Besides which, you really want a journalling file system when sudden disconnection or loss of power is an issue, which it certainly is on a portable drive. Actually, you want a journalling file system, period. Now that Microsoft has EOLed its DOS legacy OSs, old-fashioned file systems just don't have anything going for them -- except inertia.
I'm curious to know why you think NTFS sucks. Because Mister Bill owns it? Not that it really matters -- you can't access it from any non-NT OS.
You do need to distinguish between the author of the book the movie was based on, and the people who made the movie itself. Not doing so is lazy and sloppy. And in the case of Blade Runner it's just plain stupid -- nobody who's seen it and also read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? see much of a resemblance between the two. They both had artificial people in them, that's about it.
I carefully avoid seeing any Steven Spielberg movies, but I'm not persuaded that Ridley Scott is anything brilliant either. Most of the good dialog in Blade Runner was improvised by the actors, who found Scott's klunky script unperformable.
God, where is Billy Wilder, now that we really need him?
RTFA. There's nothing here about whether stealing DirecTV content is good or bad, legal or illegal, safe or risky. All the links are to pages that assume that using reprogrammed smart cards to steal programming is bad, illegal, and risky.
The issue here is that DirecTV seems to be hassling people who have the ability to steal programming, whether they actually are or not. Which is, I think you'll agree, pretty scary.
I understand why people feel the need to "discover" silly origins for words. (Hence the "standard" explanation that "starboard" comes from "steering board", even though that's totally inconsistent with other nautical uses of the word "board".) But where do these fantasy acronyms come from?
Long before there was war driving there was war dialing. Which comes from a movie about AI written by people who knew nothing about AI. Besides, you've got Ally Sheedy alone in your room, why are you wasting time on that stupid computer?
Most people who work for themselves put in more hours for less pay. Why do they do it? Because they like working for themselves, or they want to do something they enjoy. In this case it's probably the latter: he is spending all day playing an online game!
If your site (don't pretend it's not you) can't deal with simple Slashdotting or DoS attacks (from the server POV they're they same thing) then why do you keep whoring for Slashdot links? Learn to administer your site so it's available.
I said I didn't mind your promoting your site. But you're doing it backwards. First you get ready to handle the traffic, then you generate it.
Besides which, it's a beautiful form of communication. One of these days...
On development I find intriguing: claims that babies can learn to sign before they can learn to talk. Which is cool if it help loving parents bond with and begin educating their kinds more quickly. Not so cool if it becomes yet another for overcompetitive parents to put their kids on the achievement treadmill too early.
Rob, you gotta stop accepting stories from this idiot. He only submits them to promote his own site. Which I don't mind, except that his site isn't SE-effect-proof, and he always submits invalid links!
In those ancient days when you couldn't just go on the web to buy obscure electronic parts, I had to go to Fry's to buy a specialized video adapter memory chip. I had the part number recorded in my Newton, which I didn't feel like taking out of my bag, so I just took the whole bag into the store, figuring I'd let the Door Nazi search it on the way out. But he didn't even look at my bag! He just smiled and marked my receipt the way he'd been told. I could have had a couple thousand bucks worth of stuff in there!
Oops. This is a war story, not an endorsement of theft. If you decise to (mis)use this information, you're on your own!
The first ten all make the same lame joke. Get a life people!
More interesting is the documentation of the apparent exponentially decaying attention span of slashdotters.
I'm not sure the decay fits any simple math model. Here's a more practical explanation: It takes about 24 hours for a Slashdot story to scroll off the main page. So for the first day and part of the second you're getting hits from every slashdotter. After that you're only get hits from people who compulsively look through old stories and/or browse Slashdot through RSS feeds and other offline tools. And after that, of course it's old news.
I'll bet if you chart the data hour-by-hour, you'll see a sudden dropoff at the very moment the story scrolls off.
What's next, buy a used Ford and pay Ford to transfer the license for the onboard computer's OS or face piracy charges if you continue to drive?"
Legally, that analogy makes sense, but has nothing to do with the real world: Cisco and NetApp could never hope to detect and prosecute a significant number of license "thieves". Here's the more realistic analogy: Ford won't fix your car unless you pony up that license fee. Not a big threat with cars, where it's pretty easy to find an independent mechanic. But NetApp and Cisco both sell very non-standard products. They get away with selling stuff on restrictive terms because they can.
