I only watch either show occasionally (my wife's quite the fanatic), but what I've seen is pretty good, as far as science fiction goes. Acting is definitely above average, Richard Dean Anderson's portrayals as an everyman facing aliens brings a wry grin now and then. Oh, and Amanda Tapping is quite cute, no doubt about that. It's nice that SciFi can make the right decision sometimes. (And sad that they can make the horribly wrong decision other times, c.f. canceling Farscape not so long ago.)
At first I questioned the relevance, but in the end, I think it does make sense. More and more as I write open source and paid-commercial software, I find the need to insert application icons, splash screen images, installer backgrounds, about page images, and so forth. And, being an engineer and not an artist, my own, er... "creations"... range from "leaving much to be desired" to "turning the stomach."
Google's image search sometimes provides resources, but licensing of images from sundry websites is always a concern. This morgueFile, on the other hand, is well suited. A little Gimp manipulation, some compositing, a touch of gradient transparency, and you've got a winning splash screen for an app built on a shoestring budget.
... is how well your site's holding up under the slashdotting!
On topic, though, it is a quaint little trip you've provided. It's fun to see the historical context of a chosen career (a chosen passion, I should say). In 1971 I was 1 to 2 years old, and don't recall what the professional goal was. Later it would be "astronaut," until grade school, when video games (c.f. this posting) made "computer programmer" be the new (and final) choice.
Cause every programmer at one point or another wants to make video games.
That's what got me. Classic Atari system, and then games on personal computers. I just had to get me some of that.
That lead into a computer science degree and then software jobs. But not a single one has been writing video games. There's been business systems, graphics, video, weather visualization, databases, knowledge management, embedded real-time, and a bunch of stuff in between. Enough experience to work on a game, but not one game, ever.
And after reading that article, I don't think I mind!
... and cellphone seem to be doing the job pretty well already with only 10Mbps. At what point do the bandwidth capabilities of an turbo-charged Bluetooth become redundant with WiFi enabled with ZeroConf networking?
Blogging comfortably took about 56kbps. Photoblogging required broadband of at least 512kbps. Videoblogging? Looks like I better fork over even more cash to the ISP.
I won't be doing high-def videoblogging unless I get my own ATSC transmitter tower!
All too often, software announcements mention just the name of the item and not what it is or why it's interesting. As an example, compare this recent summary for Zope.
Not everyone's heard of Ettercap; this summary says what it is (network protocol analyzer) and also why it's important (in top ten of security tools). I hope to see more summaries of this caliber on Slashdot.
How nice of Google to host the default start page for Firefox.
I have a feeling it's not much more than generosity. Google's already a household name, they probably don't need any more headspace. And it would be kind of ironic if the default start page were MSN.
I've got the older pcHDTV card for Linux, the so-called model 2000, and it works great. With a RAID array and three quarters of a terabyte of storage, I've been legally time-shifting broadcast HDTV. (You've got to see the cute freckles on Jennifer Garner on Alias!)
I will go ahead and buy one of the new ones, too; it would be nice to do dual-stream recording.
And Linux only. Does it get any better than that?
One thing that's always bugged me ...
on
Halo 2 Reviews
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
And a Pope on a Rope (yes, soap in the shape of the Pope, on a rope)... now all I need for the next time I'm imprisoned for my geekly exploits is Zope on a Rope! Boo-yah.
"Researchers from the University of Maryland's nonlinear dynamics and chaos research group are seeking to solve a major scientific mystery: How is the Earth's magnetic field formed and what causes changes in the field?"
But it would take a scientist to explain--- eh? Oh, nevermind!
... do we have a right to now say, "Google is teh sux0rz?" (Somehow, I don't think so, especially since "to google" is now a verb and all. We'll all get through Google's slow index, somehow, be it through community support, religion, outreach groups, or otherwise.)
