I would also like to note that space junk that is in orbit of, let's say, >=1.5R where R=radius of earth is likely to stay there forever, or at least until it's vaporized by a space junk removal laser, because atmosphere drag there is negligible. There are many satellites, dead as well as alive, up on those orbits. Mir, ISS and the Space Shuttle, on the contrary, fly merely at about 1/20th of earth's radius above earth (or that magnitude, anyway), and drag there is very considerable, so they have to bump it up frequently.
Have you seen the nightlies from this or the last week? Not only is Mozilla feature-frozen (for a long time now), they are committing to a virtually bug-free, fully working beta browser by the end of October (my estimate).
Here are global CO2 levels as measured at the Muana Loa observatory. No discontinuity due to Pinatubo's 1992 eruption. (You're probably thinking of SO2, but you're still overstating.)
I think he's talking about another eruption, the one that occured on Pinatubo in the 17th century. Obviously we don't have precise scientific records of CO2 levels dynamics at that time.
Mt. Pinatubo did not erupt in the last decade. It erupted in the 17th century (+- a century, I don't recall). Its eruption dimmed the sky everywhere on earth for the following year. The tidal wave crossed the globe 3 times. It wasn't a regular eruption but an immense explosion of blocked gases and volcanic matter. The tidal wave went right over a neighboring ridge and into the ocean on the other side. If it did in fact happen last decade it would cause immense damage to the Asian economy from tsunamis etc. and you're right, it released a lot of greenhouse stuff into the atmosphere, more than we ever did.
Yeah, and there should also be an option to just view the funny comments when you DON'T want the facts and the intelligent chit-chat - you just want to lighten up.
ya but the creator of WinRAR is distributing free command-line binaries for many platforms as far as I remember. Also I don't think there are any licensing issues with reverse-engineering RAR... although I may be wrong here.
Me, I use RAR as a preferred compression format on my Win2K box... although I've changed the RAR icon to WinZip's because it's cuter:)
I don't think any of the cases on the QuakeCon page, or any PC cases that I've seen, are a work of art. The mushroom lego case noted above might be. The Apple Cube might be. Some of the Sun and SGI workstations, too... but none of the regular modifications that I've seen.
Yup, I'm with you. I've been assembling a computer during the past 2 weeks... the power supply fan cannot be turned off during sleep but that's not a very big problem because it's not loud... the new hdd is very quiet, but the fan on the processor is loud. I'll need to rewire my old fan that's really quiet so that it can be plugged in in its place. It's an Athlon though, and those generate more heat than any of the Intel's new processors. But I hope to make my computer run pretty darn quiet.
This is a very good point. I see numerous analogies between Mozilla and Unreal. Both developer teams have many experienced professionals as well as many programmers who are "learning on the job" and coming of age together with the project. Both teams have spent years on architecture and specs. Both have built a flexible, powerful, expendable codebase that will serve them for many years. And these qualities have paid off extremely well with Unreal: UT is an extremely good game from almost every standpoint, and the team is working on a new exciting Unreal 2.
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Have you played Unreal Tournament lately? It pretty much runs circles around Q3 in any possible field, be it rendering speed, networking, multiplayer usability, features, graphics, cuteness, community/custom maps/mods, you name it.
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Behavior and beliefs of some of the persons on the ballot, be it local, state, or federal, disgusts me deeply. Moreover, I think that many of them are complete and utter idiots. Don't get me wrong, there are many intelligent and honest people in the government too.
I'm deeply opposed to the two-party system in the US. Fsck that. I want each candidate to be either independent or with a small, "transparent" party that doesn't affect his voting greatly.
I won't be able to broadcast my opinion to other people who might listen and vote with me, while thousands of other people whose opinions are pitted against mine vote and broadcast their opinions to others, and others listen. So unless I broadcast my opinion and get people to vote with me, it doesn't really matter.
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Someone please explain this to me. This is intended to hamper DDOS attacks, right? But in a wide-scale DDOS attack the attacker has compromised tens or hundreds of computers in different subnets with totally different locations. So if he sets these boxes to start DOSing each at a certain time one after another each using a dynamically spoofed IP, what good is it to know where the attack is coming from if you're having hundreds of attacks from hundreds of subnets coming at you in a short interval of time? How are you going to shut them all down instantly to stop the attack?
