I downloaded the linux installer version (firefox-0.9.3-i686-linux-gtk2+xft-installer.tar.g z)ked from the Firefox page and itself seems to have a little bug:
** (firefox-installer-bin:3120): WARNING **: Invalid UTF8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
It winds up with an incomplete installation. However, if you just download the gzipped tarball without the installer from here and untar it over your old firefox directory you should be just fine.
You know... I've been wondering for some time, given NT's heritage, if it'd be possible to slap a VMS API on top of NT/XP. I'm sure that's a seriously lame thought, but... I miss my (college's) VAX.
The most offensive thing is that the shows suck. It's pretty bad that with all the 'first rate channels' my cable company gives me, I end up watching Pauly Shore movies.
Aw, come on now. At least expand your horizons to Adam Sandler movies.
While I agree GEB is sort of elementary after a full CS program, I still think it holds its own though. Especially important are the connections it draws between music, art and mathematics. I'd also recommend Douglas Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas, a collection of his columns for Scientific American.
Also, I would add Gerald M. Weinberg's The Psychology of Computer Programming, Tracy Kidder's The Sould of a New Machine, and Heinz-Otto Peitgen's The Beauty of Fractals. There's really so many to choose from, I've perhaps understimated the degree to which books have shaped my personality.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Thinking Forth. I'm so glad somebody holds Leo Brodie's book in such high esteem. It's been many years since I programmed in Forth, and then never professionally, but learning Forth truly advanced my understanding of computers and computer science by leaps and bounds. Leo Brodie's book was a huge part of that.
For me it's all about the whole C64 form factor which I found so appealing. Of course, you're idea about the flash card is a much better solution than a HD. Although, in reality, with your approach, the whole thing could be built into the size and shape of an old C64 ROM cartridge. Conceivably, one could then sell the C64 keyboard unit separately and use the slot where one would plug cartridges into the unit to dock the actual computer into the keyboard unit.
some company just brings about an updated Commodore 64. With modern day integration it seems to me you could easily get a 2.5" harddrive in the old C64 case, modem, ethernet port and even video and TV out ports. Make it dual boot Contiki OS and old school C64 OS and I'd buy it.
No real point to this post, just basking in the glow of potential off-the-shelf nostalgia.
"Doesn't stop a whole lot of nutter Christian fundies from believing otherwise though"
Was that a necessary comment? It doesn't stop a bunch of nutter Islamic Fundamentalists from trying to kill us just because we are Christians or Jews, or just plain old secularists trying to live under a rule of law instead of their rules of god via the prophet Mohammed. But regardless, is it relevant to this discussion?
You're absolutely right. I apologize for letting one of my personal bugaboos from shining through. It would have been perhaps better to say "nutter religious fundamentalists."
As far as relevance to the conversation I shouldn't have just tagged that line onto the end of my post. I think what I was trying to convey at the time was that religious or superstitious beliefs are often manifested in medical practice and policy, even in the modern day U.S. There is a tendency to the medicalization of culturally unacceptable behaviors.
While we often see this in fundamentalist Christian attitudes towards homosexuality (and stem cell research, the "war" on drugs, and a host of other issues), that particular group should not be singled out, although the present degree of their politcal power in the U.S. at present brings their beliefs to the fore. However, this certainly doesn't exempt good old secular humanists from effecting medical policy and practice based on beliefs rather than science. Others have pointed out the growing trend in what might be over-medicating children for questionable diseases such as ADD and depression which are fine examples. Another would be reluctance of the medical community to understand the full extent of AIDS in the early 80s choosing to think that it was a "gay disease."
The "obesity epidemic" is one particular meme that seems to be effecting medical policy and practice on a global level. Here in particular we see a cultural intolerance of what should be a neutral descriptor ("fat") fueling a massive amount of questionable research (based mostly on correlative evidence often funded by special interest groups) driving public policy.
Singling out just religious fundamentalists for my scorn is more revealing of my personal biases than accurate or relevant, as all cultures have a tendency toward instantiating their norms and mores into medical policy and practice. Thanks for calling BS on that line in my post.
...medical practice back then was not as, say, scientific as our approach is today.
You think medical practice is any more scientific today than it was in the 1950s? Now, I'm not saying medical research isn't scientific, because it is (although the studies are often questionable due to the special interest groups funding them). It's just that medical practice is often as much voodoo as it was 50 years ago. Neither is clinical psychology any better. Mental illness is often culturally defined. Here in the U.S. in 2004 it just so happens that it's no longer socially acceptable to believe that homosexuality is a mental illness. Doesn't stop a whole lot of nutter Christian fundies from believing otherwise though.
I defy anyone to provide an example of biased delivery of news by a Fox journalist.
