"I can't believe that this language, which isn't all that old, doesn't have parameters which can be returned from a subroutine (without using globals)."
In QBasic there is a distinct difference between a Subroutine and a Function. Specifically, Functions return something (and can be used in calculations) and subroutines do not.
IIRC -
FUNCTION add(x as integer, y as integer) as integer
add = x + y
END FUNCTION
If you find QBasic painful, it's largely the frustration at being unable to do something you think should be easy or intuitive - people often think BASIC in general is 'easier' or 'less powerful' than many other languages, but even easier and less powerful languages have to be learned. Just because you don't know how to do something in a language doesn't mean it can't be done.
I use QBasic infrequently for rapid prototyping on DOS workstations. If the prototype works out I'll either choose to re-do it in C later or simply leave it as is - it fits on a floppy, works great as a text editor, and is much more powerful than a batch file, without all the system requirements and build cycle times of even a small C compiler.
I fail to see from your argument valid reasons for believing that QBasic "Totally sucks" and is "obscene". I'd rather work in C for speed and versatility, and PHP for high level constructs and rapid development, but for what it does with how little it requires, it really blows most other language choices away.
"Now we can officially be ignored and spat upon by all the device manufacturers inspite of our growing numbers..."
Let's see - linux users who will actively purchase this equipment for usage under linux over the next 2 years - maybe 5% of active linux users, which amount to about 1-2% of total first adopters in all areas...
See, they can't actively ignore and spit on you if they can't find you.
When their little warranty cards start coming back with more than 10% linux usage, then they may start to think about putting together a committee to study the profitability of providing native linux drivers.
Until then they'll just have to keep their spittle to themselves, and continue to passively ignore you (kindof like they ignore all the big iron mainframe users out there).
First thing I wanted to know is how much longer is it really?
The original TT is 179 minutes, just a hair under 3 hours. That makes the extended edition 43 minutes longer at 222 minutes.
In those 43 minutes you could
Make and bake 3 batches of cookies
Order and eat one medium pizza
Lay sod down in a 200 square foot yard
Makeworld your FreeBSD
Fax 20 government representatives digital copyright
View all of the easter eggs on the FotR extended set 4 times (including the saturday night live version of the council)
Bicycle 15 miles
Bookmark and replay Boromir's death fight 8 times
Or look at new ent scenes, watch merry and pippin grow inches from ent draught, get more info about the theoden family and boramir's father and brother, etc, etc.
Me?
DIE BOROMIR, DIE!!! "My K...-rewind- THAP! "ARRRGH" THAP! THAP!
Companies don't have to announce that they use freebsd in their embedded devices. All they need to include is the following statement somewhere in their documentation:
Copyright 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
That's it. Since it looks like a fairly standard copyright and is fairly small (compared to nearly any other common license today) then it's easy to miss.
There are devices out there that use BSD derivatives for their firmware, and often it is used for precisely the reasons you give.
The recent night I was speaking of was getting up at 7am, going to bed at 4am (21 hours), and getting up 4 hours later at 8 am. I then stayed up until 3am, and got up again at 8 am. (which was this morning, coincidentally)
I am fit, though I'd rather be in a slightly different shape. To keep fit I train for and compete in ultra cycling events. The most recent race was a 24 hour race in which I cycled 209 miles (150 miles in the first 12 hours). Every other weekend or so I cycle 30-80 miles, and I try to go at least 15 miles every day.
I'm making assumptions about other people's health because my experience has been that when I live unhealthily I experience more problems (such as eye issues) than when I'm trying to live well.
Too many people underestimate the importance of a lot of good rest. 15-18 hours is great, it's right around 8 hours of sleep a night. Staying up late once a week isn't a big problem. It's when you consistantly get little sleep that it then becomes an issue.
You may have eye problems because you aren't eating well, aren't fit or don't get enough sleep on a regular basis. My eyes are still recovering from a late night (20 hours awake) - it usually takes a few days. Also note that near the end of your twenties you will find your body doesn't heal from such activities as quickly. If you stay up for more than 16 to 20 hours at a time more than once a week I wouldn't expect you to ever recover.
