a) It's my wife's laptop, so no, I don't have intent to take the time to change her prefs nor do I need to setup a 2nd account for the few times I'm helping her debug something.
b) Her laptop has a 1024x768 resolution and is less than 4 months old... just because some have very large screens doesn't mean that it can be assumed all machines, even new ones, do.
c) XP's market is specifically going to include people who buy new machines with a lower resolution screen (for cost) -and- don't have a clue about tweaking things like the start menu, so the observations are valid IMO. Do I know how to tweak them, yeah, but do I expect that most people do? No.
d) I'm not asking to be pleased, I don't use the product regularly, I just gave my impressions based on admittedly-in-that-message brief usage.
I don't use her PC much, so it could just be lack of experience, but so far I am finding the Windows XP start menu on my wife's laptop to be extremely counter-intuitive and way to heavy on realestate usage.
It appears to me that they designed it for the first-time user, which is ok, but once you have time and experience on a system you don't need the extra layer of dumbed-downedness.
On the other hand I found Win2K's start menu to be quite efficient when using it. Again, perhaps due to experience since I was using Win2K and Linux side by side for a very long time before killing off my last Win partition. I'm not convinced it is just experience though, I'm primarily a keyboard navigator and there are somethings I just plain liked better in 2K.
If it is there, it should be accessible by XUL in some way, so perhaps it could be as simple as coding some XUL to have a bookmark search item on the toolbar or somewhere similar.
As for the 2minute posting limit, while annoying it does help prevent repetitive identical posting which was a problem before the 2 minute rule was in effect (been a LONG time but there was a definite annoying spam-ish problem that this fixed). What would be good is a verification that you are posting different content in a different thread, and if so drop the 2min rule.
Firefox 1.0 sucks you in by being lean and mean... 2.0 is always the generation that says "now you'll stay because look at all we can do now!" 3.0 is the "we gotta optimize this bloat" release.
Which do you find easier to ignore, email which is meant to be a disconnected medium anyway, IM which requires you to sit in front of the computer, the phone which allows you to pretend not to be home, or the door where you know that the person knocking saw your car in the driveway?
Ever been out in the yard or garden? No email, no IM, no phone, but you might happen to notice a friend walking by.
Answering the door isn't a responsibility (unless they have uniforms and badges) but it certainly is the most likely method of getting a response assuming they are home.
This Smithee guy must be a genius... IMDB states he directed his first movie the year he was born and has been writing, directing, producing, composing, designing and editing many dozens if not hundreds of shows since. Now he's a keynote-quality software designer.
I disagree with 5X better for raytracing. Better? Yes, but not 5X. There are a larger number of tricks that can be done to make it look acceptable in realtime on today's fastest workstations (non-clustered). However the step from console to "today's fastest workstation" is probably of the same magnitude as "today's fastest workstation" is to a rendering cluster.
Additionally I'm not convinced that raytracing will always be the best looking solution. For the next 10 years? Sure... but advancements are constantly being made and Raytracing itself can have quality issues unless you spend a LOT of time tweaking a scene.
Last, I'm not saying that the realtime render has to look as good a humanly possible to be acceptable, only that it has to be a lot farther along. Realtime renders 1/5th as good as cluster rendered is going to be perfectly adequate for most folks, but consoles are a LONG way from that.
So I hold the middle ground on this... someday yes, but probably so far off in the future that the Sony marketing reps need to quit crying wolf:)
I either missed that episode of Enterprise (I skipped much of seasons 2 and 3) or I blocked it out completely. Either way, thank goodness I missed it and damn them for bringing it back. Next thing you know we'll have a completely holographic crew member;)
And as for Data, hopefully if they put him in the story (I was kinda hoping that the timeline incongruitites due to Enterprise would selectively delete a few characters, his being primary) they will do so back when he didn't act like he wanted be human. It got real old.
Then again, I don't hold out hope and I haven't seen any of the last couple of Trek movies in the theater. Just not worth the money. I'm not a big fan of ST but I am a big fan of well plotted continuity.
