Also it's unclear whether the webpage problems were due to bugs/limitations in Opera, or because of poorly written webpages that are only written for IE and Firefox.
As a web developer, when my pages are 100% valid XHTML and CSS, work properly on IE 7+8, Safari 2-4, Chrome, and Firefox 2-3.6, and they still break on Opera (which has a visitor rate of less than 1%) I'm not going to do much to support Opera. At that point, the ball is in their court to fix.
I don't care if you get 100 on the Acid3 test if your browsers still chokes on things when surfing real sites.
I just spent 5 minutes looking through their site and couldn't find a single thing that they are actually about. It's even worse than the Tea Party in that regards (and their name just sounds reactionary).
Even their top level FAQ button is just crap about username/registration process.
Microsoft my try some sort of certification process, but I have my doubts about that, too.
They did require certification on drivers for Vista (WHQL). There was a huge backlash against that and one of the reasons why people were so upset w/ Vista. Lots of hardware support problems because WHQL drivers didn't exist for a lot of products at launch. Hardware manufacturers didn't want to go through the extra hassle of getting WHQL certified.
Linux has been pioneering a way around this through trusted software repositories, but the concept hasn't panned out for Windows yet.
I've been hearing this canard trotted out quite a bit recently... How Linux is so much easier than Windows to manage updates, so much easier than Windows to install software, etc.
But think about it for just a minute. The model only works because you trust RedHat, Gentoo, etc to do the right thing. Imagine if the recommended way for doing software installs or updating 3rd party apps was through Windows Update. How much uproar would there be about MS "requiring" software developers to register. How much fury would there be about MS trying to use it's monopoly practices to kill its competitors InstallShield and Download.com.
Just look at the iPhone app store. Do you really want that distribution model for Windows?
I only have a wireless keyboard/mouse combo for my HTPC.
For all the desktops I use, I stick with wired keyboards and mice. No messing with batteries. No messing with whether the device is properly synched or not. Good luck using a bluetooth keyboard in the BIOS for example.
The two cables from a keyboard and mouse really isn't that bad. Bluetooth headsets or microphones I'd be much more likely to consider, and game controllers (like the Wiimote) make a lot sense. But it's a bit of a solution in search of a problem on the desktop, IMHO.
There's a huge difference between "cellphones convert mouth movements into speech" and "Guy with shitloads of cables on his face tracks the movements of his mouth muscles using 4 unix servers running a processor intensive application with an accuracy of 25%"
It wasn't that long ago that the same level of complexity was involved for locating faces in video (complete with UNIX servers, think SGI). Now handheld digital cameras can do it in real-time.
Proof of concepts like this are the first steps. Then researchers refine the algorithms making them more efficient, and technology advances make the processing power more commonplace.
Figuring out a way to map muscle patterns to a speech engine is pretty damn impressive. Capturing the muscle movements may require wires right now, but I guarantee that other researchers will find other ways to capture the patterns.
Back in the late 80's my father built a grey water capture system so he could use the laundry and bath water for irrigating our Southern-California-Is-A-Desert yard. It saved a lot of money, improved the home's resale value, and was eco-friendly to boot.
Unfortuneately at the time it was completely illegal. All residential waste water was required to go into either septic or sewer systems.
It's a trackpad, that has grooves/ridges for tactile feedback, plus backlighting to indicate state changes for the "buttons" and input mode changes for the device.
Put in an error code somewhere, along with a phone number for technical support, and no way to close the box. They'll call you and you can have them read off whatever you need. Then you can tell them whatever bizarre combination of keys will actually close the box.
Any one who actually implements this horrible idea deserves one of the deeper rings of hell.
If I was the end user, I would be livid if I was locked out of continuing to use my machine, and there would be one of 2 actions.
If you lock up the app, I'm just going to kill -9 or ctrl+alt+del.
If you lock up the machine, I'm just going to cut power and reboot
Neither one of these is desirable for a simple state error message, which is why it's a horrible idea. If your crappy program brings my entire computer to its knees because of an error message, don't be surprised when I start looking for alternatives real quick.
If your apps work on Win2K and Win7... and your $500 Dell from 7 years ago is still running strong and Win7 doesn't give you any measurable benefit... then what's the point of upgrading for the sake of upgrading?
Plenty of stuff is still done on Windows 2000. If your business-critical stuff works just fine on Win2K, and you don't NEED a newer machine, then why spend the money to replace the box?
And the fact that your employees can't waste their time goofing off on Web 2.0 sites is just a bonus. Although I do feel sorry for the 1-2 people at my office to whom IT gave a Win2K box instead of XP.
Funny, this car is already accurate to 2cm using GPS.
1m in plane landings may be catastrophic, but 2cm certainly is not. And GPS can pinpoint your location, but gives you no information on up-to-date ground conditions. For this, local sensing ability (like radar) will always be necessary.
I'm sure that mules aren't very effective when encountering combat situations. Something that follows the leader and doesn't run away when under fire would be very useful.
Slashdot Mirror
Running OCR on a pdf is pretty simple. Acrobat has that functionality built-in, and Google already does it for any PDFs they index.
and btw... the new /. interface BLOWS CHUNKS
As a web developer, when my pages are 100% valid XHTML and CSS, work properly on IE 7+8, Safari 2-4, Chrome, and Firefox 2-3.6, and they still break on Opera (which has a visitor rate of less than 1%) I'm not going to do much to support Opera. At that point, the ball is in their court to fix.
