The perceived superiority of vinyl over other formats has appeared on slashdot before and has time and timeagain been completely and scientifically debunked by audio engineers and general geeks alike.
Especially note this comment. It sums it all up really.
I'm not talking about drugs that aren't actually the same drug at all. That's just a form of fraud.
I'm talking about not calling drugs that are functionally identical counterfeit. That's misleading as hell.
If it looks like the medicine, and it works like the medicine (and I'm not referring to patient perception), it is the medicine. All else is corporate dickwaving and imaginary property rights fuss.
Likely this is just because a lazy programmer hardcoded it to run IE, rather than going through the proper API to figure out the user's browser preference and launch that.
Not a very nice thing to do? Sure. Intentionally malicious? Probably not.
You'd be right if the software didn't get delivered that way.
For that to happen it means it has to get written that way by a lazy programmer. Then it has to (presumably) pass QA like that.
So not only is it getting written, but it's getting QA'd. Sure there's still wiggle room for it to accidentally slip by, but compare the chances of that "slipping by" to the chances of a hard-coded Firefox call to slip by.
From the perspective of type of resources "modern" games require, he's right. But large portions of the gaming industry seem to have lost sight of the fact that games do not need to be pretty, only fun. They are games after all.
In the last six months I've logged more hours playing Mahjong on my N810 than I have playing UT3, EVE Online and Half Life 2 mods combined.
So from a wider perspective he's not only wrong, but lost sight of what is important in a game. Not that I don't personally think that UT3 is fun as hell, I actually bought that one. But some perspective on his part would be beneficial to him and his customers.
Oh you mean "patented" medicines? Where they patented the process to make the drug because the government wouldn't grant a monopoly on a chemical?
Even though those clone (counterfeit is misleading) medicines contain identical chemicals and work identically well?
Pharmaceutical companies are the biggest scum of the earth. If jacking the price on a medication that people need to live isn't profiteering I don't know what is. Why governments continue to allow this boggles my mind. Actually Brazilian government were about to put a stop to it but Abbott Laboratories caved.
then all of the companies that were there solely for that purpose will be gone overnight and we'll have to read another article about how many jobs were lost.
So?
Business models go obsolete all the time. There's no fundamental law of nature that says you get to stay in business.
This is why I propose that all drivers be able to telepathically fling the offending car into orbit. The end result is what little traffic remains flows smoothly.
You should try EVE Online then. It's a space MMO with a single server (you play on the same server as every other player in the world) where your characters level while you're not even logged in.*
*I am not affiliated with CCP beyond playing their game.
Evolution *is* a theory. Perhaps they should also teach what "theory" means.
Evolution is not a theory. We have hard evidence that evolution has occurred and continues to occur. Evolution as the explanation for the origin of all life is a theory.
The problem is that most people are either not listening (have faith) or apathetic. So they don't know there's a difference.
But the fact remains that evolution is not a theory.
Cell phones do not produce ionizing radiation, nor do they contain any matter that does.
Therefore, the sun is approximately infinitely more likely to cause cancer than a cell phone.
Non-ionizing radiation (which is all that cell phones produce) has little to no impact on the human body. See for example, light bulbs, radios, radio stations, TV stations, microwaves, ovens, the earth's magnetic field, refrigerator magnets, CB radios, MRI machines, CAT scanners, PET scanners, CD players, MP3 players, computers, monitors, TVs, cell phones, watches, motors.
The worst a cell phone can do to your body via radiation, is make you a few nano-joules more energetic. Unless of course you installed a nuclear power source in your phone for some reason. Your freaking smoke detectors are more likely to cause cancer than your cell phone.
So this morning I got up and waged war on eye crud. I followed shortly after with a war on two fronts. A war on full bladders and a war on clean toilets. Next I waged war on not being at my computer. Then I went to war on dark monitors. Then I declared war on Firefox.exe. Then I went to war with slashdot's servers and blank Firefox pages. Then slashdot's text had the audacity to wage photon based war on my retinas! In retaliation, I counterattacked with a covert war on the Reply button, then followed up with a brief war on empty subject text boxes. Then I engaged in a somewhat protracted war on empty comment boxes. Now in closing, I'll stage a blitzkrieg on the submit button and preemptively declare victory.
