Hey, if they want to do this, shouldn't they petition to have a top-level domain set aside for Sealand?
Unfortunately, the domains that would make mnemonic sense are already assigned to Sweden (.se), Saudi Arabia (.sa), Sierra Leone (.sl), Senegal (.sn), and Sudan (.sd). But.sf,.sp,.sq,.ss,.su,.sw, and.sx all seem to be available.
I agree. There is already a competing service that is superior in many respects (but unfortunately is limited to a handful of metropolitan markets). Like SightSound.com, it offers video-on-demand. Unlike SightSound.com, it has many times as many titles, there is no loss in video or audio quality, it uses a tiny fraction of the bandwidth (transfer time is under an hour even with a 28.8 kbps modem), and it doesn't even require a Pentium II or Windows.
Does anyone know how much this player's software will let you fine-tune the encoding when it rips? Will it let you choose between stereo, joint stereo, and mono? Also notably absent from the on-line literature is any mention of Xing's Variable Bit Rate encoding.
I think it transfers more than just the table of contents. My hunch is that it is doing something akin to an "intro scan," checking the first chunk of bits from each track and sending them back to the server before the server is satisfied that you have a legal copy. So scratched CDs could pose a problem.
I looked up the ECMAScript Language Specification. (Thanks for mentioning it; I had not heard of it before.) It is careful to point out that getYear() is not officially part of the specification, but the definition given is based on Netscape's getYear(), not Microsoft's. The function it recommends that is part of the specification is getFullYear().
I first found out about The Hacker's Diet a few years ago. It is an entertaining read and makes a lot of sense. It inspired me to go out and buy a scale, which I didn't own up until then.
I was happy to discover the new Palm tools last month. I had been using a program called WeightLog, which I didn't like much. The "Eat Watch" program with its moving averages is excellent and gives you pretty swift feedback on what your diet is doing to your weight. (It has been progressing steadily downward this month, but the Godfather's pizza I had on Saturday already made a noticeable blip on the chart!)
But I must say I have some issues with the exercise program (even though I have been trying to get into the habit of doing it just to do some kind of exercise). Walker claims to have based it on the Royal Canadian Air Force's "5BX" exercise program. When I did some rudimentary Web research on this program, I discovered that the RCAF itself recommends not using this program anymore: "...the exercise principles of the program have long been proven invalid--or even hazardous--by scientific advances in modern exercise physiology." Going by the ACSM Fitness Book from the American College of Sports Medicine (a book I had for years before reading The Hacker's Diet), the exercises that are ineffective or potentially hazardous appear to be the standing toe touches, the full sit-ups, and the jumping jacks.
It would be nice if The Hacker's Diet exercise program could be reworked into something like the program recommended in the ACSM's book. Admittedly, that program is more complicated and it might take more convincing to get the average hacker to stay on it. Maybe a happy medium could be found. I'm envisioning a new document: Hacking the Hacker's Diet.:-)
It appears that Netscape's version of the getYear() function returns the correct year minus 1900; while in Microsoft's, it returns the correct year minus 1900 only if the year is earlier than 2000, otherwise it simply returns the year. Neither is great (why not just return the stupid year?), but at least in Netscape's version it behaves logically.
In my copy of Netscape Communicator 4.7, the current date is filled in correctly. In my copy of Internet Explorer 5.0, the date is filled in with the year 3900. Could it be a bug in getYear()? Microsoft's support site says I am up-to-date with patches. And I haven't seen any company put out more Y2K patches than Microsoft.
You appear to be correct. According to this short paper by Jessica Apple, it's still uncertain who first invented the telescope, but it wasn't Galileo. (The Dutch gentleman you were trying to remember was Hans Lippershey.)
Yeah, isn't that sad? "Presentation is more important than content. Screw you if you're blind." This is not the Web the way Tim wanted it. A lot of great features of HTML and HTTP have gone unused because webmasters care only about their sites looking pretty. Interoperability, link maintenance, etc. are seldom considered. (At least W3History does make use of content language negotiation; some multilingual sites don't even bother to do that.)
