When I saw this article about the subscription, I was ready to sign up. I'll pay a monthly or yearly subscription, sure.
But paying for every 1000 pages? What this leads to is every time I'm going to have a look at something in Slashdot, I have to weigh whether or not I *really* want to, because every time has a cost. It's like when I was using Compuserve back in the day, and lots of the content had "premium" costs. So I could never really enjoy the extra stuff, because every time I used it had to justify paying.
Not on CD covers (besides, the RIAA would probably print it with a 2 point font)
What if it were regulated like the way they have "Parental advisory / Explicit Lyrics" on the CD? It doesn't have to be on the cover even, the back would do. But it would have to be a certain size and format, so it's easy to detect?
How about a variety of bacteria that doesn't produce scatane when it digests food? That would be wonderful. I would suggest that it could make some nice ketones instead, so our farts could smell like bananas or something.
I think that would have the ultimate effect of making me hate bananas. =)
The most recent entry now tells about their arrival at the Pole.
S90 00 T08.30AM(Chile) Alt 3000m
TT 12,0 h D 26,3 km TD 1133,1km/63days
DSP 0 km (1100) sleds w 82 kg
-37C/5kts, Sun As 2/3
The last day turned every bit as hard as the previous. Chill of -70C and twelve hours travel. Already 24 km before the pole we spotted a building. It blew our mind and we started to run. But one hour and no breath later we slowed and watched the South Pole station grow before our eyes. We wrote frequent messages in the snow to each other and grand thoughts raced our brains interrupted only by the occasional roast turkey flying by.
The polar station was backlit by the sun and it was like something from Waterworld. Or a base station on another planet. So unreal and so entirely awe-inspiring. Sounds of engines and mechanics, fumes and smell of industrial fuel, weird buildings and machines all lay deserted in the pale light. The station is on NZ time and we took it that everyone was to bed it being their midnight. It was like leaving the world of adventure and entering the world of science, although it is the same thing really.
Except we couldn't find the stick marking the pole. We thought of knocking on the door of a hut and ask for the SP, but just then we noticed a crowd of perhaps 20 people in the distance. They waived and filmed. Cold and desperately tired we hurried over. It was the station guys up and waiting for us! We skied to the mark and they cheered us on. CNN was there for another coverage and so they got us too. There were flags everywhere and we watched each other like beings from different planets. We must have made some sight, frozen solid. After 60 days of isolation this was a very warm welcome. Well, we are in tent now, very tired and immensely happy. Hey guys, we made it!
mark
Would you have to watch what you think?
on
Think And Click
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· Score: 1
What if I were using this technology to control a remote control arm, and thought about making a middle finger at someone I was frustrated with. Or one of the many impulsive thoughts that go through everyone's mind each day. Would this be unavoidable?
Would a person have to worry about fantasies and whims that pass through our minds being acted out?
That would make me feel almost more trapped, in a way.
Here's how much it will cost the airport: $0. The corporate traveler: $0. Joe Traveler: $0, if he has a wireless laptop or handheld; otherwise, $6 to $8 for the day.
That sounds really great-- but I have a hard time believing that something this useful would be that cheap (or free!). Not that it couldn't be, but I think someone's going to see an opportunity to make a big profit off this and capitalize on that. Just like the way that companies are attempting (with varying levels of success) to make money from the free parts of the Internet (like domain names).
It's because language evolves with time that the exceptions are there
Right, that's what I was trying to say.
In this case, the Latin plural is being retrofitted - though mostly in the written form from what I've noticed.
That does appear to be where it comes from. But it doesn't really matter how it comes into the language, as far as "correctness" is concerned. A word change can even arise out of an error or other oddity. An example off the top of my head is aluminum/aluminium. In British English it is the latter (and original) that is correct and in American English it is the former, because Webster or someone like that decided it would be easier to pronounce that way.
Nobody disputes Americans using "aluminum" though. (Well, I bet there are some curmudgeons out there.)
