If they cover the place where you'll be staying, Virgin Mobile offers a very attractive iPad-only data plan. It's prepaid and costs only $25 for the SIM, and then depending on how much data you want, from $25 to $60 a month.
Comparing posix read() and write() to the shifting sands of MS APIs is pretty silly. If you're going to make a comparison to Unix, at least compare apples to apples. So once upon a time I wrote code in C++ with Qt 1.0. Then Qt 2.0 came along, which was mostly compatible, but introduced new features. Then Qt 3, then Qt 4. Some things were deprecated, some things added. Developers had to adapt. Same with Gtk+ 1 to Gtk+ 2. That was a pretty painful leap for developers with several important (but understandably obsolete) widgets were deprecated. A few vertical apps out there probably never have moved from Gtk+ 1.
Anyway the point is things on Unix, as nice as they are, are not static, or even stable. The real world APIs that are necessary for developing real applications are in constant flux, and many fade away (like Motif). New languages come along that get popular for a time, like Python. Will we be using python in 10 years? hopefully. But maybe something else will come along.
So is learning python and it's current standard library of APIs, and the various current GUI apis a waste of time? I mean if the Gtk+ developers are going to pull the rug out from under me every couple of years, what's the point, right?
I don't think nook or kindle support DjVu. The Kindle does do PDF I think, but depending on the PDF the results may not be that great, given the size of the screen. The only useful PDF-viewing device I've seen is the iPad, which its pinch zoom capabilities.
Most nook and kindle owners use their books primarily for casual reading. In those kind of books, I have never heard of a book that was in the DjVu format. Indeed for this kind of reading, a digital format like epub or mobi is infinitely preferable because the device can paginate the document according to my font size preference.
Ebook readers typically are not used for browsing scanned documents (technical manuals, perhaps). The e-ink screen, as nice as it is, does not lend itself well to rapid page flipping and eyeball-searching. That's probably why you won't find DjVu or PDF support on them. There's just no demand for it, compared to the huge library of arguably throw-away literature that's in epub or mobi format.
I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say the Kindle locks you into a proprietary format. It doesn't at all. It's true that just like books you buy from BN, Amazon Kindle books are DRMed. But the device is perfectly happy to display any.mobi file I throw at it. Thanks to Calibre I can translate back and forth between mobi and epub with ease, and stick any of my O'Reilly books on my Kindle. I also love the scripts that come with Calibre to create custom newspapers for me based on feeds from BBC or CNN or other news sources. Pretty slick. Also the text to speech on the Kindle is very listenable; I've listened to about a dozen books while driving, and while it's a slight bit fatiguing to listen to, it works pretty well. The voice is about as good as OS X's Alex voice.
I have a Hanvon 516 reader that handles just about any non-DRM format as well, and even with it I would never do without Calibre. An indispensable tool for any e-book reader.
Valid complaints against the Kindle could include: fairly crappy warranty on a very fragile screen, potential privacy issues when the unit phones home, and the ability of Amazon to remote delete books from kindles. But this nonsense about locking into some proprietary format is just silly.
In a recent lawsuit my organization was involved in, the plaintiffs demanded any and all emails from certain individuals related to the case. So our lawyers had us send them all the e-mails in raw electronic form, which they then simply printed out for the plaintiffs. And of course the plaintiffs did the same thing for our side. Kind of a dirty way of complying with the court order if you think about it. I'm sure that neither side printed off the complete e-mail headers, so we're left with just the visible from, to, subject, and date fields, and the message body.
Anyway, when you're on the receiving end of a demand, printing out the e-mails is definitely a common thing in the legal world. So I'm not surprised Alaska would do this. Plus it fits with Palin's policies and platforms. I mean we have all these resources in alaska going to waste, so all these printouts means trees are being put to good use, and the ink used will put all that oil to use as well. Drill baby drill.
I've ran BtrFS's arch rival, ZFS for years, and I have never ever had to fsck the disk, even after power outages and crashes (yes Solaris crashes rather spectacularly sometimes). In theory a good file system should always be in a consistent state and never require fscking. Of course you could mean trying to fsck a disk when a hard drive starts failing, but I still don't see how that is useful; fscking a failed drive might just stir the data more. I'll settle for being able to pull off as much data as I can, fsck or no fsck.
