increases the transparency of a window so that you can see through it
Marvellous. Just as users of current operating systems have ben doing for years anyway.
turns a window on its side so that it sits at the edge of a screen like a book on a book shelf
Hmm. Potentially interesting as a way to pick between open windows, but doesn't Expose perform this task in a better manner?
turns a window completely around and leaves a note on the back
Ah, how terribly useful. Hidden, non-obvious information in a GUI. Superb.
and takes a database of CDs presented as physical CDs, that you flip through, reading the labels, just as you would with real CDs, until you locate the one you want.
Except that in the real world I can never find the bloody CDs, because I can't remember where I've put them. I can navigate a media player interface far faster than I can hunt for CDs, and I can use more search criteria too (album, artist etc.)
Nope - stunningly unimpressed. A computer GUI is an abstraction of the real world, not the real world itself. Applying the same clutter you find in the real world would make the interface worse, not better.
Meanwile, I think in the 10 minutes or so while the customer was arguing with the waiter, they probably sold several hundered dollars worth of Beer to the many people that were there.
And hence the concept of opportunity cost - it cost the pub $7 in lost business to gain the opportunity to make more standardised meals for everyone else, which in turn led to more money than the original $7. If the guy truly was smart, he'd have known that. It's a very basic, pre-University level piece of economics.
By the way - the City? As in London's Square Mile? That's where I work - interested to know which pub and whether it was any good.
Time to stop using your Bank of Tehran MASTERCARD that has been accruing frequent flier bonuses.
At the time of the first Gulf War I was at University, and I took a summer job selling computer games (16 bit stuff). We had been told by the various credit card companies that if we saw certain cards we were to cut them up in front of the owner.
One such class of cards was 'anything ever issued in Kuwait'. And, amazingly, I actually served a customer who tried to pay using a Kuwaiti-issued credit card. You can imagine how delighted he was to see me retain the card and shred it into tiny pieces in front of him. Really happy, he was.
Now, the Kuwaitis were the people we were supposed to be on the side of, right? Yet we refused any Kuwaiti currency. Similarly, I would have thought that trying to launder ill-gotten gains by buying copies of Turikan for the Amiga might have taken quite some time. Despite that, into the shredder the card remnants went.
Douglas Adams was wrong. There's is no Shoe Event Horizon, instead make way for the Phone Event Horizon.
I mean, it fits the pattern. Every second store on the high street is a phone store. Phones are made increasingly more difficult to use, and are replaced more and more frequently until eventually it becomes uneconomic to open anything other than a phone shop.
I warned you. Don't say I didn't warn you when the Phone Warriors are sent in. Relax and enjoy your phones. They are very stylish and fashionable...
For anyone planning on watching this, now would be a good time to read (or re-read) the books.
I'm not suggesting that the books are about to disappear. Nor am I implying that the TV series will be terrible. I have no idea how well the product will turn out, and the books will be as available after as they are before.
No, what I'm saying is that pretty soon this series will influence your view of things, whether you want it to or not. I'm seeing this with my nephews, who are reading Lord of the Rings directly after seeing the films. They're seeing the book as much more action-packed than I did, and I'm sure that this is due to expectation after watching the films.
So read them now, and then watch with interest. You're going to be influenced - can't help but be, but at least you'll have your own ideas in place beforehand.
Simply clipping the wire does not fix the issue for anyone but the ISP.
It fixes the issue for me as well. And you. And, in fact, anyone at all who isn't the person infected.
Having said that, I agree with your point about prior contact. I'm fully in favour of cutting off virused connections however, and in a reasonably swift time limit too.
Does anyone know a source for reasonable priced arcade cabinets in the UK? I rather fancy sticking a MAME box together, but don't have the time or inclination to actually build the cabinet.
Failing that, how easy is it to convert older actual arcade cabinets over? Or is that a "how long is a piece of string"-style question...?
Yes. And the insurance premiums in Tokyo just dropped by a third. Particularly for that petrol station. Yes, that petrol station. You know the one. I think it was trodden in all twenty-eight films...
they're rereleasing the orig 1954 B&W Godzilla in the USA in spring/summer
Thank god for that. You know, despite being a Godzilla fan I've never actually seen the original. It never gets broadcast, and it's not available on DVD that I've found (I'm in the UK).
Anyone know differently? Does the original exist, preferably on a region 2 DVD?
And you are still employed??? Man, you are my hero!
Happy to oblige.:-). Yep, still employed. Actually, part way through all of that (about 2002'ish) I switched to become contract, but I still have my contract with one of the places I was saying no to there.
