Usability issues aside - with the Olympics being, you know, an international event, you'd expect translations of the page in at least the common European languages plus Japanese and a few others, right?
Whoever had the foresight to exclude all languages other than English and French is a complete moron, and stands to further propogate the idea of the self-serving American (i.e.: "everybody should speak English!"). To make matters worse, the French site follows none of the English site's design conventions (perhaps a good thing!) and has the personality of a dehydrated camel - there are no images on the site's content pages, for example.
Also, not to be troll, but honestly, guys... when the top story on the front page is a lambasting of the usability of a website, it's a good thing to provide a link of some sort to the site, ya know?
First of all, it truly scares me that Bill Gates's announcement that Microsoft will "empasize security and privacy over new capabilities" is considered, in his own words, to be "a major strategy shift." Any reasonable developer knows that security is an inherent part of every feature - not a feature in itself.
Second of all, it can't be said that this is the first time a company has put forth a gung-ho effort (if that is even the case) to secure their products - Oracle's Unbreakable database is clear evidence of this. To me, this seems Microsoft has placed itself further into the security spotlight, and that more holes will be exposed as a result.
Finally, above all else, one has to admit that this announcement seems like the reactionary brainchild of Microsoft's PR department. On/. alone, this is the third article in 24 hours (not including the "Unbreakable" story) with direct relevance to Microsoft's security (or lack thereof). The case can be made that there is a low likelyhood that Microsoft would pay that much attention to the/. community - but on the other hand, I'd think they'd listen to this.
Chicago Proposes MAN
Yeah, it's OT, but this headline reminded me of the infamous Ian Malcom line from 'Jurassic Park'...
"God creates dinosours. God destroys dinosours. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosours. Dinosours eat man... Woman inherits the Earth."
Well, that, and I'm sure someone will make a joke about Chicago being the codename for Windows 95, and how Microsoft wants to take control of the human ra... nevermind, I'm hopeless;)
What about plain old space dust? According to this [nasa.gov] article there's enough of it out there to hamper astronomists when viewing celestial objects from earth. More closer to the point this [spacedaily.com] article describes how people involved in space exploration are concerned with peices of space dust, too small to be tracked, causing serious damage to orbiting satelites.
First of all, the stuff in orbit that's hampering astronauts is not "space dust", in the astronomy sense of the term. It's simply "space junk" - i.e. leftovers from stuff we've created.
And while it's very true that clouds of space dust proper can create enormous blind spots for Earth-based astronomers, on a human level, it's actually quite sparse. Something on the order of one-part-per-million (billion?). As my astro professor put it, one single particle of dust per that many parts is equivalent to a single tennis ball in the state of Missouri. It's simply that sparse, and that's why only lightyears of it will have any noticeable effect on visibility.
Yes, there are variations from location to location, but in general, space dust is simply not dense enough to cause this particular problem.
DirectX 8.0 was available for Win95 - it's 8.1 that's not available. I'd imagine it's simply a convenient time to block out Win95 users. I feel sorry for anyone who purchased (or will purchase in the future) EverQuest for a Win95 box, though.
Did you let it charge for a few hours before trying to use it first? And you have to hold down the power button for a few seconds before it will turn on.
Yeah, I let it charge. No text in the display would come up at all - even when charging. The backlight would turn on, but regardless of how long it had been charged, I couldn't get text to appear on the screen. It worked just fine as a USB harddrive, but something seemed to be wrong with the LCD screen. My second unit did not suffer from the same problem, so I'm pretty sure that I wasn't at fault. Thanks for the thought, though.
I'm sure that the the features of this new model will attract many, but I'll personally stay away: I've had three bad experiences with Archos products.
I purchased an Archos 6000 MP3 player from ThinkGeek about two months ago, and it arrived DOA. It simply would not turn on. I got my money back (TG was excellent as far as service is concerned, by the way), and used it to purchase an Archos HD-MP3 from a retailer in New York (who offered the better model at approximately the same price). I figured that the first time was probably a fluke, and besides - the better model offered the ability to record MP3's, something I could definitely use to for live music recording.
