Update For for the dupe. Not going well. Appreciate all the hate mail. Really encourages improvement.
Is he drunk or something (For for??) At least we know he reads the hate mail, so send more. Ignoring stupid avoidable fuckups certainly doesn't work. They can either 1) implement a simple function that compares the main words in the article with recent ones, particularly URLs (ignoring some obvious generic ones, like the home page of newspapers). (For extra credit, spellcheck the fucking thing, and check that any URLS exist.)
2)Read the mail that comes in from subscribers telling them they've duped (apparetly that's mostly ignored; when I send it in it often bounces, some editora apparently have invalid forwardnig addresses)
3)Or use their own brains and just type one relevant word into the Slashdot search box: Search 'metafor' Metafor: Translating Natural Language to Code On March 30th, 2005 with 170 comments vivin writes "Computer programming is second nature to most of the Slashdot crowd. However, this is not true for the vast majority of people. Formal...
English To Code Converter On March 26th, 2005 with 52 comments prostoalex writes "Metafor from MIT is a code visualization utility, capable of converting high-level descriptions into class and function (or method...
You're probably right, I found this statement in stories last December: "The EU ordered that Microsoft couldn't charge more for the version sans player, but it didn't say that Microsoft had to charge less." Seems a bit wimpy to me, should have mandated it be at least a few percent cheaper, otherwise the OEMS will just ignore it.
This whole "no media player thing" makes no sense to me
Probably because the EU's reasoning wasn't explained.
As the Commission says: "Available data already show a clear trend in favour of WMP and Windows Media technology. Absent intervention from the Commission, the tying of WMP with Windows is likely to make the market "tip" definitively in Microsoft's favour. This would allow Microsoft to control related markets in the digital media sector, such as encoding technology, software for broadcasting of music over the Internet and digital rights management etc."
Basically, if WMP is guaranteed built in, we have the same situation as recently with web standards -- if somethng doesn't work in your browser, but it does in IE, well, use IE or wo without. For media, it'll be everything is locked down with WMP DRM; and everyone who wants to provide media will have to pay MS for the right to make WMP-compatible files/streams.
And it's not "NO MEDIA PLAYER", it's NO WINDOWS media player". Vendors are free to bundle any of a number of alternatives. Or you can download your choice in 5 minutes; even MS's WMP if you want.
And who is going to stock this stripped down version?
Anyone who wants to sell a CHEAPER version. And they can tell the customers that they can download the latest WMP in 5 minutes if they want it. Or they can download WinAmp, Realplayer or whatever; or if they happen to want to use their PC for work and not playing porn videos, none of the above.
BTW, am I the only one who looks at Shatner as the Richard M. Stallman of sci-fi?
Yes. Stallman is a creator, Shatner an actor - the equivalent of a (very good) code monkey, who executes ideas of other people. He's not an idiot, and a very good actor, despite the schtick we all remember and parody, but he didn't come up with anything original. All the books and such that come out under his name are ghostwritten, something he doesn't try to hide, to his credit. Conversely, Stallman would be Roddenberry in the ST world. Both had strong visions and annoying obsessions.
the idea of a Star Fleet Academy series is such a horrendously bad idea. It gets even farther away from the short story format and turns the franchise into even more of a soap opera. And I, for one, cannot abide soap operas pretending to science fiction.
This sounds to me like Academy is to TOS as Smallville is to Superman. Actually, I do enjoy Smallville on occasion, though it is really a teen soap with occasional superhero deus ex machina. So Academy might be fun, but would have to carve its own niche, which could be good and hopefully at least different, though probably not really SF. (Animal House in Space -- that could be a laugh... hopefully not Beverly Hills 90210.)
Colony farming planets, somewhat off the beaten track, have a lot more use for horses and cows than fancy gadgets.
Fancy gadgets such as the internal combustion engine?
I hope not -- I'd expect miniature nukes, or beamed power, myself, cosidering interstellar travel is a given, internal combustion should be long forgotten. But perhaps horses and other domestic animals could have enhanced intelligence, and be more useful that way -- I suppose (never having the opportunity to see Firefly) that wasn't investigated.
transporting horses (including water and feed) through space is easier than shipping equipment
Well, this actually I don't think is a problem, if you're going to set up farms, you'd bring frozen fertilized ova, along with those for meat animals, and plant seeds. If you have grassland, just let the horses fend for themselves. I can see people playing cowboy just for fun.
2 million Japanese soldiers were needed in China. And they still weren't able to pacify the whole country.
So? Japan, a tenth the size and population of China, completely dominated the huge mass of China for half a century. They controlled the parts they needed.
