I read it on a comment yesterday, I couldn't believe it... but now I can, because I've seen it happen. Slashdot just served me a pop-up to thinkgeek! And this is on a mac running Safari, so the machine shouldn't have spyware on it.
Between the increase in slashvertisement, and now this... good bye, Slashdot! It's been good while it lasted.
I'm sure this will be moderated off-topic, but there's no meta forum so... besides, I don't care about my karma anymore. You can have it.
This would be a good idea for some people, but in most cases the resource we're optimizing against is not CPU, it's the user's attention. The more attention a person needs to give to BOINC (for example to understand the configuration options related to this new work exchange feature), the fewer users BOINC will get.
Go back to BOINC, attach to project using account key that was e-mailed to you (or e-mail address.)
Yes, except that cut/paste doesn't work on he Linux client. Oh, and you have to use the numbers on the keys above the letters, because the numeric pad doesn't work.
The grandparent post was being generous when it said that the client has numerous usability problems. I would say that if their other clients are as bad as the linux one, I expect they'll get no user whatsoever. When I'm donating cycles, I'm not going to be willing to spend much effort to install the software at all. Every extra step means they get fewer users.
I agree that manuals are nice, but they're disappearing fast. Even windows (or maybe I shouldn't say "even") has no useful manual anymore. Even the integrated help is dismal in my opinion (and I'm not saying Linux is perfect, far from it).
I agree that if the software you need is only on windows, then pick windows. That's never been in debate.
However the original point was ease of installation, and my experience is that installation is vastly easier on Linux. Granted, I don't often buy stuff that's expensive enough to have a manual that I'd care about (but I'm sure that if I buy Oracle for Linux it'll come with a couple binders of documentation).
Are there programs out there that have more than 8 bits per channel of color? Photoshop?
That's an honest question - are there even printers that are able to print at more than 8 bits per channel? Are there people who can tell the difference?
The location of the form is irrelevant, all that matters is that the action that it submits to is secured, and from a quick look at the HTML it is.
No, that's not enough. https gives you two things:
(1) it encrypts your answer, and (2) it authenticates the site you're talking to.
The situation with Chase does not provide guarantee number 2: if they're not using https then you would have to check the source every single time to make sure that no hacker replaced some packets in flight to steal your account information.
I agree with the grandparent: login pages that don't use https: are a pityful security practice, regardless of whether the form gets submitted over https.
We have that portability you're talking about at my school. In fact, we'had it for a while. I can use any of the machines on campus, and when I log in I get my desktop, with my settings (and keyboard shortcuts - can't forget those). If I save a file, it's saved to some central server thing and I can get to it from whenever.
The only thing I wonder is: why doesn't everyone do this?
Actually my favorite singularity fiction comes from Vernor Vinge. I think he actually came up with the singularity idea - the link goes to a 1993 talk in which he presents the idea.
I don't know whether we'll reach that singularity he talks about, but I really enjoy his books, for example the early True Names, or more recent books such as A deepness in the sky or A fire upon the deep. These last two are my two favorite science fiction books.
This would be a bug report if I didn't get that when trying to file one on their web site (click contribute, then bug report):
Bad Request Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand. Client sent malformed Host header
Anyways.
Steps to reproduce:
1) run the app through Java web start 2) click Edit, then General Options 3) click on the button next to "text font" 4) pick font size 12 instead of 11
expected: the text of emails has size 12
observed: the window closes, I'm back to the JavaWS window.
Someone from Columba is probably reading the article (how could they not notice the slashdotting?), so guys, fix your bug reporting system and add that report in there. The app looks good otherwise.
That's a bunch of bull. My parents computer has all kinds of problems and it's got nothing to do with how I use it.
Well I was talking about application bugs, not about machines that are messed up to begin with. Yes, software can be misconfigured in a way that makes it crash often - but that's not what I was talking about.
