... has a fanatical support base, at least they contribute money
Looks like people contributed a lot of money. The finances are worth mentioning for all the major Republican candidates. One of the things that surprised me as I drilled down into the numbers, is for all of the candidates, most of the funding was done at the individual level rather than PAC money. I was not expecting that.
Romney, Mitt Q4 raised: $26,928,433 Q4 spent: $33,713,503 Total raised: $88,499,686 Total spent: $86,068,239 Cash: $2,431,447 Debt: $35,350,000
McCain, John Q4 raised: $9,714,246 Q4 spent: $10,254,446 Total raised: $41,102,178 Total spent: $38,153,750 Cash: $2,948,428 Debt: $4,516,030
Paul, Ron Q4 raised: $19,873,329 Q4 spent: $17,478,711 Total raised: $28,101,264 Total spent: $20,262,084 Cash: $7,839,421 Debt: $0
Huckabee, Mike Q4 raised: $6,637,063 Q4 spent: $5,391,918 Total raised: $8,986,532 Total spent: $7,090,087 Cash: $1,896,446 Debt: $97,676
By way of comparison, Giuliani, who recently dropped out of the race...
Total Receipts: $60,929,240 Total Spent: $48,152,428 Cash on Hand: $12,776,812 Debts: $1,166,509
Wow... just wow... That sort of spending puts drunken sailors to shame.
nLite let you tune the core OS install - exposing uninstall options the 'default' installer, letting you fold in service packs and patches, drivers, pre-sorting license keys, users, and custom settings. When you get done, you can do a clean slate install and end up with something that won't take another four hours of tweaking to get where you wish was a starting point directly from the ISO.
I started using nLite to build an XP distro that would run on a CF card. Running minimal services, I noticed how much faster it was too -- became the install for my gaming rig. Space was also a concern when building VMWare images, so starting with a mean clean install was a godsend. Granted, it took a couple tries - it is very easy to kill off a critical bit when you do this sort of chainsaw sculpture to the OS. Once you get it right, it is a fantastic (free!) tool. It is wonderful to see the same technology available to Vista.
Actually... there was something like that near by. Still very much a long shot, for a cause, but a cell phone jammer did get close.
6. Accidental jamming of onboard systems by police because the Prime Minister was nearby
A far-fetched theory which suggests that the police may have blocked mobile phones in the area as the Prime Minister's motorcade drove past. This in turn would, it is claimed, have created a systems failure on a plane overhead. This is unlikely to the point of impossibility.
"I am sure other people would have noticed and more than one plane would have come down," said Mr Ling.
If they fret about cell phones on the plane, who knows if a more powerful jammer may cause an issue with avionics. I'd not bet on this, however.
Another sale this morning - BEA to Oracle
on
Sun Buys MySQL
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Short version - Oracle offered 19.23 or so, and BEA said yes this morning. Big impact on a lot of Java EE developers out there.
Your MacBook Air comes standard with a Parallel ATA (PATA) 4200-rpm hard drive. Or you can choose a solid-state drive that delivers faster performance and greater durability. arrow_open.gif arrow_closed.gif Learn more Loading...