Exactly... the Enterprise folks have already said that because of the past-based events in Enterprise that many pieces of TOS have been altered. Essentially TOS (old show) was what would have happened had the events in Enterprise not. Now that they have, they are free to do whatever they want in regards to the timeline.
Cop out? Yep. Then again, at least we can be fairly sure there won't be a holodeck in this movie, and no Data either.
I do think it could be more interesting if they kept a "no Romulan's seen" going, but it would be more work than most screenwriters would want to deal with when they have a way out that no longer violates continuity (in their opinion:)
Yep... PS2 advertised real-time cut scene rendering VERY heavily but it didn't provide the capabilities the story tellers wanted.
Something tells me the PS3 will be the same story... give a graphic artist an inch in realtime and they will still ALWAYS want more (that's a good thing, I'm not complaining). You'll likely still see rendered cut scenes to some degree for a very long time.
If you get the PS3 to be able to render in realtime what 3 years ago was rendered longtime you still haven't made it look as good as what you see in, say, Spiderman 2. I don't see a console getting to the "realtime looks as good as longtime rendering" anytime in the near future, if ever, as longtime rendering will constantly be improving as well.
(I had this scripted out years ago while doing an exercise in cubicle boredom... figured I'd update it with the new points and add a line to compare his winnings:)
Obviously he is not playing very efficiently as he has been winning only about.15% of the theoretical max (which for 26 days is $5,512,000)!
#!/usr/bin/perl # jeopardy.pl... determine the theoretical max winnings on Jeopardy! # optimal daily double location is the 6th $400 $singleJeopardy = ((1000*6)+(800*6)+(600*6)+(400*6)+(200*5))*2; pri nt "Max Single Jeopardy round = $singleJeopardy\n"; # doubleJeopardy doubles answer values # doubleJeopardy has 2 daily doubles #... must sub value of 1 and double a 2nd time #... again optimally the double replaces the lowest value, $400 $doubleJeopardy = ($singleJeopardy - 400)*2; print "Max Double Jeopardy round = $doubleJeopardy\n"; $finalJeopardy = ($singleJeopardy + $doubleJeopardy) * 2; print "Max Final Jeopardy! Winnings: $finalJeopardy\n"; $totalJeopardy = $finalJeopardy * 26; print "26 days... \$828,960 / $totalJeopardy = " . 828960 / $totalJeopardy . "% of max\n";
# Results of "perl jeopardy.pl": # Max Single Jeopardy round = 35600 # Max Double Jeopardy round = 70400 # Max Final Jeopardy! Winnings: 212000 # 26 days... $828,960 / 5512000 = 0.150391872278665% of max
... while you can't assume that the daily doubles will always be in the lowest point category, that doesn't make too much difference in the overall points.
It also shows why Super Millionaire is the place to play if you have that many trivial bits up top... $10,000,000 in 30 minutes versus less than $1,000,000 in a month of playing (unless Jeopardy! runs that contestant 7 days a week he's over a month). Hopefully for his sake *laugh* they won't disqualify him from SM.
The point isn't making it easier for people who know about it:) The point is to bring the interface to people who are smart enough to use it but haven't taken the time to learn the weirdnesses.
He didn't quite show -everything- stupid about/.... You've highlighted the "I won't get modded down if I'm self-effacing/igratiating by saying I'll get modded down for this, but that's ok" reverse psychology versus moderation ploy.
Get a slingshot, one of the big fancy ones with an arm brace. It needs to have an opening significantly bigger than the CD, so if you may need to modify the slingshot or build one based on current models but with an enhanced aperture. Cut out the small leather/plastic ammo holder, get a piece of metal about 3/5 the diameter of a CD, bend to curve around the CD with lips at the top and bottom of the disc (the lips should only be at the middle of this metal piece and probably not more than an inch wide, with a taper away from the disc, otherwise it may grab the disc and you'll find it in your forehead). Done.
Probably not worth it. I think it would be MUCH more fun to shoot the smaller mini-cds.
Ok, so they filed for the patent on 2 March 2000... how far back were they actually using the method?