Virus is not a Latin word, it's an English word, and therefore follows English conventions: one virus, many viruses. It is based on the Latin 'vir' but is as English as all get out.
Conventions like datum/data and vertex/vertices, or did you mean conventions like woman/women, or sheep/sheep?
English is full of exceptions. Just because it came from Latin into English doesn't mean it is "virii", but on the other hand, the fact that it is an English word doesn't mean it must end with an "s".
There is no "correct" way to say anything, as language evolves with time. The closest one can come to "correct" is whatever best communicates the idea(the point of language).
In the case of viruses/virii, I think they are on pretty equal footing. Especially since this is a geek website.
mark
Re:The core technologies are out there...
on
Digital Lifestyle
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· Score: 1
The tech is really cool, and I like the idea of seperating each into areas, work, home, etc...but what happens if you want to get away from it all?
I guess it'll become so normal that for the most part you won't think about it as much. Think about other modern inventions that we use all the time-- telephones, cars, radios, etc. I think computerized devices will ease in with all this stuff.
What can we do to get away from all this stuff now? Camping! As long as there's camping in the future, I'll be able to handle it.
mark
Re:Actually, if you read the book...
on
A Beautiful Mind
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· Score: 1
It is possible that he's lost some of his mental sharpness, but to know that, we'd have to look somewhere other than his talks, since they never displayed that sharpness to begin with.
You're right. I wasn't trying to say this talk was the authority on how much sharpness he had, just that it was awkward how he couldn't remember his famous work, etc, and didn't seem to be as he was.
I just figure that when he was doing his famous stuff, it was recognized despite how bad he may have been at presenting it. So now, if his current stuff isn't so great, it must not be up to par with the old. But maybe I'm totally wrong.
That is why I think Apple's OS X does things well. It's tough to move onto a totally new form of your OS. After OS X initially came out, machines were set to dual boot, with OS 9 as the default. The dual booting process is easy. For those using OS X, one can also run "classic" mode and get OS 9 within OS X.
But there needs to be a separation between the old and the new-- that is the most important thing.
mark
This is different from John Lennon
on
A Beautiful Mind
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· Score: 1
Have you ever thought that sometimes you just don't want to talk about the past anymore? What was your girlfriend's father hoping for a 'Nobel' quality rant on genius, thus validation of the intellectual superiority of all present? If you want to move into the future think, if not collect baseball cards and talk to collegues about how cool you were at university.
This was not a case of Nash being unwilling to talk about old work because he has bigger and better plans. He seemed incapable of fully understanding his old research and incapable of making any new headway. This wasn't a presentation where people wanted a "Nobel" performance. Basically, it was as though this guy wasn't the same person as the one who made the discoveries. Certainly not his fault by any means, but it was difficult to see.
mark
Re:Actually, if you read the book...
on
A Beautiful Mind
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· Score: 1
I wasn't at this presentation, so I don't have all the details of what took place. The problem was not that his presentation was not well done-- the content of what he was talking about was not very insightful at all. I gathered he was no longer able to really understand the stuff he worked on years ago.
The comments on the presentation weren't from some guy who thought the movie or book was really cool and wanted to see him-- he is also a professor who does research and was interested in Nash's insight.
I don't mean that Windows shouldn't be backwards compatible, they just went overboard with it.
With my OS X machine, I can still run pre-OS X software. I can either run it in "classic" mode, or boot up into the OS 9 system. Both of which, by the way, are extremely simple to do.
That's the way to go, I think.
mark
Nash in recent years...
on
A Beautiful Mind
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· Score: 4, Interesting
My girlfriend's father is an economics professor, and was excited to see him speak this year. It seems, however, that he is a shadow of what he once was.
Apparently, his presentation was not terribly insightful. And when asked by an audience member about some of his famous work, he responded that he "doesn't remember any of that anymore."
The entire event was very awkward for everyone in attendance. Here is a man who made some brilliant discoveries in his heyday that are very useful in game theory and economics. People come to hear him speak and it only displays how his mind has gone-- he can't even relive the old glory.
