The fact that some cylons may not know they are cylons, can make for clever use of the character Baltar.
Actually, I think that it will make for more clever use of the Boomer character, since it is revealed at the very end that she is a sleeper Cylon.
The thing that I don't understand about Baltar is how Col. Tai and the others just took his word on everything, without any verification. For example, when Baltar framed the (what he thought was a) human, claiming that he was a Cylon, he made up some story about spectroscopic analysis or something, and everyone believed him. At the very least, they should have had someone studying his methods, so that someone could take over if something happened to Baltar.
Q2WF is still around, and is still being tweaked, and is still being played. In fact, some WFA players are returning to Q2WF. Check out Biosentral if you want more info.
The last line was a joke. Of course humans can't be removed from the voting process; they're the ones who vote!
However, I stand by the rest of my statement: studies have shown that the more humans are placed into the mix, the more inaccurate are the results. If you want to argue with the studies, fine.
I totally agree with you that the system (the whole system) needs to be completely transparent to anybody and everybody who wants to look at it, except for those parts that would reveal the way that a particular voter voted.
Names and boxes on paper, a pencil and ballot boxes and a counting that is open to verification are all the [sic] are needed.
Ever heard of erasers? Perhaps you meant "pens". Also, individual voting slips can be "misplaced". At any rate, your (non-machine) method would require hand-counting by humans, and studies have shown that the more humans are placed into the mix, the more inaccurate are the results. What is needed is a way to remove humans from the voting process entirely.
A trade-secret stops being a trade-secret the moment the content is either generally known, or you disclose the information wilfully and publically. You do both when you release an ad-flyer containing the info.
Except that they haven't released anything, yet.
Just because some information will be released in the future, doesn't mean that that information isn't eligible for trade-secret staus now.
Having said that, I believe that:
using the DMCA to suppress the release of pricing information is a misuse of a bad law, and
it's kind of stupid to try to suppress this information in the first place. Instead, they should put some kind of blurb in their fliers stating, in effect, that they will undercut the price of their competitors by some small amount.
I agree. I have Flash disabled on my machine for performance/security/annoyance reasons (along with all other plug-ins (which means I can't see SVG, either (sigh)), scripting, animated GIFs, etc.). Probably 99% of web sites that use Flash do not need to, but many, if not most of them, have no alternate means of accessing their sites. For personal sites, this is not much of a problem, but commercial sites can (and do) lose business by not providing alternate access.
I used to hot-swap parallel IDE HDDs in cartridges, without any problems. I stopped doing this when I learned that it was a bad idea. I guess that I was lucky that nothing bad ever happened.
It would be really nice if HDDs came with a write-protect switch or tab (or even a write-protect jumper), the way that floppies and old removable-spindle ("washing machine") HDDs used to. That would help avoid accidentally (or virally) clobbering backup data.
In the early 1970s, the Ford Motor Company's advertising campaign proclaimed that "Ford has a better idea". During the Watergate affair (President Richard M. Nixon, Vice President Gerald R. Ford), a common joke was, "Nixon wants to remain President, but...".
But what if I don't want to use <CTRL+X>/<CTRL+V> for cut/paste? In those programs that have configurable keys, I would have to change the configuration of each program. In those programs that don't use configurable keys, I would be stuck with a configuration that I may not want. In a system with a virtual UI, I would make the change in one place, and it would take effect across all applications (that use a cut/paste metaphor). For example, I would really, really like to be able to use vi inside of generic text boxes. A virtual UI would allow me to do this.
Your argument about old programs not easily being upgraded could also be applied to XML replacing HTML. (BTW, I never wrote that such an upgrade would be easy.)
As far as virtual UIs making programs more compatible with each other, how about drawing programs (the GIMP, Sodipodi, etc.)? Things like drawing a line, dragging an object, etc., could be standardized across applications, and customized to a user's preferences. For example, dragging an object is done in many programs by clicking on it with MB1 and moving the mouse while the button is still depressed (so-called "drag 'n' drop"). Say I wanted it to work by pressing and releasing a key instead. I could set this up in one place, and it would be standardized across applications.
Regarding your observation about innovative user interfaces, I already addressed that using the PNG example. Even if some part of the virtual UI might have to be bypassed, those parts that are common across applications would not have to be (analogous to the way that file open/save dialog boxes are somewhat standardized, but, say, table-formatting dialog boxes are not (yet)).