Two more returns later, and I'm still waiting for my fourth Archos MP3 player. My experiences may be the exception to the rule, but I'd be wary of something like this until reliability figures come out.
Better yet, KPMG theme song remixes!
the jungle remix the hard-rock remix
There's also a teutonic remix out there somewhere, somebody want to provide a link?
Wow... I just thought of something. Does anyone realize what would happen if Sony started pre-loading Linux onto PS2's? Does anyone realize how many users would learn to use (and love) Linux? Consider this - the original Playstation sold close to 100 million units (maybe more?), and the overwhelming majority were sold in latter years of its life.
I'd say this is a fairly likely scenario, actually. Once the price comes down enough, Sony would be smart to start bundling PS2's with harddrives - and so it really wouldn't be a big stretch to throw in the keyboard/mouse combo as well. And if they do that, consumers are going to expect additional functionality. Why pay extra for a harddrive when all it does is store saved games? In comes Linux. By that point, there will already be a browser, a word processor, and a useable GUI developed especially for the PS2. Thus the sub-$300 gaming AND browsing PC becomes a reality - and it runs Linux.
Check out the full system, including Sony's PS2 Flatscreen monitor here. Damn, it's really slick.
Anyone also notice how smart of a move this is for R&D at Sony? They just sit back, sell units, and wait for someone to code/port the perfect office suit/browser/etc that fully integrates the PS2 into the home office, and then they sell more units! I'd say this puts them at least a step ahead of Microsoft.
It's true, the applications for automobiles seem rather limited, but thermionics could stand to revolutionize the nature of power plants.
IANAS, but I believe that today's newest and most efficient coal, oil, and even nuclear power plants can at some point be looked at as a simple heat -> steam -> turbine system, the same concept that's powered locomotives for over one-hundred years! As you'd imagine, such a system is terribly inefficient.
Thermionics, as I understand it, eliminates the "middleman" of the equation by translating heat directly to electricity. It certainly will be interesting to see how this develops on a commerical and thus much larger scale.
An idea is to simply keep a tally of how many times (and by how many unique ip's) each entry in the database has been entered - and then only screen all spam addresses above a certain threshold. No user moderation necessary.
There's little chance the current SETI program will find ET. The problem is that SETI has no dedicated, high-sensitivity telescopes. They simply can't afford it. The best they've been able to do is "piggyback" with other radio astronomy projects and listen in.
And although this may be unpopular on/., we can thank Microsoft's Paul Allen for donating the $26 million to fund the Allen Telescope Array, to be built in California in the next five years (I think), which should alleviate this problem. It'll be a network of smaller telescope arrays programmed to act as a single, massive radio telescope.
Take note that the fastest selling console is not the same thing as the most popular console ever. I'm not sure who holds that honor, but I'm sure that other consoles have sold more than 750,000 units (heck games sell two or three times that on a regular basis).
Technically the singularity itself possesses infinte density, and thus it's size cannot be resolved (i.e.: it's a single point, no matter how close you magnify it).
The Schwarzschild radius of such an object, however (better known as the "event horizon"), can be calculated fairly simply using a variation of the escape velocity formula
Rs = 2*G*M / c^2
Where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the object, and c is the speed of light.
Plugging the numbers into the equation yields a radius of 2.95 * 10^6 km. Therefore this black hole has a radius just over four times the size of the sun, and an area 16 times as large. Compared to black holes usually on scales relative to that of the Earth, that's REAL big.
According to the original Oregonian article:
In addition to the discs from Oates' apartment, investigators recovered drivers' licenses, credit cards, identification photos, death certificates, Social Security cards and applications for medical residency at OHSU Hospital.
It sounds like there was a lot more to this than just license data. My guess is that it's not the Oregon public that's at risk - it's some OHSU facility this guy was trying to get into.
