George baby, I've got a great idea for the next film. You sittin' down? Good. It's about a Robot named ErD2 (erbium deuteride, or "erb" for short) and he's powered by nuclear fusion. Now here's the good part: We take advantage of his name ("erb") and have him talk with an incredibly annoying urban slang. (That's "Erb" as in the word "urban". Get it? Get it?) Now, he wants to put the slap down the shizzle manizzle and be bustin' caps with his frickin' "laser beams". What up, dawg? [click]
Today's lesson: Anything tastes good after a shit sandwich.
I mean, you just know it's bad when, in the midst of an post discussing a new Beta of Windows, the reviewer stops to mention how cool a Newton 2000 is. So, in other words, after seeing this lame attempt at UI, even the competition's discontinued technology looks innovative.
(In frank defense of the Newton, it looks innovative because it was, and is, innovative. Nearly ten years old and nothing comes close to the quality of the Newton interface. It was a brave, bold attempt at a new way to work with a computing device, rather than yet another maladapted windowing interface such is found in WinCE).
...coming from someone posting a message on the INTERNET. Oh, the delicious irony.
Your idea of taxing those in the 1st world countries into a less-modern lifestyle isn't a solution. FYI not everyone wants to go back to horse & carriage transport, iceboxes, oil-lamps and well water. Besides, that's not where the real demand is anyway. It's not due to "piggish consumption" -- much of the increased demand for power comes from the citizens of third-world countries who would like to better their lives with refrigeration for their food and homes, appliances to perform some of the cooking and cleaning chores, vehicle transportation and increasing development of industry.
As it should be. Only Marketing Weasels(tm) understand one another's mumblings. It lets them say things without really saying anything. The fact that this unintelligable banter is confusing to you means you're still a geek.
(Oh, and just for the record, that phrase translates into "Damn Linux! Won't it just go away?")
Think about it. For most people, their first DVD player is their *last* DVD player. Which is only replaced if something wears out or breaks. Now, with this nifty key-expiring system, the DVDCCA can "break" DVD player's by edict.
What better way to keep people purchasing hardware than to force obsolescence?
>>I would like it to create millions or billions of these works...
Billions? Why bother? Based on my listening experience, Clearchannel and the record execs seem to have built empires on no more than three variations.
So keep it simple. Who needs the Circle of Fifths, or any of those pesky black piano keys when C-G-D and some random notes/rap over a drum track (serving as the bridge) will do? Repeat "ad naseum"
1) happy, mindless dance tune by teen-star-du-jour. 90beats per minute minimum, bass drum is primary instrument. May require heavy use of DSP processing to keep singer on pitch. 2) Rap about rapper knocking other rappers off the top of the charts and or "crunk whack party", "bustin' caps" or "dubs." Word "bitches" is mandatory. Threatening violence is a plus. Don't forget shout out to imprisoned/dead homies on extended mix version. 3) Wheezy, whiny country & western tune, mandatory mentions include pickup truck, whiskey. Extra chart-topping potential for use of word "fool".
Easy one first: >>bad people are there in the US too, Yes, and since they're in the US, in the employment of US companies, they may be easily and switftly prosecuted and stolen money may more easily be recovered. This is not the case in a country strattling the first-world/third-world fence. Hiring a lawyer to represent a foreign company on the other side of the world isn't easy, cheap or effective.
Now, the other point. >>saving are much more that 10-15%, more around 60-70% atleast.
70%? No way, no how. Don't believe everything the marketing weasels tell you -- they're salesmen who get paid for getting your CIO to sign a contract, delivering results is somebody else's job and by that time the salesmen are long gone.
According to the big consulting firms, a very-well-executed offshore program *may* return 40% savings. In the case of a particular Fortune 100 with which I'm familiar a forecast (and we know how accurate those figures are) savings of 30% *may* only *potentially* be realized after the "startup" phase (i.e. first couple of years) during which there are no savings whatsoever because permanent staff must be pulled off assignments to train the replacement workers, startup/training costs are factored, software licensing costs are added (~4000 per seat at my shop) during the 1st year the offshore staff isn't handling all the support tasks (permanent staff is kept as "3rd/4th line backup", offshore "scouts" are flown to US to gather information, meetings to assess the effort are conducted, reviews of metrics, etc. etc.