The problem with GM food being not labled at all (let alone with the details of exactly how it has been modified) is that they may think something is safe to eat when it isn't.
Why is this a problem? Why do you always assume that crops modified by nature are always safe to eat? They're usually subtly different with every generation.
Food that's been genetically modified by nature isn't labeled. You know, by radiation in the pistol or stamen. Or in the testes or ovaries. Or by all of a certain strain of food dying off because it was less resistant to disease.
And suppose they DID tell you precisely what was modified, I highly doubt you'd even understand what the changes made result in.
And suppose they DID tell you what those changes result in, you wouldn't believe them.
So just stfu.
If you think genetically modifying food is inherently wrong, why don't you volunteer to stop eating so that the rest of the world can survive on the meager crops of non-modified food?
Yeah, in case you didn't know, if we didn't have any genetically modified crops, a few billion people would starve to death. Naturally and organically grown crops simply do not yield enough food to support the entire world. Think on that the next time you protest "genetically modified" food. As if you understand the implications.
What we first need to do is change the FCC so that it's not headed by appointed officials, but rather by elected representatives.
The FCC's power has grown far beyond it's original intention (regulating airwaves frequencies in the U.S.). Apparently they only do things in response to complaints. Or at least that's how it once was. But the really fucked up thing is 99% of complaints come from one organization.
So essentially this one single organization is responsible for most of the - detrimental in my opinion - changes to what is allowed to be broadcast or not.
It's not the popular decision. People just think it is because this one fucked up organization has such broad powers and people just assume that it's the popular opinion. It is not.
It won at the place I work. When I started Firefox was "not officially supported" on the internal site because...well it was internal and we were allowed to be jerks about it. Not anymore.
However there has been an alarming increase in the (mis)use of Microsoft products of late. We seem to be stuck with Sharepoint now, which does not play nice at all with Firefox.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that our current model for funding TV news by commercials is a commandment written in stone.
I know it isn't written in stone. It's just an observation of how it really is today.
Perhaps these media giants should be forced by law, as a condition of their use of the public airwaves to set aside a fixed amount of money to fund the news; that funding should go to a separate and independent organization/department that will gather and report the news.
A nice idea, but these lampreys would still need to push for the success of their host companies in order to stay in "business". And if they're wholly government subsidized, they lose all real motivation. They be come comfortable and lose all motivation.
What invariably happens when people are required to do something that isn't for personal gain is it gets done poorly and slowly. See the DMV. See [government project]. There's no competition, there's no drive to improve, there's only the requirement of adequacy.
And on the flip side, when there is personal gain available, all other considerations become secondary. Horrible, unscrupulous, scoundrelous (I made up a word!) things are done. Repeatedly. To millions.
Somewhere there's a happy middle ground, but finding it and keeping it there may prove improbably difficult.
You're misunderstanding the marketspeak. When combined in such a fasion, the words lose all meaning. In fact, that entire sentence is merely to occupy your brain for a few seconds, actual meaning is never conveyed. It's just supposed to give you a feel-good-buy-me vibe.
This is why all marketing drones should kill themselves. Thank you, Bill.
This is surprisingly simple. Ignore all the artsy fuckers that thing GUI design is an art. It isn't. It's a surprisingly hard science.
Good GUIs minimize the amount of physical user interactions required by the user to perform any action. Mouse down is an action, mouse up is an action moving the mouse 5mm is an action. You get the idea. You need to be aware of EVERY tiny action and try to eliminate as many as possible. If you must use a right click menu with 2-3 menus deep, provide a hotkey for the same action.
Good GUIs absolutely, positively, never throw a modal dialog with only a single button. And avoid one with two or three buttons if possible.
Provide a hotkey for everything.
Use one thread for the GUI, one thread for the behind the scenes work.
Make sure your cancel buttons actually work to halt long resource intensive processes.
Don't use hover menus. Ever. Seriously, never. The mouse is a feedback only device until a button is clicked. Tooltips are OK as long as the vanish the instant the mouse moves off of the (small) trigger area, blocking what a user is trying to see is obnoxious.
Above all, don't annoy your users. Your GUI is a means to use your software, that is all.
Much can be learned here for free. Interface hall of shame on the left bottom. It's what NOT to do.
