In her interview with Charles Gibson, Sarah Palin claimed to have foreign policy experience because, "You can see Russia from Alaska." Is this true?
I see that you are from part of the world without figures of speech.
I imagine that Palin can "see" Russia in the same way that small towns in the Midwest can "see" Mexico. Even if you're not physically looking at it, you're aware of its presence and have to take it into account when making long-term plans.
I do wish the Funny mod wouldn't make so many posts appear so prominently on a thread.
If that ever changed, I'd stop reading it. I already get all the dry tech news I need, but come to Slashdot for the twisted geek view on things. A huge part of that is a shared sense of humor, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Think of Slashdot as a bar you go to after work. Sure, you'll hear some serious conversations, but you'll hear a lot more people telling jokes and enjoying themselves away from the office.
America, watch and learn. That's how ludicrous we find theories that you find worthy of debate
We're watching - to see how our favorite pupil, the UK, has learned our lessons. Strident over-reactions to an inaccurate paraphrase rather than a thoughtful analysis of the source material? It seems that we've taught you well.
So they're asking the gov't to determine whether Google has to highly rank link farms?
Yes, Google absolutely has the right to pick and choose results. They're the sole owners of their data and may present it any way they want. By what legal theory could that possibly be untrue?
The student almost certainly signed an agreement stating the terms of use for the university network. And he almost certainly broke that agreement. If that's the case, then I don't see how the university's response is wrong.
That's an excellent point. The TOS at my kids' elementary school says that computer crime is a serious offense, and that one aspect of computer crime is downloading copyrighted content. Because the people who wrote the TOS are not lawyers, they did not take into account that almost everything on the Internet is copyrighted - including the word's I'm writing at this moment. So, if my kids view a web page, they can be expelled.
And I'm OK with that! That's the TOS, and if they break it they should face the consequences. That's because I'm a jackass and don't understand the difference between "legal" and "right".
Hurt us all? I'm typing this on a FreeBSD desktop, and FreeBSD is getting a lot of attention lately from people who want to play with ZFS. Some of us are perfectly OK with Linus's bullheadedness (although I otherwise completely agree with you).
Until Microsoft opens their own shops and controls their own hardware OEM, they can't quite duplicate the same experience that Apple has at their stores.
If Microsoft opened their own shops, I'm 99% sure they'd look and feel exactly like Best Buy already does.
Walking into an Apple store is like visiting a BMW dealership: everything is wood and polished aluminum and sparkly. Walking into a Microsoft store would be like visiting a Kia dealer: it might look and smell like greasy plastic, but hey! It's cheaper!
Then again, I'm partial to FreeBSD. Their store would be staffed with guys in jeans, flannel shirts buttoned all the way up, and hiking shoes, and might smell like wood smoke or patchouli. Actually, I think I just described my office. Minus the patchouli. Eww.
That's what FreeBSD uses - a nice backend to the OSS API. I set a sysctl to my system to always use the second sound card by default, and another to allow up to 8 processes to play sounds simultaneously (I picked 8 arbitrarily. It seemed sufficient). Everything writes to/dev/dsp to make noise and it always works.
Seriously, it's miles better than ALSA ever was on my Linux desktop.
OK, fair enough: I only manage about 10,000 songs this way. It's been about three years since I last installed iTunes (without any plugin or anything else), so I don't remember if it had a "duplicate file - skip or add?" dialog. Perhaps it did, and you told it to always add and don't ask again?
Anyway, all I know is that it works perfectly here on three different machines - I said two earlier but I'd forgotten about the kids' computer - so I'm not sure what to tell you.
On top of all of the crappiness of iTunes, my biggest problem with it is that if you plan on using iTunes, you *have* to manage your media with it. There's no "rescan library" function.
Ummm, what? I have iTunes on a couple of Macs that use a Samba share for a common music pool (along with my Linux laptop). When I add new music to the shared directory, the worst case scenario is that it doesn't appear in iTunes unless I drag the folder onto the iTunes window. If I've added a whole lot of songs, like when ripping a batch of CDs, I just drag the "root" music folder onto the iTunes window and it re-indexes the whole thing (without adding duplicates).
Now, I much prefer Amarok where the whole process is even easier, but it's not very difficult in iTunes to begin with.
D'oh. I don't know how that escaped me. I guess I was picturing a big, heavy uranium rod versus a nice light panel, not pausing to think that you'd get a whole awful lot more power per unit mass from the uranium.
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In her interview with Charles Gibson, Sarah Palin claimed to have foreign policy experience because, "You can see Russia from Alaska." Is this true?
I see that you are from part of the world without figures of speech.
I imagine that Palin can "see" Russia in the same way that small towns in the Midwest can "see" Mexico. Even if you're not physically looking at it, you're aware of its presence and have to take it into account when making long-term plans.
I do wish the Funny mod wouldn't make so many posts appear so prominently on a thread.
If that ever changed, I'd stop reading it. I already get all the dry tech news I need, but come to Slashdot for the twisted geek view on things. A huge part of that is a shared sense of humor, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Think of Slashdot as a bar you go to after work. Sure, you'll hear some serious conversations, but you'll hear a lot more people telling jokes and enjoying themselves away from the office.
I have to wonder if this wasn't a large matter/antimatter event.
That's optimistic. I have to wonder if they found the Higgs boson.
You know, I tried hard to think of something funny here. There's just not a punch line you can add to this.