I don't care if you get 100 on the Acid3 test if your browsers still chokes on things when surfing real sites.
Considering how many privileged escalation bugs there are.... that's a really bad idea.
Sure it was easy to remove that one specific virus. But it would have been safer if the virus didn't make it onto the machine in the first place.
I just spent 5 minutes looking through their site and couldn't find a single thing that they are actually about. It's even worse than the Tea Party in that regards (and their name just sounds reactionary).
Even their top level FAQ button is just crap about username/registration process.
What are they actually for?
They did require certification on drivers for Vista (WHQL). There was a huge backlash against that and one of the reasons why people were so upset w/ Vista. Lots of hardware support problems because WHQL drivers didn't exist for a lot of products at launch. Hardware manufacturers didn't want to go through the extra hassle of getting WHQL certified.
Use of IE isn't mandatory, yet MS has been forced by the EU to make users actively choose between it and other browsers.
I've been hearing this canard trotted out quite a bit recently... How Linux is so much easier than Windows to manage updates, so much easier than Windows to install software, etc.
But think about it for just a minute. The model only works because you trust RedHat, Gentoo, etc to do the right thing. Imagine if the recommended way for doing software installs or updating 3rd party apps was through Windows Update. How much uproar would there be about MS "requiring" software developers to register. How much fury would there be about MS trying to use it's monopoly practices to kill its competitors InstallShield and Download.com.
Just look at the iPhone app store. Do you really want that distribution model for Windows?
I only have a wireless keyboard/mouse combo for my HTPC.
For all the desktops I use, I stick with wired keyboards and mice. No messing with batteries. No messing with whether the device is properly synched or not. Good luck using a bluetooth keyboard in the BIOS for example.
The two cables from a keyboard and mouse really isn't that bad. Bluetooth headsets or microphones I'd be much more likely to consider, and game controllers (like the Wiimote) make a lot sense. But it's a bit of a solution in search of a problem on the desktop, IMHO.
Apparently /. HTML filter is broken,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize/
Ig Nobel != Nobel
Ig Nobel
It wasn't that long ago that the same level of complexity was involved for locating faces in video (complete with UNIX servers, think SGI). Now handheld digital cameras can do it in real-time.
Proof of concepts like this are the first steps. Then researchers refine the algorithms making them more efficient, and technology advances make the processing power more commonplace.
Figuring out a way to map muscle patterns to a speech engine is pretty damn impressive. Capturing the muscle movements may require wires right now, but I guarantee that other researchers will find other ways to capture the patterns.
Even better, plant it with 40% native drought-resistant plants and don't have an ugly eyesore of a razed-earth yard.
Nothing says the 40% must be water-gorging lawns.
It's not a simple water rights issue.
Back in the late 80's my father built a grey water capture system so he could use the laundry and bath water for irrigating our Southern-California-Is-A-Desert yard. It saved a lot of money, improved the home's resale value, and was eco-friendly to boot.
Unfortuneately at the time it was completely illegal. All residential waste water was required to go into either septic or sewer systems.
On the other hand, look at the digital TV transition debacle.
If you don't set a deadline and enforce it, difficult technology implementations tend to drag on forever.
What you missed is that it is not a touchscreen.
It's a trackpad, that has grooves/ridges for tactile feedback, plus backlighting to indicate state changes for the "buttons" and input mode changes for the device.
Any one who actually implements this horrible idea deserves one of the deeper rings of hell.
If I was the end user, I would be livid if I was locked out of continuing to use my machine, and there would be one of 2 actions.
Neither one of these is desirable for a simple state error message, which is why it's a horrible idea. If your crappy program brings my entire computer to its knees because of an error message, don't be surprised when I start looking for alternatives real quick.
If your apps work on Win2K and Win7... and your $500 Dell from 7 years ago is still running strong and Win7 doesn't give you any measurable benefit... then what's the point of upgrading for the sake of upgrading?
Plenty of stuff is still done on Windows 2000. If your business-critical stuff works just fine on Win2K, and you don't NEED a newer machine, then why spend the money to replace the box?
And the fact that your employees can't waste their time goofing off on Web 2.0 sites is just a bonus. Although I do feel sorry for the 1-2 people at my office to whom IT gave a Win2K box instead of XP.
Livestock. In fact, the raise in corn prices caused a spike in beef, poultry and pork prices, and also forced many dairies out of business.
SBC, who then bought out AT&T to reform "Ma Bell"
Australia is trying to force the ISPs, content providers, and website operators to perform the censorship.
China does the censorship at a country-wide firewall level operated by the government. Iran does it this way as well.
They mean "holy shit that's popping out of the screen" with glasses and specialty devices.
"Damn that's some nice graphics" has no impact on the source media or display device.
Funny, this car is already accurate to 2cm using GPS.
1m in plane landings may be catastrophic, but 2cm certainly is not. And GPS can pinpoint your location, but gives you no information on up-to-date ground conditions. For this, local sensing ability (like radar) will always be necessary.
If you need a clock that's accurate to 8.6 x 10^-19 seconds in order to land a plane, you're probably doing it wrong.
Well, even as a pack mule, it's still useful.
I'm sure that mules aren't very effective when encountering combat situations. Something that follows the leader and doesn't run away when under fire would be very useful.