I submitted a flash story here at 8:26 Pacific Time (still over a half an hour the quake, but at least while the warning was still in effect). It languished in the queue and was eventually rejected.
If SlashDot wants to take itself seriously as a media company it needs to provide service to its customers (yes, I am a customer, I pay for a subscription). ne of those services is warning of impending death if warning has a chance of preventing that death. Given the number of Pacific Coast SlashDotters, and that many Slashdotters are unlikely to be getting any other media input while here, maybe SlashDot itself should subscribe to the Tsunami alert email list and add it to its RSS feed?
Does either the USGS or NOAA provide quake/tsunami alerts via RSS feed? If not maybe some slashdotters can donate their time to setting one up for them?
True, but I think the Star Wars mythos has come very valuable moral lessons that I think would be valuable to my kids while they are still kids. Should the stories of the Bible/Koran/Bhagavad Gita/etc. be withheld from children until they are old enough to handle all the violence and sex in those mythoi?
You're instilling the wrong ethics in them from day one if you're encouraging them to believe things that are not true.
Umm, isn't the whole point of fiction, including science fiction, at least temporarily believing something that isn't true?
I think you failed to fully read my very short post. I said I'd like a technological way to watch it in a G-rated format. I clearly indicated I had no problem with Lucas making it anyway he wanted.
I feel the same way about fairy tales I read to my kids. I have a copy of the Brothers Grimm stories in their original [well, translated into English] 'grim' language, but since I'm reading it and my kids can't read yet, I can edit the stories while I'm reading by making the bad people/wolves/bears fall asleep or just go away instead of dying.
I don't really have a similar option for the Star Wars films (though when the orginal movies came out we bought the story os of Star Wars album which was highly edited to get it under 45 minutes - and I think relatively fit for most children). What I'd like is a program (which I think already exists) which would automatically edit out the violence when I play the DVD on my computer in a seemless way so that my kids can be exposed to the mythology I grew up with (but that I wasn't exposed to until the movies came out when I was already a teenager).
I'm glad Lucas isn't letting the ratings system control the content of his films, but I hope that I will eventually have a technological way of watching the films in a G-rated version so I can enjoy it with my kids.
Cheaper from Amazon
on
Planet Simpson
·
· Score: -1, Troll
Once again SlashDot would rather make themselves and buck than save its readers $1.56 to $3.64 by providing a link to the book at Amazon, $17.16 instead the B&N Price $20.80 ($18.72 member). [if this makes you feel guilty - then plow the savings into a SlashDot subscription.]
Personally I'll pass on the book, it's the equivalent of buying one of those Star Trek encyclopedias (well in this case it's maybe a cross between that and getting the DVD of Trekkies 1 & 2). If you really want to establish your geek creds learn this stuff by watching the show, not by reading a a book about it.
Similar to the BBC language program, Deutsche-Welle radio also has an online language program to teach its internet audience German. The course modules are in MP3 format so you can download them to your music player of choice and study where ever you wish.
See that is the kind of passion you should have used to submit this story originally. At least you are communicating both your original take on the story, and the key fact of the story.
I wasn't criticizing the newsworthiness of this story - just of the failure to provide your own write-up of the story by instead using cut-n-paste and ignoring the meat of the story - and of the/. editors for posting the story in spite of that.
As long as paper is cheaper than video screens there will be free papers. Case in point, Washing, DC just gained a new free daily The Washington Examiner in the last month, and within the last two year the Washington Post launched its own freebie paper, The Express.
They both seem to have viable business models and in fact the Express has already decimated small group of targetted suburban papers that had cost $.35 which have now either gone out print, or or free depending on the suburban county each served. And the Post is finding that its free paper is doing better than it is. Though I think that growth will slow because of the Examiner which seems closer to a real newspaers (if one only on par to the NY Post or NY News) than the Express which consists entirely of heavily cropped wire stories. The Examiner at least has unique features and few of its own writers - plus it runs in depth wire stories, especially in SPORTS - which with the launch of the Washington Nationals should 'sell' a lot of free papers.
The 'write-up' for this story consists of two paragraphs of cut-n-paste text taken directly from the link that ignores the most important fact in the story which is in the 3rd graf of the link - that the current plan isn't ANY kind of repair mission - but a de-orbiting mission.
Avantare's email address is cclayton [AT] dsli.com so I'm assuming it's not the same person as Brian Berger who wrote the story for Space.com
The complete FAQ for the beta, including almost all known issues, is located here. The massive log files are flukes. They're usually full of a single repeating line. If that's the case, reinstall; the problem usually goes away.
