Yeah, it's been declared a monopoly - and the administration and the courts say, "Big deal". In effect, the government has said it's a monopoly - and blessed it.
Oh, wait, I forgot: the judge said she'd tan Bill's little heinie if he stepped over the line again! I just hope she has her hairbrush handy. Fat chance.
The Triangle may have a good classical music station, but the best, hands down, is still WFMT in Chicago - the one that still refuses to play prerecorded commercials. As it happens, WFMT shut down its webcast two weeks ago, citing high royalty costs; maybe some relief may be in sight for them too.
If this is the same company I've dealt with, RTR ported the X Window system to the old Coherent operating system 'way back when. Is Jeff Moskow still running it? Enquiring minds want to know...
We just returned from viewing the dubbed version. I've seen some animes before - my teenagers introduced me - but I'd never seen one in the theater before. It was delightful to see the beautiful drawings - as good as anything in "Fantasia" - seen as they ought to be seen. Our four-year-old enjoyed it too, though he was a bit scared at times. The theater was most full, which is unusual for a 4 PM showing on Sunday afternoon. Kudos to Disney for doing just a fine job with the dubbing, and for giving us a choice of dubbed or subtitled versions.
My daughter, who has lived in Iowa, tells me that there they use a hybrid system: a simple computer system walks the the user through candidate selection, but punches a card itself. There's still a physical record of the voter's choices, but without hanging chads or overvotes.
The hybrid system seems to be the best solution. The computer assists the voter, but it does not actually cast the ballot itself. To this lifelong resident of Cook County, Illinois, it sounds like a much better system than either hand-punched cards or a purely electronic system.
In Alabama it's legal to install a television set in an automobile dashboard. So the next time you see a driver from the Heart of Dixie who's yakking on a cell phone, just remember: he might also be watching "Wheel of Fortune".
I guess you didn't read the part of the article that described that Dell will charge the same price for its Windows-less PC as it will for machines with Windows pre-installed.
No doubt Dell has special handling and warehousing needs for the Windows-less PC, and yadda yadda. But in fact Dell is simply pocketing the Redmond tax.
If Dell really wanted to do the right thing, they'd remit some or all of the Redmond tax to people who buy Windows-less PCs. That way, consumers could compare prices and decide just how much Windows really is worth to them.
It seems to me that this is like Ted Turner's practice of colorizing movies, in which he'd take a classic black-and-white movie and artificially color it for the yahoo market.
Some people liked colorization; others did not; and I believe that the practice is now forbidden for films on some sort of official registry.
There are other examples of people trying to make a buck out of maiming other people's art. For example, try and find a hymn book these days in which the first verse of "Amazing Grace" still has the word "wretch" in it.
IMHO, offering a bowdlerized version of a movie is OK only (1) if the copyright holder approves, and (2) if the bowdlerized version is clearly labeled as such. If there is no copyright holder, then the movie should be left alone. Period.
On at least a dozen occasions, I've nearly been run over by idiots who are making left turns while yakking on their cell phones. I can hardly wait to have my life endangered by the same idiots as they try to drive and type at the same time.
Last night, I just turned off Windows 98 at home. It's replaced with the newest Red Hat. My two teen-agers love it (with the sole reservation that they can't run Final Fantasy any more). Our local parochial school is switching to Linux in its computer teaching lab. At work, we're a Fenster-frei environment: we route telephone calls, all done under BSD and SCO.
So Linux on the desktop is dead, eh? Guess a lot of people like me just missed the obituary.
... is that she died 15 years ago. What I need is is someone tell me how to get my kids to use Linux: unless their Final Fantasy games are available under Linux, they'll never entirely abandon Windows.
This is an interesting experiment. Too often, we simply accept the old "one size fits all" approach to hardware, when software gives us the ability to customize hardware to suit the needs and preferences of the user. What I'd like to see is a program that would let each user cook up his own "natural" layout, based on the size of hand, special needs (e.g., a person who is missing a finger), and, most importantly, the types of mistakes that the typist makes. Qwerty, remember, was designed to make typists type more slowly, so they would type more accurately; we should now be able to design custom keyboards that will let individual typists type both quickly and more accurately.
