Most flash-enabled sites are annoying, in my opinion. Since I use Mozilla as my main browser, I have flash disabled. If I really want to see something with Flash, I use IE.
Anyway, one of the concerns I have with Flash is that we are dependant on one company to make the development kits and clients. There's no choice to view flash with a different plug in. There's no opensource equivalent that can be ported to the next up and coming hardware or software platform.
Maybe you don't think that is bad. What will you think when Microsoft buys Macromedia?
Every time I work on a PC issue for any of my wife's family, I ask them where they keep their data files, so that I don't delete them. Each time the answer is 'I don't know.'
Obviously, everything is in the default directory. Not so bad, if that is the My Documents folder. But all they run is outdated software. "Personal Index to Bible Verses for windows 3.1", Old versions of Family Tree maker.
Of course, there's also all the active tasks. Dozens of active tasks, none of the firewall software or virus protection. They can't tell me what they are or what they do. I have to figure it out and tell them. They don't know why they are running them (they were part of the default install, of course).
>Now, if a professor curves a class, fine. You are still being compared against the people in your class - I don't see a problem with that.
The problem with that is that at an elite university, the class is (in theory) made up of people of abilities above average, so there is no reason that they should not ALL earn A's. Forcing a whole class into a 'Bell Curve' Distribution shows poor literacy in statistics by the Professor. (and poor ability to make an exam that fairly evalutes understanding of the course content.)
I certainly perceived bias in VNS when I read that article. In both the 2000 presidential and 2002 North Carolina senate races, the system erroneously showed Democrats winning against republicans. Since this corresponds to the widely perceived bias in the media, it could easily look like a fix to a lot of people.
I know projection TVs and CRTs are different animals, but the voices told me to share this story, so here it goes:
My Dopey Inlaws (who have never heard of Slashdot) bought an expensive rear projection TV and burned in the Fox News logo and "Live" in the upper left corner.
They left it on all day every day... to entertain their parrot.
Now, they did not think the parrot was a news junkie. That just happened to be where they usually left the channel set when they got up from watching TV.
That's a good thing? I was a mainframe and AS/400 ops type for awhile and I occassionally sat right on the mainframe while I waited for a tape to load up or something like that. Invariablely it was cold in the computer room, some fan was blowing right up my pant leg, and the top of the machine is hard and not designed for sitting.
I would rather have been sitting in the ops center.
Putting together a test that really evaluates the skill(s) you intend it to is extremely difficult, especially in technical fields. Perhaps a university will have a better success rate that other institutions, but personal experiance makes me doubt it.
I was a liberal arts major that dabbled in CS as and undergrad, and was dismayed by the experiences I had with tests there. Each time I took a test, I would immediately know I did poorly. Sure enough, grades would be posted and my score would be around 60%. Inevitably, though, this grade turned out to be a high A. The instructors were so bad at making tests based on what they taught that only a few students could get even half credit on the exams.
As an aside, how could you write an exam for a Unix sysadmin? The right answer for nearly every question is some variaion of 'man xxxx' or 'man -k xxxx'. I suppose you could put in a section on reading man pages for comprehesion.
Now that Microsoft is selling its 'Software Subscription' model to businesses, every year that goes by without a new software release is money in microsoft's pocket.
Much as it galls me to agree with someone calling themselves "CommieLib"...
Thes large organizations that try to do charitable work (the UN and the vile, heavy handed United Way), absorb way too many resources, and attach way to much agenda to what they do. If you want to do charitable work, do it at a level where you can see the results of what you do first hand.
Personally I get enough geeking in at work, so I only do volunteer computer work that is incidental to my other volunteer work, mainly network/PC support for my ambulance squad.
"The cumulative effect of these many local changes is the global phenomenon of human influence on nature, poorly understood and needlessly destructive."
There's a telling sentence, "We don't understand the effects, but we judge them anyway"
My experience is that Tim McCarver is so slow witted, it sounds like the game he is watching is 6 to 8 seconds behind the one the rest of us are watching.
Slashdot Mirror
What about other products for viewing Flash? Are there any? Especially open source ones that could be ported to more esoteric platforms?
Maybe not by design, but definately a flawed design.
Most flash-enabled sites are annoying, in my opinion. Since I use Mozilla as my main browser, I have flash disabled. If I really want to see something with Flash, I use IE.
Anyway, one of the concerns I have with Flash is that we are dependant on one company to make the development kits and clients. There's no choice to view flash with a different plug in. There's no opensource equivalent that can be ported to the next up and coming hardware or software platform.
Maybe you don't think that is bad. What will you think when Microsoft buys Macromedia?
Every time I work on a PC issue for any of my wife's family, I ask them where they keep their data files, so that I don't delete them. Each time the answer is 'I don't know.'
