I'm sure they've thought of this, but in a house, that's a lot of mass that's been tossed around starting from the 0 mark. It seems at the one sec mark, the structure would already be unstable and that's when you're going to lift it up in the air?
Remember though, that although there are different types of quakes, most in Japan don't seem to start at "full power", they ramp up over a few seconds. The March 13 quake for instance, did that.
Also, given Japan's current warning network, anybody not at the epicenter can get a few seconds warning even before the quake is evident locally—though maybe this is a bit pointless as it's exactly those who are at the epicenter that are going to really need the air cushion...
Well, if the system is based on the same air curtain setup as a hovercraft, liquefaction is a non-issue. Now landslides OTOH may be a bit tougher to contend with...
A landslide just gives you some speed to make good your escape!
Note that clang is quite gcc-compatible (by design), so a lot of "gcc only" code works fine with it. Thus it's probably not going to do so much to reduce the popularity of gcc extensions.
Howevery, although it largely implements the same interface as gcc, because it's an entirely separate implementation, it's is very useful as a way to detect inadvertent dependencies on gcc quirks / bugs (compile and test your project with both gcc and clang).
Wait, what? Minix is still what it always was: a historically interesting toy OS. Now it's new and improved, but it's hardly "the new hotness" anywhere.
Anyone know if the 3d models (of those things they've scanned so far) are already available as a download somewhere? It'd be cool throw Jefferson into a render or two...
No reason not to do both.... keep up the original video, with a giant explanation in the description about Rumblefish's illegal behavior, and a note that it would be good if they were utterly destroyed, boycotted, spit-upon, etc.
... and then also up load a new version with a tweaked soundtrack (of course with a pointer to the "Rumblefish must die" version).
The FSF's objection is precisely right. The standard of "reasonable" often used by government agencies and standards bodies is badly outdated, and based on a model ("all software written by commercial entities") that doesn't reflect the real world anymore. Standards are supposed to be for everybody's benefit, not just that of large corporations.
However making such changes is difficult (these bodies do not move quickly)—so if they're making the effort to update things, they should do it right, not just following the dictates of whatever lobby happens to be shoveling the most money at them.
It's the U.S.; those not in cars are considered mainly useful for target practice.
.... but yeah, that's one reason this is a really dumb idea, and a good example of why "traffic engineers" should never have any authority in city/transportation planning.
It's not really true that the pixels are too small to see, of course, despite Apple's hype. I have a cellphone with 300DPI+ resolution, and it's easy enough to see individual pixels in non-AA fonts at "normal viewing distance" (Japanese fonts at small sizes are usually not anti-aliased).
For anti-aliased graphics and text, it's probably more or less true—AA even at lower resolutions does a good job of hiding the pixels, but one can still discern annoying artifacts for high-contrast edges; 300DPI+ is probably good enough to hide most of those artifacts.
I don't know, but I agree with the question's implied premise (4:3's high utility).
It's a good question and I wish I knew the answer to it. I couldn't find any historical reference as to why 4:3 was originally chosen for televisions (the details behind the NTSC format are brilliant, but that's a separate topic).
I suspect it was less because it was "optimal", and more because it was an acceptable compromise between a desirable aspect ratio and technical limitations. Remember, back then, when they were using primitive CRTs, the closer to a perfect circle, the easier it was to manufacture, and most efficient rectangular shape was a square. But humans with their two eyes generally want something wider than it is tall (note movie aspect ratios, which were less constrained by technology). A 4:3 aspect ratio provides something which is close enough to a square to efficiently use the technology of the time, but wide enough to provide a somewhat comfortable shape for viewing.
With non-CRT tech, and modern manufacturing technique, there's a lot more freedom to choose a shape which is good for viewing, so it makes sense there's a lot of experimentation with aspect ratios these days.
Personally I love the "medium-wide" aspect ratios like 16:10 for my main hacking monitor; 4:3 feels constraining. Note that I tend to have multiple windows open (multiple editor windows, an editor and some terminal windows, etc) at the same time, and side-by-side windows are vastly preferable to vertically adjacent windows when the windows are tall (typically true of editor windows). A wide aspect ratio fits this usage pretty well. People whose main mode is the MS-style "one-app-window-always-maximized" may have different preferences.
