... about User Interface research. My DVD, VCR, TV, CD, CD-writer, portable mindisc player are all laid out completely differently, and -- despite similarities -- behaved subtley differently from one another (If I hit Pause-record, what do I press to recommence recording? Is it Pause or REC?)
My car has a completely different set of layout for dash controls from my girlfriends. The gears are in different places on the stick, and the feel of the clutch is completely different.
And yet, after a short period of familarisation, I find I can cope pretty well with all of these things, as can everyone else I know.
They'll be so pleased I'm not wallowing around in the mud looking for bugs like my brothers and sisters.I know how you feel. My sister worked at Microsoft for a while, too.
I'm shocked, shocked!, to discover that an out-of-court settlements that consists of paying off your antagonists. Next you'll be telling me that Michael Jackson's settlements were somehow related to the $20 million that he forked out, rather than plaintiffs reaching mutual understanding.
Next week Slashdot will discuss : "The Pope : could he be a Catholic?"
Neither do I. Fortunately, this isn't it. My local newsagent refuses to sell hardcore pornography, despite the fact its not illegal. That's not censorship either. If I want that service, I go and find someone who will provide it.
Here its all "crown" copyright and various other companies.
No, thats not true. Crown copyright only covers things produced by the Government (which would, in the US, be automatically public domain.) Anything you create yourself, you're more than allowed to put in the public domain, which functions exactly as it does everywhere else. Copyright law in the UK is very, very similar to the US, with the exception of the perpetual copyright applied to Peter Pan.
While fans of the dead Casey Donovan might be upset, this seems to be a legitimate thing bigpond to do. It's pretty clear that the vast majority got sent to the site they wanted to see, and in a few weeks/months everything can be returned to normal, and gay porn fans can get their Casey back.
It's not a desirable thing but I subscribe to the cock-up (for want of a less apposite phrase) theory on this one. No-one's getting stiffed (ditto), its just an horrendous accident.
Having said that, by own sensibilities mean I'm far more offended by Simon Cowell than I am by the goatse.cx guy.
If you're including "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Official Strategy Guide" as a computing book, "101 Tips for Winning At Monopoly" in the list for Business/Management.
On the subject of computer books, I hear "The Mythical Man Month" by Fred Brooks is really good. Also, his follow up essay "No Silver Bullet"; that's great too. They've both received a number of good reviews.
I really recommend both books -- if only you could get them cheaply, in a single volume, on a major auction site like ebay. From someone with 100% positive feedback...
Tum te tum te tum. Gosh, is that the time... gotta fly
They also call on the Internet community to express solidarity by placing NoSoftwarePatents.com links and banners on many Web sites."
Well, its a nice sentiment, but I can't imagine this having any effect. In the UK, the orchestrated FFII anti-software-patent campaign got pretty much rejected out of hand by the government...
It's a corporation which has a legal obligation to make as much money for its stockholders as it legally can. If it fails to do that, the company becomes legally liable and open to class action suits by the stockholders.
I see this all the time, and while it is true, its only superficially so. The class action suits you mention are exceedingly difficult to win. If a CEO says, we believe that our long term profits will be increased through ethical co-operation rather than vicious competition (e.g. share information and then undercut the competition in these newly commoditised markets, through efficiency and best practice), the burden of proof is on the action bringer to show that this isn't the case.
And that's ridiculously difficult to do. The few cases that do succeed are usually when the decisions made are corrupt or simply idiotic, rather than through a differing emphasis.
Now if Amaxa would just tell us what the composition of the buffers are, that is all that I need to put together my own electroporation system and save my lab at least 15k a year!
Epistemological question : If you don't know what's in the chemicals you use, how can you trust anything at all about the results? And how do you ensure your experiments are reproducible by the people who read your research?
Until you understand the concrete difference between physical items, that cost actual money to reproduce and ideas, which (once created) can be reproduced for effectively negligible cost, you will be cursed to forever create extremely bad satire.
Completely true. But its not a fait accompli. Governments should do what the people want, rather than the people having to put up with what the government decides. If you think the nation's health will be improved by funding blue-sky research in biotechnology, vote for the people who will fund it, and prevent corporations "owning" knowledge about biotech through ludicrous patents on gene sequences.
Sadly, the most pressing problem isn't the availabilty of biological tools, but the fact that researchers are being allowed to gain patents on their genome sequences, even though such people as The Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) are against it. They've no problem with patented gene therapies, but patenting the genes themselves is just a horrible thing for cutting edge science.
A better question is, how much of that software did ESR write? And the answer is almost none.. He maintains a bunch of packages none of which get much maintaining. (Check the last updates of a few).
ESR didn't write fetchmail, he just modified popclient (slightly) to parse his kind of config file (and to introduce a bunch of idiotic bugs). See http://esr.1accesshost.com/
He wrote a version of SED, almost completely unused, much as a zillion CompSci students have while learning about regular expressions.
Reason? If Linux users don't like the direction Linus decides to take, the code is there, and may be freely forked to provide a starting point for a new, different direction.