I was talking about machines that are properly maintained, like your parents' laptop apparently. It is my experience that when I get to a machine like that, I can often get applications to crash, much to the surprise of the machine owner. And my experience (again, it may be different from yours) is that the reason for all the crashes is that I do things that *should* work (using keyboard shortcuts, switching between applications, cut&paste, tab navigation, typing in boxes instead of clicking the "...", "browse" or "+/-" buttons) - and indeed they do work most of the time - but they don't work as reliably as the "normal" way.
And what I was saying is that my theory is that people mostly use the "normal" way because they learn over time what will break their machine.
In order to see that effect, you need to get someone into an environment he's not used to: a Linux person in front of a Windows machine, for example.
I agree with you that there's no need to run one app at a time now, unless you're seriously short on RAM. That just goes to show my point: how else do you explain my friend, who always closes Word before opening his web browser? It's a habit that was drilled into him, one crash at a time.
I believe the version of PowerPoint that crapped on me like that was from Office 2004 for MacOS. I'm not sure because it wasn't my machine; I can however tell you that I was able to reproduce the bug 3 times before finally giving up and doing it a different way (yes, I'm a slow learner). It may have been the specific font or something, I didn't investigate much beyond figuring out how to stop the software from crashing.
If you'd like an example of how people are trained by their computer, consider this: When working on the computer, how often do you save your work? Every day? hour? minute? If you save often, maybe that's because you have learned that programs tend to crash and lose your work.
I think what you saw there is not entirely the user being an idiot. Rather, the user was trained by his computer.
It may be hard to believe, but I have observed it and maybe other people have too: users are conditioned by their computers, in a very pavlovian way.
Consider this. Very often when I get on a friend's computer (these are usually windows), I make the computer crash in short order. Same thing with a Powerbook laptop recently. Why is that? Because I'm not trained yet.
User does X (for example, click on the "run" option) and then something bad happens (computer crashes, or things happen that user does not understand). User learns not to do X anymore.
If I ask my friend if there's anything special about the "font size" dialog on PowerPoint for MacOS, he'd say there's nothing wrong. But if you observe him, you see that he always uses it exactly the same way. Because he's an idiot? No. Because he's been conditioned. You see, then I come along, delete the current value "18 points" and start typing a new value. Computer freezes.
Turns out, this happens every time you delete the value in there. There's a bug in PowerPoint, if you delete the font size it'll try to generate a preview of 0-point text and die.
There are tons of other examples like this. Wonder why so many people never use more than one application at a time? It's a sure bet that they have two applications installed that tend to crash each other, and they've learned a way to work around it.
The computer is Pavlov. We're the dogs. I find this mildly disturbing.
I've had an HP LaserJet 4 since 1997 or so. Still works perfectly. Maybe your experience is with an inkjet printers? These, in my limited experience, are nowhere near the quality of even a decent laser printer -- and at the same time, they're much more expensive to use.
If the polar ice and the water around it had the same amount of salt, then you would be correct: the ice melting would not impact the ocean level.
However, when taking the different salinity into account, things change. As you know from Archimedes, the ice is displacing exactly enough water to offset its weight (that is, the displaced water weighs as much as the ice). The thing is, it takes less *saltwater* to do that than it would *freshwater*. So when the freshwater in the ice melts, the levels rise.
If you don't believe me, check this article, it includes a picture from an experiment.
You're right, the only problem with the summary is a problem of semantics. That is, the title says something that is not true, because it uses a word that has the wrong meaning (semantics=the meaning of language).
Another way of saying the same thing would be that everything is wrong with the summary. After all, this is text we're talking about; isn't meaning the whole point?
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot now serves pop-up ads!
I read it on a comment yesterday, I couldn't believe it... but now I can, because I've seen it happen. Slashdot just served me a pop-up to thinkgeek! And this is on a mac running Safari, so the machine shouldn't have spyware on it.
Between the increase in slashvertisement, and now this... good bye, Slashdot! It's been good while it lasted.
I'm sure this will be moderated off-topic, but there's no meta forum so... besides, I don't care about my karma anymore. You can have it.