Xavier said many of the cable companies that carry Excite@Home have informed users that their service could cease after Friday.
MANY of the users?! It scares me even more that this implies that there are some who haven't been informed about the situation!
It's as if your wife FINALLY started complaining about the fact that you missed your last three anniversaries, you haven't called in days, you make HER pay for dinner, she's caught you cheating on her several times (you're lousy in bed anyways), and you've simply LAUGHED when she's accused you in the past!
It so happens that you work at a digital camera company, and, to make it up to your wife, you buy a company camera at invoice for YOURSELF, get a RAISE for the sale, and EVERYONE on the block sees you as the greatest and sweetest guy in town!
I was a little surprised last week to receive a forwarded e-mail from Junis, who lives in a small town 35 miles southwest of Kabul.
I have two questions for Katz:
1. Since when have forwarded e-mails been reliable journalistic sources?
2. Doesn't this sound suspiciously like the beginning of a "[name] is dying of cancer, will receive [amount of money] for every time this e-mail is forwarded" chain letter?
At least the poor kid didn't try and set up a website. Hehe... his Commodore would quickly learn the meaning of the phrase "/. effect."
Anyone that's experienced any of Square's masterpieces - especially Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears - will be able to agree with me that videogames can be some of the most expressive, passionate, and masterful pieces of immersive storytelling of our time. That's not to say they're all wonders of human creativity - but, as with television and movies, there are brilliant works that can be considered nothing other than art.
I can't say the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will be able to pick up on this - games are, unforunately, in the public's mind, nothing more than "games" - but I certainly suggest the above titles as justification for my belief.
Slashdot Mirror
Usability issues aside - with the Olympics being, you know, an international event, you'd expect translations of the page in at least the common European languages plus Japanese and a few others, right?
Whoever had the foresight to exclude all languages other than English and French is a complete moron, and stands to further propogate the idea of the self-serving American (i.e.: "everybody should speak English!"). To make matters worse, the French site follows none of the English site's design conventions (perhaps a good thing!) and has the personality of a dehydrated camel - there are no images on the site's content pages, for example.
Also, not to be troll, but honestly, guys... when the top story on the front page is a lambasting of the usability of a website, it's a good thing to provide a link of some sort to the site, ya know?
First of all, it truly scares me that Bill Gates's announcement that Microsoft will "empasize security and privacy over new capabilities" is considered, in his own words, to be "a major strategy shift." Any reasonable developer knows that security is an inherent part of every feature - not a feature in itself. /. alone, this is the third article in 24 hours (not including the "Unbreakable" story) with direct relevance to Microsoft's security (or lack thereof). The case can be made that there is a low likelyhood that Microsoft would pay that much attention to the /. community - but on the other hand, I'd think they'd listen to this.
Second of all, it can't be said that this is the first time a company has put forth a gung-ho effort (if that is even the case) to secure their products - Oracle's Unbreakable database is clear evidence of this. To me, this seems Microsoft has placed itself further into the security spotlight, and that more holes will be exposed as a result.
Finally, above all else, one has to admit that this announcement seems like the reactionary brainchild of Microsoft's PR department. On
Chicago Proposes MAN ;)
Yeah, it's OT, but this headline reminded me of the infamous Ian Malcom line from 'Jurassic Park'...
"God creates dinosours. God destroys dinosours. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosours. Dinosours eat man... Woman inherits the Earth."
Well, that, and I'm sure someone will make a joke about Chicago being the codename for Windows 95, and how Microsoft wants to take control of the human ra... nevermind, I'm hopeless
What about plain old space dust? According to this [nasa.gov] article there's enough of it out there to hamper astronomists when viewing celestial objects from earth. More closer to the point this [spacedaily.com] article describes how people involved in space exploration are concerned with peices of space dust, too small to be tracked, causing serious damage to orbiting satelites.