In other words, some companies are spending A LOT more up front to offshore, with the hopes that somewhere down the line, years from now, when the permanent staff is fired, the company might save a few bucks. That's if everything goes perfectly, which it won't.
So far, many companies are just spending more and crossing their fingers, hoping the consulting companies deliver on promises.
How can they get by with this? Startup costs for offshoring efforts are put into a different slot by the accountants than operational costs which tends to mask the real spendings and underline the "savings." So it looks like a win-win situation which in fact it's a washout over a three or five year span.
That's all that matters to upper management -- savings. Now, with many offshoring efforts only yielding 10 or 15% savings, what does an event like this do? It blows any potential savings, resulting in a net loss. Nice going, Mr. Shiny Hair And Teeth Strategic-Thinker!
Now, this question is directed at those big-shot CIOs who troll here, let me ask you something (feel free to reply as ACs). How much money does something like *this* cost your precious bottom line? And when it happens again, then what? What could possibly happen that would make you think "Gee, maybe our technical staff shouldn't live on the other side of the world and work for somebody else (including our competition)?" Or does that even matter?
Yeah, yeah, I know... Fugeddaboutit, it's purely rhetorical. I realize that employment horizon of the corporate ruling class is only as far ahead as their golden parachute payout. I'm sure you'll find a way to blame these failures on somebody else, Mr. Executive, and your replacement can implement a new strategy for cleaning up the mess.
I have a 6600gt video card and an AMD processor and couldn't play HL2 for more than two minutes at a time 'till I tried this fix out of desperation and it totally cured the crashing. Seriously. as seen at: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic /3573 7/?o=120
Re: Half Life 2 crashes my pc during gameplay! please help!!! Help me out withe the registry editor, This is what the MS Doc says: 1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe). 2. Locate and click the following key in the registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentContro lSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management 3. On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value: Value name: LargePageMinimum Data type: REG_DWORD Radix: Hexadecimal Data value: 0xffffffff 4. Quit Registry Editor. 5. Restart the computer.
>>if the paper tape tore while you were reading it in, then you just didn't get that weapon or that sound effect.
You old-fashioned analog sound-effects guys never give up, do you? Upgrade to the 0.0.0002 version. It uses the printhead of a Epson dot-matrix printer to play music. Wicked cool. However, it does require an optional, and expensive, 16k RAM expansion card.:( Bastards.
Just remember, Ninjas don't forget endtags like other mammals.
And if they DID wipe out half their storage, I would be like, "Dude! You'd better look out -- that Ninja just dropped the PENDING_ORDERS table in Production and I think he's going flip out and chop off somebody's head!"
>>I think it'll take a lot of people actually cancelling their subscriptions...
Count me in.
I've been preparing for this moment for the past several months. My MythTV box is waiting, ready-to-go, so the instant I see my first fast-forward advertisement I'm calling Tivo and telling them to cancel my subscription, effective immediately.
I guess I'll be checking my tivo recordings tonight, phone in hand.
Rather than crush the cars, why didn't GM just let it be known that they were going to dump/abandon these vehicles, with keys in the ignition and blank title paperwork in the glove box, in their desert holding area? Then, with a wink and a nod, inform the community that if anyone wanted to *steal* the vehicles it wouldn't be in GM's interests to prosecute.
Presto - problem solved. If anyone cared, they could have a car. If they injured themselves, GM could say "tough doughnuts -- you STOLE it, after all!"
I'm sure a lawyer can come up with a good reason why this wouldn't work. Spoilsports.:(
>>Won't somebody think of the CARS!!! I can understand some of GMs thinking, especially the part about litigation, but it seems a waste to crush so many perfectly usable automobiles.
>>Raskin is a big fan of buttons, as long as each button does exactly one thing. He says that the best way to use a computer is to develop habits, so that you can do things without thinking about them.
Yes, but he contradicts himself, too. I clearly remember Jef railing about the problems of habits -- he complained, for example, that the "Are you sure?" dialog is not just worthless, but dangerous because people develop the habit of clicking "yes" without pausing to consider the implications. So are habits good or bad, Mr. Raskin? One can't have it both ways, I'm afraid.
For a single-task system (such as his Canon Cat word processor) a single-purpose specialized interface such as a dedicated keyboard button may be fine, but for a general purpose system, which may be called upon to create documents, create video, play music, organize photographs or simulate a 3D space, dedicating a button to a task (e.g. the LEAP(tm) key) is too restrictive a model because it leads to confusion of it's own.