Right on! Away from the office you are Slashdot user #323026, and post comments like #8461887. Or... hang on... are you posting from work? Now I'm confused.
Want to be more confused? I'm posting from home. Via an SSH connection from work...:-)
Wrong, the company owns you. Those are the terms you agree to when you get hired.
Maybe in your private hell, or in the dreams of the HR department, but certainly not in reality - no. That's the whole point about local laws limiting that right.
For example, after stating that I was taking three weeks off following the birth of my son, I started getting phone calls about simple development questions that could easily have waited or been worked out by others. I politely reminded the people involved a couple of times, and put the phone down on them the next. No further calls.
For example, shortly before midnight 31st Dec 1999 I was called asking if I could just log on to a machine in Singapore to watch a log when the millenium ticked over. Answer - no, absolutely not.
For example, in the middle of moving house I was told to drop what I was doing and come into the company. Answer? No - of course not. If I don't complete the move I have nowhere to sleep tonight...
People should stop behaving in such a sheep-like fashion. Actually posting that a company 'owns' you and believing it? Good god man - for once the cliche applies, go out and get a life. And a backbone to go with that life - you'll need it at times when dealing with people who are trying to own you...
From the article: "You need to clearly define when and how your engineers can participate in open source projects on their personal time, and define the disclosure rules for your employees. Local employment laws may limit restrictions on your employees."
Damn right law might limit restrictions. My time is mine. Not a company's, mine. That's the very definition of personal time. I am not employee #3877643 away from the office, I am a human being who does work for a company during certain prescribed times and under certain prescribed circumstances.
They might well have legitimate rights over what I can contribute, but certainly not when if 'when' is part of my personal time.
Do you remember the movie that had the actor from 'John Boy' as the young inpresionable backwater farm planet...
Battle Beyond The Stars.
The whole western in space theme really worked for that film.
That's because the whole thing was a deliberate re-working of The Magnificent Seven, with Robert Vaughn in the same role he played in the Magnificent Seven (ie. no Man from Uncle reference). And yes, I'm aware that Magnificent Seven was itself a reworking of The Seven Samurai, but in this case Battle Beyond The Stars self-conciously referenced the Magnificent Seven, not the original Japanese film.
God forbid we sit and do nothing. It may cause us to think about our lives...We must all do our part to keep introspection at bay, lest we realize things are not as perfect as they seem.
Yep. Glad to see you're avoiding this profound philosophical problem by keeping yourself busy posting about it on Slashdot...
It also shows typical Slashdot thinking - why mention HP and MIT, and leave Microsoft out, other than because Microsoft is Satan, even when they also hire the best and brightest after they've distinguished themselves elsewhere?
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Or as applied to this article, I tried to summarise it according to where I thought they were working when they got the prize. I must have misread - I thought the people in question were actually at MIT and HP when the work was done. I knew the two Microsoft employees weren't at Microsoft though, hence no mention.
In other words, no malice. Just crass incompetence on my part...
" When you rely on free or low-cost products, you often get the shaft, and that, in my opinion, is exactly what governments are on track to get"
Aah, the sweet sweet tones of language in the hands of a master. What subtlety, what charm, what wit. Prithee kind sir, wherefore is thy prose, thy grasp upon the fundamentals comprising the very art of speech itself?
English Grade: C-, should learn not to use informal language when making a formal argument.
But many years down the road, while some STILL play PS1 games on their PS2s they are in the minority (and they are also known as cheap-skates;).
Ooh, I don't know about that:-). For example, I still play Worms on the PS2 - not any of the sequels, which I dislike, but the first PS1 release of Worms. Pong too - the PS1 release of Pong was a good laugh, and hasn't been seen natively on the PS2.
The lame tie-ins you mention...well, I have a GBA, a GMA/Cube connection lead and also a Gameboy Player for the Cube. Allows me to play both decent and recent 2D games on the big screen, and I like 2D. No, I don't find that lame at all.
The connector - yes, I'd agree with you there. It's a bit off expecting people who've paid for your game and the console to run it from to also pay for a handheld (Zelda:Windwaker tie-in) and sometimes even an extra game as well (Metroid Fusion/Metroid Prime tie-in).
I still think compatibility is important personally. Or emulation at least - it sounds like the kind of hardware they're chucking at this new X-Box should be able to handle emulation of 766Mhz Celeron.
Nintendo's strategy was to underprice the behemoths, and they are still hanging on.