I ask because I -swear- that in the mid-90's I was able to use the exact same information to register an account on AOL. Perhaps AOL didn't use the information for -electronic- withdrawal but just printed checks using the info. If so, then ok, there are some differences but seriously not enough to make this valid.
If firefox wasn't -quite- so limited on it's pref UI. Mozilla has too many default configuration items and Firefox has too few.
I know about about:config, but my father will probably never get it (and he's a geek from the old days, he's just tired of fidgeting with hidden widgets).
A simple entry in the tools/options menu that says "advanced features" which pulled up about:config in a separate window along with better documentation and some tweaks to the UI display for about:config to allow deep help searches would be enough.
Something to make it easier for the non-expert (not necessarily newbie) to realize all the power hidden under the hood and some more explanations on what things do.
I would like to see a few more items in the Firefox pref UI as well, like more of the tabbed browsing parameters, but if not possible then the above would be sufficient.
A quick googling will show you a number of comparisons of ATRAC to more recent lossy formats. I linked to one a couple of replies up if you click "parent".
And you could be right, an ATRAC machine with an ideal decoder chipset compared to one of the other formats with an ideal decoder chipset might very well sound better, but we're talking portables and you don't get that ideal on that level.
From what I have been able to tell, mini-disc players are chosen because the audiophiles are still rather snobbish on MP3/Ogg (rightly so in the case of 128K CBR, but VBR at a high quality gives both formats alot of bragging rights) and/or people who have a very high-end minidisc deck at home and want to use the same media on the road.
If I guess correctly (and I'm not saying I've personally compared minidisc players for quite some time) the playback on the portables is far weaker than the expensive component decks. Since today most are concerned with the portable side as much as the component side, it sounds like ATRAC is losing out.
Plus, think of this... in alot of cases people will be buying (hopefully) MP3 or AAC files and then having to convert them to ATRAC. Even if raw->ATRAC were superior, you're talking double conversion there and that is never good.
"This is not a three- or four-month struggle. We see this as a multiyear battle,'' Wiser said.
I like everything I see about the Sony products including their attitude on the long-haul. Everything but one... they still use their nasty-sounding ATRAC format (the same one used for minidiscs).
Sorry, but if you can't play MP3 OR Ogg Vorbis OR AAC, you're dead in the water. Yes, they bundle software to convert those formats (not sure about Ogg Vorbis, which is what I use) for loading onto the player as ATRAC files, but this is seriously not something that interests me.
Give me the same basic form factor, a higher price (but still under iPod), and the ability to natively play MP3, Ogg Vorbis and AAC (yes, all 3... I actually would be happy with OV but I'm not the mass-market... I'll even admit that you could probably get away without including OV for the next couple of years with no significant market loss) and you've got me hook, line and tweeter.
Until then I'm sticking with my rather huge but very flexible Neuros. A shame, because until I found the blurbs about the ATRAC (that verbally sounds too much like 8-track:) file format I was seriously drooling.
And while you're at it, allow me to load files via USB Mass-storage so that I don't need a bunch of flaky software to load the player. Right now this and size are the only detractors keeping the Neuros from being the best thing out there. An Ogg player with USB Mass-storage loading (Neuros supports USB mass-storage, but won't play songs loaded that way because they are not in the database) that is small with a significant battery life and good corporate support... is it so much to ask? Yeah *laugh* I guess so.
I do not think that means what you think it means. Go look up "disinterested" in a dictionary. Compare & contrast with "uninterested". If you use the first definition from dictionary.com, be sure also to check the comment attached to it.
But if I choose not to use the first definition (link to the mentioned page), then I can use the second which clearly shows that my usage is exactly what I intended.
The question is, does one accept only the original definition of the word that you were pointing out? Or does one accept that we speak a living language and after enough undefined but accepted use said connotation becomes a new denotation?
I tend to fall under the living language category. Apparently so does Dictionary.com since even though their note supports the first definition, they continue with a second definition that supports it. In fact, it would appear that the online Webster's dictionary lists my usage as the first and yours as second, probably because yours has come to be considered archaic in modern use.
