> At 10' away, you might as well have saved your money > and bought a 720P set.
I seen this recommendation often over the last year or two; time to put it to rest now, though.
The majority of Hi-def TV models available for purchase are today 1080P. Soon, if you want to purchase a 720P set, you'll have to hit eBay or your local flea market.
It's a technically valid conclusion of little value.
> would have 'a profound effect on virtually every sector of > the economy,' touching 'every household in the land.'
I had a different reaction from this statement than you.
Frankly, I was kinda blown away that the judge recognized the situation to be exactly as the environmentalists had described: almost every facet of our society will be affected by the changes necessary to live in a sustainable way.
That's why we are doomed. This episode is merely a prototypical example that demonstrates how we are incapable of facing up to social challenges when profiteering stands in the way.
I was on I-35 in south Austin, heading to San Marcos, and I kept passing northbound trucks hauling these HUGE white tubes.
I'd never seen anything like them before. I thought maybe that they were industrial smokestacks except that, as I passed more trucks, I got a better look at them and realized that they weren't really cylinders... they had a twist to them.
I was totally blown away when I realized that they were windmill blades and that they were just HALF of the diameter of the assembled propeller.
> Is paying another $50 a month on your bill - before you ever even > start paying for the electricity itself, to add 2 or 3 percent more > (unreliable) watts to the grid, and mainly make Pickens richer good?
I understand your point but arguments like that depend on an unspoken assumption: electrical utilities prices will otherwise not got up.
This is just not true.
No matter how this plays out, our utility bills are going to rise.
That fifty dollars that you are talking about is going to be paid by us to someone... just get used to it. And in the grand scheme of things, $50 is a pittance.
I've got a few years on you but my views are quite different from yours.
I've seen stories where individuals are physically beaten, battered, and chopped up almost beyond belief and, yet, they lived on. And I've seen stories where where people are instantly killed from the most innocent and timid little thumps.
There's enough variation in the sort of events necessary to kill a person for me to easily believe that people can be "accidentally" killed.
As far crossing the line (purposely exercising violent force sufficient to kill another person)... again, I've seen and heard enough stories to be very confident that everyone is well capable of killing another person on purpose.
Several situations can be contrived to induce YOU to kill another person, for example. The pope can kill; in the correct circumstances, anyone can make the decision to kill.
Got any kids? If you do, well, it's way too easy to induce you into killing-mode to even be considered a sporting challenge.
Further, this is typically done by people in emotional distress. Reiser's unlikability notwithstanding, he was obviously emotionally pretty fucked up -- he'd never killed before, for instance.
> Anyhow, the mind of a murderer is something I can not understand. > I can get angry, sure, but to resort to violence, or worse, to have > someone's life on my conscience, that's just unfathomable for me.
You are a lucky man. So am I. Pray that our situations stay that way.
--Richard
PS: I'm not defending Hans Reiser -- no way. But it's really easy to come off being morally arrogant when we have got nothing on the line.
> If I am to get only the raw information without the physical thing
Somehow, that's a peculiar point of view to encounter on Slashdot... the value of a book is its physical instantiation, not the information it contains.
I see it the other way around.
A couple years ago, I bought the PDF rights to a Ruby on Rails book during its development -- I needed the info immediately and couldn't wait for it to go to print.
I had a copy center print it up, spiral-bound, and I also used it in soft form on my computer. Later, when the book actually went to print, I bought it again. (It was a good book.)
I realized that I didn't like the officially printed book as much. My spiral-bound version was larger and easier to read and laid flat on my desk. Since I knew that I could print another if necessary, I didn't hesitate to write notations in it. Finally, the searchability of the PDF actually changed the way I read: I didn't have to refer to a table of contents, I didn't have to refer to an index, and I didn't have to thumb through pages looking for pertinent information.
> I have doubts about Lynx, because there is already LynxOS
That's not anything that would stop Apple. They encountered a bigger legal challenge when they released OS 9.
> I also highly doubt they'll be abandoning PowerPC entirely yet.
I suspect that they may very well remove PowerPC support, however, as always, they'll keep PowerPC-based versions of OS X up to date, just as they always had OS X 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 running in the labs on Intel-based hardware. They like to keep their options open.
--Richard
The world's most popular distribution?
on
Ubuntu 8.04 Released
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
>> it's the second LTS (Long Term Support) release of the world's most popular distro.
The world's most popular distribution? No, that can't be right. I've never used it.
Re:iPhone is just another word for vendor lock-in
on
Origin of the iPhone
·
· Score: 1
> Jobs and his crew have given us a beautiful device but an ugly product. > It is completely locked into its two vendors, and is not a good value.
Two opinions, of course, and certainly you are absolutely entitled to them both, but you come off appearing merely contrarian.
I do agree with you about hating vendor lock-in but I'm not going to get religious about it. Vendor lock-in doesn't automatically make a product a bad value any more than being a Republican makes a person automatically wrong (it just seems that way).
Also, and maybe most tellingly, A LOT of people have laid down good money and disagree with your cost-free pontificating.
