But that's to be expected. Speech recognition is one of the technology challenges currently facing software developers. If the system worked right now they'd move it to Microsoft's house of today, a nearby showroom officially known as the Consumer Experience Center where the company shows off current technology.
Perhaps if the system worked right now, they'd call it Macintosh OS X.
Seriously, Mac speech recognition has (quietly) gotten pretty good, just recently. For nearly ten years it's been one of those things that I play with occasionally and think, "When they get this right, it's gonna be cool."
It's now very cool. With an hour or so of set up, a few nights ago, I can now surf the web (among many other tasks) completely hands free. I say, "Drudge" and Safari opens drudgereport.com. I say, "move page down" and it scrolls. I say, "Weather" and weather.com is loaded. I say, "Switch to..." and it switches to whatever app I want, already running or not.
All while iTunes is playing.
Any keyboard shortcut can be defined in one app or system-wide to be triggered by any spoken word or phrase you choose.
Combine it with Applescript and.... shell scripts and... this is VERY cool.
Mac users, if you haven't tried Speech stuff on your Mac recently, try it again with 10.2.
I recently demonstrated it to a neighbor who only knows Windows and his response was, "So how much would it cost me to get a Mac that can do that?"
Your post sums up my feelings quite well. I've tried just about every browser out there for both Mac and Windows.
(Windows at work because it pays the bills and Mac at home because all those Windows problems pay my bills quite well.:-)
My default browser on my NT box at work is Opera 6. (I recently downloaded the Opera 7 beta and gave up the first day. They've got a long way to go with THAT beta before it's ready.) I made that decision because it IS fast and compatible and feature rich. I epecially like tabbed browsing, especially on Windows. It makes up for some of the other fundamental flaws in the Windows interface.
(For some reason, tabs are not nearly as important to me on a Mac. Haven't thought it through, but for some reason they're not as valuable. I've used Chimera but don't miss the tabs on my Mac. I've become almost dependent on them in Windows. It has something to do with the giant suckage that is the Windows GUI.)
On my Mac at home, I've tried them all and had settled on Omniweb (prior to the intro of Safari) because it had hands-down the best text rendering and most Aqua integrated interface. It was a true pleasure to use except that it sometimes choked on complicated (non-standard) Javascript and some CSS. I had to keep IE as a back up for the occasional site that OW puked at, but I used OmniWeb 99% of the time.
I tried Opera for Mac, but it was lagging WAY behind the Windows version and after a few days of use I could not find ONE compelling reason to continue using it. It blew goats. It had at least as many of the site compatibility problems as OmniWeb but wasn't as pretty. In fact, it was downright UGLY all the way around -- page rendering as ugly as IE with an interface even UGLIER than IE. It was not at all faster than OmniWeb. On top of all that, I had banners flashing in my face all the time reminding me I hadn't paid for this load of un-Mac-like crap. AND no tabs. (The primary reason I use it on Windows.)
When Safari was released, I downloaded it the first day but frankly didn't expect much because I knew it was beta. It has been my default browser since the evening of day one. I NEVER open IE anymore and rarely use OmniWeb for anything. I have recommended it to my non-geek mother and sister and they both love it. It's elegant and clean and pretty and FASTER than greased owl shit.
Opera for Mac sucked because those bone heads don't know how to develop for Mac, or don't care to. Either way, their Mac offering sucked and now they're pissed because even their Windows version can no longer honestly claim "Fastest browser on Earth."
If they don't want to develop for Mac anymore, I say good riddance. We still have half a dozen browsers to choose from on the Mac platform and they're ALL better than Opera.
Personally, I walk 6 miles each way to college and back every day. In the rain. And the cold. And the wind. And the dark. Wearing only a t-shirt. And no hat. And the only thing keeping me going is a portion of sausage and chips picked up from the chippy half way there.
Yeah, but have you ever done it uphill, both ways, in the snow, barefoot?
