Well, for the record, our two-year-old son is definitely winning. He thinks the Roomba is great fun, though. If you leave it out where he can get to it, he'll just keep starting it whenever it stops until the battery runs out.
It does a pretty decent job, even with all the cat hair we accumulate on the carpet. You still need to drag out the old-fashioned vacuum cleaner about once a month to get the deep-down stuff, though. Personally, I think it was well worth the money. I think we're probably going to buy a second battery and/or rapid charger soon, though. It can only get through about 1000 square feet before the battery is down for the count, and then you need to wait a whole day for it to charge.
i used one of these mowers when i lived near downtown and my back yard was as big as a couple office cubes. in the 'burbs it's not very feasable.
Hmm... I find our reel mower to be about as easy to push as a large-wheeled non-self-propelled gas mower. From conversations I"ve had with my father-in-law comparing the reel mower we have (~3 years old) versus the ones he grew up with, apparently they're much easier to push now than they were 20 years ago. You weren't using an older mower by any chance, were you?
In addition to the other benefits people have touted (very quiet, no bad smell), I'll add two more to the list: after mowing a large lawn, your hands aren't numb from the vibration (which is something that always annoyed me about using a gas mower), and you won't end up throwing little rocks all over the place. It's kind of nice not having to chase the kids out of the yard just to mow it.
To be fair, this draft is perfectly consistent with RFC 2804.
While 2804 said that we are not going to require wiretapping
capabilities in the protocols developed in the IETF, it
did point to future publication of informational documents
about such mechanisms. Specifically:
"...[T]he IETF believes that mechanisms designed to
facilitate or enable wiretapping, or methods of using other
facilities for such purposes, should be openly described, so as to
ensure the maximum review of the mechanisms and ensure that they
adhere as closely as possible to their design constraints. The IETF
believes that the publication of such mechanisms, and the
publication of known weaknesses in such mechanisms, is a Good
Thing."
Of course, you are a nominal author of this draft, Keith, so I suspect this is something you already knew. Right?
--12:56:52-- ftp://ftp.anythingbox.com/pub/album.zip
(try:316) => `album.zip' Connecting to ftp.anythingbox.com[161.58.207.147]:21... connected. Logging in as anonymous...
--> USER anonymous
530 Sorry, the maximum number of allowed clients (10) already connected.
Try checking at shopping.yahoo.com. I've found it to be the Google of online shopping. I haven't been able to stump it with any currently available product yet.
The answers, by the way, are "$380 to $400" and "yes."
It's not that MS didn't make provisions for Opera. It's intentionally sending a broken style sheet. If you tweak the user-agent string (change Opera to, say, Oprea), it sends the "normal" style sheet, and Opera can render it just fine.
This is obviously an intentionally different style sheet. They went out of their way to send a different set of data to Opera than they do to any other browser in the world. And it's broken.
I'm just the type of person that'd rather look at all the details than try to find details to support a bias.
I'm a bit confused. If Xerox's patent covers the whole one-stroke-per-character interface, I don't see offhand how Jot doesn't infringe.
If you look at the
character
chart, every Jot character except "X" has a one-stroke equivalent (in fact, only "I", "J", and "T" have a two-stroke varient).
Certainly modifying grafitti so that "X" is two strokes would not have been sufficient to fend off the lawsuit, right? So what gives?
Ummm... uhhh... you might want to chill a little bit and, as the intro suggests, read the postscript.
It's a joke. They guys who put it together only have (both by their own admission and by casual observation) the most rudimentary understanding of programming languages.
They are confirmed opt-in. When you first set up a mobile device, Yahoo sends it a message containing a unique password. You are required to type this password into a web page before it starts sending you alerts. So, you'd have to physically get your hands on someone else's phone to sign them up.
Generally works pretty well, except when the phone number changes hands.
See, I pay for the pop access to my yahoo
mailbox, but (because their SMTP servers require
some dodgy and usually broken authentication
scheme) send my outgoing mail through my
ISP's SMTP servers.
Sure, it's just one datapoint, but I bet
dollars to donuts that, at some point, someone
like me will try to send you a legit e-mail,
and you'll toss it in the bit bucket. And
maybe you'll even care about what they had
to say.
My point is: technical solutions may
look like they work on the surface, but the potential for false positives is, IMHO, completely
unacceptable. Further, while they can block
you from most of the symptoms, the underlying
disease is still driving the cost of IP infrastructure up. Yes, you actually do end up paying more for your internet access because of this. As much as I hate to say
"we need more laws", I think the only
solution to this problem will ultimately
involve legislation.
