I tried 3.1, RTF was f*cked up. 3.2, it still is. Are they ever going to fix it?
Back in 2.3, if I did a SAVE->AS from an ODT file to RTF, the result was messed up. The first paragraph was OK, the rest was defaulted to single-space, no indents. But if I cleaned it up with "format paragraph" and saved it, it would STAY CLEANED UP. 3.1 was a total disaster for RTF, it messed everything up incredibly. In 3.2, the SAVE->AS to RTF gives the same result as 2.3, but YOU CAN'T CLEAN IT UP!!!! TRY, then save, close, and reopen, and once again NOTHING AFTER THE FIRST PARAGRAPH is formatted.
I **NEED** RTF, I **NEED** properly formatted RTF! Lots of places I need to send files won't take anything else. Hey, guys, get with it and fix the damn thing!
It is possible to get a "decent" e-mail address and, for a small fee, to get it forwarded... to your ISP or whatever is convenient. Change ISPs, change the forwarding and go on using the same e-mail. One such is Mail.com (that's who I use), I'm sure there are others.
By the way, I don't laugh at gmail or yahoo addresses. But aol, hotmail, msn, those will certainly get far less respect from me.
Just recently I had to look at, and print a few pages from, a PDF document. Knowing where it came from, a corporation that is only very slowly dipping a toe in the water of software other than the big names, I'm sure it was done with Adobe.
Now I don't even have the Adobe Acrobat reader on my system, when I try to install it, the install crashes. But Fedora comes with several other PDF readers, and the default is set to "Evince" which works fine MOST of the time.
But I got this PDF, and one page was a picture of a tax form, and when I tried to print it, the tax form came out as a big black blob - man, does that waste ink! Obviously I killed the print job to try something else. (Just VIEWING this tax form was fine, only printing messed up.)
I remembered using "Xpdf" a while ago, so I tried that, and voila, the tax form printed perfectly. Since I knew there were more tax forms in there, I used Xpdf for the rest of the job.
So here is a case where two different PDF viewers reacted differently to the same PDF file. I think what we need is is an OPEN DEFINITION for PDF files, probably a subset of Adobe's definition, that any OSS viewer can follow and get the proper results - and ask the user what to do with files that don't follow it.
And tell Adobe they can either follow the open definition, or stuff it where the sun don't shine!
Now I must admit that I went to High School in the days before computers, and Touch Typing was taught on electric typewriters with BLANK keys (so you couldn't cheat and look at the keyboard). I took Typing for one marking period because my mother thought it would be good for me.
Right! That was the only damn "D" I got in my entire High School career. I was so glad when that was over! The problem is that I am an ill-coordinated klutz, and I just can't get the present-finger-position/brain/new-finger-position circuits to work... not everyone can do this!
So I happily go along looking at the keyboard, typing with four fingers and an occasional thumb. Took a test once, I can hit 30-35 wpm this way, fine by me. I can't do numeric keypad entry, either, even when I have to do a lot of numbers I use the row at the top.
So if you want to make this a required course, what are you going to do with people like me? Remedial Typing?
can I control the thing **WITHOUT** an iPhone? If it requires the iPhone, well, that would be a total deal-killer for me, as I will NEVER buy an iPhone.
Maybe because there's little difference in deleting those files and doing an system update?
Wrong. I expect system updates to affect/bin,/sbin./usr,/etc,/lib, and so on (or whatever the equivalent for the Kindle are). I DO NOT expect system updates to do ANYTHING to/home, which is where the books should be stored. So a system update procedure that allows it to mess with MY FILES is clearly bug-infested. The Kindle software totally sucks if it can do this.
And I agree with the comments that say the "apology" is nothing more than lip-service. I will NEVER buy any e-books (or e-anything-else) from Amazon. I may trust them to the extent of buying PAPER books, plastic CDs and DVDs, etc., if they break into my house to take those back I at least have the option of calling the cops!
If the Obama bin Laden Administration wants to pass regulations on this, what they need to do is INCLUDE in those regulations a law that invalidates any patents which would prevent any manufacturer from following the regulations. If Ford or GM or whoever goes to build a hybrid car, and Toyota complains of a patent violation - WHAM! Toyota's patent(s) are instantly canceled, retracted, invalidated.