This would be a good idea for some people, but in most cases the resource we're optimizing against is not CPU, it's the user's attention. The more attention a person needs to give to BOINC (for example to understand the configuration options related to this new work exchange feature), the fewer users BOINC will get.
Go back to BOINC, attach to project using account key that was e-mailed to you (or e-mail address.)
Yes, except that cut/paste doesn't work on he Linux client. Oh, and you have to use the numbers on the keys above the letters, because the numeric pad doesn't work.
The grandparent post was being generous when it said that the client has numerous usability problems. I would say that if their other clients are as bad as the linux one, I expect they'll get no user whatsoever. When I'm donating cycles, I'm not going to be willing to spend much effort to install the software at all. Every extra step means they get fewer users.
Would you use windows:
the fight is about DNS, that is who gets to use which domain name.
I agree that manuals are nice, but they're disappearing fast. Even windows (or maybe I shouldn't say "even") has no useful manual anymore. Even the integrated help is dismal in my opinion (and I'm not saying Linux is perfect, far from it).
I agree that if the software you need is only on windows, then pick windows. That's never been in debate.
However the original point was ease of installation, and my experience is that installation is vastly easier on Linux. Granted, I don't often buy stuff that's expensive enough to have a manual that I'd care about (but I'm sure that if I buy Oracle for Linux it'll come with a couple binders of documentation).
Are there programs out there that have more than 8 bits per channel of color? Photoshop?
That's an honest question - are there even printers that are able to print at more than 8 bits per channel? Are there people who can tell the difference?
Windows:
Linux:
See? It's very easy in both cases. We don't have to fight about this anymore.
Gimp supports 24-bit color (also known as "True Color"), and has for as long as I can remember.
The location of the form is irrelevant, all that matters is that the action that it submits to is secured, and from a quick look at the HTML it is.
No, that's not enough. https gives you two things:
(1) it encrypts your answer, and
(2) it authenticates the site you're talking to.
The situation with Chase does not provide guarantee number 2: if they're not using https then you would have to check the source every single time to make sure that no hacker replaced some packets in flight to steal your account information.
I agree with the grandparent: login pages that don't use https: are a pityful security practice, regardless of whether the form gets submitted over https.
We have that portability you're talking about at my school. In fact, we'had it for a while. I can use any of the machines on campus, and when I log in I get my desktop, with my settings (and keyboard shortcuts - can't forget those). If I save a file, it's saved to some central server thing and I can get to it from whenever.
The only thing I wonder is: why doesn't everyone do this?
Actually my favorite singularity fiction comes from Vernor Vinge. I think he actually came up with the singularity idea - the link goes to a 1993 talk in which he presents the idea.
I don't know whether we'll reach that singularity he talks about, but I really enjoy his books, for example the early True Names, or more recent books such as A deepness in the sky or A fire upon the deep. These last two are my two favorite science fiction books.
And, no, I'm not affiliated with V. Vinge.
This would be a bug report if I didn't get that when trying to file one on their web site (click contribute, then bug report):
Bad Request
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Client sent malformed Host header
Anyways.
Steps to reproduce:
1) run the app through Java web start
2) click Edit, then General Options
3) click on the button next to "text font"
4) pick font size 12 instead of 11
expected: the text of emails has size 12
observed: the window closes, I'm back to the JavaWS window.
Someone from Columba is probably reading the article (how could they not notice the slashdotting?), so guys, fix your bug reporting system and add that report in there. The app looks good otherwise.
Small, rugged, scratchproof: pick any two?
You could actually get all three. But it would cost a lot more.
That's a bunch of bull. My parents computer has all kinds of problems and it's got nothing to do with how I use it.
Well I was talking about application bugs, not about machines that are messed up to begin with. Yes, software can be misconfigured in a way that makes it crash often - but that's not what I was talking about.
I was talking about machines that are properly maintained, like your parents' laptop apparently. It is my experience that when I get to a machine like that, I can often get applications to crash, much to the surprise of the machine owner. And my experience (again, it may be different from yours) is that the reason for all the crashes is that I do things that *should* work (using keyboard shortcuts, switching between applications, cut&paste, tab navigation, typing in boxes instead of clicking the "...", "browse" or "+/-" buttons) - and indeed they do work most of the time - but they don't work as reliably as the "normal" way.