We must seize control of the debate. We must blacken the idea behind this bill, and we must abuse Fritz Hollings.
Remember: calling the Strategic Defense Initiative "Star Wars" stopped it dead in its tracks.
When talking with people, forget the ever-shifting acronyms: always speak of the Big Brother Chip that the feds want to install in your computer.
As for Fritz Hollings, always remind people that he was governor of South Carolina when they started flying the Confederate flag over the statehouse. He's a political whore who spread his legs for the Klan in the '60s, and is doing it now for Hollywood.
(Oops - is he up for relection within 60 days? If so, I'm in deep shit - I criticized a poltical candidate *by name*, thanks to the fucking "campaign finance reform" bill they just passed.)
And send a C-note to the EFF. We *must* win this one.
There is so much to celebrate here. Can we also spare a word of praise for the guys who ran Warner Bros. in the 1940s and 1950s? They put together the Termite Terrace crew - Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Carl Stallings, Mel Blanc, and the rest - and let them do their thing for two glorious decades.
My favorite WB moment: portable holes. What madman would think up a thing like that?
For Chuck Jones fans: about four years ago, he wrote a op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal, on Warner Bros. and what it was like to work there. Jones' illustration was priceless: Wiley Coyote reacting in horror as Acme Industries stock crashed. Well worth seeking out.
It's in Microsoft's interest to break its APIs and file formats: that keeps the $$$ rolling in for upgrades, because people need to read and work with files in the format du jour.
Microsoft will always be more creative at breaking its file formats than the WINE people will be in emulating them. For that reason alone, WINE will always be a long stride behind the current release of the MS apps. Therefore, the project can never achieve its goal of providing true Windows emulation under Linux.
WINE is a curiosity, nothing more, and will always remain so.
Maybe I'm crazy, but it seems to me that instead of a Buck Rogers-style solution to cracking H2O into H2, why not use fission power to do the same thing? Fission power is a well-known source of energy - no R&D involved - and the plants used to crack H2O into H2 can be located far from any populated area, to minimize risk in case of an accident.
A question for the chemists in the/. audience: would it be feasible to use fission power to combine atmospheric CO2 with H2O to make methane? If so, it would be possible to port the methane via the nation's natural-gas pipelines to power home fuel-cell units to generate electricity. In effect, you could transmit nuclear-generated energy thousands of miles with minimal transmission loss. Just a thought.
In any event, I was delighted to read about the fuel-cell initiative. I'll be buying one of those home units as soon I can afford one.
I got a book from my wife and a chocolate bar from my younger son. Both given with love, and much appreciated. We're having dinner at my sister's - see the family, always a pleasure. Most important, my son who's in the USMC has been stationed to California rather than Afghanistan: we're all very happy about that
Peace on Earth to all you./ers.
In the late 1960s, Toronto's Campus Co-op built a cooperative high-rise apartment building, called Rochdale (after the town in England where the co-op movement started). This building, which is located near the corner of Bloor and St George, was designed for cooperative living: groups of individuals could rent suites, which consisted of 2, 3, 4, or 5 bedrooms, and a common area. The residents elected a board that ran the building.
The project was a catastrophe. It was the classic problem of socialism: property which belongs to everyone belongs to no one, so no one looked after it. Ultimately, the government of Ontario took over the building and converted it to an old-folks home.
A residence like this might make sense if run by groups of techies with some money in their pockets, rather than by penniless students. Certainly, the idea of leasing bedroom suites rather than apartments makes sense for groups of friends or co-workers - assuming a landlord could find enough stable, extended groups to fill the building. And for groups of hackers (or other professionals), it would be a good living environment. But it probably is not viable economically.
My wife and I were up at 3:00 AM to see the Leonids, but it was cloudy - no luck. I suggested we stay up, perhaps one would penetrate the cloud cover; but my wife, bless her, pointed out that if a meteor was big enough to penetrate the cloud cover, we didn't want to be anywhere near it.
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Yeah, it's been declared a monopoly - and the administration and the courts say, "Big deal". In effect, the government has said it's a monopoly - and blessed it.
Oh, wait, I forgot: the judge said she'd tan Bill's little heinie if he stepped over the line again! I just hope she has her hairbrush handy. Fat chance.
