If they're going to focus development on PalmOS-for-mobile-phones, they may very well end up with an OS that isn't well-suited for palmtops.
No more HWR, for example, and no user-accessible expansion (because the phone company will insist you move all data in and out of the device via their network instead of USB/a memory stick, so they can keep on making you pay through the nose).
It's not that Word is a bad wysiwyg, it's that wysiwyg is bad per se. It's not a matter of taste.
Rubbish. Applications like Adobe FrameMaker show that wysiwyg can be done well. I certainly don't spend my time fighting Frame over format details. Generally, I spend no more than a day (out of a 120-day budget to write a 600-page manual) on formatting, and that includes creating the formatting from scratch. That's pretty productive.
Even better, we rarely encounter problems with Frame that we don't understand and can't solve easily. Word, on the other hand, has us going "WTF" on a regular basis.
Which means that yes, wysiwyg versus TeX IS a matter of taste, and that Word IS a bad example of wysiwyg.
From TFA: The creativity of our children. In many ways, people growing up with the Web and now the Semantic Web take the power at their fingertips for granted. The people who designed the tools that make the Net run had their own ideas for the future. I look forward to seeing what the next generation does with these tools that we could not have foreseen....
I suspect he didn't mean to say that our children will be more creative than we are. Just that we can't foresee what new applications will be developed, and how all that information will be used.
'making kids creative' would be hugely optimistic given what's currently happening on the internet, with most people's publications being either mundane or regurgitation. I suspect most activity on the internet is passive consumption rather than creative.
Why is "ls *.bmp | xargs convert $i $i.jpg" so difficult in a GUI?
It isn't. The only thing you need is a GUI equivalent to 'convert', and they may not be present by default. Once you have an app like Irfanview or GraphicConverter, "convert all bmp files to JPEG" is trivial, less prone to syntax errors (as you so eloquently demonstrated), and allows you to arbitrarily select files rather than being limited to selecting-by-grep.
Is it really 'a tenth cheaper', i.e. 10% cheaper than its nearest competitor? I somehow get the impression that the submitter meant 'a tenth the cost of its nearest competitor, i.e. 90% cheaper.
Neither seem correct, as Keck cost $ 140M for two telescopes with a similar diameter.
The problem is, our continent-wide power grids are already beyond safe capacity, Since power distribution is the bottleneck, you're not solving anything important from an engineering infrastructure point of view with solar power.
As problems go, I wouldn't call this one 'hard'. Increasing grid capacity is trivial, it's just a matter of spending the money and stringing some new cables. Sure, it'll add to the cost of using solar power, but the grid needs an upgrade anyway, you'll just have to specify heavier-gauge components if you're planning to use solar or wind energy.
Maybe. You've got the weather to contend with, and the day/night cycle. We've already got continent-wide power grids, which means local cloud cover shouldn't be too much of a problem. And with fuel cells becoming reality, we finally have a way to store large amounts of electrical energy and use it later (i.e. whenever the solar grid produces less power than is needed).
especially for its disk-spanning capabilities. Winzip's disk spanning abilities are bloody annoying, because they only work when you want to span an archive across several disks. You can't use it to divide an archive into chunks e.g. to avoid e-mail size limits, because its braindead implementation gives every chunk the same name and expects to save to the root diretory of a drive. There are any number of utilities that do this the right way, for arbitrary files.
For many documents, some formatting is essential to make the document readable, so.txt wouldn't do.
HTML is a bit better, but still only usable as an output format for online documents (HTML has no concept of pagination, for example).
With OO, you've got a format that can be used not only as the final output, but as the source format of your document. This simplifies exchanging documents during production.
After WW2, it took us 4 months to pump out the Wieringermeerpolder [1] (an area 3x the size of New Orleans, and at the same ground level, i.e. 4 m below sea level). So New Orleans might be doable in 6 weeks. It all comes down to available pump capacity, of course.
1: the polder hadn't been flooded because of a storm, but as an act of revenge by the retreating German army.
Have you ever tried doing this? It's horrible. No word wrap, for instance. It's meant to be used for minor corrections, not for writing whole pages. PDF is an output format, not an editing format.
when this new data center standard becomes a matter of enforcement
Which won't be anytime soon, because "TIA is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to develop voluntary industry standards for a wide variety of telecommunications products." (from the TIA website). They don't have the power to write laws.
Walking through the data center with my mag light at that hour of the morning comes pretty close to that feeling you get when you watch CSI on TV.
Mag light? OK, pet peeve time: why walk around in the dark, trying to see by some puny flashlight when you can flip the bloody lightswitch instead? I understand why it's done on TV (makes for a more dramatic look), but IRL, why bother?
Which reminds me: we need a coating for monitors that prevents greasy smudges from morons pointing at the screen. A thin metallic film with a 10 kV feed would be good.
"boss, I'd like to buy this new ultrasecure shredder. It uses a laser to completely obliterate the document. The only snag is that we'd need to have a 2.5 kA/400V feed brought in."
Slashdot Mirror
If they're going to focus development on PalmOS-for-mobile-phones, they may very well end up with an OS that isn't well-suited for palmtops.
No more HWR, for example, and no user-accessible expansion (because the phone company will insist you move all data in and out of the device via their network instead of USB/a memory stick, so they can keep on making you pay through the nose).
madetory. I typed this whole post with my eyes closed.
It shows.
It's not that Word is a bad wysiwyg, it's that wysiwyg is bad per se. It's not a matter of taste.
