I remember seeing Titanic in Mountain View and afterwards driving around the neighborhood--past Sun, SGI, and everyone else who helped make it happen. I wanted to leave notes on the companies' front doors saying "Great job on Titanic!" but didn't.:-) Not quite the point of the article but it just came to mind. I do remember back when all us PC drones looked up at Sun and SGI gear in awe.
And the bonus that some (many? most?) unicies actually use 'slocate', i.e. secure-locate, so Bob won't see Sam's porn when he issues 'locate paris'
my problem with locate is that if I try to combine it with 'rm' to delete tons of files, like 'rm `locate.txt`', I get 'argument list too long.' Any way around that? (Yes, I'm too lazy to google for and test solutions. just thought I'd ask since I'm here.)
The following words can be singluar or plural, depending on context: some, any, none, all, most.
Example: Most of the pie _is_ gone. Most of the pies _were_ sold. See? In the above example, I figure it's "Any [people] who love..." Plus, there's a good reason for that assumption: since English doesn't have a good neutral third-person pronoun for people (i.e., not "he", not "she", and definitely not "it"), the poster is pretty much forced to use "they" later in the sentence, so of course the beginning should match as well; thus it is be plural.
And "want" is fine here as well if the poster is asserting what he belives to be the truth. You might think that any person who loves knowledge *should* want to be told they're wrong, but perhaps his opinion is that any person who *truly* loves knowledge, by definition, really *does* want to be told they're wrong. See?
"Personally, I have a pet peeve when people post comments saying things like "That's not News For Nerds!" and "That's not Stuff that Matters!" Slashdot has been running for almost 5 years, and over that time, I have always been the final decision maker on what ends up on the homepage. It turns out that a lot of people agree with me: Linux, Legos [emphasis added], Penguins, Sci (both real and fiction). If you've been reading Slashdot, you know what the subjects commonly are, but we might deviate occasionally. It's just more fun that way. Variety Is The Spice Of Life and all that, right? We've been running Slashdot for a long time, and if we occasionally want to post something that someone doesn't think is right for Slashdot, well, we're the ones who get to make the call. It's the mix of stories that makes Slashdot the fun place that it is."
Answered by: CmdrTaco Last Modified: 6/26/00
Only on slashdot do you get "+5, Insightful" for demonstrating that you didn't read the f'ing FAQ.
I've played with the speech recognition that came with my tablet PC. Works OK if I'm by myself in a quiet room where I can non-self-conciously talk unusually loud-n-clear. Every time I've demo'ed it to people, in an office environment talking normally, the results are laugable.
The good news is, you can play "Telephone" all by yourself! Remember that game where you sat in a circle, and one person says a sentence to the person next to him, and he tells the next person, and so on all around the circle, and then you hear the final version? Just talk to your computer, then when your words are shown (incorrectly) on the screen, read those words back, and so on. Easier and more fun than going from german to french to english to spanish to french to german to english in babelfish.:-)
My favorite issue of all time. Also has good articles on ReBoot (cartoon) and a great interview with Tim Berners-Lee.
W: Do you wish you'd started the Web as a business?
TBL: If I'd started "Web Inc." it would have been just another proprietary system. You wouldn't have had this universality. For something like the Web to exist, it has to be based on public, nonproprietary standards.
Spammers & spyware authors are black-hats. Maybe not uber-cool, Jolt-drinking, shades-at-night black-hats, but black-hats nonetheless. Think about it: what does a black hat do? He says "I don't care who you are or why you bought your computer. I'm going to use your comptuer to serve my needs."
I'm too lazy to google, but last I heard, Pine was (c) Washington Univ. and 'mutt' is its open-source clone. I've heard the original author of Pine uses mutt now.
Remember kids, just because it came free on your Linux installer CD doesn't mean it's OSS. See also 'pico' (c. WU) and 'nano' (OSS clone).
Apple literally* cannot keep $250 minis on the shelves. Why do they want to introduce something cheaper? And unless it's voice-activated, I don't think a display-less MP3 player can be made that Apple would call "easy to use."
* and I mean literally, literally. Not in the new bass-ackwards "there were *literally* a million people in line at the deli" but literally, literally, literally. I was in an Apple store a few months ago. Spent maybe 45 minutes there having my iBook looked at. In that time (weekday day, mind you) about a half-dozen people came in: "Got any iPod minis in stock?" "No." "OK."
In related news, I love thinkpads as much as anyone else in this thread but the one thing I always hated was there were no Windows keys! (yes, I use them, *especially* on a laptop--windows-R, 'notepad', return is quicker than mousing around, and windows-D is the best thing ever (since you didn't have to hit 'shift' to undo it, like with windows-M.))