Your original statement implied that disaster would befall anyone who invded China. Eventually Japan did have to withdraw, but not because of China's efforts. The Mongols ran the place for centuries. The Europeans took possession of several cities and kept them for centuries likewise, retiring with massive profits. Russia shows no sign of giving up Vladivostok and other far eastern dependencies, occupying it since 1858. China lost "Outer" Mongolia to Russia then too, now independent.
little bitty pieces of far eastern Siberia doesn't count
I already noted you'd excluded the parts that actually were invaded and occupied. So what was your point here?
You made a sweeping statement unsuuported by facts and now are scrambling to redefine terms to make it true in some sense.
I've seen enough of this style of argument on Usenet, and with Slashdot, no one is reading "old" threads like this anyway except the participants, so having made my point, I retire. Consider yourself vindicated if you like.
Yeah, it'd be great if Adobe could spend a bit of time cutting off some fat from their products
I think the cheap, or even free (if you count bundled with hardware as "free") image editors they make, like PhotoDeluxe and Photoshop LE, are based on the same code, but lacking some features. However, for most users, especially web graphics (which is what I was using Deluxe for a few years ago) they're excellent. One feature lacking in Deluxe was CMYK, which is probably a showstopper for press work. Both compatible with PS filters, and PSD files.
I had a Mac Quadra I let my daughter play games on, she liked to use Photoshop 1 (size, about 1 MB) to make art on it, I tried PS3, it ran, but was too slow....
I could respond to your erudite points, but how about you explain why one should "never invade China"? Who got burnt so badly? Most seem to have either conquered the whole place (like the Mongols), or carved off the bits they wanted and shipped home the loot. China was the epitome of a Paper Tiger for the last 200 years or so. It's their memory and fear of their "humiliations" that make Beijing so touchy about matters they see as of sovereignty (eg, Taiwan) today.
And while we're at it, though Napoleon and Hitler both destroyed themselves by invading Russia, others have fared better -- the Mongols and Japanese again come to mind (though you've covered yourself with the Japanese by stating "Greater" Russia).
Not so sure about this: the gmx.net page is in German so I can't check it up, but according to yahoo.co.uk and yahoo.com.au you can only get POP3 access (no SMTP server) when paying (see, for example http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/mail/plus/ - if they provide an SMTP server they're not letting on).
Several UK and Canadian posters have said their Yahoos let them do free POP. SMTP too, I think but I just use my ISP for that. (I could BCC if I wanted a copy on Yahoo.) Translating GMX says they do have free POP3, but storage is for three months only.
a) He DID mention Ramanujan--he just didn't do so by name.
That's a pretty amazing statement. I'll just leave you to hang yourself with it.
>FOAD redneck
You make a statement of that magnitude
No, simply a response to your repeatd "dumb ass" insults. But the whole problem is that you think it's pefectly all right for you, or the original poster, to insult and belittle, and if anyone complains, let alone responds in kind, that they're just subject to more ridicule.
Two rules of war you should never, ever break:
Never invade "greater" Russia
Never invade China
Actually, China has been invaded successfully many times. The Mongols, for instance in the 13th C. The Great Wall couldn't keep them out. More recently, many European powers occupied various choice sites for trading, (silk, teas, opium), and held them for centuries, before withdrawing with fat profits. Japan did well for a while in the 20th C -- they held Taiwan for 50 years till the end of WWII, as well as swathes of Manchuria for years. The Chinese forces were too divided and disorganised to stop them, only the entry of the Allied forces forced a withdrawal.
I believe it. Over the last three years I've seen mail-based virus infections disappear. I don't think I've seen a mail-based virus infection in the last year at all.
I'm sure then that they're being filtered before you get them. I get at least two a day, about 10% of my spam. And the author of TFA's reasoning was that "From" spoofing will be impossible because of some new mail standards touted by IBM and others (was he shilling for them?). But if spoofing is impossible, (something I rather doubt) the viruses will still be sent, just not spoofed, making it a bit easier to track back but not enough to eradicate them.
Re:what was HD size on those macs?
on
Apple Easter Egg
·
· Score: 1
96 MB of movie would be a few seconds more being burnt at the factory-- not on the customer's hard drive.
They don't burn installer discs, they have a master (made of gold, IIRC, and stamp them, pretty much like vinyl records. So it doesn't matter how much or little of the CD's capacity is used, it takes the same time to press.