Obviously, everything is in the default directory. Not so bad, if that is the My Documents folder. But all they run is outdated software. "Personal Index to Bible Verses for windows 3.1", Old versions of Family Tree maker.
Of course, there's also all the active tasks. Dozens of active tasks, none of the firewall software or virus protection. They can't tell me what they are or what they do. I have to figure it out and tell them. They don't know why they are running them (they were part of the default install, of course).
Wow... I didn't even read your whole post. What a retard I am.
You had google's 'Safe Search' on, the original poster did not.
If you don't stop using Google as a verb, I'm going to windows you. Then microsoft you while you aren't looking.
Java you!
Did you go to the State University of NY at Buffalo? I went through the exact same set of languages in a semester there, way back in 1990.
>Now, if a professor curves a class, fine. You are still being compared against the people in your class - I don't see a problem with that.
The problem with that is that at an elite university, the class is (in theory) made up of people of abilities above average, so there is no reason that they should not ALL earn A's. Forcing a whole class into a 'Bell Curve' Distribution shows poor literacy in statistics by the Professor. (and poor ability to make an exam that fairly evalutes understanding of the course content.)
I certainly perceived bias in VNS when I read that article. In both the 2000 presidential and 2002 North Carolina senate races, the system erroneously showed Democrats winning against republicans. Since this corresponds to the widely perceived bias in the media, it could easily look like a fix to a lot of people.
I know projection TVs and CRTs are different animals, but the voices told me to share this story, so here it goes:
My Dopey Inlaws (who have never heard of Slashdot) bought an expensive rear projection TV and burned in the Fox News logo and "Live" in the upper left corner.
They left it on all day every day... to entertain their parrot.
Now, they did not think the parrot was a news junkie. That just happened to be where they usually left the channel set when they got up from watching TV.
That's a good thing? I was a mainframe and AS/400 ops type for awhile and I occassionally sat right on the mainframe while I waited for a tape to load up or something like that. Invariablely it was cold in the computer room, some fan was blowing right up my pant leg, and the top of the machine is hard and not designed for sitting.
I would rather have been sitting in the ops center.
Putting together a test that really evaluates the skill(s) you intend it to is extremely difficult, especially in technical fields. Perhaps a university will have a better success rate that other institutions, but personal experiance makes me doubt it.
I was a liberal arts major that dabbled in CS as and undergrad, and was dismayed by the experiences I had with tests there. Each time I took a test, I would immediately know I did poorly. Sure enough, grades would be posted and my score would be around 60%. Inevitably, though, this grade turned out to be a high A. The instructors were so bad at making tests based on what they taught that only a few students could get even half credit on the exams.
As an aside, how could you write an exam for a Unix sysadmin? The right answer for nearly every question is some variaion of 'man xxxx' or 'man -k xxxx'. I suppose you could put in a section on reading man pages for comprehesion.
Now that Microsoft is selling its 'Software Subscription' model to businesses, every year that goes by without a new software release is money in microsoft's pocket.
Ames in my area had tons of the activision ones while they were going out of business.
It is a Joystick... I am pretty sure Circus atari, breakout and video olympics all used the paddles.
A worm writing a worm! What if this worm writes a worm? The possibilities for recursion are endless. As they always are.
Much as it galls me to agree with someone calling themselves "CommieLib"...
Thes large organizations that try to do charitable work (the UN and the vile, heavy handed United Way), absorb way too many resources, and attach way to much agenda to what they do. If you want to do charitable work, do it at a level where you can see the results of what you do first hand.
Personally I get enough geeking in at work, so I only do volunteer computer work that is incidental to my other volunteer work, mainly network/PC support for my ambulance squad.
"The cumulative effect of these many local changes is the global phenomenon of human influence on nature, poorly understood and needlessly destructive."
There's a telling sentence, "We don't understand the effects, but we judge them anyway"
It is a typo for "Tolkien Ring", a system in which the computer that holds the "One True Ring" becomes the most powerful machine on the network.
> ..the libertarian streak thru geekdom (with which I sympathize, though not always agree) is definitely in line with old-school conservatism.
Remembering of course that Helms is no old school conservative... When old school was new school, Helms was a Democrat.
I tried but was distracted by someone clapping one hand in the next office
My experience is that Tim McCarver is so slow witted, it sounds like the game he is watching is 6 to 8 seconds behind the one the rest of us are watching.
You are probably right. My experience with Mozilla on windows has been that the Flash plugin tends to not work without some extra configuration.
For me, this is a bonus since Flash annoys the shit out of me, but for Joe User this might be a problem.
Mojo Nixon Supports taping and distributing of his performances,\ and his studio recordings. He may even own the rights to his songs.
Don Henley must die