Isn't it amazing how the solution to so many Windows problems is to jump through hoops, restrict what you can do, and generally make your life a hassle.
Yeah, it is amazing. What's even more amazing is, this is what you have to do to perform common tasks under Linux.
But the nice thing is, if somebody sends you an archive, you can tell what files it purports to have before decrypting them. Useful for when you get an encrypted zip file and, lo and behold, it's full of virus scripts.
If you want to encrypt your porn, you really shouldn't be using ZIP for it, man. Encrypted zips are to secure and encapsulate data, not obfuscate it. For that...may I suggest Jetico's BestCrypt suite (if'n you're stuck with windows), which is efficient, fast, and lets you use any level or method of encryption you like, customize random generation, key length and strength, etc. You basically make an encrypter container and mount it like a filesystem...also useful for encrypting your Freenet temp files and object store, if you're into that.
It was William Carlos WIlliams. e e cummings is the asshole who can't put two letters together on the same line.
Anyhow, you're both right. That is a prime example of an image poem, one which create a scene like a still life in our minds and does nothing else. However, since no image can ever exist without interpretation, it's wrong to discourage people from finding any "deeper meaning" in an image poem.
That doesn't mean it was "about sex," so much as it reminds you of sex (thought I must say this interpretation is fairly sophomoric). It reminds me that I have to mow my lawn.
Or seeing a woman's face in the evening sun. Or meaning in a red wheelbarrow rimmed with rainwater.
The problem isn't metaphor, man. It's superstition. Speculation and imagination are fun, human concepts. It's when they become dogma -- the basis for your life decisions -- that a problem is generated.
I have friends who write niche shareware. The one guy charges $100 for what's essentially a 4 line registry hack he put a keen interface on. He got a LOT of takers -- hundreds. Funny thing is, he'd written a similar utility back in 1999 and sold about the same number of copies -- only he had charge $10 for it.
The fact is, most people won't pay at ALL for these utilities. For those that do, the key is to set the price high enough that the people willing to pay the price will maximize your value.
Is some niche software overpriced compared to over-the-counter software? Of course. It has to be if you want to make money on it. Not everybody thinks software has to be charity. And there's a school of thought that says value is entirely in what you're willing to pay. If my friend's registry hack saves you a week of rewriting a document, or a couple days writing your own front end, it'll be worth $100 to you. If you just want it because it's neat, it won't be. Too bad.
I like giving shit away, hence all the public domain images on my website, but I respect a person's right to recoup the cost of their efforts.
You're in luck, then. Mos Def is the pinnacle of almost-40 looking journalist/artist/hippy types. He's just not white.
I'm not getting testy...it's just that this casting decision is so beguilingly perfect that I'm surprised Disney made it. I can't wait for this durn film!
Just be happy slashdot has entered its postmodern phase and is therefore no longer ironic. Next up is the punk revolution! Slashdot posters doin' it low tech just for the sake of the POST.
Yeah, that cuntlip Bill O'reilly's always going on about this, too. But the point is this: civil liberties are civil liberties, and you can't draw a line just because you think something is okay. If a government agency is doing something that even passively infringes on somebody's liberties, somebody should call then on it. That's the ACLU. The ACLU stepped in when my high school was trying to prevent students from circulating their own "underground" newspapers; they got the school to stop suspending kids for it and for the school to revise some of its policies.
Yeah, the ACLU supports some stuff which 99% of us wouldn't think twice about. But that's what they're supposed to do!
If you think that freedom to practice religion means that you are free to infringe on other people's religions by placing your God's image and commandments in public arenas, you aren't thinking hard enough. The only way that a society can exist with freedom of religion is if every religion's philosophies are treated equally in the eyes of government. If you expect your ten commandments to be posted in a courthouse, you should expect the religious laws of every other person in the community to be given equal time. And how hypocritical would that look, when the first of said commandments is "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me?"
The ACLU is doing what it always does: it's trying to protect the rights of the minority from being squelched by a well meaning but misguided majority. There is no shame in having a secular government. After all, government is about keeping things in order right here and right now. Religion's about the afterlife. If you think the two should be mixed, then mix them in your church -- and expect the Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Ba'hai, and Zoroastrians in your neighbourhood to do the same. Render unto Caeser what it Caesar's, man.
Yes, a black guy is playing Ford Prefect. An immesely cool, intelligent, easy going, and unique entertainer who just HAPPENS to be black, is playing the part of an immensely cool, intelligent, easy going intergalactic hitchhiker slash journalist.
