Packaged with seeds in the tongue doesn't sound too promising either.
People wash sneakers. (Well, ok, Moms wash sneakers). And it rains.
hmm, well they could encapsulate the tongue-seeds in some of the "biodegradable plastic" from the soles; then they wouldn't sprout until a shoe was well and truly kaput...
I quite often BCC myself at another address, e.g., if it's a mail I'm sending from work, but I want a copy in my non-work mail account too.
Less often, but still occasionally, I'll BCC somebody so they also have a record, and I don't necessarily want the recipient to know -- you know, the actual intended use of BCC header...
BCC is certainly useful, if not something you typically use on every email. Sure the masses are ignorant of it, but they're ignorant of vast numbers of useful features.... that's certainly no reason to get rid of it (unless perhaps you're making a dumbed-down lightweight client and every byte counts...)!
I see that my browser is unique among the 1.4 million tested, with 20 bits of identifying information. Knowing my user name isn't going to compromise my privacy all that much more, especially compared to how Facebook screws your privacy every day.
Cute... but of course all you have to do to change your identity is install a new font!
Hmm, "Ain't It Cool News" are a bunch of idiots, so clearly if they love Quicktime it must suck. Similarly, WMV has "windows" in the acronym, so it sucks pretty much by definition; that's out as well.
That leaves webm as the only thing that doesn't suck. Good work, Google!
There's a starbucks near my house that gets extremely crowded sometimes (often with students studying "traditional" materials), and they address this problem in what seems a much more sensible way: At "likely to be crowded" times, they write in big letters on the menu chalkboard something like "When the cafe is crowded, please do not sit and study for long periods." I presume they back this up with some polite nudging when somebody is obviously ignoring the request.
Importantly, I think, they also aren't anal about it -- when it isn't crowded, they really have no problem with you sitting there for a long time.
(As it happens, they also don't offer free wifi, but that isn't the source of the problem)
Note that this video is from "ReasonTV", AKA, The Reason Foundation -- one of the most prolific sources of anti-rail propaganda and misinformation in the U.S.
It doesn't matter if it goes 250mph if it sits on the track for an hour waiting for right of way. Granted, this is just one experience, but from reading up after it happened, it seems to be the norm .... Sure, you can build a high speed train, but if its run by Amtrak and exists in this countries rail system mentality, it will quickly become worthless. Fix the real issues.
Er, a the whole point is to "fix the real issues," at a far more fundamental level than has been tried in the past. Because of the insanely awful state of U.S. rail infrastructure, doing it right requires a lot of capital investment.
Much of the money will go to HSR projects that actually get it, like CAHSR. They will build dedicated lines and use real world-class equipment (not the awful overweight stuff gimped by clueless FRA regulations that's typical in the U.S.); it will not be run by Amtrak, and won't be sharing with freight lines. As a result, it will be real high-speed rail.
I've no doubt that some of the money will go to "lesser" projects, but that's politics in the U.S.
[Unfortunately, the Republicans and anti-rail think-tanks like the Reason Foundation will be making a concerted effort to convince everybody that HSR simply "can't happen," and "won't work in the U.S." They are wrong, but they are very well funded, and very media savvy.]
It doesn't matter if it goes 250mph if it sits on the track for an hour waiting for right of way. Granted, this is just one experience, but from reading up after it happened, it seems to be the norm .... Sure, you can build a high speed train, but if its run by Amtrak and exists in this countries rail system mentality, it will quickly become worthless. Fix the real issues.
Er, a the whole point is to "fix the real issues," at a far more fundamental level than has been tried in the past. Because of the insanely awful state of U.S. rail infrastructure, doing it right requires a lot of capital investment.
Much of the money will go to HSR projects that actually get it, like CAHSR. They will build dedicated lines and use real world-class equipment (not the awful overweight stuff gimped by clueless FRA regulations that's typical in the U.S.); it will not be run by Amtrak, and won't be sharing with freight lines. As a result, it will be real high-speed rail.
I've no doubt that some of the money will go to "lesser" projects, but that's politics in the U.S.