But you are talking about two seperate (but related) things - eye strain, and dry eyes. There are two seperate remedies if you have taken care of health, fitness, and sleep. First, look away from the screen at a far away object for 30 seconds or more at least every 10-15 minutes. There are programs which cover the screen and force you to do so for periods of time. Second, make a program that flashes something large on your display every 10-30 seconds extremely briefly. Your eyes will instinctively blink, and you will not be distracted after getting used to it - much less distracting than a beep, or other stimulues, and uses your reflexes so you don't need to take your mind off what you're doing.
I find that reading and coding cause me to keep my eyes open for far longer than they should be. I would be surprised if you were actually blinking enough when you were trying to blink more frequently.
-Adam
Fortunately Hitachi's beat them with a 4GB disk
on
1.5GB HDs On a 1" Platter
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· Score: 4, Informative
Hitachi announced a 4GB Microdrive (one inch) earlier this year.
The differences between these two products:
Hitachi is more expensive, more parts, requires more power
Cornice is more 'dumb', less capacity, smaller (mounted to PCB) and non-removable
So they each have their advantages. I don't know if I could be satisfied with being unable to 'change tapes' in my camcorder - it probably takes on the order of minutes to transfer from the camera to a computer or other storage device, and I doubt the drive has enough throughput and a low enough seek time to allow both high speed recording and high speed reading which would allow me to offload portions of the data while still recording.
But not owning a camcorder I don't know what the usage patterns typically are. I imagine that most days it's used it isn't used for more than an hour throughout the whole day. At this point the MPEG4 encoder may require more power then the HD, which means that a very small li-ion polymer battery will last through the entire drive.
Why oh why do so many story submitters encourage us to visit a site which requires some small amount of personal information to gain access to something which is freely available in so many other places????
You might think so, but you'd have to cover a lot of those digits, as they probably also get information about the size, shape and color of the vehicle. Coupled with a few digits of the license and you can ID the car. If the car doesn't come up (too much mud) then I'm certian a human studying the picture can narrow the search down to a few cars and still deliver the ticket to the correct one.
-Adam
Re:The possibilities are endless!
on
More Clones!
·
· Score: 1
Two rebuttals:
Pretty much, yeah, but that still doesn't discount the fact that one cow may taste better than another, despite being raised similarily. If the industry could make all their cows taste like the top 1/3 that they have now cheaply, they would.
I was making a play on the concept that many people feel cloning is bad because either 1) you can't clone the soul/spirit/mind/whatever or 2) cloned animals posses no soul/spirit. My statement alludes to another line of thought where the soul/spirit/mind/whatever is also cloned. If the definition of sentient life is the physical embodiement of a soul/spirit/mind/whatever and you combine that with a loose interpretation of double jeapardy, then you can come to the conclusion that a living, cloned animal is not actually 'alive', and therefore cannot die.
"...when I'm riding my bike, I'm paying attention to the BIG-[@#$] FORD BIGGER-THAN-[#$&%]-ALL EXCURSIONS flying past me at fifty miles per hour."
Dude! I know exactly what you mean! Has there ever been a vehicle more suitable for bicycle drafting??!! Semis go way too slow, but these things have nearly the same cross-section, and their little bitty drivers drive 'em like speed bikes. Since they have no concept of their size, they actually pass close enough to the bike to gimme an extra 5mph!
Not quite as thilling as the top thrill dragster ride at cedar point, but a lot less expensive (excluding hospital stays)
-Adam
Ultramarathon Cyclist
209 miles in 24 hours
Florida Sebring
First in class, fourth overall
The possibilities are endless!
on
More Clones!
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Now we simply need to have a cow contest to find...
The World's Tastiest Cow
At which point we can start cloning it for mass consumption! Imagine, you can now own your very own "World's Tastiest Cow" in your very own back yard! The look on your neighbors face when you tell them you're still considered vegan because this cow has already been killed so when you eat it you can't be killing it - it was cloned dead!