In short, tasks which are different should feel different, and the interface should reflect that. Personally, I think having one interface for everything is a BAD idea; and modality is not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, I play a number of different musical instruments and someone asked me once, "Don't you get confused when you switch? How do you remember them all?" My answer was "It's easy -- they're different." Each one feels different, I hold a saxaphone like so, but the highland bagpipes are quite a different thing altogether. The point at which I interface with the instrument is completely different, even if I'm playing the same musical notes in the same order. The same applies to language. Russian has it's own phonems, tempo, feel, mood, which is quite different from Spanish, and different again from Engligh. Keeping them straight is actually quite easy, one just shifts to a different mode.
Getting back to the point at hand, I believe some of the most forward-reaching studies in computer-human interaction are taking place in studies which examine robot/human interaction (e.g. Sony labs and the MIT AI lab such as Cynthia Braezeal-Ferrel's Kizmet). They've gotten beyond interacting with stuff drawn on a CRT to study interactions with objects in the real world rather than a simulation. "The world as it's own model," as Rod Brooks would say, is where the future of computer/human interaction lies.
Don't mod something as offtopic just because you're ignorant. GNURadio is VERY "on topic" since GNURadio can be used to receive over-the-air HDTV and stream the data to disk, for later demux and rendering.
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/hdtv-sample s.html
GNU Radio - HDTV Snapshots Below are some single frame snapshots captured February 15, 2003. The source station was KSBW-DT, channel 10 (195 MHz), Salinas, CA. The program was "Law and Order", and the recording was made between 8 and 9 PM Pacific Standard Time.
is that awesome, or what?
More information about using GNURadio to receive hdtv at: http://comsec.com/wiki?HowtoHdTv
Slashdot Mirror
George baby, I've got a great idea for the next film. You sittin' down? Good. It's about a Robot named ErD2 (erbium deuteride, or "erb" for short) and he's powered by nuclear fusion. Now here's the good part: We take advantage of his name ("erb") and have him talk with an incredibly annoying urban slang. (That's "Erb" as in the word "urban". Get it? Get it?) Now, he wants to put the slap down the shizzle manizzle and be bustin' caps with his frickin' "laser beams". What up, dawg?
[click]
Hello? George, you there? Hello? hello?
Today's lesson: Anything tastes good after a shit sandwich.
I mean, you just know it's bad when, in the midst of an post discussing a new Beta of Windows, the reviewer stops to mention how cool a Newton 2000 is. So, in other words, after seeing this lame attempt at UI, even the competition's discontinued technology looks innovative.
(In frank defense of the Newton, it looks innovative because it was, and is, innovative. Nearly ten years old and nothing comes close to the quality of the Newton interface. It was a brave, bold attempt at a new way to work with a computing device, rather than yet another maladapted windowing interface such is found in WinCE).
Your idea of taxing those in the 1st world countries into a less-modern lifestyle isn't a solution. FYI not everyone wants to go back to horse & carriage transport, iceboxes, oil-lamps and well water. Besides, that's not where the real demand is anyway. It's not due to "piggish consumption" -- much of the increased demand for power comes from the citizens of third-world countries who would like to better their lives with refrigeration for their food and homes, appliances to perform some of the cooking and cleaning chores, vehicle transportation and increasing development of industry.
>>This is virtually non-sensical to me.
As it should be. Only Marketing Weasels(tm) understand one another's mumblings. It lets them say things without really saying anything. The fact that this unintelligable banter is confusing to you means you're still a geek.
(Oh, and just for the record, that phrase translates into "Damn Linux! Won't it just go away?")
Think about it. For most people, their first DVD player is their *last* DVD player. Which is only replaced if something wears out or breaks. Now, with this nifty key-expiring system, the DVDCCA can "break" DVD player's by edict.
What better way to keep people purchasing hardware than to force obsolescence?
>>I would like it to create millions or billions of these works...
Billions? Why bother? Based on my listening experience, Clearchannel and the record execs seem to have built empires on no more than three variations.
So keep it simple. Who needs the Circle of Fifths, or any of those pesky black piano keys when C-G-D and some random notes/rap over a drum track (serving as the bridge) will do? Repeat "ad naseum"
1) happy, mindless dance tune by teen-star-du-jour. 90beats per minute minimum, bass drum is primary instrument. May require heavy use of DSP processing to keep singer on pitch.