I figured they left them off because some guy, somewhere, was *sure* that OS/2 would come back. I mean, I had a several-hundred MHz laptop--what would that be, 1998? 1999? Whatever--*years* after Win95 came out, and still no Windows key. grr... Honestly, that's the *only* thing I ever disliked about thinkpads... but it's a huge "thing"
Similarly, I didn't buy an iBook until they put a second 'command' key on the right side of the keyboard.
I've owned a two-tuner TiVo for a couple years and yes, this IS a problem. not as much of a problem as if there were only one tuner, but it is, I assure you, a problem. what if I want to use my dual-tuner tivo for what it was DESIGNED FOR (i.e., recording two whole shows taht are on at the same time) *and* I want to record another show immediately before or after? if all 3 have to be started early and end late, there is a conflict.
This is, of course, a zero-sum game. For every person who quits watching CSI: Springfield because Law and Order: Metermaids runs late, there will be one person who quits watching L&O:M to catch CSI:S. If all networks synced up to the Naval Atomic Clock and started shows at hour-and-15-seconds and ended them at hour:59:45, more shows would get watched overall. A rising tide lifts all boats.
But hey, where does cooperation and common sense belong in corporate America, even if it can be easily proven that it's the best thing to do for all involved?
I mean, hacker-types who might want to do out-there stuff would probably already be familiar with the concept of "find it online." Is there a person can not figure out iTunes and an iPod but *buy* a book and *read* it?
The leaflet that comes with an iPod is pretty good, and iTunes, by default, is pretty much set to "do everything for me." All the people I work with who don't take the Apple URL shortcut out of their dock do *not* want to get the most out of iTunes (or their computer, for that matter.) They want to just use it out of the box and Apple comes with great defaults for clueless users.
(Note that I don't look down on uncaring users. I'm sure there are plenty of places in my life I could optimize, but I just don't care that much and want to spend my time doing other things. I totally understand if someone's involvement with their iPod goes no further than "rip all my music, buy some songs online, and put them all into this little box.")
I did actually look at the manual (since I had never played with one before buying it, and some things (like "turn the iPod off") are not obvious) and I can't imagine a simpler "get me up and running" guide.
So, I take it you haven't ripped any of your CDs to MP3/AAC/WMA/ogg/etc.? 'Cause, you know, it's just so easy to walk over to your wall, pull down a CD, pop it in your player...:-)
Even if I *weren't* so totally lazy, I'd *still* want to rip all my DVDs. First of all, as a TiVo owner, I *totally love* the whole "press a button and see a list of everything I have" thing.
Secondly, I hate media. That is, little plastic and metal things I have to move around. (Furethermore: I could care less about CD liner notes, and every DVD box is the same--picture of the actor on the front, and a back panel listing all the special DVD features like... interactive menus, and subtitles! ooh... But anyway,)
I hate taking out these fragile things and moving them into and out of the player (and then the bonus: that I *have to* sit through the bullshit red warnings in nine languages, and the 30-minute intro montage just to get to the fscking menus.) If I scratch one while taking it out of its shitty case (I never thought they'd find worse packaging than plain-old jewel cases, but here we are--press the center button, bend your DVD backwards, and hope it doesn't get scratched when it *finally* springs out of the vise-like holder) then yippee, I get to pay for it again!
I'd much rather have it all on HDs. I shouldn't touch anything but buttons. Plus, once it's all, y'know, *computerized*, you get all kinds of neat bonuses, like "Show me all the Harrison Ford movies I have" or "what comedies have I not watched in the last six months" and things like that.
And the randomness is a bonus. Sometimes I can't really think of what I'd like to watch, and I've even had this happen: I'll be flipping around HBO or Showtime, see a move on *that I own*, and I'll leave it on, just because it's already on and it's as good of a choice as I could have made on my own. So a "random play", just like all CD and MP3 players have, would be cool, too. Especially if my Humongo Media Server has shows as well as movies--maybe Used Cars, maybe The Simpsons, maybe Terminator 2, maybe Seinfeld, maybe Law and Order... just the thing to have on for a long Saturday of room-cleaning and slashdot-reading.
