) but it was published in the UK. To get it I would have had to order it from Amazon UK and have it shipped to me here in the states. That would have been $50-$60. So instead I had to wait almost a year for Amazon US to carry it (where I could purchase it for a reasonable price). Now the market for that particular book was not large in the first place. I would love to see more books like it (and not have problems like the one I mentioned above). If this would move publishers towards that, that would be fine with me.
On a different note, I would LOVE to be able to search books for something. There are many times I have to look through many books in my collection (I'm talking about computer books) to find something specific. To be able to type it into Google and have it tell me which book on which page could be a MAJOR time savor some times.
Anything political on Slashdot suffers from the same problems as anything political in the US. There isn't much discussion. It is yelling and name calling. Most people have given up on real discussion and just argue. This isn't helped by the media always choosing the "extremists" on sides, and not more moderate supporters. Makes for good arguing on TV, but not for good political discussion.
Thanks for reading my comment. I can only hope that others find comments like yours that still have points, and hit the "parent" link. That and that there are some metamoderators that call some of those moderations unfair.
I am pro-life. I am against embryonic stem cells. Now I'll admit that I am not dead set on this. On the one hand, as long as you have murdered someone (make no mistake, that is how I see abortion) then perhaps we should take what good we can from that to make the best of the terrible situation. A bit like another poster put taking the cells from miscarried babies: post-mortum organ donation.
On the other hand, there is the part of me that say we shouldn't allow this to happen because of what it means. It could mean a market for aborted children (need money? Get pregnant by some one-night-stand and sell the remains!). It also provides a rationalization (and if they can cure cancer with this or some such, a STRONG one) for why a woman would be willing to have an abortion.
Now I have many issues with abortion (Planned Parenthood makes a living off of killing people, not letting parents to be see their child via sonogram before the "procedure", taking advantage of the lack of judgement such an emotional situation can bring, not telling "patients" about the psychological after-effects, Planed Parenthood still hasn't apologized for their original mission statement about preventing the births of minorities).
All of this makes it a tough call. That said, when something like this comes up, sticking with the status quo (no cells from aborted children) is best. Take this situation. There is a married couple. One wants a kid, the other doesn't. So what should they do? Do they not have a kid (one adult isn't happy), or do they have it (the other one isn't happy, but a child is produced who has a parent who never even wanted them to exist). In that situation (and other situations like it), the "Nay" vote (the status quo) should win.
I would contend that legalizing abortion was the same thing and the status quo should have been followed (not legalizing it) because of the negative implications, but that's another discussion.
If I had a kid with a terrible disease like that, I can't say I wouldn't switch sides on the issue (as I said, I'm on the fence now, even though I am leaning hard to one side). I think there are other options now though. We have cells from umbilical cords. They could use discarded IVF cells (that's fine with me, others draw the line on that one) to get the cells. There are adult stem cells. I realize none of those (except the IVF cells) are supposed to be as good, but they are there and don't have the moral quandary attached.
I'll end on this. Remember that movie a few years ago about a man who took a hospital hostage to help his kid. Was that justified? What if your kid needed a transplant to live and everyone you know (family included) didn't match. In saving your kid would it be justified to shoot someone on the street to death incase they may match? That is the same thing from my point of view. Would it be OK to kill everyone ahead of your child on the AFIS list, or hold the AFIS people hostage until they let your kid live? I see that as the same thing. I realize many won't agree. I'm not trying to start an argument with my post, I'm just trying to get my viewpoint across so others can see where I (and many others) are coming from; as opposed to that "bible thumper" idea the media often gives, just as parts of the media often portray all abortion advocates as blood-thirsty or anti-war people as radical communists.
PS: I find your comment about "being thrown back in their faces" sad. You would have had a perfectly good post without that. Seems only there to incite something to me. I don't see that as hypocrisy at all. Being against abortion is preventing a murder (my viewpoint, and that of pro-lifers). Saying no to embryonic stem-cells is not a murder sentence for these children with this disease. At worst it is preserving the status quo. And given the options mentioned two paragraphs ago, I don't think it so bad. It is very sad,
I could understand that (although I wouldn't be happy about it). That said, the unit looks EXACTLY like the slim PS2 only with a different color. Since I haven't heard of any problems with the slim PS2, why would this unit (which looks exactly like a slim PS2 with a different coat of paint) have problems? That just doesn't add up.