As I mentioned before, WMs and GUIs already do some standardization across components (move windows, quit app, display components such as menus, textboxes, drop-down lists, etc.). A virtual UI would just expand this further. It might not be easy, it might not be useful, but it should not be dismissed out-of-hand without even doing any research.
In case you did not notice, windows and Linux both use ctrl+c/v to copy and paste,...
Not all apps use those keys for copy/paste. For example, vi uses Y and y to copy, and P and p to paste. Putting this functionality in a virtual UI layer would ensure that all applications would use the same keys. Of course, this would require modifying all of those applications, which I think is a somewhat more serious problem than interfacing to new functionality.
As far as Frob is concerned, apps could register "private" events for new functionality. As the functionality became more widespread, a standard event would be specified, and newer versions of the app could use that. This type of thing is done with PNG files, for example, which can have private chunks that are not available to all apps. As time goes by, and chunks are seen to be useful, public chunks replace the private ones. (Several chunks that were private in PNG 1.1 have public equivalents now in PNG 1.2.) Similarly, the UI would allow apps to register private events for new functionality. When a function becomes popular enough, its event becomes public. At that point, other apps would start using the public functionality, and new versions of the original app would support both private and public.
What I'd like to see would be a site dedicated to collecting feedback on what Linux users (old and new alike) would like to see created or improved.
The problem with that is that many Mac users would want one mouse button, many MS-Windows users would want the <CTRL+C>/<CTRL+V> copy/paste, etc. You can't accomodate them all with a single UI.
What is really needed is a virtual layer between the (G)UI and app that would allow GUI "themes", similar to the way that KDE and GNOME have themes for their WMs. For example, say that I am using a program that displays various objects that can be moved, copied, etc. Rather than receiving events like <KEY C with CTRL modifier> or <MB1 with mouse coord> , the program would receive events like <COPY> or <MOVE with delta/coord>. Then, the GUI theme that I was using would determine what keys/mouse movements generate what events. Some programs already allow users to customize keyboard shortcuts and menus. This would be like that, except that, instead of customizing per-application, it would customize across all applications.
The problem is determining the domain of events that the virtual layer would support. Operations like copy, paste, and move are easy (and have already been done for things like text boxes); file open/save operations are semi-standard in that many apps use <CTRL+O> and <CTRL+S> (but not necessarily customizable, and certainly not globally); other, less common operations (e.g., drawing a line from point A to point B, adding to or subtracting from the current selection, etc.) could be handled using some sort of modular system (ala XML XPointers, etc).
that superman film where lex luther bought up loads desert near the San Andreas fault and launched nukes to trigger an earthquake that would tip LA into the sea
And we all know how scientifically accurate the "Superman" movies are.
At planetary scales, solids act like liquids. That is why all planets are roughly spherical. (Yes, I know that surface features like mountains exist, but they are so small, compared to the size of a planet as a whole, that the surface of the Earth is smoother than that of a billiard ball would be at the same scale. And, yes, I know that the Earth bulges out at the equator, but that is due to the Earth's rotation. A liquid would behave similarly.)
If humans were to place all of their nuclear weapons at one spot on the Moon, at its weakest point, where some fault happened to run deep into the core, and detonated them, what would happen would be that some very small fraction of the Moon's crust would be blasted into space. Most of it, however, would return to the Moon's surface. All you have to do is look at the craters pockmarking the Moon's surface (some of them caused by impacts releasing energy many times larger than Mankind's entire nuclear arsenal) to know that it will survive anything that Man can throw at it in the near future.
Just wondering how you would possibly organize even more than 3 non-labeled CDs.
Keep your CD-R/RWs in half-height jewel cases, and label those instead of the CD-R/RWs themselves. When removing a CD-R/RW from the drive, always return it to its case. I label a case by writing on the non-sticky portion of the sticky side of a Post-It Note, then sticking the Post-It Note to the inside of the clear case top (so that the writing faces outward). (Placing the note inside the case will prevent it from being inadvertantly removed due to external forces (e.g., two cases rubbing together).)
Cases also help to protect CD-R/RWs from scratches and other environmental hazards, and can be placed vertically (on edge) on a shelf without worries of it rolling off.
Using the above scheme, I have never lost a CD-R/RW to scratches, etc., and I can easily find the CD-R/RW that I want (I have never misplaced a CD-R/RW or placed the wrong on in the drive).
