I tend to use cursive when I'm jotting stuff down, so I write. I'd imagine that stuff you put online is libel, since it's written down. Or printed. Or whatever verb you want to use. IANAL.
The verb used isn't important. It's just to remember "Lines -> Libel; Speak -> Slander."
No kidding - I looked up, and in the middle of the air, I saw the standard Windows cursor just sitting there. It was as though Whatever had just gotten up to go take a leak and left the cursor sitting there in the middle of the sky. Reality was falling apart. I was going crazy.
I thought, "Wait, what the fuck is that?", and then the seagull banked, showing that it was in fact a bird in the air, and reality was mostly intact.
No, you can't "get good" at an instrument in a few months. If you think you're good after that short a time, then you're just "wearing the juice" or you're a virtuoso.
I started playing my instrument in 1989. I'm now pretty good, but I'd still consider myself a "B-list" player. There are people who are far superior than me. (I play the euphonium. Technically, I play the Baritone Horn, but if I say that, people always say, "the sax?") I can still play the full range of my instrument, get higher than most other players, and I can circular breathe. I can also sing reasonably well. None of my musical talent was gained over a few months. It takes YEARS of dedicated practice to get good.
My brother started playing bass guitar at about the same time. He's been able to land a few paying gigs. He's quite talented but has spent almost all of his time in the last decade playing guitar.
Guitar Hero (like almost any other game) is an escapist fantasy game. That's all there is to it. And when you really get down to it, it's really just Simon with a really slick wrapper.
It saves me a lot of PITA for people on forums who can't be bothered / are unable to make clickable HTML links. Okay, maybe just a little bit of a PITA, but still, it's one of the better extensions out there.
The same thing happens to me all the time, no matter what kind of store I'm in. People look at me and ask if I work there and try to ask me questions. It doesn't matter that I didn't shave that morning, am wearing casual clothes, and everyone else in the store is wearing some kind of brightly-coloured uniform.
I've never had employees confuse me with a manager. That takes a level of dedication to stupidity that I've never seen before. Wow.
Years ago I did work in retail. On lunch breaks, I would wear a sign that said "STOP! I DO NOT WORK HERE!" and that did NOT work. "No, I really don't work here. I'm on my lunch break." "It's just a quick question."
The sad part is that I can usually answer the questions people ask me, and usually better than the staff.
I once wrote a bit of code that was about 15 lines.
With comments, it was about 150 lines.
It was a reasonably tricky set of decoding code that did a lot of fancy things to get the data out of a packet for a specialized application. It worked quite well, with corruption of about 20% still being recoverable into the original data.
Anyway, nothing about the encoder was even remotely obvious. I wanted to make damned sure that whoever had to maintain that code had at least a reasonable clue as to what was going on without having to draw out charts and wonder why the indexes used were flipping at certain points. It wasn't comments like "this is an integer." "Now the integer increases". It was more like: "If the accumulated error goes above the threshold indicated, then we have to move back at least one step to find a different pathway. Since we know that the first pathway was not a match, then we increment the error threshold, increment the index, and *decrement* the position in the message." (I can't remember exactly, it's been a year since I wrote that, I no longer work there, and there's an NDA anyway.)
Another piece of code I wrote stripped the GPS data from a GPS module's RS-232 output. It was trivial to write the code, since it was an iterative loop. However, comments for each line made it impossible to get lost in the series of 15 nested loops and in the placement of commas and other fields. It was really handy to see at a glance exactly which lines were used to skip to any given field.
(Special thanks to the lameness filter for not letting me post it quite right!)
At this point, get the GPS longitude minutes: $GPGGA,180432.00,4027.027912,N,08704.857070, W
^^
Skip the period: $GPGGA,180432.00,4027.027912,N,08704.857070, W
^ skip_period;
Any coding practice has to be flexible enough to allow you to make your point. If you're not commenting because you think the code is obvious, then maybe you haven't coded real stuff, or you haven't coded really tricky stuff. Maybe I write my code with a little bit of overkill in the comments, but at least I know that years from now, anyone can take a look and know exactly what I was thinking and know how to update the code.
My code's been reviewed by an independent auditor as "better than most".
Ah, so it's not the "survival" poor that are the targets. It's those who are in a classroom who are able to get their basic needs met on a reliable basis.