[Unfortunately, the Republicans and anti-rail think-tanks like the Reason Foundation will be making a concerted effort to convince everybody that HSR simply "can't happen," and "won't work in the U.S." They are wrong, but they are very well funded, and very media savvy.]
If you upload full size images to Flickr, etc, you're really just asking for someone to steal it and use it without your permission. So if you're that worried about it... don't use Flickr. But if you absolutely must, then you can take the annoying step of putting a watermark across the whole image, or, if you don't like to deface your work, there's also no reason you can't downsize the image to something like 800px at a low to medium DPI which makes it practically unusable for print.
Of course these techniques also make the picture less usable for its intended use, being viewed on the web...
I loathe the idiots on flickr who do that kind of crap -- I can't count the number of times I've wanted to see the details in some picture, but I can't because the photographer (who in most cases clearly likes the idea of his photo being viewed) only uploaded a low-resolution version of it. Watermarks are even worse, as they actually make the picture ugly.
The chances of a random picture being used on a Hungrariarn billboard are vanishingly small, so gimping every picture just in case it happens seems completely absurd.
Sites like flickr are convenient, and it's easy to share with family and friends that way. If a stranger or two sees them, who cares -- most family photos are mundane and innocuous (and indeed I'll bet that most people are proud of their family).
There are plenty of paranoid types on slashdot, who encrypt their root disk even though there's zero chance anybody cares about the information there, but not everybody is that way...
I must say, it's kinda nice of Capcom to give such a clear and unambiguous reason not to buy "Bionic Commando Rearmed 2" -- often it's kind of hard to decide whether to buy a game ("is it worth the money?".. "do I trust reviewer X?"... "should I finish up those other games first...?"), but no such problem here....
Yeah, I too like Apple, and I don't have a problem with their business practices in most cases. Hey, you make a super popular device, you deserve to profit from it, plain and simple.
I don't think too many would disagree.
What people don't like, though, is when you make a super-popular device and seize the moment to distort the market and attempt to quash future competition...
And I'll never buy another eBook the first time I see an ad in one. We balance out. Books are about immersion, and having ads will ruin it for me.
It seems like it depends critically on the presentation and content of the ads.
Many (physical) paperbacks I buy have little fall-out inserts advertising other releases by the same publisher, book clubs, etc. I don't mind these -- I glance them, sometimes read them, usually toss them out (though the mini-catalogues of other books are actually useful enough to keep in some cases). They're easily ignored, not in my face, often informative, and topical.
Ebook adverts with these same properties wouldn't be too objectionable I think.
OTOH, I imagine the likelihood of ebook publishers not screwing it up is very low -- there's this weird idea amongst publishing entities (not just books but movies, music, etc) that any change of medium means that all the rules change, that any and all conventions and lessons learned from the old medium should be tossed out, and that the new medium is carte blanche to viciously ream the consumer while bleeding him dry.
One would hope that consumers (and regulators, where appropriate) would disabuse publishers of this notion...
Yup, I agree, the new code is really broken in a lot of ways, though it's hard to tell whether it's bugs, or simply bad design.
I actually really liked the immediately previous incarnation of slashdot -- it was much nicer than "traditional" slashdot, because many things like expanding comments were dynamic and didn't require jumping to a new page (which I used to hate about the traditional code), but also seemed to be reasonably solid and well thought-out. This new slashdot is basically a regression in almost every way (except that perhaps the actual code is cleaner, but that's a bit hard for me to tell).
Hopefully all the problems with the new system are just shallow bugs and easily-rectified design mistakes, which will be quickly shaken out...hopefully...haha..."
Have you seen where the "Show X More Comments" button is? I hope there's some way to just get all the comments without having to scroll all the way down again and again (if there is, I haven't found it yet).
It's especially silly because there are now two non-scrolling fixed panes (sidebar and topbar), but they're filled with relatively useless and redundant links (and lots of empty space), whereas the two controls that would actually be pretty useful if always available -- the "show more comments" button and the "minimum score" slider -- are relegated to inconvenient positions at the end/beginning of the scrolling page!
My impression is that the person who did the redesign is not so bad at graphical design (it's fairly clean and polished looking), but isn't very experienced with UI / usability issues...