I'm not going to provide a specific example. I'm sure I could find several, but I simply don't have time. However, it's well known that Fox News' management likes to add their own special touch to the news. For instance, producer Don Dahler resigned after being asked by senion vice-president John Moody to play down statistics in a story that showed a lack of social progress among blacks. Also, the Columbia Journalism Review has reported that several former employees of Fox News complained that management often interfered in the writing and editing of stories to "make them more palatable to Right-of-centre tastes" and quoted one of them as saying, "I've worked at a lot of news organizations and never found that kind of manipulation."
Funny that Fox News has the best ratings in America. Apparently not everyone agrees with you.
Well, it depends on how you look at it. Fox News is heavily watched. For 2003, Fox's Nielsen average daily ratings were 1.02 million vieweres while CNN only had 665,000 viewers. That's the number you hear cited so much when news outlets report "Fox crushing CNN."
What may be more telling though is their respective "cumes" or the cumulative total number of viewers who watch a channel for at least six minutes during a given day. CNN's cume is regularly at least 20% greater than Fox News. The cumes for April 2003 show that CNN had 105 million viewers while Fox only had 86 million.
Even more interesting is when looks at viewers who describe themselves as "very conservative." An ad agency (Carat USA) did such a study and found that 37% of viewers who are "very conservative" watch CNN during a week, while only 32% watch Fox News.
Also, you have to remember that neither network is a ratings success. For instance, on a good night, The O
Reilly Factor (Fox News' highest rated program will get about 2 million viewers. Contrast this to CBS News, the lowest rated network news program which regularly gets 8 - 10 million viewers.
All of the above has been drawn from this article from FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting). Is FAIR a left-wing or liberal media watch group? Yeah, I would hesitate to use those terms, but I'll concede that they are left in-so-far as they report on the innacuracies of the mainstream news media, which generally ranges mildly right-of-center to hard right. However, they use facts to back up their assertions that are solidly based in reality and not derived from Karl Rove's morning talking points memo.
I don't know about mainstream America, but here in rural upstate NY, food delivery certainly has caught on. It seems like every other house gets delivery from Schwan's. The reason for this I think is that there are no grocery stores within 15 miles. It can be damn convenient to have that Schwan's truck stop by every other week.
Now, the problem I have with this service is that the food (not counting the very high priced steaks, etc.) is, to my mind, almost totally snack food. Some of it very good snack food (ummm... Tacquitos) but snack food just the same. A steady diet of this stuff and you're probably not going to be doing yourself any good.
Also, of course, only a couple of (frozen, of course) vegetable and fruit items.
but I'm really uncomfortable with some of the social implications of GMail's services (along with some of the other services)
1) It seems like this promotes a tendency to centrally store all e-mail forever. No potential for any abuse by anyone there, right?
2) 10MB attachments. Uggh! Here I've spent years training my users to only send smaller files via e-mail. Maybe I'm out of touch with the times but I hate to think of the effect on bandwidth as people get accustomed to sending 10MB files through e-mail. To everyone on their address list. How long before GMail allows 25MB attachments in response to Lycos offering 15MB attachments?
So, ATI's new 12 and 16 pipe (!!) Radeon X800 Pro and Radeon X800 XT cards are coming soon at $400 and $500 each. I suppose in fine ATI tradition we'll soon see the Radeon X800 XT XXX XPXP XFactorX2 card (obviously optimized for HDTV quality streaming porn under Windows XP on Athlon XPs) as ATI decides to test out the theoretical maximum limit for how many Xs one can fit in a product name.
The new ATI cards are said to be faster than NVidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme. Of course, I hear rumours that NVidia is countering the ATI X threat by naming their next video card the GeForce 68X10^100 Ultra Extreme Voodoo SuperPowerMax Orgasmatron XPXPXPXPXP (take *that* ATI!) Pro++. NVidia claims this card will be able to render polygons so fast as to actually prepare a delicious microwave dinner in half the time while eliminating 1/3 the fat.
However, it looks as if ATI will beat NVidia to the punch once again as NVidia is forced to let their release date slip due to reported problems of paint (and sometimes skin) peeling off unprotected surfaces directly behind the card's DVI outputs. NVidia says it will ship the retail boxed versions of the card with a special lead coated radiation blast shield.
In related news, NVidia has filed patent applications on its' high performace game wave absorbtion optimizing planar deflector.
That's like walking into a restaurant and having the waiter tell you that today's special is fried spam topped with toasted dog dung and then after complaining about being served crap the waiter tells you that you should be thankful because yesterday's special was a donkey dung frappe served piping hot from the donkey's ass... or having to vote for Kerry because he isn't as bad as Bush. IMHO, YMMV.
I occassionally do some work for a person who works as a producer in Los Angeles. So far, she has answered her cellphone at a museum, at a classical music concert, while in meetings and on a date. The last time I called her she mentioned after about three minutes that she was at a movie theater, watching a movie. I asked her why she even bothered to answer her mobile. I think she was actually dumbfounded that anyone would not answer their phone when it rang.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I see a pony. I don't know about you. :-P
perhaps we could all encapsulate our websites with the tag?