If you want everyone to build hybrids or other efficeint cars, you simply CAN NOT allow one company to have a stranglehold on the technology! The technology you want everyone to use must be FORCED into the public domain.
Do you have moral qualms with obtaining those extracted files online, pirate-style, even though you own the original cartridges?
Of course not! If I bought a legal copy of the game, I believe I am entitled to time/space/format shift it... and I consider obtaining a copy on-line to be ethically and morally equivalent to ripping it myself. I know that certain media interests may not agree with me, but they can go f*ck themselves!
Downloading things I don't own is different... I will only get stuff that is easily publicly available (like a YouTube video).
Sega Genesis? Sega Genesis? You're not telling me you need the full power of a Motorola 68000 just to get a fun game! All that matters is the plot and the game-play. All this talk of Sega Genesises makes me want to dig out my old ZX Spectrum and play some of those old text adventures.
Actually, screw that. Why not make do with one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books? Plenty of plot and game-play there - don't tell me you rely on fancy computer graphics? (Although having said that, it displeases me that so many books have illustrations these days. What a waste of ink that is!)
Yeah, you have a good point there. Can anybody think about adding physics to Colossal Cave or Zork? **THAT** boggles the imagination!
An emulator would be fine, except I don't know how to get the game into my PC. Those games came on "cartridges" and there is no matching socket to plug it into. Somebody would at least have to figure a way to extract the code into a readable file.
Why is the physics of the game world important? The thing that really counts is the plot and the game-play. Requiring super-duper CPU power (or GPU power) for the physics and the graphics is another big waste. Looking at all these new... and expensive... games makes me want to dig out my old Sega Genesis and play some of the old games like the Phantasy Star titles. Kindergarten graphics, no real attention to physics, but those games were FUN!
I am really surprised that an article on Slashdot managed to miss the ABSOLUTE WORST thing about Orlando - EVERYONE USES WINDOZE!!!! Look at ads for Orlando (OK, the whole Orlando metro area) on Dice or Monster, and you'll see tons of jobs for C#,.net, and similar Micro$haft junk. Very few openings for Linux/Unix jobs.
I think this one thing should have put Orlando much closer to the top of the "Worst" list.
I don't have a Kindle. I doubt if i will ever buy a Kindle. Don't know about games or music or movies, but when it comes to books I buy them in the ultimate DRM-free format - PAPER! Nobody has yet figured out how to put DRM on good ol' fashioned books. No problems buying them new OR used, no problems getting them from the library. In at least this one area, I take pride in being a Luddite!
$35 for a book? I wrote a book and (through not making the best choice of publishers) to date I have made less than $20 on it. Some people SPEND money to self-publish, and end up making less than they spent. Should we have to pay another $35 to register a copyright?
Or a short story. Some markets pay $10, $5, $1 for a story... should we have to pay $35 to regi9ster a copyright? No way!
But I agree that the current term is too long... way too long! Go back to the 28 years or something similar - perhaps the greater of 28 years or life of author. And maybe one FREE renewal, but only by the original author, no estates, trusts, corporate purchasers, or corporations claiming work-for-hire, all those just get the 28 years and that's it. PERIOD!
Would Disney really go bankrupt if Steamboat Willie dropped into the public domain?
It's hard to beat some of the old classics, like Kasner and Newman's "Mathematics and the Imagination" or the four-volume "The World of Mathematics." Assuming, of course, that those are still in print.
Leisure Suit Larry is MODERN compared to its predecessor. LSL 1 was based on a text adventure game called "Soft Porn Adventure" originally written (I think) in Apple BASIC but then ported to PC BASIC. A lot of the puzzles and events in LSL 1 were identical to those in SPA. Only the user interface was changed to a graphics format.
I must have been 7 or 8 when I got my first "ChemCraft" chemistry set for Christmas. By the time I was in Junior High, my best friend had a well-equipped chem lab in his basement, and I had one in an unused upstairs bedroom (my father even ran in gas for my bunsen burner). We used to make regular trips (driven by parents, of course) to a local science supply business to purchase glassware, chemicals, and such.
Now we have stupid paranoid lawmakers passing stupid paranoid laws, and even stupider fogbound bureaucratic government agencies enforcing the laws in a totally ham-handed manner.