Thanks for appreciating the story. That story is to me just like what you said -- one of the half dozen best stories in my life that I tell too many times and everyone's tired of hearing. Two or three of the rest of the half dozen come from that same period in my life.
The BMW "Ride and Drive" for the salespeople when they introduced the V8 5 Series... on a closed track... with all the competitor's cars... and the guys from the Skip Barber Racing school... is probably at the top of that list.
Another (speaking of driving fast) is the day that I drove a car as fast as I've ever been in a vehicle. I was on my way back from taking a brand new 540 (as in, "8 miles on it and the first one to hit our dealership" brand new) to show to a client that had been waiting to drive one before committing to buy. He didn't buy it, but on the way back I decided to see if I could hit the 147 mph electronic speed limiter.
(I had already managed to hit the 128 mph speed limiter on the stock 325 of the day a couple of times. It's a weird feeling. Almost sounds and feels as if it has developed a miss as it slows the ignition firing.)
I chickened out and never hit it, but I did almost touch 140 at 3:00 on a weekday afternoon on a (mostly vacant) urban freeway. Passing cars that are doing 60 when you are doing 135+ is surreal. I suspect it was for them as well.
I would never do it now even given the chance, but I love the memory.
BTW, that post was only a two because of karma -- it hasn't been moderated at all. But I don't really care about the mods or karma. I get a lot more satisfaction out of reminding you of your '69 Malibu than any karma.
Reminiscing is one of the great pleasures in life.
I sold BMWs for a few months back in the early nineties. (One of the coolest experiences of my life even though the dealership was going under and I nearly went bankrupt for the chance to play with such cool toys.) I got to be pretty good friends with the regional technical trainer (or whatever they called them) for our region. (He was a tech/engineering geek and I think he liked me because, unlike most of the salesmen, I wasn't there just to make a buck. I genuinely loved the cars and the technology and engineering that went into them.) With a name like Dietz Froelich, I figured he knew what he was talking about, too.;-)
Anyway, there was constant debate amongst the salesmen over whether it was fact or myth that in the 8 series, when you reached 110 mph, the windows and sunroof would close automatically (to prevent the horrendous wind buffeting in the cabin resulting from the small size and aerodynamic shape of the car's interior.) I searched all the tech documentation and found no mention so I asked Dietz to settle it for me. He merely smiled and said, "I wouldn't know. It's not documented and it's illegal to drive that fast in your country. Whenever I've driven an 8 series that fast on the Autobahn I was always smart enough to have the windows and sunroof already closed."
So... we had an 850 on the lot that was over a year old and still never titled. (As I said, the dealership was going under.) It had to be driven every so often to keep the batteries (it has two) charged so that on the rare occasions someone was genuinely interested in it, it would start. One beautiful summer day I talked the sales manager into letting me take it to lunch. He reminded me that I would be working nearly two years at my current earnings level to pay for it and tossed me the key. (He was a pretty nervous guy by nature. I was shocked he actually let me take it.)
Of course I immediately opened the windows and sunroof and headed out to a stretch of smooth, open country highway near the dealership.
He nearly fainted when I came back in, threw the key on his desk and said casually over my shoulder, "The windows and sunroof thing is true."
Man, those were the days.
Re:Socialism is all that works for information
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 2
There is no such thing as "willingly paying with taxes." No one is, or would be, *forcing* you to do anything. Education is not a right. If you want it, *earn* it. Taxes ARE robbery... at the point of a gun. You've just hired government thugs to do the dirty work for you and you can be assured they're taking a (very substantial) cut.
I would *prefer* that you rob me yourself if you're going to do it. At least that way, you would be as clear as I am about what's happening and you would get the full "take" instead of paying the overhead of having someone else commit the crime for you.
Incidentally, there is far more poverty since the government started its "War on Poverty" in the 60's than there ever was before. Government is the primary *cause* of poverty.
"Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force." -- George Washington
Re:Socialism is all that works for information
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 2
If I might paraphrase you, it would be much more accurate to say:
As a result of public schools, police, government, etc we have complete chaos and the people in this country arent (sic) intelligent enough, arent (sic) responsible enough, and they arent (sic) mature enough to successfully govern themselves.
The primary cause of all the conditions you mention is government, specifically, its involvement in schooling. (Which, for the record, is quite different than "education.")
I've only gotten a couple of paragraphs into that IFPI report and already I have to respond.
The victims include the artists whose creativity gets no reward; governments who lose hundreds of millions of tax revenues; economies that are deprived of new investment; consumers who get less diversity and less choice; and record producers who are forced to reduce their artist rosters because it is impossible to compete against theft.
Let's be clear about this piece of propaganda. First off, I don't believe the recording industry is losing any significant amount of sales due to piracy. Having said that, the consumer *and* the artist are being victimized by *the recording industry*.
Consumers are fighting back by refusing to pay these pimps for someone else's work. That is the free market at work. (Refuse to be a victim! Boycott the recording industry.) I'm really hoping more artists will get fed up too (like Courtney Love apparently has) and find alternatives to promote their music and reach their fans. Death to the major record labels!
Proper government (if there is such a thing) by definition can never be a victim. But pandering like this, to the only people in society permitted to enforce their will with guns, sure can't hurt their cause, can it? Besides, if there are hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue being lost because of $4.3 billion in (hypothetical) lost record sales, the problem is excessive taxation, not piracy.
These robots are all cool but I quickly found my two favorites.
For non-technical reasons, the RoboTender (bartender robot) is by far the coolest. They even make a point of mentioning that this bartender will never cut you off. Pretty cool for a bunch of geeky CS students.
On the technical side, by far the one that impresses me the most is the Bipedal Robot. It starts only understanding 3 basic commands and being fed a random sequence of those commands. Then it uses trial and error in the form of "genetic algorithms" to "learn" how to walk. As an enthusiastic but very amateur programmer, that amazes me.
Anyway, I have to go now. Speaking of bartenders, the wife has been drinking tonight and every time that happens she gets all worked up and "needs" me for something.
(Contrary to popular belief, not everyone on Slashdot is sex starved. That woman's hitting her "prime" and wearing me out!)
I agree with you completely. This is the most biased anti-Mac propaganda I've read in a long time. One small piece of evidence:
In the past even the US Army has moved its web servers over to MacOS in the mistaken belief that they will be more secure.
They fail to mention that that was prior to OS X. While it's certainly true now also, back then the Mac OS was FAR more secure than Windows for running a web server simply by virtue of the Mac having NO COMMAND LINE. Even if you could exploit a Macintosh web server in the days of OS 9 and prior, what would you do once you got in? There is no ability to do anything remotely on the machine unless there is third party remote desktop software installed on it.
I find the line about 7,000 macro viruses hysterical as well. The vast majority of those macro viruses are VB viruses that attack the myriad gaping security holes in Outlook (or the myriad gaping security holes in IIS, installed by default on all Windows systems and not even available for Macintosh). The Macintosh version of Outlook Express doesn't even support VB! The only macro viruses a Mac might be vulnerable to are MS Office macros. How long has it been since you heard of an MS Office macro virus outbreak? They're virtually non-existent now because it's so much easier to propagate a virus via Outlook and/or IE.
Speaking of which, if you're dumb enough to be running IE on a Mac, you probably are opening up some vulnerability. That's one reason there's so much activity in the browser space (iCab, Opera, OmniWeb, Chimera, etc.) even though IE is free.
No system is totally invulnerable, but having spent many long hours dealing with the effects of NIMDA (for one) at work, I'll gladly hold on to my Mac at home, thanks.
The neumerator denotes the distance (in feet) the test is given at.
I liked your post and would have probably moderated it up as "+1 Informative" myself, had I moderator points.
