Good point. One thing to be aware of when using Maildir, though, is that since each message is stored in its own file you'll have to make sure you configure your filesystem so that it can handle holding a massive number of files/messages. If you configure an ext3 partition with the default number of inodes, for example, then with one inode per message you might find yourself running out of inodes before you run out of disk space.
I'd agree with you, except I would assume that many of these sites hosting images of slaughterhouses are intended primarily to discourage people from eating meat at fast food chains (PETA types, etc.). As such, I imagine that these sites might welcome such traffic, it coming from what they might consider their target audience.
(Of course I could have the wrong idea about the material he is redirecting these visitors to; I haven't seen it myself because, at the time of this writing, fuddruckers.com is slashdotted.)
Trademark infringement, anyone? Did you see their logo? And the layout of their web page is clearly designed to blur the distinction between the Mozilla Foundation and whatever organization or company owns this project.
It appears to me that this group is trying to piggy-back on the success of the Firefox name and image in order to further their own product.
In addition to paying New York state $1.25 million in penalties and costs, AOL will also reimburse eligible New York consumers with a cash refund worth up to four months of service.
But the difference is that the elevator is a solution to the real problem of having to climb up very long stairways in high-rise buildings. What problem with previous, simpler automated door designs does this door actually solve?
It's not just our corporations that think with their wallets and damn the whole world, there are plenty of consumers who think that way too!
In my opinion, throwing out a computer for such reasons doesn't even qualify as thinking with your wallet: As inexpensive as computers may be nowadays, it should still be cheaper to pay the local computer shop for a 'tune up' than to buy a completely new machine. Instead, it's acting on the basis of laziness, which I consider a far worse thing...
Oops, I misunderstood your parent comment the first time I read it. Good point, I agree: Inconsistent and contradictory decisions by a Supreme Court Justice would indeed be very worrisome.
According to the Washington Post article highlighting her service on the Supreme Court, O'Connor was considered a swing vote because she has exhibited less of a political agenda than most of her fellow Justices, generally being relatively open to rational persuasion, and less predictable in her decisions as a result.
In my opinion, this isn't "questionable behavior from a SC justice"; the Supreme Court Justices are supposed to be non-partisan and open to discussion on polarizing issues. To the extent that Sandra Day O'Connor exemplified these positive characteristics as a Justice to a greater degree than her colleagues, she has been considered a "swing vote".
As other posters have noted, the primary problem in getting games ported to OS X (or Linux, for that matter) is not one of CPU architecture but of operating system APIs. So the Intel deal probably won't effect more games "for OS X", other than as an indirect effect; if using Intel processors allows Apple to ultimately capture a larger market share, than it could result in more (and more up-to-date) OS X ports of video games.
However, with x86 processors in Macs we should be able to run Virtual PC at nearly full speed on OS X. Could VPC allow the client operating system to access the host hardware's video card for 3D acceleration, perhaps through some special driver such as the "Additions" for Windows hosted on OS X that are available in the current version? If so, then while we might not immediately see more "for OS X" games as a result of Apple's Intel switch, we may be able to run more PC games on our Macintoshes - for whatever that's worth.
Some Bluetooth keyboards allow for an encrypted channel between the keyboard and computer. The Apple Wireless Keyboard uses 128-bit AES for this purpose; when you initially pair your keyboard and computer, you go through a process in which OS X displays a short numeric encryption key on the monitor, which is then entered into the keyboard's numeric keypad.
I agree with you in one sense: In a time of war we need to protect our American soldiers using every means possible, including technological superiority.
In a just war, space-based weaponry could be an incredible asset. However, there is at least one negative consequence to be considered: Such weaponry can lower the bar for what, in Americans' minds, is proper justification to go to war. The more "smart" weapons we have in our arsenal, the easier it is for our leaders to convince Congress and the American public that wars, including those fought for the wrong reasons, can be fought with relatively little loss of American lives. With a sufficiently superior military at our command the ideologues have much less to stop them from "liberating" other nations as they see fit, for better or for worse.