I think he's referring to Mos Def, the actor playing Ford Prefect (also a righteous rhymer in his own right who's been the musical guest on, like, a dozen Chappelle's Show episodes).
He's not English...he's from Brooklyn...and to be honest, I can't find him in the photo. But I'm sitting like 4 feet away from the laptop at the moment.
Microsoft denounces Linux, which is a competing operating system. They don't necessarily denounce open source software in general (at least, not that I've heard of.) That would be sort of foolish...I mean, you have to denounce a rival's products, that's obvious. But to denounce the way he makes them when other world class software vendors are considering them would be shooting yourself in the foot.
The electric and gas engines share a common drive shaft. RPM range is therefore on par with a car with one more cylinder than the hybrid normally would have...redline at 6-9000 i'd wager.
What I think you're taling about with the final gear thing is that some hybrids ALSO have a CVT, continuously variable transmission, eg one that doesn't have traditional "gears." The CVT can improve economy by 5-10%, judging by the EPA's numbers for CVT Audis and Hondas. Incidentally, the CVT Audi doesn't have as good economy as the 6 speed manual...
This is the same argument used for outsourcing: less money paid for tools, aka employees, the more money that can be spent on using them. Bigger raise, more hires.
How can OSS be good, and yet outsourcing be bad?
(just posing a question here...I know MY answer...)
Free software is capitalism and does make sense, but only for certain things. See, software is hard to write, and there are many elements which are universal, yet have no universal method of replication. Open Source makes sense as a method of providing a uniform framework that is shared by many closed source vendors, that is understood by and supported by all of them. It's less a product than a standardization of common activities.
Think of it like constructing a building. Could you make a building if every brick vendor offered different sizes and shapes of bricks? If every concrete had a different mix time and pour rate? If every bulldozer shipped with different fuel sources and control systems? Sure, some of these things are standardized, but most of them are just the result of every vendor and manufacturer adopting the same constraints as the others. That's what OSS is for software vendors.
A little uniformity is a good thing, and before the prevalence of OSS, your only option was to trust the arbitrary uniformity of closed source vendors. OSS is a way to take the repetitive, common things all developers do, and do them ONCE for the entire community of developers.
Now, where OSS doesn't make sense is in the creation of new software products. If you can make good money selling something, why in the hell should you give it away?
That's because RMS is a creepy academic zealot with an agenda. It's really hard to take business advice from a guy like that, especially considering most companies are out to make money, and the whole thrust of that page is that software can be sold to fund development -- in other words, you can break even selling it. It becomes a charity, not a business.
It's hard for classic software companies to go from "we're making money" to "we're funding development." In my experience, GPL distribution attracts a few honest companies and a lot of freeloaders. I bought a Windows distribution of SpamAssassin promising free support and unlimited updates. The guy provides NO support and hasn't compiled anything since March. Buyer beware, I guess...but it's happened to me with enough other OSS Windows ports to encourage a "better off buying closed source, at least I know the developers are getting paid" philosophy.
On the highway, a Hybrid engine is just a low-powered gasoline engine -- generally, the electric engine does not engage over highway travel. I say low-powered, and not under-powered, because today's engines have an obscenely high average horsepower. An "economy" car like a Civic or a Focus has a better power to weight ratio than many classic V6s. Your '69 Type 1 put out 55 horsepower, which was plenty to get 4 passengers and their gear up to 75 MPH.
As a low powered gasoline engine, you get your best economy by accelerating slowly and allowing the resistance of the engine to adjust your speed. Braking on the highway, or downshifting before accelerating, will take a huge bite out of your economy.
It's in city driving where the hybrid shines, but again, only if you drive it correctly. The big thing is to try to keep the gas engine shut off as much as possible. This is performed by accelerating slowly from stoplights and braking slowly as well (more energy is recycled by the magnetic brake when less is lost to the "backup" brake). Jackrabbit starts will be tempting, as the electric assist engine has a TON of torque, but resist it! That's the only way you'll see your economy improve.
To be honest, these driving methods will help you improve the economy of any car, especially 3 and 4 cylinder engines, where keeping the revs low and speed constant has a bigger effect than with a 6 or an 8. But the difference in economy is even wider for a hybrid. Whereas I can see an 8 mpg difference between racing to work (27 mpg)and driving casual (35 mpg) in my turbocharged I4, with a hybrid that difference could be close to 20 mpg.