The Triangle may have a good classical music station, but the best, hands down, is still WFMT in Chicago - the one that still refuses to play prerecorded commercials. As it happens, WFMT shut down its webcast two weeks ago, citing high royalty costs; maybe some relief may be in sight for them too.
If this is the same company I've dealt with, RTR ported the X Window system to the old Coherent operating system 'way back when. Is Jeff Moskow still running it? Enquiring minds want to know ...
We just returned from viewing the dubbed version. I've seen some animes before - my teenagers introduced me - but I'd never seen one in the theater before. It was delightful to see the beautiful drawings - as good as anything in "Fantasia" - seen as they ought to be seen. Our four-year-old enjoyed it too, though he was a bit scared at times. The theater was most full, which is unusual for a 4 PM showing on Sunday afternoon. Kudos to Disney for doing just a fine job with the dubbing, and for giving us a choice of dubbed or subtitled versions.
My daughter, who has lived in Iowa, tells me that there they use a hybrid system: a simple computer system walks the the user through candidate selection, but punches a card itself. There's still a physical record of the voter's choices, but without hanging chads or overvotes.
The hybrid system seems to be the best solution. The computer assists the voter, but it does not actually cast the ballot itself. To this lifelong resident of Cook County, Illinois, it sounds like a much better system than either hand-punched cards or a purely electronic system.
In Alabama it's legal to install a television set in an automobile dashboard. So the next time you see a driver from the Heart of Dixie who's yakking on a cell phone, just remember: he might also be watching "Wheel of Fortune".
I guess you didn't read the part of the article that described that Dell will charge the same price for its Windows-less PC as it will for machines with Windows pre-installed.
No doubt Dell has special handling and warehousing needs for the Windows-less PC, and yadda yadda. But in fact Dell is simply pocketing the Redmond tax.
If Dell really wanted to do the right thing, they'd remit some or all of the Redmond tax to people who buy Windows-less PCs. That way, consumers could compare prices and decide just how much Windows really is worth to them.
It seems to me that this is like Ted Turner's practice of colorizing movies, in which he'd take a classic black-and-white movie and artificially color it for the yahoo market.
Some people liked colorization; others did not; and I believe that the practice is now forbidden for films on some sort of official registry.
There are other examples of people trying to make a buck out of maiming other people's art. For example, try and find a hymn book these days in which the first verse of "Amazing Grace" still has the word "wretch" in it.
IMHO, offering a bowdlerized version of a movie is OK only (1) if the copyright holder approves, and (2) if the bowdlerized version is clearly labeled as such. If there is no copyright holder, then the movie should be left alone. Period.
On at least a dozen occasions, I've nearly been run over by idiots who are making left turns while yakking on their cell phones. I can hardly wait to have my life endangered by the same idiots as they try to drive and type at the same time.
Thanks! Works like a charm. Now we're totally defenestrated!
Last night, I just turned off Windows 98 at home.
It's replaced with the newest Red Hat. My two teen-agers love it (with the sole reservation that they can't run Final Fantasy any more). Our local parochial school is switching to Linux in its computer teaching lab. At work, we're a Fenster-frei environment: we route telephone calls, all done under BSD and SCO.
So Linux on the desktop is dead, eh? Guess a lot of people like me just missed the obituary.
... is that she died 15 years ago. What I need is is someone tell me how to get my kids to use Linux: unless their Final Fantasy games are available under Linux, they'll never entirely abandon Windows.
This is an interesting experiment. Too often, we simply accept the old "one size fits all" approach to hardware, when software gives us the ability to customize hardware to suit the needs and preferences of the user. What I'd like to see is a program that would let each user cook up his own "natural" layout, based on the size of hand, special needs (e.g., a person who is missing a finger), and, most importantly, the types of mistakes that the typist makes. Qwerty, remember, was designed to make typists type more slowly, so they would type more accurately; we should now be able to design custom keyboards that will let individual typists type both quickly and more accurately.
Evolution may be wonderful, but other wonderful things were supposed to change Microsoft, e.g., the web and Java, that were duds.