The real innovation of Spotlight is the way in which searches are performed. Rather than parsing every eligible file for pattern matches, Spotlight searches are made incomparably faster by a background process that indexes every eligible file in your filesystem, much as Google indexes all the web pages in its database. When you then wish to search for something - whether it be a substring of a filename or something in the contents of a file - Spotlight only needs to refer to its filesystem index to find your search results.
Prior to OS X 10.4 and Longhorn, the Macintosh and Windows operating systems had lacked a search engine. Now they will have one.
(Think of it this way: If Google worked the way that current file search implementations on OS X (10.3) and Windows XP do, then if you were to search for, say, "hamsters", Google would proceed to load every web page in its database from each page's respective servers and look for "hamsters" in these pages. A simple web search would take hours (days?) to conclude. Instead, Google performs all this indexing in the background so that, when we decide we want to find something, we can have the 0.25 second search results we're used to.)
Combine this with robust APIs for access from external programs, the ability to write filters to index diverse filetypes, and a convenient user interface, and you will see that Spotlight is quite a big deal indeed.
Hmm... but is there really anything odd about that? Their corporate mantra is "don't be evil". Guns kill people; porn, unless you suffer from some very extreme medical condition, does not.
I think you make a very good point in your comparison of the PSP to the evolution of portable music systems. However, I find it hard to believe that portable television and movies will ever be as big as the iPod.
When we listen to music, it is often as an accompaniment to whatever other activity we happen to be engaging in at the time. I often use my iPod while I am reading, going for a run, studying in the library, or working in the lab. (I used it on my bike, too, until an officer pulled me over... but that's another story.) Television and movies, on the other hand, demand the use of both your eyes and ears, and thus your full attention. The utility of portable video as opposed to portable music therefore seems greatly diminished.
This is not to say I think there is no market for such a device, but - and maybe I am just suffering from a case of tunnel vision here - I doubt that ten years from now we will see as many people that drag portable video players along with them wherever they go, as there are who keep their MP3 players in their side pockets today.
The comfort of Christian religious belief largely stems from the notion that by worshipping and making oneself subservient to an omnipotent diety, one is made eligible for eternal life and that diety's everlasting love. I would also postulate that the so-called "holier-than-thou" mindset can have something to do with why, for many people, it feels good to be a Christian, but that would likely come off as cynical.
I too scoff at the idea that I need "saving". I could be wrong, of course - but as a rational being I have no empirical reason whatsoever to believe otherwise.
I'd say that the designation of American citizens and non-citizens as so-called enemy combatants, and the subsequent detention of these persons under the scepter of a nebulous "war on terror" and without the recognition of their basic human rights, very well falls under the category of arbitrary power.
Yes, there is an insane amount of FUD regarding Google's desktop search tool, and it annoys me as much as anyone.
Of course the desktop search does not send your personal data abroad to Google; read my comment before replying and you'll see that I never suggested that. What I did say is that the potential exists for someone to write malicious software that, running on your own computer, could use the desktop search plugin architecture to rapidly locate, for example, PDFs of bank statements. Obviously this would require a very particular set of circumstances and isn't likely to be a problem any time soon, given Google desktop search's install base - and it would equally be a problem for the up-and-coming Macintosh OS 10.4 with Spotlight. This is, after all, hypothetically speaking.
Lastly, even if I had been incorrect, there's no need to be so presumptuously rude about it. You don't win any friends that way.
I think it's awesome that Google has provided this tool to us, and I hope that they release a OS X and Linux versions soon. However, I worry that we may see spyware use this search plugin architecture for, say, rapidly locating credit card information or bank statements...
One of my roommate's professors was talking a little while ago about a similar motion-detecting feature in the IBM Thinkpads which was supposed to protect the hard drive in the event of a fall. According to whatever studies or experiments this professor cited, between the time it takes for the sensor to realize the computer had been dropped and the time it takes to park the hard drive, these things simply weren't effective for falls of under five feet or so.