The EPA drivers know how to drive efficiently, and that's why their scores are so high. You can learn to drive like this too...it's why the Insight has a momentary MPG rating right on the dashboard. The guy from AutoWeek who did the long-term Insight test said he considered the average MPG rating to be a "different KIND of performance rating," and that he made it a game to get it above 60.
God, where do you live? That's hardly the situation around here.
My wife and I are always talkative to neighborhood kids. We have a puppy, and when we walk her, they swarm us. Their parents don't give us disapproving looks, despite the fact that we're new around here and nobody know us from Adam. Most are really friendly, probably as a result of our humouring their kids.
I've never gotten discouraging looks for playing with my friends' kids, either. This weekend we were playing football and cards with my friend's cousins...their parents were happy to get them out of their hair and occupied! I've gone on trips with my brother's scout troop to teach them kayaking, and visited his school to give a Q & A talk on the Internet. People seem thrilled that a young people are willing to spend time with their kids. My friends in Big Brothers/Big Sisters tell me the same.
Methinks maybe you're a bit sensitive, and you're allowing a few paranoid people to skew your vision. So long as you're not creepy about it, people like their kids to have older role models. It's one of the keys to growing up. I myself had a number of older friends, including several male teachers and a couple who used to help me with Chemistry.
It is entirely possible to have analog sensitivity with a touchscreen.
Anyhow, they're not meant to replace all the buttons. They're meant to make in easier to perform selections based on variable options. Sure, it's pretty easy to select "Attack monster" with an analog stick, or to scroll through a list of weapons to find the one you like. But it's even EASIER to have a visual catalog of options that you can slide your thumb down and tap to select. It'll make for some GREAT controls, and for some INSANELY quick and intuitive gameplay.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't it amazing how the solution to so many Windows problems is to jump through hoops, restrict what you can do, and generally make your life a hassle.
Yeah, it is amazing. What's even more amazing is, this is what you have to do to perform common tasks under Linux.
And I'm ouuuuuuuuut.
But the nice thing is, if somebody sends you an archive, you can tell what files it purports to have before decrypting them. Useful for when you get an encrypted zip file and, lo and behold, it's full of virus scripts.
If you want to encrypt your porn, you really shouldn't be using ZIP for it, man. Encrypted zips are to secure and encapsulate data, not obfuscate it. For that...may I suggest Jetico's BestCrypt suite (if'n you're stuck with windows), which is efficient, fast, and lets you use any level or method of encryption you like, customize random generation, key length and strength, etc. You basically make an encrypter container and mount it like a filesystem...also useful for encrypting your Freenet temp files and object store, if you're into that.
It was William Carlos WIlliams. e e cummings is the asshole who can't put two letters together on the same line.
Anyhow, you're both right. That is a prime example of an image poem, one which create a scene like a still life in our minds and does nothing else. However, since no image can ever exist without interpretation, it's wrong to discourage people from finding any "deeper meaning" in an image poem.
That doesn't mean it was "about sex," so much as it reminds you of sex (thought I must say this interpretation is fairly sophomoric). It reminds me that I have to mow my lawn.
Mad propers for the Phil Sidney sig. I love that guy...I wrote my honors paper on Astrophel & Stella, which I am probably unique in finding hilarious.
I'm guessing playing logic games doesn't exactly bring in the girls, does it?
Or seeing a woman's face in the evening sun. Or meaning in a red wheelbarrow rimmed with rainwater.
The problem isn't metaphor, man. It's superstition. Speculation and imagination are fun, human concepts. It's when they become dogma -- the basis for your life decisions -- that a problem is generated.
My brother-in-law is red-green colourblind. He can't tell the difference.
I have friends who write niche shareware. The one guy charges $100 for what's essentially a 4 line registry hack he put a keen interface on. He got a LOT of takers -- hundreds. Funny thing is, he'd written a similar utility back in 1999 and sold about the same number of copies -- only he had charge $10 for it.
The fact is, most people won't pay at ALL for these utilities. For those that do, the key is to set the price high enough that the people willing to pay the price will maximize your value.
Is some niche software overpriced compared to over-the-counter software? Of course. It has to be if you want to make money on it. Not everybody thinks software has to be charity. And there's a school of thought that says value is entirely in what you're willing to pay. If my friend's registry hack saves you a week of rewriting a document, or a couple days writing your own front end, it'll be worth $100 to you. If you just want it because it's neat, it won't be. Too bad.