"... I can't figure out why no one has pre-ordered the CD"
You're asking people to pre-order a CD? You're asking regular, average, CD-buying people to preorder a CD?
Average Joe does not preorder anything from an unknown entity, much less for music that they've heard maybe 5 or 10 times in their life. Pre-orders work for groups that have dedicated following, who are willing to say, "Here's my money now - you can pay me with product later." You are trying to go backwards and develop a following by having non-followers preorder a CD.
I wouldn't do it, myself, unless I felt passionate about the music, and I doubt your music causes much feeling in me at all, nevermind passion. Even if I really liked the music I would say, "Well, I'll visit infrequently over the next few months - if they have anything they can ship tomorrow then I might buy it." But since the MP3s are freely available, I might not even check back.
Going back to your original question: what should a small independent music publishing company do to sell a new artist to the public?
I suspect, but don't know, that a publishing company will have to take a hit on a few albums before the artist takes off. Like a web site it takes years, not months, to gather enough followers to make ends meet, without breaking a profit. Some artists biff, some make it big, but you have to hold onto them, develop them, produce two or more EXCELLENT polished albums, get some regular airplay on several stations, and put some blood, sweat, and tears into your work.
How about this:
Quick, easy/cheap, profitable.
Pick two. The RIAA does quick and profitable by pouring money into it. You will never be able to compete on their field, so don't try.
A large portion of spam gets sent out under real email addresses that do not belong to the spammer.
On top of that fatal flaw, this system still has all the major problems of other systems:
Would require huge infrastructure and deployment efforts Not everyone will get on board, either on the receiving end or sending end
Most email users do not control their own domains and would depend on their ISP for any finger servers
Most people still accept spam as a 'fact of life' concerning the internet.
Even now I still tell people that they will just have to accept the spam, though some filters help. It's simply not worth most people's time to fight it yet.
I wish we didn't have to use any legal measures, but the reality is that any technological measures will be overcome quickly. Laws exist to prevent such 'arms races', and in this case neither party (spammer/user) is willing to back down from their position.
All else being equal, I'm glad *BSD got the legal troubles out of its system early in development, rather than running into litigious lawyer lapdogs later.
I suspect, but don't know, that it costs more to make an LCD, put it in a suitable enclosure with a controller card, box it and ship it than your $50 price mark, regardless of the number of bad pixels.
Since the LCD is the only bad part then it's cheaper to find that it doesn't meet specs right off the line before ever attaching any circuitry. The only thing lost at that point is the time to manufacture, and some small amount of materials.
Lastly, most of the big display manufacturers probably have the high-volume LCD lines to the point where units thrown away due to minor defect (but still usable, as in your need) are very low, much less than 10%, probably under 5% or even 1%.
The reason we have specs which include "no dead pixels inside center area, up to eight outside" are not because someone sat down and decided that was the case, or because it was determined that after 8 pixels around the border people started having siezures. It was most likely determined by a bean counter looking at the numbers, and determining that the 95% success rate would include screens which may have up to that many defects in those areas.
Now that they have a starting point, they've refined the process not to reduce dead pixels, but to reduce dead pixels that fall outside those requirements.
I imagine that you can special order LCDs from a major manufacturer in quantity and lower your cost by lowering the requirements, but I doubt it could be profitable for more than a year or two until LCDs finally cost around $100 for the 15" versions.
-Adam
And this is why many ISPs don't give log access
on
Meet Cyveillancebot
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· Score: 0, Troll
And this is why many ISPs don't give log access to the people they host for
Too many user will run around screaming "Somebody's stealing my stuff! WAAAAAAH!"
Look, robots.txt is a gentleman's agreement. The internet is open for all, not just gentlemen.
WELCOME TO THE INTERNET! HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE ABUSED TODAY?
Please take some time to re-read that, and disabuse yourself of the idea that you can control other people - the only control you have over them is going to be control they will also have over you.