80GB Parallel ATA Drive @ 4200 rpm 64GB Solid State Drive [Add $999]
10:26 am New Ad for MacBook Air. Plays off of the ability to fit in an envelope. 10:25 am Pre-orders today, shipping in two weeks 10:24 am $1799 10:24 am 2 GB Memory standard 10:23 am 5 hours of Battery Life 10:23 am No optical drive, but a Superdrive accessory is available for $99. Also, software comes with the MacBook Air that allows you to "borrow" a Mac or PCs optical drive. 10:21 am 802.11n + Bluetooth 2.1/EDR 10:20 am Other features: 45 Watt MagSafe, 1 USB 2.0 port, Micro-DVI, Audio Out 10:19 am Steve retaking stage 10:19 am Otellini: The processor is as thick as a nickle and as wide as a dime. 10:18 am Apple asked Intel to shrink the Core 2 Duo. Intel shrunk the processor by 60%. Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel is taking the stage 10:17 am 1.6 GHz Standard, 1.8 GHz Option -- Intel Core 2 Duo 10:16 am 80 GB hard disk standard, 64 GB SSD as an option. "they're pricy, but they're fast" 10:15 am 1.8" Hard Drive 10:15 am How did we fit a Mac in here? 10:15 am Move a window by double-tap and move. Rotate a photo by pivoting your index finger around your thumb. Of course, pinch-zoom. 10:14 am Multi-touch trackpad 10:13 am display is LED backlit. iSight is built-in. MacBook-like keyboard, but with an ambient light sensor 10:12 am Magnetic latch, 13.3" widescreen display 10:12 am MacBook Air is 0.16" to 0.76". The thickest part of the MacBook Air is thinner than the thinnest part of the Sony. It fits inside a envelope 10:10 am We thought 3 lbs is a good target weight, but there was too much compromise with the other features 10:10 am Most people think of Sony TZ series when they think of thin notebooks. Competition specs: 3 lbs,.8-1.2 inches, 11 or 12" display, miniature keyboard, and slower processor. 10:08 am "The World's Thinnest Notebook" 10:08 am As you know, Apple makes the best notebooks in the industry. Today, we are introducing a third kind of notebook. It's called the MacBook Air 10:08 am 4th thing: There's something in the air 10:07 am Steve has re-taken the stage
ftfa: "It's endless world of hardware modifications that smart people worldwide have embraced" Um.. what the hell is that supposed to mean?
Translation: Cheap fun for people who are willing to work with a soldering iron. There is not much room inside, but folks are already modding the laptop to add more 'disk' in the form of hand made USB adapters to SD cards internally! The laptop is small, but the mainboard is not so miniaturized that one can't measure/modify the circuits. As a bonus - it cost so little (for this sort of hardware) - it is worth risking letting the magic out.
See - a 300hp engine does not have to get terrible gas mileage. I get mid to high 20's under the same cruise control conditions with my all wheel drive Porsche, and got about the same with a BMW 740i - both in the 300hp range. Driving style matters more than displacement as vehicles with that sort of HP don't have to work that hard to maintain highway speeds. If I'm driving very hard, always accelerating or decelerating, I can get down to 16mpg or so. The same was true when I drove a 4 cylinder car. Take the same momentum management techniques the hybrid drivers use, and it does wonders to fuel consumption.
Instrument flight rules (IFR) vs visual flight rules. I should have said class E airspace. Anything over 10k' requires oxygen, so yes... technically you could get something up that high, 10,000 feet is a practical limit. Odds are, if something has O2 or a pressurized cabin, it will have an electrical system.
I'm thinking of the Police drones rather than the version (and activities) they use on the non-civilian side. A prop based drone like they are playing with in Houston would probably fly in my airspace.
Really, why is it OK for planes to fly without even having a radio? It's almost 2008, we should have planes with full, digital situational monitors that tell the pilot about any looming threats. If you spend $500,000, you can have that today, but it should be costing somewhere around a couple grand. Since the entry point for aviation is around $20,000 for a basic, 2-seat plane, this is a big deal.
You assume the aircraft has electrical power. I've got a 1962 Stitts that does not have an electrical system. You start it the old fashion way - spin the prop. Cost me ~6.5, with a couple thousand more in maintenance to fly a 100 hp, two seat, tail dragger that has its aerobatics rating. Next time I resurface the wings, I'll probably run wiring for lights. I just cannot afford (weight) an alternator. The extras are nice - but the moment you buy anything 'aviation' grade, you tend to shell out 2-3 times what one would think you might pay. I'd reply back - why are bicyclist allowed to bike on a street without a drivers license? Why aren't all cars all wheel drive? Just like a radio, in some conditions you don't need it. Flying is not so different from boating. Most areas follow some simple rules. You don't take a canoe into a major port...
So anyhow - I don't have my instrument rating, so I fly below 10,000' in good weather - VFR (visual flight rules) airspace. This is my worry about the UAV's - they damn well better keep those things in IFR airspace. They can be hard to spot in the air - much like a glider. You get the wrong angle, and you could be in for a surprise if you are not diligent in scanning the sky. Commercial aircraft are equipped with the transponder, radio, etc. Personal aircraft - not so much. Either way, the pilot is ultimately responsible. An autonomous drone scares the hell out of me. A remotely piloted drone is troubling, as the odds they will look at their cameras for oncoming traffic as intensely as somebody who's life *depends* on it is slim.