Look, Arial is not a particularly good on-screen font. I have my browser configured so that CSS "sans-serif" resolves to Verdana, and that is for good reason. Other websites respect it - why can't Slashdot? In fact, it could be configured that way... up until this brand new design. Please don't hardcode font family, at least not for article text and comments
+1 on this -- it was always nice that slashdot respected the user's font preferences (many sites don't), and it's very bad that the new design doesn't do this.
(attractive design: good; inflexible design: bad; luckily, attractive and flexible are not incompatible!)
Some day we'll have true holographic projection on an economical scale. At that point, if I'm still alive, I'll appreciate 3D. Until then, I'll have to stick to standard 2D theaters.
With huge films, this generally isn't a problem, as there are generally a few theaters showing both versions, so one can choose, but with mid-level films (e.g., recently Tron), it's often the case that only a single theater nearby is showing the film -- and if it's the 3d version then I end up paying more than usual to see a crappy substandard film (noticeably dimmer than normal films, need to wear awkward and uncomfortable glasses).
I'd rather they just raise the price and show the 2d version (call it the "haha aren't you lucky we didn't go with 3d!" tax...)!
I wonder what proportion of "fast" connections are actually fast though...
I live in Japan, and my internet connection is nominally 20mbps -- but in actuality, I usually get less than 3mpbs, because it's a ADSL connection, and I'm just a bit too far from the central office. I understand that in many cases cable internet also has issues with the real speed not living up to what's advertised.
Granted, there are multiple other providers I could use that have their own infrastructure (fiber-to-home, cable, etc), and maybe they're better, but still, I think I'm probably counted as a statistic ("has 20mpbs connection!") somewhere when maybe I shouldn't be...
[I don't switch because this connection is really cheap, and I just don't care enough; it's "fast enough" for me.]
Also, stating that the IETF cooperates closely with the ISO does not imply that creating an IETF standard somehow grants ISO standard status.
Indeed. But the notion that a standard must be from ISO to "count", is of course incorrect -- the canonical example being TCP/IP, which utterly trounced the competing ISO-standardized protocols.
Worse, the people who need to be excited about WebM (big corporate media) will actively be repulsed by the FSF's stamp of approval. ...
The FSF putting their stamp on it is just the final nail in WebM's coffin. Stick a fork in it. It's done. Google has really screwed the pooch on this one.
Not true. I know that yer average Slashdot MS fanboy hates the FSF and the GPL with a passion, but they don't really represent reality.
Despite the FSF's political positions, boycotts, etc, these simply aren't the sort of thing that register on a corporation -- corporations don't care about anything that doesn't affect them, and these activities by the FSF, while intended to have some effect... largely don't. Neither do they care about RMS's hairstyle; not only are they very unlikely to have noticed it, but it just doesn't matter to them, however much it infuriates some people on Slashdot.
The bulk of large companies will simply have no idea who the FSF is, so won't be influenced by the what the FSF thinks about webm (other than it being another entry in a list).
Companies who do know who the FSF will be largely those who have some technical connection with it -- I work for a (very) large company, and the FSF is thought of as "the place where gcc comes from" around here -- and will thus essentially have a productive relationship of some sort with them. These companies will, by and large, be positively influenced by any FSF recommendation of webm (if they notice), in the sense that "somebody we know about recommends webm".
I find that to be disappointing and unexpected. Keep in mind that I do not know what it takes to create a browser or what is involved in passing the Acid3 test.
Er, then why do you care? The correlation between acid3 results and actual usability is questionable at best, and "100% on acid" is a goal that's useful mainly for PR purposes. There's nothing wrong with good PR, of course, but I don't fault the FF devs for prioritizing changes that actually help usability instead...
[This has long been a major criticism of the acid tests -- such tests are interesting mainly to developers, who know how to interpret the results.]
Slashdot Mirror
Packaged with seeds in the tongue doesn't sound too promising either. People wash sneakers. (Well, ok, Moms wash sneakers). And it rains.
hmm, well they could encapsulate the tongue-seeds in some of the "biodegradable plastic" from the soles; then they wouldn't sprout until a shoe was well and truly kaput...
I quite often BCC myself at another address, e.g., if it's a mail I'm sending from work, but I want a copy in my non-work mail account too.