I like giving shit away, hence all the public domain images on my website, but I respect a person's right to recoup the cost of their efforts.
You're in luck, then. Mos Def is the pinnacle of almost-40 looking journalist/artist/hippy types. He's just not white.
I'm not getting testy...it's just that this casting decision is so beguilingly perfect that I'm surprised Disney made it. I can't wait for this durn film!
Just be happy slashdot has entered its postmodern phase and is therefore no longer ironic. Next up is the punk revolution! Slashdot posters doin' it low tech just for the sake of the POST.
Yeah, that cuntlip Bill O'reilly's always going on about this, too. But the point is this: civil liberties are civil liberties, and you can't draw a line just because you think something is okay. If a government agency is doing something that even passively infringes on somebody's liberties, somebody should call then on it. That's the ACLU. The ACLU stepped in when my high school was trying to prevent students from circulating their own "underground" newspapers; they got the school to stop suspending kids for it and for the school to revise some of its policies.
Yeah, the ACLU supports some stuff which 99% of us wouldn't think twice about. But that's what they're supposed to do!
If you think that freedom to practice religion means that you are free to infringe on other people's religions by placing your God's image and commandments in public arenas, you aren't thinking hard enough. The only way that a society can exist with freedom of religion is if every religion's philosophies are treated equally in the eyes of government. If you expect your ten commandments to be posted in a courthouse, you should expect the religious laws of every other person in the community to be given equal time. And how hypocritical would that look, when the first of said commandments is "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me?"
The ACLU is doing what it always does: it's trying to protect the rights of the minority from being squelched by a well meaning but misguided majority. There is no shame in having a secular government. After all, government is about keeping things in order right here and right now. Religion's about the afterlife. If you think the two should be mixed, then mix them in your church -- and expect the Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Ba'hai, and Zoroastrians in your neighbourhood to do the same. Render unto Caeser what it Caesar's, man.
*Rolls Eyes*
Yes, a black guy is playing Ford Prefect. An immesely cool, intelligent, easy going, and unique entertainer who just HAPPENS to be black, is playing the part of an immensely cool, intelligent, easy going intergalactic hitchhiker slash journalist.
Do you have a problem with that?
Oh wait, there he is. In the blue suit. In the front row. I'm a fucking idiot.
I think he's referring to Mos Def, the actor playing Ford Prefect (also a righteous rhymer in his own right who's been the musical guest on, like, a dozen Chappelle's Show episodes).
He's not English...he's from Brooklyn...and to be honest, I can't find him in the photo. But I'm sitting like 4 feet away from the laptop at the moment.
Screw USB. This isn't 1998. Now, show me a Bluetooth captain's wheel, and I'll be a happy man!
That is the best rebuttal I have ever seen. Would you like to head my new Slashdot forensics team?
Microsoft denounces Linux, which is a competing operating system. They don't necessarily denounce open source software in general (at least, not that I've heard of.) That would be sort of foolish...I mean, you have to denounce a rival's products, that's obvious. But to denounce the way he makes them when other world class software vendors are considering them would be shooting yourself in the foot.
The electric and gas engines share a common drive shaft. RPM range is therefore on par with a car with one more cylinder than the hybrid normally would have...redline at 6-9000 i'd wager.
What I think you're taling about with the final gear thing is that some hybrids ALSO have a CVT, continuously variable transmission, eg one that doesn't have traditional "gears." The CVT can improve economy by 5-10%, judging by the EPA's numbers for CVT Audis and Hondas. Incidentally, the CVT Audi doesn't have as good economy as the 6 speed manual...
This is the same argument used for outsourcing: less money paid for tools, aka employees, the more money that can be spent on using them. Bigger raise, more hires.
How can OSS be good, and yet outsourcing be bad?
(just posing a question here...I know MY answer...)
Well, I agreed with you up to the last paragraph.
Free software is capitalism and does make sense, but only for certain things. See, software is hard to write, and there are many elements which are universal, yet have no universal method of replication. Open Source makes sense as a method of providing a uniform framework that is shared by many closed source vendors, that is understood by and supported by all of them. It's less a product than a standardization of common activities.
