The ocean regions that spawn tropical storms each have their own naming conventions. The Atlantic and Eastern North Pacific basins use 6 yearly lists of names (respectively 21 and 25 names in length: ENP omits Q, while Atlantic also skips U, X, Y, and Z), and the Phillipines area uses 4 yearly lists (which skip X, but go back to A after Z), but all other regions use lists in sequence without regard to the year.
A simple rule change would put the Atlantic storms into that format. If the rule were in place now, Wilma would have been followed by Alberto. In addition, the last named storm of 2004 (TS Otto) would have been followed in 2005 by Paula, not Arlene.
It looks like the third field in each one is the month (0a is October, and 04 is April), the fifth field is the week, and the 7th field is the time of day that it changes. I'll even go out on a limb and say that the first field is the day of week, but we don't need to change that anyway.
Much like extending Daylight Savings sic Time, politicians have no idea what impact this has on the real world - programmers that have to code this stuff
When the new Daylight Saving Time rules were enacted, I figured out that all I have to do is edit the/etc/TIMEZONE or/etc/environment file (depending on which of the 4 flavors of *nix I have to support is involved) and add the string ",M3.2.0,M11.1.0" to the end of the TZ= statement. For instance, change "TZ=CST6CDT" to "CST6CDT,M3.2.0,M11.1.0".
That's it. No 'reprogramming' involved at all. That's because the interpretation of the TZ variable was already programmed to include this sort of encoded rules.
On the gripping hand, I have no clue what it'll take to fix Windows timezones.
If there's a problem (i.e. TiVo failure, cable out, dish askew, power outage), then you've missed your show and you have to wait for it to be broadcast again, using TiVo. If you miss a show with a download system, you can download it whenever.
If it weren't for the 'file sharing is piracy!' mentality, you could use a 'buddy' system. Maybe we can wangle a workaround:
When your DVR records a show, it would put that fact into a database. Perhaps there was a nasty storm and the dish was no good for about 10 minutes. Your DVR consults the database and finds 120 other people who successfully recorded the show, and are willing to let you have a 5-second fair-use excerpt thereof. Your DVR downloads those 120 chunks and assembles them together to cover the outage.
TiVo killed the VCR!
TiVo killed the VCR!
With iPods and DVR
no more tapes, just gzipped tar*
Oh-a-aho oh, Oh-a-aho oh!
I see any "RFID Killer" being classified as illegal as soon as it hiss the market.
Well, I don't have quite such a pessimistic outlook.
Ever hear of 'paraphernalia' laws? Tommy Chong went to prison for selling pipes that could be used to smoke marijuana. This is typical of how new laws are often made: A law is passed to criminalize activity based on a correlation to an existing illegal activity as a means to make the latter easier to enforce. After some time passes, the process repeats, with a new class of behavior criminalized to make it easier to enforce the prior law.
Soon we'll see laws against making 'precursors' to 'circumvention devices'; just you watch it happen.
The Power of the OpenDocument Approach
on
No Office Suite Google
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I've made this point any number of times. Because the OD formats use PKZIPped XML, you can do meaningful work on them with the classic Unix approach of small tools that do one thing well.
As an example, my employer recently changed its name (again). It's really simple to write a little shell script to unzip filea, s/oldname/newname/g, and zip back up, without ever needing an 'office application' at all.
Google might want to use its server farm to gather information requested, and construct an *.od* on the fly to download to the user. After all, they already do it with HTML. It can't be all that difficult to do XML instead, and send the output to a compression program.
Spam is an annoying side effect of allowing open access to the web to the masses.
Not really, since email usually doesn't go over 80/tcp. Oh, you meant net access? I can understand PHBs failure to understand the Intarwebs, but on a Geek site, there's no excuse for such sloppy language.
The e-mail graphics looked exactly like eBay's question-from-bidders form. I clicked on reply to inform the writer that I was not offering this item at auction. The screen appeared for me to enter my eBay user name and password. It looked exactly like the standard eBay screen
Including the part where it says "https://www.ebay.com" in the address bar?
<crickets chirping>
Yeah. That's what I thought. Anyone not smart enough to check the address bar isn't smart enough have a valid opinion on how to solve Internet problems.
Your definition of "user" is flawed. A user is (it's in the actual word) the one who uses the program.