Not to sound like the typical slashdot Linux fanboy, but the Windows lifespan != the lifespan of any computer I own. First of all, laptops tend to be more expensive than desktops, so people tend to keep them longer. Same for Macs--I know plenty of people with early PowerMacs that are going on 6, 7, 8 years old now. Thirdly, plenty of us have similarly old computers like P133s that we don't throw out just because they won't run WinXP (or Fedora Core 3, for that matter.) I figure if I could take a $5 part (the CMOS battery) and make it rechargable at 4x the cost ($20) and therefore double the amount of time that I can use a $1,000 (now $1,015) computer for without CMOS battery headaches, that would be worth it.
In answer to your question, I don't have to replace CMOS batteries *that* often, but when I do, it's usually a huge pain in the ass, therefore I'd be interested in a better solution.
I actually said "something the size of a couple D-cell batteries", meaning "If a big UPS can power a computer for 10 minutes, why can't a tiny UPS power it for one minute?"
But I think this guy has the answer--it seems that you can't make a UPS 1/10 the size and have it last 1/10 as long.
So what you're saying is, the physical size of lead-acid batteries is related to how much energy they can send out in X amount of time? For example, if a 10"x2"x3" (60 cu. in.) UPS battery could power a computer for 10 minutes, a 1x2x3 (6 cu. in.) battery could not power that same computer for 1 minute? If so, then there's my answer.
Only down to number 3 so far, but #1, "If the computer loses power for more than a few thousanths of a second, it throws everything away", is sooooooooo perfect. 20 years ago I had a clock radio with a 9-volt battery so it would keep time during short power outages. Why don't current computers have something? I know how big UPSs are; I imagine something the size of a couple D-cell batteries hooked to the motherboard could keep it running for momentary power outages, tripping over the cord, accidentally stepping on the power strip's button, etc.
And on that note, why can't the BIOS battery be rechargable? Why should my computer *ever* think it's 1969, or 1980, or 1984?
Eh, there's no accounting for taste... especially mine.:-) The book didn't do much for me, but the movie, though cheesy, had some good action (hey, it was the 80s) and I thought Dawson was great. Good overall, gun-hiding aside.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember seeing Titanic in Mountain View and afterwards driving around the neighborhood--past Sun, SGI, and everyone else who helped make it happen. I wanted to leave notes on the companies' front doors saying "Great job on Titanic!" but didn't. :-) Not quite the point of the article but it just came to mind. I do remember back when all us PC drones looked up at Sun and SGI gear in awe.
And the bonus that some (many? most?) unicies actually use 'slocate', i.e. secure-locate, so Bob won't see Sam's porn when he issues 'locate paris'
.txt`', I get 'argument list too long.' Any way around that? (Yes, I'm too lazy to google for and test solutions. just thought I'd ask since I'm here.)
my problem with locate is that if I try to combine it with 'rm' to delete tons of files, like 'rm `locate
so, living on the south edge of a good-sized city... any chance of me seeing this, or should I drive out to the sticks that night?
More editors, faster dupes! ;-)
(A joke only ruined by the fact that this isn't actually a dupe, assuming this guy is correct.)
The XML-ness of it isn't even as important as its plain-text-ness. Ever 'cat' an MS Word doc?
The following words can be singluar or plural, depending on context: some, any, none, all, most.
Example: Most of the pie _is_ gone. Most of the pies _were_ sold. See? In the above example, I figure it's "Any [people] who love..." Plus, there's a good reason for that assumption: since English doesn't have a good neutral third-person pronoun for people (i.e., not "he", not "she", and definitely not "it"), the poster is pretty much forced to use "they" later in the sentence, so of course the beginning should match as well; thus it is be plural.
And "want" is fine here as well if the poster is asserting what he belives to be the truth. You might think that any person who loves knowledge *should* want to be told they're wrong, but perhaps his opinion is that any person who *truly* loves knowledge, by definition, really *does* want to be told they're wrong. See?
Someone with a UID as low as yours should know this was answered FOUR FUCKING YEARS AGO right here: http://slashdot.org/faq/editorial.shtml
"Personally, I have a pet peeve when people post comments saying things like "That's not News For Nerds!" and "That's not Stuff that Matters!" Slashdot has been running for almost 5 years, and over that time, I have always been the final decision maker on what ends up on the homepage. It turns out that a lot of people agree with me: Linux, Legos [emphasis added], Penguins, Sci (both real and fiction). If you've been reading Slashdot, you know what the subjects commonly are, but we might deviate occasionally. It's just more fun that way. Variety Is The Spice Of Life and all that, right? We've been running Slashdot for a long time, and if we occasionally want to post something that someone doesn't think is right for Slashdot, well, we're the ones who get to make the call. It's the mix of stories that makes Slashdot the fun place that it is."