I think the moral of the story is "Buyer Beware", not "Help, I'm Being Raped". When you buy some used technology on eBay, make sure you're also buying the right to use that technology. Or if you don't feel obligated to honor the non-transferrability clause in a user license, make sure it's a product where the clause is effectively unenforceable -- as with all the educational-license software that students routinely resell on eBay.
which is why I'm glad they've opened the engine up for third party use, because it means Apple can focus on speed and integration with the OS, and 3rd parties can get on with innovating.
Not as if they had a whole lot of choice, kHTML being open-source. Still there seems to be a lot of mutual admiration between the Safari and Konqueror teams, as reflected by friendly pronouncemnts and such.
I've always liked the kHTML engine. I just hope that it gets "borrowed" even more than it is already.
Read this post. Read the horror stories on TivoCommunity.com. I don't have a scientific sample, although I'd guess it's a pretty small percentage. But it's obvious way higher than the failure rate for other consumer devices. Why do you think the waranty is only good for 90 days?
Before you get all bent out of shape, bear in mind that I'm not advising against buying the product, just making more than usual allowance for product problems. And if you still have nothing better to do than flame me for suggesting there's any kind of issue, you can fuck off. I'm thorough bored with Tivo Flame Zealots.
It's funny -- I got two different responses saying the same thing: "I was at wWDC and everybody there says Cocoa is going to conquer the world!" So you both got blasted by big glossy sales presentations that did exactly what they were supposed to do. That has precisely nothing to do with the quality or acceptance level of an API.
Wait a minute. I seem to recall that the set from TOS was acquired by the Smithsonian! I smell a con.
Tee Eye Vee Ooooooh
on
Buying a New TV?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Spend some of it on a TiVo (you can't go wrong, but you can always return it if you don't like it (I know, not possible)).
Well, you can go wrong -- TiVo's have a high failure rate. There are two things you can do to avoid making this a problem:
Don't buy it over the Internet. If you do and it dies, you'll waste months fighting with the support people for TiVo and for whatever label you bought it under. Instead, go to a local merchant and make sure there's an understanding that you can get a replacement unit right away if the first one dies.
Get an extended warrantee. I usually consider this a ripoff (if your gadget is reliable, an EW is a bad value, and if it isn't, why are you buying it?), but for a Tivo this actually makes sense.
Also, note that a Tivo's price doesn't include a subscription, even though the device is pretty useless without one. A lifetime subscription is a better value (it costs less than 2 years of the monthly subscription) but there *are* those hardware issues...
If you're lucky, nothing will go wrong and your enjoyment of TV will go up drastically. (Tivos aren't just convenient, they're wonderful for digging up shows you always meant to watch, or would want to watch if you'd ever heard of them.) If you're not lucky, the damn thing will go psychotic. Which is survivable, if you're prepared for it.
Jeez, it doesn't even come with any real documentation or provenance. Just some laundry marks that might have been made by the Desilu props department. Or not.
You'll note that the rank stripes are for a Lieutenant J.G., though by the end of TOS Scotty jumped up to Lieutenant Commander. Roddenberry explained this with some silly story about giving the actors promotions instead of raises. But I suspect that he really had no idea what the stripes meant. A lot more of Star Trek was invented by other people than members of the Church of St. Gene will admit.
You can't buy Dells with 28% return rates. "Uhm, Captin, the computer is down again. Can you tell the Admiral that we're going to have to take it off-line again while I trouleshoot." Don't think so.
I seem to recall an ep of JAG where precisely that happened. Of course, they changed the culprit from the vendor QA department to North Korean Intelligence...
The more interesting question is why Apple instead of Sun hardware.
I very much doubt if either the Navy or Lockheed cares what the specific hardware platform is. They simply chose the high-performance computing integrator whose bid came out on top during whatever evaluation process they use. This time it was Terra Soft, and Terra Soft only does PPC/Linux.
I managed to figure it out when the battery fell out. Not that it matters. What does matter is that their complicated feature-ripe recharging system has a MTBF of about 5 minutes.
I'm afraid our front line troops mostly dorunWindows. This is one of the few military applications where Microsoft wouldn't have an almost automatic lock: almost nobody uses NT as a high-performance computing platform.
I have one of those weird Rio MP3 gadgets, the ones that used a speparate "backpack" to hold memory and battery (?). Overengineered, poor physical design, way too many wiz bang features.
On top of this, you say the new Rio product will have OV, a feature that nobody except a few anti-patent zealots care about. Too clever for me.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm curious to know why you think NTFS sucks. Because Mister Bill owns it? Not that it really matters -- you can't access it from any non-NT OS.
I carefully avoid seeing any Steven Spielberg movies, but I'm not persuaded that Ridley Scott is anything brilliant either. Most of the good dialog in Blade Runner was improvised by the actors, who found Scott's klunky script unperformable.