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
An extreme example of what you advocate would produce a shy, cautious child with probably some psychological disorders. Although I grew up in a house that definitely wasn't child-proof, my parents didn't skin me for doing stuff either (I was told that once when I was ~3 yrs old a family friend showed me some crayons and said to just draw on the wall. Next thing, I ruined all the wallpaper in the living room). It is definitely necessary to make the house somewhat childproof because otherwise there will be severe property damage as well as threat to child's health:)
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Perhaps you fail to grasp the fundamental difference between an automated spellchecker and Bob. Perhaps you cannot distinguish the benefits of a spellchecker from that idiot paperclip asking me if I need help writing a stupid letter.
Yeah, read the whole message before replying, ok? My point was that although the paperclip was a failure, many other pseudo-AI features in Office and Windows are quite good.
I'm not bashing their every attempt at AI. I'm bashing the idea that a user is somehow incapable of deciding whether to be notified about incoming email. I am bashing the idea that the user is incapable of managing the huge distraction of having to "multitask" by noticing whether they have mail. Microsoft's dolts in charge of Bob have obviously moved on to this new project.
I'm an optimist... there are many truly useful potential uses for this feature. Would you like the OS to intelligently track the focus following your eyes? Would you like (it's been said in this thread) a 3D renderer to be more effective byrendering what comes into your central field of vision better than what doesn't (that's how our eye works)? Would you like your computer to switch your user apps to higher priority when you're looking at the monitor and switch to your server or time-consuming apps when you aren't? I would, and I haven't even started on what else this could bring. This is promising research.
As for the BSODs with Win2K: I have a brand-spanking new Dell laptop. Coming back from a suspend, if you mess with the touchpad before the machine is fully back to life, it will choke and die.
Know nothing about that. Don't have a Dell touchpad:) My desktop doesn't give a damn if I move the mouse when it's waking up. What bugs me though is that it only responds to the power button and not to mouse/keyboard, whereas Win98 (shudder) did. I liked it better that way.
Also, I'd like the OS to be able to wake the system up via scheduling... but that's more of a hardware problem...
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
hehe... you're wrong because you insult needlessly but you're right because you express your true feelings... I'm on your side but you suffered righteously from the moderator's divine hand! Yay!
I hope everyone achieves complete moral integrity and posts so intelligently it will make me cry. Yeah, now I'm totally off track.
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Diablo II... yeah, I need to get that game ASAP... I can't wait to play it. Good example.:)
Yeah, I agree with you on all of your points here (I didn't think about the keybinding part of the interface when I was talking about FPSs... tell me about it - I have all of UT's keys remapped to the keypad, and use all of my keypad buttons extensively with the left hand on keyboard, right hand on mouse, intelligent weapons switching via the scroll wheel (another excellent UI invention:))... I love it. The "game UI"... well whatever you're referring to - I love UT, the game environment is simply amazing and fun to play, that's all I can say.
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
The best interfaces I've found have powerful features but let you activate them yourself, presumably after you've read about the features and benefits derived from them.
You know, I have never read a single manual on Word (I did use the help a few times, but rarely). Yet I consider myself somewhere near expert level in it. On a general note, I believe that a good interface should be intuitive enough to easily reveal all of its features to a reasonably knowledgeable user without the user having to go through manuals. Of course then it shouldn't be too intimidating to a novice either, like you're saying. So we got ourselves a little dilemma.(spelling right?)
I'm not just complaining about Microsoft, there are plenty of other apps guilty of these kinds of things. As far as customizability goes, Microsoft gives you the illusion of customizability without providing much actual benefit. Yes you can adjust locations of menu items or toolbar elements. How do I drag the contents pane into a seperate window entirely? How do I bind any key I want to any command? These again might be possible, but anything that does not fall inside the realm of the "options" box is so hard to do it might as well be impossible.
I don't use the contents pane so I can't help with that. You can bind any key you want to any command, I don't recall exactly how that's done, but it is possible in Office and in Windows shortcuts, too. Generally, I disagree with you. Office is reasonably customizable. Other M$ products may be less customizable but still... I wouldn't bash them on that.
If you're thinking that I'm saying CLI's and X-windows programs are superior, I'm not.
no I was just saying that Word is very intuitive compared to any CLI.
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Phleaze people, why was this moderated up? Could we start talking intelligently instead of stupidly trying to bash M$ products on every occasion? Of course this is a promising research (although when it gets implemented, I would like to be able to turn it off, that sometimes is a problem with M$).