In the case of the ipad, of course, the main style does seem to be "one app visible", and they strongly want a shape which is viable when used either vertically or horizontally. Given those factors, 4:3 does seem a reasonable choice.
Moreover, I don't even think such a choice is even necessary—a lot of the cost of blockbuster films is quite artificial; it's not an efficient industry. They don't need to be so crazy expensive to make.
If the current studios die off, but there's enough demand for similar products, people will figure out a way to make them at lower cost, and with a different business model.
That's an example of the most basic and underlying rule of all: those with enough power/money/weapons tend to get their way on issues they really care about, no matter how crazy their position, and regardless of what all the other rules and conventions say.
I don't know what model it is, nor the details of "updating." As she did get the hardware replaced a bunch of times hoping it would fix her problems, maybe the "updates" were all to the same version from the base version used by the manuf.
and yeah, I'm sure it's a windows phone (winphone7)... the person in question actually works at MS, she knows the difference!
[and geez, people (not you, parent poster, but all the people flipping out), calm down, it's just an anecdote, and we all know to take them with a grain of salt, right...? If you have a different exprience, great! But don't accuse me of lying simply because your personal anecdote is different.]
Actually, customers largely refuse to buy based on service. Among the service-is-king tier, there's room in the market for Neiman Marcus and... uh... well, that's it. Everyone else that tries, regrets the move.
It's like newspapers blocking access to content behind a paywall. Everyone has to try eventually, and each time it fails: consumers race toward the bottom on cost far faster and more forcefully than they pay attention to quality and service.
I don't like this, but it's a dominant rule of market economics.
You forgot to add: "... in the United States."
Sure the U.S. is a nation of cheapskates, and they reap what they sow, yada yada—but not every society is the same in this respect.
Japan, in particular is rather different: cheap prices at the expense of all else doesn't get you far there, and service is a very important part of retail. [It's not that prices are irrelevant, of course, simply that the equation is different.]
I have a friend that bought a WP7 phone (she used to have an iphone, and loved it, but got a little tired of seeing the same thing every day and wanted to try something new) 'cause it seemed very slick and flashy in the store—only to find out it's insanely buggy / flaky / ill-designed in everyday use. She updates the software regularly and has actually had the hardware replaced multiple times, but things never seem to really improve.
She's not sure whether she'll go back to iphone or try some android thing next, but she's adamant that she's never getting another winphone...
I hated the initial incarnations of gnome-shell (buggy as hell) but I've been using it for about a month now, and find I quite prefer it to ye-olde gnome2 panel interface. I like the fact that it relegates a bunch of stuff to the normally-hidden-but-realllly-easy-to-invoke "activities" screen (I use the screen-corner hotspot, so I can just shove my mouse into the corner of the screen and suddenly everything appears). I think in general it's a better design than the old gnome2 one. It feels like it keeps out of my way more, without being inconvenient.
I also dislike some of the excessive "simplicity" and "no customization" attitude—but in practice, this isn't much of an issue, because under the hood it actually seems pretty flexible, and even if customizations aren't exposed to the user by default (I think they should be), they're easy enough to tweak with various tools. So far, I've been able to address almost all of my little nits about the interface pretty simply.
So while I sympathize with those who feel a bit upended by the big interface change, and realize that familiarity is important to many, I'm skeptical of claims that the new shell is somehow inherently worse. I don't think that's true. I think it's just different—and in some ways, better.
"Amagasaki, Japan 26 April 2005 A seven-car train with 580 passengers derailed and slammed into an apartment building of nine floors. 73 people were killed and nearly 450 injured"
Note that the line in question was one of the few passenger lines in Japan without ATC/ATS ("automatic train-control/train-stop") installed, and it's pretty likely that had it been installed (it was "on the list" to be upgraded at the time...), the accident would have been prevented, as the system automatically applies brakes in an overspeed condition.
[One interesting question is whether the driver can disable it or not...]
Seriously, Pixel Qi (and Mirasol) has been "an almost ready LCD killer" for ages now.