2) Rap about rapper knocking other rappers off the top of the charts and or "crunk whack party", "bustin' caps" or "dubs." Word "bitches" is mandatory. Threatening violence is a plus. Don't forget shout out to imprisoned/dead homies on extended mix version.
3) Wheezy, whiny country & western tune, mandatory mentions include pickup truck, whiskey. Extra chart-topping potential for use of word "fool".
>>XCode is far too bulky
As compared to Visual Studio?!? Woah.
Easy one first:
>>bad people are there in the US too,
Yes, and since they're in the US, in the employment of US companies, they may be easily and switftly prosecuted and stolen money may more easily be recovered. This is not the case in a country strattling the first-world/third-world fence. Hiring a lawyer to represent a foreign company on the other side of the world isn't easy, cheap or effective.
Now, the other point.
>>saving are much more that 10-15%, more around 60-70% atleast.
70%? No way, no how. Don't believe everything the marketing weasels tell you -- they're salesmen who get paid for getting your CIO to sign a contract, delivering results is somebody else's job and by that time the salesmen are long gone.
According to the big consulting firms, a very-well-executed offshore program *may* return 40% savings. In the case of a particular Fortune 100 with which I'm familiar a forecast (and we know how accurate those figures are) savings of 30% *may* only *potentially* be realized after the "startup" phase (i.e. first couple of years) during which there are no savings whatsoever because permanent staff must be pulled off assignments to train the replacement workers, startup/training costs are factored, software licensing costs are added (~4000 per seat at my shop) during the 1st year the offshore staff isn't handling all the support tasks (permanent staff is kept as "3rd/4th line backup", offshore "scouts" are flown to US to gather information, meetings to assess the effort are conducted, reviews of metrics, etc. etc.
In other words, some companies are spending A LOT more up front to offshore, with the hopes that somewhere down the line, years from now, when the permanent staff is fired, the company might save a few bucks. That's if everything goes perfectly, which it won't.
So far, many companies are just spending more and crossing their fingers, hoping the consulting companies deliver on promises.
How can they get by with this? Startup costs for offshoring efforts are put into a different slot by the accountants than operational costs which tends to mask the real spendings and underline the "savings." So it looks like a win-win situation which in fact it's a washout over a three or five year span.
That's all that matters to upper management -- savings. Now, with many offshoring efforts only yielding 10 or 15% savings, what does an event like this do? It blows any potential savings, resulting in a net loss. Nice going, Mr. Shiny Hair And Teeth Strategic-Thinker!
Now, this question is directed at those big-shot CIOs who troll here, let me ask you something (feel free to reply as ACs). How much money does something like *this* cost your precious bottom line? And when it happens again, then what? What could possibly happen that would make you think "Gee, maybe our technical staff shouldn't live on the other side of the world and work for somebody else (including our competition)?" Or does that even matter?
Yeah, yeah, I know... Fugeddaboutit, it's purely rhetorical. I realize that employment horizon of the corporate ruling class is only as far ahead as their golden parachute payout. I'm sure you'll find a way to blame these failures on somebody else, Mr. Executive, and your replacement can implement a new strategy for cleaning up the mess.
What the hell.I've got karma to burn...
c /3573 7/?o=120
o lSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management
I have a 6600gt video card and an AMD processor and couldn't play HL2 for more than two minutes at a time 'till I tried this fix out of desperation and it totally cured the crashing. Seriously.
as seen at:
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topi
Re: Half Life 2 crashes my pc during gameplay! please help!!!
Help me out withe the registry editor, This is what the MS Doc says:
1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
2. Locate and click the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentContr
3. On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:
Value name: LargePageMinimum
Data type: REG_DWORD
Radix: Hexadecimal
Data value: 0xffffffff
4. Quit Registry Editor.
5. Restart the computer.
>>if the paper tape tore while you were reading it in, then you just didn't get that weapon or that sound effect.
:( Bastards.
You old-fashioned analog sound-effects guys never give up, do you? Upgrade to the 0.0.0002 version. It uses the printhead of a Epson dot-matrix printer to play music. Wicked cool. However, it does require an optional, and expensive, 16k RAM expansion card.
Just remember, Ninjas don't forget endtags like other mammals.