A few years ago you could buy pressed warez CDROMS, and each had a label showing the app it contained. But you'd often find that the disc also contained a dozen other apps, and sometimes you'd bought duplicate discs with different labels. (After a while I noticed the disc ID number which was common to all these.) These days with 52x or better burners, they're burnt to order (reducing inventory, exposure, and overhead), so few if any freebies (or Easter Eggs, perhaps).
Nice balanced submission you got there. As far as I'm aware there is no conclusive evidence that shows Macs are inherently more secure and would not suffer the virus problem that Windows does if it had Windows' market share.
Because it's impossible to have "conclusive proof" of a hypothetical situation (unless you're dealing with pure maths). However, it only takes one hacker to write and release one virus or other attack, if successful it can spread to take most of the onlne population That's happened several times for Windows, never for OSX.
I've had good luck with buying quality AM/FM/SW radios, like Grundig's YB400. Even if you never listen to SW, it does a nice job on AM and FM.
That's not the kind of radio I'd walk around the city with in my pocket. I was talking about the cigarette-lighter-size types, favoured by horse-racing fans.
When I'm travelling (eg, trekking in Nepal), I do like to have a lightweight SW radio though.
Most consumer-grade FM radios turn to shit in a hostile RF environment
What other grade of radio would a consumer buy? Anyway, I have a cheap FM radio, it perfomrs well enough in the hostile urban environment I live in. (Unfortunately, AM radio fares much less well, and that's what I really want to listen to most of the time.)
've been looking around to find a car stereo that doesn't have FM, I don't want to have to pay for something I won't use.
Since I can buy a pocket FM radio for $2, I think the cost of the receiver circuit is approximately zero. So it's like all the integrated functions on your mobo, what once was an add-on (used to have ISA cards for hard disk controller, printer port, etc) are now totally written off. If you do find a car stereo without an FM radio, I'd expect that it was still in the circuit board, just not connected.
Anyway, radio (AM is probably better) is useful for news, weather and traffic reports, sometimes essential.
Actually, on reflection, the reason they honoured PK Dick was more likely because Spielberg made a movie out of his story Minority Report recently. That's another media-friendly hook.
The thing that makes Gmail unique as a free email provider, AFAIK, is that it provides both POP3 and SMTP
Well, that's not unique. There are a number: GMX.net, and Yahoo in most countries (except the US, but you can still use them) for example.
Personally, after being burnt by losing a bunch of mail when a free service just went dead one day, I keep all my mail on my PC, and back it up periodically. Trust No One with your data.
If the arthor were truly commiting 'racial slight', why would he've mentioned Ramanujan in the first place?
He DIDN'T mention Ramanujan at all. It's like saying "The tsunami hit a number of Asian countries, lots of Asians died". Meanwhile, in more important news, the Michel Jackson trial...
While Ramanujan's additions to mathematics are incredible and should in no way be overlooked, that doesn't mean Suzy Rottencrotch needs to be held accountable for not knowing his name.
If someone is writing an article about him, it seems porverse to seemingly go out of your way to avoid naming him. That was my point. The reason could well have been carelessness, but it can easily be interpreted as a cultural and racial slight.
I'll be waiting to hear about 1u3hrvania, dumbass.
Not quite. There's Mary Shelly, Brian Aldiss, Arthur C Clarke, Jules Verne, Eric Frank Russell and Michael Moorcok, for instance. But now they're indicting movie directors and stop-motion animators don't hold your breath for many names not known to the presenters of "Entertainment Tonight".
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a "so-called" dupe, it's two stories referring to exactly the same NYT article. How is it NOT a dupe?
It's still linked in the "Older stuff" panel on the right. Or is this a troll? DON'T CONSTANTLY COMPLAIN ABOUT IT.
If no one complains, it can only get worse.
Update For for the dupe. Not going well. Appreciate all the hate mail. Really encourages improvement.
Is he drunk or something (For for??) At least we know he reads the hate mail, so send more. Ignoring stupid avoidable fuckups certainly doesn't work.
They can either
1) implement a simple function that compares the main words in the article with recent ones, particularly URLs (ignoring some obvious generic ones, like the home page of newspapers). (For extra credit, spellcheck the fucking thing, and check that any URLS exist.)
2)Read the mail that comes in from subscribers telling them they've duped (apparetly that's mostly ignored; when I send it in it often bounces, some editora apparently have invalid forwardnig addresses)
3)Or use their own brains and just type one relevant word into the Slashdot search box:
Search 'metafor'
Metafor: Translating Natural Language to Code
On March 30th, 2005 with 170 comments
vivin writes "Computer programming is second nature to most of the Slashdot crowd. However, this is not true for the vast majority of people. Formal...