The operative phrase is "based on"
on
Kylix in Limbo
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Borland "Object Pascal" isn't standard Pascal. It suffers from few of the restrictions of the standard language, and has many enhancements (e.g., properties) that are better than their C++ equivalents, IMO. Also, it compiles faster than C++, and the IDE is just great. It has its problems though, (every language does), but, all in all, I think that it compares favorably against C++ in many ways (and, of course, unfavorably in others).
The thing that I noticed about the GUI in the MS-Windows version of 3.20 was that it seems to think that all of the characters have width 0. That is, it places all of the characters on top of each other. This is true for buttons, captions, balloon help ("tool tips"), etc. Also, if I type text into a text box, it doesn't appear at all. This is on MS-Windows 95; I also downloaded the Linux version, but haven't tested it yet.
Look at the (totally bogus) Y2K bug: we THOUGHT it was a problem, and were running to the zero hour to fix it. While it ended up being a dud, if you have the foresight why wait that long?
Y2K was not "totally bogus"; we thought that it was a problem because it was a problem. The only reason that it "ended up being a dud" was because everyone was "running to the zero hour to fix it".
This IPv6 dealie is similar; the IPv4 running-out-of-addresses thingee won't be a problem because of people who are migrating to (or starting out with) IPv6. But if no one did, it would be, eventually.
Unfortunately, the "http://www.windowsforunixpros.com" link doesn't work because I have scripting turned off. (Idiot web designers.)
The "http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu" link takes me to a site that wants me to spend $99 for a product that doesn't look any better than cygwin. Also, since it's from Microsoft, I doubt that it would run on MS-Windows 95, which is the version of MS-Windows that I use on my machines. (The "http://www.interix.com/" page appears to support this speculation.)
Cygwin runs fine on MS-W95, once it's installed, (although X isn't as fast as it is under Linux), and it's free. In addition, the source code is available if I want to fool around with it (which I have).
In addition, SCO doesn't distribute just the Linux kernel, but also the GNU utilities (shells, compilers, etc.), libraries, etc. that run on it. The FSF owns (or has had assigned to them) the copyrights to many of these utilites.
Yeah, the installer does suck in many ways, but the part that I like least is that you can't resize the window. (The other thing that I didn't like was that the root of the dos drives was named "cygdrive" (or something like it) (e.g., "/cygdrive/c",/cygdrive/d, etc.). Fortunately, a minute or two with regedit, and it's now "dos" ("/dos/c", etc.,), just like it is when I boot up Linux.)
Oh, um, to get back on topic, bash under cygwin is the way to go when running a shell under MS-WinX. It bashes any MS shell out there. (Get it? Bash "bashes" any... ah, forget it.)
Slashdot Mirror
The thing that I don't understand about Baltar is how Col. Tai and the others just took his word on everything, without any verification.
For example, when Baltar framed the (what he thought was a) human, claiming that he was a Cylon, he made up some story about spectroscopic analysis or something, and everyone believed him.
At the very least, they should have had someone studying his methods, so that someone could take over if something happened to Baltar.
Q2WF is still around, and is still being tweaked, and is still being played.
In fact, some WFA players are returning to Q2WF.
Check out Biosentral if you want more info.
The last line was a joke.
Of course humans can't be removed from the voting process; they're the ones who vote!
However, I stand by the rest of my statement: studies have shown that the more humans are placed into the mix, the more inaccurate are the results.
If you want to argue with the studies, fine.
I totally agree with you that the system (the whole system) needs to be completely transparent to anybody and everybody who wants to look at it, except for those parts that would reveal the way that a particular voter voted.
Perhaps you meant "pens".
Also, individual voting slips can be "misplaced".
At any rate, your (non-machine) method would require hand-counting by humans, and studies have shown that the more humans are placed into the mix, the more inaccurate are the results.
What is needed is a way to remove humans from the voting process entirely.
Your link, "http://sourcemage.org/", didn't work.
Use http://www.sourcemage.org/ instead.
I don't know why some sites these days still require "www.".
Just because some information will be released in the future, doesn't mean that that information isn't eligible for trade-secret staus now.
Having said that, I believe that:
Instead, they should put some kind of blurb in their fliers stating, in effect, that they will undercut the price of their competitors by some small amount.
they can go stick their head in a lake.
That should be "he or she can go stick his/her head in a lake".