(One final note - while I do lust after a glass cockpit, the altimeter and other gages tend to work on air pressure. The old displays might be analog, but digital display or not - it is the same data source that worked in the 50's)
There is. I got to play with some kit at OOW last week. Bitmicro had a booth with all sorts of HDD's in server form factors and interfaces (SCSI, Fibre Channel, Sata, Pata). While it is not cheap - $20USD/gig? - it is getting better with each price drop. The drives were cool compared to my old fashion disks, so it might already be at the break even point for people who count air conditioning into the cost. I'd love to replace my raptors with a fast, quite, cool, flash based device - just waiting on the cheap....
Wish there was a DDR2 version of the iRAM out there (for not stupid money) that could do better than 4x1G. Starting to see 2G sticks going for peanuts these days.
I *thought* I was getting a hell of a deal on a mini-itx form factor mainboard/cpu... that is what I get for pulling the trigger on a 'hot deal' and not doing my homework. (as well as browsing on a cell phone in text only mode).
Anyhow - my pics and notes about the development board and CD...
Seems like the C7 is an i586 architecture, rather than i686. The Ubuntu distribution (including gOS, which is based on Ubuntu) worked just fine. Other distributions would barf on the i686 bits - including Centos (4 & 5), Gentoo, and a couple others. Goofy. I did not expect to have to work hard on hardware that 'shipped' with Linux.
Windows Version Windows XP 234,100 (84.45 %) Windows Vista 38,760 (13.98 % ) Windows 2003 64 bit (2,544 0.92 %) Windows 2000 1,793 (0.65 %) Other 24 (0.01 %)
Many of the current generation private planes - including 'light sport' grade aircraft are including a rocket propelled parashoot recovery system. Pull the pin, and the plan will make a landing everyone can walk away from. Cirrus was one of the first that I knew of, but you can get the ballistic recovery systems for other aircraft now.
Our house was hit by a drunk driver - one of those interesting tidbits they had to disclose when we purchased it. For a 'flying car' to qualify under sport aircraft regs, they are limited to 1,320 pounds maximum takeoff weight - that includes fuel and 1-2 people. My 1962 Stitts Playboy, which now qualifies as a light sport aircraft, weights in lighter than my old FJ-1100 motorcycle by comparison. Point being, sport aircraft don't really have the mass most autos do if they hit something. An impact with a 'flying car' (under these sport rules) scares me far less than the typical car -- never mind the behemoth SUV's and trucks.
I looked into RHEL when they dropped support for RH 8/9, and they wanted far more money than I was willing to pay to kick around the tires at home or on my development box. When time came to look at 'enterprise' grade distributions, SuSE made it much easier on the developers. Fast forward and I found that I never bothered to even try RHEL 3, 4, and 5. Same went for Oracle's branded version. With no easy way to patch and having to deal with accounting to get a license, meh.
What changed it for me was Centos. I found that I could use the free as in beer versions for all my personal/internal needs, and it was so dang close to OEL and RHEL it became a no-brainer for testing and some dev work. With the internal blessings from our side that our code would work, QA did the formal testing on the branded versions of Linux. Folks running our product, of course, would want OS support - so they purchased the formal 'supported' OS from the commercial vendors. I suspect Centos is saving RHEL/OEL sales that might have gone to Ubuntu or other variants.
I'm a netflix cusomter - 4 CD's in three queues (child, bride, me). As a perk, they also let you have an hour/usd of streaming content each month. For me, that works out to ~24 hours a month. Great, right? Well, it only works in the States, so any gigs in Canada are right out.
The chink in the armor is the selection. While they have a massive collection of DVDs, the streaming selection is really poor. I would not pay extra for it as it stands. At home, It looks about the same as a DVD on a high bandwidth connection - here for example, is a movie getting piped to a TV via my laptop. Bandwidth in hotels works better than I expected, and it is good enough for watching on a computer. I hear Blockbuster might have better selection... they should embrace the streaming!
Is there a non-elitist reason to not use tables for a layout?
Tis the bloody 508 compliance that burns you... in the US, it is a (rarely enforced) law. It will take more lawsuits before that 'pain' gets cost justified, but after Target and a few others, it might happen. Better to code it up correctly now than when someone without a monitor sues.