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/26/00
Only on slashdot do you get "+5, Insightful" for demonstrating that you didn't read the f'ing FAQ.
I've played with the speech recognition that came with my tablet PC. Works OK if I'm by myself in a quiet room where I can non-self-conciously talk unusually loud-n-clear. Every time I've demo'ed it to people, in an office environment talking normally, the results are laugable.
:-)
The good news is, you can play "Telephone" all by yourself! Remember that game where you sat in a circle, and one person says a sentence to the person next to him, and he tells the next person, and so on all around the circle, and then you hear the final version? Just talk to your computer, then when your words are shown (incorrectly) on the screen, read those words back, and so on. Easier and more fun than going from german to french to english to spanish to french to german to english in babelfish.
My favorite issue of all time. Also has good articles on ReBoot (cartoon) and a great interview with Tim Berners-Lee.
W: Do you wish you'd started the Web as a business?
TBL: If I'd started "Web Inc." it would have been just another proprietary system. You wouldn't have had this universality. For something like the Web to exist, it has to be based on public, nonproprietary standards.
Spammers & spyware authors are black-hats. Maybe not uber-cool, Jolt-drinking, shades-at-night black-hats, but black-hats nonetheless. Think about it: what does a black hat do? He says "I don't care who you are or why you bought your computer. I'm going to use your comptuer to serve my needs."
"The purpose of marketing is to create confusion. The purpose of sales is to convince the costomer that spending money will end the confusion."
:-)
Don't know where I heard that, or if I'm quoting it correctly, but that's the gist of it.
I'm too lazy to google, but last I heard, Pine was (c) Washington Univ. and 'mutt' is its open-source clone. I've heard the original author of Pine uses mutt now.
Remember kids, just because it came free on your Linux installer CD doesn't mean it's OSS. See also 'pico' (c. WU) and 'nano' (OSS clone).
Apple literally* cannot keep $250 minis on the shelves. Why do they want to introduce something cheaper? And unless it's voice-activated, I don't think a display-less MP3 player can be made that Apple would call "easy to use."
* and I mean literally, literally. Not in the new bass-ackwards "there were *literally* a million people in line at the deli" but literally, literally, literally. I was in an Apple store a few months ago. Spent maybe 45 minutes there having my iBook looked at. In that time (weekday day, mind you) about a half-dozen people came in:
"Got any iPod minis in stock?"
"No."
"OK."
"While this is cool for us power gamers, it has many more impressive applications..."
:-)
No, it doesn't.
Hysterical.
In related news, I love thinkpads as much as anyone else in this thread but the one thing I always hated was there were no Windows keys! (yes, I use them, *especially* on a laptop--windows-R, 'notepad', return is quicker than mousing around, and windows-D is the best thing ever (since you didn't have to hit 'shift' to undo it, like with windows-M.))
I figured they left them off because some guy, somewhere, was *sure* that OS/2 would come back. I mean, I had a several-hundred MHz laptop--what would that be, 1998? 1999? Whatever--*years* after Win95 came out, and still no Windows key. grr... Honestly, that's the *only* thing I ever disliked about thinkpads... but it's a huge "thing"
Similarly, I didn't buy an iBook until they put a second 'command' key on the right side of the keyboard.
I've owned a two-tuner TiVo for a couple years and yes, this IS a problem. not as much of a problem as if there were only one tuner, but it is, I assure you, a problem. what if I want to use my dual-tuner tivo for what it was DESIGNED FOR (i.e., recording two whole shows taht are on at the same time) *and* I want to record another show immediately before or after? if all 3 have to be started early and end late, there is a conflict.
This is, of course, a zero-sum game. For every person who quits watching CSI: Springfield because Law and Order: Metermaids runs late, there will be one person who quits watching L&O:M to catch CSI:S. If all networks synced up to the Naval Atomic Clock and started shows at hour-and-15-seconds and ended them at hour:59:45, more shows would get watched overall. A rising tide lifts all boats.
But hey, where does cooperation and common sense belong in corporate America, even if it can be easily proven that it's the best thing to do for all involved?
I mean, hacker-types who might want to do out-there stuff would probably already be familiar with the concept of "find it online." Is there a person can not figure out iTunes and an iPod but *buy* a book and *read* it?
The leaflet that comes with an iPod is pretty good, and iTunes, by default, is pretty much set to "do everything for me." All the people I work with who don't take the Apple URL shortcut out of their dock do *not* want to get the most out of iTunes (or their computer, for that matter.) They want to just use it out of the box and Apple comes with great defaults for clueless users.