Less often, but still occasionally, I'll BCC somebody so they also have a record, and I don't necessarily want the recipient to know -- you know, the actual intended use of BCC header...
BCC is certainly useful, if not something you typically use on every email. Sure the masses are ignorant of it, but they're ignorant of vast numbers of useful features.... that's certainly no reason to get rid of it (unless perhaps you're making a dumbed-down lightweight client and every byte counts...)!
We are rocket scientists: MYTH BUSTED!
...
Good thing we've got that camera crew in lunar orbit ready to capture it in ultra slow motion..."
Eh? The courts most certainly have invalidated patents before...
A lot of granted patents probably wouldn't stand up to the higher level of scrutiny given by a court.
And the installed fonts, and the screen resolution and color depth and the dozens of other factors that combined allow you to be tracked.
Try this web site for an idea of how these factors can (in combination) uniquely identify you:
https://panopticlick.eff.org/
I see that my browser is unique among the 1.4 million tested, with 20 bits of identifying information. Knowing my user name isn't going to compromise my privacy all that much more, especially compared to how Facebook screws your privacy every day.
Cute ... but of course all you have to do to change your identity is install a new font!
Hmm, "Ain't It Cool News" are a bunch of idiots, so clearly if they love Quicktime it must suck. Similarly, WMV has "windows" in the acronym, so it sucks pretty much by definition; that's out as well.
That leaves webm as the only thing that doesn't suck. Good work, Google!
Yeah, it seems a silly policy.
There's a starbucks near my house that gets extremely crowded sometimes (often with students studying "traditional" materials), and they address this problem in what seems a much more sensible way: At "likely to be crowded" times, they write in big letters on the menu chalkboard something like "When the cafe is crowded, please do not sit and study for long periods." I presume they back this up with some polite nudging when somebody is obviously ignoring the request.
Importantly, I think, they also aren't anal about it -- when it isn't crowded, they really have no problem with you sitting there for a long time.
(As it happens, they also don't offer free wifi, but that isn't the source of the problem)
Note that this video is from "ReasonTV", AKA, The Reason Foundation -- one of the most prolific sources of anti-rail propaganda and misinformation in the U.S.
They get a lot of funding from airlines, oil companies, and car manufacturers...
It doesn't matter if it goes 250mph if it sits on the track for an hour waiting for right of way. Granted, this is just one experience, but from reading up after it happened, it seems to be the norm
....
Sure, you can build a high speed train, but if its run by Amtrak and exists in this countries rail system mentality, it will quickly become worthless. Fix the real issues.
Er, a the whole point is to "fix the real issues," at a far more fundamental level than has been tried in the past. Because of the insanely awful state of U.S. rail infrastructure, doing it right requires a lot of capital investment.
Much of the money will go to HSR projects that actually get it, like CAHSR. They will build dedicated lines and use real world-class equipment (not the awful overweight stuff gimped by clueless FRA regulations that's typical in the U.S.); it will not be run by Amtrak, and won't be sharing with freight lines. As a result, it will be real high-speed rail.
I've no doubt that some of the money will go to "lesser" projects, but that's politics in the U.S.
[Unfortunately, the Republicans and anti-rail think-tanks like the Reason Foundation will be making a concerted effort to convince everybody that HSR simply "can't happen," and "won't work in the U.S." They are wrong, but they are very well funded, and very media savvy.]
It doesn't matter if it goes 250mph if it sits on the track for an hour waiting for right of way. Granted, this is just one experience, but from reading up after it happened, it seems to be the norm
....
Sure, you can build a high speed train, but if its run by Amtrak and exists in this countries rail system mentality, it will quickly become worthless. Fix the real issues.
Er, a the whole point is to "fix the real issues," at a far more fundamental level than has been tried in the past. Because of the insanely awful state of U.S. rail infrastructure, doing it right requires a lot of capital investment.
Much of the money will go to HSR projects that actually get it, like CAHSR. They will build dedicated lines and use real world-class equipment (not the awful overweight stuff gimped by clueless FRA regulations that's typical in the U.S.); it will not be run by Amtrak, and won't be sharing with freight lines. As a result, it will be real high-speed rail.