Does anybody have any (slightly more informed) comments on this claim? If true, might this apply to the PowerBook's system as well?
However, there will certainly be more people using network applications in the future.
I think we've already seen at least a small shift toward network-based applications and away from "the way things used to be." For example, back in the mid to late '90s we used to run Precision Mapping for road maps and directions on trips; nowadays we simply go to Mapquest or Yahoo Maps for such information. This was changed primarily due to an increase in available bandwidth.
(I know this is a bit of a special case: Maps are especially easy to serve up in a web page, and both of these services are free. That is to say, that many people use Mapquest does not indicate that they would be willing to pay for such a service, to the same degree that they were once - still are? - willing to pay for commercial mapping programs on their own computers.)
But I think it is only a matter of time and bandwidth before we see subscription packages to more consumer oriented network-based applications. Probably not productivity applications; I doubt any of us will ever see an ASP word processor. Rather, the kinds of applications that aren't major show stoppers when the network burps and we can't use them for a few minutes. Things like Mapquest and other infrequently used but useful tools. Games - imagine something like Yahoo Games taken to a whole new level. And who knows what else.
I know it costs money to develop commercial applications. But if I wanted to pay, I would pay MSFT, because they're CHEAPER!!!
This is one of the reasons many people hold GNOME to be a better desktop environment than KDE. While KDE may have some nice bells and whistles, when it costs that much to develop commercial software for the platform you may as well forget about it.
Yes, I realize that KDevelop + QT Designer (or whatever it's called) is to many people a much more attractive development environment than the GNOME alternative. But expecting an expensive, semi-proprietary toolkit controlled exclusively by a commercial entity to become the staple of GNU/Linux software application development is, in my opinion, looking for answers in all the wrong places.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point. One thing to be aware of when using Maildir, though, is that since each message is stored in its own file you'll have to make sure you configure your filesystem so that it can handle holding a massive number of files/messages. If you configure an ext3 partition with the default number of inodes, for example, then with one inode per message you might find yourself running out of inodes before you run out of disk space.
I'd agree with you, except I would assume that many of these sites hosting images of slaughterhouses are intended primarily to discourage people from eating meat at fast food chains (PETA types, etc.). As such, I imagine that these sites might welcome such traffic, it coming from what they might consider their target audience.
(Of course I could have the wrong idea about the material he is redirecting these visitors to; I haven't seen it myself because, at the time of this writing, fuddruckers.com is slashdotted.)
Trademark infringement, anyone? Did you see their logo? And the layout of their web page is clearly designed to blur the distinction between the Mozilla Foundation and whatever organization or company owns this project.
It appears to me that this group is trying to piggy-back on the success of the Firefox name and image in order to further their own product.
From the article:
But the difference is that the elevator is a solution to the real problem of having to climb up very long stairways in high-rise buildings. What problem with previous, simpler automated door designs does this door actually solve?
It's not just our corporations that think with their wallets and damn the whole world, there are plenty of consumers who think that way too!
In my opinion, throwing out a computer for such reasons doesn't even qualify as thinking with your wallet: As inexpensive as computers may be nowadays, it should still be cheaper to pay the local computer shop for a 'tune up' than to buy a completely new machine. Instead, it's acting on the basis of laziness, which I consider a far worse thing...
I think that to be able to claim "moral sufferings", you need to have some sense of morals to begin with...
Oops, I misunderstood your parent comment the first time I read it. Good point, I agree: Inconsistent and contradictory decisions by a Supreme Court Justice would indeed be very worrisome.
According to the Washington Post article highlighting her service on the Supreme Court, O'Connor was considered a swing vote because she has exhibited less of a political agenda than most of her fellow Justices, generally being relatively open to rational persuasion, and less predictable in her decisions as a result.