They're doing a tad more than 'hanging on'. They're in second position worldwide, with the US being the only place they're in third. It used to be that in the UK they were third too, but following the drastic price-cut they're second here too at the moment.
The PS2 remains drastically ahead of both however, and why? Well certainly brand awareness is one, but backwards compatibility would be another...
...[i]t needs some sort of MS Office replacement, which at the moment it doesn't have.
True, at least in my opinion. Appleworks is stagnant, and hasn't even integrated some standard OS X features yet. Realtime spell-checking comes to mind, I'm fairly sure I was doing that using 1st Word Plus on an 8Mhz Atari ST 512k more than ten years ago...
Slashdot Mirror
- increases the transparency of a window so that you can see through it
- turns a window on its side so that it sits at the edge of a screen like a book on a book shelf
- turns a window completely around and leaves a note on the back
- and takes a database of CDs presented as physical CDs, that you flip through, reading the labels, just as you would with real CDs, until you locate the one you want.
Nope - stunningly unimpressed. A computer GUI is an abstraction of the real world, not the real world itself. Applying the same clutter you find in the real world would make the interface worse, not better.Marvellous. Just as users of current operating systems have ben doing for years anyway.
Hmm. Potentially interesting as a way to pick between open windows, but doesn't Expose perform this task in a better manner?
Ah, how terribly useful. Hidden, non-obvious information in a GUI. Superb.
Except that in the real world I can never find the bloody CDs, because I can't remember where I've put them. I can navigate a media player interface far faster than I can hunt for CDs, and I can use more search criteria too (album, artist etc.)
Cheers,
Ian
(biased nonsense deleted)
Hardly.
Cheers,
Ian
And hence the concept of opportunity cost - it cost the pub $7 in lost business to gain the opportunity to make more standardised meals for everyone else, which in turn led to more money than the original $7. If the guy truly was smart, he'd have known that. It's a very basic, pre-University level piece of economics.
By the way - the City? As in London's Square Mile? That's where I work - interested to know which pub and whether it was any good.
Cheers,
Ian
Cheers,
Ian
At the time of the first Gulf War I was at University, and I took a summer job selling computer games (16 bit stuff). We had been told by the various credit card companies that if we saw certain cards we were to cut them up in front of the owner.
One such class of cards was 'anything ever issued in Kuwait'. And, amazingly, I actually served a customer who tried to pay using a Kuwaiti-issued credit card. You can imagine how delighted he was to see me retain the card and shred it into tiny pieces in front of him. Really happy, he was.
Now, the Kuwaitis were the people we were supposed to be on the side of, right? Yet we refused any Kuwaiti currency. Similarly, I would have thought that trying to launder ill-gotten gains by buying copies of Turikan for the Amiga might have taken quite some time. Despite that, into the shredder the card remnants went.
Talk about using a blunderbuss approach...
Cheers,
Ian
I mean, it fits the pattern. Every second store on the high street is a phone store. Phones are made increasingly more difficult to use, and are replaced more and more frequently until eventually it becomes uneconomic to open anything other than a phone shop.
I warned you. Don't say I didn't warn you when the Phone Warriors are sent in. Relax and enjoy your phones. They are very stylish and fashionable...
Cheers,
Ian
I'm not suggesting that the books are about to disappear. Nor am I implying that the TV series will be terrible. I have no idea how well the product will turn out, and the books will be as available after as they are before.
No, what I'm saying is that pretty soon this series will influence your view of things, whether you want it to or not. I'm seeing this with my nephews, who are reading Lord of the Rings directly after seeing the films. They're seeing the book as much more action-packed than I did, and I'm sure that this is due to expectation after watching the films.
So read them now, and then watch with interest. You're going to be influenced - can't help but be, but at least you'll have your own ideas in place beforehand.
Cheers,
Ian
No. It's just that they've had too much to drink...
Cheers,
Ian
It fixes the issue for me as well. And you. And, in fact, anyone at all who isn't the person infected.
Having said that, I agree with your point about prior contact. I'm fully in favour of cutting off virused connections however, and in a reasonably swift time limit too.
Cheers,
Ian
Failing that, how easy is it to convert older actual arcade cabinets over? Or is that a "how long is a piece of string"-style question...?
Cheers,
Ian
Yes. And the insurance premiums in Tokyo just dropped by a third. Particularly for that petrol station. Yes, that petrol station. You know the one. I think it was trodden in all twenty-eight films...
Cheers,
Ian
Thank god for that. You know, despite being a Godzilla fan I've never actually seen the original. It never gets broadcast, and it's not available on DVD that I've found (I'm in the UK).