To paraphrase Hank Hill, this acquisition is the feces that is produced when shame eats too much stupidity.
America, watch and learn. That's how ludicrous we find theories that you find worthy of debate
We're watching - to see how our favorite pupil, the UK, has learned our lessons. Strident over-reactions to an inaccurate paraphrase rather than a thoughtful analysis of the source material? It seems that we've taught you well.
Creationisum is an insult to the glory of God.
It's also an insult to his sincerity. Young-Earth creationists would have us believe in a God who loves nothing more than to screw with our heads.
I would gladly take CD checks over limited installs any day.
That's not so convenient for owners of new computers without optical drives.
As it turns out, there are places like home.
How's that keyboard work velcroed to a server rack so you can read CPU frequency and server load without firing up a monitor?
Devices like this are kind of like the Eee PC. If you get it, it's great. If you don't, it makes no sense whatsoever.
Yes.
And can anyone point me to a bit torrent of an actual Miley Cyrus CD instead of garbage binaries?
As the parent of a pre-teen girl who has said CD, let me assure you that you're drawing a distinction that does not exist.
So they're asking the gov't to determine whether Google has to highly rank link farms?
Yes, Google absolutely has the right to pick and choose results. They're the sole owners of their data and may present it any way they want. By what legal theory could that possibly be untrue?
The student almost certainly signed an agreement stating the terms of use for the university network. And he almost certainly broke that agreement. If that's the case, then I don't see how the university's response is wrong.
That's an excellent point. The TOS at my kids' elementary school says that computer crime is a serious offense, and that one aspect of computer crime is downloading copyrighted content. Because the people who wrote the TOS are not lawyers, they did not take into account that almost everything on the Internet is copyrighted - including the word's I'm writing at this moment. So, if my kids view a web page, they can be expelled.
And I'm OK with that! That's the TOS, and if they break it they should face the consequences. That's because I'm a jackass and don't understand the difference between "legal" and "right".
Our lawyers need to grow up and stop being such babies about interpreting the letter of the law, but that has its own problems.
Yeah, minor problems like being able to clearly know what is legal or not.
None of this has anything to do with actual software. It has to do with image. Strung out felons tend to not help create a good image.
Yeah. Stoners are bad publicity.
Hurt us all? I'm typing this on a FreeBSD desktop, and FreeBSD is getting a lot of attention lately from people who want to play with ZFS. Some of us are perfectly OK with Linus's bullheadedness (although I otherwise completely agree with you).
Until the people they convinced to buy Vista come back to the store in a black fart of rage
Either you mistyped "fit" or you have some seriously unpleasant anger issues.
Until Microsoft opens their own shops and controls their own hardware OEM, they can't quite duplicate the same experience that Apple has at their stores.
If Microsoft opened their own shops, I'm 99% sure they'd look and feel exactly like Best Buy already does.
Walking into an Apple store is like visiting a BMW dealership: everything is wood and polished aluminum and sparkly. Walking into a Microsoft store would be like visiting a Kia dealer: it might look and smell like greasy plastic, but hey! It's cheaper!
Then again, I'm partial to FreeBSD. Their store would be staffed with guys in jeans, flannel shirts buttoned all the way up, and hiking shoes, and might smell like wood smoke or patchouli. Actually, I think I just described my office. Minus the patchouli. Eww.
Any Best Buy employee explaining Windows "inappropriately" will be taken out back by a Windows Guru and "evangelized".
"This sucks - avoid it" is appropriate, although perhaps not what they intended.
That's what FreeBSD uses - a nice backend to the OSS API. I set a sysctl to my system to always use the second sound card by default, and another to allow up to 8 processes to play sounds simultaneously (I picked 8 arbitrarily. It seemed sufficient). Everything writes to /dev/dsp to make noise and it always works.
Seriously, it's miles better than ALSA ever was on my Linux desktop.
OK, fair enough: I only manage about 10,000 songs this way. It's been about three years since I last installed iTunes (without any plugin or anything else), so I don't remember if it had a "duplicate file - skip or add?" dialog. Perhaps it did, and you told it to always add and don't ask again?
Anyway, all I know is that it works perfectly here on three different machines - I said two earlier but I'd forgotten about the kids' computer - so I'm not sure what to tell you.
On the one Vista machine I can't get rid of? Trained pigeons, apparently.
For other devices, it's just not possible under Windows. Try writing a user-mode graphics driver and get back to me.
Fixed that for you, because I don't see anything resembling "ATI" or "Radeon" in
and yet here I am looking at a nice eyecandyful KDE desktop.
On top of all of the crappiness of iTunes, my biggest problem with it is that if you plan on using iTunes, you *have* to manage your media with it. There's no "rescan library" function.
Ummm, what? I have iTunes on a couple of Macs that use a Samba share for a common music pool (along with my Linux laptop). When I add new music to the shared directory, the worst case scenario is that it doesn't appear in iTunes unless I drag the folder onto the iTunes window. If I've added a whole lot of songs, like when ripping a batch of CDs, I just drag the "root" music folder onto the iTunes window and it re-indexes the whole thing (without adding duplicates).
Now, I much prefer Amarok where the whole process is even easier, but it's not very difficult in iTunes to begin with.
D'oh. I don't know how that escaped me. I guess I was picturing a big, heavy uranium rod versus a nice light panel, not pausing to think that you'd get a whole awful lot more power per unit mass from the uranium.