--
ironic-humor-impaired guy/gal
I agree.
I have Flash disabled on my machine for performance/security/annoyance reasons (along with all other plug-ins (which means I can't see SVG, either (sigh)), scripting, animated GIFs, etc.).
Probably 99% of web sites that use Flash do not need to, but many, if not most of them, have no alternate means of accessing their sites.
For personal sites, this is not much of a problem, but commercial sites can (and do) lose business by not providing alternate access.
Oh, wait, (s)he said "standards".
Never mind.
I used to hot-swap parallel IDE HDDs in cartridges, without any problems.
I stopped doing this when I learned that it was a bad idea.
I guess that I was lucky that nothing bad ever happened.
It would be really nice if HDDs came with a write-protect switch or tab (or even a write-protect jumper), the way that floppies and old removable-spindle ("washing machine") HDDs used to.
That would help avoid accidentally (or virally) clobbering backup data.
In the early 1970s, the Ford Motor Company's advertising campaign proclaimed that "Ford has a better idea". ...".
During the Watergate affair (President Richard M. Nixon, Vice President Gerald R. Ford), a common joke was, "Nixon wants to remain President, but
But what if I don't want to use <CTRL+X> /<CTRL+V> for cut/paste?
In those programs that have configurable keys, I would have to change the configuration of each program.
In those programs that don't use configurable keys, I would be stuck with a configuration that I may not want.
In a system with a virtual UI, I would make the change in one place, and it would take effect across all applications (that use a cut/paste metaphor).
For example, I would really, really like to be able to use vi inside of generic text boxes.
A virtual UI would allow me to do this.
Your argument about old programs not easily being upgraded could also be applied to XML replacing HTML.
(BTW, I never wrote that such an upgrade would be easy.)
As far as virtual UIs making programs more compatible with each other, how about drawing programs (the GIMP, Sodipodi, etc.)?
Things like drawing a line, dragging an object, etc., could be standardized across applications, and customized to a user's preferences.
For example, dragging an object is done in many programs by clicking on it with MB1 and moving the mouse while the button is still depressed (so-called "drag 'n' drop").
Say I wanted it to work by pressing and releasing a key instead.
I could set this up in one place, and it would be standardized across applications.
Regarding your observation about innovative user interfaces, I already addressed that using the PNG example.
Even if some part of the virtual UI might have to be bypassed, those parts that are common across applications would not have to be (analogous to the way that file open/save dialog boxes are somewhat standardized, but, say, table-formatting dialog boxes are not (yet)).
As I mentioned before, WMs and GUIs already do some standardization across components (move windows, quit app, display components such as menus, textboxes, drop-down lists, etc.).
A virtual UI would just expand this further.
It might not be easy, it might not be useful, but it should not be dismissed out-of-hand without even doing any research.
For example, vi uses Y and y to copy, and P and p to paste.
Putting this functionality in a virtual UI layer would ensure that all applications would use the same keys.
Of course, this would require modifying all of those applications, which I think is a somewhat more serious problem than interfacing to new functionality.
As far as Frob is concerned, apps could register "private" events for new functionality.
As the functionality became more widespread, a standard event would be specified, and newer versions of the app could use that.
This type of thing is done with PNG files, for example, which can have private chunks that are not available to all apps.
As time goes by, and chunks are seen to be useful, public chunks replace the private ones.
(Several chunks that were private in PNG 1.1 have public equivalents now in PNG 1.2.)
Similarly, the UI would allow apps to register private events for new functionality.
When a function becomes popular enough, its event becomes public.
At that point, other apps would start using the public functionality, and new versions of the original app would support both private and public.
You can't accomodate them all with a single UI.
What is really needed is a virtual layer between the (G)UI and app that would allow GUI "themes", similar to the way that KDE and GNOME have themes for their WMs.
For example, say that I am using a program that displays various objects that can be moved, copied, etc.
Rather than receiving events like <KEY C with CTRL modifier> or <MB1 with mouse coord> , the program would receive events like <COPY> or <MOVE with delta/coord>
Then, the GUI theme that I was using would determine what keys/mouse movements generate what events.
Some programs already allow users to customize keyboard shortcuts and menus.
This would be like that, except that, instead of customizing per-application, it would customize across all applications.
The problem is determining the domain of events that the virtual layer would support.