Aaaarrrrgh!
Is there **ANY** way to get rid of all this idiotic nonsense?
(I could suggest that we elect Libertarians to **ALL** public and lawmaking posisitons, but I have a feeling that's not going to happen... anyone have a better idea?)
This one reminded me of a book, one of my favorites back in my college days, titled "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science" by Martin Gardner. Originally (c)1952, revised Dover version (c)1957.
It includes such gems as Flat Earth and Hollow Earth, the Babson Gravitation Institute, and Bridey Murphy. I haven't looked at it in many years, but my treasured copy sits on the shelf, and this may prompt me to pull it down and reread it.
I wouldn't have thought it was still in print, but gosh, golly, IT IS! (Just checked amazon.com).
I highly recommend it if you are interested in this sort of thing.
if condition then
begin
stuff
end else
begin
otherstuff
end
That may be the reason I like GNU-style for C since I have done a LOT of Pascal programming in the past. Frankly, I prefer it to C, but everything is in C or C-ish languages nowadays, so its not worth flagellating that moribund equine any longer.
And the other thing people seem to be complaining about is the size of tabs... well, I ***HATE*** tabs, I don't use them, and my indents go in units of 2 SPACES (spacebar spaces). DOWN WITH TABS!!!
Why does everybody do it that way? That is, with the opening paren on the "if" line? I have always found that difficult to read. Why not
if (something) {
stuff } else {
other stuff }
or maybe even
if (something)
{
stuff
} else
{
other stuff
}
This last has always seemed to me to be the most readable, most obvious way to write the code. Can anyone explain why it is not used? (other than some well-known guru prefers the other?)
Slashdot Mirror
I tried 3.1, RTF was f*cked up. 3.2, it still is. Are they ever going to fix it?
Back in 2.3, if I did a SAVE->AS from an ODT file to RTF, the result was messed up. The first paragraph was OK, the rest was defaulted to single-space, no indents. But if I cleaned it up with "format paragraph" and saved it, it would STAY CLEANED UP. 3.1 was a total disaster for RTF, it messed everything up incredibly. In 3.2, the SAVE->AS to RTF gives the same result as 2.3, but YOU CAN'T CLEAN IT UP!!!! TRY, then save, close, and reopen, and once again NOTHING AFTER THE FIRST PARAGRAPH is formatted.
I **NEED** RTF, I **NEED** properly formatted RTF! Lots of places I need to send files won't take anything else. Hey, guys, get with it and fix the damn thing!
Meanwhile I guess I'll keep on using 2.3!
It is possible to get a "decent" e-mail address and, for a small fee, to get it forwarded ... to your ISP or whatever is convenient. Change ISPs, change the forwarding and go on using the same e-mail. One such is Mail.com (that's who I use), I'm sure there are others.
By the way, I don't laugh at gmail or yahoo addresses. But aol, hotmail, msn, those will certainly get far less respect from me.
Just recently I had to look at, and print a few pages from, a PDF document. Knowing where it came from, a corporation that is only very slowly dipping a toe in the water of software other than the big names, I'm sure it was done with Adobe.
Now I don't even have the Adobe Acrobat reader on my system, when I try to install it, the install crashes. But Fedora comes with several other PDF readers, and the default is set to "Evince" which works fine MOST of the time.
But I got this PDF, and one page was a picture of a tax form, and when I tried to print it, the tax form came out as a big black blob - man, does that waste ink! Obviously I killed the print job to try something else. (Just VIEWING this tax form was fine, only printing messed up.)
I remembered using "Xpdf" a while ago, so I tried that, and voila, the tax form printed perfectly. Since I knew there were more tax forms in there, I used Xpdf for the rest of the job.
So here is a case where two different PDF viewers reacted differently to the same PDF file. I think what we need is is an OPEN DEFINITION for PDF files, probably a subset of Adobe's definition, that any OSS viewer can follow and get the proper results - and ask the user what to do with files that don't follow it.
And tell Adobe they can either follow the open definition, or stuff it where the sun don't shine!
Well, I guess this opens up a new field in horror writing!
I enjoy both "Holy Grail" and "Brian" but neither is my favorite. **I** think "The Meaning of Life" was their masterpiece.
