most of the time that people use tables in a word processor document, they would have been better using a spreadsheet.
No way. Any of those reasons the AC lists better off in a spreadsheet? Sure, it would be nice to have something more elegant than tables for simple layout. But spreadsheets have even less control over layout. How about forms that combine instructions and explanations with fields that need to be filled out? Don't tell me thats one for a spreadsheet.
Is there any conclusive evidence that Microsoft uses some undocumented API's to their advantage?
I know they exist, but I doubt that Microsoft has used them to any great extent. Remember, this trial is about Microsoft's business practices, not their programming practices. Microsoft has tried to deflect the issues by transferring attention to programming issues, hoping that the people involved in the trial don't understand the FUD that they're putting forth.
You know that Troll that keeps posting all the math that shows BSD only has like 3 installations worldwide? And that other guy that posts to every other Microsoft story (posting to every one of them is too much) on how all those stock options are a grand pyramid scheme and Microsoft isn't worth so much after all?
They need to get together and come up with some good fuzzy math that shows how Microsoft will burn through that $40 billion in a week and make the DOJ irrelevant. Then we can all go home.
Those pretty bar graphs indicated the time spent getting the job done. That means that the taller one labeled Mac on each of them means the Mac took longer. Generally that means the Mac loses to the Athlon.
That could be the case. I've had the impression that the.doc format was a series of object states serialized to disk, hence the binary format, backwards compatibility problems and difficulty parsing it. However that isn't even a very informed impression. But Word could be built around a capable RTF importer / exporter along with object serialization / deserialization capabilities.
Microsoft does make a RTF specification available, but I don't see any clear answers to the question at hand.
DOC format is a binary format that includes a great deal more information and takes much more room and looks nothing like RTF. Microsoft confuses the matter by ignoring the file extension when it parses the filetype and contents. You can rename a RTF or even an HTML to DOC and Word will happily parse it as best it can.
2) Word files are for the most part backwards compatible.
For the most part. IIRC, Word 95 was a quick 32 bit port of Word 6. Word 97 was a rewrite, with a correspondingly different binary file format that Word 95 couldn't handle. This caused great problems for companies who were slowly adopting Word 97. Sure, you could change the filetype when you saved and I believe you could change the defaults somewhere but how many drones are going to figure this out. To them, it just doesn't work. Incidentally, this is probably what people have in mind that Microsoft intentionally breaks backwards compatibility to force upgrades. Following this, Microsoft learned to make the file formats backwards compatible.
I think you are trying to make the point that the Office file formats are a de facto standard, regardless of what is actually useful or compatible. I happen to agree, though I hate Word for its quirks and difficulty in doing anything more than the simplest thing.
Ha, I stop reading his book 1632 on my palm pilot and see this on/.
Last year when this came up I read one of his free books but got distracted and didn't follow up. After seeing this again on/. and enjoying his article I read the first two in the Belasarius series and got thoroughly sucked in. I tried tracking down the rest at the library but they closed early on the weekend so I bought the next two from the Webscriptions. (looks like I could have saved $4 on Destiny's Shield but hey, overall I'm quite happy, $8 for 4 books worth of entertainment is a great deal).
Now I'm wading my way through 1632 and I'm going to have to track down the rest of the books in this series. I might try the library or I might end up buying them, we'll see. And, as I mentioned, I'm reading it on a Palm Pilot. Not as good as paper, not even as good as the HTML versions, but definately readable and I can take it to the toilet with me...
Vegas is also one of the fastest growing areas in the country. Much of the infrastructure has not kept pace, improvements are only now being finished that accomodate the level of traffic here, they will be swamped if the level of growth continues.
For instance, I-15 (you can see it in the graphic) is the major North-South traffic artery through town, it currently has rougly 4 lanes in each direction in the area that parallels the monorail project and the strip casinos. I attended a presentation a few years back that estimated a need for over 10 lanes in each direction in less than 20 years. For some large metropolitan areas that is nothing, but for a backward gambling town that isn't so recently out of the mob era (some say we're still there with Oscar Goodman as mayor) that is quite an increase in traffic.
Some more #s off the top of my head:
35,000,000 visitors a year (6 million by car, the rest by air
125,000 hotel rooms
1,600 taxicabs
Comdex is usually one of the largest events (this year's was under the shadow of the events of 9/11/01), with reported attendance of over 200,000, this fills up the city and allows the sleaziest dumps to charge over $200 a night. So we can get an extra 13% of our population into town over a week or a long weekend? We can use some help in the transit department.
