Sometimes I find subtle, semi-transparent logos helpful when flipping around
Fair enough. But when they started having those continous news flash scrolling along the bottom, along with the other logos and station IDs, etc. they can take up to a quater or a third of the screen.
That is really annoying.
Just another example of Disney Planet, Mac World, and the universe of Microsoft.
I swear I am getter less sympathetic to corporations each day.
Paraphrasing here, "the agency's main hopes lie with persuading Congress to bail it out. It is estimated it needs 8 billion dollars to fulfill its commitments and to cover a 5 billion dollar debt, a vastly improbable sum given that America is on a war footing and has priorities far removed from space travel. Instead, a desperate slashing back of costs and missions seems the agency's likely future."
Alot of it depends on the preponderance of the material being reproduced. The issues of the Digital media are relevant here, since a lot of things that that are electronic will not survive.
This is a very similar same issue.
Now you also have the favorites of particular professors, perpetuated because that is what some doctorate candidate wrote their thesis on. So most writers depend on the mercies of the college professors, unless they have some large estate to keep promoting them, republishing the works, etc.
There was a special on PBS recently on the author of the original sam spade detective novels, well known today from Humphrey Bogart movies. But most folks have probably never read the original stories.
Finding out who that was is left as an exercise for the reader;-)
Of course everyone wants a Tricorder, which could do almost anything. Or one of those other Star Trek devices.
Strangely enough the form factor on those was more like a 5x8 piece of paper. (about half the size of an A4, etc)
Strangely, I have not really seen a PDA in that form factor, although it is reasonable. Usually they are in pocket size (or so), or else migrate to an actual laptop.
probably would not mind something in that form factor although I would have to think about it.
On the other hand, the author, illiad, has been known to be partial to llamas.
but you'd have to visit the IRC channel to find this out. And Llamas have achieved the status of an old IRC joke that is slowly fading into the background.
The concept is pretty straight ahead, but I was wondering how you operated the wing. then I saw this:
The sailboard version changes shape according to the amount of downforce exerted on the boom - in stronger winds the increasing lift generated by the rig is counterbalanced by the sailor leaning out more over the water, which in turn causes the rig to flex
Now that's clever. But that rig is going to have to be pretty strong, given the stress on the joints.
Although each new weapon to be added to the mix makes war less confrontable. The more overwhelming the weapon, the less folks can deal with it.
By the time a generation gets "used" to the next invention of attrocity, something else seems to come along.
So the long term problem is not really one of technology, except maybe of the spirit. One that does not depend on so much on happy pills to help us get over the stress of all these conflicts.
Relax, be happy, and forget about the bomb might not be a fully rational response.
Christ, that's mean. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, even Microsoft.
I have my moments.
This comes out of the idea that if MS software is so widspread, being a monopoly and all, then maybe it should the equivalent of a public utility.
Maybe managed by something like the Microsoft Software Commission, with mostly none MS people on it. All changes having to be vetted for by the commission, and also vetted for by separate commissions in the seaprate states. With a bureacracy to match. Suprise inspections, the whole thing. Hire ex IRS, BATF, etc
If this is supposed to be like a 5 year jail term, then make sure it feels like jail. Have a big enforcement office lifting up all of the rocks.
Make them desperately want to to be on good behavior. Treat them like the source of software terrorism. It's been a bad day, so the idea of corporate torture brings a smile to my face.
In an earlier post that I can not find, I had the thought that you could have a large commission to approve everyting MS does.
It would be the death of a thousand cuts if it was sufficiently large (reps from each state) and if MS have to clear all plans with the commission in advance.
Micromanagement from the DOJ, with the IRS as a model, lots of random audits, etc.
All people are innocent until proved guilty by a court of law? IANAL, but I thought that such presumption of guilt would not be constitutional or something.
Could we have a legal geek in here explain this bit please?
I just love all of these folks who want to make the mere existance of something they dislike a crime with an instant penalty.
How about data compression? A three min video clip that is 177 megs? This better be good.