Windows is too backwards compatible, IMO. Too much building off of old stuff. Microsoft needs to make a new version more or less from scratch, like Apple's transition from the old Mac OS to OS X. It isn't a quick or easy transition, but it will pay off in the long run.
I guess that's the problem when you are a huge software company trying to appeal to everyone. You end up supporting everything and it turns into a big mess.
If you want a perfect example of the difference, just look at Mac gaming. There are many games available for the Mac put out by several great Mac porting companies. But no one develops new games for the Mac.
Why should the Net be any different?
on
Browsing Alone
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· Score: 1
I agree with the trends that the Net seems to be perpetuating, but is it really a surprise? I didn't really expect the Net to connect people personally in the way Katz and the author had hoped.
Naturally, the more outlets for non-direct communication there are, the less direct human interaction there will be!
It's a trade-off, just like TVs, telephones, even letters.
The refusal to trade with the Ukraine if they don't comply with piracy standards makes perfect sense in theory. But, since the US is so powerful, such action can be crippling to most nations.
A nation has the right to try to protect against piracy, right?
Well, since the US has a monopoly on power, it should have different standards of what it can or can't do, so that this power is not abused (like MS).
What if you don't know the precise destination, or you don't have a precise destination?
Maybe you are going to a someone's house but you're not quite sure where it is, or you want to drive by some restaurants before you decide which one you want to eat at.
This system could not replace cars for this reason alone (not that it was necessarily meant to).
Slashdot Mirror
When I saw this article about the subscription, I was ready to sign up. I'll pay a monthly or yearly subscription, sure.
But paying for every 1000 pages? What this leads to is every time I'm going to have a look at something in Slashdot, I have to weigh whether or not I *really* want to, because every time has a cost. It's like when I was using Compuserve back in the day, and lots of the content had "premium" costs. So I could never really enjoy the extra stuff, because every time I used it had to justify paying.
mark
What if it were regulated like the way they have "Parental advisory / Explicit Lyrics" on the CD? It doesn't have to be on the cover even, the back would do. But it would have to be a certain size and format, so it's easy to detect?
markI think that would have the ultimate effect of making me hate bananas. =)
mark
Congratulations!
I asked a girl to prom like this several years ago, by making a website and sending her a link.
The dorkier and more embarrassing, the better!
mark
mark
What if I were using this technology to control a remote control arm, and thought about making a middle finger at someone I was frustrated with. Or one of the many impulsive thoughts that go through everyone's mind each day. Would this be unavoidable?
Would a person have to worry about fantasies and whims that pass through our minds being acted out?
That would make me feel almost more trapped, in a way.
mark
What about the cost of time, though? Not just the initial setup, but also maintenance?
I feel like there's an advantage to the Mac in that department.
That may even offset the more expensive hardware.
mark
That sounds really great-- but I have a hard time believing that something this useful would be that cheap (or free!). Not that it couldn't be, but I think someone's going to see an opportunity to make a big profit off this and capitalize on that. Just like the way that companies are attempting (with varying levels of success) to make money from the free parts of the Internet (like domain names).
I'd love to be proven wrong though.
mark
Right, that's what I was trying to say.
That does appear to be where it comes from. But it doesn't really matter how it comes into the language, as far as "correctness" is concerned. A word change can even arise out of an error or other oddity. An example off the top of my head is aluminum/aluminium. In British English it is the latter (and original) that is correct and in American English it is the former, because Webster or someone like that decided it would be easier to pronounce that way.
Nobody disputes Americans using "aluminum" though. (Well, I bet there are some curmudgeons out there.)
mark
Conventions like datum/data and vertex/vertices, or did you mean conventions like woman/women, or sheep/sheep?
English is full of exceptions. Just because it came from Latin into English doesn't mean it is "virii", but on the other hand, the fact that it is an English word doesn't mean it must end with an "s".
There is no "correct" way to say anything, as language evolves with time. The closest one can come to "correct" is whatever best communicates the idea(the point of language).
