But there's been... like... nine Debian derivative distributions to come out in the last year.
How do I know which of these will follow through, which of them will continue to be active in a year, and which ones will have maybe two more minor releases then just sort of peter out? How do I know what will happen to this one, in the long run? How do I justify not just taking the safe route and installing vanilla Debian?
I'd love to have a "user friendly" Debian distro to recommend to people so that they aren't stuck using Mandrake, but when three projects aspiring to that title crop up a year... can I consider them safe to recommend? I just don't know what to do.
the U.S. would now need to use less than 3% of its farmland to get 95% of its electricity demand satisfied by wind power
Does that take into account the amount of energy lost when transporting electricity from the point of generation (farmland) to the point of use (everywhere except farmland)? Also what would the monetary cost of doing this be?
Another nail in the coffin of privatize space ventures. Go Congress!!!
I think what you mean is "another nail in the coffin of privatized American space ventures". Anyone in Europe, meanwhile, interested in privatized space ventures would be dancing for joy at news like this; the U.S. congress would have just handed them a market on a silver platter.
I don't see it on those pages. However I signed up for a GMail account a few days ago, and that was definitely one of the clauses of the clickthrough agreement I was presented with at that time. It appears their clickthrough agreement is different from their posted TOS policy? I guess you'd need to find a gmail invite in order to read the clickthrough...
Many of Google's other functions, like the search, they openly published interfaces to via web services and such. They explicitly disallow in the GMail TOS using web-fetching "screen scrapers" like this thing uses, but I'd imagine their main objection would be not so much the loss of control as that they don't want to be locked into a specific set of HTML-- if they significantly change their page layouts then any program which fetches and reprocesses GMail web pages will break.
But this bloggy thing is a very cool feature and Google might well publish a public web-services interface to GMail as well to allow things like this to happen before the end.
Or maybe Mozilla has decided to learn from the mistakes of Mozilla. Or the mistakes of Netscape Communicator. Once NS3 died out and until Firefox came along the Netscape browser series was just about the archetypical example of detrimental "integration"...
As you have noted, Cheranobyl was entirely avoidable. It happened because of poor oversight, poor practices, and poor funding, all due to the fact Russia's government was basically falling apart brick by brick at that point.
At this point the Chinese government is relatively stable. However, it is hardly trustable. Corruption is common, and the response to failures of governmental systems is-- as was attempted with SARS-- to cover them up rather than attempt to fix them. The seeds of the fundamental problems in the USSR that made Cheronobyl possible are certainly present in China.
I'm very much pro-nuclear power. However I'm rather concerned about the prospect of more nuclear power plants in the hands of zero-transparency stalinist governments.
They want to avoid people posting through open proxies since open proxies are the standard method of ban evasion by trolls. So I assume when you post, they do some quick checks to check for evidence your computer has any sort of open or web-based proxy on it.
I assume if they hit anything, they'll either block you from posting further, or just flag you as a potential "problem user" or something. I suppose the thing to do here would be set up an open proxy on your computer and then attempt to post from it, and see if antyhing happens.
Previous examples of voice recognition in a video game can be seen in the Dreamcast's Seaman, which I have heard nothing but excellent things about, and in the N64's "Hey You Pikachu", which I have heard nothing at all about.
A somewhat more directly relevant example of how we might see voice recognition used in the DS might perhaps be teased from the news about Nintendo's upcoming Mario Party 6, which will contain about eighty-something multiplayer minigames, all entirely based around the useage of a microphone peripheral that will come with the game, and some of which will incorporate voice recognition.
Note to the 98% of the Slashdot populace who does not read the article: Actually, no, in fact, all that Gamestop is reporting is that an analyst named "Boris Markovich" has the THEORY that the Nintendo DS will support voice over IP. There is however no support for this theory whatsoever.
Nintendo representatives have publically stated they think it would be neat if there were a DS web browser that used the DS's built-in wireless ethernet to connect to the internet; however this does not mean that such a browser will ever actually occur, to my knowlege they've said nothing whatsoever about internet voice chat.
Not to give any spoilers or anything, but does this mean that the Clerks "original ending" (it's provided on the DVD as a deleted scene) is now officially non-canon?
It will result in the state settling for some relatively rediculously paltry sum, 50% of which will go to lawyers, and which will only reach consumers in the form of a $50 off coupon on any future Microsoft product they purchase.
Seriously, is there any way whatsoever this case could end in anything resembling a victory for consumers?
is that, like any good capitalist system, it positively leverages greed by putting the public good in the self-interest of moneyed entities.