Slashdot Mirror
The perceived superiority of vinyl over other formats has appeared on slashdot before and has time and time again been completely and scientifically debunked by audio engineers and general geeks alike.
Especially note this comment. It sums it all up really.
I'm not talking about drugs that aren't actually the same drug at all. That's just a form of fraud.
I'm talking about not calling drugs that are functionally identical counterfeit. That's misleading as hell.
If it looks like the medicine, and it works like the medicine (and I'm not referring to patient perception), it is the medicine. All else is corporate dickwaving and imaginary property rights fuss.
So, stop abusing the word "edgy". I don't think that word means what you think it means.
For that to happen it means it has to get written that way by a lazy programmer. Then it has to (presumably) pass QA like that.
So not only is it getting written, but it's getting QA'd. Sure there's still wiggle room for it to accidentally slip by, but compare the chances of that "slipping by" to the chances of a hard-coded Firefox call to slip by.
From the perspective of type of resources "modern" games require, he's right. But large portions of the gaming industry seem to have lost sight of the fact that games do not need to be pretty, only fun. They are games after all.
In the last six months I've logged more hours playing Mahjong on my N810 than I have playing UT3, EVE Online and Half Life 2 mods combined.
So from a wider perspective he's not only wrong, but lost sight of what is important in a game. Not that I don't personally think that UT3 is fun as hell, I actually bought that one. But some perspective on his part would be beneficial to him and his customers.
Oh you mean "patented" medicines? Where they patented the process to make the drug because the government wouldn't grant a monopoly on a chemical?
Even though those clone (counterfeit is misleading) medicines contain identical chemicals and work identically well?
Pharmaceutical companies are the biggest scum of the earth. If jacking the price on a medication that people need to live isn't profiteering I don't know what is. Why governments continue to allow this boggles my mind. Actually Brazilian government were about to put a stop to it but Abbott Laboratories caved.
So?
Business models go obsolete all the time. There's no fundamental law of nature that says you get to stay in business.
This is why I propose that all drivers be able to telepathically fling the offending car into orbit. The end result is what little traffic remains flows smoothly.
Except you wouldn't' be able to see the ones on the vehicle one car ahead of you because of the titanic SUV blocking your view.
I'm sure the telcos said the same thing until they were forced to get all the equipment.
Then they more or less had it, and could then start advertising it.
If only they would think long term.
A drop in quarterly profits isn't going to kill the company. In fact, with 99.999% uptime, in the long run, there would surely be a net gain.
If a user uses your product wrong, do not try and reeducate them, but rather thank them for pointing out the problem with your product.
Thirded.
Flash in one window locks up the entire UI in every window and tab. So does the WMP plugin. And java video plugins too.
Even Internet Explorer 6 doesn't do this.
It's the single most annoying problem with Firefox (to me).
The only winners of a class action lawsuit are the lawyers.
You should try EVE Online then. It's a space MMO with a single server (you play on the same server as every other player in the world) where your characters level while you're not even logged in.*
*I am not affiliated with CCP beyond playing their game.
Evolution is not a theory. We have hard evidence that evolution has occurred and continues to occur. Evolution as the explanation for the origin of all life is a theory.
The problem is that most people are either not listening (have faith) or apathetic. So they don't know there's a difference.
But the fact remains that evolution is not a theory.
Cell phones do not produce ionizing radiation, nor do they contain any matter that does.
Therefore, the sun is approximately infinitely more likely to cause cancer than a cell phone.
Non-ionizing radiation (which is all that cell phones produce) has little to no impact on the human body. See for example, light bulbs, radios, radio stations, TV stations, microwaves, ovens, the earth's magnetic field, refrigerator magnets, CB radios, MRI machines, CAT scanners, PET scanners, CD players, MP3 players, computers, monitors, TVs, cell phones, watches, motors.
The worst a cell phone can do to your body via radiation, is make you a few nano-joules more energetic. Unless of course you installed a nuclear power source in your phone for some reason. Your freaking smoke detectors are more likely to cause cancer than your cell phone.