However, it's lucky for you the test you vaguely refer to is not on English or Grammar. Your post could be AN A answer. I guess we'll all find out on Friday. (AT WHICH time you will receive your grade, I presume.:-)
One percent of America's population holds 40% of the wealth.
I hope you are not suggesting that it is unfair to have that one percent of the population pay 40% of the taxes.
Yup. It's completely "unfair" because the taxes in question are levied on income not wealth. Two completely different (and often unrelated) things.
FWIW, I'm definitely not wealthy (yet) or in a high tax bracket.
Of course, IMneverHO, the real solution is for America to start obeying the freaking law again which would mean abolishing most of the fedgov. Then income taxes would be unnecessary. Hell, we might even be free again!
This concludes this edition of the off-topic rant.
I agree with every word of that (except maybe the part about Pink Floyd -- not really my taste:-)
I haven't bought a CD in so long that I can't remember the last one. It's probably been 3+ years. I stopped buying CDs before I ever even discovered P2P MP3 sharing, primarily because there simply wasn't anything being released on CD that I wanted to hear bad enough to pay for the CD.
When you combine the almost complete lack of any quality, original music from the (large) record companies these days with the way radio plays only the top 40 (of any given format) into the ground, I have no use for CDs. Anything released by the record companies that I might care to hear, I can hear enough to be sick of it in a matter of weeks just by turning on my radio.
I mostly listen to local and/or indie bands these days. I would have no problem buying their self produced CDs as it helps them recover their production expense and there is no pimp taking a 95%+ cut off the top. For convenience sake, though, I normally grab the MP3s off gnutella and then pay the artist through www.fairtunes.com. (I also do this for the handful of major label artists I like. It's quite satisfying to know that I can donate $5 to them for the couple of good songs I like and they will get the equivalent of 10 CDs worth of record company royalties.)
I'll be damned if I'll ever pay $15 for two good songs again, especially when $14.50 of it is going to a pimp that is simply exploiting me and the artist.
These systems are un-Constitutional because they limit your ability to express yourself where you see fit...
It will take an Amendment! And like Heston, they will get my DVD/VCD/MP3 player from my cold dead hands.
Actually, since the First Amendment begins with "Congress shall make no law...", they can't override that even with a Constitutional amendment. It would require the repeal of the First Amendment. Fat chance!
Them old crotchety white guys that started this place were pretty damn smart. (Too bad our ancestors ignored all their warnings and we became exactly what the Founding Fathers feared we would.)
If you want rockets to be used in weapons, elect a Republican President. If you want rockets to be used for space exploration and science, elect a Democrat.
If you care about actually advancing "space exploration and science" get the feckless retards that work for the government completely out of it! There has never been anything that gubmint does better than the private sector and capitalism.
If it weren't for the government's monopoly of incompetence (created violently at the point of a gun) we would be vacationing on the Moon today.
But I expect this tripe from someone who has nothing better than traffic to bitch about in his journal.
Read a non-government approved book. (I recommend "The Federalist" as a start.) Then you'll be qualified to comment on the pathetic political situation in this country.
Slashdot Mirror
Nine women cannot make a baby in one month, but nine women can make nine babies in nine months.
.NET allow for nine women to make a baby in one month?
Won't Microsoft's soon-to-be-released BabyMaker
I thought I saw a press release about it a while back but can't seem to find a link now.
You had the PADDLES!?!?
:-)
I wish *I* could have grown up in a rich family.
Oh, how I WANTED paddles. All I had was the joysticks the 2600 came with.
Ahh. The good old days.
I suspect it's both as it's been a few minutes now and still nearly nothing, even in troll land.
I can spare the Karma and only posted FP because I couldn't believe it was staring me in the face.
Wow. Maybe I'll become a troll. It is somehow, perversely gratifying to get first post.
Is this coincidence or is /. this dead at 2:00 am?