Hey, thanks AC. That's a lot easier than combing through the MS newsgroups. It sounds from what other are saying here like the large error file may be the result of running on a machine with limited memory and perhaps because it also had limited HD space.
I've been running this on one of my XP boxes since it came out. Here are a couple of caveats:
It creates (what I consider to be) an absurdly large error.log file, on mine it had reached nearly 1Gb in about a month. I have since created a read-only dummy version of the file so it can't write to it anymore and it hasn't seemed to affect the program.
When installed while Admin it's installed for every user, which I guess you would want the blocking for every user, but not necessarily the scanning and program update features, - which leads to...
Running as Admin it doesn't find suspicious Registry Entries in other users' User Registries, which means you could be the admin on an infested machine and not know it - this is on an XP Home box, so perhaps it's different on XP Pro?
Though called a beta, I haven't been able to find a way to report these bugs/flaws/'features' to MS.
Only burnt out tubes belong in museums, unless they are installed in working equipment AT a museum. It's stupid to put working tubes on display when the burnt out ones have just as much ashtaetic value if all you are going to do is look at them.
So if you can find a museum that will actually install them in equipment, sell them on eBay. Better yet - let the museums that really want to use them buy them off eBay then if you are still in a donating mood you can donate the proceeds to the charity of your choice.
Here's the earliest clear use of the term in relation to software I could find on Google's Usenet Archive:
... BSD's open source policy meant that user developed software could be ported among platforms, which meant their customers saw a much more cost effective, leading edge capability combined hardware and software platform....
Rather than addressing the movies already pruchased, why not require MGM release all films produced in this manner in a dual format going forward. It would seem that it could be engineered direclty into a single digital copy of the 4:3 image that when the user wants to see it in "widescreen" it just does the cropping digitally.
This would certainly be trivial for PC playback of the film. For playback on console DVD players, it might require flashing the BIOS.
I suspect that they have found a better replacement for the zig-zag scan and huffman coding steps.
I don't think they have replaced a step that has already ocurred in the JPEG process as that would require uncompressing and recompressing the file twice during the conversion from jpg to sif and back, which would have to intorduce loss.
I think it's more likely that they have found an algorhythm that is optomized to compress the results of step 7). Since the step 7) is repeated over and over for each 8x8 grid, there must be a resultant pattern, especially for area of an image that are similar. In this way it would be somewhat similar to the standard zip algorhythm that is looking for patterns in file - but it has been optomized to look for patterns in the results of the huffman compression.
If you upgrade the Mac mini to 1GB of memory through the Apple store, the additional cost is $425!
Yeah, that seems out of line, but the upgrade to 512M is only $75. So instead of getting one $599 plus the Gig upgrade for total of $1,024, get two $499 models with the 512M option and cluster them! In effect a dual G4 machine with a Gig of RAM for $1,149!
Alternatively, you could maybe just upgrade to 512M, then get a 512M thumbdrive (or iPod Shuffle!) for much less than the additional $350 they want to go from 512M to 1G internal. Set it up as RAM drive and you might be able to get some of the speed of full Gig of internal RAM for $200 less.
My one annoyance about the base configuration is lack of WiFi out of the box, yet they include a 56k Modem. I wish you could opt for WiFi instead of the modem, instead of paying $75 to get the AirPort card. Anyone know where I can get a list of compatible USB WiFi adapters that will work with it?
Actually, what I would like to see is for this to be lauching platform for a totally free TiVo service, just agree to NOT FF the ads and you get your service free, or watch a monthly quota without FF'ing and for those you go beyond actually earn credit toward purchases with TiVo affiliate partners.
You haven't had a "sweet" beer until you've tried Carib Sorrel Shandy. It's a mix of Carib Lager (the Caribbean's answer to Corona) and Sorrel flavored (somewhere between flowery and strawberry) soda. At least that is what I thought. After drinking one I now know that it has all the sugar (if not possibly more) of the soda, and absolutely no hoppiness - not even the level of other North American lagers/pilsners.
I don't regret the experience as it was a hot night, but I don't need to repeat it. And this comes from someone who is regular drinker of home-mixed ginger beer / lager shandies.
There are incidences of people mixing vodka and Red Bull and actually dying.
There in fact are incidences of ppl mixing Vodka and just about anything and dying - alcohol in sufficient quantities will kill you and in lesser quantities can put you at risk of accidental death.
Are you next going to suggest that rum & coke should be banned because it is a potentially fatal combination? It seems to have been pretty popular over the years. What about black Russians? Irish coffee?
Please come down from your prohibitionist mentality and let adults make their own decisions about what they put in their own bodies - provided they don't plan on operating heavy equipment or firearms while under the influence.