Their site seems to be down right now. And this was before this story appeared, so I think something else is going on other than the Slashdot Effect. Anybody know what's going on?
P.S. I submitted order number 7 after they opened their site yesterday. Nyah, nyah, nyah.:-)
I had to look up this story at CNet to know what on earth you were talking about. Gotta love MAPS. They sure deserve my $35/year more than NSI does.
Hmmm, interesting... part of it says: "[Jonathan] Emery [NSI's general counsel] added that far from being spam, NSI's emails were 'vital catalysts to free and open commerce,' and that customers have the ability to get off the marketing list."
Someone tell me where the opt-out page on NSI's Web site is, please, I beg you!
"The narrowing focus means that mega-sites will dictate trends that emphasize convention while 'dissenters'--like small newspapers and public-access cable--will ultimately wield little influence."
At least it's infinitely easier for the "dissenters" to get out there on the Web than in the traditional media. And it's easier still for the people who really want to find those "dissenters" to do so on the Web.
Oh, wait, I forgot about paid placement on search engines.
IANAFA (I Am Not A Financial Advisor), but my understanding is that this practice is derisively known as "flipping" and is a good way to guarantee that you will have a much more difficult time getting in on future IPOs.
My guess is that the idea is being implemented with a goal NOT to be the sole source of charging power for the battery (otherwise why have a battery at all?), but rather to stretch the amount of time the battery can power the notebook on a single charge. This would be similar to the idea of regenerative braking in electric vehicles.
This does make the mind wander with all kinds of other possibilities. What about capturing the energy of ambient sound waves? Then the swearing and cursing prompted by the Blue Screen Of Death could actually be put to constructive use.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
What about a compromise: keys arranged in hexagonal honeycomb fashion?
It's a nice idea, but the Palm version still wastes screen space. It would be better if they could do something like what Silkyboard does for QWERTY.
Unfortunately, the domains that would make mnemonic sense are already assigned to Sweden (.se), Saudi Arabia (.sa), Sierra Leone (.sl), Senegal (.sn), and Sudan (.sd). But .sf, .sp, .sq, .ss, .su, .sw, and .sx all seem to be available.
Reworking free-trade agreements so that they don't benefit companies that pollute would be a good start.
Guess who? :-)
Does anyone know how much this player's software will let you fine-tune the encoding when it rips? Will it let you choose between stereo, joint stereo, and mono? Also notably absent from the on-line literature is any mention of Xing's Variable Bit Rate encoding.
I think it transfers more than just the table of contents. My hunch is that it is doing something akin to an "intro scan," checking the first chunk of bits from each track and sending them back to the server before the server is satisfied that you have a legal copy. So scratched CDs could pose a problem.
I looked up the ECMAScript Language Specification. (Thanks for mentioning it; I had not heard of it before.) It is careful to point out that getYear() is not officially part of the specification, but the definition given is based on Netscape's getYear(), not Microsoft's. The function it recommends that is part of the specification is getFullYear().
I first found out about The Hacker's Diet a few years ago. It is an entertaining read and makes a lot of sense. It inspired me to go out and buy a scale, which I didn't own up until then.
I was happy to discover the new Palm tools last month. I had been using a program called WeightLog, which I didn't like much. The "Eat Watch" program with its moving averages is excellent and gives you pretty swift feedback on what your diet is doing to your weight. (It has been progressing steadily downward this month, but the Godfather's pizza I had on Saturday already made a noticeable blip on the chart!)
But I must say I have some issues with the exercise program (even though I have been trying to get into the habit of doing it just to do some kind of exercise). Walker claims to have based it on the Royal Canadian Air Force's "5BX" exercise program. When I did some rudimentary Web research on this program, I discovered that the RCAF itself recommends not using this program anymore: "...the exercise principles of the program have long been proven invalid--or even hazardous--by scientific advances in modern exercise physiology." Going by the ACSM Fitness Book from the American College of Sports Medicine (a book I had for years before reading The Hacker's Diet), the exercises that are ineffective or potentially hazardous appear to be the standing toe touches, the full sit-ups, and the jumping jacks.