Given that I believe most early applications had to have it after a ? and the straight text is a fairly new thing, they might have done it early enough to be the first to do it.
Not early enough. I have prior art in 2003... because my boss wanted exactly this sort of behavior. ISAPI extensions in C++. This was one of my first bits of web development - and if it was obvious to me then... well... I'd hardly call it novel. He did not want to type a ? or add in any search=... parameters. Just parse the url and use whatever text was there as the search string.
If it happens or not, either way a prospect looking to buy BEA has to wonder if Weblogic (as it exists today) is still going to be around in a few years. The other big players will probably profit from the move.
Well, here are a few screen shots of how the OOTB browser renders/. in simple design, low bandwidth, and no icons.
While buying a new browser would fix the surfing issues, the 'smart phone' is just as deficient in other areas - email, phone, alarm, etc. It would be good money after bad. I'm done with it. Going back to a Blackberry is an easy decision for someone who is on the road as much as I am. I talked about the other issues here.
With phones becoming more common as internet devices, you would think sites would be a bit more friendly to those sorts of devices. Yes,/. does have a 'palm' version.... but using the low bandwidth variant for normal surfing is just painful on the embedded version of IE my Cingular 8525 bundles with Windows Mobile. The low bandwidth version style sheets list the article summary...
one word per line
For whatever reason, the comments render correctly on it. To think I got this phone because it *has* wifi. Argh.
So anyhow, other browser options are welcome. I know I could buy Opera for the phone, but... I'd rather buy another phone and get rid of this 'smartphone'. Free, however, is just my speed. If it renders this site correctly, I know I'll give it a whirl.
Oh man, that brings back a funny memory. I was working a customer where there were many consultants parked in a cube farm. An evening came, and most everyone left the laptops chained via a kensington lock rather than un-network and take them home. They came back to find all of the laptops still there - minus the battery, hdd, memory, dvd, and any other removable part - without being overly gentle on the deconstruction.
Slashdot Mirror
... has a fanatical support base, at least they contribute money
Looks like people contributed a lot of money. The finances are worth mentioning for all the major Republican candidates. One of the things that surprised me as I drilled down into the numbers, is for all of the candidates, most of the funding was done at the individual level rather than PAC money. I was not expecting that.
Romney, Mitt
Q4 raised: $26,928,433
Q4 spent: $33,713,503
Total raised: $88,499,686
Total spent: $86,068,239
Cash: $2,431,447
Debt: $35,350,000
McCain, John
Q4 raised: $9,714,246
Q4 spent: $10,254,446
Total raised: $41,102,178
Total spent: $38,153,750
Cash: $2,948,428
Debt: $4,516,030
Paul, Ron
Q4 raised: $19,873,329
Q4 spent: $17,478,711
Total raised: $28,101,264
Total spent: $20,262,084
Cash: $7,839,421
Debt: $0
Huckabee, Mike
Q4 raised: $6,637,063
Q4 spent: $5,391,918
Total raised: $8,986,532
Total spent: $7,090,087
Cash: $1,896,446
Debt: $97,676
By way of comparison, Giuliani, who recently dropped out of the race...
Total Receipts: $60,929,240
Total Spent: $48,152,428
Cash on Hand: $12,776,812
Debts: $1,166,509
Wow... just wow... That sort of spending puts drunken sailors to shame.
Truth is a defense for libel.
True... but you still have pay for *your* defense - even if you 100% in the right. That sucks.
nLite let you tune the core OS install - exposing uninstall options the 'default' installer, letting you fold in service packs and patches, drivers, pre-sorting license keys, users, and custom settings. When you get done, you can do a clean slate install and end up with something that won't take another four hours of tweaking to get where you wish was a starting point directly from the ISO.
I started using nLite to build an XP distro that would run on a CF card. Running minimal services, I noticed how much faster it was too -- became the install for my gaming rig. Space was also a concern when building VMWare images, so starting with a mean clean install was a godsend. Granted, it took a couple tries - it is very easy to kill off a critical bit when you do this sort of chainsaw sculpture to the OS. Once you get it right, it is a fantastic (free!) tool. It is wonderful to see the same technology available to Vista.