Anyone know differently? Does the original exist, preferably on a region 2 DVD?
Cheers,
Ian
Happy to oblige. :-). Yep, still employed. Actually, part way through all of that (about 2002'ish) I switched to become contract, but I still have my contract with one of the places I was saying no to there.
Cheers,
Ian
Want to be more confused? I'm posting from home. Via an SSH connection from work... :-)
Cheers,
Ian
Maybe in your private hell, or in the dreams of the HR department, but certainly not in reality - no. That's the whole point about local laws limiting that right.
For example, after stating that I was taking three weeks off following the birth of my son, I started getting phone calls about simple development questions that could easily have waited or been worked out by others. I politely reminded the people involved a couple of times, and put the phone down on them the next. No further calls.
For example, shortly before midnight 31st Dec 1999 I was called asking if I could just log on to a machine in Singapore to watch a log when the millenium ticked over. Answer - no, absolutely not.
For example, in the middle of moving house I was told to drop what I was doing and come into the company. Answer? No - of course not. If I don't complete the move I have nowhere to sleep tonight...
People should stop behaving in such a sheep-like fashion. Actually posting that a company 'owns' you and believing it? Good god man - for once the cliche applies, go out and get a life. And a backbone to go with that life - you'll need it at times when dealing with people who are trying to own you...
Cheers, Ian
Damn right law might limit restrictions. My time is mine. Not a company's, mine. That's the very definition of personal time. I am not employee #3877643 away from the office, I am a human being who does work for a company during certain prescribed times and under certain prescribed circumstances.
They might well have legitimate rights over what I can contribute, but certainly not when if 'when' is part of my personal time.
Cheers,
Ian
Battle Beyond The Stars.
The whole western in space theme really worked for that film.
That's because the whole thing was a deliberate re-working of The Magnificent Seven, with Robert Vaughn in the same role he played in the Magnificent Seven (ie. no Man from Uncle reference). And yes, I'm aware that Magnificent Seven was itself a reworking of The Seven Samurai, but in this case Battle Beyond The Stars self-conciously referenced the Magnificent Seven, not the original Japanese film.
Cheers,
Ian
Yep. Glad to see you're avoiding this profound philosophical problem by keeping yourself busy posting about it on Slashdot...
Cheers,
Ian
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Or as applied to this article, I tried to summarise it according to where I thought they were working when they got the prize. I must have misread - I thought the people in question were actually at MIT and HP when the work was done. I knew the two Microsoft employees weren't at Microsoft though, hence no mention.
In other words, no malice. Just crass incompetence on my part...
Cheers,
Ian
Cheers,
Ian
Aah, the sweet sweet tones of language in the hands of a master. What subtlety, what charm, what wit. Prithee kind sir, wherefore is thy prose, thy grasp upon the fundamentals comprising the very art of speech itself?
English Grade: C-, should learn not to use informal language when making a formal argument.
Cheers,
Ian
Ooh, I don't know about that :-). For example, I still play Worms on the PS2 - not any of the sequels, which I dislike, but the first PS1 release of Worms. Pong too - the PS1 release of Pong was a good laugh, and hasn't been seen natively on the PS2.
The lame tie-ins you mention...well, I have a GBA, a GMA/Cube connection lead and also a Gameboy Player for the Cube. Allows me to play both decent and recent 2D games on the big screen, and I like 2D. No, I don't find that lame at all.
The connector - yes, I'd agree with you there. It's a bit off expecting people who've paid for your game and the console to run it from to also pay for a handheld (Zelda:Windwaker tie-in) and sometimes even an extra game as well (Metroid Fusion/Metroid Prime tie-in).
I still think compatibility is important personally. Or emulation at least - it sounds like the kind of hardware they're chucking at this new X-Box should be able to handle emulation of 766Mhz Celeron.
Cheers,
Ian
They're doing a tad more than 'hanging on'. They're in second position worldwide, with the US being the only place they're in third. It used to be that in the UK they were third too, but following the drastic price-cut they're second here too at the moment.
The PS2 remains drastically ahead of both however, and why? Well certainly brand awareness is one, but backwards compatibility would be another...
Cheers,
Ian
What, Magrathea built Mars too?
Cheers,
Ian
False
True, at least in my opinion. Appleworks is stagnant, and hasn't even integrated some standard OS X features yet. Realtime spell-checking comes to mind, I'm fairly sure I was doing that using 1st Word Plus on an 8Mhz Atari ST 512k more than ten years ago...
Cheers,
Ian