Of course there are errors in printed sources. CRC Tables, though, were around for a very long time and would likely have had most errors corrected.
I remember using it a lot as an undergrad way back when. But I have to say I was happy when electronic calculators went mainstream and I didn't have to be looking stuff up so much.
I'm not even sure unions exist to serve their constituents. It seems they exist to take money from their members, to be used to increase the power of the union leadership, who only care about themselves.
half-assing 5, 6, 7 hobbies rather than be really good at 1-2-3.
I'm saying this more than a decade later, as a small time employer, but I notice that lack of focus is usually a sign of unproductivity or true passion. They're are people who go to all the meeting and will even volunteer to be a body heading some project -- but it's like they are filling checkmarks of some bucket list and rollcall more than actually doing something.
This is a really insightful comment. A lot of it I think is a "keeping up with the Joneses" thing. The other kids go to soccer and piano and judo so my kid has to do it to, even if he has no interest, let alone passion.
Better to do something you love and do it well than to do something you're "expected" to do not out of necessity but because others are doing it for some sort of "status" that you have to have, too.
Dancing cursors and animated icons and the like are (at least to me) an irritant for the most part. Things like progress bars actually give you useful information.
"Hip" stuff --- all the tile nonsense in Windows 8 and up, for instance. Maybe I don't have the right definition of "hip" but for some reason I see the tiles and am reminded of hipsters who proclaim avant-garde is good simply because it's avant-garde; and because they're right maybe 1% of the time they think they are always right.
You have a good point. There are Emacs packages for unexpected things. Emacs, for instance, is my favorite audio player (the EMMS package among others are available) and that isn't even an extreme example.
Can you make a screen cast with stuff like this and explain it?
If I understand you correctly, yes. Emacs has good options for creating excellent presentation material. Not "slick" in the extreme way that can be done with PowerPoint, but presentations that communicate the material effectively, rather than just being overly showy (which, I think, distracts from the material).
But I need to clarify two points.
1) Emacs doesn't do things like, for instance, edit movies or do Disney-style animation. You will always need specialized tools when you reach some point.
2) While Emacs can help make great presentations (such as with the LaTex Beamer class), there is a serious learning curve. I won't deny that this will eliminate 90%, maybe even 99%, of potential users. If you want something simple, this isn't it.
On the other hand, if you do go to the trouble to get good at Emacs[1], you can get an amazing amount of work done with it.
[1] YMMV but I would say a year of experience is needed to reach an expert level. Sounds like a long, long time. But how much experience do you need to be good at, say, golf? Or French (for an English speaker)? Some things take time but are worth it.
To me a computer is a tool and I find arbitrary change in UI irritating.
And +2 to your comment. I use a computer to Get Stuff Done. Hipsterism in the UI (look at Windows 8 if you want to see the worst of it) works against me, not for me.
I don't mind a bit of style, but really, a plain old boring interface that enhances my ability to work is what I want.
Maybe that's why I like text-mode interfaces (I'm a big Emacs user). Text mode is dull and boring but it lets me do my work effectively.
Granted, everyone doesn't need or want to go to such a basic interface level. But how helpful are dancing cursors, animated icons, illegible fonts, and all the other "hip" things? My computer interface isn't a fashion statement, it's a tool!
I have every right to use my computer in any legal way I see fit. If I want to block ads I can do that. Nothing immoral or illegal about it in any way.
If sites that depend on ads to exist go away because too many people block their ads, that's life. We all make choices. If I block ads, I take on whatever risk (if you can call it that) is associated. I find the risk of "losing" a site much less than the real risk of being fed a stream of ads that may possibly be laden with malware, although I'm willing to view safe and non-obnoxious ads (as I determine them to be by my own judgment). I definitely read ads that are relevant to me, which unfortunately is about.00001 % of them (percentage approximate!).
The bottom line is that it's a tough world. Sites search for business models. Users search for a satisfactory experience. These goals don't always intersect. Users make decisions. Site operators make decisions. We all live with the results.
I love Gnus[1] and have used it for years. However 2016 may not be the year of Gnus on the desktop.
[1] It does everything the article asks for: plain text composition, multiple feeds/accounts, filtering, not one monolithic file, folder flexibility, ease-of-use... oh, wait. Hold the phone on that last one. There is, um, a learning curve.
I realize the issue is complex (I was once a landlord myself), but while landlords have legitimate interests, a lot of them are just plain greedy and a certain percentage are downright dishonest.