Rubbish. Applications like Adobe FrameMaker show that wysiwyg can be done well. I certainly don't spend my time fighting Frame over format details. Generally, I spend no more than a day (out of a 120-day budget to write a 600-page manual) on formatting, and that includes creating the formatting from scratch. That's pretty productive.
Even better, we rarely encounter problems with Frame that we don't understand and can't solve easily. Word, on the other hand, has us going "WTF" on a regular basis.
Which means that yes, wysiwyg versus TeX IS a matter of taste, and that Word IS a bad example of wysiwyg.
"The Ring Of Fire"
In other news, the RIAA has started suing geologists everywhere on behalf of Johnny Cash's estate.
From TFA: The creativity of our children. In many ways, people growing up with the Web and now the Semantic Web take the power at their fingertips for granted. The people who designed the tools that make the Net run had their own ideas for the future. I look forward to seeing what the next generation does with these tools that we could not have foreseen. ...
I suspect he didn't mean to say that our children will be more creative than we are. Just that we can't foresee what new applications will be developed, and how all that information will be used.
'making kids creative' would be hugely optimistic given what's currently happening on the internet, with most people's publications being either mundane or regurgitation. I suspect most activity on the internet is passive consumption rather than creative.
Why is "ls *.bmp | xargs convert $i $i.jpg" so difficult in a GUI?
It isn't. The only thing you need is a GUI equivalent to 'convert', and they may not be present by default. Once you have an app like Irfanview or GraphicConverter, "convert all bmp files to JPEG" is trivial, less prone to syntax errors (as you so eloquently demonstrated), and allows you to arbitrarily select files rather than being limited to selecting-by-grep.
Traditonally, the diameter of the mirror (10 m in SALT's case) is used for comparison.
Is it really 'a tenth cheaper', i.e. 10% cheaper than its nearest competitor? I somehow get the impression that the submitter meant 'a tenth the cost of its nearest competitor, i.e. 90% cheaper.
Neither seem correct, as Keck cost $ 140M for two telescopes with a similar diameter.
The problem is, our continent-wide power grids are already beyond safe capacity,
Since power distribution is the bottleneck, you're not solving anything important from an engineering infrastructure point of view with solar power.
As problems go, I wouldn't call this one 'hard'. Increasing grid capacity is trivial, it's just a matter of spending the money and stringing some new cables. Sure, it'll add to the cost of using solar power, but the grid needs an upgrade anyway, you'll just have to specify heavier-gauge components if you're planning to use solar or wind energy.
we prefer to call ourselves very small shell scripts
IT'S DUCT TAPE!!! DUCT. NOT DUCK. DUCT.
Hey, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...
However, that "on average" is the killer.
Maybe. You've got the weather to contend with, and the day/night cycle.
We've already got continent-wide power grids, which means local cloud cover shouldn't be too much of a problem. And with fuel cells becoming reality, we finally have a way to store large amounts of electrical energy and use it later (i.e. whenever the solar grid produces less power than is needed).
Does it allow you to specify headers and footers? Page margins? Page numbers?
especially for its disk-spanning capabilities.
Winzip's disk spanning abilities are bloody annoying, because they only work when you want to span an archive across several disks. You can't use it to divide an archive into chunks e.g. to avoid e-mail size limits, because its braindead implementation gives every chunk the same name and expects to save to the root diretory of a drive.
There are any number of utilities that do this the right way, for arbitrary files.
For many documents, some formatting is essential to make the document readable, so .txt wouldn't do.
HTML is a bit better, but still only usable as an output format for online documents (HTML has no concept of pagination, for example).
With OO, you've got a format that can be used not only as the final output, but as the source format of your document. This simplifies exchanging documents during production.
After WW2, it took us 4 months to pump out the Wieringermeerpolder [1] (an area 3x the size of New Orleans, and at the same ground level, i.e. 4 m below sea level). So New Orleans might be doable in 6 weeks. It all comes down to available pump capacity, of course.
1: the polder hadn't been flooded because of a storm, but as an act of revenge by the retreating German army.
Huh. I tried the same IP, and got 'Suspicious'. Something fishy's going on here...
Have you ever tried doing this? It's horrible. No word wrap, for instance. It's meant to be used for minor corrections, not for writing whole pages. PDF is an output format, not an editing format.
That;s because the most densly populated areas tend to compact and sink.
True, but quite a few of our population centres are in areas that were below sea level to begin with: they're in polders (reclaimed land).
These interesting moons have one thing in common, they are huge. They have gravity and a core.
IANARS, but a moon without gravity or a core would seem pretty interesting to me...
when this new data center standard becomes a matter of enforcement
Which won't be anytime soon, because "TIA is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to develop voluntary industry standards for a wide variety of telecommunications products." (from the TIA website). They don't have the power to write laws.
Walking through the data center with my mag light at that hour of the morning comes pretty close to that feeling you get when you watch CSI on TV.
Mag light? OK, pet peeve time: why walk around in the dark, trying to see by some puny flashlight when you can flip the bloody lightswitch instead?
I understand why it's done on TV (makes for a more dramatic look), but IRL, why bother?
Which reminds me: we need a coating for monitors that prevents greasy smudges from morons pointing at the screen. A thin metallic film with a 10 kV feed would be good.
Yeah, that would be cool.
"boss, I'd like to buy this new ultrasecure shredder. It uses a laser to completely obliterate the document. The only snag is that we'd need to have a 2.5 kA/400V feed brought in."
Um, because that would mean spending twice the money on hardware development and OS testing?