If Java(tm) users don't like the direction Java(tm) is taking... Tough. They're stuck with it.
...be squeezed in amongst the poor or other undesirables.
And yet the irony is, by driving they expose themselves to the much greater risks of traffic accidents. An undesirable drunk on the bus is pretty obnoxious, an undesirable drunk driving a Buick in the next lane is potentially lethal.
May I introduce you to the concept of population density?
There's a reason why I picked out the quote about traffic jams. In regions with low population density, mass transits are completely infeasible ("monorail, Monorail, MONORAIL!"), but traffic jams aren't the problem.
If you choose to live in the country, and take a long but leisurely commute through reasonably quiet roads, good for you. That's my choice too (although I live close enough that I can cycle if the weathers amenable).
In this circumstance his point might be that until public transit is more convenient than driving your own vehicle, we in the states won't really embrace public transit.
If you live in Menlo Park, or Redwood City, or any of the towns between San Jose and San Francisco, CalTrain is an incredibly convenient ride into the city, and then you've the BART and the Muni at the other end.
And yet, every morning HWY101 and I-280 are both just a hideous snarls-up of commuter cars. In terms of convenience, there's simply no comparison.
And yet people insist on getting in their cars to drive for 2hrs to complete the distance they could do in 45 minutes by train. That's not convenience, and its not just an expression of rugged individualism.
Slashdot Mirror
... about User Interface research. My DVD, VCR, TV, CD, CD-writer, portable mindisc player are all laid out completely differently, and -- despite similarities -- behaved subtley differently from one another (If I hit Pause-record, what do I press to recommence recording? Is it Pause or REC?)
My car has a completely different set of layout for dash controls from my girlfriends. The gears are in different places on the stick, and the feel of the clutch is completely different.
And yet, after a short period of familarisation, I find I can cope pretty well with all of these things, as can everyone else I know.
I'm shocked, shocked!, to discover that an out-of-court settlements that consists of paying off your antagonists. Next you'll be telling me that Michael Jackson's settlements were somehow related to the $20 million that he forked out, rather than plaintiffs reaching mutual understanding.
Next week Slashdot will discuss : "The Pope : could he be a Catholic?"
Absolutely none.
That's a really good idea.
While fans of the dead Casey Donovan might be upset, this seems to be a legitimate thing bigpond to do. It's pretty clear that the vast majority got sent to the site they wanted to see, and in a few weeks/months everything can be returned to normal, and gay porn fans can get their Casey back.
It's not a desirable thing but I subscribe to the cock-up (for want of a less apposite phrase) theory on this one. No-one's getting stiffed (ditto), its just an horrendous accident.
Having said that, by own sensibilities mean I'm far more offended by Simon Cowell than I am by the goatse.cx guy.
If you're including "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Official Strategy Guide" as a computing book, "101 Tips for Winning At Monopoly" in the list for Business/Management.
Games are cool, but they're not computing.
On the subject of computer books, I hear "The Mythical Man Month" by Fred Brooks is really good. Also, his follow up essay "No Silver Bullet"; that's great too. They've both received a number of good reviews.
I really recommend both books -- if only you could get them cheaply, in a single volume, on a major auction site like ebay. From someone with 100% positive feedback...
Tum te tum te tum. Gosh, is that the time... gotta fly
Hey! Look down there!
|
|
|
v
And that's ridiculously difficult to do. The few cases that do succeed are usually when the decisions made are corrupt or simply idiotic, rather than through a differing emphasis.
Sadly, the most pressing problem isn't the availabilty of biological tools, but the fact that researchers are being allowed to gain patents on their genome sequences, even though such people as The Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) are against it. They've no problem with patented gene therapies, but patenting the genes themselves is just a horrible thing for cutting edge science.
I haven't written much either, but then I don't describe myself as "one of the senior technical cadre that makes the Internet work"
ESR didn't write fetchmail, he just modified popclient (slightly) to parse his kind of config file (and to introduce a bunch of idiotic bugs).
See http://esr.1accesshost.com/
He wrote a version of SED, almost completely unused, much as a zillion CompSci students have while learning about regular expressions.
Reason? If Linux users don't like the direction Linus decides to take, the code is there, and may be freely forked to provide a starting point for a new, different direction.
If Java(tm) users don't like the direction Java(tm) is taking... Tough. They're stuck with it.
If you choose to live in the country, and take a long but leisurely commute through reasonably quiet roads, good for you. That's my choice too (although I live close enough that I can cycle if the weathers amenable).
And yet, every morning HWY101 and I-280 are both just a hideous snarls-up of commuter cars. In terms of convenience, there's simply no comparison.
And yet people insist on getting in their cars to drive for 2hrs to complete the distance they could do in 45 minutes by train. That's not convenience, and its not just an expression of rugged individualism.
The only explanation is shear bloody mindedness.
But most people in such rural areas don't have a 2 hour commute through heavy traffic, so the point is largely moot.