We sold the Swift microscopes, something like this would be the minimum I'd reccomend, IIRC they were about $500. If you're a little more serious about it, the stuff that was priced up closer to $1000 was definately better quality.
I'll bet the SMT rigs you mention were much better than these though, wider FOV, better depth of field and better optics.
Re:I've always found the Bible series
on
Zope Bible
·
· Score: 2
One exception, the 'Bibles' on Macromedia products. These books had a good reputation in the Macromedia newsgroups, the authors participated heavily in that community (and I imagine they participate in the web forums) and the books did a good job of moving from the basics into advanced topics.
But some of the other 'Bible' titles that I purchased based on that good experience were right in line with your opinion, lacking is actually rather kind...
Don't be thrown off by the lower magnification powers that these things have. While I haven't used one of them, I've used other low power microscopes and for general day to day use and for getting kids interested in science, a 10x to 25x microscope will probably do more for you than a 100x,400x,1000x scope would.
Why? 10x is easier to use and you can look at all kinds of real world objects. You catch some funny looking bug and you can look at him real close up and personal like. You've got a cut on your finger healing? Nothing like seeing that filling your field of view. Now sure, at 400x you can see cells if you prepare a slide. But the real interesting stuff has to stained and prepared properly, those nice micrographs you see don't come without preparation. And you can't just stick a circuit board in there and see if you have cracked traces or cold solder joints.
Then again, you might be interested to know that as of IE 5.5, IE was backported from the Macintosh version.
I'm curious about this, do you have more info or a a reference for this? I know that IE 5.5 had a significantly longer startup time than IE 5 on my ancient Win95 computer, but then IE 5.5 still had the CSS box model problems that IE 5 Win had that IE 5 Mac had done correctly (one place I found something on this).
That was the first time a game ever actually scared me.
No monsters at all on the first map. I wandered around thinking I was missing something. Finally did the portal to the next map. Wandered around that a bit. When something finally did start moving around I almost fell out of my chair.
Dude, that doesn't catch all the updates they issue. They've gotten better after Code Red (IIRC, the Code Red vulnerability fix wasn't on the windowsupdate site when it hit) but if you run that little update check utility they just put out, you'll find a load of stuff that escaped the automated updates.
Now if you're actually tracking down those updates you get in the email and installing each one, you're doing your part to keep my Apache log files a little cleaner.
When people ask if it supports ASP, they usually mean, does it execute ASP pages that contain code in VBScript or Microsoft's JScript.
Don't you go to COM controls when you hit the bounds of ASP performance or when you need a feature and don't have the time to write it in VBScript and nobody has open-sourced something? I don't think it matters what languages the Apache ASP modules support, you're almost going to have to re-do a serious web application from scratch when you change platforms.
Hit your preferences page, about the 5th option down should be something called 'Collapse Sections', put a check mark in that, go to the end of the page and hit the save button. You should now see all the articles that show up in each of the sections of/. but don't get put up on the front page. And yeah, its normal for not all of them to make the front page.
I'd agree, for knocking together a presentation, Swish may be a better authoring tool than Macromedia's.
Others have pointed out some decent alternatives, SVG, DHTML and Java applets would all let you add some glitz to your presentation.
Whatever you do, enforce a separation of style from content, it is possible in any of the above mentioned technologies. This might even allow you to provide multiple versions from the same content base (something concerning policy on perscription drugs might be very useful to the blind and the physically handicapped)
Another good reason for a list is when researching a project or problem you find an obscure Usenet posting on Google refering to a project and further searching doesn't turn up anything. Finding it in a database like this quickly lets you know the status and whether it is going to solve your particular problem.
So I finally tracked down the source to bnetd (v0.4.25) and Tim Jung is only listed in the credits as offering hosting for the project. A grep of the source confirms his name appears on none of the copyright headers for any of the files.
Furthermore, EFF issued a press release regarding the lawsuit today. Of note is the following paragraph:
"Blizzard contacted our lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) saying they would consider dropping the case if we help find ways to prevent pirates from using the bnetd server software," noted Tim Jung, Internet Gateway ISP owner of the and defendant in the case. "While we bnetd developers spent many hours last week trying to help Blizzard, they apparently spent many hours preparing to sue me and my small business."