I was thinking about it all wrong - I use the word "need" only when referring to food, water, clothing, and shelter. (And air, but that's usually around.) So I want Internet access, but I need water. I want a computer, but need a house to put it in.
Buying a computer - even a $500 US laptop - is so ridiculously expensive to most of the world that those folks are relying on donated computers from the 1st world. Rather than rely on the rejected 30-year-old textbooks, the students with these machines can use IRC and talk directly so someone. I had the target market incorrect in my head.
Here I thought that the OLPC crowd was just being slacktivists.
Sure, it's great to give a kid a computer. Isn't it better to give the kid some medicine, drinking water, or food?
You guys may find it hard to believe, but there are places that are three days away from ELECTRICITY. A kid spending his day farming isn't going to say, "man, I could really go for a/. break right now." Nightlights are a foreign concept to these kids. Never mind paycheque to paycheque - some folks live day-to-day, eating whatever they can find.
So why are we giving away laptops? Is it because we think that we can genuinely help them by providing a computer to a remote village? Do we have nothing else we can give? They don't want code. They want food.
TeleAtlas has bad maps. They've put a road through the building where I work. The road (which doesn't exist) then meanders over a lake (which has no bridge) after going through a field (which is presently flooded).
At least it's close to civilization. If you were lost with a TeleAtlas map, you're better off with a 14-th century Spanish map.
I'm from Canada. Sometimes I feel like the French must have just before Germany invaded. You know you're outgunned and outnumbered by your obnoxious neighbour, and you know there's nothing you can do about it but hope they aren't going to invade you next.
Nobody's ever gone to war against Canada and won, but we'd surrender pretty quickly if the US decided that we were harbouring terrorists (or oil, fresh drinking water, and uranium). Our military is a right shambles, we don't have nuclear weapons, and we're spread out over the globe trying to clean up the mess our "older brother" keeps making. We wouldn't stand much of a chance.
Most of the world still talks about the loss of Habeas Corpus - you know, the cornerstone of all Common Law since the Brits wrote it down 500 years ago. Just because Faux News only shows reports on whatever the uh... you know, I don't watch it. Anyway, the rest of the world still talks about it.
It's not a war of good and evil. It's a war between Chaos and Law./May these gates never be closed
The whole point of/. is to have a series of "stupid reasons" and "equally stupid counter-arguments". It's not like we're doing anything even remotely productive. I've even managed to meta-troll your post.
Every thread will spin uncontrollably into previously unimaginable levels of stupidity.
Why am I being modded as a troll?/. doesn't have a "Haha, u sld hv a fon lk m3!" option, so you opted for "troll" instead?
Most people have cellular phones. I'm not one of them. My post is a counterpoint to the article, stating that there are 3.3 BILLION cell accounts. Not everyone has one, and not everyone on/. has one. I choose not to pay hundreds a month to a phone company. I have never wanted one, and I have not encountered a situation where one was warranted. I went to classes and meetings while my wife was 9+ months pregnant - didn't miss a thing. When I was looking for work - I didn't miss a thing.
I'm not a luddite, either. I'm an Electrical Engineer who has done a fair bit of work "advancing our tech level." Some of the things I've worked on are Penokio, P25 radio, and Project Lifesaver. I've literally used my craft to save lives. That's probably more than that mod can say.
Also, it's nice to be first. I've been waiting for seven years.
This is Canada. We have more guns per capita than the US. We're a nation of hunters and trappers. What's the government going to do, drop a Victoria-class submarine on me? (That's all they're good for.)
But guns are so 20-th century. What you can do now is jam their cellphones, blackberries, laptops, and internet access, and tell them that trying to fix the problem is against the new copyright legislation.
Slashdot Mirror
I tend to use cursive when I'm jotting stuff down, so I write. I'd imagine that stuff you put online is libel, since it's written down. Or printed. Or whatever verb you want to use. IANAL.
The verb used isn't important. It's just to remember "Lines -> Libel; Speak -> Slander."
You Speak Slander or write Lines of Libel.
Your sig should read:
Any sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from incompetence.
If we reboot, we'll be okay because they'll save the work first.
Now, if the patch isn't compatible with previously saved games, then we'll be in trouble.
Fucking amoebas.
One day, in a bright blue sky, I saw a cursor.