FWIW, since the sentence is syntactically and semantically correct, you are not truly criticizing the grammar. You are challenging the usage and context. If my usage had been definitively incorrect instead of contextually viable then it might be considered by some to be a grammatical error but in this case it was not.
And now that we've spent too much time on it, I await a -1 Offtopic:)
Much to the dismay of the others who replied to your post, I agree.
Look at what happened to Apollo... Apollo 11? Everyone was watching. By Apollo 14 the public was disinterested.
Similarly with the Shuttle.
The only things that got people reinterested were calamity (Apollo 13, Challenger, Columbia) or aberation (John Glenn).
Congress is only treating NASA and similar topics with the same general disdain that the majority of the public want. That's how a democracy works. Until/unless we discover -life- out there, not just the possibility, or have some new massive breakthrough that invigorates the public, these programs will continue to fight for their lives.
Let's face it, if you counted the number of people who were watching the Mars rover landings live on TV a few years ago and then subtracted everyone you had 3 degrees or less connection to, you would probably have wiped out 90% of the viewers.
If you watched live the recent Burt Rutan plane make it into space a couple of weeks ago and subtracted anyone who reads Slashdot or knows someone who does, you'd probably have wiped out 90% of -those- viewers.
We simply are not in anywhere near a majority when it comes to exploration enthusiasm.
(replying to a score:0 in case you're not sure what this is about)
Dude you haven't been to China.
Are some of them without electricity and "modern" lifestyle? Sure. Is the percentage higher than the percentage of Amish in the U.S.? Most definitely.
However a significant amount of the population today in China DOES have a "modern" lifestyle. Do you know why there is such an oil shortage? Because China and India have been expanding the number of cars per capita DRASTICALLY in the last 2 years and there is no end in site.
And my statement was a generalization... of the 5+ Billion non-Chinese that I mentioned a significant percentage also do not have electricity or networked computers.
Fact of the matter is that China has declared they plan on migrating 200 Million computers to Linux in the next couple of years. 200 MILLION. And those are computers that are in some form under the direction of the government. There may not be 1 Billion chinese people using IPv9 but I wouldn't be surprised if in 5 years there ARE 1 Billion Chinese -adresses- using it. That is still a very significant number no matter how you slice it.
Slashdot Mirror
a) It's my wife's laptop, so no, I don't have intent to take the time to change her prefs nor do I need to setup a 2nd account for the few times I'm helping her debug something.
... just because some have very large screens doesn't mean that it can be assumed all machines, even new ones, do.
b) Her laptop has a 1024x768 resolution and is less than 4 months old
c) XP's market is specifically going to include people who buy new machines with a lower resolution screen (for cost) -and- don't have a clue about tweaking things like the start menu, so the observations are valid IMO. Do I know how to tweak them, yeah, but do I expect that most people do? No.
d) I'm not asking to be pleased, I don't use the product regularly, I just gave my impressions based on admittedly-in-that-message brief usage.
I don't use her PC much, so it could just be lack of experience, but so far I am finding the Windows XP start menu on my wife's laptop to be extremely counter-intuitive and way to heavy on realestate usage.
It appears to me that they designed it for the first-time user, which is ok, but once you have time and experience on a system you don't need the extra layer of dumbed-downedness.
On the other hand I found Win2K's start menu to be quite efficient when using it. Again, perhaps due to experience since I was using Win2K and Linux side by side for a very long time before killing off my last Win partition. I'm not convinced it is just experience though, I'm primarily a keyboard navigator and there are somethings I just plain liked better in 2K.
If it is there, it should be accessible by XUL in some way, so perhaps it could be as simple as coding some XUL to have a bookmark search item on the toolbar or somewhere similar.
As for the 2minute posting limit, while annoying it does help prevent repetitive identical posting which was a problem before the 2 minute rule was in effect (been a LONG time but there was a definite annoying spam-ish problem that this fixed). What would be good is a verification that you are posting different content in a different thread, and if so drop the 2min rule.
Firefox 1.0 sucks you in by being lean and mean ... 2.0 is always the generation that says "now you'll stay because look at all we can do now!" 3.0 is the "we gotta optimize this bloat" release.