I've no doubt that some of the money will go to "lesser" projects, but that's politics in the U.S.
[Unfortunately, the Republicans and anti-rail think-tanks like the Reason Foundation will be making a concerted effort to convince everybody that HSR simply "can't happen," and "won't work in the U.S." They are wrong, but they are very well funded, and very media savvy.]
If you upload full size images to Flickr, etc, you're really just asking for someone to steal it and use it without your permission. So if you're that worried about it... don't use Flickr. But if you absolutely must, then you can take the annoying step of putting a watermark across the whole image, or, if you don't like to deface your work, there's also no reason you can't downsize the image to something like 800px at a low to medium DPI which makes it practically unusable for print.
Of course these techniques also make the picture less usable for its intended use, being viewed on the web...
I loathe the idiots on flickr who do that kind of crap -- I can't count the number of times I've wanted to see the details in some picture, but I can't because the photographer (who in most cases clearly likes the idea of his photo being viewed) only uploaded a low-resolution version of it. Watermarks are even worse, as they actually make the picture ugly.
The chances of a random picture being used on a Hungrariarn billboard are vanishingly small, so gimping every picture just in case it happens seems completely absurd.
I think "why not?" is exactly the right answer.
Sites like flickr are convenient, and it's easy to share with family and friends that way. If a stranger or two sees them, who cares -- most family photos are mundane and innocuous (and indeed I'll bet that most people are proud of their family).
There are plenty of paranoid types on slashdot, who encrypt their root disk even though there's zero chance anybody cares about the information there, but not everybody is that way...
Indeed.
I must say, it's kinda nice of Capcom to give such a clear and unambiguous reason not to buy "Bionic Commando Rearmed 2" -- often it's kind of hard to decide whether to buy a game ("is it worth the money?".. "do I trust reviewer X?"... "should I finish up those other games first ...?"), but no such problem here....
I can't think of a single thing Microsoft has done that was an original idea.
Microsoft Bob?
Yeah, I too like Apple, and I don't have a problem with their business practices in most cases. Hey, you make a super popular device, you deserve to profit from it, plain and simple.
I don't think too many would disagree.
What people don't like, though, is when you make a super-popular device and seize the moment to distort the market and attempt to quash future competition...
And I'll never buy another eBook the first time I see an ad in one. We balance out. Books are about immersion, and having ads will ruin it for me.
It seems like it depends critically on the presentation and content of the ads.
Many (physical) paperbacks I buy have little fall-out inserts advertising other releases by the same publisher, book clubs, etc. I don't mind these -- I glance them, sometimes read them, usually toss them out (though the mini-catalogues of other books are actually useful enough to keep in some cases). They're easily ignored, not in my face, often informative, and topical.
Ebook adverts with these same properties wouldn't be too objectionable I think.
OTOH, I imagine the likelihood of ebook publishers not screwing it up is very low -- there's this weird idea amongst publishing entities (not just books but movies, music, etc) that any change of medium means that all the rules change, that any and all conventions and lessons learned from the old medium should be tossed out, and that the new medium is carte blanche to viciously ream the consumer while bleeding him dry.
One would hope that consumers (and regulators, where appropriate) would disabuse publishers of this notion...
Yup, I agree, the new code is really broken in a lot of ways, though it's hard to tell whether it's bugs, or simply bad design.
I actually really liked the immediately previous incarnation of slashdot -- it was much nicer than "traditional" slashdot, because many things like expanding comments were dynamic and didn't require jumping to a new page (which I used to hate about the traditional code), but also seemed to be reasonably solid and well thought-out. This new slashdot is basically a regression in almost every way (except that perhaps the actual code is cleaner, but that's a bit hard for me to tell).
Hopefully all the problems with the new system are just shallow bugs and easily-rectified design mistakes, which will be quickly shaken out...hopefully...haha..."
Have you seen where the "Show X More Comments" button is? I hope there's some way to just get all the comments without having to scroll all the way down again and again (if there is, I haven't found it yet).
It's especially silly because there are now two non-scrolling fixed panes (sidebar and topbar), but they're filled with relatively useless and redundant links (and lots of empty space), whereas the two controls that would actually be pretty useful if always available -- the "show more comments" button and the "minimum score" slider -- are relegated to inconvenient positions at the end/beginning of the scrolling page!
