"I think the idea behind this smart oven is that it refrigerates the stuff while you're gone at work, so you can safely leave that Stouffer's brand frozen pork chop and mashed potatoes in there for 10 or 12 hours [...]"
I bet Geordi La Forge could work some engineering magic with a switchable phase inverter to convert your oven into a temporary refrigerator (or vice-versa, with the addition of some resonant magnetic shielding to keep the refrigerator from melting).
"I hadn't thought that Monster Fair would be useable running via Rosetta, let alone faster, let alone faster while compiling software on the other CPU. "
Remember that programs which use OS services to perform processor-intensive operations won't spend much time in the actual program code, thus won't be affected much by Rosetta emulation. They become glorified scripts that delegate the real work to the native OS code. It was the same with the switch from 68K to PowerPC in 1994, where many 68K programs ran at full speed because things like graphics blitting were done via OS calls, and thus ran PowerPC native.
Elaorating further on this insight, the only way to have a (website|gadget|foo) that doesn't get criticism is for it to be perfect or so bad that nobody uses it. To anyone striving for the former, criticism is a gift and a sign that people find the thing worth using.
"The new technology also claims to help combat the counterfeit, pilferage, and repeat use that can be such a problem for paper tickets."
Print the barcode on the ticket and then tickets are just as secure as this scheme. If a virtual ticket on a mobile phone is good enough, so is a thermal prinout from the even more common thermal printers that are almost everywhere these days.
The mose useful thing when I'm trying to understand something new is a simplified model that I can use to rule out many wrong understandings from the start. Along these lines, you might describe a general model that makes clear the kinds of things a computer can do and things it can't. Think of it as a form of compression by supplying a simple algorithm to get it mostly right, then a small list of corrections to get it exactly right. Maybe people whom this would help already understand computers.
I flirt with paranoia occasionally and have recently been keeping my backups physically unconnected to anything electrical. You might keep a regular backup on a separate drive in your machine, but if there is a major electrical disturbance, it might take out all the drives in the machine. I keep daily magnetic backups physically separate from my machine in a steel filing cabinet (though it'd be even better to use magneto-optical or even CD-R), and make periodic CD-R backups and leave them with a trusted family member off-site.
Of course so far my main losses have been due to error on my part, and a few times software corruption of the drive data, so an in-machine backup on a second drive would have been sufficient.
"Bigger apps tend to ask it more because they need to modify the System folder for some reason."
I doubt it's because they need to in order to provide functionality; it's because they want to and because big companies will get away with requiring it. What the hell is a graphics application installer doing modifying the system?
Yes, I hate programs which insist on having admin privileges, because this just makes things less-secure in the long-run by training users to think it's normal to require that.
"And you very, very rarely have to enter your admin password [on Mac OS X], practically only when you are installing big applications like Photoshop which need to install libraries."
And only because they're a big company that people have to put up with. A small company wouldn't get away with requiring administrator privileges just to install a freaking application program.
I've been hearing about a massive group calling themselves "ohpen sourz", whose sole purpose is plagiarism. They copy damn near everything and even boast about it! Someone should do a story on this.
I also just tested reading a 43MB file from a CD I burned almost 10 years ago (November 1996) and got no errors. The problem is that I don't know how many corrected errors occurred at the raw level. What would be most useful is a program to scan a CD and tell how many raw errors occurred; with error correction, this is masked until it gets too bad, then your file is unreadable. It would be nice to have a warning that the disc has degraded and is due for copying to new media, much like the S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics in modern hard drives.
"it is unlikely to see any of the judgment money but said that it was time that spammers learnt that their actions would result in an economic death penalty"
Yeah, let's teach them that they'll get sued even though they won't pay anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, maybe they can streamline it more in the future. I'm thinking of a system like this (just an idea; don't attack me if I've oversimplified it):
"I think the idea behind this smart oven is that it refrigerates the stuff while you're gone at work, so you can safely leave that Stouffer's brand frozen pork chop and mashed potatoes in there for 10 or 12 hours [...]"
I bet Geordi La Forge could work some engineering magic with a switchable phase inverter to convert your oven into a temporary refrigerator (or vice-versa, with the addition of some resonant magnetic shielding to keep the refrigerator from melting).
I just read an article today about how "Instant noodle is one of advanced technology of Japan". Good read.
"I hadn't thought that Monster Fair would be useable running via Rosetta, let alone faster, let alone faster while compiling software on the other CPU. "
Remember that programs which use OS services to perform processor-intensive operations won't spend much time in the actual program code, thus won't be affected much by Rosetta emulation. They become glorified scripts that delegate the real work to the native OS code. It was the same with the switch from 68K to PowerPC in 1994, where many 68K programs ran at full speed because things like graphics blitting were done via OS calls, and thus ran PowerPC native.