If they fret about cell phones on the plane, who knows if a more powerful jammer may cause an issue with avionics. I'd not bet on this, however.
Short version - Oracle offered 19.23 or so, and BEA said yes this morning. Big impact on a lot of Java EE developers out there.
From the apple site...
.8-1.2 inches, 11 or 12" display, miniature keyboard, and slower processor.
Hard Drive
Your MacBook Air comes standard with a Parallel ATA (PATA) 4200-rpm hard drive. Or you can choose a solid-state drive that delivers faster performance and greater durability.
arrow_open.gif arrow_closed.gif Learn more Loading...
80GB Parallel ATA Drive @ 4200 rpm
64GB Solid State Drive [Add $999]
Wow. Just Wow. Transcript from http://www.macrumorslive.com/
10:26 am New Ad for MacBook Air. Plays off of the ability to fit in an envelope.
10:25 am Pre-orders today, shipping in two weeks
10:24 am $1799
10:24 am 2 GB Memory standard
10:23 am 5 hours of Battery Life
10:23 am No optical drive, but a Superdrive accessory is available for $99. Also, software comes with the MacBook Air that allows you to "borrow" a Mac or PCs optical drive.
10:21 am 802.11n + Bluetooth 2.1/EDR
10:20 am Other features: 45 Watt MagSafe, 1 USB 2.0 port, Micro-DVI, Audio Out
10:19 am Steve retaking stage
10:19 am Otellini: The processor is as thick as a nickle and as wide as a dime.
10:18 am Apple asked Intel to shrink the Core 2 Duo. Intel shrunk the processor by 60%. Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel is taking the stage
10:17 am 1.6 GHz Standard, 1.8 GHz Option -- Intel Core 2 Duo
10:16 am 80 GB hard disk standard, 64 GB SSD as an option. "they're pricy, but they're fast"
10:15 am 1.8" Hard Drive
10:15 am How did we fit a Mac in here?
10:15 am Move a window by double-tap and move. Rotate a photo by pivoting your index finger around your thumb. Of course, pinch-zoom.
10:14 am Multi-touch trackpad
10:13 am display is LED backlit. iSight is built-in. MacBook-like keyboard, but with an ambient light sensor
10:12 am Magnetic latch, 13.3" widescreen display
10:12 am MacBook Air is 0.16" to 0.76". The thickest part of the MacBook Air is thinner than the thinnest part of the Sony. It fits inside a envelope
10:10 am We thought 3 lbs is a good target weight, but there was too much compromise with the other features
10:10 am Most people think of Sony TZ series when they think of thin notebooks. Competition specs: 3 lbs,
10:08 am "The World's Thinnest Notebook"
10:08 am As you know, Apple makes the best notebooks in the industry. Today, we are introducing a third kind of notebook. It's called the MacBook Air
10:08 am 4th thing: There's something in the air
10:07 am Steve has re-taken the stage
ftfa: "It's endless world of hardware modifications that smart people worldwide have embraced" Um.. what the hell is that supposed to mean?
Translation: Cheap fun for people who are willing to work with a soldering iron. There is not much room inside, but folks are already modding the laptop to add more 'disk' in the form of hand made USB adapters to SD cards internally! The laptop is small, but the mainboard is not so miniaturized that one can't measure/modify the circuits. As a bonus - it cost so little (for this sort of hardware) - it is worth risking letting the magic out.
See - a 300hp engine does not have to get terrible gas mileage. I get mid to high 20's under the same cruise control conditions with my all wheel drive Porsche, and got about the same with a BMW 740i - both in the 300hp range. Driving style matters more than displacement as vehicles with that sort of HP don't have to work that hard to maintain highway speeds. If I'm driving very hard, always accelerating or decelerating, I can get down to 16mpg or so. The same was true when I drove a 4 cylinder car. Take the same momentum management techniques the hybrid drivers use, and it does wonders to fuel consumption.
Instrument flight rules (IFR) vs visual flight rules. I should have said class E airspace. Anything over 10k' requires oxygen, so yes... technically you could get something up that high, 10,000 feet is a practical limit. Odds are, if something has O2 or a pressurized cabin, it will have an electrical system.