I mean, this is a man who can choke on a pretzel and regularly falls off his mountain bike.
Here's a coralized link:
Ubuntu Linux
That would have been my guess too. Also, maybe something to fake out E-ZPass systems.
Mozilla Gojira OS or perhaps Mozilla MegarOS.
I downloaded the linux installer version (firefox-0.9.3-i686-linux-gtk2+xft-installer.tar.g z)ked from the Firefox page and itself seems to have a little bug:
** (firefox-installer-bin:3120): WARNING **: Invalid UTF8 string passed to pango_layout_set_text()
It winds up with an incomplete installation. However, if you just download the gzipped tarball without the installer from here and untar it over your old firefox directory you should be just fine.
So, let me get this straight. You copied that floppy?
You know... I've been wondering for some time, given NT's heritage, if it'd be possible to slap a VMS API on top of NT/XP. I'm sure that's a seriously lame thought, but... I miss my (college's) VAX.
Aw, come on now. At least expand your horizons to Adam Sandler movies.
Ah, that is so cool! It really makes me happy to hear that. Please submit to Slashdot when it is ready.
While I agree GEB is sort of elementary after a full CS program, I still think it holds its own though. Especially important are the connections it draws between music, art and mathematics. I'd also recommend Douglas Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas, a collection of his columns for Scientific American.
Also, I would add Gerald M. Weinberg's The Psychology of Computer Programming, Tracy Kidder's The Sould of a New Machine, and Heinz-Otto Peitgen's The Beauty of Fractals. There's really so many to choose from, I've perhaps understimated the degree to which books have shaped my personality.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Thinking Forth. I'm so glad somebody holds Leo Brodie's book in such high esteem. It's been many years since I programmed in Forth, and then never professionally, but learning Forth truly advanced my understanding of computers and computer science by leaps and bounds. Leo Brodie's book was a huge part of that.
Sorry no, that's just an abomination. :-)
For me it's all about the whole C64 form factor which I found so appealing. Of course, you're idea about the flash card is a much better solution than a HD. Although, in reality, with your approach, the whole thing could be built into the size and shape of an old C64 ROM cartridge. Conceivably, one could then sell the C64 keyboard unit separately and use the slot where one would plug cartridges into the unit to dock the actual computer into the keyboard unit.
some company just brings about an updated Commodore 64. With modern day integration it seems to me you could easily get a 2.5" harddrive in the old C64 case, modem, ethernet port and even video and TV out ports. Make it dual boot Contiki OS and old school C64 OS and I'd buy it.
No real point to this post, just basking in the glow of potential off-the-shelf nostalgia.
You're absolutely right. I apologize for letting one of my personal bugaboos from shining through. It would have been perhaps better to say "nutter religious fundamentalists."
As far as relevance to the conversation I shouldn't have just tagged that line onto the end of my post. I think what I was trying to convey at the time was that religious or superstitious beliefs are often manifested in medical practice and policy, even in the modern day U.S. There is a tendency to the medicalization of culturally unacceptable behaviors.
While we often see this in fundamentalist Christian attitudes towards homosexuality (and stem cell research, the "war" on drugs, and a host of other issues), that particular group should not be singled out, although the present degree of their politcal power in the U.S. at present brings their beliefs to the fore. However, this certainly doesn't exempt good old secular humanists from effecting medical policy and practice based on beliefs rather than science. Others have pointed out the growing trend in what might be over-medicating children for questionable diseases such as ADD and depression which are fine examples. Another would be reluctance of the medical community to understand the full extent of AIDS in the early 80s choosing to think that it was a "gay disease."
The "obesity epidemic" is one particular meme that seems to be effecting medical policy and practice on a global level. Here in particular we see a cultural intolerance of what should be a neutral descriptor ("fat") fueling a massive amount of questionable research (based mostly on correlative evidence often funded by special interest groups) driving public policy.
Singling out just religious fundamentalists for my scorn is more revealing of my personal biases than accurate or relevant, as all cultures have a tendency toward instantiating their norms and mores into medical policy and practice. Thanks for calling BS on that line in my post.
You think medical practice is any more scientific today than it was in the 1950s? Now, I'm not saying medical research isn't scientific, because it is (although the studies are often questionable due to the special interest groups funding them). It's just that medical practice is often as much voodoo as it was 50 years ago. Neither is clinical psychology any better. Mental illness is often culturally defined. Here in the U.S. in 2004 it just so happens that it's no longer socially acceptable to believe that homosexuality is a mental illness. Doesn't stop a whole lot of nutter Christian fundies from believing otherwise though.