So this lawsuit comes after good faith efforts by the bnetd developers to implement Blizzard's cd key checking code? Could this be a case of one side of the corporation not knowing what the other side is doing? Or the blind arrogance of a corporation?
But then it came to my mind that Dungeon Siege doesn't offer one essential thing: generated maps. Those are one of the major factors in Diablo's almost unlimited replay value.
Ah, but GPG is releasing the Siege Editor and assorted tools to enable us to create content for the game. Granted, 90% of projects won't get finished and won't be worth playing but I can imagine a few gems being done that rival the original in quality. Counterstrike is the ultimate example but think of the mod communities for the various FPS games. The mod community is where your replay value with DS lies.
To bring this remotely back on topic, if any of these D2 mods became popular would Blizzard force their shutdown? Just because Blizzard knows about them now and doesn't do anything doesn't mean they aren't going to do anything in the future.
The lawsuit isn't against bnetd, it is against Tim Jung and his ISP, Internet Gateway. They are involved because Tim was kind enough to host the project and had the balls to stand up to Blizzard instead of bending to their will.
The lawsuit reads like a press release, using phrases like 'Blizzard is one of the preeminent entertainment software companies in the world'.
Don't tell anyone, but the source for bnetd is available with many linux distributions... I might have a look at some of Blizzards absurd claims myself.
In other news, the coming of Dungeon Siege numbers the days for DiabloII. Dungeon Siege is much prettier and more immersing while offering the same kind of hack and slash gameplay, character advancement and 'finding nifty items' that was first pioneered in games like Rogue.
I've used the WebDAV module with Apache on both Windows and Linux systems to offer things like a quick and dirty remote file share, a private Yahoo briefcase-ish service and as another poster describes, uploading websites. WebDAV is not only cross platform, a client comes with IE 4 and later. As a part of MS 'integration', the WebDAV servers appear as a 'Web Folder' or a 'Network Place' inside Windows Explorer. This allows you to set something up and provide simple instructions for those that glaze over when you start talking about protocols or installing new software. Of course, Microsoft doens't quite implement things perfectly so I've had some bizarre issues with Windows98 refusing to connect to a server but for the most part it works very well.
Slashdot Mirror
The Polywell starts at $3000, as does the dual G4.
The equality is also in the long standing claims of superior performance from some Apple tr^H^Henthusiasts.
I know they exist, but I doubt that Microsoft has used them to any great extent. Remember, this trial is about Microsoft's business practices, not their programming practices. Microsoft has tried to deflect the issues by transferring attention to programming issues, hoping that the people involved in the trial don't understand the FUD that they're putting forth.
They need to get together and come up with some good fuzzy math that shows how Microsoft will burn through that $40 billion in a week and make the DOJ irrelevant. Then we can all go home.
Those pretty bar graphs indicated the time spent getting the job done. That means that the taller one labeled Mac on each of them means the Mac took longer. Generally that means the Mac loses to the Athlon.
besides, its all offtopic anyway :)
Microsoft does make a RTF specification available, but I don't see any clear answers to the question at hand.
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl {\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 Arial;}}
\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs20 Hello World\par
}
DOC format is a binary format that includes a great deal more information and takes much more room and looks nothing like RTF. Microsoft confuses the matter by ignoring the file extension when it parses the filetype and contents. You can rename a RTF or even an HTML to DOC and Word will happily parse it as best it can.
For the most part. IIRC, Word 95 was a quick 32 bit port of Word 6. Word 97 was a rewrite, with a correspondingly different binary file format that Word 95 couldn't handle. This caused great problems for companies who were slowly adopting Word 97. Sure, you could change the filetype when you saved and I believe you could change the defaults somewhere but how many drones are going to figure this out. To them, it just doesn't work. Incidentally, this is probably what people have in mind that Microsoft intentionally breaks backwards compatibility to force upgrades. Following this, Microsoft learned to make the file formats backwards compatible.I think you are trying to make the point that the Office file formats are a de facto standard, regardless of what is actually useful or compatible. I happen to agree, though I hate Word for its quirks and difficulty in doing anything more than the simplest thing.
No BSA story is complete without linking to this unverified horror story of a BSA raid.