Thanks for your one-liner summary; now I don't have to read the whole article!
Except the lights are on at night time, when the power would otherwise go to waste due to the fairly fixed output of power plants.
Just open browser preferences and check "Disable GIF animation".
"Can we add a few more levels of indirection here??"
Sure, just translate it into English++.
Agent Smith: "Mr. Anderson, what good is an Internet connection if you can't...get...any...content?"
Yeah, but can it judge this in just 50 milliseconds?
Elaorating further on this insight, the only way to have a (website|gadget|foo) that doesn't get criticism is for it to be perfect or so bad that nobody uses it. To anyone striving for the former, criticism is a gift and a sign that people find the thing worth using.
"The new technology also claims to help combat the counterfeit, pilferage, and repeat use that can be such a problem for paper tickets."
Print the barcode on the ticket and then tickets are just as secure as this scheme. If a virtual ticket on a mobile phone is good enough, so is a thermal prinout from the even more common thermal printers that are almost everywhere these days.
"[...] the biggest stakeholder, the public, won't matter when it comes to decision?"
"The public" is just one stakeholder, while there are many companies who want software patents.
</sarcasm>
The mose useful thing when I'm trying to understand something new is a simplified model that I can use to rule out many wrong understandings from the start. Along these lines, you might describe a general model that makes clear the kinds of things a computer can do and things it can't. Think of it as a form of compression by supplying a simple algorithm to get it mostly right, then a small list of corrections to get it exactly right. Maybe people whom this would help already understand computers.
I flirt with paranoia occasionally and have recently been keeping my backups physically unconnected to anything electrical. You might keep a regular backup on a separate drive in your machine, but if there is a major electrical disturbance, it might take out all the drives in the machine. I keep daily magnetic backups physically separate from my machine in a steel filing cabinet (though it'd be even better to use magneto-optical or even CD-R), and make periodic CD-R backups and leave them with a trusted family member off-site.
Of course so far my main losses have been due to error on my part, and a few times software corruption of the drive data, so an in-machine backup on a second drive would have been sufficient.
It happened again. Another instance of short sentences. Awful. Periods everywhere. Attempts at being dramatic. Failed. What a loss.
People, lost the dramatic writing style and don't worry if it sounds dry! Sheesh.
"Bigger apps tend to ask it more because they need to modify the System folder for some reason."
I doubt it's because they need to in order to provide functionality; it's because they want to and because big companies will get away with requiring it. What the hell is a graphics application installer doing modifying the system?
Yes, I hate programs which insist on having admin privileges, because this just makes things less-secure in the long-run by training users to think it's normal to require that.
"And you very, very rarely have to enter your admin password [on Mac OS X], practically only when you are installing big applications like Photoshop which need to install libraries."
And only because they're a big company that people have to put up with. A small company wouldn't get away with requiring administrator privileges just to install a freaking application program.
"Not true! Windows Vista was promised to be nearly completely backward-compatibile with previous Windows!"
And it's working too; the latest exploit worked fine on Vista!
I've been hearing about a massive group calling themselves "ohpen sourz", whose sole purpose is plagiarism. They copy damn near everything and even boast about it! Someone should do a story on this.
I also just tested reading a 43MB file from a CD I burned almost 10 years ago (November 1996) and got no errors. The problem is that I don't know how many corrected errors occurred at the raw level. What would be most useful is a program to scan a CD and tell how many raw errors occurred; with error correction, this is masked until it gets too bad, then your file is unreadable. It would be nice to have a warning that the disc has degraded and is due for copying to new media, much like the S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics in modern hard drives.
"could he turn a flatbed scanner into an optical mouse? "
No, but how about a huge trackpad? Though it's be painfully slow. "DO NOT MOVE FINGER UNTIL SCAN COMPLETES"
Also, "DO NOT TOUCH COPY AREA DURING VIDI-COPY OPERATION"
"Color and detail have never looked better or bigger thanks to the brilliantly bright display and Dell's UltraSharp technology."
Is UltraSharp Dell's way of saying "it's an LCD screen"?
For a moment there I thought the fine was going to be for intentionally ignoring Sony's rootkit malware.
"it is unlikely to see any of the judgment money but said that it was time that spammers learnt that their actions would result in an economic death penalty"
Yeah, let's teach them that they'll get sued even though they won't pay anything.