I'm not going to provide a specific example. I'm sure I could find several, but I simply don't have time. However, it's well known that Fox News' management likes to add their own special touch to the news. For instance, producer Don Dahler resigned after being asked by senion vice-president John Moody to play down statistics in a story that showed a lack of social progress among blacks. Also, the Columbia Journalism Review has reported that several former employees of Fox News complained that management often interfered in the writing and editing of stories to "make them more palatable to Right-of-centre tastes" and quoted one of them as saying, "I've worked at a lot of news organizations and never found that kind of manipulation."
Well, it depends on how you look at it. Fox News is heavily watched. For 2003, Fox's Nielsen average daily ratings were 1.02 million vieweres while CNN only had 665,000 viewers. That's the number you hear cited so much when news outlets report "Fox crushing CNN."
What may be more telling though is their respective "cumes" or the cumulative total number of viewers who watch a channel for at least six minutes during a given day. CNN's cume is regularly at least 20% greater than Fox News. The cumes for April 2003 show that CNN had 105 million viewers while Fox only had 86 million.
Even more interesting is when looks at viewers who describe themselves as "very conservative." An ad agency (Carat USA) did such a study and found that 37% of viewers who are "very conservative" watch CNN during a week, while only 32% watch Fox News.
Also, you have to remember that neither network is a ratings success. For instance, on a good night, The O Reilly Factor (Fox News' highest rated program will get about 2 million viewers. Contrast this to CBS News, the lowest rated network news program which regularly gets 8 - 10 million viewers.
All of the above has been drawn from this article from FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting). Is FAIR a left-wing or liberal media watch group? Yeah, I would hesitate to use those terms, but I'll concede that they are left in-so-far as they report on the innacuracies of the mainstream news media, which generally ranges mildly right-of-center to hard right. However, they use facts to back up their assertions that are solidly based in reality and not derived from Karl Rove's morning talking points memo.
I don't know about mainstream America, but here in rural upstate NY, food delivery certainly has caught on. It seems like every other house gets delivery from Schwan's. The reason for this I think is that there are no grocery stores within 15 miles. It can be damn convenient to have that Schwan's truck stop by every other week.
Now, the problem I have with this service is that the food (not counting the very high priced steaks, etc.) is, to my mind, almost totally snack food. Some of it very good snack food (ummm... Tacquitos) but snack food just the same. A steady diet of this stuff and you're probably not going to be doing yourself any good.
Also, of course, only a couple of (frozen, of course) vegetable and fruit items.
but I'm really uncomfortable with some of the social implications of GMail's services (along with some of the other services)
1) It seems like this promotes a tendency to centrally store all e-mail forever. No potential for any abuse by anyone there, right?
2) 10MB attachments. Uggh! Here I've spent years training my users to only send smaller files via e-mail. Maybe I'm out of touch with the times but I hate to think of the effect on bandwidth as people get accustomed to sending 10MB files through e-mail. To everyone on their address list. How long before GMail allows 25MB attachments in response to Lycos offering 15MB attachments?
So, ATI's new 12 and 16 pipe (!!) Radeon X800 Pro and Radeon X800 XT cards are coming soon at $400 and $500 each. I suppose in fine ATI tradition we'll soon see the Radeon X800 XT XXX XPXP XFactorX2 card (obviously optimized for HDTV quality streaming porn under Windows XP on Athlon XPs) as ATI decides to test out the theoretical maximum limit for how many Xs one can fit in a product name.
The new ATI cards are said to be faster than NVidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme. Of course, I hear rumours that NVidia is countering the ATI X threat by naming their next video card the GeForce 68X10^100 Ultra Extreme Voodoo SuperPowerMax Orgasmatron XPXPXPXPXP (take *that* ATI!) Pro++. NVidia claims this card will be able to render polygons so fast as to actually prepare a delicious microwave dinner in half the time while eliminating 1/3 the fat.
However, it looks as if ATI will beat NVidia to the punch once again as NVidia is forced to let their release date slip due to reported problems of paint (and sometimes skin) peeling off unprotected surfaces directly behind the card's DVI outputs. NVidia says it will ship the retail boxed versions of the card with a special lead coated radiation blast shield.
In related news, NVidia has filed patent applications on its' high performace game wave absorbtion optimizing planar deflector.
That's like walking into a restaurant and having the waiter tell you that today's special is fried spam topped with toasted dog dung and then after complaining about being served crap the waiter tells you that you should be thankful because yesterday's special was a donkey dung frappe served piping hot from the donkey's ass... or having to vote for Kerry because he isn't as bad as Bush. IMHO, YMMV.
I occassionally do some work for a person who works as a producer in Los Angeles. So far, she has answered her cellphone at a museum, at a classical music concert, while in meetings and on a date. The last time I called her she mentioned after about three minutes that she was at a movie theater, watching a movie. I asked her why she even bothered to answer her mobile. I think she was actually dumbfounded that anyone would not answer their phone when it rang.