All these "I don't answer the door" replies make me feel very happy I live in a small neighborhood where I don't mind visitors.
Which do you find easier to ignore, email which is meant to be a disconnected medium anyway, IM which requires you to sit in front of the computer, the phone which allows you to pretend not to be home, or the door where you know that the person knocking saw your car in the driveway?
Ever been out in the yard or garden? No email, no IM, no phone, but you might happen to notice a friend walking by.
Answering the door isn't a responsibility (unless they have uniforms and badges) but it certainly is the most likely method of getting a response assuming they are home.
This Smithee guy must be a genius ... IMDB states he directed his first movie the year he was born and has been writing, directing, producing, composing, designing and editing many dozens if not hundreds of shows since. Now he's a keynote-quality software designer.
Good show old chap!
I disagree with 5X better for raytracing. Better? Yes, but not 5X. There are a larger number of tricks that can be done to make it look acceptable in realtime on today's fastest workstations (non-clustered). However the step from console to "today's fastest workstation" is probably of the same magnitude as "today's fastest workstation" is to a rendering cluster.
... but advancements are constantly being made and Raytracing itself can have quality issues unless you spend a LOT of time tweaking a scene.
... someday yes, but probably so far off in the future that the Sony marketing reps need to quit crying wolf :)
Additionally I'm not convinced that raytracing will always be the best looking solution. For the next 10 years? Sure
Last, I'm not saying that the realtime render has to look as good a humanly possible to be acceptable, only that it has to be a lot farther along. Realtime renders 1/5th as good as cluster rendered is going to be perfectly adequate for most folks, but consoles are a LONG way from that.
So I hold the middle ground on this
I'm lazy, so not directly quoting ...
;)
I either missed that episode of Enterprise (I skipped much of seasons 2 and 3) or I blocked it out completely. Either way, thank goodness I missed it and damn them for bringing it back. Next thing you know we'll have a completely holographic crew member
And as for Data, hopefully if they put him in the story (I was kinda hoping that the timeline incongruitites due to Enterprise would selectively delete a few characters, his being primary) they will do so back when he didn't act like he wanted be human. It got real old.
Then again, I don't hold out hope and I haven't seen any of the last couple of Trek movies in the theater. Just not worth the money. I'm not a big fan of ST but I am a big fan of well plotted continuity.
Exactly ... the Enterprise folks have already said that because of the past-based events in Enterprise that many pieces of TOS have been altered. Essentially TOS (old show) was what would have happened had the events in Enterprise not. Now that they have, they are free to do whatever they want in regards to the timeline.
:)
Cop out? Yep. Then again, at least we can be fairly sure there won't be a holodeck in this movie, and no Data either.
I do think it could be more interesting if they kept a "no Romulan's seen" going, but it would be more work than most screenwriters would want to deal with when they have a way out that no longer violates continuity (in their opinion
Yep ... PS2 advertised real-time cut scene rendering VERY heavily but it didn't provide the capabilities the story tellers wanted.
... give a graphic artist an inch in realtime and they will still ALWAYS want more (that's a good thing, I'm not complaining). You'll likely still see rendered cut scenes to some degree for a very long time.
Something tells me the PS3 will be the same story
If you get the PS3 to be able to render in realtime what 3 years ago was rendered longtime you still haven't made it look as good as what you see in, say, Spiderman 2. I don't see a console getting to the "realtime looks as good as longtime rendering" anytime in the near future, if ever, as longtime rendering will constantly be improving as well.
By gum, you're right, I didn't have the single added in for the doubling of the 2nd round. Well obviously this is more case for a CVS repository.
Sorry ... bad % marker ... I meant he's only getting 15%, not .15% ... I'll fix that in version 3.