I thought weblogging would be a passing fad, especially given that the majority of such blogs are updated by people with poor writing skills and dull lives. The pathetic stream-of-consciousness musings of a acne infested high schooler can only keep your interest for so long.
Sure, there are exceptions that prove the rule; the rapid punditry of certain election blogs were interesting, too.
What would be most interesting to me is to find if there's a business strategy in exploiting blogs. I recall just a few years ago Micro$oft finding some business use for instant messaging (and not just as a communications enhancement, but for things like EDI); I'm sure there are some plans already to deploy Business Visual Blog Server or some such product, to what end I can't fathom. I'm sure another company will say they've patented blogs and/or blog technology, and then we'll know that blogs have really arrived.
Ever since I fell from "Sun God"
on
FreeBSD 5.3 Released
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· Score: 4, Interesting
From 1988 to 1993 I was a "Sun God," meaning I adminisrated a university's computer lab and network of mostly SunOS (680x0 & SPARC) 4.0 systems, all based on BSD. Root access, god-like powers, you get the drift. About this time, Linux was just a posting in a newsgroup.
After leaving the university environment and getting a real job, I wanted to re-live the Sun environment at home, but goodness, were Sun systems ever pricy. Linux looked like a viable alternative, but FreeBSD had just released 2.0 at the time.
I went with FreeBSD.
It was a pretty easy decision: FreeBSD was the more Sun-like of the two PC Unix-like systems. Specifically, Linux used the System V style of runlevels, and Sun had jaded me against System V ever since they stopped bundling the compiler and called their OS "Solaris."
That was awhile back. Today, I've got rackmount hardware at home running a variety of operating systems. I get most of my stuff done on Linux. But FreeBSD has run, now runs, and will most likely continue to run my firewall and NAT. It doesn't do much else; but what it does, it does with efficiency and grace.
I can't imagine anything more vile than the so-called potted meat product that is Spam. It's the multiplicative zero element of food: you add Spam to any other dish and the whole thing tastes like Spam (as opposed to the multiplicative identity element of food, tofu, which when added to any dish takes on the flavor of the whole dish).
Given that even before Spam took on the unwelcome meaning of unsolicited commercial email that it was more a war-time inexpensive way to get protein into the diet, and that even in such dire times it tasted awful, wouldn't it make sense for Hormel to just drop that product line altogether?
I realize some Hawaiians might be upset, some fan websites would be put out, but think of the money they'd make selling rare cans of Spam on eBay.
OK, my daughter, being the daughter of a couple of geeks, was exposed early on to lots of anime. Now, we speak English in the house, and she certainly picked up on that. But when she babbled, it would have a Japanese kind of sound to it.
She's four years old now and is totally in love with Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, a live action show. Now, her reading isn't up to snuff to actually keep up with the captions, but she loves the pretty girls going shopping, singing, and fighting evil.
And now she takes that same cadence and rhythm from the long exposure to spoken and sung Japanese and will faithfully reproduce the words of songs, or will chatter in a kind of pseudo-Japanese when playing by herself. Yet her English is accentless. Clearly, there's some kind of organizational process going on in that cute little head.
Yeah, we're probably setting her up to get ostrasized in school, but then again, if she'd just pick up on some of those fighting techniques, that might not happen either!
I'm curious what improvements Google will make to the overall user experience of Mac OS X. Search is already a fundamental part of the Mac desktop experience: virtually every application features a search field in the upper-right hand corner of the window (lower-right-ish for some bizarre reason on iCal). The Google mantra of "search, don't sort" is at least partially alive on this platform today.
Slashdot Mirror
I only watch either show occasionally (my wife's quite the fanatic), but what I've seen is pretty good, as far as science fiction goes. Acting is definitely above average, Richard Dean Anderson's portrayals as an everyman facing aliens brings a wry grin now and then. Oh, and Amanda Tapping is quite cute, no doubt about that. It's nice that SciFi can make the right decision sometimes. (And sad that they can make the horribly wrong decision other times, c.f. canceling Farscape not so long ago.)