Granted, this is not unusal for new technologies—a real product is a lot harder than an imagined extension of a lab experiment—but given that really all anybody has seen is essentially marketing material, it's probably not wise to bet a lot of money on any of these techs. Some promising new technologies eventually change the world—but many more fade away unnoticed.
Are you certain about that? I would think that for a phone to be GSM and CDMA it would need to have hardware for both on board... doesn't seem like a very cost effective way to manufacture.
Nonetheless, there are many phones which do simply have the hardware for both (there's presumably some degree of commonality which can be shared, so it's probably not exactly twice the hardware).
It's a fairly common feature on Japanese cellphones, targetted specifically at people who travel overseas...
GCC? People still use that? Clang can now parse a lot of the standard windows headers.
Hmm, why wouldn't people use gcc? Clang certainly has a neat-n-shiny modern source base and shows promise for the future, but for practical purposes gcc is still often the better compiler—by which I mean, optimizes better, is less buggy and more mature, has better standard support, supports more targets, has more developers, etc. Since gcc is what they were probably already using, why would they suddenly change?
[I do use clang sometimes, especially for making sure my code is portable (clang is an independent implementation, so it's a way to see if I'm depending on any implemenation quirks in gcc), but I don't use clang as my regular compiler because gcc still does a much better job of optimizing in cases I care about, and is less buggy.]
Royal icing is pretty nuts stuff too. A friend had their wedding cake made with it, with a rather dense liquor-infused cake recipe (like Christmas pudding), and it's so hardy that they just mailed slices of their cake wrapped in a bit of paper to friends overseas that couldn't make the wedding!
They said that recipe could be just left sitting around the house (er, presumably covered) for months and eaten with no ill effects... [in fact, they made the cake several months in advance, so it could "age".]
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't that a long time to wait?
I'm sure they've thought of this, but in a house, that's a lot of mass that's been tossed around starting from the 0 mark. It seems at the one sec mark, the structure would already be unstable and that's when you're going to lift it up in the air?
Remember though, that although there are different types of quakes, most in Japan don't seem to start at "full power", they ramp up over a few seconds. The March 13 quake for instance, did that.
Also, given Japan's current warning network, anybody not at the epicenter can get a few seconds warning even before the quake is evident locally—though maybe this is a bit pointless as it's exactly those who are at the epicenter that are going to really need the air cushion...
Well, if the system is based on the same air curtain setup as a hovercraft, liquefaction is a non-issue. Now landslides OTOH may be a bit tougher to contend with...
A landslide just gives you some speed to make good your escape!
Note that clang is quite gcc-compatible (by design), so a lot of "gcc only" code works fine with it. Thus it's probably not going to do so much to reduce the popularity of gcc extensions.
Howevery, although it largely implements the same interface as gcc, because it's an entirely separate implementation, it's is very useful as a way to detect inadvertent dependencies on gcc quirks / bugs (compile and test your project with both gcc and clang).
Wait, what? Minix is still what it always was: a historically interesting toy OS. Now it's new and improved, but it's hardly "the new hotness" anywhere.
Anyone know if the 3d models (of those things they've scanned so far) are already available as a download somewhere? It'd be cool throw Jefferson into a render or two...
No reason not to do both.... keep up the original video, with a giant explanation in the description about Rumblefish's illegal behavior, and a note that it would be good if they were utterly destroyed, boycotted, spit-upon, etc.
... and then also up load a new version with a tweaked soundtrack (of course with a pointer to the "Rumblefish must die" version).
And sue them of course.
The FSF's objection is precisely right. The standard of "reasonable" often used by government agencies and standards bodies is badly outdated, and based on a model ("all software written by commercial entities") that doesn't reflect the real world anymore. Standards are supposed to be for everybody's benefit, not just that of large corporations.
However making such changes is difficult (these bodies do not move quickly)—so if they're making the effort to update things, they should do it right, not just following the dictates of whatever lobby happens to be shoveling the most money at them.
It's the U.S.; those not in cars are considered mainly useful for target practice.
.... but yeah, that's one reason this is a really dumb idea, and a good example of why "traffic engineers" should never have any authority in city/transportation planning.