I resort to hitting control with the edge of my left palm. Makes most control keys work pretty well. But if you are a touch-typist, then you'll appreciate those who pine for the days of control where the capslock key is (which for most people never gets used). As for the Commodore 64 memory model, he doesn't pine for unprotected memory, rather he pines for the way that the machine mapped things into the flat memory space. Subtle difference.
Though it certainly takes a lot of fuel and oxidizer to get a rocket through the thick lower atmosphere up to say 90,000 feet, it still takes a tremendous amount of energy to get from 90,000 feet and 3000-4000 mph to escape velocity of 17,500 mph. And that last bit would have to use oxidizer brought with since the air is quite thin at the edge of space.
From what I learned in physics class, the cheapest way to get through the thick atmosphere is to go straight up. Taking the airplane route consumes a lot more energy (several times more), though the hope is that the air can be used as an oxidizer so you don't have to carry O2. But I'm very skeptical that anything better than a rocket will ever be found, at least that uses chemical reactions as a means of propulsion.
No because it relies on two photos of the same thing, but taken at slightly different angles. In other words, it would work with a series of photos with some movement between them, but not with google maps since they are static.
Phone manufacturers should pay you, or at least help you. You breathe new life into old and clunky phones.
That's exactly why phone companies won't ever do it, and aren't at all interested in CyanogenMod. They aren't interested in improving existing phones; they are in the business of pushing new expensive phones. Or at least new contracts. Want to upgrade your year old clunker phone? No problem. Just sign here to start a new two year contract and you're good to go!
Oh wow, are you serious? If this is the kind of verbosity that Java requires, I am definitely not sad to not be a Java developer. Guess the toy dynamic languages (Python, etc) have spoiled me.
Only after signing up did I find out it doesn't even support Linux (Hulu does and they are free). Silverlight? Are they serious? I hate flash as much as the next guy, but at least it runs on Linux. Why is this even on slashdot if it can't even be accessed from Linux anyway? I'll be canceling my account tomorrow (too late tonight now), fortunately it was in the trial phase.
Not true. The GPLv3, like the GPLv2, says nothing about *installing* and running (using) the software, except in certain cases where the GPLv3 covers the output of a program (if I recall correctly). Except for that, the license only comes into effect when you *distribute* the software to other parties.
What you should have said is that any reasonable legal department has already made the use of any source code that one license in acceptable terms a fireable offense.
Actually, no the ISS can't stay in orbit without intervention. It's called "Orbital Decay." The ISS experiences atmospheric friction, even at the altitude that it's at. The Space Shuttle regularly uses its thrusters to boost the ISS's orbit at least once a year. I believe that the russian capsule can do the same thing. If we abandoned the station, it would come down in just a couple of years all on its own. Maybe it was a waste of money to build it in the first place, but letting it come down would be a further waste. I've never understood the argument because of that. The ISS really has let us test technologies and methods like building in space, life-support systems, generating power in space, etc. I doubt we could go the L1 or L2 and do things any easier or faster than we have done on the low-earth-orbit space station. In short I don't see L1 or L2 stations as being feasible at this stage of the game; we can barely do a low orbit space station.
What is this activator chemical of which you speak? You do know that most of the world's food is in the form of wheat, right? The kind you plant, harvest, then plant again. The problems with big ag have more to do with being dependent on massive amounts of fertilizer, which is derived entirely from fossil fuels. That and a dependence on herbicide for adequate weed control, but that's really a different issue. A few years ago there was talk of putting a kill switch in wheat, but that has never gone anywhere with any nation.
So no we don't worry about "activator [chemicals]" for any of the main food crops. I happen to know as I planted about a 1000 acres of winter wheat last fall, from seed I grew the year before. And except for a single broadleaf spraying in the spring and a shot of nitrogen fertilizer in the spring, there are no chemicals involved.
That doesn't matter; he essentially writes serials. So his existing book may sell like hotcakes for only a year, but that's enough. He'll have the next one out soon. That's the way pulp fiction works. It's like today's mass-marketed music. What's hot today will be forgotten in six months.
There's a huge difference though. With a proprietary library I pay for a license to use it under certain terms, which was the whole point of buying the license in the first place. With most open source libraries, they are freely offered to me, but with the complicated terms.