I always tried to be fair with tenants and work with them. I had a few bad tenants, of course, like anyone does, but by and large with almost everyone we could mutually work things out when necessary.
But then, I was only looking for a reasonable return on investment, not trying to squeeze every cent out of people who often didn't have a lot in the first place.
Their announcement is that they have remote desktop working via a mobile phone that can be connected to a TV/monitor in a pinch to work with it at full scale.
Oh, you mean like Teamviewer (and probably others). Still nothing new here except hype.
I respect your right to your opinion, based on your own criteria in your own environment, but I find LibreOffice excellent. It does everything I need 100% of the time. I've done anything from letters to 500 page books and it's all been good.
This kind of reminds me about IBM announcing a source-level debugger for the (now ancient) AS400 platform, years and years after GDB and countless others, and then hailing it as a great innovation.
A remote desktop? Really? Woo-hoo, how original! What will Microsoft "discover" next? Has Slashdot become a Microsoft shill too?
I can see that if there are cultural or societal issues that make women less likely to be entrepreneurial, then perhaps an event of this nature can send a message that women do indeed participate and compete in such endeavors. That's all well and good and I have no problem with it. Maybe it will encourage more women to cast aside incorrect stereotypes.
But as others have said, let's never send a message that women aren't as good and need extra help to be successful. That's horribly condescending, unfair, and just plain untrue.
Harming the dog in any way (unless the dog actually attacks you) is neither the answer nor is it right. I once heard an experienced trainer say "We train the owners as much as the dog."
Slashdot Mirror
I have trouble believing it was all luck. There were a lot of safeguards.
Some things went wrong but there was never escalation into a nuclear attack. Seems like it all worked out. Is that luck?
I don't know the answer for sure, no one does, but I think we may, in the interests of making a political statement, skew the analysis somewhat.
Of course there are errors in printed sources. CRC Tables, though, were around for a very long time and would likely have had most errors corrected.
I remember using it a lot as an undergrad way back when. But I have to say I was happy when electronic calculators went mainstream and I didn't have to be looking stuff up so much.
I'm not even sure unions exist to serve their constituents. It seems they exist to take money from their members, to be used to increase the power of the union leadership, who only care about themselves.
half-assing 5, 6, 7 hobbies rather than be really good at 1-2-3.
I'm saying this more than a decade later, as a small time employer, but I notice that lack of focus is usually a sign of unproductivity or true passion. They're are people who go to all the meeting and will even volunteer to be a body heading some project -- but it's like they are filling checkmarks of some bucket list and rollcall more than actually doing something.
This is a really insightful comment. A lot of it I think is a "keeping up with the Joneses" thing. The other kids go to soccer and piano and judo so my kid has to do it to, even if he has no interest, let alone passion.
Better to do something you love and do it well than to do something you're "expected" to do not out of necessity but because others are doing it for some sort of "status" that you have to have, too.
Oh, I see ... there are screencasts of various Emacs tricks/packages on youtube.
Dancing cursors and animated icons and the like are (at least to me) an irritant for the most part. Things like progress bars actually give you useful information.
"Hip" stuff --- all the tile nonsense in Windows 8 and up, for instance. Maybe I don't have the right definition of "hip" but for some reason I see the tiles and am reminded of hipsters who proclaim avant-garde is good simply because it's avant-garde; and because they're right maybe 1% of the time they think they are always right.
You have a good point. There are Emacs packages for unexpected things. Emacs, for instance, is my favorite audio player (the EMMS package among others are available) and that isn't even an extreme example.
Can you make a screen cast with stuff like this and explain it?
If I understand you correctly, yes. Emacs has good options for creating excellent presentation material. Not "slick" in the extreme way that can be done with PowerPoint, but presentations that communicate the material effectively, rather than just being overly showy (which, I think, distracts from the material).
But I need to clarify two points.
1) Emacs doesn't do things like, for instance, edit movies or do Disney-style animation. You will always need specialized tools when you reach some point.
2) While Emacs can help make great presentations (such as with the LaTex Beamer class), there is a serious learning curve. I won't deny that this will eliminate 90%, maybe even 99%, of potential users. If you want something simple, this isn't it.
On the other hand, if you do go to the trouble to get good at Emacs[1], you can get an amazing amount of work done with it.
[1] YMMV but I would say a year of experience is needed to reach an expert level. Sounds like a long, long time. But how much experience do you need to be good at, say, golf? Or French (for an English speaker)? Some things take time but are worth it.
+1 to that.
To me a computer is a tool and I find arbitrary change in UI irritating.