First of all, the stuff in orbit that's hampering astronauts is not "space dust", in the astronomy sense of the term. It's simply "space junk" - i.e. leftovers from stuff we've created.
And while it's very true that clouds of space dust proper can create enormous blind spots for Earth-based astronomers, on a human level, it's actually quite sparse. Something on the order of one-part-per-million (billion?). As my astro professor put it, one single particle of dust per that many parts is equivalent to a single tennis ball in the state of Missouri. It's simply that sparse, and that's why only lightyears of it will have any noticeable effect on visibility.
Yes, there are variations from location to location, but in general, space dust is simply not dense enough to cause this particular problem.
DirectX 8.0 was available for Win95 - it's 8.1 that's not available. I'd imagine it's simply a convenient time to block out Win95 users. I feel sorry for anyone who purchased (or will purchase in the future) EverQuest for a Win95 box, though.
Did you let it charge for a few hours before trying to use it first? And you have to hold down the power button for a few seconds before it will turn on.
Yeah, I let it charge. No text in the display would come up at all - even when charging. The backlight would turn on, but regardless of how long it had been charged, I couldn't get text to appear on the screen. It worked just fine as a USB harddrive, but something seemed to be wrong with the LCD screen. My second unit did not suffer from the same problem, so I'm pretty sure that I wasn't at fault. Thanks for the thought, though.
I'm sure that the the features of this new model will attract many, but I'll personally stay away: I've had three bad experiences with Archos products.
I purchased an Archos 6000 MP3 player from ThinkGeek about two months ago, and it arrived DOA. It simply would not turn on. I got my money back (TG was excellent as far as service is concerned, by the way), and used it to purchase an Archos HD-MP3 from a retailer in New York (who offered the better model at approximately the same price). I figured that the first time was probably a fluke, and besides - the better model offered the ability to record MP3's, something I could definitely use to for live music recording.
Two more returns later, and I'm still waiting for my fourth Archos MP3 player. My experiences may be the exception to the rule, but I'd be wary of something like this until reliability figures come out.
Better yet, KPMG theme song remixes!
the jungle remix
the hard-rock remix
There's also a teutonic remix out there somewhere, somebody want to provide a link?
Wow... I just thought of something. Does anyone realize what would happen if Sony started pre-loading Linux onto PS2's? Does anyone realize how many users would learn to use (and love) Linux? Consider this - the original Playstation sold close to 100 million units (maybe more?), and the overwhelming majority were sold in latter years of its life.
I'd say this is a fairly likely scenario, actually. Once the price comes down enough, Sony would be smart to start bundling PS2's with harddrives - and so it really wouldn't be a big stretch to throw in the keyboard/mouse combo as well. And if they do that, consumers are going to expect additional functionality. Why pay extra for a harddrive when all it does is store saved games? In comes Linux. By that point, there will already be a browser, a word processor, and a useable GUI developed especially for the PS2. Thus the sub-$300 gaming AND browsing PC becomes a reality - and it runs Linux.
Check out the full system, including Sony's PS2 Flatscreen monitor here. Damn, it's really slick.
Anyone also notice how smart of a move this is for R&D at Sony? They just sit back, sell units, and wait for someone to code/port the perfect office suit/browser/etc that fully integrates the PS2 into the home office, and then they sell more units! I'd say this puts them at least a step ahead of Microsoft.
It's true, the applications for automobiles seem rather limited, but thermionics could stand to revolutionize the nature of power plants.
IANAS, but I believe that today's newest and most efficient coal, oil, and even nuclear power plants can at some point be looked at as a simple heat -> steam -> turbine system, the same concept that's powered locomotives for over one-hundred years! As you'd imagine, such a system is terribly inefficient.
Thermionics, as I understand it, eliminates the "middleman" of the equation by translating heat directly to electricity. It certainly will be interesting to see how this develops on a commerical and thus much larger scale.