Secondly, if it really bothers you, block, ban, tarpit, data-spam, whatever the heck you want out of them. If they dare contact you, you can give them whatever you want, however you want. Send them data from random at a rate of 2 bytes per second. Drop half the packets they send you. Abuse the TCP/IP protocol and see if their software is robust enough to handle it. Make it just annoying enough to contact your website in certian ways that they will put you on their 'do not spider' list. Here's a simple example.
But, man get a grip. Seriously. Do you honestly think you are the first person to discover the dark underbelly of corporate money making schemes on the net?
That end up being 100 Hard drive failures per year, about $10,000/yr, not counting labor.
Or 2 per week. ($200/wk), if efficient to replace then add another $100/wk for ordering, shipping, storage, replacement and disposal.
That's assuming good cooling and low usage (equivilant to an intermittant home user - which is what I expect a good backup system to get used to)
So, ignoring the cost of the initial investment, they'll be paying up to $15,000 per year to maintain this backup solution.
This is more expensive than many traditional backup methods, such as tape.
However there were a few 'gimmes'. Firstly, the array only has to last 5 years. Secondly they are using 5400rpm hard drives - much cooler. Thirdly, these hard drives have a 3 year warranty, which is better than most places will give you now.
So it's likely that the maintenance cost, in this case, is going to be low compared to the initial investment.
The real problem, then, is the tendancy to keep an old system long past its prime and original intent. Someone in the future will say, "Instead of junking the system and upgrading to new technology, let's just throw larger hard drives in there each time one fails and up the capacity. Eventually it will cost $10k or more per year, and they won't know it.
-Adam
Read 'im his rights!
on
Linus on DRM
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· Score: 2, Funny
The new Linus's Rights:
You have the right to sign your binaries.
Anything you sign can and will be used against you in a public forum.
If you are under the age of 18, anything you sign can be used against you in a juvenile flame war for a juvenile offense and can also be used against you in an adult flame war if the forum admin decides that you are to be flamed as an adult.
You have the right to talk to an attorney before signing any binaries.
You have the right to have your attorney present during the signing.
If you cannot afford PGP, OpenPGP will be provided to you without cost, before or during signing, if you desire.
Will we see Mac OS X running on two different platforms/CPUs? Could we be that lucky?
In short, NO.
Firstly, as everyone knows, Apple makes money off one thing, and one thing only - HARDWARE. They make great software only to sell their hardware.
The benefits of controlling the hardware are
A better user experience
Lower tech support costs
Better quality control
Specialized/customized designs with an eye toward aesthetics
They CANNOT allow others to create hardware upon which their software will run. This means that they have to use a special BIOS, and manufacture their own boards. IF they switch to an OS that can be run on an x86 processor (and custom mothboard/bios/etc), you will find, the very next day, a crack for the software which will allow it to run on any generic motherboard, and further down the line a BIOS image which will allow an unmodified software to run on a non-custom motherboard.
Right now they can control it because a 'commodity' PPC motherboard costs more than the same apple motherboard. It would surprise me if Apple wasn't applying some pressure to various suppliers to prevent the widespread availability of commodity PPC equipment which is very similar to Apple's own. This is common in the industry. Furthermore, they may even have a slightly altered/customized version of the various PPC chips they use.
The only way for Apple to play against WINTEL is to not compete - not competing means selling essentially different products. Apple would die if they had to sell their OS and try to make a profit at it - the company is simply not designed to compete against MS. (Although if they did Windows would improve dramatically)
Put another way, Apple is a whole user experience company. They don't want the user to go to a generic theatre, sit in seats made by some strange company, eat food purchased from GFS, and watch a movie made by three different movie studios. They want you in their theater, their seats eating their food, and watching their entirely controlled movie.
This is good for those who only want to deal with one company, and are willing to pay for it. They know their market. They may be trying to expand it a little towards the geek segment that play with software but don't care about hardware (we run unix!). It is unlikely that they will ever capture the imagination of the hardware geek, they know it, and they aren't courting us.
So stop posting freaking stories about OS X on any commodity hardware, ok?
Slashdot Mirror
"We do not guarantee that any source code or executable code available from the mozilla.org domain is Year 2000 compliant."