I'm thinking of the Police drones rather than the version (and activities) they use on the non-civilian side. A prop based drone like they are playing with in Houston would probably fly in my airspace.
Really, why is it OK for planes to fly without even having a radio? It's almost 2008, we should have planes with full, digital situational monitors that tell the pilot about any looming threats. If you spend $500,000, you can have that today, but it should be costing somewhere around a couple grand. Since the entry point for aviation is around $20,000 for a basic, 2-seat plane, this is a big deal.
You assume the aircraft has electrical power. I've got a 1962 Stitts that does not have an electrical system. You start it the old fashion way - spin the prop. Cost me ~6.5, with a couple thousand more in maintenance to fly a 100 hp, two seat, tail dragger that has its aerobatics rating. Next time I resurface the wings, I'll probably run wiring for lights. I just cannot afford (weight) an alternator. The extras are nice - but the moment you buy anything 'aviation' grade, you tend to shell out 2-3 times what one would think you might pay. I'd reply back - why are bicyclist allowed to bike on a street without a drivers license? Why aren't all cars all wheel drive? Just like a radio, in some conditions you don't need it. Flying is not so different from boating. Most areas follow some simple rules. You don't take a canoe into a major port...
So anyhow - I don't have my instrument rating, so I fly below 10,000' in good weather - VFR (visual flight rules) airspace. This is my worry about the UAV's - they damn well better keep those things in IFR airspace. They can be hard to spot in the air - much like a glider. You get the wrong angle, and you could be in for a surprise if you are not diligent in scanning the sky. Commercial aircraft are equipped with the transponder, radio, etc. Personal aircraft - not so much. Either way, the pilot is ultimately responsible. An autonomous drone scares the hell out of me. A remotely piloted drone is troubling, as the odds they will look at their cameras for oncoming traffic as intensely as somebody who's life *depends* on it is slim.
(One final note - while I do lust after a glass cockpit, the altimeter and other gages tend to work on air pressure. The old displays might be analog, but digital display or not - it is the same data source that worked in the 50's)
There is. I got to play with some kit at OOW last week. Bitmicro had a booth with all sorts of HDD's in server form factors and interfaces (SCSI, Fibre Channel, Sata, Pata). While it is not cheap - $20USD/gig? - it is getting better with each price drop. The drives were cool compared to my old fashion disks, so it might already be at the break even point for people who count air conditioning into the cost. I'd love to replace my raptors with a fast, quite, cool, flash based device - just waiting on the cheap....
Wish there was a DDR2 version of the iRAM out there (for not stupid money) that could do better than 4x1G. Starting to see 2G sticks going for peanuts these days.
I *thought* I was getting a hell of a deal on a mini-itx form factor mainboard/cpu... that is what I get for pulling the trigger on a 'hot deal' and not doing my homework. (as well as browsing on a cell phone in text only mode).
Anyhow - my pics and notes about the development board and CD...
http://heelix.multiply.com/journal/item/53/Ordered_a_walmart_special..._gOS_dev_board
Seems like the C7 is an i586 architecture, rather than i686. The Ubuntu distribution (including gOS, which is based on Ubuntu) worked just fine. Other distributions would barf on the i686 bits - including Centos (4 & 5), Gentoo, and a couple others. Goofy. I did not expect to have to work hard on hardware that 'shipped' with Linux.
There are some Vista gamers out there, but not that many. Looking at some of the data, about 14% of the players were still using some variant of DX8.
http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html
Windows Version
Windows XP 234,100 (84.45 %)
Windows Vista 38,760 (13.98 % )
Windows 2003 64 bit (2,544 0.92 %)
Windows 2000 1,793 (0.65 %)
Other 24 (0.01 %)
Same here. Most current laptops have a VGA or DVI port, which you can run an external monitor on. Dual screens all the way (when you can).
Many of the current generation private planes - including 'light sport' grade aircraft are including a rocket propelled parashoot recovery system. Pull the pin, and the plan will make a landing everyone can walk away from. Cirrus was one of the first that I knew of, but you can get the ballistic recovery systems for other aircraft now.