And +2 to your comment. I use a computer to Get Stuff Done. Hipsterism in the UI (look at Windows 8 if you want to see the worst of it) works against me, not for me.
I don't mind a bit of style, but really, a plain old boring interface that enhances my ability to work is what I want.
Maybe that's why I like text-mode interfaces (I'm a big Emacs user). Text mode is dull and boring but it lets me do my work effectively.
Granted, everyone doesn't need or want to go to such a basic interface level. But how helpful are dancing cursors, animated icons, illegible fonts, and all the other "hip" things? My computer interface isn't a fashion statement, it's a tool!
I have every right to use my computer in any legal way I see fit. If I want to block ads I can do that. Nothing immoral or illegal about it in any way.
If sites that depend on ads to exist go away because too many people block their ads, that's life. We all make choices. If I block ads, I take on whatever risk (if you can call it that) is associated. I find the risk of "losing" a site much less than the real risk of being fed a stream of ads that may possibly be laden with malware, although I'm willing to view safe and non-obnoxious ads (as I determine them to be by my own judgment). I definitely read ads that are relevant to me, which unfortunately is about .00001 % of them (percentage approximate!).
The bottom line is that it's a tough world. Sites search for business models. Users search for a satisfactory experience. These goals don't always intersect. Users make decisions. Site operators make decisions. We all live with the results.
That's why Gnus is so amazing...
I love Gnus[1] and have used it for years. However 2016 may not be the year of Gnus on the desktop.
[1] It does everything the article asks for: plain text composition, multiple feeds/accounts, filtering, not one monolithic file, folder flexibility, ease-of-use ... oh, wait. Hold the phone on that last one. There is, um, a learning curve.
Long COMPILE times? What, you're (frequently?) building versions of LibreOffice? Whatever for?
Compile times for LibreOffice are of little interest to 99.99% of the users. (And who knows what compile times for MS Office are anyhow?)
Doesn't "render" Excel properly? What does that mean? Are you talking about VB macros or something? Won't open your PowerPoint? Huh?
If you're already using MS Office for your work, I don't see your point.
I realize the issue is complex (I was once a landlord myself), but while landlords have legitimate interests, a lot of them are just plain greedy and a certain percentage are downright dishonest.
I always tried to be fair with tenants and work with them. I had a few bad tenants, of course, like anyone does, but by and large with almost everyone we could mutually work things out when necessary.
But then, I was only looking for a reasonable return on investment, not trying to squeeze every cent out of people who often didn't have a lot in the first place.
These are companies run by human beings
You sure that Comcast is run by human beings or just greedy clones?
I would say that the original response to DataBreach was probably shear ignorance.
Shear ignorance ... a truly cutting remark.
You may (accurately) mock them, but hey, this story has given Newsweek more page views than they've gotten all year!
Oh, you mean they've doubled their count to about 12?
Their announcement is that they have remote desktop working via a mobile phone that can be connected to a TV/monitor in a pinch to work with it at full scale.
Oh, you mean like Teamviewer (and probably others). Still nothing new here except hype.
LibreOffice on the desktop is mediocre
I respect your right to your opinion, based on your own criteria in your own environment, but I find LibreOffice excellent. It does everything I need 100% of the time. I've done anything from letters to 500 page books and it's all been good.
This kind of reminds me about IBM announcing a source-level debugger for the (now ancient) AS400 platform, years and years after GDB and countless others, and then hailing it as a great innovation.
A remote desktop? Really? Woo-hoo, how original! What will Microsoft "discover" next? Has Slashdot become a Microsoft shill too?
I can see that if there are cultural or societal issues that make women less likely to be entrepreneurial, then perhaps an event of this nature can send a message that women do indeed participate and compete in such endeavors. That's all well and good and I have no problem with it. Maybe it will encourage more women to cast aside incorrect stereotypes.
But as others have said, let's never send a message that women aren't as good and need extra help to be successful. That's horribly condescending, unfair, and just plain untrue.
And it will create jobs, too.
The real threat to our way of life is encrypted pigeons.
Eating meat is about the most destructive thing we do to the environment by far
I hadn't heard this one before. I guess we all had better stick to alfalfa sprouts and organic broccoli.
Tell me, in that perfect green world, is fish permissible?
Or maybe the best thing would be for everyone to just die off and restore the balance?
Harming the dog in any way (unless the dog actually attacks you) is neither the answer nor is it right. I once heard an experienced trainer say "We train the owners as much as the dog."