You propose giving poor African, South American, and Asian kids big beautiful glass and polished stainless steel laptops and then send them walking home from school -- maybe a three to five mile walk?
They'd get fucking killed. They'd get mugged and every one of those things would be stolen.
It's for kids. Little kids. It should look like it for no other reason than to just keeping these kids safer.
1. You're a cop and you have this guy's computer full of nasty pictures 2. You can tell when each one was copied/received onto the hard drive 3. You know who his ISP is 4. You know which Internet resources he has been visiting
His lawyer will not attempt to argue that the files were place on the computer by the techs...
1. No motive 2. Shitload of other corroborating evidence
I hope those service tech were wearing rubber gloves, though. Ech.
I typed in Speedscript, printed in Compute! magazine. The last column in the machine code listing was a checksum and it worked pretty well.
I used Speedscript, printing out personal letters, recipes, and college papers (my own and others for a little money on the side) on a NLQ (Near Letter Quality) Panasonic KXP-1091 dot-matrix printer. Never got lower than an A on any of the papers.
It was a tiny word processor and, when loaded, there was still lots of room for the document.
As the years go by, you'll recognize that this type of behavior is normal. The company that I work at reorgs every 12-months with random no-cause firings in between.
Don't try to understand it. "Right" and "wrong" are concepts that cannot apply.
Slashdot Mirror
> At 10' away, you might as well have saved your money
> and bought a 720P set.
I seen this recommendation often over the last year or two; time to put it to rest now, though.
The majority of Hi-def TV models available for purchase are today 1080P. Soon, if you want to purchase a 720P set, you'll have to hit eBay or your local flea market.
It's a technically valid conclusion of little value.
--Richard
I didn't RTF because... "plasmons"?
Sounds fishy to me. Sounds like something a Jedi Knight uses.
I'm going to tell me son to look into this. He was pretty excited recently when he discovered he could sell his semen for $250 a pop.
His urine might not fetch as much but he's got more of it.
> would have 'a profound effect on virtually every sector of
> the economy,' touching 'every household in the land.'
I had a different reaction from this statement than you.
Frankly, I was kinda blown away that the judge recognized the situation to be exactly as the environmentalists had described: almost every facet of our society will be affected by the changes necessary to live in a sustainable way.
That's why we are doomed. This episode is merely a prototypical example that demonstrates how we are incapable of facing up to social challenges when profiteering stands in the way.
I was on I-35 in south Austin, heading to San Marcos, and I kept passing northbound trucks hauling these HUGE white tubes.
I'd never seen anything like them before. I thought maybe that they were industrial smokestacks except that, as I passed more trucks, I got a better look at them and realized that they weren't really cylinders... they had a twist to them.
I was totally blown away when I realized that they were windmill blades and that they were just HALF of the diameter of the assembled propeller.
It really was awesome.
--Richard
> Is paying another $50 a month on your bill - before you ever even
> start paying for the electricity itself, to add 2 or 3 percent more
> (unreliable) watts to the grid, and mainly make Pickens richer good?
I understand your point but arguments like that depend on an unspoken assumption: electrical utilities prices will otherwise not got up.
This is just not true.
No matter how this plays out, our utility bills are going to rise.
That fifty dollars that you are talking about is going to be paid by us to someone... just get used to it. And in the grand scheme of things, $50 is a pittance.
--Richard
I've got a few years on you but my views are quite different from yours.
I've seen stories where individuals are physically beaten, battered, and chopped up almost beyond belief and, yet, they lived on. And I've seen stories where where people are instantly killed from the most innocent and timid little thumps.
There's enough variation in the sort of events necessary to kill a person for me to easily believe that people can be "accidentally" killed.
As far crossing the line (purposely exercising violent force sufficient to kill another person)... again, I've seen and heard enough stories to be very confident that everyone is well capable of killing another person on purpose.
Several situations can be contrived to induce YOU to kill another person, for example. The pope can kill; in the correct circumstances, anyone can make the decision to kill.
Got any kids? If you do, well, it's way too easy to induce you into killing-mode to even be considered a sporting challenge.
Further, this is typically done by people in emotional distress. Reiser's unlikability notwithstanding, he was obviously emotionally pretty fucked up -- he'd never killed before, for instance.
> Anyhow, the mind of a murderer is something I can not understand.
> I can get angry, sure, but to resort to violence, or worse, to have
> someone's life on my conscience, that's just unfathomable for me.
You are a lucky man. So am I. Pray that our situations stay that way.
--Richard
PS: I'm not defending Hans Reiser -- no way.
But it's really easy to come off being morally
arrogant when we have got nothing on the line.
The follow up article, which hasn't been published yet, is the effect that outsourcing dissertation evaluations has had on the educational process.
The most shocking revelation will be that these outsourced professors frequently evaluate their own papers, effectively double-dipping.
> If I am to get only the raw information without the physical thing
Somehow, that's a peculiar point of view to encounter on Slashdot... the value of a book is its physical instantiation, not the information it contains.