Good thing we're not in the year 2000 anymore. Lucky for those lazy developers...
-Adam
The google cache of the pdf (converted to HTML by google) is here.
-Adam
"I can't believe that this language, which isn't all that old, doesn't have parameters which can be returned from a subroutine (without using globals)."
In QBasic there is a distinct difference between a Subroutine and a Function. Specifically, Functions return something (and can be used in calculations) and subroutines do not.
IIRC -
FUNCTION add(x as integer, y as integer) as integer
add = x + y
END FUNCTION
If you find QBasic painful, it's largely the frustration at being unable to do something you think should be easy or intuitive - people often think BASIC in general is 'easier' or 'less powerful' than many other languages, but even easier and less powerful languages have to be learned. Just because you don't know how to do something in a language doesn't mean it can't be done.
I use QBasic infrequently for rapid prototyping on DOS workstations. If the prototype works out I'll either choose to re-do it in C later or simply leave it as is - it fits on a floppy, works great as a text editor, and is much more powerful than a batch file, without all the system requirements and build cycle times of even a small C compiler.
I fail to see from your argument valid reasons for believing that QBasic "Totally sucks" and is "obscene". I'd rather work in C for speed and versatility, and PHP for high level constructs and rapid development, but for what it does with how little it requires, it really blows most other language choices away.
-Adam
"Now we can officially be ignored and spat upon by all the device manufacturers inspite of our growing numbers..."
Let's see - linux users who will actively purchase this equipment for usage under linux over the next 2 years - maybe 5% of active linux users, which amount to about 1-2% of total first adopters in all areas...
See, they can't actively ignore and spit on you if they can't find you.
When their little warranty cards start coming back with more than 10% linux usage, then they may start to think about putting together a committee to study the profitability of providing native linux drivers.
Until then they'll just have to keep their spittle to themselves, and continue to passively ignore you (kindof like they ignore all the big iron mainframe users out there).
Sorry, no spit for you.
-Adam
The original TT is 179 minutes, just a hair under 3 hours. That makes the extended edition 43 minutes longer at 222 minutes.
In those 43 minutes you could
Or look at new ent scenes, watch merry and pippin grow inches from ent draught, get more info about the theoden family and boramir's father and brother, etc, etc.
Me?
DIE BOROMIR, DIE!!! "My K...-rewind- THAP! "ARRRGH" THAP! THAP!
-Adam
This one's easy, so I'll answer it.
Companies don't have to announce that they use freebsd in their embedded devices. All they need to include is the following statement somewhere in their documentation:
Copyright 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
That's it. Since it looks like a fairly standard copyright and is fairly small (compared to nearly any other common license today) then it's easy to miss.
There are devices out there that use BSD derivatives for their firmware, and often it is used for precisely the reasons you give.
-Adam
I did a google and came up with these:
http://www.micronite.com/html/news/preyes.htm
http://www.s-sc.com/towshlog.htm
There are probably others as well. I'm looking at making my own software in the near future.
-Adam
The recent night I was speaking of was getting up at 7am, going to bed at 4am (21 hours), and getting up 4 hours later at 8 am. I then stayed up until 3am, and got up again at 8 am. (which was this morning, coincidentally)
I am fit, though I'd rather be in a slightly different shape. To keep fit I train for and compete in ultra cycling events. The most recent race was a 24 hour race in which I cycled 209 miles (150 miles in the first 12 hours). Every other weekend or so I cycle 30-80 miles, and I try to go at least 15 miles every day.
I'm making assumptions about other people's health because my experience has been that when I live unhealthily I experience more problems (such as eye issues) than when I'm trying to live well.
Too many people underestimate the importance of a lot of good rest. 15-18 hours is great, it's right around 8 hours of sleep a night. Staying up late once a week isn't a big problem. It's when you consistantly get little sleep that it then becomes an issue.
-Adam
You may have eye problems because you aren't eating well, aren't fit or don't get enough sleep on a regular basis. My eyes are still recovering from a late night (20 hours awake) - it usually takes a few days. Also note that near the end of your twenties you will find your body doesn't heal from such activities as quickly. If you stay up for more than 16 to 20 hours at a time more than once a week I wouldn't expect you to ever recover.