Our house was hit by a drunk driver - one of those interesting tidbits they had to disclose when we purchased it. For a 'flying car' to qualify under sport aircraft regs, they are limited to 1,320 pounds maximum takeoff weight - that includes fuel and 1-2 people. My 1962 Stitts Playboy, which now qualifies as a light sport aircraft, weights in lighter than my old FJ-1100 motorcycle by comparison. Point being, sport aircraft don't really have the mass most autos do if they hit something. An impact with a 'flying car' (under these sport rules) scares me far less than the typical car -- never mind the behemoth SUV's and trucks.
I looked into RHEL when they dropped support for RH 8/9, and they wanted far more money than I was willing to pay to kick around the tires at home or on my development box. When time came to look at 'enterprise' grade distributions, SuSE made it much easier on the developers. Fast forward and I found that I never bothered to even try RHEL 3, 4, and 5. Same went for Oracle's branded version. With no easy way to patch and having to deal with accounting to get a license, meh.
What changed it for me was Centos. I found that I could use the free as in beer versions for all my personal/internal needs, and it was so dang close to OEL and RHEL it became a no-brainer for testing and some dev work. With the internal blessings from our side that our code would work, QA did the formal testing on the branded versions of Linux. Folks running our product, of course, would want OS support - so they purchased the formal 'supported' OS from the commercial vendors. I suspect Centos is saving RHEL/OEL sales that might have gone to Ubuntu or other variants.
I'm a netflix cusomter - 4 CD's in three queues (child, bride, me). As a perk, they also let you have an hour/usd of streaming content each month. For me, that works out to ~24 hours a month. Great, right? Well, it only works in the States, so any gigs in Canada are right out.
The chink in the armor is the selection. While they have a massive collection of DVDs, the streaming selection is really poor. I would not pay extra for it as it stands. At home, It looks about the same as a DVD on a high bandwidth connection - here for example, is a movie getting piped to a TV via my laptop. Bandwidth in hotels works better than I expected, and it is good enough for watching on a computer. I hear Blockbuster might have better selection... they should embrace the streaming!
Is there a non-elitist reason to not use tables for a layout?
Tis the bloody 508 compliance that burns you... in the US, it is a (rarely enforced) law. It will take more lawsuits before that 'pain' gets cost justified, but after Target and a few others, it might happen. Better to code it up correctly now than when someone without a monitor sues.
Given that I believe most early applications had to have it after a ? and the straight text is a fairly new thing, they might have done it early enough to be the first to do it.
Not early enough. I have prior art in 2003... because my boss wanted exactly this sort of behavior. ISAPI extensions in C++. This was one of my first bits of web development - and if it was obvious to me then... well... I'd hardly call it novel. He did not want to type a ? or add in any search=... parameters. Just parse the url and use whatever text was there as the search string.
If it happens or not, either way a prospect looking to buy BEA has to wonder if Weblogic (as it exists today) is still going to be around in a few years. The other big players will probably profit from the move.
Well, here are a few screen shots of how the OOTB browser renders /. in simple design, low bandwidth, and no icons.
While buying a new browser would fix the surfing issues, the 'smart phone' is just as deficient in other areas - email, phone, alarm, etc. It would be good money after bad. I'm done with it. Going back to a Blackberry is an easy decision for someone who is on the road as much as I am. I talked about the other issues here.
With phones becoming more common as internet devices, you would think sites would be a bit more friendly to those sorts of devices. Yes, /. does have a 'palm' version.... but using the low bandwidth variant for normal surfing is just painful on the embedded version of IE my Cingular 8525 bundles with Windows Mobile. The low bandwidth version style sheets list the article summary...
one
word
per
line
For whatever reason, the comments render correctly on it. To think I got this phone because it *has* wifi. Argh.
So anyhow, other browser options are welcome. I know I could buy Opera for the phone, but... I'd rather buy another phone and get rid of this 'smartphone'. Free, however, is just my speed. If it renders this site correctly, I know I'll give it a whirl.
The RIAA looks like it is specifically targeting folks who do not have the resources to actually mount a defense.
Oh man, that brings back a funny memory. I was working a customer where there were many consultants parked in a cube farm. An evening came, and most everyone left the laptops chained via a kensington lock rather than un-network and take them home. They came back to find all of the laptops still there - minus the battery, hdd, memory, dvd, and any other removable part - without being overly gentle on the deconstruction.