Now I must admit that I went to High School in the days before computers, and Touch Typing was taught on electric typewriters with BLANK keys (so you couldn't cheat and look at the keyboard). I took Typing for one marking period because my mother thought it would be good for me.
Right! That was the only damn "D" I got in my entire High School career. I was so glad when that was over! The problem is that I am an ill-coordinated klutz, and I just can't get the present-finger-position/brain/new-finger-position circuits to work ... not everyone can do this!
So I happily go along looking at the keyboard, typing with four fingers and an occasional thumb. Took a test once, I can hit 30-35 wpm this way, fine by me. I can't do numeric keypad entry, either, even when I have to do a lot of numbers I use the row at the top.
So if you want to make this a required course, what are you going to do with people like me? Remedial Typing?
can I control the thing **WITHOUT** an iPhone? If it requires the iPhone, well, that would be a total deal-killer for me, as I will NEVER buy an iPhone.
Maybe because there's little difference in deleting those files and doing an system update?
Wrong. I expect system updates to affect /bin, /sbin. /usr, /etc, /lib, and so on (or whatever the equivalent for the Kindle are). I DO NOT expect system updates to do ANYTHING to /home, which is where the books should be stored. So a system update procedure that allows it to mess with MY FILES is clearly bug-infested. The Kindle software totally sucks if it can do this.
And I agree with the comments that say the "apology" is nothing more than lip-service. I will NEVER buy any e-books (or e-anything-else) from Amazon. I may trust them to the extent of buying PAPER books, plastic CDs and DVDs, etc., if they break into my house to take those back I at least have the option of calling the cops!
If the Obama bin Laden Administration wants to pass regulations on this, what they need to do is INCLUDE in those regulations a law that invalidates any patents which would prevent any manufacturer from following the regulations. If Ford or GM or whoever goes to build a hybrid car, and Toyota complains of a patent violation - WHAM! Toyota's patent(s) are instantly canceled, retracted, invalidated.
If you want everyone to build hybrids or other efficeint cars, you simply CAN NOT allow one company to have a stranglehold on the technology! The technology you want everyone to use must be FORCED into the public domain.
Do you have moral qualms with obtaining those extracted files online, pirate-style, even though you own the original cartridges?
Of course not! If I bought a legal copy of the game, I believe I am entitled to time/space/format shift it ... and I consider obtaining a copy on-line to be ethically and morally equivalent to ripping it myself. I know that certain media interests may not agree with me, but they can go f*ck themselves!
Downloading things I don't own is different ... I will only get stuff that is easily publicly available (like a YouTube video).
Sega Genesis? Sega Genesis? You're not telling me you need the full power of a Motorola 68000 just to get a fun game! All that matters is the plot and the game-play. All this talk of Sega Genesises makes me want to dig out my old ZX Spectrum and play some of those old text adventures.
Actually, screw that. Why not make do with one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books? Plenty of plot and game-play there - don't tell me you rely on fancy computer graphics? (Although having said that, it displeases me that so many books have illustrations these days. What a waste of ink that is!)
Yeah, you have a good point there. Can anybody think about adding physics to Colossal Cave or Zork? **THAT** boggles the imagination!
An emulator would be fine, except I don't know how to get the game into my PC. Those games came on "cartridges" and there is no matching socket to plug it into. Somebody would at least have to figure a way to extract the code into a readable file.
Why is the physics of the game world important? The thing that really counts is the plot and the game-play. Requiring super-duper CPU power (or GPU power) for the physics and the graphics is another big waste. Looking at all these new ... and expensive ... games makes me want to dig out my old Sega Genesis and play some of the old games like the Phantasy Star titles. Kindergarten graphics, no real attention to physics, but those games were FUN!
I'd love to see a Linux port of those games!
I am really surprised that an article on Slashdot managed to miss the ABSOLUTE WORST thing about Orlando - EVERYONE USES WINDOZE!!!! Look at ads for Orlando (OK, the whole Orlando metro area) on Dice or Monster, and you'll see tons of jobs for C#, .net, and similar Micro$haft junk. Very few openings for Linux/Unix jobs.
I think this one thing should have put Orlando much closer to the top of the "Worst" list.