This is a typical oversight when designing stuff mostly for internal consumption. They obviously were not planning for people to try to see the file via a dialup or something.
This fits in with the dot-bomb executives who wanted their website optimized for 1280 x 1024 or something, which is what they had in their office. Which was more clueless since those dotbomb websites were designed for public use.
Re:The reason is that Galaxies are screwed up
on
Dark Matter Measurements
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
But these black holes may have enough gravitational pull to bind millions or billions of starts together to form what we know as galaxies.
A further problem not mentioned in the above is that the angular motion of spiral arms is such that the speed of star motion is much more consistent from the center of the spriral to the outside of the spiral then they should be. It is almost as if they were a solidf or semi-solid disc. which is silly, but that is how they behave.
This may be less consistent with a high energy point source of gravity, and more consistent with mass spread out for a large distance. but I haven't kept up and my math sucks [smile]
newspaper archives contain a lot more than just the articles and the pictures used. They contain the other unpublished material, 95% of which never gets used. great stuff for historical researchers and writers.
With digital culling you do not have that 95% in the background. As a proportional figur you migh have 10% to 50%. This is what she is worried about.
It is like the old way of writing by hand.
It is a different intellectual and emotional feeling to write a manuscript by hand, and to re-write pages by hand, over the progress of a complete book. The experience is one where you are much more intimate on a phrase by phrase basis with the text.
This is far different than electronic cut and paste, where even with version control, you often do not have the same word by world immersion with what you write.
Of course, this is entirley different from the experience of writing so well and fast that you are like the old pulp magazine writers who had rolls of butcher block paper in the typewriter. [/urbanlegend]
This type of experience is similar the the interaction that a photographer had with a photo in darkroom work. Very different from digital photography indeed. and a very different way of thinking and even looking at the world.
So, how the f*ck is it that we know exactly how much ELSE there is out there?
They look at the galaxies, and estimate how many stars and stuff there is in the galaxy. Any rotating galaxy. And They figure out how fast the galaxy is rotating.
They notice a problem. For any rotating galaxy there is not enough star stuff to hold the galaxy together. The spiral arms should never be there.
The star stuff in the galaxies do not have have enough gravity to hold galaxies together. Galaxcies should not exist at all. Stars should be all flying about because that is how weak the gravity is.
Just how much too weak? The Star stuff has one tenth the gravity needed to do the job. so something has to be doing the other 90%.
That is what the dark matter is. It is a term to label what the other 90% is. The don't know what it is yet. but they are working on it.
I'm fighting gainst bad software, which Microsoft happens to make.
So I presume you are in favor of a Microsoft World?
Anti-Globalists
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
globalization - pitting fundamentalism against cosmopolitan tolerance
Not quite.
Many anti-globalists are in fact in protest against the prospect of the Disney Planet, McEarth, and the Microsoft World. They are in protest of the potential economic, political, and social rape of the economies and resources of people around the world for the mere financial profit of a few corporations. They are against the corporate democracy where only they voices of the corporations count, and yours do not.
If you are fighting against Microsoft, you are to a certain degree fighting against globalization. This is a much bigger and more complex picture than so quickly sketched above.
It is, of course about freedom vs control. any monopoly wants to have control.
The question is if it is possible to have freedom while allow a single company control. Or is it a matter of the golden handcuffs, and an S&M relationship between the marketer and the customer?
Even in an S&M type of relationship, there is the matter of trust. And the problem is that in a large company, there will be people you can not trust. It becomes a fight between people who want to improve the product vs people who wish to get head by destroying their competitors. MS seems to have segregated these tyeps somewhat, pushing the destructive types into marketing.
I do not want an S&M relationship with my software provider. I want a meritocracy of software, not a meritocracy of marketing and propanga. By the actions of marketing , and the silly games they play in system design to lock out other companies, Microsoft lost me long ago. They could not trust the quality and craftmanship of their own product to win the customer over. They had to use dis-honest means. Which meant that I started dis-trusting what the system was telling me. Their very tactics taught me to distrust them. I think that any thinking person tends to resent this kind of thing after awhile. After all, these efforts to take control are not even with your own best interest at heart, not matter how misguided. It is with their own best interest at heart, without regard for the benefits to others. Most people do not like being used in this way.