"While ruling that a tax upon income from real and personal property is invalid in the absence of apportionment, the Supreme Court explicitly stated that taxes on income from one's employment are not direct taxes and are not subject to the necessity of apportionment."
(From www.quatloos.com.)
Actually, they have a huge volume of information that debunks a variety of wild and whacked-out theories that various naive individuals have been fooled into beleiving by scammers out to make a few bucks. (The usually pitch something like "Send me $15, and I'll send you information that will allow you to legally avoid federal income taxes for the rest of your life!")
And, in theory, that would work just fine (as long as people were honest enough). The problem, as you point out, is that most states don't make it obvious where you're supposed to report that sort of thing.
Of course, you can't always trust people to be that honest, so an IRS-like approach, but without witholding (where the merchants report the purchase price to the state to which the merchandise was shipped, but don't actually collect the taxes themselves) would be a nice compromise. The merchants don't have to calculate squat, and the purchasers still have reason to beleive that they might get caught if they don't turn in their fair share.
In states without an income tax, though (e.g., Texas), it's a bit more complicated: private citizens don't ever have any tax-related correspondence directly with the state at all. I have a friend who, just as an excercise in "doing the right thing," got in touch with the Texas state government in an attempt to pay sales tax on items he had purchased over the internet. After speaking to a wide variety of people who couldn't believe him (and getting comments like, "I don't think anyone has tried to do that before, sir."), he gave up.
Based on that experience, it seems a bit obvious that not all states are really that worried about this particular issue...
There are some things in OS X that need improvement - notably window-sizing - but then again, the Win2000 box still does outline-drawing for resizing so it's not fair.
So turn that off and try again!
start->settings->control panel->display->effects,
check "show window contents while dragging", and click "apply".
That's what I love about this operating system.It's just so easy to find and manipulate all the features!
I'm all about beating down the RIAA and MPAA and such, but I'm a little uncomfortable at such a blatant disrespect for copyright law
That's only because you apparently don't really understand it.
This isn't the original Adventure game. It's a re-write. It acts like Adventure, but it isn't. It's like DR-DOS acting like MS-DOS. Or Exult acting like Ultima 7.
Sorry; you're really off base on this one. Copyright doesn't apply in this case.
Now, trademark is another issue, and it's not usually as cut-and-dried.
Since atari games only could display 1-2 sprites at a time, sprites would flicker if you had more than 2.
2 shaped sprites (8 pixels across, and you needed to change the shape every scan line if you actually wanted to draw someting), two paddles (one, two, or four pixels wide), and one missile/ball (fixed width, if memory serves).
The shaped sprites could appear once, twice or three times on the screen, or once double-wide.
Even stranger, the "background" was only 20 pixels wide, and that filled half the screen. The other half was the same 20 pixels, either repeated or mirrored. And, like the sprites, you needed to change the pattern every few scan lines to actually get shapes.
In adventure, you were the missile/ball
(probably the only game that did this), the side bars that kept you from going off the side of the screens (the ones that you needed to go through to get to the easter egg) were paddles, and everything else was a shaped sprite. The bridge, I think, was a double-wide sprite.
Given these constraints and 128 bytes(!) of RAM, it's amazing that you could actually write games at all, much less something as intricate as Adventure.
Slashdot Mirror
It does a pretty decent job, even with all the cat hair we accumulate on the carpet. You still need to drag out the old-fashioned vacuum cleaner about once a month to get the deep-down stuff, though. Personally, I think it was well worth the money. I think we're probably going to buy a second battery and/or rapid charger soon, though. It can only get through about 1000 square feet before the battery is down for the count, and then you need to wait a whole day for it to charge.
Hmm... I find our reel mower to be about as easy to push as a large-wheeled non-self-propelled gas mower. From conversations I"ve had with my father-in-law comparing the reel mower we have (~3 years old) versus the ones he grew up with, apparently they're much easier to push now than they were 20 years ago. You weren't using an older mower by any chance, were you?
In addition to the other benefits people have touted (very quiet, no bad smell), I'll add two more to the list: after mowing a large lawn, your hands aren't numb from the vibration (which is something that always annoyed me about using a gas mower), and you won't end up throwing little rocks all over the place. It's kind of nice not having to chase the kids out of the yard just to mow it.
Okay, then, smartass. Write up a three-page document about a security exploit in flawless German.
No killer app? When was the last time you tried to get a 16-bit address space from any of the NICs? v4 is running out of unallocated space.