It's not really true that the pixels are too small to see, of course, despite Apple's hype. I have a cellphone with 300DPI+ resolution, and it's easy enough to see individual pixels in non-AA fonts at "normal viewing distance" (Japanese fonts at small sizes are usually not anti-aliased).
For anti-aliased graphics and text, it's probably more or less true—AA even at lower resolutions does a good job of hiding the pixels, but one can still discern annoying artifacts for high-contrast edges; 300DPI+ is probably good enough to hide most of those artifacts.
> Why is 4:3 such a useful aspect ratio?
I don't know, but I agree with the question's implied premise (4:3's high utility).
It's a good question and I wish I knew the answer to it. I couldn't find any historical reference as to why 4:3 was originally chosen for televisions (the details behind the NTSC format are brilliant, but that's a separate topic).
I suspect it was less because it was "optimal", and more because it was an acceptable compromise between a desirable aspect ratio and technical limitations. Remember, back then, when they were using primitive CRTs, the closer to a perfect circle, the easier it was to manufacture, and most efficient rectangular shape was a square. But humans with their two eyes generally want something wider than it is tall (note movie aspect ratios, which were less constrained by technology). A 4:3 aspect ratio provides something which is close enough to a square to efficiently use the technology of the time, but wide enough to provide a somewhat comfortable shape for viewing.
With non-CRT tech, and modern manufacturing technique, there's a lot more freedom to choose a shape which is good for viewing, so it makes sense there's a lot of experimentation with aspect ratios these days.
Personally I love the "medium-wide" aspect ratios like 16:10 for my main hacking monitor; 4:3 feels constraining. Note that I tend to have multiple windows open (multiple editor windows, an editor and some terminal windows, etc) at the same time, and side-by-side windows are vastly preferable to vertically adjacent windows when the windows are tall (typically true of editor windows). A wide aspect ratio fits this usage pretty well. People whose main mode is the MS-style "one-app-window-always-maximized" may have different preferences.
In the case of the ipad, of course, the main style does seem to be "one app visible", and they strongly want a shape which is viable when used either vertically or horizontally. Given those factors, 4:3 does seem a reasonable choice.
"Engineer": "Hacker" with enough scars.
Well said.
Moreover, I don't even think such a choice is even necessary—a lot of the cost of blockbuster films is quite artificial; it's not an efficient industry. They don't need to be so crazy expensive to make.
If the current studios die off, but there's enough demand for similar products, people will figure out a way to make them at lower cost, and with a different business model.
That's an example of the most basic and underlying rule of all: those with enough power/money/weapons tend to get their way on issues they really care about, no matter how crazy their position, and regardless of what all the other rules and conventions say.
I don't know what model it is, nor the details of "updating." As she did get the hardware replaced a bunch of times hoping it would fix her problems, maybe the "updates" were all to the same version from the base version used by the manuf.
and yeah, I'm sure it's a windows phone (winphone7)... the person in question actually works at MS, she knows the difference!
[and geez, people (not you, parent poster, but all the people flipping out), calm down, it's just an anecdote, and we all know to take them with a grain of salt, right...? If you have a different exprience, great! But don't accuse me of lying simply because your personal anecdote is different.]
Actually, customers largely refuse to buy based on service. Among the service-is-king tier, there's room in the market for Neiman Marcus and... uh... well, that's it. Everyone else that tries, regrets the move. It's like newspapers blocking access to content behind a paywall. Everyone has to try eventually, and each time it fails: consumers race toward the bottom on cost far faster and more forcefully than they pay attention to quality and service. I don't like this, but it's a dominant rule of market economics.
You forgot to add: "... in the United States."
Sure the U.S. is a nation of cheapskates, and they reap what they sow, yada yada—but not every society is the same in this respect.
Japan, in particular is rather different: cheap prices at the expense of all else doesn't get you far there, and service is a very important part of retail. [It's not that prices are irrelevant, of course, simply that the equation is different.]
very heavily rewritten
A whole load of new bugs to deal with!
...and that's not just a joke.