The example of MS behavior regarding the Web is only more of the same.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s792.htm
lots of links and pretty pictures available.
(And just a note: Radio Free Nation had this back in the middle of October, but what do I know? [smile])
Fair enough. But when they started having those continous news flash scrolling along the bottom, along with the other logos and station IDs, etc. they can take up to a quater or a third of the screen.
That is really annoying.
Just another example of Disney Planet, Mac World, and the universe of Microsoft.
I swear I am getter less sympathetic to corporations each day.
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4291653,00. html
Paraphrasing here, "the agency's main hopes lie with persuading Congress to bail it out. It is estimated it needs 8 billion dollars to fulfill its commitments and to cover a 5 billion dollar debt, a vastly improbable sum given that America is on a war footing and has priorities far removed from space travel. Instead, a desperate slashing back of costs and missions seems the agency's likely future."
Not a pretty picture at all.
There is this link. many good links on the page.
Of course, this has been discussed in the fringe areas for a while.
This is a very similar same issue.
Now you also have the favorites of particular professors, perpetuated because that is what some doctorate candidate wrote their thesis on. So most writers depend on the mercies of the college professors, unless they have some large estate to keep promoting them, republishing the works, etc.
There was a special on PBS recently on the author of the original sam spade detective novels, well known today from Humphrey Bogart movies. But most folks have probably never read the original stories.
Finding out who that was is left as an exercise for the reader ;-)
Ah the pleasure of being a provincial usian lost in the world.
just ignore the usians, they are just so much rabble anyhow ...
Strangely enough the form factor on those was more like a 5x8 piece of paper. (about half the size of an A4, etc)
Strangely, I have not really seen a PDA in that form factor, although it is reasonable. Usually they are in pocket size (or so), or else migrate to an actual laptop.
probably would not mind something in that form factor although I would have to think about it.
On the other hand, the author, illiad, has been known to be partial to llamas.
but you'd have to visit the IRC channel to find this out. And Llamas have achieved the status of an old IRC joke that is slowly fading into the background.
not that it is important or anything.
It looks like JPL is helping people figure out how to get to mars on thier own. Tragically, I can see the fruit cakes now.
I imagine it won't be so bad, so long as they leave a trail of bread crumbs,p.;-)
By the time a generation gets "used" to the next invention of attrocity, something else seems to come along.
So the long term problem is not really one of technology, except maybe of the spirit. One that does not depend on so much on happy pills to help us get over the stress of all these conflicts.
Relax, be happy, and forget about the bomb might not be a fully rational response.
Which is why you need to make sure they are properly washed. The dirt and stains will case problems.
I bet you didn't use Microsoft Soap.
I have my moments.
This comes out of the idea that if MS software is so widspread, being a monopoly and all, then maybe it should the equivalent of a public utility.
Maybe managed by something like the Microsoft Software Commission, with mostly none MS people on it. All changes having to be vetted for by the commission, and also vetted for by separate commissions in the seaprate states. With a bureacracy to match. Suprise inspections, the whole thing. Hire ex IRS, BATF, etc
If this is supposed to be like a 5 year jail term, then make sure it feels like jail. Have a big enforcement office lifting up all of the rocks.
Make them desperately want to to be on good behavior. Treat them like the source of software terrorism. It's been a bad day, so the idea of corporate torture brings a smile to my face.
It would be the death of a thousand cuts if it was sufficiently large (reps from each state) and if MS have to clear all plans with the commission in advance.
Micromanagement from the DOJ, with the IRS as a model, lots of random audits, etc.
One can only hope
Could we have a legal geek in here explain this bit please?
I just love all of these folks who want to make the mere existance of something they dislike a crime with an instant penalty.