English To Code Converter
On March 26th, 2005 with 52 comments
prostoalex writes "Metafor from MIT is a code visualization utility, capable of converting high-level descriptions into class and function (or method...
You're probably right, I found this statement in stories last December: "The EU ordered that Microsoft couldn't charge more for the version sans player, but it didn't say that Microsoft had to charge less." Seems a bit wimpy to me, should have mandated it be at least a few percent cheaper, otherwise the OEMS will just ignore it.
Probably because the EU's reasoning wasn't explained.
Basically, if WMP is guaranteed built in, we have the same situation as recently with web standards -- if somethng doesn't work in your browser, but it does in IE, well, use IE or wo without. For media, it'll be everything is locked down with WMP DRM; and everyone who wants to provide media will have to pay MS for the right to make WMP-compatible files/streams.And it's not "NO MEDIA PLAYER", it's NO WINDOWS media player". Vendors are free to bundle any of a number of alternatives. Or you can download your choice in 5 minutes; even MS's WMP if you want.
Anyone who wants to sell a CHEAPER version. And they can tell the customers that they can download the latest WMP in 5 minutes if they want it. Or they can download WinAmp, Realplayer or whatever; or if they happen to want to use their PC for work and not playing porn videos, none of the above.
Yes. Stallman is a creator, Shatner an actor - the equivalent of a (very good) code monkey, who executes ideas of other people. He's not an idiot, and a very good actor, despite the schtick we all remember and parody, but he didn't come up with anything original. All the books and such that come out under his name are ghostwritten, something he doesn't try to hide, to his credit. Conversely, Stallman would be Roddenberry in the ST world. Both had strong visions and annoying obsessions.
This sounds to me like Academy is to TOS as Smallville is to Superman. Actually, I do enjoy Smallville on occasion, though it is really a teen soap with occasional superhero deus ex machina. So Academy might be fun, but would have to carve its own niche, which could be good and hopefully at least different, though probably not really SF. (Animal House in Space -- that could be a laugh... hopefully not Beverly Hills 90210.)
Fancy gadgets such as the internal combustion engine?
I hope not -- I'd expect miniature nukes, or beamed power, myself, cosidering interstellar travel is a given, internal combustion should be long forgotten. But perhaps horses and other domestic animals could have enhanced intelligence, and be more useful that way -- I suppose (never having the opportunity to see Firefly) that wasn't investigated.
transporting horses (including water and feed) through space is easier than shipping equipment
Well, this actually I don't think is a problem, if you're going to set up farms, you'd bring frozen fertilized ova, along with those for meat animals, and plant seeds. If you have grassland, just let the horses fend for themselves. I can see people playing cowboy just for fun.
So? Japan, a tenth the size and population of China, completely dominated the huge mass of China for half a century. They controlled the parts they needed.
Your original statement implied that disaster would befall anyone who invded China. Eventually Japan did have to withdraw, but not because of China's efforts. The Mongols ran the place for centuries. The Europeans took possession of several cities and kept them for centuries likewise, retiring with massive profits. Russia shows no sign of giving up Vladivostok and other far eastern dependencies, occupying it since 1858. China lost "Outer" Mongolia to Russia then too, now independent.
little bitty pieces of far eastern Siberia doesn't count
I already noted you'd excluded the parts that actually were invaded and occupied. So what was your point here?
You made a sweeping statement unsuuported by facts and now are scrambling to redefine terms to make it true in some sense.
I've seen enough of this style of argument on Usenet, and with Slashdot, no one is reading "old" threads like this anyway except the participants, so having made my point, I retire. Consider yourself vindicated if you like.
I think the cheap, or even free (if you count bundled with hardware as "free") image editors they make, like PhotoDeluxe and Photoshop LE, are based on the same code, but lacking some features. However, for most users, especially web graphics (which is what I was using Deluxe for a few years ago) they're excellent. One feature lacking in Deluxe was CMYK, which is probably a showstopper for press work. Both compatible with PS filters, and PSD files.
I had a Mac Quadra I let my daughter play games on, she liked to use Photoshop 1 (size, about 1 MB) to make art on it, I tried PS3, it ran, but was too slow....
I could respond to your erudite points, but how about you explain why one should "never invade China"? Who got burnt so badly? Most seem to have either conquered the whole place (like the Mongols), or carved off the bits they wanted and shipped home the loot. China was the epitome of a Paper Tiger for the last 200 years or so. It's their memory and fear of their "humiliations" that make Beijing so touchy about matters they see as of sovereignty (eg, Taiwan) today.