And if they DID wipe out half their storage, I would be like, "Dude! You'd better look out -- that Ninja just dropped the PENDING_ORDERS table in Production and I think he's going flip out and chop off somebody's head!"
>>I think it'll take a lot of people actually cancelling their subscriptions...
Count me in.
I've been preparing for this moment for the past several months. My MythTV box is waiting, ready-to-go, so the instant I see my first fast-forward advertisement I'm calling Tivo and telling them to cancel my subscription, effective immediately.
I guess I'll be checking my tivo recordings tonight, phone in hand.
Don't worry. They'll speak normally. It's the closed captions that'll be l337!
These cards didn't need to be destroyed.
:(
Rather than crush the cars, why didn't GM just let it be known that they were going to dump/abandon these vehicles, with keys in the ignition and blank title paperwork in the glove box, in their desert holding area? Then, with a wink and a nod, inform the community that if anyone wanted to *steal* the vehicles it wouldn't be in GM's interests to prosecute.
Presto - problem solved. If anyone cared, they could have a car. If they injured themselves, GM could say "tough doughnuts -- you STOLE it, after all!"
I'm sure a lawyer can come up with a good reason why this wouldn't work. Spoilsports.
>>Won't somebody think of the CARS!!!
I can understand some of GMs thinking, especially the part about litigation, but it seems a waste to crush so many perfectly usable automobiles.
Before and after photos of at least 60 EV1s being crushed: http://ev1-club.power.net/
Because, as we all know, P2P networks are EVIL.
Signed,
The MPAA/RIAA.
>>Who knew an mp3 player wasn't appropriate for playing music.
Sony.
>>TV is full of idiotic shows that make women look perfect
Damn!! There's a channel with nothing but perfect women? Where do I sign up?
>>...and men look like a bunch of retards
Funny. All this time I thought us men made men look like retards. You mean I can blame it on the TV studios? That's awesome.
>>Raskin is a big fan of buttons, as long as each button does exactly one thing. He says that the best way to use a computer is to develop habits, so that you can do things without thinking about them.
Yes, but he contradicts himself, too. I clearly remember Jef railing about the problems of habits -- he complained, for example, that the "Are you sure?" dialog is not just worthless, but dangerous because people develop the habit of clicking "yes" without pausing to consider the implications. So are habits good or bad, Mr. Raskin? One can't have it both ways, I'm afraid.
For a single-task system (such as his Canon Cat word processor) a single-purpose specialized interface such as a dedicated keyboard button may be fine, but for a general purpose system, which may be called upon to create documents, create video, play music, organize photographs or simulate a 3D space, dedicating a button to a task (e.g. the LEAP(tm) key) is too restrictive a model because it leads to confusion of it's own.
In short, tasks which are different should feel different, and the interface should reflect that. Personally, I think having one interface for everything is a BAD idea; and modality is not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, I play a number of different musical instruments and someone asked me once, "Don't you get confused when you switch? How do you remember them all?" My answer was "It's easy -- they're different." Each one feels different, I hold a saxaphone like so, but the highland bagpipes are quite a different thing altogether. The point at which I interface with the instrument is completely different, even if I'm playing the same musical notes in the same order. The same applies to language. Russian has it's own phonems, tempo, feel, mood, which is quite different from Spanish, and different again from Engligh. Keeping them straight is actually quite easy, one just shifts to a different mode.
Getting back to the point at hand, I believe some of the most forward-reaching studies in computer-human interaction are taking place in studies which examine robot/human interaction (e.g. Sony labs and the MIT AI lab such as Cynthia Braezeal-Ferrel's Kizmet). They've gotten beyond interacting with stuff drawn on a CRT to study interactions with objects in the real world rather than a simulation. "The world as it's own model," as Rod Brooks would say, is where the future of computer/human interaction lies.
>>Umm... correct me if I'm wrong... but wouldn't it more or less run out of the box?
Nope. Not until you glue on a LEAP(tm) key and install a SwyftCard.
"Flamebait?" C'mon -- that was +5 informative if I've ever seen it.
It was fake, but accurate.
is that awesome, or what?
More information about using GNURadio to receive hdtv at: http://comsec.com/wiki?HowtoHdTv
>>The security people aren't big fans of people
I think that just about says it all.
>I used to date a girl like that...
You used to date a cheap, headless girl?
Freaky!!!