Operations like copy, paste, and move are easy (and have already been done for things like text boxes); file open/save operations are semi-standard in that many apps use <CTRL+O> and <CTRL+S> (but not necessarily customizable, and certainly not globally); other, less common operations (e.g., drawing a line from point A to point B, adding to or subtracting from the current selection, etc.) could be handled using some sort of modular system (ala XML XPointers, etc).
At planetary scales, solids act like liquids.
That is why all planets are roughly spherical.
(Yes, I know that surface features like mountains exist, but they are so small, compared to the size of a planet as a whole, that the surface of the Earth is smoother than that of a billiard ball would be at the same scale.
And, yes, I know that the Earth bulges out at the equator, but that is due to the Earth's rotation.
A liquid would behave similarly.)
If humans were to place all of their nuclear weapons at one spot on the Moon, at its weakest point, where some fault happened to run deep into the core, and detonated them, what would happen would be that some very small fraction of the Moon's crust would be blasted into space.
Most of it, however, would return to the Moon's surface.
All you have to do is look at the craters pockmarking the Moon's surface (some of them caused by impacts releasing energy many times larger than Mankind's entire nuclear arsenal) to know that it will survive anything that Man can throw at it in the near future.
When removing a CD-R/RW from the drive, always return it to its case.
I label a case by writing on the non-sticky portion of the sticky side of a Post-It Note, then sticking the Post-It Note to the inside of the clear case top (so that the writing faces outward).
(Placing the note inside the case will prevent it from being inadvertantly removed due to external forces (e.g., two cases rubbing together).)
Cases also help to protect CD-R/RWs from scratches and other environmental hazards, and can be placed vertically (on edge) on a shelf without worries of it rolling off.
Using the above scheme, I have never lost a CD-R/RW to scratches, etc., and I can easily find the CD-R/RW that I want (I have never misplaced a CD-R/RW or placed the wrong on in the drive).
Borland "Object Pascal" isn't standard Pascal.
It suffers from few of the restrictions of the standard language, and has many enhancements (e.g., properties) that are better than their C++ equivalents, IMO.
Also, it compiles faster than C++, and the IDE is just great.
It has its problems though, (every language does), but, all in all, I think that it compares favorably against C++ in many ways (and, of course, unfavorably in others).
The thing that I noticed about the GUI in the MS-Windows version of 3.20 was that it seems to think that all of the characters have width 0.
That is, it places all of the characters on top of each other.
This is true for buttons, captions, balloon help ("tool tips"), etc.
Also, if I type text into a text box, it doesn't appear at all.
This is on MS-Windows 95; I also downloaded the Linux version, but haven't tested it yet.
It's "cracking", not "hacking", dammit!
I expect this from mainstream media, but not here.
The only reason that it "ended up being a dud" was because everyone was "running to the zero hour to fix it".
This IPv6 dealie is similar; the IPv4 running-out-of-addresses thingee won't be a problem because of people who are migrating to (or starting out with) IPv6.
But if no one did, it would be, eventually.
Unfortunately, the "http://www.windowsforunixpros.com" link doesn't work because I have scripting turned off.
(Idiot web designers.)
The "http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu" link takes me to a site that wants me to spend $99 for a product that doesn't look any better than cygwin.
Also, since it's from Microsoft, I doubt that it would run on MS-Windows 95, which is the version of MS-Windows that I use on my machines.
(The "http://www.interix.com/" page appears to support this speculation.)
Cygwin runs fine on MS-W95, once it's installed, (although X isn't as fast as it is under Linux), and it's free.
In addition, the source code is available if I want to fool around with it (which I have).
In addition, SCO doesn't distribute just the Linux kernel, but also the GNU utilities (shells, compilers, etc.), libraries, etc. that run on it.
The FSF owns (or has had assigned to them) the copyrights to many of these utilites.
Yeah, the installer does suck in many ways, but the part that I like least is that you can't resize the window. /cygdrive/d, etc.).
... ah, forget it.)
(The other thing that I didn't like was that the root of the dos drives was named "cygdrive" (or something like it) (e.g., "/cygdrive/c",
Fortunately, a minute or two with regedit, and it's now "dos" ("/dos/c", etc.,), just like it is when I boot up Linux.)
Oh, um, to get back on topic, bash under cygwin is the way to go when running a shell under MS-WinX.
It bashes any MS shell out there.
(Get it? Bash "bashes" any