My impression is that the person who did the redesign is not so bad at graphical design (it's fairly clean and polished looking), but isn't very experienced with UI / usability issues...
Look, Arial is not a particularly good on-screen font. I have my browser configured so that CSS "sans-serif" resolves to Verdana, and that is for good reason. Other websites respect it - why can't Slashdot? In fact, it could be configured that way... up until this brand new design. Please don't hardcode font family, at least not for article text and comments
+1 on this -- it was always nice that slashdot respected the user's font preferences (many sites don't), and it's very bad that the new design doesn't do this.
(attractive design: good; inflexible design: bad; luckily, attractive and flexible are not incompatible!)
But you'll have to read the actual article, ...blah blah...
Welcome to Slashdot!
Some day we'll have true holographic projection on an economical scale. At that point, if I'm still alive, I'll appreciate 3D. Until then, I'll have to stick to standard 2D theaters.
With huge films, this generally isn't a problem, as there are generally a few theaters showing both versions, so one can choose, but with mid-level films (e.g., recently Tron), it's often the case that only a single theater nearby is showing the film -- and if it's the 3d version then I end up paying more than usual to see a crappy substandard film (noticeably dimmer than normal films, need to wear awkward and uncomfortable glasses).
I'd rather they just raise the price and show the 2d version (call it the "haha aren't you lucky we didn't go with 3d!" tax...)!
I wonder what proportion of "fast" connections are actually fast though...
I live in Japan, and my internet connection is nominally 20mbps -- but in actuality, I usually get less than 3mpbs, because it's a ADSL connection, and I'm just a bit too far from the central office. I understand that in many cases cable internet also has issues with the real speed not living up to what's advertised.
Granted, there are multiple other providers I could use that have their own infrastructure (fiber-to-home, cable, etc), and maybe they're better, but still, I think I'm probably counted as a statistic ("has 20mpbs connection!") somewhere when maybe I shouldn't be ...
[I don't switch because this connection is really cheap, and I just don't care enough; it's "fast enough" for me.]
Also, stating that the IETF cooperates closely with the ISO does not imply that creating an IETF standard somehow grants ISO standard status.
Indeed. But the notion that a standard must be from ISO to "count", is of course incorrect -- the canonical example being TCP/IP, which utterly trounced the competing ISO-standardized protocols.
Worse, the people who need to be excited about WebM (big corporate media) will actively be repulsed by the FSF's stamp of approval.
...
The FSF putting their stamp on it is just the final nail in WebM's coffin. Stick a fork in it. It's done. Google has really screwed the pooch on this one.
Not true. I know that yer average Slashdot MS fanboy hates the FSF and the GPL with a passion, but they don't really represent reality.
Despite the FSF's political positions, boycotts, etc, these simply aren't the sort of thing that register on a corporation -- corporations don't care about anything that doesn't affect them, and these activities by the FSF, while intended to have some effect ... largely don't. Neither do they care about RMS's hairstyle; not only are they very unlikely to have noticed it, but it just doesn't matter to them, however much it infuriates some people on Slashdot.
The bulk of large companies will simply have no idea who the FSF is, so won't be influenced by the what the FSF thinks about webm (other than it being another entry in a list).
Companies who do know who the FSF will be largely those who have some technical connection with it -- I work for a (very) large company, and the FSF is thought of as "the place where gcc comes from" around here -- and will thus essentially have a productive relationship of some sort with them. These companies will, by and large, be positively influenced by any FSF recommendation of webm (if they notice), in the sense that "somebody we know about recommends webm".
I find that to be disappointing and unexpected. Keep in mind that I do not know what it takes to create a browser or what is involved in passing the Acid3 test.
Er, then why do you care? The correlation between acid3 results and actual usability is questionable at best, and "100% on acid" is a goal that's useful mainly for PR purposes. There's nothing wrong with good PR, of course, but I don't fault the FF devs for prioritizing changes that actually help usability instead...
[This has long been a major criticism of the acid tests -- such tests are interesting mainly to developers, who know how to interpret the results.]