In my opinion, this isn't "questionable behavior from a SC justice"; the Supreme Court Justices are supposed to be non-partisan and open to discussion on polarizing issues. To the extent that Sandra Day O'Connor exemplified these positive characteristics as a Justice to a greater degree than her colleagues, she has been considered a "swing vote".
As other posters have noted, the primary problem in getting games ported to OS X (or Linux, for that matter) is not one of CPU architecture but of operating system APIs. So the Intel deal probably won't effect more games "for OS X", other than as an indirect effect; if using Intel processors allows Apple to ultimately capture a larger market share, than it could result in more (and more up-to-date) OS X ports of video games.
However, with x86 processors in Macs we should be able to run Virtual PC at nearly full speed on OS X. Could VPC allow the client operating system to access the host hardware's video card for 3D acceleration, perhaps through some special driver such as the "Additions" for Windows hosted on OS X that are available in the current version? If so, then while we might not immediately see more "for OS X" games as a result of Apple's Intel switch, we may be able to run more PC games on our Macintoshes - for whatever that's worth.
Some Bluetooth keyboards allow for an encrypted channel between the keyboard and computer. The Apple Wireless Keyboard uses 128-bit AES for this purpose; when you initially pair your keyboard and computer, you go through a process in which OS X displays a short numeric encryption key on the monitor, which is then entered into the keyboard's numeric keypad.
I agree with you in one sense: In a time of war we need to protect our American soldiers using every means possible, including technological superiority.
In a just war, space-based weaponry could be an incredible asset. However, there is at least one negative consequence to be considered: Such weaponry can lower the bar for what, in Americans' minds, is proper justification to go to war. The more "smart" weapons we have in our arsenal, the easier it is for our leaders to convince Congress and the American public that wars, including those fought for the wrong reasons, can be fought with relatively little loss of American lives. With a sufficiently superior military at our command the ideologues have much less to stop them from "liberating" other nations as they see fit, for better or for worse.
haha
If any of you missed the reference: clicky.
The real innovation of Spotlight is the way in which searches are performed. Rather than parsing every eligible file for pattern matches, Spotlight searches are made incomparably faster by a background process that indexes every eligible file in your filesystem, much as Google indexes all the web pages in its database. When you then wish to search for something - whether it be a substring of a filename or something in the contents of a file - Spotlight only needs to refer to its filesystem index to find your search results.
Prior to OS X 10.4 and Longhorn, the Macintosh and Windows operating systems had lacked a search engine. Now they will have one.
(Think of it this way: If Google worked the way that current file search implementations on OS X (10.3) and Windows XP do, then if you were to search for, say, "hamsters", Google would proceed to load every web page in its database from each page's respective servers and look for "hamsters" in these pages. A simple web search would take hours (days?) to conclude. Instead, Google performs all this indexing in the background so that, when we decide we want to find something, we can have the 0.25 second search results we're used to.)
Combine this with robust APIs for access from external programs, the ability to write filters to index diverse filetypes, and a convenient user interface, and you will see that Spotlight is quite a big deal indeed.
Hmm... but is there really anything odd about that? Their corporate mantra is "don't be evil". Guns kill people; porn, unless you suffer from some very extreme medical condition, does not.
I think you make a very good point in your comparison of the PSP to the evolution of portable music systems. However, I find it hard to believe that portable television and movies will ever be as big as the iPod.
When we listen to music, it is often as an accompaniment to whatever other activity we happen to be engaging in at the time. I often use my iPod while I am reading, going for a run, studying in the library, or working in the lab. (I used it on my bike, too, until an officer pulled me over... but that's another story.) Television and movies, on the other hand, demand the use of both your eyes and ears, and thus your full attention. The utility of portable video as opposed to portable music therefore seems greatly diminished.
This is not to say I think there is no market for such a device, but - and maybe I am just suffering from a case of tunnel vision here - I doubt that ten years from now we will see as many people that drag portable video players along with them wherever they go, as there are who keep their MP3 players in their side pockets today.