To patch YOUR version:
cat jeopardy.pl | sed 's/828960 \/ \$totalJeopardy/\(828960 \/ \$totalJeopardy\) \* 100/g' > jeopardy3.pl
Obviously he is not playing very efficiently as he has been winning only about
#!/usr/bin/perl
# jeopardy.pl
# optimal daily double location is the 6th $400
$singleJeopardy = ((1000*6)+(800*6)+(600*6)+(400*6)+(200*5))*2;
pr
# doubleJeopardy doubles answer values
# doubleJeopardy has 2 daily doubles
#
#
$doubleJeopardy = ($singleJeopardy - 400)*2;
print "Max Double Jeopardy round = $doubleJeopardy\n";
$finalJeopardy = ($singleJeopardy + $doubleJeopardy) * 2;
print "Max Final Jeopardy! Winnings: $finalJeopardy\n";
$totalJeopardy = $finalJeopardy * 26;
print "26 days
# Results of "perl jeopardy.pl":
# Max Single Jeopardy round = 35600
# Max Double Jeopardy round = 70400
# Max Final Jeopardy! Winnings: 212000
# 26 days
It also shows why Super Millionaire is the place to play if you have that many trivial bits up top
I mean
The point isn't making it easier for people who know about it :) The point is to bring the interface to people who are smart enough to use it but haven't taken the time to learn the weirdnesses.
He didn't quite show -everything- stupid about /. ... You've highlighted the "I won't get modded down if I'm self-effacing/igratiating by saying I'll get modded down for this, but that's ok" reverse psychology versus moderation ploy.
Get a slingshot, one of the big fancy ones with an arm brace. It needs to have an opening significantly bigger than the CD, so if you may need to modify the slingshot or build one based on current models but with an enhanced aperture. Cut out the small leather/plastic ammo holder, get a piece of metal about 3/5 the diameter of a CD, bend to curve around the CD with lips at the top and bottom of the disc (the lips should only be at the middle of this metal piece and probably not more than an inch wide, with a taper away from the disc, otherwise it may grab the disc and you'll find it in your forehead). Done.
Probably not worth it. I think it would be MUCH more fun to shoot the smaller mini-cds.
Ok, so they filed for the patent on 2 March 2000 ... how far back were they actually using the method?
I ask because I -swear- that in the mid-90's I was able to use the exact same information to register an account on AOL. Perhaps AOL didn't use the information for -electronic- withdrawal but just printed checks using the info. If so, then ok, there are some differences but seriously not enough to make this valid.
If firefox wasn't -quite- so limited on it's pref UI. Mozilla has too many default configuration items and Firefox has too few.
I know about about:config, but my father will probably never get it (and he's a geek from the old days, he's just tired of fidgeting with hidden widgets).
A simple entry in the tools/options menu that says "advanced features" which pulled up about:config in a separate window along with better documentation and some tweaks to the UI display for about:config to allow deep help searches would be enough.
Something to make it easier for the non-expert (not necessarily newbie) to realize all the power hidden under the hood and some more explanations on what things do.
I would like to see a few more items in the Firefox pref UI as well, like more of the tabbed browsing parameters, but if not possible then the above would be sufficient.
A quick googling will show you a number of comparisons of ATRAC to more recent lossy formats. I linked to one a couple of replies up if you click "parent".
And you could be right, an ATRAC machine with an ideal decoder chipset compared to one of the other formats with an ideal decoder chipset might very well sound better, but we're talking portables and you don't get that ideal on that level.
Only one of a NUMBER of comparisons I have read:
... quote: "Atrac3 by the consumer electronic giant Sony was just crushed in this comparison."
... in alot of cases people will be buying (hopefully) MP3 or AAC files and then having to convert them to ATRAC. Even if raw->ATRAC were superior, you're talking double conversion there and that is never good.
Tuned OGG Vorbis Shines, Lame MP3 still very competitive
From what I have been able to tell, mini-disc players are chosen because the audiophiles are still rather snobbish on MP3/Ogg (rightly so in the case of 128K CBR, but VBR at a high quality gives both formats alot of bragging rights) and/or people who have a very high-end minidisc deck at home and want to use the same media on the road.
If I guess correctly (and I'm not saying I've personally compared minidisc players for quite some time) the playback on the portables is far weaker than the expensive component decks. Since today most are concerned with the portable side as much as the component side, it sounds like ATRAC is losing out.