So if someone uses Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Firefox, or Konqueror to access a web site that uses GPL'ed software to decide what HTML/CSS/XML/JavaScript to send the browser, who is using what? The person in question is not the 'user' who is running Apache, perl, Python, Ruby, or whatever on the server. That person is 'anonymous', 'guest', or 'nobody' on the server. What is the 'browsor' (my term for a browser operator) using, other than his browser?
plant named flags -- that the other players don't see, of course
or to combine the two ideas, and expand on them... In Civ III Conquests, you added the ability to rename any unit - I always like doing this with ships and Elite* units that spawned a Great Leader, and would like some additional functionality to automatically name/number units to help distinguish them. I'd like to extend this to allow me to put a tag on any space on the map, or on another civ's unit within my LOS, with 4 different text fields: 1) a name field 2) a longer 'memo' field, readable by everyone who has LOS of that space from an actual unit 3) a memo field readable by my allies (those I share LOS with) 4) a memo field only readable by me. The name field could be used for geographical features, while the others can serve as 'post-it' notes to remember and communicate strategic objectives. These tags can be used as targets for orders, such as a 'patrol' that has a unit moving through a series of tags to expand visibility -- When I want to make a minor adjustment to the patrol route, I just move a tag instead of recreating the orders.
Example 4: Dihydrogen Monoxide
OK, this one is stupid, but it shows how easy it is to misattribute symptoms for the cause.
You're obviously just shilling for the DHMO Industry, trying to keep the truth about DHMO from the people! Especially now, with hundreds dead and an unimaginable amount of property damage in which DHMO played a central role, how can you sleep at night, you heartless bastard?
One of the approaches I've read about which would be high-impact for low effort would be to seed the shallow seas with powdered iron.
That approach would be orders of magnitude less costly than the Holy Kyoto Protocols. Therefore it gets no attention. It's not enough to reduce C02 if we can't cripple Western economies in the process.
Actually, I don't see why the grandparent post was modded flamebait.
Because he used terminology of ethnicity rather than economic class. That put him in the same boat as Kanye West and the Congressional Black Caucus who just HAD to Play The Card, because that is what they do. It's got to stop, or my granddaughters may as well be growing up in Bosnia or Gaza.
Anyway, the one-time-use is fine, you cannot remanufacture their cartridges.
It's about nothing of the sort. As the lone voice of reason on the originating site points out, the case was not about the right to refill or remanufacture cartridges. Read the decision: [emphasis mine]
The dispute arises from Lexmark's
advertising of its "Prebate" program, under which it gives
purchasers an upfront discount in exchange for their agreement
to return the empty cartridge to Lexmark for remanufacturing...
Please read before opening. Opening of this package
or using the patented cartridge inside confirms your
acceptance of the following license agreement. The
patented cartridge is sold at a special price subject to
a restriction that it may be used only once. Following
this initial use, you agree to return the empty cartridge
only to Lexmark for remanufacturing and
recycling. If you don't accept these terms, return the
unopened package to your point of purchase. A regular
price cartridge without these terms is available
These are people who took the money, then refused to do what they'd promised to do. If you don't want to be bound by these terms, don't participate in the program.
Personally, I think the bigger news is that just under 90% of the 90-odd organisations that received a letter have not responded to requests to relinquish any legal claim to the 'Linux' name.
That's not news at all. No businessman in his right mind agrees to any legal terms without running it past his lawyers first. A business of any size at all has a legal department whose main job is reviewing documents to be sure they aren't booby-trapped.
The question you have to ask is what benefit these people see from agreeing to LMI's terms vs. the cost of not doing so. If they don't think they're doing anything that can get them sued YET, they might be afraid that entering into any discussion at all could entangle them so that they could.
We all saw what OSDL's reaction was to MS's attempt to get them to agree to something. Better to remain silent than to let your words be used against you.
Strangely, if you follow the instructions at http://www.google.com/support/talk/bin/answer.py?a nswer=24073, (which actually gives instructions on how to download GAIM, as well as configure it to work with the Google Talk Jabber server) it works just fine. I'm logged into talk.google.com right now with GAIM.
only a fool could watch a business acquire the kind of widespread power and dominance Google is working towards without atleast a little apprehension
Hmmm. They have built a business around providing services via open protocols. (Notice that the Google Talk system will interoperate just fine with Jabber clients.) They don't require that you install a program that disables anyone else's offerings. You can still use Yahoo to do searches, Hotmail instead of Gmail for your web-based email account, PriceSCAN instead of Froogle to find bargains. Or you can use those services in addition to the ones Google offers.
The moment Google 'forks' the Internet, they lose value because less people can use their services. The fact is that Google is one of a handful of companies that knows that they NEED open protocols. They have a corporate culture document that says 'do no evil' because doing evil would detract from their bottom line, and top management wants everybody in the company to know it.