But that's to be expected. Speech recognition is one of the technology challenges currently facing software developers. If the system worked right now they'd move it to Microsoft's house of today, a nearby showroom officially known as the Consumer Experience Center where the company shows off current technology.
Perhaps if the system worked right now, they'd call it Macintosh OS X.
Seriously, Mac speech recognition has (quietly) gotten pretty good, just recently. For nearly ten years it's been one of those things that I play with occasionally and think, "When they get this right, it's gonna be cool."
It's now very cool. With an hour or so of set up, a few nights ago, I can now surf the web (among many other tasks) completely hands free. I say, "Drudge" and Safari opens drudgereport.com. I say, "move page down" and it scrolls. I say, "Weather" and weather.com is loaded. I say, "Switch to..." and it switches to whatever app I want, already running or not.
All while iTunes is playing.
Any keyboard shortcut can be defined in one app or system-wide to be triggered by any spoken word or phrase you choose.
Combine it with Applescript and.... shell scripts and... this is VERY cool.
Mac users, if you haven't tried Speech stuff on your Mac recently, try it again with 10.2.
I recently demonstrated it to a neighbor who only knows Windows and his response was, "So how much would it cost me to get a Mac that can do that?"
Microsoft, once again, is WAY behind the curve.
Your post sums up my feelings quite well. I've tried just about every browser out there for both Mac and Windows.
:-)
(Windows at work because it pays the bills and Mac at home because all those Windows problems pay my bills quite well.
My default browser on my NT box at work is Opera 6. (I recently downloaded the Opera 7 beta and gave up the first day. They've got a long way to go with THAT beta before it's ready.) I made that decision because it IS fast and compatible and feature rich. I epecially like tabbed browsing, especially on Windows. It makes up for some of the other fundamental flaws in the Windows interface.
(For some reason, tabs are not nearly as important to me on a Mac. Haven't thought it through, but for some reason they're not as valuable. I've used Chimera but don't miss the tabs on my Mac. I've become almost dependent on them in Windows. It has something to do with the giant suckage that is the Windows GUI.)
On my Mac at home, I've tried them all and had settled on Omniweb (prior to the intro of Safari) because it had hands-down the best text rendering and most Aqua integrated interface. It was a true pleasure to use except that it sometimes choked on complicated (non-standard) Javascript and some CSS. I had to keep IE as a back up for the occasional site that OW puked at, but I used OmniWeb 99% of the time.
I tried Opera for Mac, but it was lagging WAY behind the Windows version and after a few days of use I could not find ONE compelling reason to continue using it. It blew goats. It had at least as many of the site compatibility problems as OmniWeb but wasn't as pretty. In fact, it was downright UGLY all the way around -- page rendering as ugly as IE with an interface even UGLIER than IE. It was not at all faster than OmniWeb. On top of all that, I had banners flashing in my face all the time reminding me I hadn't paid for this load of un-Mac-like crap. AND no tabs. (The primary reason I use it on Windows.)
When Safari was released, I downloaded it the first day but frankly didn't expect much because I knew it was beta. It has been my default browser since the evening of day one. I NEVER open IE anymore and rarely use OmniWeb for anything. I have recommended it to my non-geek mother and sister and they both love it. It's elegant and clean and pretty and FASTER than greased owl shit.
Opera for Mac sucked because those bone heads don't know how to develop for Mac, or don't care to. Either way, their Mac offering sucked and now they're pissed because even their Windows version can no longer honestly claim "Fastest browser on Earth."
If they don't want to develop for Mac anymore, I say good riddance. We still have half a dozen browsers to choose from on the Mac platform and they're ALL better than Opera.
When I woke, I told my girlfriend, and then several other people, that I'd had a dream about building a weather balloon...
After reading about half of the design story on this I'm having a real hard time believing that he has a girlfriend.
J/K, JimDog. It's a cool project.
I had to reply to this.
That is great writing, my friend, in both style and substance. Not that I am by any means an expert.