Plus, think of this
I like everything I see about the Sony products including their attitude on the long-haul. Everything but one ... they still use their nasty-sounding ATRAC format (the same one used for minidiscs).
Sorry, but if you can't play MP3 OR Ogg Vorbis OR AAC, you're dead in the water. Yes, they bundle software to convert those formats (not sure about Ogg Vorbis, which is what I use) for loading onto the player as ATRAC files, but this is seriously not something that interests me.
Give me the same basic form factor, a higher price (but still under iPod), and the ability to natively play MP3, Ogg Vorbis and AAC (yes, all 3 ... I actually would be happy with OV but I'm not the mass-market ... I'll even admit that you could probably get away without including OV for the next couple of years with no significant market loss) and you've got me hook, line and tweeter.
Until then I'm sticking with my rather huge but very flexible Neuros. A shame, because until I found the blurbs about the ATRAC (that verbally sounds too much like 8-track :) file format I was seriously drooling.
And while you're at it, allow me to load files via USB Mass-storage so that I don't need a bunch of flaky software to load the player. Right now this and size are the only detractors keeping the Neuros from being the best thing out there. An Ogg player with USB Mass-storage loading (Neuros supports USB mass-storage, but won't play songs loaded that way because they are not in the database) that is small with a significant battery life and good corporate support ... is it so much to ask? Yeah *laugh* I guess so.
But if I choose not to use the first definition (link to the mentioned page), then I can use the second which clearly shows that my usage is exactly what I intended.
The question is, does one accept only the original definition of the word that you were pointing out? Or does one accept that we speak a living language and after enough undefined but accepted use said connotation becomes a new denotation?
I tend to fall under the living language category. Apparently so does Dictionary.com since even though their note supports the first definition, they continue with a second definition that supports it. In fact, it would appear that the online Webster's dictionary lists my usage as the first and yours as second, probably because yours has come to be considered archaic in modern use.
FWIW, since the sentence is syntactically and semantically correct, you are not truly criticizing the grammar. You are challenging the usage and context. If my usage had been definitively incorrect instead of contextually viable then it might be considered by some to be a grammatical error but in this case it was not.
And now that we've spent too much time on it, I await a -1 Offtopic :)
Much to the dismay of the others who replied to your post, I agree.
... Apollo 11? Everyone was watching. By Apollo 14 the public was disinterested.
Look at what happened to Apollo
Similarly with the Shuttle.
The only things that got people reinterested were calamity (Apollo 13, Challenger, Columbia) or aberation (John Glenn).
Congress is only treating NASA and similar topics with the same general disdain that the majority of the public want. That's how a democracy works. Until/unless we discover -life- out there, not just the possibility, or have some new massive breakthrough that invigorates the public, these programs will continue to fight for their lives.
Let's face it, if you counted the number of people who were watching the Mars rover landings live on TV a few years ago and then subtracted everyone you had 3 degrees or less connection to, you would probably have wiped out 90% of the viewers.
If you watched live the recent Burt Rutan plane make it into space a couple of weeks ago and subtracted anyone who reads Slashdot or knows someone who does, you'd probably have wiped out 90% of -those- viewers.
We simply are not in anywhere near a majority when it comes to exploration enthusiasm.
(replying to a score:0 in case you're not sure what this is about)
... of the 5+ Billion non-Chinese that I mentioned a significant percentage also do not have electricity or networked computers.
Dude you haven't been to China.
Are some of them without electricity and "modern" lifestyle? Sure. Is the percentage higher than the percentage of Amish in the U.S.? Most definitely.
However a significant amount of the population today in China DOES have a "modern" lifestyle. Do you know why there is such an oil shortage? Because China and India have been expanding the number of cars per capita DRASTICALLY in the last 2 years and there is no end in site.
And my statement was a generalization
Fact of the matter is that China has declared they plan on migrating 200 Million computers to Linux in the next couple of years. 200 MILLION. And those are computers that are in some form under the direction of the government. There may not be 1 Billion chinese people using IPv9 but I wouldn't be surprised if in 5 years there ARE 1 Billion Chinese -adresses- using it. That is still a very significant number no matter how you slice it.