IBM's doing what they're doing out of self-interest, but the entanglement created by the GPL means that in order to act in self-interest they must indirectly act in the interests of the community as well.
After being constantly screwed up by many of the features of AIM-- such as file transfer, or the interpretation of linebreaks-- being handled in bizarre and totally different ways depending on the exact combination of platform, client, official AIM client version, and presence or absence of a NAT,
and after spending all summer on traditional UNIX machines, watching toc.oscar.aol.com kick me half the times I tried to sign on,
I am once again very enthusiastic about the idea of AIM being dethroned, as long as it isn't by Microsoft. Just make sure iChat handles it, and I'll be so happy.
But it won't happen. I've never used AIM because it was a good program; it never has been. I suspect things are much the same for others. I use AIM not to communicate, but to communicate with a specific set of specific people, and so I have to use AIM because those people are on the AIM network. Google could make the best IM system in the world and that likely wouldn't change. Google could make their IM system interoperate with AOL's and it would probably not help any since I'd still have to deal with the world blowing up every time I want to send a windows user an image.
...how does gmail not provide one interface everywhere? It is a web page.
What you need is an IMAP mail server, and an IMAP webmail client for when you don't have an IMAP software client.
I am trying to discuss the specific case of people who prefer to use the exact same email client on every computer they come into contact with. What you propose is clearly not a solution for these people. Gmail, or ssh (which is what I use) is.
Is that some people like being able to use a single email interface whereever they are. Gmail provides this. Using a normal IMAP client would provide extra features such as a tray notifier, but would remove the single-interface advantage. The gmail tray notifier allows users to reclaim this one advantage of fullscale email applications, without having to give up their unified interface. This notifier will not be available everywhere; however this does not matter, since the notifier is tangential and external to the actual mail client (gmail) itself.
Slashdot Mirror
But there's been ... like ... nine Debian derivative distributions to come out in the last year.
How do I know which of these will follow through, which of them will continue to be active in a year, and which ones will have maybe two more minor releases then just sort of peter out? How do I know what will happen to this one, in the long run? How do I justify not just taking the safe route and installing vanilla Debian?
I'd love to have a "user friendly" Debian distro to recommend to people so that they aren't stuck using Mandrake, but when three projects aspiring to that title crop up a year... can I consider them safe to recommend? I just don't know what to do.
This story is interesting and I don't want to have to go to politics.slashdot.org.
You know... come to think of it, that's probably a better question than the one I asked.
Since electricity can't be stored in large amounts
Could hydrogen fuel cells potentially change this?
the U.S. would now need to use less than 3% of its farmland to get 95% of its electricity demand satisfied by wind power
Does that take into account the amount of energy lost when transporting electricity from the point of generation (farmland) to the point of use (everywhere except farmland)? Also what would the monetary cost of doing this be?
I'm still far, far happier with my little cardboard box containing a digitally remastered but unaltered Star Wars Trilogy on VHS tapes.
Another nail in the coffin of privatize space ventures. Go Congress!!!
I think what you mean is "another nail in the coffin of privatized American space ventures". Anyone in Europe, meanwhile, interested in privatized space ventures would be dancing for joy at news like this; the U.S. congress would have just handed them a market on a silver platter.
I don't see it on those pages. However I signed up for a GMail account a few days ago, and that was definitely one of the clauses of the clickthrough agreement I was presented with at that time. It appears their clickthrough agreement is different from their posted TOS policy? I guess you'd need to find a gmail invite in order to read the clickthrough...
What, Google create an free, optional service that you aren't personally interested in? How dare they?
Many of Google's other functions, like the search, they openly published interfaces to via web services and such. They explicitly disallow in the GMail TOS using web-fetching "screen scrapers" like this thing uses, but I'd imagine their main objection would be not so much the loss of control as that they don't want to be locked into a specific set of HTML-- if they significantly change their page layouts then any program which fetches and reprocesses GMail web pages will break.
But this bloggy thing is a very cool feature and Google might well publish a public web-services interface to GMail as well to allow things like this to happen before the end.
Or maybe Mozilla has decided to learn from the mistakes of Mozilla. Or the mistakes of Netscape Communicator. Once NS3 died out and until Firefox came along the Netscape browser series was just about the archetypical example of detrimental "integration"...
Songs bought from Windows Media Player based music stores work in and only in Windows Media applications such as WMP.
Songs bought from the iTunes Music Store work in and only in Quicktime applications such as iTunes.
Songs bought from mp3 based music stores work anywhere.
Didn't we all know this already?