But, I'm no idiot either and, that sort of writing is (mostly) wasted on this board. Have you ever heard of casting pearls before swine?
You should be published. Have you tried?
If not, you should.
Personally, I walk 6 miles each way to college and back every day. In the rain. And the cold. And the wind. And the dark. Wearing only a t-shirt. And no hat. And the only thing keeping me going is a portion of sausage and chips picked up from the chippy half way there.
Yeah, but have you ever done it uphill, both ways, in the snow, barefoot?
Thanks for appreciating the story. That story is to me just like what you said -- one of the half dozen best stories in my life that I tell too many times and everyone's tired of hearing. Two or three of the rest of the half dozen come from that same period in my life.
The BMW "Ride and Drive" for the salespeople when they introduced the V8 5 Series... on a closed track... with all the competitor's cars... and the guys from the Skip Barber Racing school... is probably at the top of that list.
Another (speaking of driving fast) is the day that I drove a car as fast as I've ever been in a vehicle. I was on my way back from taking a brand new 540 (as in, "8 miles on it and the first one to hit our dealership" brand new) to show to a client that had been waiting to drive one before committing to buy. He didn't buy it, but on the way back I decided to see if I could hit the 147 mph electronic speed limiter.
(I had already managed to hit the 128 mph speed limiter on the stock 325 of the day a couple of times. It's a weird feeling. Almost sounds and feels as if it has developed a miss as it slows the ignition firing.)
I chickened out and never hit it, but I did almost touch 140 at 3:00 on a weekday afternoon on a (mostly vacant) urban freeway. Passing cars that are doing 60 when you are doing 135+ is surreal. I suspect it was for them as well.
I would never do it now even given the chance, but I love the memory.
BTW, that post was only a two because of karma -- it hasn't been moderated at all. But I don't really care about the mods or karma. I get a lot more satisfaction out of reminding you of your '69 Malibu than any karma.
Reminiscing is one of the great pleasures in life.
Thanks again for the great compliment.
I sold BMWs for a few months back in the early nineties. (One of the coolest experiences of my life even though the dealership was going under and I nearly went bankrupt for the chance to play with such cool toys.) I got to be pretty good friends with the regional technical trainer (or whatever they called them) for our region. (He was a tech/engineering geek and I think he liked me because, unlike most of the salesmen, I wasn't there just to make a buck. I genuinely loved the cars and the technology and engineering that went into them.) With a name like Dietz Froelich, I figured he knew what he was talking about, too. ;-)
Anyway, there was constant debate amongst the salesmen over whether it was fact or myth that in the 8 series, when you reached 110 mph, the windows and sunroof would close automatically (to prevent the horrendous wind buffeting in the cabin resulting from the small size and aerodynamic shape of the car's interior.) I searched all the tech documentation and found no mention so I asked Dietz to settle it for me. He merely smiled and said, "I wouldn't know. It's not documented and it's illegal to drive that fast in your country. Whenever I've driven an 8 series that fast on the Autobahn I was always smart enough to have the windows and sunroof already closed."
So... we had an 850 on the lot that was over a year old and still never titled. (As I said, the dealership was going under.) It had to be driven every so often to keep the batteries (it has two) charged so that on the rare occasions someone was genuinely interested in it, it would start. One beautiful summer day I talked the sales manager into letting me take it to lunch. He reminded me that I would be working nearly two years at my current earnings level to pay for it and tossed me the key. (He was a pretty nervous guy by nature. I was shocked he actually let me take it.)
Of course I immediately opened the windows and sunroof and headed out to a stretch of smooth, open country highway near the dealership.
He nearly fainted when I came back in, threw the key on his desk and said casually over my shoulder, "The windows and sunroof thing is true."
Man, those were the days.
There is no such thing as "willingly paying with taxes." No one is, or would be, *forcing* you to do anything. Education is not a right. If you want it, *earn* it. Taxes ARE robbery... at the point of a gun. You've just hired government thugs to do the dirty work for you and you can be assured they're taking a (very substantial) cut.
I would *prefer* that you rob me yourself if you're going to do it. At least that way, you would be as clear as I am about what's happening and you would get the full "take" instead of paying the overhead of having someone else commit the crime for you.
Incidentally, there is far more poverty since the government started its "War on Poverty" in the 60's than there ever was before. Government is the primary *cause* of poverty.
"Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force." -- George Washington
If I might paraphrase you, it would be much more accurate to say:
As a result of public schools, police, government, etc we have complete chaos and the people in this country arent (sic) intelligent enough, arent (sic) responsible enough, and they arent (sic) mature enough to successfully govern themselves.
The primary cause of all the conditions you mention is government, specifically, its involvement in schooling. (Which, for the record, is quite different than "education.")
You've not found a flaw in capitalism, my friend. You've found a business opportunity.
I've only gotten a couple of paragraphs into that IFPI report and already I have to respond.
The victims include the artists whose creativity gets no reward; governments who lose hundreds of millions of tax revenues; economies that are deprived of new investment; consumers who get less diversity and less choice; and record producers who are forced to reduce their artist rosters because it is impossible to compete against theft.
Let's be clear about this piece of propaganda. First off, I don't believe the recording industry is losing any significant amount of sales due to piracy. Having said that, the consumer *and* the artist are being victimized by *the recording industry*.
Consumers are fighting back by refusing to pay these pimps for someone else's work. That is the free market at work. (Refuse to be a victim! Boycott the recording industry.) I'm really hoping more artists will get fed up too (like Courtney Love apparently has) and find alternatives to promote their music and reach their fans. Death to the major record labels!
Proper government (if there is such a thing) by definition can never be a victim. But pandering like this, to the only people in society permitted to enforce their will with guns, sure can't hurt their cause, can it? Besides, if there are hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue being lost because of $4.3 billion in (hypothetical) lost record sales, the problem is excessive taxation, not piracy.
These robots are all cool but I quickly found my two favorites.
For non-technical reasons, the RoboTender (bartender robot) is by far the coolest. They even make a point of mentioning that this bartender will never cut you off. Pretty cool for a bunch of geeky CS students.
On the technical side, by far the one that impresses me the most is the Bipedal Robot. It starts only understanding 3 basic commands and being fed a random sequence of those commands. Then it uses trial and error in the form of "genetic algorithms" to "learn" how to walk. As an enthusiastic but very amateur programmer, that amazes me.
Anyway, I have to go now. Speaking of bartenders, the wife has been drinking tonight and every time that happens she gets all worked up and "needs" me for something.
(Contrary to popular belief, not everyone on Slashdot is sex starved. That woman's hitting her "prime" and wearing me out!)
I agree with you completely. This is the most biased anti-Mac propaganda I've read in a long time. One small piece of evidence:
In the past even the US Army has moved its web servers over to MacOS in the mistaken belief that they will be more secure.
They fail to mention that that was prior to OS X. While it's certainly true now also, back then the Mac OS was FAR more secure than Windows for running a web server simply by virtue of the Mac having NO COMMAND LINE. Even if you could exploit a Macintosh web server in the days of OS 9 and prior, what would you do once you got in? There is no ability to do anything remotely on the machine unless there is third party remote desktop software installed on it.
I find the line about 7,000 macro viruses hysterical as well. The vast majority of those macro viruses are VB viruses that attack the myriad gaping security holes in Outlook (or the myriad gaping security holes in IIS, installed by default on all Windows systems and not even available for Macintosh). The Macintosh version of Outlook Express doesn't even support VB! The only macro viruses a Mac might be vulnerable to are MS Office macros. How long has it been since you heard of an MS Office macro virus outbreak? They're virtually non-existent now because it's so much easier to propagate a virus via Outlook and/or IE.
Speaking of which, if you're dumb enough to be running IE on a Mac, you probably are opening up some vulnerability. That's one reason there's so much activity in the browser space (iCab, Opera, OmniWeb, Chimera, etc.) even though IE is free.
No system is totally invulnerable, but having spent many long hours dealing with the effects of NIMDA (for one) at work, I'll gladly hold on to my Mac at home, thanks.
I'd strongly suggest college, for two reasons.
...
Thirdly, it gives you flexibility
PLUS... you get to learn fancy New Math and alternative counting methods in college!
(Is that not a A answer, I'll find out on Friday)
:-)
The neumerator denotes the distance (in feet) the test is given at.
I liked your post and would have probably moderated it up as "+1 Informative" myself, had I moderator points.
However, it's lucky for you the test you vaguely refer to is not on English or Grammar. Your post could be AN A answer. I guess we'll all find out on Friday. (AT WHICH time you will receive your grade, I presume.
One percent of America's population holds 40% of the wealth.
I hope you are not suggesting that it is unfair to have that one percent of the population pay 40% of the taxes.
Yup. It's completely "unfair" because the taxes in question are levied on income not wealth. Two completely different (and often unrelated) things.
FWIW, I'm definitely not wealthy (yet) or in a high tax bracket.
Of course, IMneverHO, the real solution is for America to start obeying the freaking law again which would mean abolishing most of the fedgov. Then income taxes would be unnecessary. Hell, we might even be free again!
This concludes this edition of the off-topic rant.
I agree with every word of that (except maybe the part about Pink Floyd -- not really my taste :-)
I haven't bought a CD in so long that I can't remember the last one. It's probably been 3+ years. I stopped buying CDs before I ever even discovered P2P MP3 sharing, primarily because there simply wasn't anything being released on CD that I wanted to hear bad enough to pay for the CD.
When you combine the almost complete lack of any quality, original music from the (large) record companies these days with the way radio plays only the top 40 (of any given format) into the ground, I have no use for CDs. Anything released by the record companies that I might care to hear, I can hear enough to be sick of it in a matter of weeks just by turning on my radio.
I mostly listen to local and/or indie bands these days. I would have no problem buying their self produced CDs as it helps them recover their production expense and there is no pimp taking a 95%+ cut off the top. For convenience sake, though, I normally grab the MP3s off gnutella and then pay the artist through www.fairtunes.com. (I also do this for the handful of major label artists I like. It's quite satisfying to know that I can donate $5 to them for the couple of good songs I like and they will get the equivalent of 10 CDs worth of record company royalties.)
I'll be damned if I'll ever pay $15 for two good songs again, especially when $14.50 of it is going to a pimp that is simply exploiting me and the artist.
Good points.
One technicality I'd like to point out. You said:
These systems are un-Constitutional because they limit your ability to express yourself where you see fit...
It will take an Amendment! And like Heston, they will get my DVD/VCD/MP3 player from my cold dead hands.
Actually, since the First Amendment begins with "Congress shall make no law...", they can't override that even with a Constitutional amendment. It would require the repeal of the First Amendment. Fat chance!
Them old crotchety white guys that started this place were pretty damn smart. (Too bad our ancestors ignored all their warnings and we became exactly what the Founding Fathers feared we would.)
Yup. Revenue gathered at gun point is a pretty secure business model. I bet the economic situation hasn't threatened any Mafia jobs either.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=27946&cid=3004 106
If you want rockets to be used in weapons, elect a Republican President. If you want rockets to be used for space exploration and science, elect a Democrat.
If you care about actually advancing "space exploration and science" get the feckless retards that work for the government completely out of it! There has never been anything that gubmint does better than the private sector and capitalism.
If it weren't for the government's monopoly of incompetence (created violently at the point of a gun) we would be vacationing on the Moon today.
But I expect this tripe from someone who has nothing better than traffic to bitch about in his journal.
Read a non-government approved book. (I recommend "The Federalist" as a start.) Then you'll be qualified to comment on the pathetic political situation in this country.