Think of it like constructing a building. Could you make a building if every brick vendor offered different sizes and shapes of bricks? If every concrete had a different mix time and pour rate? If every bulldozer shipped with different fuel sources and control systems? Sure, some of these things are standardized, but most of them are just the result of every vendor and manufacturer adopting the same constraints as the others. That's what OSS is for software vendors.
A little uniformity is a good thing, and before the prevalence of OSS, your only option was to trust the arbitrary uniformity of closed source vendors. OSS is a way to take the repetitive, common things all developers do, and do them ONCE for the entire community of developers.
Now, where OSS doesn't make sense is in the creation of new software products. If you can make good money selling something, why in the hell should you give it away?
That's because RMS is a creepy academic zealot with an agenda. It's really hard to take business advice from a guy like that, especially considering most companies are out to make money, and the whole thrust of that page is that software can be sold to fund development -- in other words, you can break even selling it. It becomes a charity, not a business.
It's hard for classic software companies to go from "we're making money" to "we're funding development." In my experience, GPL distribution attracts a few honest companies and a lot of freeloaders. I bought a Windows distribution of SpamAssassin promising free support and unlimited updates. The guy provides NO support and hasn't compiled anything since March. Buyer beware, I guess...but it's happened to me with enough other OSS Windows ports to encourage a "better off buying closed source, at least I know the developers are getting paid" philosophy.
YMMV is correct. Why it varies is important.
On the highway, a Hybrid engine is just a low-powered gasoline engine -- generally, the electric engine does not engage over highway travel. I say low-powered, and not under-powered, because today's engines have an obscenely high average horsepower. An "economy" car like a Civic or a Focus has a better power to weight ratio than many classic V6s. Your '69 Type 1 put out 55 horsepower, which was plenty to get 4 passengers and their gear up to 75 MPH.
As a low powered gasoline engine, you get your best economy by accelerating slowly and allowing the resistance of the engine to adjust your speed. Braking on the highway, or downshifting before accelerating, will take a huge bite out of your economy.
It's in city driving where the hybrid shines, but again, only if you drive it correctly. The big thing is to try to keep the gas engine shut off as much as possible. This is performed by accelerating slowly from stoplights and braking slowly as well (more energy is recycled by the magnetic brake when less is lost to the "backup" brake). Jackrabbit starts will be tempting, as the electric assist engine has a TON of torque, but resist it! That's the only way you'll see your economy improve.
To be honest, these driving methods will help you improve the economy of any car, especially 3 and 4 cylinder engines, where keeping the revs low and speed constant has a bigger effect than with a 6 or an 8. But the difference in economy is even wider for a hybrid. Whereas I can see an 8 mpg difference between racing to work (27 mpg)and driving casual (35 mpg) in my turbocharged I4, with a hybrid that difference could be close to 20 mpg.
The EPA drivers know how to drive efficiently, and that's why their scores are so high. You can learn to drive like this too...it's why the Insight has a momentary MPG rating right on the dashboard. The guy from AutoWeek who did the long-term Insight test said he considered the average MPG rating to be a "different KIND of performance rating," and that he made it a game to get it above 60.
God, where do you live? That's hardly the situation around here.
My wife and I are always talkative to neighborhood kids. We have a puppy, and when we walk her, they swarm us. Their parents don't give us disapproving looks, despite the fact that we're new around here and nobody know us from Adam. Most are really friendly, probably as a result of our humouring their kids.
I've never gotten discouraging looks for playing with my friends' kids, either. This weekend we were playing football and cards with my friend's cousins...their parents were happy to get them out of their hair and occupied! I've gone on trips with my brother's scout troop to teach them kayaking, and visited his school to give a Q & A talk on the Internet. People seem thrilled that a young people are willing to spend time with their kids. My friends in Big Brothers/Big Sisters tell me the same.
Methinks maybe you're a bit sensitive, and you're allowing a few paranoid people to skew your vision. So long as you're not creepy about it, people like their kids to have older role models. It's one of the keys to growing up. I myself had a number of older friends, including several male teachers and a couple who used to help me with Chemistry.
It is entirely possible to have analog sensitivity with a touchscreen.
Anyhow, they're not meant to replace all the buttons. They're meant to make in easier to perform selections based on variable options. Sure, it's pretty easy to select "Attack monster" with an analog stick, or to scroll through a list of weapons to find the one you like. But it's even EASIER to have a visual catalog of options that you can slide your thumb down and tap to select. It'll make for some GREAT controls, and for some INSANELY quick and intuitive gameplay.