God, where is Billy Wilder, now that we really need him?
The issue here is that DirecTV seems to be hassling people who have the ability to steal programming, whether they actually are or not. Which is, I think you'll agree, pretty scary.
Long before there was war driving there was war dialing. Which comes from a movie about AI written by people who knew nothing about AI. Besides, you've got Ally Sheedy alone in your room, why are you wasting time on that stupid computer?
Sorry, caught me in a bad mood.
Most people who work for themselves put in more hours for less pay. Why do they do it? Because they like working for themselves, or they want to do something they enjoy. In this case it's probably the latter: he is spending all day playing an online game!
I said I didn't mind your promoting your site. But you're doing it backwards. First you get ready to handle the traffic, then you generate it.
On development I find intriguing: claims that babies can learn to sign before they can learn to talk. Which is cool if it help loving parents bond with and begin educating their kinds more quickly. Not so cool if it becomes yet another for overcompetitive parents to put their kids on the achievement treadmill too early.
Rob, you gotta stop accepting stories from this idiot. He only submits them to promote his own site. Which I don't mind, except that his site isn't SE-effect-proof, and he always submits invalid links!
Oops. This is a war story, not an endorsement of theft. If you decise to (mis)use this information, you're on your own!
I'll bet if you chart the data hour-by-hour, you'll see a sudden dropoff at the very moment the story scrolls off.
I think the moral of the story is "Buyer Beware", not "Help, I'm Being Raped". When you buy some used technology on eBay, make sure you're also buying the right to use that technology. Or if you don't feel obligated to honor the non-transferrability clause in a user license, make sure it's a product where the clause is effectively unenforceable -- as with all the educational-license software that students routinely resell on eBay.
This opens up some scary possibilities. Like flame wars between soldiers that like different Linux distros. Conducted with real flamethrowers!
Yeah, nobody sane uses Windows for embedded apps. But I don't think a tanker or a artillery man knows or care what OS he's "using".
I've always liked the kHTML engine. I just hope that it gets "borrowed" even more than it is already.
Before you get all bent out of shape, bear in mind that I'm not advising against buying the product, just making more than usual allowance for product problems. And if you still have nothing better to do than flame me for suggesting there's any kind of issue, you can fuck off. I'm thorough bored with Tivo Flame Zealots.
It's funny -- I got two different responses saying the same thing: "I was at wWDC and everybody there says Cocoa is going to conquer the world!" So you both got blasted by big glossy sales presentations that did exactly what they were supposed to do. That has precisely nothing to do with the quality or acceptance level of an API.
Wait a minute. I seem to recall that the set from TOS was acquired by the Smithsonian! I smell a con.
- Don't buy it over the Internet. If you do and it dies, you'll waste months fighting with the support people for TiVo and for whatever label you bought it under. Instead, go to a local merchant and make sure there's an understanding that you can get a replacement unit right away if the first one dies.
- Get an extended warrantee. I usually consider this a ripoff (if your gadget is reliable, an EW is a bad value, and if it isn't, why are you buying it?), but for a Tivo this actually makes sense.
Also, note that a Tivo's price doesn't include a subscription, even though the device is pretty useless without one. A lifetime subscription is a better value (it costs less than 2 years of the monthly subscription) but there *are* those hardware issues...If you're lucky, nothing will go wrong and your enjoyment of TV will go up drastically. (Tivos aren't just convenient, they're wonderful for digging up shows you always meant to watch, or would want to watch if you'd ever heard of them.) If you're not lucky, the damn thing will go psychotic. Which is survivable, if you're prepared for it.
You'll note that the rank stripes are for a Lieutenant J.G., though by the end of TOS Scotty jumped up to Lieutenant Commander. Roddenberry explained this with some silly story about giving the actors promotions instead of raises. But I suspect that he really had no idea what the stripes meant. A lot more of Star Trek was invented by other people than members of the Church of St. Gene will admit.
I hope your insurance is paid up!
I managed to figure it out when the battery fell out. Not that it matters. What does matter is that their complicated feature-ripe recharging system has a MTBF of about 5 minutes.
I'm afraid our front line troops mostly do run Windows. This is one of the few military applications where Microsoft wouldn't have an almost automatic lock: almost nobody uses NT as a high-performance computing platform.
And now that Sun's market cap is back down in the 10 billion range, maybe Apple will buy Sun!
On top of this, you say the new Rio product will have OV, a feature that nobody except a few anti-patent zealots care about. Too clever for me.