And while we're at it, though Napoleon and Hitler both destroyed themselves by invading Russia, others have fared better -- the Mongols and Japanese again come to mind (though you've covered yourself with the Japanese by stating "Greater" Russia).
Several UK and Canadian posters have said their Yahoos let them do free POP. SMTP too, I think but I just use my ISP for that. (I could BCC if I wanted a copy on Yahoo.) Translating GMX says they do have free POP3, but storage is for three months only.
That's a pretty amazing statement. I'll just leave you to hang yourself with it.
>FOAD redneck
You make a statement of that magnitude
No, simply a response to your repeatd "dumb ass" insults. But the whole problem is that you think it's pefectly all right for you, or the original poster, to insult and belittle, and if anyone complains, let alone responds in kind, that they're just subject to more ridicule.
Never invade "greater" Russia
Never invade China
Actually, China has been invaded successfully many times. The Mongols, for instance in the 13th C. The Great Wall couldn't keep them out. More recently, many European powers occupied various choice sites for trading, (silk, teas, opium), and held them for centuries, before withdrawing with fat profits. Japan did well for a while in the 20th C -- they held Taiwan for 50 years till the end of WWII, as well as swathes of Manchuria for years. The Chinese forces were too divided and disorganised to stop them, only the entry of the Allied forces forced a withdrawal.
I'm sure then that they're being filtered before you get them. I get at least two a day, about 10% of my spam. And the author of TFA's reasoning was that "From" spoofing will be impossible because of some new mail standards touted by IBM and others (was he shilling for them?). But if spoofing is impossible, (something I rather doubt) the viruses will still be sent, just not spoofed, making it a bit easier to track back but not enough to eradicate them.
They don't burn installer discs, they have a master (made of gold, IIRC, and stamp them, pretty much like vinyl records. So it doesn't matter how much or little of the CD's capacity is used, it takes the same time to press.
A few years ago you could buy pressed warez CDROMS, and each had a label showing the app it contained. But you'd often find that the disc also contained a dozen other apps, and sometimes you'd bought duplicate discs with different labels. (After a while I noticed the disc ID number which was common to all these.) These days with 52x or better burners, they're burnt to order (reducing inventory, exposure, and overhead), so few if any freebies (or Easter Eggs, perhaps).
Because it's impossible to have "conclusive proof" of a hypothetical situation (unless you're dealing with pure maths). However, it only takes one hacker to write and release one virus or other attack, if successful it can spread to take most of the onlne population That's happened several times for Windows, never for OSX.
That's not the kind of radio I'd walk around the city with in my pocket. I was talking about the cigarette-lighter-size types, favoured by horse-racing fans.
When I'm travelling (eg, trekking in Nepal), I do like to have a lightweight SW radio though.
What other grade of radio would a consumer buy? Anyway, I have a cheap FM radio, it perfomrs well enough in the hostile urban environment I live in. (Unfortunately, AM radio fares much less well, and that's what I really want to listen to most of the time.)
Since I can buy a pocket FM radio for $2, I think the cost of the receiver circuit is approximately zero. So it's like all the integrated functions on your mobo, what once was an add-on (used to have ISA cards for hard disk controller, printer port, etc) are now totally written off. If you do find a car stereo without an FM radio, I'd expect that it was still in the circuit board, just not connected.
Anyway, radio (AM is probably better) is useful for news, weather and traffic reports, sometimes essential.
Actually, on reflection, the reason they honoured PK Dick was more likely because Spielberg made a movie out of his story Minority Report recently. That's another media-friendly hook.
Well, that's not unique. There are a number: GMX.net, and Yahoo in most countries (except the US, but you can still use them) for example.
Personally, after being burnt by losing a bunch of mail when a free service just went dead one day, I keep all my mail on my PC, and back it up periodically. Trust No One with your data.
He DIDN'T mention Ramanujan at all. It's like saying "The tsunami hit a number of Asian countries, lots of Asians died". Meanwhile, in more important news, the Michel Jackson trial...
lol I've never heard FOAD
If you know LOL, you really should know FOAD.
If someone is writing an article about him, it seems porverse to seemingly go out of your way to avoid naming him. That was my point. The reason could well have been carelessness, but it can easily be interpreted as a cultural and racial slight.
I'll be waiting to hear about 1u3hrvania, dumbass.
FOAD redneck.
Not quite. There's Mary Shelly, Brian Aldiss, Arthur C Clarke, Jules Verne, Eric Frank Russell and Michael Moorcok, for instance. But now they're indicting movie directors and stop-motion animators don't hold your breath for many names not known to the presenters of "Entertainment Tonight".