How about incorporating captcha into showing the cards?
Like this:
For game 13814397 today,
the face-up cards are
<img src="card/20050828/13814397/1.gif>
through
<img src="card/20050828/13814397/52.gif>
The numbers in the image URLs would have no fixed correlation to the card values (1.gif is NOT always the Ace of spades).
The browser will unfortunately have to download all 52 images every game, but not every hand. Maybe a player could be allowed to keep a 'deck' for several games, but the basic idea would make it difficult for a bot to play. It would keep visually-impaired humans out, too.
Slashdot Mirror
A simple rule change would put the Atlantic storms into that format. If the rule were in place now, Wilma would have been followed by Alberto. In addition, the last named storm of 2004 (TS Otto) would have been followed in 2005 by Paula, not Arlene.
Looks like several of us. Or do you and I count as the same person?
- A Soviet Russia reference
- Beowulf Cluster
- Natalie Portman Grits
- All your ${topic:-Base} are belong to us
- Underpants Gnome Business Plan:
- ${topic:-Bad Business Move}
- ???
- Profit!
- ...You insensitive clod!
- I, for one, welcome our ${topic} overlords.
- Calculate degrees of Kevin Bacon
- Make fun of Microsoft
- Operating System
- Office
- Bob
- You have no honor. I should kill you where you stand!
- You keep using that word. I do not thin' it means what you thin' it means.
- D'oh!
- BSD is dying.
[sentences] Would you like to check spelling of the rest of the document?That's it. No 'reprogramming' involved at all. That's because the interpretation of the TZ variable was already programmed to include this sort of encoded rules.
On the gripping hand, I have no clue what it'll take to fix Windows timezones.
When your DVR records a show, it would put that fact into a database. Perhaps there was a nasty storm and the dish was no good for about 10 minutes. Your DVR consults the database and finds 120 other people who successfully recorded the show, and are willing to let you have a 5-second fair-use excerpt thereof. Your DVR downloads those 120 chunks and assembles them together to cover the outage.
TiVo killed the VCR!
TiVo killed the VCR!
With iPods and DVR
no more tapes, just gzipped tar*
Oh-a-aho oh, Oh-a-aho oh!
*(Or some other file format that doesn't rhyme)
Soon we'll see laws against making 'precursors' to 'circumvention devices'; just you watch it happen.
As an example, my employer recently changed its name (again). It's really simple to write a little shell script to unzip filea, s/oldname/newname/g, and zip back up, without ever needing an 'office application' at all.
Google might want to use its server farm to gather information requested, and construct an *.od* on the fly to download to the user. After all, they already do it with HTML. It can't be all that difficult to do XML instead, and send the output to a compression program.
or to combine the two ideas, and expand on them...
In Civ III Conquests, you added the ability to rename any unit - I always like doing this with ships and Elite* units that spawned a Great Leader, and would like some additional functionality to automatically name/number units to help distinguish them. I'd like to extend this to allow me to put a tag on any space on the map, or on another civ's unit within my LOS, with 4 different text fields:
1) a name field
2) a longer 'memo' field, readable by everyone who has LOS of that space from an actual unit
3) a memo field readable by my allies (those I share LOS with)
4) a memo field only readable by me.
The name field could be used for geographical features, while the others can serve as 'post-it' notes to remember and communicate strategic objectives. These tags can be used as targets for orders, such as a 'patrol' that has a unit moving through a series of tags to expand visibility -- When I want to make a minor adjustment to the patrol route, I just move a tag instead of recreating the orders.
Watt wood-eyed dew width aught mine ice bell Czech her?
So Katrina is the fault of the SOIL, not Chimpy McBusHitlerBurton?
The question you have to ask is what benefit these people see from agreeing to LMI's terms vs. the cost of not doing so. If they don't think they're doing anything that can get them sued YET, they might be afraid that entering into any discussion at all could entangle them so that they could.
We all saw what OSDL's reaction was to MS's attempt to get them to agree to something. Better to remain silent than to let your words be used against you.
Strangely, if you follow the instructions at http://www.google.com/support/talk/bin/answer.py?a nswer=24073, (which actually gives instructions on how to download GAIM, as well as configure it to work with the Google Talk Jabber server) it works just fine. I'm logged into talk.google.com right now with GAIM.
The moment Google 'forks' the Internet, they lose value because less people can use their services. The fact is that Google is one of a handful of companies that knows that they NEED open protocols. They have a corporate culture document that says 'do no evil' because doing evil would detract from their bottom line, and top management wants everybody in the company to know it.