At first I questioned the relevance, but in the end, I think it does make sense. More and more as I write open source and paid-commercial software, I find the need to insert application icons, splash screen images, installer backgrounds, about page images, and so forth. And, being an engineer and not an artist, my own, er ... "creations" ... range from "leaving much to be desired" to "turning the stomach."
Google's image search sometimes provides resources, but licensing of images from sundry websites is always a concern. This morgueFile, on the other hand, is well suited. A little Gimp manipulation, some compositing, a touch of gradient transparency, and you've got a winning splash screen for an app built on a shoestring budget.
I blinked! Aw, man.
"When you're marketing to the world, there are enough idiots out there."
And PT Barnum's top competitor said, "There's a sucker born every minute."
I've pretty much lost hope for the species.
... is how well your site's holding up under the slashdotting!
On topic, though, it is a quaint little trip you've provided. It's fun to see the historical context of a chosen career (a chosen passion, I should say). In 1971 I was 1 to 2 years old, and don't recall what the professional goal was. Later it would be "astronaut," until grade school, when video games (c.f. this posting) made "computer programmer" be the new (and final) choice.
Apparently, the publisher, Ladybird Books, has had its own interesting history, and is now part of Penguin.
Cause every programmer at one point or another wants to make video games.
That's what got me. Classic Atari system, and then games on personal computers. I just had to get me some of that.
That lead into a computer science degree and then software jobs. But not a single one has been writing video games. There's been business systems, graphics, video, weather visualization, databases, knowledge management, embedded real-time, and a bunch of stuff in between. Enough experience to work on a game, but not one game, ever.
And after reading that article, I don't think I mind!
"Profit" is probably in there somewhere, too.
Maybe if you split the Time and the Warner parts off, you'd have even clearer direction, AOL?
... and cellphone seem to be doing the job pretty well already with only 10Mbps. At what point do the bandwidth capabilities of an turbo-charged Bluetooth become redundant with WiFi enabled with ZeroConf networking?
Blogging comfortably took about 56kbps. Photoblogging required broadband of at least 512kbps. Videoblogging? Looks like I better fork over even more cash to the ISP.
I won't be doing high-def videoblogging unless I get my own ATSC transmitter tower!
All too often, software announcements mention just the name of the item and not what it is or why it's interesting. As an example, compare this recent summary for Zope.
Not everyone's heard of Ettercap; this summary says what it is (network protocol analyzer) and also why it's important (in top ten of security tools). I hope to see more summaries of this caliber on Slashdot.
How nice of Google to host the default start page for Firefox.
I have a feeling it's not much more than generosity. Google's already a household name, they probably don't need any more headspace. And it would be kind of ironic if the default start page were MSN.
I've got the older pcHDTV card for Linux, the so-called model 2000, and it works great. With a RAID array and three quarters of a terabyte of storage, I've been legally time-shifting broadcast HDTV. (You've got to see the cute freckles on Jennifer Garner on Alias!)
I will go ahead and buy one of the new ones, too; it would be nice to do dual-stream recording.
And Linux only. Does it get any better than that?
... why doesn't the Halo guy get Lasik surgery?
... nevermind!
Oh, that's the Half-Life guy?
Ummmm
And a Pope on a Rope (yes, soap in the shape of the Pope, on a rope) ... now all I need for the next time I'm imprisoned for my geekly exploits is Zope on a Rope! Boo-yah.
"Researchers from the University of Maryland's nonlinear dynamics and chaos research group are seeking to solve a major scientific mystery: How is the Earth's magnetic field formed and what causes changes in the field?"
But it would take a scientist to explain--- eh? Oh, nevermind!
Software Update took care of the installation without a hitch, and since it was a micro-point release, without a price as well.
...