But you are talking about two seperate (but related) things - eye strain, and dry eyes. There are two seperate remedies if you have taken care of health, fitness, and sleep. First, look away from the screen at a far away object for 30 seconds or more at least every 10-15 minutes. There are programs which cover the screen and force you to do so for periods of time. Second, make a program that flashes something large on your display every 10-30 seconds extremely briefly. Your eyes will instinctively blink, and you will not be distracted after getting used to it - much less distracting than a beep, or other stimulues, and uses your reflexes so you don't need to take your mind off what you're doing.
I find that reading and coding cause me to keep my eyes open for far longer than they should be. I would be surprised if you were actually blinking enough when you were trying to blink more frequently.
-Adam
The differences between these two products:
- Hitachi is more expensive, more parts, requires more power
- Cornice is more 'dumb', less capacity, smaller (mounted to PCB) and non-removable
So they each have their advantages. I don't know if I could be satisfied with being unable to 'change tapes' in my camcorder - it probably takes on the order of minutes to transfer from the camera to a computer or other storage device, and I doubt the drive has enough throughput and a low enough seek time to allow both high speed recording and high speed reading which would allow me to offload portions of the data while still recording.But not owning a camcorder I don't know what the usage patterns typically are. I imagine that most days it's used it isn't used for more than an hour throughout the whole day. At this point the MPEG4 encoder may require more power then the HD, which means that a very small li-ion polymer battery will last through the entire drive.
-Adam
Why oh why do so many story submitters encourage us to visit a site which requires some small amount of personal information to gain access to something which is freely available in so many other places????
Google News has a whole list of news stories about this event.
-Adam
You might think so, but you'd have to cover a lot of those digits, as they probably also get information about the size, shape and color of the vehicle. Coupled with a few digits of the license and you can ID the car. If the car doesn't come up (too much mud) then I'm certian a human studying the picture can narrow the search down to a few cars and still deliver the ticket to the correct one.
-Adam
-
Pretty much, yeah, but that still doesn't discount the fact that one cow may taste better than another, despite being raised similarily. If the industry could make all their cows taste like the top 1/3 that they have now cheaply, they would.
-
I was making a play on the concept that many people feel cloning is bad because either 1) you can't clone the soul/spirit/mind/whatever or 2) cloned animals posses no soul/spirit. My statement alludes to another line of thought where the soul/spirit/mind/whatever is also cloned. If the definition of sentient life is the physical embodiement of a soul/spirit/mind/whatever and you combine that with a loose interpretation of double jeapardy, then you can come to the conclusion that a living, cloned animal is not actually 'alive', and therefore cannot die.
-AdamUntil she realizes you're typing your mistress's email address or http://www.playboy.com/
-Adam
"...when I'm riding my bike, I'm paying attention to the BIG-[@#$] FORD BIGGER-THAN-[#$&%]-ALL EXCURSIONS flying past me at fifty miles per hour."
Dude! I know exactly what you mean! Has there ever been a vehicle more suitable for bicycle drafting??!! Semis go way too slow, but these things have nearly the same cross-section, and their little bitty drivers drive 'em like speed bikes. Since they have no concept of their size, they actually pass close enough to the bike to gimme an extra 5mph!
Not quite as thilling as the top thrill dragster ride at cedar point, but a lot less expensive (excluding hospital stays)
-Adam
Ultramarathon Cyclist
209 miles in 24 hours
Florida Sebring
First in class, fourth overall
Now we simply need to have a cow contest to find...
The World's Tastiest Cow
At which point we can start cloning it for mass consumption! Imagine, you can now own your very own "World's Tastiest Cow" in your very own back yard! The look on your neighbors face when you tell them you're still considered vegan because this cow has already been killed so when you eat it you can't be killing it - it was cloned dead!
Moo.
-Adam
Let's all say this together - "We don't need no stinkin' registration for the majority of news!"