I don't have a Kindle. I doubt if i will ever buy a Kindle. Don't know about games or music or movies, but when it comes to books I buy them in the ultimate DRM-free format - PAPER! Nobody has yet figured out how to put DRM on good ol' fashioned books. No problems buying them new OR used, no problems getting them from the library.
In at least this one area, I take pride in being a Luddite!
$35 for a book? I wrote a book and (through not making the best choice of publishers) to date I have made less than $20 on it. Some people SPEND money to self-publish, and end up making less than they spent. Should we have to pay another $35 to register a copyright?
Or a short story. Some markets pay $10, $5, $1 for a story ... should we have to pay $35 to regi9ster a copyright? No way!
But I agree that the current term is too long ... way too long! Go back to the 28 years or something similar - perhaps the greater of 28 years or life of author. And maybe one FREE renewal, but only by the original author, no estates, trusts, corporate purchasers, or corporations claiming work-for-hire, all those just get the 28 years and that's it. PERIOD!
Would Disney really go bankrupt if Steamboat Willie dropped into the public domain?
No, you have it backwards. Chapter 11 is "reorganize and recover," Chapter 7 is "bye, bye, company!"
I'm beginning to think ... and hope ... that the "True Name" for Windows 7 is really going to be "Windows Chapter 7." Wouldn't that be nice?
It's hard to beat some of the old classics, like Kasner and Newman's "Mathematics and the Imagination" or the four-volume "The World of Mathematics." Assuming, of course, that those are still in print.
Leisure Suit Larry is MODERN compared to its predecessor. LSL 1 was based on a text adventure game called "Soft Porn Adventure" originally written (I think) in Apple BASIC but then ported to PC BASIC. A lot of the puzzles and events in LSL 1 were identical to those in SPA. Only the user interface was changed to a graphics format.
I must have been 7 or 8 when I got my first "ChemCraft" chemistry set for Christmas. By the time I was in Junior High, my best friend had a well-equipped chem lab in his basement, and I had one in an unused upstairs bedroom (my father even ran in gas for my bunsen burner). We used to make regular trips (driven by parents, of course) to a local science supply business to purchase glassware, chemicals, and such.
Now we have stupid paranoid lawmakers passing stupid paranoid laws, and even stupider fogbound bureaucratic government agencies enforcing the laws in a totally ham-handed manner.
Aaaarrrrgh!
Is there **ANY** way to get rid of all this idiotic nonsense?
(I could suggest that we elect Libertarians to **ALL** public and lawmaking posisitons, but I have a feeling that's not going to happen ... anyone have a better idea?)
The only thing Obama was more positive in for this election: He POSITIVELY SPENT LOTS MORE MONEY!
This was an E-bay election, and Obama way outbid his opponent.
This one reminded me of a book, one of my favorites back in my college days, titled "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science" by Martin Gardner. Originally (c)1952, revised Dover version (c)1957.
It includes such gems as Flat Earth and Hollow Earth, the Babson Gravitation Institute, and Bridey Murphy. I haven't looked at it in many years, but my treasured copy sits on the shelf, and this may prompt me to pull it down and reread it.
I wouldn't have thought it was still in print, but gosh, golly, IT IS! (Just checked amazon.com).
I highly recommend it if you are interested in this sort of thing.
Sorry, that's not correct Pascal. Try:
if condition then
begin
stuff
end
else
begin
otherstuff
end
That may be the reason I like GNU-style for C since I have done a LOT of Pascal programming in the past. Frankly, I prefer it to C, but everything is in C or C-ish languages nowadays, so its not worth flagellating that moribund equine any longer.
And the other thing people seem to be complaining about is the size of tabs ... well, I ***HATE*** tabs, I don't use them, and my indents go in units of 2 SPACES (spacebar spaces). DOWN WITH TABS!!!
Why does everybody do it that way? That is, with the opening paren on the "if" line? I have always found that difficult to read. Why not
if (something)
{
stuff
}
else
{
other stuff
}
or maybe even
if (something)
{
stuff
}
else
{
other stuff
}
This last has always seemed to me to be the most readable, most obvious way to write the code. Can anyone explain why it is not used? (other than some well-known guru prefers the other?)