This is a typical oversight when designing stuff mostly for internal consumption. They obviously were not planning for people to try to see the file via a dialup or something.
This fits in with the dot-bomb executives who wanted their website optimized for 1280 x 1024 or something, which is what they had in their office. Which was more clueless since those dotbomb websites were designed for public use.
A further problem not mentioned in the above is that the angular motion of spiral arms is such that the speed of star motion is much more consistent from the center of the spriral to the outside of the spiral then they should be. It is almost as if they were a solidf or semi-solid disc. which is silly, but that is how they behave.
This may be less consistent with a high energy point source of gravity, and more consistent with mass spread out for a large distance. but I haven't kept up and my math sucks [smile]
With digital culling you do not have that 95% in the background. As a proportional figur you migh have 10% to 50%. This is what she is worried about.
It is like the old way of writing by hand.
It is a different intellectual and emotional feeling to write a manuscript by hand, and to re-write pages by hand, over the progress of a complete book. The experience is one where you are much more intimate on a phrase by phrase basis with the text.
This is far different than electronic cut and paste, where even with version control, you often do not have the same word by world immersion with what you write.
Of course, this is entirley different from the experience of writing so well and fast that you are like the old pulp magazine writers who had rolls of butcher block paper in the typewriter. [/urbanlegend]
This type of experience is similar the the interaction that a photographer had with a photo in darkroom work. Very different from digital photography indeed. and a very different way of thinking and even looking at the world.
They look at the galaxies, and estimate how many stars and stuff there is in the galaxy. Any rotating galaxy. And They figure out how fast the galaxy is rotating.
They notice a problem. For any rotating galaxy there is not enough star stuff to hold the galaxy together. The spiral arms should never be there.
The star stuff in the galaxies do not have have enough gravity to hold galaxies together. Galaxcies should not exist at all. Stars should be all flying about because that is how weak the gravity is.
Just how much too weak? The Star stuff has one tenth the gravity needed to do the job. so something has to be doing the other 90%.
That is what the dark matter is. It is a term to label what the other 90% is. The don't know what it is yet. but they are working on it.
So I presume you are in favor of a Microsoft World?
Not quite.
Many anti-globalists are in fact in protest against the prospect of the Disney Planet, McEarth, and the Microsoft World. They are in protest of the potential economic, political, and social rape of the economies and resources of people around the world for the mere financial profit of a few corporations. They are against the corporate democracy where only they voices of the corporations count, and yours do not.
If you are fighting against Microsoft, you are to a certain degree fighting against globalization. This is a much bigger and more complex picture than so quickly sketched above.
But it makes sense since it was the point in the flight where there is the highest speed and best chance of engine ignition
but this also means the test engine is usually destroyed instead of being saved for the next test run
I can see this being a scare, an april fools joke in reverse, just in time to give certain Microsoft execs a heart attack.
sort of like a halloween scare. Trick or treat, like earlier memos from earlier years.
LOL
somebody please mod this up
The question is if it is possible to have freedom while allow a single company control. Or is it a matter of the golden handcuffs, and an S&M relationship between the marketer and the customer?
Even in an S&M type of relationship, there is the matter of trust. And the problem is that in a large company, there will be people you can not trust. It becomes a fight between people who want to improve the product vs people who wish to get head by destroying their competitors. MS seems to have segregated these tyeps somewhat, pushing the destructive types into marketing.
I do not want an S&M relationship with my software provider. I want a meritocracy of software, not a meritocracy of marketing and propanga. By the actions of marketing , and the silly games they play in system design to lock out other companies, Microsoft lost me long ago. They could not trust the quality and craftmanship of their own product to win the customer over. They had to use dis-honest means. Which meant that I started dis-trusting what the system was telling me. Their very tactics taught me to distrust them. I think that any thinking person tends to resent this kind of thing after awhile. After all, these efforts to take control are not even with your own best interest at heart, not matter how misguided. It is with their own best interest at heart, without regard for the benefits to others. Most people do not like being used in this way.
The example of MS behavior regarding the Web is only more of the same.