In the case of viruses/virii, I think they are on pretty equal footing. Especially since this is a geek website.
mark
I'm more of a Whopper man myself.
mark
I guess it'll become so normal that for the most part you won't think about it as much. Think about other modern inventions that we use all the time-- telephones, cars, radios, etc. I think computerized devices will ease in with all this stuff.
What can we do to get away from all this stuff now? Camping! As long as there's camping in the future, I'll be able to handle it.
mark
You're right. I wasn't trying to say this talk was the authority on how much sharpness he had, just that it was awkward how he couldn't remember his famous work, etc, and didn't seem to be as he was.
I just figure that when he was doing his famous stuff, it was recognized despite how bad he may have been at presenting it. So now, if his current stuff isn't so great, it must not be up to par with the old. But maybe I'm totally wrong.
mark
That already happened.
mark
That is why I think Apple's OS X does things well. It's tough to move onto a totally new form of your OS. After OS X initially came out, machines were set to dual boot, with OS 9 as the default. The dual booting process is easy. For those using OS X, one can also run "classic" mode and get OS 9 within OS X.
But there needs to be a separation between the old and the new-- that is the most important thing.
mark
This was not a case of Nash being unwilling to talk about old work because he has bigger and better plans. He seemed incapable of fully understanding his old research and incapable of making any new headway. This wasn't a presentation where people wanted a "Nobel" performance. Basically, it was as though this guy wasn't the same person as the one who made the discoveries. Certainly not his fault by any means, but it was difficult to see.
mark
I wasn't at this presentation, so I don't have all the details of what took place. The problem was not that his presentation was not well done-- the content of what he was talking about was not very insightful at all. I gathered he was no longer able to really understand the stuff he worked on years ago.
The comments on the presentation weren't from some guy who thought the movie or book was really cool and wanted to see him-- he is also a professor who does research and was interested in Nash's insight.
mark
I don't mean that Windows shouldn't be backwards compatible, they just went overboard with it.
With my OS X machine, I can still run pre-OS X software. I can either run it in "classic" mode, or boot up into the OS 9 system. Both of which, by the way, are extremely simple to do.
That's the way to go, I think.
mark
My girlfriend's father is an economics professor, and was excited to see him speak this year. It seems, however, that he is a shadow of what he once was.
Apparently, his presentation was not terribly insightful. And when asked by an audience member about some of his famous work, he responded that he "doesn't remember any of that anymore."
The entire event was very awkward for everyone in attendance. Here is a man who made some brilliant discoveries in his heyday that are very useful in game theory and economics. People come to hear him speak and it only displays how his mind has gone-- he can't even relive the old glory.
mark
Windows is too backwards compatible, IMO. Too much building off of old stuff. Microsoft needs to make a new version more or less from scratch, like Apple's transition from the old Mac OS to OS X. It isn't a quick or easy transition, but it will pay off in the long run.
I guess that's the problem when you are a huge software company trying to appeal to everyone. You end up supporting everything and it turns into a big mess.
mark
mark
I agree with the trends that the Net seems to be perpetuating, but is it really a surprise? I didn't really expect the Net to connect people personally in the way Katz and the author had hoped.
Naturally, the more outlets for non-direct communication there are, the less direct human interaction there will be!
It's a trade-off, just like TVs, telephones, even letters.
mark
The refusal to trade with the Ukraine if they don't comply with piracy standards makes perfect sense in theory. But, since the US is so powerful, such action can be crippling to most nations.
A nation has the right to try to protect against piracy, right?
Well, since the US has a monopoly on power, it should have different standards of what it can or can't do, so that this power is not abused (like MS).
mark
But is it really newsworthy? I mean, how many sites are there out there that have similar problems?
(Hint: lots.)
I think there's a broader problem here.
mark
What if you don't know the precise destination, or you don't have a precise destination?
Maybe you are going to a someone's house but you're not quite sure where it is, or you want to drive by some restaurants before you decide which one you want to eat at.
This system could not replace cars for this reason alone (not that it was necessarily meant to).
mark