Thus if I don't like the open source terms, or if I'm not sure they will fit into my proprietary program, I should buy some code that does (maybe from the OSS author... he or she can relicense), or write my own code.
So if you want to complain about how "expensive" open source libraries are, that simply comes across as whining. They gave me this free code but I can't do what I want with it. Seems like most people who whine about how hard it is to use OSS code in a proprietary project need to just let it go and buy code under a license that fits their needs. If they are going to make money, then why not expect to pay library developers as well.
Comments like this one cause me to desire to release all my code only under the GPL if I was writing a library, just so I can get paid for it when my code is used in a proprietary situation.
Now, if you are an OSS developer using OSS tools and libraries, juggling licenses can get very tricky indeed.
Actually until Snow Leopard, Apple seemed to be naming their OS after German tanks. Now I'm not saying they are... I'm just asking questions and you should too.
I can't comment on what kind of snobs HBGary folks are, but the actions of Anonymous seem quite hypocritical to me in general. So "Anonymous" fights for wikileaks, which is expressly set up for the purpose of sharing secrets and revealing things. Then I read about how someone tried to expose who various members of Anonymous were, after which Anonymous got all upset and attacked him for doing the very things that wikileaks does, which they work to support. Seems like they value secrecy above everything else, kind of like the people that feel the most threatened by wikileaks. Ironic.
Thank you so much for saying this. I am a Mormon and I cringe every time I hear Glenn Beck say things that are dishonest and half-true, which is most of the time. It's very depressing really, as honesty is something we believe in. Most attacks on Mormons are based on half-truths and the exact kind of logic Beck uses. Would be ironic if it weren't so sad and hypocritical.
I think most Mormons that I know would rather not hear "Glenn Beck" and "Mormon" in the same sentence, as it gives us a bad name. Beck's TV image is definitely not what we think we are about. In fact if he were to spout his stuff in church over the pulpit, he'd be asked to stop.
Slashdot Mirror
If they cover the place where you'll be staying, Virgin Mobile offers a very attractive iPad-only data plan. It's prepaid and costs only $25 for the SIM, and then depending on how much data you want, from $25 to $60 a month.
Comparing posix read() and write() to the shifting sands of MS APIs is pretty silly. If you're going to make a comparison to Unix, at least compare apples to apples. So once upon a time I wrote code in C++ with Qt 1.0. Then Qt 2.0 came along, which was mostly compatible, but introduced new features. Then Qt 3, then Qt 4. Some things were deprecated, some things added. Developers had to adapt. Same with Gtk+ 1 to Gtk+ 2. That was a pretty painful leap for developers with several important (but understandably obsolete) widgets were deprecated. A few vertical apps out there probably never have moved from Gtk+ 1.
Anyway the point is things on Unix, as nice as they are, are not static, or even stable. The real world APIs that are necessary for developing real applications are in constant flux, and many fade away (like Motif). New languages come along that get popular for a time, like Python. Will we be using python in 10 years? hopefully. But maybe something else will come along.
So is learning python and it's current standard library of APIs, and the various current GUI apis a waste of time? I mean if the Gtk+ developers are going to pull the rug out from under me every couple of years, what's the point, right?
I don't think nook or kindle support DjVu. The Kindle does do PDF I think, but depending on the PDF the results may not be that great, given the size of the screen. The only useful PDF-viewing device I've seen is the iPad, which its pinch zoom capabilities.
Most nook and kindle owners use their books primarily for casual reading. In those kind of books, I have never heard of a book that was in the DjVu format. Indeed for this kind of reading, a digital format like epub or mobi is infinitely preferable because the device can paginate the document according to my font size preference.
Ebook readers typically are not used for browsing scanned documents (technical manuals, perhaps). The e-ink screen, as nice as it is, does not lend itself well to rapid page flipping and eyeball-searching. That's probably why you won't find DjVu or PDF support on them. There's just no demand for it, compared to the huge library of arguably throw-away literature that's in epub or mobi format.