I bought a US PS2 on day one. I had it reserved. I actually had two reserved by accident and told the store "never mind" on the second one. I am still kicking myself on that as I could have bad $300 EASY on eBay with that one.
Any way, my PS2 plays DVDs, and PS1 games. It has no problems at all. I pre-ordered it (as I said above). I don't know WHAT you are talking about with PS1 games.
What's that, you mean Japanese PS2s? Wrong again. They played PS1 games (I rented one from a local company that imports stuff just after the Japanese launch). It could play PS1 games (I tried it!). It could play DVDs, but the DVD player software had to be stored on a memory card (they gave you the software with the system). This software was built-in to the BIOS by the time the PS2 came to the US.
I'm sorry, but I don't know what you are talking about.
Side notes about the PS2:
Seymour Skinner: I have a bomb.
Chief Wiggum: Wait a minute. Those aren't bombs. They're hot dogs. Armour hot dogs.
Superintendent Chalmers: What kind of man wears Armour hot dogs?
Always a favorite.
I think the breathalyzer is a fine tool. That said, if you test someone with it and arrest them, I think the first thing the police should do is take a blood sample. This would prevent this argument, because we would know for sure if the person was legally drunk or not.
As for the LIDAR gun, I would hope they would have some kind of correction (for example, an internal accelerometer which could be used to factor out movement of the gun). But I guess that would be one good reason to "open" the device. Then such an issue could be argued easier, and a conclusion reached.
The system has been working very good. Plus there are obvious connections. FreeBSD (and I assume Solaris) can both read ext2 (and I assume 3). Both have DevFS (which Linux has had, at least in some form, I don't know how close/far apart they were). So code which can be easily adapted does get moved. I would be VERY surprised if there were only a handful of drivers for FreeBSD that said something along the lines of "Based on the Linux driver by Mr. Reverse Engineer", and I'd imagine there are drivers that go the other way too (I'm not nearly as familiar with FreeBSD as I am with Linux).
For hyperthreaded CPUs, FreeBSD has a mechanism to help keep threads on the same CPU node (though possibly a different hyperthread). Solaris has a similar mechanism, but it is under control of the user and application, and is not restricted to hyperthreads (called "processor sets" in Solaris and "processor groups" in FreeBSD).
I am positive that the 2.6 kernel understands hyperthreading and does something similar to FreeBSD. Why wasn't that mentioned? Did the author not know that?
Overall through, it was interesting. I'd read it as a longer series, if they had one. This is an area that I'm interested in. I read kernel-traffic, and subscribe to LWN (you should to!) almost entirely to read the kernel page. I've learned so much about operating systems and computers from reading about the improvements in the Linux kernel, why the old version wasn't good enough, etc. While I no longer use Linux since I got my Mac (OS X fills all my needs), I continue to learn a large amount about computer architecture and operating system concepts from it.
As for any cost of the chips (I don't know what it costs, and my dog was chipped about 6 years ago so I'd imagine it has changed since anyway), by requiring all pets (except, perhaps, rodents like mice, hamsters, and ferrets; as well as small birds and small fish) to be chipped would drive the price down (economies of scale and what not).
It could also be used to track down puppy mills. If breeders are required to chip their animals, it would be pretty trivial to find the puppy mills (or at least many of them) and shut them down if they deserve it. I suppose it would also make tracking of pedigree bloodlines easier.
I'm all for it. Let's do it in the US.
Now thanks to the laws of physics, smaller cars will always get better mileage. As the price of gas continues to climb (that's what I expect, and I assume most others too), that will be a bigger and bigger factor pushing people back to smaller cars (as well as things like ease of parking, etc).
I'd like to add that for Excursion was just taken off the market. With its 44 gallon fuel tank that takes over $100 to fill up and it's gargantuan size (harder to find parking spots, fit in garages, etc) and it's amazing 12 MPG (if you're lucky), no one was buying them.