I have a friend that bought a WP7 phone (she used to have an iphone, and loved it, but got a little tired of seeing the same thing every day and wanted to try something new) 'cause it seemed very slick and flashy in the store—only to find out it's insanely buggy / flaky / ill-designed in everyday use. She updates the software regularly and has actually had the hardware replaced multiple times, but things never seem to really improve.
She's not sure whether she'll go back to iphone or try some android thing next, but she's adamant that she's never getting another winphone...
Hmmm, I respectfully disagree.
I hated the initial incarnations of gnome-shell (buggy as hell) but I've been using it for about a month now, and find I quite prefer it to ye-olde gnome2 panel interface. I like the fact that it relegates a bunch of stuff to the normally-hidden-but-realllly-easy-to-invoke "activities" screen (I use the screen-corner hotspot, so I can just shove my mouse into the corner of the screen and suddenly everything appears). I think in general it's a better design than the old gnome2 one. It feels like it keeps out of my way more, without being inconvenient.
I also dislike some of the excessive "simplicity" and "no customization" attitude—but in practice, this isn't much of an issue, because under the hood it actually seems pretty flexible, and even if customizations aren't exposed to the user by default (I think they should be), they're easy enough to tweak with various tools. So far, I've been able to address almost all of my little nits about the interface pretty simply.
So while I sympathize with those who feel a bit upended by the big interface change, and realize that familiarity is important to many, I'm skeptical of claims that the new shell is somehow inherently worse. I don't think that's true. I think it's just different—and in some ways, better.
"Amagasaki, Japan 26 April 2005 A seven-car train with 580 passengers derailed and slammed into an apartment building of nine floors. 73 people were killed and nearly 450 injured"
Note that the line in question was one of the few passenger lines in Japan without ATC/ATS ("automatic train-control/train-stop") installed, and it's pretty likely that had it been installed (it was "on the list" to be upgraded at the time...), the accident would have been prevented, as the system automatically applies brakes in an overspeed condition.
[One interesting question is whether the driver can disable it or not...]
Seriously, Pixel Qi (and Mirasol) has been "an almost ready LCD killer" for ages now.
Granted, this is not unusal for new technologies—a real product is a lot harder than an imagined extension of a lab experiment—but given that really all anybody has seen is essentially marketing material, it's probably not wise to bet a lot of money on any of these techs. Some promising new technologies eventually change the world—but many more fade away unnoticed.
Are you certain about that? I would think that for a phone to be GSM and CDMA it would need to have hardware for both on board... doesn't seem like a very cost effective way to manufacture.
Nonetheless, there are many phones which do simply have the hardware for both (there's presumably some degree of commonality which can be shared, so it's probably not exactly twice the hardware).
It's a fairly common feature on Japanese cellphones, targetted specifically at people who travel overseas...
GCC? People still use that? Clang can now parse a lot of the standard windows headers.
Hmm, why wouldn't people use gcc? Clang certainly has a neat-n-shiny modern source base and shows promise for the future, but for practical purposes gcc is still often the better compiler—by which I mean, optimizes better, is less buggy and more mature, has better standard support, supports more targets, has more developers, etc. Since gcc is what they were probably already using, why would they suddenly change?
[I do use clang sometimes, especially for making sure my code is portable (clang is an independent implementation, so it's a way to see if I'm depending on any implemenation quirks in gcc), but I don't use clang as my regular compiler because gcc still does a much better job of optimizing in cases I care about, and is less buggy.]
Whoa, Dell's still around....?! I had no idea... (really!)
I agree. Mutation jokes are fine, but move this story out of idle; it isn't.
Royal icing is pretty nuts stuff too. A friend had their wedding cake made with it, with a rather dense liquor-infused cake recipe (like Christmas pudding), and it's so hardy that they just mailed slices of their cake wrapped in a bit of paper to friends overseas that couldn't make the wedding!
They said that recipe could be just left sitting around the house (er, presumably covered) for months and eaten with no ill effects... [in fact, they made the cake several months in advance, so it could "age".]
Are raw eggs really risky anyway, or just raw eggs in the U.S. (because of nutcase factory farming practices etc)?
Around here raw eggs are very frequently consumed, but don't seem to be particularly problematic....