I think the BBC's main problems are its complete inability to produce funny comedy (Coupling, My Family, Mad About Alice make me physically ill), unimaginative and dull drama output, its complete lack of new ideas and a general reliance on cheap TV (DIY, gardening etc). Not exactly worth 114GBP/year.
I think the reason for the moderation is that it is both a very old joke and a very unfunny one. It appears almost everytime some release announcement is made on Slashdot.
Most Linux distributions will upgrade automatically. If anything the automatic upgrading in the linux world is a strong point and better implemented than in Windows - many times I've upgraded systems using windows update and broken something.
The touchpad on the laptop in front of me works fine - Linux 2.6.3(Gentoo) and a Synaptics Touchpad on a Compaq Armada M300. I didn't have to fiddle around with anything - I just put my mouse device as/dev/psaux in XF86config and it works fine. I can post my.config if you need it.
I use it to check my email from time to time. I wrote a little PHP script using the imap module to do it. I can't imagine sending an email using it though!
The current big thing seems to be mobile video phones (mainly from 3, in the uk) which seem to have flopped big time. Has anyone actually found them useful at all? From what I've seen the quality of video is pretty useless.
That's what directories like dmoz.org do. IIRC, google does use directory information, but it is far too hard a problem to automate topic finding without a lot of human editors. I saw some research recently at a conference that used complex vocabulary matching algorithms to automatically extract topics and organise large numbers of documents into topic hierachies and present summary reports, but I think that might be a bit too processor intensive and cutting edge, even for google.
The point (as I see it) is that you can make the ethanol from plants. So the CO2 emitted by the hydrogen manufacture is reabsorbed by the plants used to make the ethanol, making it overall a nearly closed system. Unlike fossil fuels, where you are releasing stored CO2 from millions of years ago.
...and what's with the toolbar having to be at the top of the screen instead of on the actual application window?
Once you get used to that it's a massive improvement over having the bar on the window - much quicker to get to (just slam the mouse cursor to the top of the screen: Fitt's Law). There have been studies done that show it's much faster. I have my KDE setup in the same way and I find it really hard to go back to the Windows way now.
I think the problem is that the early episodes were *so* good - bart gets an F, lisa goes to washington, Lisa's Substitute for example. that it was an almost impossible act to follow. Later series had their classic episodes - personally I think the quality started to drop about series 10.
You really have to wonder whether it was worthwhile for Microsoft. What would have changed if Netscape had continued to sell their browser?
It's another way for MS to make other platforms less attractive and to lock users into Windows. If they control 95% of the browser market and therefore all the crappy web developers write IE only pages, it's that much harder to switch to another platform.
Is the reason it gets nowhere near the press Mozilla does that Opera is not open source?
Erm, yes. Opera isn't free beer or speech. Open source projects can't be bought by MS, can't be destroyed in the way MS did to Netscape.
Hence the article - the web browser is absolutely key to the desktop market, and this time we're wise to what a bad idea relying on a company (however well intentioned) to supply that key component is.
Man that transcript is funny. The SCO lawyers behave like kids caught not paying attention in class - the judge says his bit, the IBM lawyer gives his part of the case, then the SCO lawyer suddenly notices everyone is looking at him and it's his turn, panics, leaps up and says "Show us the AIX code", sits down and drifts off again.
But as no society is truly equal, not everyone has equal opportunity. My parents could afford to send me to a good school, so I'm doing well now. Where's the equal opportunity in that? I now have an unfair advantage over those forced through circumstance to go to the local awful comprehensive.
Because this way creates 1000 skilled jobs directly in the area, which increases tax income and reduces unemployment payments. The local economy is helped by the money from the jobs, other companies (builders, suppliers etc) in the area benefit. All round the area's economy improves. This is about long-term growth, not the short term benefits.
It is the job of the government, after all, to improve the lot of its people.
I think ITV (yes, we do have more than one channel) has most of the security camera "real crime" crap. Endless CCTV footage of drunk men trying to hit each other and falling over.
I think Westminster's system is one of the most effective. Their area covers some very high crime areas (leicester square, oxford circus). They claim a 51% decrease in street crime and a 12% increase in crime clearup rates after installing a vast CCTV system. It's mainly used to better target the limited number of police available - it's not just about deterrence and after-the-fact clear up , it's well enough integrated and implemented that they can spot pickpockets and muggers as they move in to commit a crime and direct nearby police to arrest them.
Queen Mary's is only just introducing that system now? I think many UK universities run something similar already. Certainly Imperial, London does - I can't get into my department or library without my ID card. Security does occasional sweeps to check people in the department all have cards. You are meant to carry it at all times on campus. Departments without it suffer petty crime fairly regularly - mobiles, laptops etc. go missing.
The equivalent to a sudbury school over here (UK) is a Rudolf Steiner school. The kids make the rules, study what they want etc.
From what I hear, they produce confident, self-assured and completely uneducated children. A school inspector I talked to said the kids there were *years* behind those in mainstream schools.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the BBC's main problems are its complete inability to produce funny comedy (Coupling, My Family, Mad About Alice make me physically ill), unimaginative and dull drama output, its complete lack of new ideas and a general reliance on cheap TV (DIY, gardening etc).