This is nothing more than Bob with hardware. It's that idiot paperclip on steroids. It's just one more way that Microsoft insults the intelligence of their customers.
Yeah, right! I don't need no stinking Word to do spell-checking on me, I type perfectly, even at 120 WPM! Why automatically wrap lines, I'll just use Enter! Heck, why do I even need Word between me and my printer? Let me just open a console and talk to my printer bit-for-bit!
Yes, I know the paperclip was a failure, but why bash every M$'s attempt at a pseudo-AI? The Spellcheck feature has really come of age in Word 2K, do you know just how sophisticated it is? It corrects a wide range of your typing errors, it knows when one of your hands is typing faster than the other and swaps the mistyped letters... I could go on and on about how good it is. Don't assume, okay? Maybe this will be something cool...
btw, the parent's parent's sig: Two weeks of running Windows 2000. Two Blue Screens of Death. Thank goodness for Linux!
Interesting. How did you get them? It froze only 3 times on me I think for the past half year, once when I pulled out its hard drive when it was up...:)
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Sorry, shoulda put that in the previous post too...
I think UI's that are really easily altered by the user are the way to go - application developers should look at games to see how simple and configurable UI's can be.
I haven't seen any good game UIs lately, but then I haven't been playing many of the new games lately. I think the nicest one I've seen yet is in NFS 3. Everyone's talking about how Simcity's and The Sims' UIs are so good, but I don't find them that nice. I mean, they are neatly designed and all (though too loudly), but nothing is in them that really captures my attention. On the opposite side, Q3's UI is completely horrible. Unreal Tournament is better, but it just copies the Windows GUI. Could you hint at what games you were talking about?
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
I think UI's that are really easily altered by the user are the way to go - application developers should look at games to see how simple and configurable UI's can be.
The intellisense feature (or whatever it's properly called) is easily altered by the user. You can turn it off, you can reset your statistics. If you really want to have your menus under complete control, they are totally customizable! You can create your own toolbars, delete the whole default menu, put any of the Office COM-callable commands in a menu command, configure and reconfigure your toolbars all you want, draw your own icons easily. The Office menu/toolbar system is the most customizable one I've ever seen. Of course you need to learn a little how to use the program first... I didn't need any manuals to do it though, it's very intuitive, as opposed to Linux's many CLI tools that I have to read tons of mans on.
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
WTF. Why are you people whining and whining about this and no one in this thread is even knowledgeable enough about the feature. It's a nice new feature that you can turn off, if you can use the Options window of course (which does show in the first tier in its regular menu, Tools). For all the new users who don't know what's going on, chances are they'll wait the 2 seconds necessary and the menu will expand to all of its entries. For me, the feature is highly helpful in MS Office because being able to locate a command (which if you use Office frequently enough will be brought forward) as fast as possible and with as little distractions as possible (i.e. other menu commands) is crucial to productivity. Although I've turned it off for Explorer and the Start menu (I don't use the Start menu that often, my frequently used shortcuts are organized in a popup toolbar, nor the Favorites menu, instead I use the Links bar), the concept is very nicely thought out and is one of the better newer ones from M$.
Seriously, I agree with winzig, why should I defend Microsoft against FUD?
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
My box has full Russian support. I can write Russian anywhere, everywhere I want to. The unicode charmap even sorts it alphabetically correctly now. My Russian mp3s have Russian names on them. I have tons of Russian filenames in my filesystem. It's pretty cool.
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Slashdot Mirror
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
I think he's talking about another eruption, the one that occured on Pinatubo in the 17th century. Obviously we don't have precise scientific records of CO2 levels dynamics at that time.
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
Me, I use RAR as a preferred compression format on my Win2K box... although I've changed the RAR icon to WinZip's because it's cuter
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
That said, I don't think I'd vote anyway because:
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Someone please explain this to me. This is intended to hamper DDOS attacks, right? But in a wide-scale DDOS attack the attacker has compromised tens or hundreds of computers in different subnets with totally different locations. So if he sets these boxes to start DOSing each at a certain time one after another each using a dynamically spoofed IP, what good is it to know where the attack is coming from if you're having hundreds of attacks from hundreds of subnets coming at you in a short interval of time? How are you going to shut them all down instantly to stop the attack?
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Yeah, read the whole message before replying, ok? My point was that although the paperclip was a failure, many other pseudo-AI features in Office and Windows are quite good.