So this morning I got up and waged war on eye crud. I followed shortly after with a war on two fronts. A war on full bladders and a war on clean toilets. Next I waged war on not being at my computer. Then I went to war on dark monitors. Then I declared war on Firefox.exe. Then I went to war with slashdot's servers and blank Firefox pages. Then slashdot's text had the audacity to wage photon based war on my retinas! In retaliation, I counterattacked with a covert war on the Reply button, then followed up with a brief war on empty subject text boxes. Then I engaged in a somewhat protracted war on empty comment boxes. Now in closing, I'll stage a blitzkrieg on the submit button and preemptively declare victory.
Why is this a problem? Why do you always assume that crops modified by nature are always safe to eat? They're usually subtly different with every generation.
Food that's been genetically modified by nature isn't labeled. You know, by radiation in the pistol or stamen. Or in the testes or ovaries. Or by all of a certain strain of food dying off because it was less resistant to disease.
And suppose they DID tell you precisely what was modified, I highly doubt you'd even understand what the changes made result in.
And suppose they DID tell you what those changes result in, you wouldn't believe them.
So just stfu.
If you think genetically modifying food is inherently wrong, why don't you volunteer to stop eating so that the rest of the world can survive on the meager crops of non-modified food?
Yeah, in case you didn't know, if we didn't have any genetically modified crops, a few billion people would starve to death. Naturally and organically grown crops simply do not yield enough food to support the entire world. Think on that the next time you protest "genetically modified" food. As if you understand the implications.
Mine the sun!
What we first need to do is change the FCC so that it's not headed by appointed officials, but rather by elected representatives.
The FCC's power has grown far beyond it's original intention (regulating airwaves frequencies in the U.S.). Apparently they only do things in response to complaints. Or at least that's how it once was. But the really fucked up thing is 99% of complaints come from one organization.
So essentially this one single organization is responsible for most of the - detrimental in my opinion - changes to what is allowed to be broadcast or not.
It's not the popular decision. People just think it is because this one fucked up organization has such broad powers and people just assume that it's the popular opinion. It is not.
The organization responsible for all this? The Parent's Television Council. The sick thing is they're proud to be the nation's most influential advocacy organization yet have barely a million members. That's right one million up tight fucks are responsible for 99.8-99.9% of all FCC regulation that affects 303 million people.
And the FCC allows it.
It won at the place I work. When I started Firefox was "not officially supported" on the internal site because...well it was internal and we were allowed to be jerks about it. Not anymore.
However there has been an alarming increase in the (mis)use of Microsoft products of late. We seem to be stuck with Sharepoint now, which does not play nice at all with Firefox.
I'd rather use a wiki.
What invariably happens when people are required to do something that isn't for personal gain is it gets done poorly and slowly. See the DMV. See [government project]. There's no competition, there's no drive to improve, there's only the requirement of adequacy.
And on the flip side, when there is personal gain available, all other considerations become secondary. Horrible, unscrupulous, scoundrelous (I made up a word!) things are done. Repeatedly. To millions.
Somewhere there's a happy middle ground, but finding it and keeping it there may prove improbably difficult.
You're misunderstanding the marketspeak. When combined in such a fasion, the words lose all meaning. In fact, that entire sentence is merely to occupy your brain for a few seconds, actual meaning is never conveyed. It's just supposed to give you a feel-good-buy-me vibe.
This is why all marketing drones should kill themselves. Thank you, Bill.
This is surprisingly simple. Ignore all the artsy fuckers that thing GUI design is an art. It isn't. It's a surprisingly hard science.
Good GUIs minimize the amount of physical user interactions required by the user to perform any action. Mouse down is an action, mouse up is an action moving the mouse 5mm is an action. You get the idea. You need to be aware of EVERY tiny action and try to eliminate as many as possible. If you must use a right click menu with 2-3 menus deep, provide a hotkey for the same action.
Good GUIs absolutely, positively, never throw a modal dialog with only a single button. And avoid one with two or three buttons if possible.
Provide a hotkey for everything.
Use one thread for the GUI, one thread for the behind the scenes work.
Make sure your cancel buttons actually work to halt long resource intensive processes.
Don't use hover menus. Ever. Seriously, never. The mouse is a feedback only device until a button is clicked. Tooltips are OK as long as the vanish the instant the mouse moves off of the (small) trigger area, blocking what a user is trying to see is obnoxious.
Above all, don't annoy your users. Your GUI is a means to use your software, that is all.
Much can be learned here for free. Interface hall of shame on the left bottom. It's what NOT to do.