(Note that I don't look down on uncaring users. I'm sure there are plenty of places in my life I could optimize, but I just don't care that much and want to spend my time doing other things. I totally understand if someone's involvement with their iPod goes no further than "rip all my music, buy some songs online, and put them all into this little box.")
I did actually look at the manual (since I had never played with one before buying it, and some things (like "turn the iPod off") are not obvious) and I can't imagine a simpler "get me up and running" guide.
So, I take it you haven't ripped any of your CDs to MP3/AAC/WMA/ogg/etc.? 'Cause, you know, it's just so easy to walk over to your wall, pull down a CD, pop it in your player... :-)
Even if I *weren't* so totally lazy, I'd *still* want to rip all my DVDs. First of all, as a TiVo owner, I *totally love* the whole "press a button and see a list of everything I have" thing.
Secondly, I hate media. That is, little plastic and metal things I have to move around. (Furethermore: I could care less about CD liner notes, and every DVD box is the same--picture of the actor on the front, and a back panel listing all the special DVD features like... interactive menus, and subtitles! ooh... But anyway,)
I hate taking out these fragile things and moving them into and out of the player (and then the bonus: that I *have to* sit through the bullshit red warnings in nine languages, and the 30-minute intro montage just to get to the fscking menus.) If I scratch one while taking it out of its shitty case (I never thought they'd find worse packaging than plain-old jewel cases, but here we are--press the center button, bend your DVD backwards, and hope it doesn't get scratched when it *finally* springs out of the vise-like holder) then yippee, I get to pay for it again!
I'd much rather have it all on HDs. I shouldn't touch anything but buttons. Plus, once it's all, y'know, *computerized*, you get all kinds of neat bonuses, like "Show me all the Harrison Ford movies I have" or "what comedies have I not watched in the last six months" and things like that.
And the randomness is a bonus. Sometimes I can't really think of what I'd like to watch, and I've even had this happen: I'll be flipping around HBO or Showtime, see a move on *that I own*, and I'll leave it on, just because it's already on and it's as good of a choice as I could have made on my own. So a "random play", just like all CD and MP3 players have, would be cool, too. Especially if my Humongo Media Server has shows as well as movies--maybe Used Cars, maybe The Simpsons, maybe Terminator 2, maybe Seinfeld, maybe Law and Order... just the thing to have on for a long Saturday of room-cleaning and slashdot-reading.
To be a good liar you have to have a good memory.
Not to sound like the typical slashdot Linux fanboy, but the Windows lifespan != the lifespan of any computer I own. First of all, laptops tend to be more expensive than desktops, so people tend to keep them longer. Same for Macs--I know plenty of people with early PowerMacs that are going on 6, 7, 8 years old now. Thirdly, plenty of us have similarly old computers like P133s that we don't throw out just because they won't run WinXP (or Fedora Core 3, for that matter.) I figure if I could take a $5 part (the CMOS battery) and make it rechargable at 4x the cost ($20) and therefore double the amount of time that I can use a $1,000 (now $1,015) computer for without CMOS battery headaches, that would be worth it.
In answer to your question, I don't have to replace CMOS batteries *that* often, but when I do, it's usually a huge pain in the ass, therefore I'd be interested in a better solution.
I actually said "something the size of a couple D-cell batteries", meaning "If a big UPS can power a computer for 10 minutes, why can't a tiny UPS power it for one minute?"
But I think this guy has the answer--it seems that you can't make a UPS 1/10 the size and have it last 1/10 as long.
So what you're saying is, the physical size of lead-acid batteries is related to how much energy they can send out in X amount of time? For example, if a 10"x2"x3" (60 cu. in.) UPS battery could power a computer for 10 minutes, a 1x2x3 (6 cu. in.) battery could not power that same computer for 1 minute? If so, then there's my answer.
Only down to number 3 so far, but #1, "If the computer loses power for more than a few thousanths of a second, it throws everything away", is sooooooooo perfect. 20 years ago I had a clock radio with a 9-volt battery so it would keep time during short power outages. Why don't current computers have something? I know how big UPSs are; I imagine something the size of a couple D-cell batteries hooked to the motherboard could keep it running for momentary power outages, tripping over the cord, accidentally stepping on the power strip's button, etc.
And on that note, why can't the BIOS battery be rechargable? Why should my computer *ever* think it's 1969, or 1980, or 1984?
Eh, there's no accounting for taste... especially mine. :-) The book didn't do much for me, but the movie, though cheesy, had some good action (hey, it was the 80s) and I thought Dawson was great. Good overall, gun-hiding aside.