It's not an RFC. RFCs have RFC numbers.
What's the RFC number for this document?
Yes. That's the exact point I was trying to make.
Typo. s/author of this draft/author of this RFC/
Keith's point is valid: this is just an i-d. It is not an RFC.
--12:56:52-- ftp://ftp.anythingbox.com/pub/album.zip
(try:316) => `album.zip'
Connecting to ftp.anythingbox.com[161.58.207.147]:21... connected.
Logging in as anonymous
--> USER anonymous
530 Sorry, the maximum number of allowed clients (10) already connected.
The server refuses login.
Retrying.
*sigh*
The answers, by the way, are "$380 to $400" and "yes."
This is obviously an intentionally different style sheet. They went out of their way to send a different set of data to Opera than they do to any other browser in the world. And it's broken.
Then why the hell didn't you?Oh. you're just scaremongering. Everyone knows that you'd write that as http://[1080::8:800:200C:417A]/index.html
Like that would be hard to remember. Pshah.
If you look at the character chart, every Jot character except "X" has a one-stroke equivalent (in fact, only "I", "J", and "T" have a two-stroke varient).
Certainly modifying grafitti so that "X" is two strokes would not have been sufficient to fend off the lawsuit, right? So what gives?
It's a joke. They guys who put it together only have (both by their own admission and by casual observation) the most rudimentary understanding of programming languages.
Generally works pretty well, except when the phone number changes hands.
See, I pay for the pop access to my yahoo mailbox, but (because their SMTP servers require some dodgy and usually broken authentication scheme) send my outgoing mail through my ISP's SMTP servers.
Sure, it's just one datapoint, but I bet dollars to donuts that, at some point, someone like me will try to send you a legit e-mail, and you'll toss it in the bit bucket. And maybe you'll even care about what they had to say.
My point is: technical solutions may look like they work on the surface, but the potential for false positives is, IMHO, completely unacceptable. Further, while they can block you from most of the symptoms, the underlying disease is still driving the cost of IP infrastructure up. Yes, you actually do end up paying more for your internet access because of this. As much as I hate to say "we need more laws", I think the only solution to this problem will ultimately involve legislation.
Ummm.... no
Actually, they have a huge volume of information that debunks a variety of wild and whacked-out theories that various naive individuals have been fooled into beleiving by scammers out to make a few bucks. (The usually pitch something like "Send me $15, and I'll send you information that will allow you to legally avoid federal income taxes for the rest of your life!")
Of course, you can't always trust people to be that honest, so an IRS-like approach, but without witholding (where the merchants report the purchase price to the state to which the merchandise was shipped, but don't actually collect the taxes themselves) would be a nice compromise. The merchants don't have to calculate squat, and the purchasers still have reason to beleive that they might get caught if they don't turn in their fair share.
In states without an income tax, though (e.g., Texas), it's a bit more complicated: private citizens don't ever have any tax-related correspondence directly with the state at all. I have a friend who, just as an excercise in "doing the right thing," got in touch with the Texas state government in an attempt to pay sales tax on items he had purchased over the internet. After speaking to a wide variety of people who couldn't believe him (and getting comments like, "I don't think anyone has tried to do that before, sir."), he gave up.
Based on that experience, it seems a bit obvious that not all states are really that worried about this particular issue...
start->settings->control panel->display->effects, check "show window contents while dragging", and click "apply".
That's what I love about this operating system.It's just so easy to find and manipulate all the features!
That's only because you apparently don't really understand it.
This isn't the original Adventure game. It's a re-write. It acts like Adventure, but it isn't. It's like DR-DOS acting like MS-DOS. Or Exult acting like Ultima 7.
Sorry; you're really off base on this one. Copyright doesn't apply in this case.
Now, trademark is another issue, and it's not usually as cut-and-dried.
Ob: IANAL
The shaped sprites could appear once, twice or three times on the screen, or once double-wide.
Even stranger, the "background" was only 20 pixels wide, and that filled half the screen. The other half was the same 20 pixels, either repeated or mirrored. And, like the sprites, you needed to change the pattern every few scan lines to actually get shapes.
In adventure, you were the missile/ball (probably the only game that did this), the side bars that kept you from going off the side of the screens (the ones that you needed to go through to get to the easter egg) were paddles, and everything else was a shaped sprite. The bridge, I think, was a double-wide sprite.
Given these constraints and 128 bytes(!) of RAM, it's amazing that you could actually write games at all, much less something as intricate as Adventure.