As you have noted, Cheranobyl was entirely avoidable. It happened because of poor oversight, poor practices, and poor funding, all due to the fact Russia's government was basically falling apart brick by brick at that point.
At this point the Chinese government is relatively stable. However, it is hardly trustable. Corruption is common, and the response to failures of governmental systems is-- as was attempted with SARS-- to cover them up rather than attempt to fix them. The seeds of the fundamental problems in the USSR that made Cheronobyl possible are certainly present in China.
I'm very much pro-nuclear power. However I'm rather concerned about the prospect of more nuclear power plants in the hands of zero-transparency stalinist governments.
It just happens there's a gray area between "banning something" and "allowing something to occur without oversight".
the only way you can legally download music for the iPod is through iTunes?
There are a large number of sources from which you may legally download music for the iPod, for example here.
They want to avoid people posting through open proxies since open proxies are the standard method of ban evasion by trolls. So I assume when you post, they do some quick checks to check for evidence your computer has any sort of open or web-based proxy on it.
I assume if they hit anything, they'll either block you from posting further, or just flag you as a potential "problem user" or something. I suppose the thing to do here would be set up an open proxy on your computer and then attempt to post from it, and see if antyhing happens.
Previous examples of voice recognition in a video game can be seen in the Dreamcast's Seaman, which I have heard nothing but excellent things about, and in the N64's "Hey You Pikachu", which I have heard nothing at all about.
A somewhat more directly relevant example of how we might see voice recognition used in the DS might perhaps be teased from the news about Nintendo's upcoming Mario Party 6, which will contain about eighty-something multiplayer minigames, all entirely based around the useage of a microphone peripheral that will come with the game, and some of which will incorporate voice recognition.
Note to the 98% of the Slashdot populace who does not read the article: Actually, no, in fact, all that Gamestop is reporting is that an analyst named "Boris Markovich" has the THEORY that the Nintendo DS will support voice over IP. There is however no support for this theory whatsoever.
Nintendo representatives have publically stated they think it would be neat if there were a DS web browser that used the DS's built-in wireless ethernet to connect to the internet; however this does not mean that such a browser will ever actually occur, to my knowlege they've said nothing whatsoever about internet voice chat.
Not to give any spoilers or anything, but does this mean that the Clerks "original ending" (it's provided on the DVD as a deleted scene) is now officially non-canon?
(I'M NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE HERE TODAY...)
It will result in the state settling for some relatively rediculously paltry sum, 50% of which will go to lawyers, and which will only reach consumers in the form of a $50 off coupon on any future Microsoft product they purchase.
Seriously, is there any way whatsoever this case could end in anything resembling a victory for consumers?
is that, like any good capitalist system, it positively leverages greed by putting the public good in the self-interest of moneyed entities.
IBM's doing what they're doing out of self-interest, but the entanglement created by the GPL means that in order to act in self-interest they must indirectly act in the interests of the community as well.
After being constantly screwed up by many of the features of AIM-- such as file transfer, or the interpretation of linebreaks-- being handled in bizarre and totally different ways depending on the exact combination of platform, client, official AIM client version, and presence or absence of a NAT,
and after spending all summer on traditional UNIX machines, watching toc.oscar.aol.com kick me half the times I tried to sign on,
I am once again very enthusiastic about the idea of AIM being dethroned, as long as it isn't by Microsoft. Just make sure iChat handles it, and I'll be so happy.
But it won't happen. I've never used AIM because it was a good program; it never has been. I suspect things are much the same for others. I use AIM not to communicate, but to communicate with a specific set of specific people, and so I have to use AIM because those people are on the AIM network. Google could make the best IM system in the world and that likely wouldn't change. Google could make their IM system interoperate with AOL's and it would probably not help any since I'd still have to deal with the world blowing up every time I want to send a windows user an image.
...how does gmail not provide one interface everywhere? It is a web page.
What you need is an IMAP mail server, and an IMAP webmail client for when you don't have an IMAP software client.
I am trying to discuss the specific case of people who prefer to use the exact same email client on every computer they come into contact with. What you propose is clearly not a solution for these people. Gmail, or ssh (which is what I use) is.
Is that some people like being able to use a single email interface whereever they are. Gmail provides this. Using a normal IMAP client would provide extra features such as a tray notifier, but would remove the single-interface advantage. The gmail tray notifier allows users to reclaim this one advantage of fullscale email applications, without having to give up their unified interface. This notifier will not be available everywhere; however this does not matter, since the notifier is tangential and external to the actual mail client (gmail) itself.
I just fricking hate webmail.