Use Google News to find it elsewhere, and reported better as often as not.
Shuttle Wing Foam Collision Tests
And a direct Reuters link which is pretty much what all the other articles say for those who are too lazy to click twice.
-Adam
"... I can't figure out why no one has pre-ordered the CD"
You're asking people to pre-order a CD? You're asking regular, average, CD-buying people to preorder a CD?
Average Joe does not preorder anything from an unknown entity, much less for music that they've heard maybe 5 or 10 times in their life. Pre-orders work for groups that have dedicated following, who are willing to say, "Here's my money now - you can pay me with product later." You are trying to go backwards and develop a following by having non-followers preorder a CD.
I wouldn't do it, myself, unless I felt passionate about the music, and I doubt your music causes much feeling in me at all, nevermind passion. Even if I really liked the music I would say, "Well, I'll visit infrequently over the next few months - if they have anything they can ship tomorrow then I might buy it." But since the MP3s are freely available, I might not even check back.
Going back to your original question:
what should a small independent music publishing company do to sell a new artist to the public?
I suspect, but don't know, that a publishing company will have to take a hit on a few albums before the artist takes off. Like a web site it takes years, not months, to gather enough followers to make ends meet, without breaking a profit. Some artists biff, some make it big, but you have to hold onto them, develop them, produce two or more EXCELLENT polished albums, get some regular airplay on several stations, and put some blood, sweat, and tears into your work.
How about this:
Quick, easy/cheap, profitable.
Pick two. The RIAA does quick and profitable by pouring money into it. You will never be able to compete on their field, so don't try.
-Adam
A large portion of spam gets sent out under real email addresses that do not belong to the spammer.
On top of that fatal flaw, this system still has all the major problems of other systems:
Would require huge infrastructure and deployment efforts
Not everyone will get on board, either on the receiving end or sending end
Most email users do not control their own domains and would depend on their ISP for any finger servers
Most people still accept spam as a 'fact of life' concerning the internet.
Even now I still tell people that they will just have to accept the spam, though some filters help. It's simply not worth most people's time to fight it yet.
I wish we didn't have to use any legal measures, but the reality is that any technological measures will be overcome quickly. Laws exist to prevent such 'arms races', and in this case neither party (spammer/user) is willing to back down from their position.
-Adam
All else being equal, I'm glad *BSD got the legal troubles out of its system early in development, rather than running into litigious lawyer lapdogs later.
-Adam
alliteration always averts attention...
I suspect, but don't know, that it costs more to make an LCD, put it in a suitable enclosure with a controller card, box it and ship it than your $50 price mark, regardless of the number of bad pixels.
Since the LCD is the only bad part then it's cheaper to find that it doesn't meet specs right off the line before ever attaching any circuitry. The only thing lost at that point is the time to manufacture, and some small amount of materials.
Lastly, most of the big display manufacturers probably have the high-volume LCD lines to the point where units thrown away due to minor defect (but still usable, as in your need) are very low, much less than 10%, probably under 5% or even 1%.
The reason we have specs which include "no dead pixels inside center area, up to eight outside" are not because someone sat down and decided that was the case, or because it was determined that after 8 pixels around the border people started having siezures. It was most likely determined by a bean counter looking at the numbers, and determining that the 95% success rate would include screens which may have up to that many defects in those areas.
Now that they have a starting point, they've refined the process not to reduce dead pixels, but to reduce dead pixels that fall outside those requirements.
I imagine that you can special order LCDs from a major manufacturer in quantity and lower your cost by lowering the requirements, but I doubt it could be profitable for more than a year or two until LCDs finally cost around $100 for the 15" versions.
-Adam
And this is why many ISPs don't give log access to the people they host for
Too many user will run around screaming "Somebody's stealing my stuff! WAAAAAAH!"
Look, robots.txt is a gentleman's agreement. The internet is open for all, not just gentlemen.
WELCOME TO THE INTERNET!
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE ABUSED TODAY?
Please take some time to re-read that, and disabuse yourself of the idea that you can control other people - the only control you have over them is going to be control they will also have over you.