It would be nice if The Hacker's Diet exercise program could be reworked into something like the program recommended in the ACSM's book. Admittedly, that program is more complicated and it might take more convincing to get the average hacker to stay on it. Maybe a happy medium could be found. I'm envisioning a new document: Hacking the Hacker's Diet. :-)
It appears that Netscape's version of the getYear() function returns the correct year minus 1900; while in Microsoft's, it returns the correct year minus 1900 only if the year is earlier than 2000, otherwise it simply returns the year. Neither is great (why not just return the stupid year?), but at least in Netscape's version it behaves logically.
Check this out:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/calen dar/
In my copy of Netscape Communicator 4.7, the current date is filled in correctly. In my copy of Internet Explorer 5.0, the date is filled in with the year 3900. Could it be a bug in getYear()? Microsoft's support site says I am up-to-date with patches. And I haven't seen any company put out more Y2K patches than Microsoft.
You appear to be correct. According to this short paper by Jessica Apple, it's still uncertain who first invented the telescope, but it wasn't Galileo. (The Dutch gentleman you were trying to remember was Hans Lippershey.)
Countdown to the Millennium
Yeah, isn't that sad? "Presentation is more important than content. Screw you if you're blind." This is not the Web the way Tim wanted it. A lot of great features of HTML and HTTP have gone unused because webmasters care only about their sites looking pretty. Interoperability, link maintenance, etc. are seldom considered. (At least W3History does make use of content language negotiation; some multilingual sites don't even bother to do that.)
Slow, nothing. I've been getting refused connections.
Their site seems to be down right now. And this was before this story appeared, so I think something else is going on other than the Slashdot Effect. Anybody know what's going on?
P.S. I submitted order number 7 after they opened their site yesterday. Nyah, nyah, nyah. :-)
Hmmm, no Linux binaries yet as of 16:15 PDT. But the most recent binaries were posted 7 minutes ago, so maybe they're still building them. :-)
Another good book on this subject is AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis (ISBN: 0471197130).
http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/perlin/ demos/quikwriting.html
Define "lately." :-)
I had to look up this story at CNet to know what on earth you were talking about. Gotta love MAPS. They sure deserve my $35/year more than NSI does.
Hmmm, interesting... part of it says: "[Jonathan] Emery [NSI's general counsel] added that far from being spam, NSI's emails were 'vital catalysts to free and open commerce,' and that customers have the ability to get off the marketing list."
Someone tell me where the opt-out page on NSI's Web site is, please, I beg you!
"The narrowing focus means that mega-sites will dictate trends that emphasize convention while 'dissenters'--like small newspapers and public-access cable--will ultimately wield little influence."
At least it's infinitely easier for the "dissenters" to get out there on the Web than in the traditional media. And it's easier still for the people who really want to find those "dissenters" to do so on the Web.
Oh, wait, I forgot about paid placement on search engines.
*sigh*
Does anyone know how this relates to the long-in-the-works Uniform Resource Name standard? I thought URNs were supposed to replace URLs years ago.
IANAFA (I Am Not A Financial Advisor), but my understanding is that this practice is derisively known as "flipping" and is a good way to guarantee that you will have a much more difficult time getting in on future IPOs.
He was flying at night, in a haze, and he didn't have his instrument rating. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
My guess is that the idea is being implemented with a goal NOT to be the sole source of charging power for the battery (otherwise why have a battery at all?), but rather to stretch the amount of time the battery can power the notebook on a single charge. This would be similar to the idea of regenerative braking in electric vehicles.
;-)
This does make the mind wander with all kinds of other possibilities. What about capturing the energy of ambient sound waves? Then the swearing and cursing prompted by the Blue Screen Of Death could actually be put to constructive use.