If only 10.4 ("Tiger") would go as smoothly in both departments
... do we have a right to now say, "Google is teh sux0rz?" (Somehow, I don't think so, especially since "to google" is now a verb and all. We'll all get through Google's slow index, somehow, be it through community support, religion, outreach groups, or otherwise.)
I thought weblogging would be a passing fad, especially given that the majority of such blogs are updated by people with poor writing skills and dull lives. The pathetic stream-of-consciousness musings of a acne infested high schooler can only keep your interest for so long.
Sure, there are exceptions that prove the rule; the rapid punditry of certain election blogs were interesting, too.
What would be most interesting to me is to find if there's a business strategy in exploiting blogs. I recall just a few years ago Micro$oft finding some business use for instant messaging (and not just as a communications enhancement, but for things like EDI); I'm sure there are some plans already to deploy Business Visual Blog Server or some such product, to what end I can't fathom. I'm sure another company will say they've patented blogs and/or blog technology, and then we'll know that blogs have really arrived.
From 1988 to 1993 I was a "Sun God," meaning I adminisrated a university's computer lab and network of mostly SunOS (680x0 & SPARC) 4.0 systems, all based on BSD. Root access, god-like powers, you get the drift. About this time, Linux was just a posting in a newsgroup.
After leaving the university environment and getting a real job, I wanted to re-live the Sun environment at home, but goodness, were Sun systems ever pricy. Linux looked like a viable alternative, but FreeBSD had just released 2.0 at the time.
I went with FreeBSD.
It was a pretty easy decision: FreeBSD was the more Sun-like of the two PC Unix-like systems. Specifically, Linux used the System V style of runlevels, and Sun had jaded me against System V ever since they stopped bundling the compiler and called their OS "Solaris."
That was awhile back. Today, I've got rackmount hardware at home running a variety of operating systems. I get most of my stuff done on Linux. But FreeBSD has run, now runs, and will most likely continue to run my firewall and NAT. It doesn't do much else; but what it does, it does with efficiency and grace.
Cheers, Chuckie.
I can't imagine anything more vile than the so-called potted meat product that is Spam. It's the multiplicative zero element of food: you add Spam to any other dish and the whole thing tastes like Spam (as opposed to the multiplicative identity element of food, tofu, which when added to any dish takes on the flavor of the whole dish).
Given that even before Spam took on the unwelcome meaning of unsolicited commercial email that it was more a war-time inexpensive way to get protein into the diet, and that even in such dire times it tasted awful, wouldn't it make sense for Hormel to just drop that product line altogether?
I realize some Hawaiians might be upset, some fan websites would be put out, but think of the money they'd make selling rare cans of Spam on eBay.
OK, my daughter, being the daughter of a couple of geeks, was exposed early on to lots of anime. Now, we speak English in the house, and she certainly picked up on that. But when she babbled, it would have a Japanese kind of sound to it.
She's four years old now and is totally in love with Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, a live action show. Now, her reading isn't up to snuff to actually keep up with the captions, but she loves the pretty girls going shopping, singing, and fighting evil.
And now she takes that same cadence and rhythm from the long exposure to spoken and sung Japanese and will faithfully reproduce the words of songs, or will chatter in a kind of pseudo-Japanese when playing by herself. Yet her English is accentless. Clearly, there's some kind of organizational process going on in that cute little head.
Yeah, we're probably setting her up to get ostrasized in school, but then again, if she'd just pick up on some of those fighting techniques, that might not happen either!
... is BBSpot's OS Quiz.
I'm curious what improvements Google will make to the overall user experience of Mac OS X. Search is already a fundamental part of the Mac desktop experience: virtually every application features a search field in the upper-right hand corner of the window (lower-right-ish for some bizarre reason on iCal). The Google mantra of "search, don't sort" is at least partially alive on this platform today.
That page tells me two things:
1. Some really ugly guys like Macs.
2. Some really lovely women like Macs.
Hummanah, hummanah!