Secondly, if it really bothers you, block, ban, tarpit, data-spam, whatever the heck you want out of them. If they dare contact you, you can give them whatever you want, however you want. Send them data from random at a rate of 2 bytes per second. Drop half the packets they send you. Abuse the TCP/IP protocol and see if their software is robust enough to handle it. Make it just annoying enough to contact your website in certian ways that they will put you on their 'do not spider' list. Here's a simple example.
But, man get a grip. Seriously. Do you honestly think you are the first person to discover the dark underbelly of corporate money making schemes on the net?
-Adam
576 Hard drives.
Assume 5 years MTBF.
That end up being 100 Hard drive failures per year, about $10,000/yr, not counting labor.
Or 2 per week. ($200/wk), if efficient to replace then add another $100/wk for ordering, shipping, storage, replacement and disposal.
That's assuming good cooling and low usage (equivilant to an intermittant home user - which is what I expect a good backup system to get used to)
So, ignoring the cost of the initial investment, they'll be paying up to $15,000 per year to maintain this backup solution.
This is more expensive than many traditional backup methods, such as tape.
However there were a few 'gimmes'. Firstly, the array only has to last 5 years. Secondly they are using 5400rpm hard drives - much cooler. Thirdly, these hard drives have a 3 year warranty, which is better than most places will give you now.
So it's likely that the maintenance cost, in this case, is going to be low compared to the initial investment.
The real problem, then, is the tendancy to keep an old system long past its prime and original intent. Someone in the future will say, "Instead of junking the system and upgrading to new technology, let's just throw larger hard drives in there each time one fails and up the capacity. Eventually it will cost $10k or more per year, and they won't know it.
-Adam
- You have the right to sign your binaries.
-
Anything you sign can and will be used against you in a public forum.
- If you are under the age of 18, anything you sign can be used against you in a juvenile flame war for a juvenile offense and can also be used against you in an adult flame war if the forum admin decides that you are to be flamed as an adult.
- You have the right to talk to an attorney before signing any binaries.
- You have the right to have your attorney present during the signing.
- If you cannot afford PGP, OpenPGP will be provided to you without cost, before or during signing, if you desire.
- Do you understand these rights?
-AdamIn short, NO.
Firstly, as everyone knows, Apple makes money off one thing, and one thing only - HARDWARE. They make great software only to sell their hardware.
The benefits of controlling the hardware are
- A better user experience
- Lower tech support costs
- Better quality control
- Specialized/customized designs with an eye toward aesthetics
They CANNOT allow others to create hardware upon which their software will run. This means that they have to use a special BIOS, and manufacture their own boards. IF they switch to an OS that can be run on an x86 processor (and custom mothboard/bios/etc), you will find, the very next day, a crack for the software which will allow it to run on any generic motherboard, and further down the line a BIOS image which will allow an unmodified software to run on a non-custom motherboard.Right now they can control it because a 'commodity' PPC motherboard costs more than the same apple motherboard. It would surprise me if Apple wasn't applying some pressure to various suppliers to prevent the widespread availability of commodity PPC equipment which is very similar to Apple's own. This is common in the industry. Furthermore, they may even have a slightly altered/customized version of the various PPC chips they use.
The only way for Apple to play against WINTEL is to not compete - not competing means selling essentially different products. Apple would die if they had to sell their OS and try to make a profit at it - the company is simply not designed to compete against MS. (Although if they did Windows would improve dramatically)
Put another way, Apple is a whole user experience company. They don't want the user to go to a generic theatre, sit in seats made by some strange company, eat food purchased from GFS, and watch a movie made by three different movie studios. They want you in their theater, their seats eating their food, and watching their entirely controlled movie.
This is good for those who only want to deal with one company, and are willing to pay for it. They know their market. They may be trying to expand it a little towards the geek segment that play with software but don't care about hardware (we run unix!). It is unlikely that they will ever capture the imagination of the hardware geek, they know it, and they aren't courting us.
So stop posting freaking stories about OS X on any commodity hardware, ok?
-Adam