I see it the other way around.
A couple years ago, I bought the PDF rights to a Ruby on Rails book during its development -- I needed the info immediately and couldn't wait for it to go to print.
I had a copy center print it up, spiral-bound, and I also used it in soft form on my computer. Later, when the book actually went to print, I bought it again. (It was a good book.)
I realized that I didn't like the officially printed book as much. My spiral-bound version was larger and easier to read and laid flat on my desk. Since I knew that I could print another if necessary, I didn't hesitate to write notations in it. Finally, the searchability of the PDF actually changed the way I read: I didn't have to refer to a table of contents, I didn't have to refer to an index, and I didn't have to thumb through pages looking for pertinent information.
I'm a system administrator.
Where the fuck do these people get the time to snoop?
> Now companies like Samsung offer up serious competition with the i900,
> and suddenly Apple is charging $200 a pop.
Unless I misunderstood, Apple isn't selling the iPhone, AT&T is.
Still, agree with you about competition being good: fortuitous coincidences occur when competition exists.
--Richard
The real reason is that Apple is a hardware company.
Everybody say this out loud over and over until you die:
APPLE IS A HARDWARE COMPANY.
Yes, they produce some great software but they make their money (which is the thing that really matters) on hardware.
--Richard
> I have doubts about Lynx, because there is already LynxOS
That's not anything that would stop Apple. They encountered a bigger legal challenge when they released OS 9.
> I also highly doubt they'll be abandoning PowerPC entirely yet.
I suspect that they may very well remove PowerPC support, however, as always, they'll keep PowerPC-based versions of OS X up to date, just as they always had OS X 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 running in the labs on Intel-based hardware. They like to keep their options open.
--Richard
>> it's the second LTS (Long Term Support) release of the world's most popular distro.
The world's most popular distribution? No, that can't be right. I've never used it.
>> I'm very tired of hearing people use the world fundamentalist
>> in any and every context.
>> You can be an open source fanatic, but you cannot be an open
>> source fundamentalist.
>> Stop. Think about the meaning of the words you are using.
>> Select correct words. Continue.
I agree wholeheartedly!!!
I detest it when people use the words "towards" and "anyways"... they don't exist.
Stop. Think about the meaning of the words you are using. Select correct words. Continue.
> Apple knows how to make things pretty, but they always seem to
> do it after other OS and PC manufacturers take the hard road.
Place the drugs down on the table and back slowly away with your hands where they can be seen...
Another post links to a site for a regex visualizer utility for Windows and Linux.
Here's one for the Mac:
http://homepage.mac.com/roger_jolly/software/index.html#regexhibit
> Jobs and his crew have given us a beautiful device but an ugly product.
> It is completely locked into its two vendors, and is not a good value.
Two opinions, of course, and certainly you are absolutely entitled to them both, but you come off appearing merely contrarian.
I do agree with you about hating vendor lock-in but I'm not going to get religious about it. Vendor lock-in doesn't automatically make a product a bad value any more than being a Republican makes a person automatically wrong (it just seems that way).
Also, and maybe most tellingly, A LOT of people have laid down good money and disagree with your cost-free pontificating.
--Richard
Think this through....
You propose giving poor African, South American, and Asian kids big beautiful glass and polished stainless steel laptops and then send them walking home from school -- maybe a three to five mile walk?
They'd get fucking killed. They'd get mugged and every one of those things would be stolen.
It's for kids. Little kids. It should look like it for no other reason than to just keeping these kids safer.
--Richard
> 1. Long boot time;
I've seen this mentioned elsewhere before. What is this "boot" thing you refer to?
Think this through...
1. You're a cop and you have this guy's computer full of nasty pictures
2. You can tell when each one was copied/received onto the hard drive
3. You know who his ISP is
4. You know which Internet resources he has been visiting
His lawyer will not attempt to argue that the files were place on the computer by the techs...
1. No motive
2. Shitload of other corroborating evidence
I hope those service tech were wearing rubber gloves, though. Ech.
My grandson learned to use a computer at a young age, too.
Back when he was just _SIX_MONTHS_OLD_, I'd pick him up and lay him on the keyboard, then I'd roll him side to side.
He typed gibberish, of course, but I thought he did well for six month old kid.
I typed in Speedscript, printed in Compute! magazine. The last column in the machine code listing was a checksum and it worked pretty well.
I used Speedscript, printing out personal letters, recipes, and college papers (my own and others for a little money on the side) on a NLQ (Near Letter Quality) Panasonic KXP-1091 dot-matrix printer. Never got lower than an A on any of the papers.
It was a tiny word processor and, when loaded, there was still lots of room for the document.
--Richard
Welcome to corporate Amerika.
As the years go by, you'll recognize that this type of behavior is normal. The company that I work at reorgs every 12-months with random no-cause firings in between.
Don't try to understand it. "Right" and "wrong" are concepts that cannot apply.
> Surely what they do with their own money is their own business.
That's a peculiar thing to say. There are thousands of national, state, county, and city laws that direction contradict your point of view.