I'm an optimist... there are many truly useful potential uses for this feature. Would you like the OS to intelligently track the focus following your eyes? Would you like (it's been said in this thread) a 3D renderer to be more effective byrendering what comes into your central field of vision better than what doesn't (that's how our eye works)? Would you like your computer to switch your user apps to higher priority when you're looking at the monitor and switch to your server or time-consuming apps when you aren't? I would, and I haven't even started on what else this could bring. This is promising research.
Know nothing about that. Don't have a Dell touchpad :) My desktop doesn't give a damn if I move the mouse when it's waking up. What bugs me though is that it only responds to the power button and not to mouse/keyboard, whereas Win98 (shudder) did. I liked it better that way.
Also, I'd like the OS to be able to wake the system up via scheduling... but that's more of a hardware problem...
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
I hope everyone achieves complete moral integrity and posts so intelligently it will make me cry. Yeah, now I'm totally off track.
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Yeah, I agree with you on all of your points here (I didn't think about the keybinding part of the interface when I was talking about FPSs... tell me about it - I have all of UT's keys remapped to the keypad, and use all of my keypad buttons extensively with the left hand on keyboard, right hand on mouse, intelligent weapons switching via the scroll wheel (another excellent UI invention :) )... I love it. The "game UI"... well whatever you're referring to - I love UT, the game environment is simply amazing and fun to play, that's all I can say.
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
You know, I have never read a single manual on Word (I did use the help a few times, but rarely). Yet I consider myself somewhere near expert level in it. On a general note, I believe that a good interface should be intuitive enough to easily reveal all of its features to a reasonably knowledgeable user without the user having to go through manuals. Of course then it shouldn't be too intimidating to a novice either, like you're saying. So we got ourselves a little dilemma.(spelling right?)
I'm not just complaining about Microsoft, there are plenty of other apps guilty of these kinds of things. As far as customizability goes, Microsoft gives you the illusion of customizability without providing much actual benefit. Yes you can adjust locations of menu items or toolbar elements. How do I drag the contents pane into a seperate window entirely? How do I bind any key I want to any command? These again might be possible, but anything that does not fall inside the realm of the "options" box is so hard to do it might as well be impossible.
I don't use the contents pane so I can't help with that. You can bind any key you want to any command, I don't recall exactly how that's done, but it is possible in Office and in Windows shortcuts, too. Generally, I disagree with you. Office is reasonably customizable. Other M$ products may be less customizable but still... I wouldn't bash them on that.
If you're thinking that I'm saying CLI's and X-windows programs are superior, I'm not.
no I was just saying that Word is very intuitive compared to any CLI.
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Yes, I know the paperclip was a failure, but why bash every M$'s attempt at a pseudo-AI? The Spellcheck feature has really come of age in Word 2K, do you know just how sophisticated it is? It corrects a wide range of your typing errors, it knows when one of your hands is typing faster than the other and swaps the mistyped letters... I could go on and on about how good it is. Don't assume, okay? Maybe this will be something cool...
btw, the parent's parent's sig: Two weeks of running Windows 2000. Two Blue Screens of Death. Thank goodness for Linux!
Interesting. How did you get them? It froze only 3 times on me I think for the past half year, once when I pulled out its hard drive when it was up... :)
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
I haven't seen any good game UIs lately, but then I haven't been playing many of the new games lately. I think the nicest one I've seen yet is in NFS 3. Everyone's talking about how Simcity's and The Sims' UIs are so good, but I don't find them that nice. I mean, they are neatly designed and all (though too loudly), but nothing is in them that really captures my attention. On the opposite side, Q3's UI is completely horrible. Unreal Tournament is better, but it just copies the Windows GUI. Could you hint at what games you were talking about?
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
The intellisense feature (or whatever it's properly called) is easily altered by the user. You can turn it off, you can reset your statistics. If you really want to have your menus under complete control, they are totally customizable! You can create your own toolbars, delete the whole default menu, put any of the Office COM-callable commands in a menu command, configure and reconfigure your toolbars all you want, draw your own icons easily. The Office menu/toolbar system is the most customizable one I've ever seen. Of course you need to learn a little how to use the program first... I didn't need any manuals to do it though, it's very intuitive, as opposed to Linux's many CLI tools that I have to read tons of mans on.
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Seriously, I agree with winzig, why should I defend Microsoft against FUD?
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio