The Wall Street Journal makes press releases available for companies listed in its Company Research pages. The PR departments of these companies write the press releases, not WSJ reporters.
If you follow the link, you'll see that what he really said was "There are 50 million Facebook users who don't know what OpenSocial APIs are...and don't care." [emphasis mine]
I know what you mean. Whoever posted this story definitely sounds like one of those know-it-all types. And what the hell does that username mean, anyway?
The report covers much more than just the proximate cause of the accident. It focuses on the organizational and procedural failures that led to a situation where nobody checked the bolts. Whoever posted this story should have mentioned, that, too.
I don't think it's as bad as you make it out to be.
1) Quantum speeds? WTF is that? There's no such unit, not even associated with quantum computing.
If I say my car can operate at racecar speeds, am
I implying that there's a unit called the
"racecar"? Of course not. "Quantum speeds"
is shorthand for the the relative speed of
quantum search algorithms when compared
to classical algorithms.
2) The device "mimics quantum interference". No, it's light; it displays quantum interference. Light is photons, quantum particles. Dur.
Yes, light is composed of quantum particles.
So are the electrons in my PC. That doesn't
mean I have a quantum computer.
The device in question works using interference
of light waves, interference which can be
described using a classical wave-only description
of light: i.e. light can be treated as a wave
propogating in a 3-d field of real-valued vectors
that describe the magnitude and direction of
E and H at each point in space.
This is in contrast to quantum interference,
which generally involves the superpostion
of state vectors in a Hilbert space (of complex
valued wave functions).
It wasn't too difficult to decode, but I still
have one question: how did they decide on those
sybols to represent digits? Why not something
simpler, maybe 7-segment LED-style numerals, for example?
You're right. I only went down to 8pt because
that's what the picklist offers, but setting
it to 6pt, it *does* get antialiased. I added
this to the web page.
However, I still think the main problem is not
anti-aliasing (or lack thereof). I haven't
looked at the latest releases, but a typical
experience for me was to download WP for Linux,
or Abiword, install it, type some text at the
default pt size (8 or 12), and think "Yuck!"
With no antialiasing, comparable font size,
and out-of-the box Linux/Windows setup, Windows
fonts look better (IMHO).
You'll find two images of a Word document. The
text varies from 48pt down to 8pt. The left
image is with the default settings for Windows
(NT 4.0 at least). If you
zoom in, you'll see none of the fonts use
antialiasing, regardless of their size.
The image on the right is with "Smooth edges of
screen fonts" set in the Plus! tab of display properties. This turns on antialiasing. However, you'll see that for the smallest
fonts, MS has decided not to use antialiasing.
Now, one can argue as to whether that means small
antialised fonts look bad, but your statements
about Windows seem to be incorrect.
One of things I like most about Shyamalan's
style is how every scene is dense with meaning.
For example, there's color coding, which also played an important
role in the Sixth Sense. Bruce Willis's character, David Dunn, is
associated with the colors yellow and green. If you watch the
movie with this in mind, you'll see it in almost every scene. His
clothes are almost always a combination of these two colors. Even
when he's washing dishes, he has a green shirt and is using a yellow
dish towel. His house is yellow with green trim. His raincoat
and uniform are green with yellow writing (green and yellow are
the colors of the fictional Franklin State University). The
superhero in the comic young Elijah receives as a child is yellow
and green. The superhero action figure David's son Joseph plays
with is green and yellow. And so on.
Samuel Jackson's character, Elijah Price, is associated with the
color purple. In the very first scene of the movie, the baby
Elijah is coddled in a blanket with purple trim. His coat
has a purple lining. Even a casual viewer will have noticed this.
(On a side note, in Judaism, Elijah is the prophet that is expected
to announce the coming of the Messiah...)
The two color schemes are used together in interesting ways.
For example, in the scene in which Elijah and David's wife
Audrey are speaking at the medical clinic, the rug consists of a
checkered pattern of squares: yellow circles in green squares on
the one hand, and purple squares with blue trim on the other. It's
very striking, especially in the aerial shot.
Another color sometimes associated with David and his family
is a dark maroon. His hat at work is this color, for example.
When he tells Elijah of his near drowning as a child, he's wearing
a shirt of this color under his jacket, just showing through.
When Joseph threatens to shoot him, Joseph's shirt is yellow
and maroon, and Audrey has a maroon undershirt.
I think this color is explained by something David says during
his dinner date with Audrey: his favorite color is rust. I think
that's what this color must be -- dark rust. Why rust? It's what
happens when water damages what is otherwise strong iron and steel.
It symbolizes his vulnerability -- water is his weakness.
Another recurring theme, almost the leitmotif of the movie, is
the upside-down shot. It starts with the little girl in the
train who watches David with her head upside down. It continues
when Joseph sees the news of the accident on TV, his head dangling
upside down from the couch.
You see almost the same thing when Elijah is lying on the
staircase in the subway, and sees the man with the gun upside
down. When he receives his first comic book as a child, it's
upside down (and we're given some foreshadowing by the mother:
"They say this one has a surprise ending" ). David and Audrey's
accident leaves their car upside down. There are more examples
but I'll stop.
So what's the point? I think Shyamalan is underscoring the
nature of the plot: he's turned the classic comic book story
upside down: instead of the villain trying to destroy the
superhero, he's actually trying to *create* him.
Perhaps others noticed things I've missed. I'd like to
hear what others think.
-David
What do you mean, "I don't know." ???
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 1
Would it have been fair, in 2000, for the middle class to be able to vote from the comfort of their homes
and jobs, while the poor and homeless had to get to a voting booth? I don't know.
Of course that would not be fair! You shouldn't even have to think twice.
I think it's especially fitting on Veterans Day (here in the States) to remember that men and women have given their lives to make sure all citizens are equally enfranchised.
Before everybody starts to scream about having these guys drawn and quartered, I'd like to remind the esteemed Slashdot
audience about such thing as freedom, and in particular, the freedom of contract. ...
Granted, if any attempt is made to force such textbooks on people, I'd be in the front rows of the lynching mob.
Are these two statements consistent?
Suppose Addison Wesley decides that TCP/IP Illustrated will only be released in a time-limited digital format to which you must resubscribe annually. Your choices then are
Don't buy the book at all
Subscribe to it
Isn't it AW's right to choose the terms under which it will sell its product? Why should they
be forced to sell a one-time-fee copy as well?
And I don't think the free market is going to
solve this problem. If books were a commodity
like butter or sheet metal, I could just go to
another seller whose terms/price I prefer.
But books are not a commodity. TCP/IP Illustrated is a classic, and there's not
really a replacement. I'd be more or less forced
to buy it under their terms, or not at all.
I see two possibilities. Either the publishing
complanies get to do things their way, or the
business model becomes so unpopular that congress
takes legislative action. And that depends on
how powerful the publishing loby is.
Briefly, Lawrence Lessig argues that the Clinton administration's regulatory inaction during AT&T's acquisition of MediaOne will have dire consequences for the future of the Net. Among them:
1) "Customers accessing the Internet through cable will have no guaranteed choice of ISPs. Instead, the cable company will pick the ISP. Rather than allow consumer choice among scores of providers offering broadband Internet service, the cable company will permit just a few ISPs of its own selection."
2) "... cable companies [will] design the next generation of the Internet on the model of the old telephone system--in which the network owner, by dint of choosing the ISP, gets to control the kind of content and use the network will allow. "
Motif isn't as dead as the article would have you believe.
Motif is still the standard for commerical desktop Unix apps.
I can hear the response: "But all the commercial desktop apps that people actually use run on Windows." When it comes to Office Productivity apps, that's more or less true.
But when you're talking about commerical engineering apps, things like EDA and FEA, Unix workstations are still a pretty popular platform. Most of those apps use Motif.
That's precisely my point. MS can afford to pay for bandwidth while streaming video is still young. Once their format has become the standard, they'll stop paying the bandwidth bills. By then it may be too late to break their stranglehold.
Slashdot Mirror
The Wall Street Journal makes press releases available for companies listed in its Company Research pages. The PR departments of these companies write the press releases, not WSJ reporters.
If you follow the link, you'll see that what he really said was "There are 50 million Facebook users who don't know what OpenSocial APIs are...and don't care." [emphasis mine]
This question gets asked here from time to time. For example,
Where Can I Find Beautiful Code?
and when I asked it back in -- my god -- 1998:
Ask Slashdot:Programming Styles
That jumped out at me, too, but I can't decide whether to s/is/are/. I suppose "What the world needs" is indeed singular.
4 0628crbo_books1?040628crbo_books1
Speaking of Lynne Truss, have you read this delightful review of her book?
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/0
-David
I know what you mean. Whoever posted this story definitely sounds like one of those know-it-all types. And what the hell does that username mean, anyway?
The report covers much more than just the proximate cause of the accident. It focuses on the organizational and procedural failures that led to a situation where nobody checked the bolts. Whoever posted this story should have mentioned, that, too.
And as has been mentioned, the title in the summary box substitutes "Human" for "Humane".
Maybe you should borrow an idea from XP and practice pair publishing ...
The device in question works using interference of light waves, interference which can be described using a classical wave-only description of light: i.e. light can be treated as a wave propogating in a 3-d field of real-valued vectors that describe the magnitude and direction of E and H at each point in space.
This is in contrast to quantum interference, which generally involves the superpostion of state vectors in a Hilbert space (of complex valued wave functions).
-David
I remember when I asked a similar question a few years ago. It might be informative to take a gander at it. -David
I'm not convinced by your argument. Each digit symbol in the message is 5x7 pixels. You can easily represent our digit symbols in that resolution.
It wasn't too difficult to decode, but I still
have one question: how did they decide on those
sybols to represent digits? Why not something
simpler, maybe 7-segment LED-style numerals, for example?
However, I still think the main problem is not anti-aliasing (or lack thereof). I haven't looked at the latest releases, but a typical experience for me was to download WP for Linux, or Abiword, install it, type some text at the default pt size (8 or 12), and think "Yuck!"
With no antialiasing, comparable font size, and out-of-the box Linux/Windows setup, Windows fonts look better (IMHO).
The image on the right is with "Smooth edges of screen fonts" set in the Plus! tab of display properties. This turns on antialiasing. However, you'll see that for the smallest fonts, MS has decided not to use antialiasing.
Now, one can argue as to whether that means small antialised fonts look bad, but your statements about Windows seem to be incorrect.
Sorry, accidentally hit submit: my
post has lots of spoilers!
One of things I like most about Shyamalan's
...)
style is how every scene is dense with meaning.
For example, there's color coding, which also played an important
role in the Sixth Sense. Bruce Willis's character, David Dunn, is
associated with the colors yellow and green. If you watch the
movie with this in mind, you'll see it in almost every scene. His
clothes are almost always a combination of these two colors. Even
when he's washing dishes, he has a green shirt and is using a yellow
dish towel. His house is yellow with green trim. His raincoat
and uniform are green with yellow writing (green and yellow are
the colors of the fictional Franklin State University). The
superhero in the comic young Elijah receives as a child is yellow
and green. The superhero action figure David's son Joseph plays
with is green and yellow. And so on.
Samuel Jackson's character, Elijah Price, is associated with the
color purple. In the very first scene of the movie, the baby
Elijah is coddled in a blanket with purple trim. His coat
has a purple lining. Even a casual viewer will have noticed this.
(On a side note, in Judaism, Elijah is the prophet that is expected
to announce the coming of the Messiah
The two color schemes are used together in interesting ways.
For example, in the scene in which Elijah and David's wife
Audrey are speaking at the medical clinic, the rug consists of a
checkered pattern of squares: yellow circles in green squares on
the one hand, and purple squares with blue trim on the other. It's
very striking, especially in the aerial shot.
Another color sometimes associated with David and his family
is a dark maroon. His hat at work is this color, for example.
When he tells Elijah of his near drowning as a child, he's wearing
a shirt of this color under his jacket, just showing through.
When Joseph threatens to shoot him, Joseph's shirt is yellow
and maroon, and Audrey has a maroon undershirt.
I think this color is explained by something David says during
his dinner date with Audrey: his favorite color is rust. I think
that's what this color must be -- dark rust. Why rust? It's what
happens when water damages what is otherwise strong iron and steel.
It symbolizes his vulnerability -- water is his weakness.
Another recurring theme, almost the leitmotif of the movie, is
the upside-down shot. It starts with the little girl in the
train who watches David with her head upside down. It continues
when Joseph sees the news of the accident on TV, his head dangling
upside down from the couch.
You see almost the same thing when Elijah is lying on the
staircase in the subway, and sees the man with the gun upside
down. When he receives his first comic book as a child, it's
upside down (and we're given some foreshadowing by the mother:
"They say this one has a surprise ending" ). David and Audrey's
accident leaves their car upside down. There are more examples
but I'll stop.
So what's the point? I think Shyamalan is underscoring the
nature of the plot: he's turned the classic comic book story
upside down: instead of the villain trying to destroy the
superhero, he's actually trying to *create* him.
Perhaps others noticed things I've missed. I'd like to
hear what others think.
-David
Of course that would not be fair! You shouldn't even have to think twice.
I think it's especially fitting on Veterans Day (here in the States) to remember that men and women have given their lives to make sure all citizens are equally enfranchised.
Let's not take a step backwards, OK?
Suppose Addison Wesley decides that TCP/IP Illustrated will only be released in a time-limited digital format to which you must resubscribe annually. Your choices then are
- Don't buy the book at all
- Subscribe to it
Isn't it AW's right to choose the terms under which it will sell its product? Why should they be forced to sell a one-time-fee copy as well?And I don't think the free market is going to solve this problem. If books were a commodity like butter or sheet metal, I could just go to another seller whose terms/price I prefer.
But books are not a commodity. TCP/IP Illustrated is a classic, and there's not really a replacement. I'd be more or less forced to buy it under their terms, or not at all.
I see two possibilities. Either the publishing complanies get to do things their way, or the business model becomes so unpopular that congress takes legislative action. And that depends on how powerful the publishing loby is.
We'll see.
-David
Did you read the talk?
The section "Unix Components: Small is Beautiful" addresses the Unix component model you describe, and its deficiencies.
-David
If these microorganisms survive, we still won't know whether life "once came to Earth on a meteorite."
I'm wondering what people think about this article, from The New Republic:
http://www.tnr.com/061900/lessig061900. html
Briefly, Lawrence Lessig argues that the Clinton administration's
regulatory inaction during AT&T's acquisition of MediaOne will have
dire consequences for the future of the Net. Among them:
1) "Customers accessing the Internet through cable will have no guaranteed
choice of ISPs. Instead, the cable company will pick the ISP.
Rather than allow consumer choice among scores of providers offering
broadband Internet service, the cable company will permit just a few
ISPs of its own selection."
2) "... cable companies [will] design the next generation of the Internet
on the model of the old telephone system--in which the network owner,
by dint of choosing the ISP, gets to control the kind of content and
use the network will allow. "
Thoughts?
Motif is still the standard for commerical desktop Unix apps.
I can hear the response: "But all the commercial desktop apps that people actually use run on Windows." When it comes to Office Productivity apps, that's more or less true.
But when you're talking about commerical engineering apps, things like EDA and FEA, Unix workstations are still a pretty popular platform. Most of those apps use Motif.
Here's an image of the Unistroke character set.
-David
That's precisely my point. MS can afford to
pay for bandwidth while streaming video
is still young. Once their format has become
the standard, they'll stop paying the bandwidth
bills. By then it may be too late to break
their stranglehold.