No kidding - I looked up, and in the middle of the air, I saw the standard Windows cursor just sitting there. It was as though Whatever had just gotten up to go take a leak and left the cursor sitting there in the middle of the sky. Reality was falling apart. I was going crazy.
I thought, "Wait, what the fuck is that?", and then the seagull banked, showing that it was in fact a bird in the air, and reality was mostly intact.
It was a very bizarre moment.
No, you can't "get good" at an instrument in a few months. If you think you're good after that short a time, then you're just "wearing the juice" or you're a virtuoso.
I started playing my instrument in 1989. I'm now pretty good, but I'd still consider myself a "B-list" player. There are people who are far superior than me. (I play the euphonium. Technically, I play the Baritone Horn, but if I say that, people always say, "the sax?") I can still play the full range of my instrument, get higher than most other players, and I can circular breathe. I can also sing reasonably well. None of my musical talent was gained over a few months. It takes YEARS of dedicated practice to get good.
My brother started playing bass guitar at about the same time. He's been able to land a few paying gigs. He's quite talented but has spent almost all of his time in the last decade playing guitar.
Guitar Hero (like almost any other game) is an escapist fantasy game. That's all there is to it. And when you really get down to it, it's really just Simon with a really slick wrapper.
Eat.
Survive.
Reproduce.
That's all there is. The rest is just a layer of abstraction.
Try installing "Linkification" for Firefox.
It saves me a lot of PITA for people on forums who can't be bothered / are unable to make clickable HTML links. Okay, maybe just a little bit of a PITA, but still, it's one of the better extensions out there.
The same thing happens to me all the time, no matter what kind of store I'm in. People look at me and ask if I work there and try to ask me questions. It doesn't matter that I didn't shave that morning, am wearing casual clothes, and everyone else in the store is wearing some kind of brightly-coloured uniform.
I've never had employees confuse me with a manager. That takes a level of dedication to stupidity that I've never seen before. Wow.
Years ago I did work in retail. On lunch breaks, I would wear a sign that said "STOP! I DO NOT WORK HERE!" and that did NOT work. "No, I really don't work here. I'm on my lunch break." "It's just a quick question."
The sad part is that I can usually answer the questions people ask me, and usually better than the staff.
With comments, it was about 150 lines.
It was a reasonably tricky set of decoding code that did a lot of fancy things to get the data out of a packet for a specialized application. It worked quite well, with corruption of about 20% still being recoverable into the original data.
Anyway, nothing about the encoder was even remotely obvious. I wanted to make damned sure that whoever had to maintain that code had at least a reasonable clue as to what was going on without having to draw out charts and wonder why the indexes used were flipping at certain points. It wasn't comments like "this is an integer." "Now the integer increases". It was more like: "If the accumulated error goes above the threshold indicated, then we have to move back at least one step to find a different pathway. Since we know that the first pathway was not a match, then we increment the error threshold, increment the index, and *decrement* the position in the message." (I can't remember exactly, it's been a year since I wrote that, I no longer work there, and there's an NDA anyway.)
Another piece of code I wrote stripped the GPS data from a GPS module's RS-232 output. It was trivial to write the code, since it was an iterative loop. However, comments for each line made it impossible to get lost in the series of 15 nested loops and in the placement of commas and other fields. It was really handy to see at a glance exactly which lines were used to skip to any given field.
(Special thanks to the lameness filter for not letting me post it quite right!) Any coding practice has to be flexible enough to allow you to make your point. If you're not commenting because you think the code is obvious, then maybe you haven't coded real stuff, or you haven't coded really tricky stuff. Maybe I write my code with a little bit of overkill in the comments, but at least I know that years from now, anyone can take a look and know exactly what I was thinking and know how to update the code.
My code's been reviewed by an independent auditor as "better than most".
Your enemy is not the United States, it's our government. We are sick of this shit too
We know.
Ah, so it's not the "survival" poor that are the targets. It's those who are in a classroom who are able to get their basic needs met on a reliable basis.
I was thinking about it all wrong - I use the word "need" only when referring to food, water, clothing, and shelter. (And air, but that's usually around.) So I want Internet access, but I need water. I want a computer, but need a house to put it in.