Not exactly worth 114GBP/year.
>It even de-activated the tap-to-click
Isn't that a feature, not a bug? Tap to click is the most annoying input method idea I have ever used.
I think the reason for the moderation is that it is both a very old joke and a very unfunny one. It appears almost everytime some release announcement is made on Slashdot.
Most Linux distributions will upgrade automatically. If anything the automatic upgrading in the linux world is a strong point and better implemented than in Windows - many times I've upgraded systems using windows update and broken something.
The touchpad on the laptop in front of me works fine - Linux 2.6.3(Gentoo) and a Synaptics Touchpad on a Compaq Armada M300. I didn't have to fiddle around with anything - I just put my mouse device as /dev/psaux in XF86config and it works fine. I can post my .config if you need it.
I use it to check my email from time to time. I wrote a little PHP script using the imap module to do it. I can't imagine sending an email using it though!
The current big thing seems to be mobile video phones (mainly from 3, in the uk) which seem to have flopped big time. Has anyone actually found them useful at all? From what I've seen the quality of video is pretty useless.
That's what directories like dmoz.org do. IIRC, google does use directory information, but it is far too hard a problem to automate topic finding without a lot of human editors.
I saw some research recently at a conference that used complex vocabulary matching algorithms to automatically extract topics and organise large numbers of documents into topic hierachies and present summary reports, but I think that might be a bit too processor intensive and cutting edge, even for google.
The point (as I see it) is that you can make the ethanol from plants. So the CO2 emitted by the hydrogen manufacture is reabsorbed by the plants used to make the ethanol, making it overall a nearly closed system. Unlike fossil fuels, where you are releasing stored CO2 from millions of years ago.
Once you get used to that it's a massive improvement over having the bar on the window - much quicker to get to (just slam the mouse cursor to the top of the screen: Fitt's Law). There have been studies done that show it's much faster. I have my KDE setup in the same way and I find it really hard to go back to the Windows way now.
So Manchester uses SCO and Yorkshire uses linux? But they normally get on so well ;).
I think the problem is that the early episodes were *so* good - bart gets an F, lisa goes to washington, Lisa's Substitute for example. that it was an almost impossible act to follow.
Later series had their classic episodes - personally I think the quality started to drop about series 10.
You really have to wonder whether it was worthwhile for Microsoft. What would have changed if Netscape had continued to sell their browser?
It's another way for MS to make other platforms less attractive and to lock users into Windows. If they control 95% of the browser market and therefore all the crappy web developers write IE only pages, it's that much harder to switch to another platform.
Is the reason it gets nowhere near the press Mozilla does that Opera is not open source?
Erm, yes. Opera isn't free beer or speech. Open source projects can't be bought by MS, can't be destroyed in the way MS did to Netscape.
Hence the article - the web browser is absolutely key to the desktop market, and this time we're wise to what a bad idea relying on a company (however well intentioned) to supply that key component is.
Man that transcript is funny. The SCO lawyers behave like kids caught not paying attention in class - the judge says his bit, the IBM lawyer gives his part of the case, then the SCO lawyer suddenly notices everyone is looking at him and it's his turn, panics, leaps up and says "Show us the AIX code", sits down and drifts off again.
But as no society is truly equal, not everyone has equal opportunity. My parents could afford to send me to a good school, so I'm doing well now. Where's the equal opportunity in that? I now have an unfair advantage over those forced through circumstance to go to the local awful comprehensive.
Never heard of decreasing marginal utility? As in an extra $100 to a millionare doesn't make much difference.
Because this way creates 1000 skilled jobs directly in the area, which increases tax income and reduces unemployment payments. The local economy is helped by the money from the jobs, other companies (builders, suppliers etc) in the area benefit. All round the area's economy improves. This is about long-term growth, not the short term benefits.
It is the job of the government, after all, to improve the lot of its people.
I think ITV (yes, we do have more than one channel) has most of the security camera "real crime" crap. Endless CCTV footage of drunk men trying to hit each other and falling over.
I think Westminster's system is one of the most effective. Their area covers some very high crime areas (leicester square, oxford circus). They claim a 51% decrease in street crime and a 12% increase in crime clearup rates after installing a vast CCTV system.
It's mainly used to better target the limited number of police available - it's not just about deterrence and after-the-fact clear up , it's well enough integrated and implemented that they can spot pickpockets and muggers as they move in to commit a crime and direct nearby police to arrest them.
Queen Mary's is only just introducing that system now? I think many UK universities run something similar already. Certainly Imperial, London does - I can't get into my department or library without my ID card. Security does occasional sweeps to check people in the department all have cards. You are meant to carry it at all times on campus.
Departments without it suffer petty crime fairly regularly - mobiles, laptops etc. go missing.
The equivalent to a sudbury school over here (UK) is a Rudolf Steiner school. The kids make the rules, study what they want etc.
From what I hear, they produce confident, self-assured and completely uneducated children. A school inspector I talked to said the kids there were *years* behind those in mainstream schools.
Just download the IcOSX icon theme from kde-look.org. It's most of the OSX icons converted for use in KDE.
Just enable anti-aliasing and install the bitstream vera truetype fonts to de-uglify the text.