I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say the Kindle locks you into a proprietary format. It doesn't at all. It's true that just like books you buy from BN, Amazon Kindle books are DRMed. But the device is perfectly happy to display any .mobi file I throw at it. Thanks to Calibre I can translate back and forth between mobi and epub with ease, and stick any of my O'Reilly books on my Kindle. I also love the scripts that come with Calibre to create custom newspapers for me based on feeds from BBC or CNN or other news sources. Pretty slick. Also the text to speech on the Kindle is very listenable; I've listened to about a dozen books while driving, and while it's a slight bit fatiguing to listen to, it works pretty well. The voice is about as good as OS X's Alex voice.
I have a Hanvon 516 reader that handles just about any non-DRM format as well, and even with it I would never do without Calibre. An indispensable tool for any e-book reader.
Valid complaints against the Kindle could include: fairly crappy warranty on a very fragile screen, potential privacy issues when the unit phones home, and the ability of Amazon to remote delete books from kindles. But this nonsense about locking into some proprietary format is just silly.
In a recent lawsuit my organization was involved in, the plaintiffs demanded any and all emails from certain individuals related to the case. So our lawyers had us send them all the e-mails in raw electronic form, which they then simply printed out for the plaintiffs. And of course the plaintiffs did the same thing for our side. Kind of a dirty way of complying with the court order if you think about it. I'm sure that neither side printed off the complete e-mail headers, so we're left with just the visible from, to, subject, and date fields, and the message body.
Anyway, when you're on the receiving end of a demand, printing out the e-mails is definitely a common thing in the legal world. So I'm not surprised Alaska would do this. Plus it fits with Palin's policies and platforms. I mean we have all these resources in alaska going to waste, so all these printouts means trees are being put to good use, and the ink used will put all that oil to use as well. Drill baby drill.
I've ran BtrFS's arch rival, ZFS for years, and I have never ever had to fsck the disk, even after power outages and crashes (yes Solaris crashes rather spectacularly sometimes). In theory a good file system should always be in a consistent state and never require fscking. Of course you could mean trying to fsck a disk when a hard drive starts failing, but I still don't see how that is useful; fscking a failed drive might just stir the data more. I'll settle for being able to pull off as much data as I can, fsck or no fsck.
I resort to hitting control with the edge of my left palm. Makes most control keys work pretty well. But if you are a touch-typist, then you'll appreciate those who pine for the days of control where the capslock key is (which for most people never gets used). As for the Commodore 64 memory model, he doesn't pine for unprotected memory, rather he pines for the way that the machine mapped things into the flat memory space. Subtle difference.
I don't know of anyone who's not insisting on capsules for manned flight. What else would you suggest?
Though it certainly takes a lot of fuel and oxidizer to get a rocket through the thick lower atmosphere up to say 90,000 feet, it still takes a tremendous amount of energy to get from 90,000 feet and 3000-4000 mph to escape velocity of 17,500 mph. And that last bit would have to use oxidizer brought with since the air is quite thin at the edge of space.
From what I learned in physics class, the cheapest way to get through the thick atmosphere is to go straight up. Taking the airplane route consumes a lot more energy (several times more), though the hope is that the air can be used as an oxidizer so you don't have to carry O2. But I'm very skeptical that anything better than a rocket will ever be found, at least that uses chemical reactions as a means of propulsion.
No because it relies on two photos of the same thing, but taken at slightly different angles. In other words, it would work with a series of photos with some movement between them, but not with google maps since they are static.
That's exactly why phone companies won't ever do it, and aren't at all interested in CyanogenMod. They aren't interested in improving existing phones; they are in the business of pushing new expensive phones. Or at least new contracts. Want to upgrade your year old clunker phone? No problem. Just sign here to start a new two year contract and you're good to go!
I'm pretty sure pidgin supports google talk video and has for some time.
Umm, the Gimli Glider was a Canadian incident that happened because of the switch *to* metric.
Oh wow, are you serious? If this is the kind of verbosity that Java requires, I am definitely not sad to not be a Java developer. Guess the toy dynamic languages (Python, etc) have spoiled me.
Only after signing up did I find out it doesn't even support Linux (Hulu does and they are free). Silverlight? Are they serious? I hate flash as much as the next guy, but at least it runs on Linux. Why is this even on slashdot if it can't even be accessed from Linux anyway? I'll be canceling my account tomorrow (too late tonight now), fortunately it was in the trial phase.