The comfort of Christian religious belief largely stems from the notion that by worshipping and making oneself subservient to an omnipotent diety, one is made eligible for eternal life and that diety's everlasting love. I would also postulate that the so-called "holier-than-thou" mindset can have something to do with why, for many people, it feels good to be a Christian, but that would likely come off as cynical.
I too scoff at the idea that I need "saving". I could be wrong, of course - but as a rational being I have no empirical reason whatsoever to believe otherwise.
I'd say that the designation of American citizens and non-citizens as so-called enemy combatants, and the subsequent detention of these persons under the scepter of a nebulous "war on terror" and without the recognition of their basic human rights, very well falls under the category of arbitrary power.
I am an American Liberal. I oppose this.
I am a moron.
rainsford: I thought you were replying to me, but you were replying to someone replying to me, but I didn't see his comment and I got confused, etc...
So yeah, ignore that. And sorry for being an ass. Goodnight.
Yes, there is an insane amount of FUD regarding Google's desktop search tool, and it annoys me as much as anyone.
Of course the desktop search does not send your personal data abroad to Google; read my comment before replying and you'll see that I never suggested that. What I did say is that the potential exists for someone to write malicious software that, running on your own computer, could use the desktop search plugin architecture to rapidly locate, for example, PDFs of bank statements. Obviously this would require a very particular set of circumstances and isn't likely to be a problem any time soon, given Google desktop search's install base - and it would equally be a problem for the up-and-coming Macintosh OS 10.4 with Spotlight. This is, after all, hypothetically speaking.
Lastly, even if I had been incorrect, there's no need to be so presumptuously rude about it. You don't win any friends that way.
I think it's awesome that Google has provided this tool to us, and I hope that they release a OS X and Linux versions soon. However, I worry that we may see spyware use this search plugin architecture for, say, rapidly locating credit card information or bank statements...
Fortunately there's an easy solution: just add the line
0.0.0.0 www.drudgereport.com
to your hosts file. Problem solved! :)
One of my roommate's professors was talking a little while ago about a similar motion-detecting feature in the IBM Thinkpads which was supposed to protect the hard drive in the event of a fall. According to whatever studies or experiments this professor cited, between the time it takes for the sensor to realize the computer had been dropped and the time it takes to park the hard drive, these things simply weren't effective for falls of under five feet or so.
Does anybody have any (slightly more informed) comments on this claim? If true, might this apply to the PowerBook's system as well?
I think we've already seen at least a small shift toward network-based applications and away from "the way things used to be." For example, back in the mid to late '90s we used to run Precision Mapping for road maps and directions on trips; nowadays we simply go to Mapquest or Yahoo Maps for such information. This was changed primarily due to an increase in available bandwidth.
(I know this is a bit of a special case: Maps are especially easy to serve up in a web page, and both of these services are free. That is to say, that many people use Mapquest does not indicate that they would be willing to pay for such a service, to the same degree that they were once - still are? - willing to pay for commercial mapping programs on their own computers.)
But I think it is only a matter of time and bandwidth before we see subscription packages to more consumer oriented network-based applications. Probably not productivity applications; I doubt any of us will ever see an ASP word processor. Rather, the kinds of applications that aren't major show stoppers when the network burps and we can't use them for a few minutes. Things like Mapquest and other infrequently used but useful tools. Games - imagine something like Yahoo Games taken to a whole new level. And who knows what else.
This is one of the reasons many people hold GNOME to be a better desktop environment than KDE. While KDE may have some nice bells and whistles, when it costs that much to develop commercial software for the platform you may as well forget about it.
Yes, I realize that KDevelop + QT Designer (or whatever it's called) is to many people a much more attractive development environment than the GNOME alternative. But expecting an expensive, semi-proprietary toolkit controlled exclusively by a commercial entity to become the staple of GNU/Linux software application development is, in my opinion, looking for answers in all the wrong places.