As far as first films by future 'masters' is concerned. I'd rather wait for the digitally enhanced version of John Carpenter's Dark Star to be made and released. The existing DVD already has a Director's cut included (this might be the un-enhanced student version though, I've only seen the movie on cable).
Slashdot Mirror
I submitted a flash story here at 8:26 Pacific Time (still over a half an hour the quake, but at least while the warning was still in effect). It languished in the queue and was eventually rejected.
If SlashDot wants to take itself seriously as a media company it needs to provide service to its customers (yes, I am a customer, I pay for a subscription). ne of those services is warning of impending death if warning has a chance of preventing that death. Given the number of Pacific Coast SlashDotters, and that many Slashdotters are unlikely to be getting any other media input while here, maybe SlashDot itself should subscribe to the Tsunami alert email list and add it to its RSS feed?
Does either the USGS or NOAA provide quake/tsunami alerts via RSS feed? If not maybe some slashdotters can donate their time to setting one up for them?
They'll not be kids forever.
True, but I think the Star Wars mythos has come very valuable moral lessons that I think would be valuable to my kids while they are still kids. Should the stories of the Bible/Koran/Bhagavad Gita/etc. be withheld from children until they are old enough to handle all the violence and sex in those mythoi?
You're instilling the wrong ethics in them from day one if you're encouraging them to believe things that are not true.
Umm, isn't the whole point of fiction, including science fiction, at least temporarily believing something that isn't true?
I think you failed to fully read my very short post. I said I'd like a technological way to watch it in a G-rated format. I clearly indicated I had no problem with Lucas making it anyway he wanted.
I feel the same way about fairy tales I read to my kids. I have a copy of the Brothers Grimm stories in their original [well, translated into English] 'grim' language, but since I'm reading it and my kids can't read yet, I can edit the stories while I'm reading by making the bad people/wolves/bears fall asleep or just go away instead of dying.
I don't really have a similar option for the Star Wars films (though when the orginal movies came out we bought the story os of Star Wars album which was highly edited to get it under 45 minutes - and I think relatively fit for most children). What I'd like is a program (which I think already exists) which would automatically edit out the violence when I play the DVD on my computer in a seemless way so that my kids can be exposed to the mythology I grew up with (but that I wasn't exposed to until the movies came out when I was already a teenager).
Most include some spoilers.
I'm glad Lucas isn't letting the ratings system control the content of his films, but I hope that I will eventually have a technological way of watching the films in a G-rated version so I can enjoy it with my kids.
Once again SlashDot would rather make themselves and buck than save its readers $1.56 to $3.64 by providing a link to the book at Amazon, $17.16 instead the B&N Price $20.80 ($18.72 member). [if this makes you feel guilty - then plow the savings into a SlashDot subscription.]
Personally I'll pass on the book, it's the equivalent of buying one of those Star Trek encyclopedias (well in this case it's maybe a cross between that and getting the DVD of Trekkies 1 & 2). If you really want to establish your geek creds learn this stuff by watching the show, not by reading a a book about it.
Similar to the BBC language program, Deutsche-Welle radio also has an online language program to teach its internet audience German. The course modules are in MP3 format so you can download them to your music player of choice and study where ever you wish.
See that is the kind of passion you should have used to submit this story originally. At least you are communicating both your original take on the story, and the key fact of the story.
/. editors for posting the story in spite of that.
I wasn't criticizing the newsworthiness of this story - just of the failure to provide your own write-up of the story by instead using cut-n-paste and ignoring the meat of the story - and of the
As long as paper is cheaper than video screens there will be free papers. Case in point, Washing, DC just gained a new free daily The Washington Examiner in the last month, and within the last two year the Washington Post launched its own freebie paper, The Express.
They both seem to have viable business models and in fact the Express has already decimated small group of targetted suburban papers that had cost $.35 which have now either gone out print, or or free depending on the suburban county each served. And the Post is finding that its free paper is doing better than it is. Though I think that growth will slow because of the Examiner which seems closer to a real newspaers (if one only on par to the NY Post or NY News) than the Express which consists entirely of heavily cropped wire stories. The Examiner at least has unique features and few of its own writers - plus it runs in depth wire stories, especially in SPORTS - which with the launch of the Washington Nationals should 'sell' a lot of free papers.
The 'write-up' for this story consists of two paragraphs of cut-n-paste text taken directly from the link that ignores the most important fact in the story which is in the 3rd graf of the link - that the current plan isn't ANY kind of repair mission - but a de-orbiting mission.
Avantare's email address is cclayton [AT] dsli.com so I'm assuming it's not the same person as Brian Berger who wrote the story for Space.com
The complete FAQ for the beta, including almost all known issues, is located here.