So... it's legal until Amazon starts running a dedup algorithm on their disks. Crazy.
Not true. The GPLv3, like the GPLv2, says nothing about *installing* and running (using) the software, except in certain cases where the GPLv3 covers the output of a program (if I recall correctly). Except for that, the license only comes into effect when you *distribute* the software to other parties.
What you should have said is that any reasonable legal department has already made the use of any source code that one license in acceptable terms a fireable offense.
Actually, no the ISS can't stay in orbit without intervention. It's called "Orbital Decay." The ISS experiences atmospheric friction, even at the altitude that it's at. The Space Shuttle regularly uses its thrusters to boost the ISS's orbit at least once a year. I believe that the russian capsule can do the same thing. If we abandoned the station, it would come down in just a couple of years all on its own. Maybe it was a waste of money to build it in the first place, but letting it come down would be a further waste. I've never understood the argument because of that. The ISS really has let us test technologies and methods like building in space, life-support systems, generating power in space, etc. I doubt we could go the L1 or L2 and do things any easier or faster than we have done on the low-earth-orbit space station. In short I don't see L1 or L2 stations as being feasible at this stage of the game; we can barely do a low orbit space station.
What is this activator chemical of which you speak? You do know that most of the world's food is in the form of wheat, right? The kind you plant, harvest, then plant again. The problems with big ag have more to do with being dependent on massive amounts of fertilizer, which is derived entirely from fossil fuels. That and a dependence on herbicide for adequate weed control, but that's really a different issue. A few years ago there was talk of putting a kill switch in wheat, but that has never gone anywhere with any nation.
So no we don't worry about "activator [chemicals]" for any of the main food crops. I happen to know as I planted about a 1000 acres of winter wheat last fall, from seed I grew the year before. And except for a single broadleaf spraying in the spring and a shot of nitrogen fertilizer in the spring, there are no chemicals involved.
That doesn't matter; he essentially writes serials. So his existing book may sell like hotcakes for only a year, but that's enough. He'll have the next one out soon. That's the way pulp fiction works. It's like today's mass-marketed music. What's hot today will be forgotten in six months.
There's a huge difference though. With a proprietary library I pay for a license to use it under certain terms, which was the whole point of buying the license in the first place. With most open source libraries, they are freely offered to me, but with the complicated terms.
Thus if I don't like the open source terms, or if I'm not sure they will fit into my proprietary program, I should buy some code that does (maybe from the OSS author... he or she can relicense), or write my own code.
So if you want to complain about how "expensive" open source libraries are, that simply comes across as whining. They gave me this free code but I can't do what I want with it. Seems like most people who whine about how hard it is to use OSS code in a proprietary project need to just let it go and buy code under a license that fits their needs. If they are going to make money, then why not expect to pay library developers as well.
Comments like this one cause me to desire to release all my code only under the GPL if I was writing a library, just so I can get paid for it when my code is used in a proprietary situation.
Now, if you are an OSS developer using OSS tools and libraries, juggling licenses can get very tricky indeed.
Actually until Snow Leopard, Apple seemed to be naming their OS after German tanks. Now I'm not saying they are... I'm just asking questions and you should too.
Funny. I made no analogy.
I can't comment on what kind of snobs HBGary folks are, but the actions of Anonymous seem quite hypocritical to me in general. So "Anonymous" fights for wikileaks, which is expressly set up for the purpose of sharing secrets and revealing things. Then I read about how someone tried to expose who various members of Anonymous were, after which Anonymous got all upset and attacked him for doing the very things that wikileaks does, which they work to support. Seems like they value secrecy above everything else, kind of like the people that feel the most threatened by wikileaks. Ironic.
Thank you so much for saying this. I am a Mormon and I cringe every time I hear Glenn Beck say things that are dishonest and half-true, which is most of the time. It's very depressing really, as honesty is something we believe in. Most attacks on Mormons are based on half-truths and the exact kind of logic Beck uses. Would be ironic if it weren't so sad and hypocritical.
I think most Mormons that I know would rather not hear "Glenn Beck" and "Mormon" in the same sentence, as it gives us a bad name. Beck's TV image is definitely not what we think we are about. In fact if he were to spout his stuff in church over the pulpit, he'd be asked to stop.