And what I was saying is that my theory is that people mostly use the "normal" way because they learn over time what will break their machine.
In order to see that effect, you need to get someone into an environment he's not used to: a Linux person in front of a Windows machine, for example.
I agree with you that there's no need to run one app at a time now, unless you're seriously short on RAM. That just goes to show my point: how else do you explain my friend, who always closes Word before opening his web browser? It's a habit that was drilled into him, one crash at a time.
I believe the version of PowerPoint that crapped on me like that was from Office 2004 for MacOS. I'm not sure because it wasn't my machine; I can however tell you that I was able to reproduce the bug 3 times before finally giving up and doing it a different way (yes, I'm a slow learner). It may have been the specific font or something, I didn't investigate much beyond figuring out how to stop the software from crashing.
If you'd like an example of how people are trained by their computer, consider this:
When working on the computer, how often do you save your work? Every day? hour? minute? If you save often, maybe that's because you have learned that programs tend to crash and lose your work.
I think what you saw there is not entirely the user being an idiot. Rather, the user was trained by his computer.
It may be hard to believe, but I have observed it and maybe other people have too: users are conditioned by their computers, in a very pavlovian way.
Consider this. Very often when I get on a friend's computer (these are usually windows), I make the computer crash in short order. Same thing with a Powerbook laptop recently. Why is that? Because I'm not trained yet.
User does X (for example, click on the "run" option) and then something bad happens (computer crashes, or things happen that user does not understand). User learns not to do X anymore.
If I ask my friend if there's anything special about the "font size" dialog on PowerPoint for MacOS, he'd say there's nothing wrong. But if you observe him, you see that he always uses it exactly the same way. Because he's an idiot? No. Because he's been conditioned. You see, then I come along, delete the current value "18 points" and start typing a new value. Computer freezes.
Turns out, this happens every time you delete the value in there. There's a bug in PowerPoint, if you delete the font size it'll try to generate a preview of 0-point text and die.
There are tons of other examples like this. Wonder why so many people never use more than one application at a time? It's a sure bet that they have two applications installed that tend to crash each other, and they've learned a way to work around it.
The computer is Pavlov. We're the dogs. I find this mildly disturbing.
new strategy for transforming its Web properties into an open platform for developers.
Open microsoft?
The word we are looking for
is oximoron.
Am I the only one who likes GNOME/Ubuntu more than XP?
No, you're not.
I've had an HP LaserJet 4 since 1997 or so. Still works perfectly. Maybe your experience is with an inkjet printers? These, in my limited experience, are nowhere near the quality of even a decent laser printer -- and at the same time, they're much more expensive to use.
However, when taking the different salinity into account, things change. As you know from Archimedes, the ice is displacing exactly enough water to offset its weight (that is, the displaced water weighs as much as the ice). The thing is, it takes less *saltwater* to do that than it would *freshwater*. So when the freshwater in the ice melts, the levels rise.
If you don't believe me, check this article, it includes a picture from an experiment.
DRM is coming (...) is [it] better to work on creating something done right, or to object to it on moral grounds?
It's better to object on moral grounds. Next question?
I'm pretty sure that one specific part of me has its own mind. So I treat it very well.
lol!
You're right, the only problem with the summary is a problem of semantics. That is, the title says something that is not true, because it uses a word that has the wrong meaning (semantics=the meaning of language).
Another way of saying the same thing would be that everything is wrong with the summary. After all, this is text we're talking about; isn't meaning the whole point?
OK, so it's only an ethical problem if the thing has free will (which you call a "mind"). The question remains, how do we know it has free will?
And please don't say that we can't detect the mind, so we should treat everything as not having free will and therefore we can do as we please.
When anything under the sun is patentable, it puts an unbelievable amount of pressure on the patent office.
I think the solution suggests itself here.
Make fewer things patentable?