The massive log files are flukes. They're usually full of a single repeating line. If that's the case, reinstall; the problem usually goes away.
Hey, thanks AC. That's a lot easier than combing through the MS newsgroups. It sounds from what other are saying here like the large error file may be the result of running on a machine with limited memory and perhaps because it also had limited HD space.
Only burnt out tubes belong in museums, unless they are installed in working equipment AT a museum. It's stupid to put working tubes on display when the burnt out ones have just as much ashtaetic value if all you are going to do is look at them.
So if you can find a museum that will actually install them in equipment, sell them on eBay. Better yet - let the museums that really want to use them buy them off eBay then if you are still in a donating mood you can donate the proceeds to the charity of your choice.
Rather than addressing the movies already pruchased, why not require MGM release all films produced in this manner in a dual format going forward. It would seem that it could be engineered direclty into a single digital copy of the 4:3 image that when the user wants to see it in "widescreen" it just does the cropping digitally.
This would certainly be trivial for PC playback of the film. For playback on console DVD players, it might require flashing the BIOS.
I suspect that they have found a better replacement for the zig-zag scan and huffman coding steps.
I don't think they have replaced a step that has already ocurred in the JPEG process as that would require uncompressing and recompressing the file twice during the conversion from jpg to sif and back, which would have to intorduce loss.
I think it's more likely that they have found an algorhythm that is optomized to compress the results of step 7). Since the step 7) is repeated over and over for each 8x8 grid, there must be a resultant pattern, especially for area of an image that are similar. In this way it would be somewhat similar to the standard zip algorhythm that is looking for patterns in file - but it has been optomized to look for patterns in the results of the huffman compression.
that's how they manage to go only to 14.
This one goes to 11!
If you upgrade the Mac mini to 1GB of memory through the Apple store, the additional cost is $425!
Yeah, that seems out of line, but the upgrade to 512M is only $75. So instead of getting one $599 plus the Gig upgrade for total of $1,024, get two $499 models with the 512M option and cluster them! In effect a dual G4 machine with a Gig of RAM for $1,149!
Alternatively, you could maybe just upgrade to 512M, then get a 512M thumbdrive (or iPod Shuffle!) for much less than the additional $350 they want to go from 512M to 1G internal. Set it up as RAM drive and you might be able to get some of the speed of full Gig of internal RAM for $200 less.
My one annoyance about the base configuration is lack of WiFi out of the box, yet they include a 56k Modem. I wish you could opt for WiFi instead of the modem, instead of paying $75 to get the AirPort card. Anyone know where I can get a list of compatible USB WiFi adapters that will work with it?
And what, exactly, is a "Comapanion"? Look at the picture... I think they mean "companion". Scientists can't spell.
Oh they can spell. They just can't type.
Actually, what I would like to see is for this to be lauching platform for a totally free TiVo service, just agree to NOT FF the ads and you get your service free, or watch a monthly quota without FF'ing and for those you go beyond actually earn credit toward purchases with TiVo affiliate partners.
And women's pro basketball, and while they lasted women's pro soccer.
I think we are currently missing Arena Football, and pro-lacrosse tho.
You haven't had a "sweet" beer until you've tried Carib Sorrel Shandy. It's a mix of Carib Lager (the Caribbean's answer to Corona) and Sorrel flavored (somewhere between flowery and strawberry) soda. At least that is what I thought. After drinking one I now know that it has all the sugar (if not possibly more) of the soda, and absolutely no hoppiness - not even the level of other North American lagers/pilsners.
I don't regret the experience as it was a hot night, but I don't need to repeat it. And this comes from someone who is regular drinker of home-mixed ginger beer / lager shandies.
There are incidences of people mixing vodka and Red Bull and actually dying.
There in fact are incidences of ppl mixing Vodka and just about anything and dying - alcohol in sufficient quantities will kill you and in lesser quantities can put you at risk of accidental death.
Are you next going to suggest that rum & coke should be banned because it is a potentially fatal combination? It seems to have been pretty popular over the years. What about black Russians? Irish coffee?
Please come down from your prohibitionist mentality and let adults make their own decisions about what they put in their own bodies - provided they don't plan on operating heavy equipment or firearms while under the influence.
Rhode Island (which by the way, isn't the original name of the state)
It isn't the current name of the state either.
Not me. I just hoped there was enough stuff here
You might want to stop by PLASTIC's Politics Section for a more matured (and generally maturer) Slash-type discussion site on Politics.
As far as first films by future 'masters' is concerned. I'd rather wait for the digitally enhanced version of John Carpenter's Dark Star to be made and released. The existing DVD already has a Director's cut included (this might be the un-enhanced student version though, I've only seen the movie on cable).