Microsoft thwarts [Ee]volution by changing the environment to suit itself. Only a dinosaur-killer will put evolution back on track.
We must seize control of the debate. We must blacken the idea behind this bill, and we must abuse Fritz Hollings.
Remember: calling the Strategic Defense Initiative "Star Wars" stopped it dead in its tracks.
When talking with people, forget the ever-shifting acronyms: always speak of the Big Brother Chip that the feds want to install in your computer.
As for Fritz Hollings, always remind people that he was governor of South Carolina when they started flying the Confederate flag over the statehouse. He's a political whore who spread his legs for the Klan in the '60s, and is doing it now for Hollywood.
(Oops - is he up for relection within 60 days? If so, I'm in deep shit - I criticized a poltical candidate *by name*, thanks to the fucking "campaign finance reform" bill they just passed.)
And send a C-note to the EFF. We *must* win this one.
There is so much to celebrate here. Can we also spare a word of praise for the guys who ran Warner Bros. in the 1940s and 1950s? They put together the Termite Terrace crew - Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Carl Stallings, Mel Blanc, and the rest - and let them do their thing for two glorious decades.
My favorite WB moment: portable holes. What madman would think up a thing like that?
For Chuck Jones fans: about four years ago, he wrote a op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal, on Warner Bros. and what it was like to work there. Jones' illustration was priceless: Wiley Coyote reacting in horror as Acme Industries stock crashed. Well worth seeking out.
It's in Microsoft's interest to break its APIs and file formats: that keeps the $$$ rolling in for upgrades, because people need to read and work with files in the format du jour. Microsoft will always be more creative at breaking its file formats than the WINE people will be in emulating them. For that reason alone, WINE will always be a long stride behind the current release of the MS apps. Therefore, the project can never achieve its goal of providing true Windows emulation under Linux. WINE is a curiosity, nothing more, and will always remain so.
Maybe I'm crazy, but it seems to me that instead of a Buck Rogers-style solution to cracking H2O into H2, why not use fission power to do the same thing? Fission power is a well-known source of energy - no R&D involved - and the plants used to crack H2O into H2 can be located far from any populated area, to minimize risk in case of an accident. A question for the chemists in the /. audience: would it be feasible to use fission power to combine atmospheric CO2 with H2O to make methane? If so, it would be possible to port the methane via the nation's natural-gas pipelines to power home fuel-cell units to generate electricity. In effect, you could transmit nuclear-generated energy thousands of miles with minimal transmission loss. Just a thought.
In any event, I was delighted to read about the fuel-cell initiative. I'll be buying one of those home units as soon I can afford one.
I got a book from my wife and a chocolate bar from my younger son. Both given with love, and much appreciated. We're having dinner at my sister's - see the family, always a pleasure. Most important, my son who's in the USMC has been stationed to California rather than Afghanistan: we're all very happy about that Peace on Earth to all you ./ers.
Unless you're in Oz, where they're now getting shorter.
In the late 1960s, Toronto's Campus Co-op built a cooperative high-rise apartment building, called Rochdale (after the town in England where the co-op movement started). This building, which is located near the corner of Bloor and St George, was designed for cooperative living: groups of individuals could rent suites, which consisted of 2, 3, 4, or 5 bedrooms, and a common area. The residents elected a board that ran the building. The project was a catastrophe. It was the classic problem of socialism: property which belongs to everyone belongs to no one, so no one looked after it. Ultimately, the government of Ontario took over the building and converted it to an old-folks home. A residence like this might make sense if run by groups of techies with some money in their pockets, rather than by penniless students. Certainly, the idea of leasing bedroom suites rather than apartments makes sense for groups of friends or co-workers - assuming a landlord could find enough stable, extended groups to fill the building. And for groups of hackers (or other professionals), it would be a good living environment. But it probably is not viable economically.
... so let's see how they react when someone starting FUDding XP. My guess: it ain't gonna be pretty.
My wife and I were up at 3:00 AM to see the Leonids, but it was cloudy - no luck. I suggested we stay up, perhaps one would penetrate the cloud cover; but my wife, bless her, pointed out that if a meteor was big enough to penetrate the cloud cover, we didn't want to be anywhere near it.