Last year when this came up I read one of his free books but got distracted and didn't follow up. After seeing this again on /. and enjoying his article I read the first two in the Belasarius series and got thoroughly sucked in. I tried tracking down the rest at the library but they closed early on the weekend so I bought the next two from the Webscriptions. (looks like I could have saved $4 on Destiny's Shield but hey, overall I'm quite happy, $8 for 4 books worth of entertainment is a great deal).
Now I'm wading my way through 1632 and I'm going to have to track down the rest of the books in this series. I might try the library or I might end up buying them, we'll see. And, as I mentioned, I'm reading it on a Palm Pilot. Not as good as paper, not even as good as the HTML versions, but definately readable and I can take it to the toilet with me...
For instance, I-15 (you can see it in the graphic) is the major North-South traffic artery through town, it currently has rougly 4 lanes in each direction in the area that parallels the monorail project and the strip casinos. I attended a presentation a few years back that estimated a need for over 10 lanes in each direction in less than 20 years. For some large metropolitan areas that is nothing, but for a backward gambling town that isn't so recently out of the mob era (some say we're still there with Oscar Goodman as mayor) that is quite an increase in traffic.
Some more #s off the top of my head:
35,000,000 visitors a year (6 million by car, the rest by air
125,000 hotel rooms
1,600 taxicabs
Comdex is usually one of the largest events (this year's was under the shadow of the events of 9/11/01), with reported attendance of over 200,000, this fills up the city and allows the sleaziest dumps to charge over $200 a night. So we can get an extra 13% of our population into town over a week or a long weekend? We can use some help in the transit department.
I'll bet the SMT rigs you mention were much better than these though, wider FOV, better depth of field and better optics.
But some of the other 'Bible' titles that I purchased based on that good experience were right in line with your opinion, lacking is actually rather kind...
Why? 10x is easier to use and you can look at all kinds of real world objects. You catch some funny looking bug and you can look at him real close up and personal like. You've got a cut on your finger healing? Nothing like seeing that filling your field of view. Now sure, at 400x you can see cells if you prepare a slide. But the real interesting stuff has to stained and prepared properly, those nice micrographs you see don't come without preparation. And you can't just stick a circuit board in there and see if you have cracked traces or cold solder joints.
That was the first time a game ever actually scared me.
No monsters at all on the first map. I wandered around thinking I was missing something. Finally did the portal to the next map. Wandered around that a bit. When something finally did start moving around I almost fell out of my chair.
Now if you're actually tracking down those updates you get in the email and installing each one, you're doing your part to keep my Apache log files a little cleaner.
Hit your preferences page, about the 5th option down should be something called 'Collapse Sections', put a check mark in that, go to the end of the page and hit the save button. You should now see all the articles that show up in each of the sections of /. but don't get put up on the front page. And yeah, its normal for not all of them to make the front page.
Others have pointed out some decent alternatives, SVG, DHTML and Java applets would all let you add some glitz to your presentation.
Whatever you do, enforce a separation of style from content, it is possible in any of the above mentioned technologies. This might even allow you to provide multiple versions from the same content base (something concerning policy on perscription drugs might be very useful to the blind and the physically handicapped)
Another good reason for a list is when researching a project or problem you find an obscure Usenet posting on Google refering to a project and further searching doesn't turn up anything. Finding it in a database like this quickly lets you know the status and whether it is going to solve your particular problem.
Furthermore, EFF issued a press release regarding the lawsuit today. Of note is the following paragraph:
So this lawsuit comes after good faith efforts by the bnetd developers to implement Blizzard's cd key checking code? Could this be a case of one side of the corporation not knowing what the other side is doing? Or the blind arrogance of a corporation?To bring this remotely back on topic, if any of these D2 mods became popular would Blizzard force their shutdown? Just because Blizzard knows about them now and doesn't do anything doesn't mean they aren't going to do anything in the future.
The lawsuit reads like a press release, using phrases like 'Blizzard is one of the preeminent entertainment software companies in the world'.
Don't tell anyone, but the source for bnetd is available with many linux distributions... I might have a look at some of Blizzards absurd claims myself.
In other news, the coming of Dungeon Siege numbers the days for DiabloII. Dungeon Siege is much prettier and more immersing while offering the same kind of hack and slash gameplay, character advancement and 'finding nifty items' that was first pioneered in games like Rogue.
I haven't used the Kiwi File System though.