Buying a computer - even a $500 US laptop - is so ridiculously expensive to most of the world that those folks are relying on donated computers from the 1st world. Rather than rely on the rejected 30-year-old textbooks, the students with these machines can use IRC and talk directly so someone. I had the target market incorrect in my head.
Here I thought that the OLPC crowd was just being slacktivists.
I don't understand OLPC - at all.
/. break right now." Nightlights are a foreign concept to these kids. Never mind paycheque to paycheque - some folks live day-to-day, eating whatever they can find.
I really don't get it.
Sure, it's great to give a kid a computer. Isn't it better to give the kid some medicine, drinking water, or food?
You guys may find it hard to believe, but there are places that are three days away from ELECTRICITY. A kid spending his day farming isn't going to say, "man, I could really go for a
So why are we giving away laptops? Is it because we think that we can genuinely help them by providing a computer to a remote village? Do we have nothing else we can give? They don't want code. They want food.
Or am I missing something here?
So the DVD is worth getting?
Yeah, but the wrong information?
TeleAtlas has bad maps. They've put a road through the building where I work. The road (which doesn't exist) then meanders over a lake (which has no bridge) after going through a field (which is presently flooded).
At least it's close to civilization. If you were lost with a TeleAtlas map, you're better off with a 14-th century Spanish map.
No, it's because you dared to post first. I did on a cellphone thread and got modded down substantially as "offtopic" and "flamebait".
So don't take it too seriously. I ended up getting a 1, Interesting as my final tally.
What the hell is wrong with you?
TEN DOLLARS IS MORE THAN A QUARTER.
Pay phones in my city are a quarter for a local call for about ten minutes.
All of those plans cost more than a quarter.
I'm from Canada. Sometimes I feel like the French must have just before Germany invaded. You know you're outgunned and outnumbered by your obnoxious neighbour, and you know there's nothing you can do about it but hope they aren't going to invade you next.
/May these gates never be closed
Nobody's ever gone to war against Canada and won, but we'd surrender pretty quickly if the US decided that we were harbouring terrorists (or oil, fresh drinking water, and uranium). Our military is a right shambles, we don't have nuclear weapons, and we're spread out over the globe trying to clean up the mess our "older brother" keeps making. We wouldn't stand much of a chance.
Most of the world still talks about the loss of Habeas Corpus - you know, the cornerstone of all Common Law since the Brits wrote it down 500 years ago. Just because Faux News only shows reports on whatever the uh... you know, I don't watch it. Anyway, the rest of the world still talks about it.
It's not a war of good and evil. It's a war between Chaos and Law.
I am the great-grandparent.
And weird is redundant.
Ooh, 5, no preview.
The whole point of /. is to have a series of "stupid reasons" and "equally stupid counter-arguments". It's not like we're doing anything even remotely productive. I've even managed to meta-troll your post.
Every thread will spin uncontrollably into previously unimaginable levels of stupidity.
Funnily enough, I'm a vegetarian.
...tasty, tasty murder.
Meat is murder!
(Seriously, I'm a vegetarian for health reasons, but now we're going to get modded as offtopic.)
Why am I being modded as a troll? /. doesn't have a "Haha, u sld hv a fon lk m3!" option, so you opted for "troll" instead?
/. has one. I choose not to pay hundreds a month to a phone company. I have never wanted one, and I have not encountered a situation where one was warranted. I went to classes and meetings while my wife was 9+ months pregnant - didn't miss a thing. When I was looking for work - I didn't miss a thing.
Most people have cellular phones. I'm not one of them. My post is a counterpoint to the article, stating that there are 3.3 BILLION cell accounts. Not everyone has one, and not everyone on
I'm not a luddite, either. I'm an Electrical Engineer who has done a fair bit of work "advancing our tech level." Some of the things I've worked on are Penokio, P25 radio, and Project Lifesaver. I've literally used my craft to save lives. That's probably more than that mod can say.
Also, it's nice to be first. I've been waiting for seven years.
I've never required a cellular phone.
I've never missed having one, even when my wife was quite pregnant.
Wrong.
This is Canada. We have more guns per capita than the US. We're a nation of hunters and trappers. What's the government going to do, drop a Victoria-class submarine on me? (That's all they're good for.)
But guns are so 20-th century. What you can do now is jam their cellphones, blackberries, laptops, and internet access, and tell them that trying to fix the problem is against the new copyright legislation.