An idea is to simply keep a tally of how many times (and by how many unique ip's) each entry in the database has been entered - and then only screen all spam addresses above a certain threshold. No user moderation necessary.
The website lists an organized tournament of 128 5-on-5 Counterstrike teams. Dear lord that's a lot of people.
I don't believe that's the point. Simply knowing that we're not alone in the universe is reason enough to be listening.
There's little chance the current SETI program will find ET. The problem is that SETI has no dedicated, high-sensitivity telescopes. They simply can't afford it. The best they've been able to do is "piggyback" with other radio astronomy projects and listen in. /., we can thank Microsoft's Paul Allen for donating the $26 million to fund the Allen Telescope Array, to be built in California in the next five years (I think), which should alleviate this problem. It'll be a network of smaller telescope arrays programmed to act as a single, massive radio telescope.
And although this may be unpopular on
Take note that the fastest selling console is not the same thing as the most popular console ever. I'm not sure who holds that honor, but I'm sure that other consoles have sold more than 750,000 units (heck games sell two or three times that on a regular basis).
Hahaha... Search Googlefor "largest black hole" and the first result that comes up is Microsoft Technical Support.
Technically the singularity itself possesses infinte density, and thus it's size cannot be resolved (i.e.: it's a single point, no matter how close you magnify it).
The Schwarzschild radius of such an object, however (better known as the "event horizon"), can be calculated fairly simply using a variation of the escape velocity formula
Rs = 2*G*M / c^2
Where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the object, and c is the speed of light.
Plugging the numbers into the equation yields a radius of 2.95 * 10^6 km. Therefore this black hole has a radius just over four times the size of the sun, and an area 16 times as large. Compared to black holes usually on scales relative to that of the Earth, that's REAL big.
Seven words I just couldn't resist:
All your plates are belong to us.
According to the original Oregonian article:
In addition to the discs from Oates' apartment, investigators recovered drivers' licenses, credit cards, identification photos, death certificates, Social Security cards and applications for medical residency at OHSU Hospital.
It sounds like there was a lot more to this than just license data. My guess is that it's not the Oregon public that's at risk - it's some OHSU facility this guy was trying to get into.
Xavier said many of the cable companies that carry Excite@Home have informed users that their service could cease after Friday.
MANY of the users?! It scares me even more that this implies that there are some who haven't been informed about the situation!
Ah, but the situation is FAR WORSE!
It's as if your wife FINALLY started complaining about the fact that you missed your last three anniversaries, you haven't called in days, you make HER pay for dinner, she's caught you cheating on her several times (you're lousy in bed anyways), and you've simply LAUGHED when she's accused you in the past!
It so happens that you work at a digital camera company, and, to make it up to your wife, you buy a company camera at invoice for YOURSELF, get a RAISE for the sale, and EVERYONE on the block sees you as the greatest and sweetest guy in town!
Life is good.
Perhaps this is off-topic, but the link to distributed.net is broken in the story paragraph. The 'p' in 'http:' is missing.
I was a little surprised last week to receive a forwarded e-mail from Junis, who lives in a small town 35 miles southwest of Kabul.
I have two questions for Katz:
1. Since when have forwarded e-mails been reliable journalistic sources?
2. Doesn't this sound suspiciously like the beginning of a "[name] is dying of cancer, will receive [amount of money] for every time this e-mail is forwarded" chain letter?
At least the poor kid didn't try and set up a website. Hehe... his Commodore would quickly learn the meaning of the phrase "/. effect."
Anyone that's experienced any of Square's masterpieces - especially Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears - will be able to agree with me that videogames can be some of the most expressive, passionate, and masterful pieces of immersive storytelling of our time. That's not to say they're all wonders of human creativity - but, as with television and movies, there are brilliant works that can be considered nothing other than art.
I can't say the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will be able to pick up on this - games are, unforunately, in the public's mind, nothing more than "games" - but I certainly suggest the above titles as justification for my belief.