Well, it seems the judge was equally ambivalent, given the derisory payment demanded from the offender of 8,000 (which for those who count in US dollars amounts to about $11,616) plus court costs. I'd say that was pretty much a slap on the wrist.
Seems like this kind of airship would be extremely vulnerable flying over hostile territory.
Exactly. I'm not exactly sure what weaponry would be able to hit a target at 20,000 feet but it's a big, slow-moving target.
On the other hand, I love the whole idea of gasbags as a means of transport, and would really like to see them come back for civilian use. I can see their time coming again as fuel bills rise or the carbon emissions of winged craft become too scary.
Airships got a bad rap as a result of some messy crashes, but by of perspective, even with the Hindenburg crash 63% of the passengers survived. Whereas if you're in a plane when it crashes, you can usually guarantee that you're toast.
Cool. Has anyone here had experience with handwriting recognition on Linux? That's one thing I've never tried in over 15 years of using Linux. Trouble is, my handwriting is pretty idiosyncratic, so I suspect it might be a tall order for any software to cope with it...:-(
I wonder how rare this situation actually is. The same thing happened to me in about 1998 when I was a customer of Q-net, which later got absorbed by Eftel. Some certifiable cretin emailed out the ISP's entire customer contact list to every one of its customers. The managing director of Q-Net was a total creep, and rather than admitting responsibility and eating crow, his letter of "apology" was more of an exhortation to customers to secure their passwords. Needless to say, I was unamused, and changed ISPs shortly after.
In my case, it would have to be. No tablet machine I've come across has been able to cope with my generally italic script, which is generally regarded as attractive but not always easily readable for those unfamiliar with it. And I'm too old to learn how to print, given that I can manage a keyboard reasonably well.
Apart from your excellent points, there is the pleasure in serendipity to be found when a friend lends you a book which finds resonance in your being (incidentally, I found this just recently when I read Vikram Seth's "An Equal Music"), and there is much pleasure to be found in passing on your own discoveries likewise.
E-books with proprietary formats just don't fill that space. Sure, sometimes you can manage to snag a PDF or whatever of your text, but many (I would say most) people would say reading a text of any length on a computer screen sucks.
I guess its antecedents are open to debate. One thing that concerns me (but only a little) is from having looked at the demo video, it looks rather as if Microsoft have adopted the finger gestures (or whatever they're called) that Apple just nabbed a patent for a couple of months ago. IIRC there was a/. thread about it, but I can't find it at the moment.
OT: Given how long Slashdot has been in existence, one might be forgiven for getting a bit cranky over Slashcode's inability to perform a simple keyword search on their own content.
Anyway, back on-topic, the patent might only extend to mobile phones, but in a way (for once) I hope it doesn't. Having a 400-lb legal team with Microsoft's budget behind it might be just what it takes to nuke the patent from orbit.
Fortunately for you, I just used up my mod points, otherwise your post (and any other FTFY...) would have been modded "-1 Redundant" in the absence of a "-1 Obnoxious and Unfunny" tag.
We're all getting away from the point here, partly due to a bad summary which takes Linus' words out of context. Sure, the kernel (if you use all of it) is big, but the bashers are the first to poke fun at inadequate functionality. Linux is big simply because it now does a lot. I don't believe anyone can say any of the Linux kernel is badly coded.
If you don't need all of those modules, you don't have to build them. Here's a quick comparison: on my Arch Linux box, the default kernel is built with 75 MB of modules. My stripped kernel is built with only 21 MB, and that's without probing very deeply to find redundancies, and it would probably run on the majority of reasonably-up-to-date-but-not-bleeding-edge consumer-grade hardware.
It had a habit of randomly rebooting itself, or worse, locking up in such a way that swapping batteries and the other hard-reset techniques didn't work reliably. And of course, when I did finally get the machine to work, all my userland software would be gone and I'd have to restore it from backup.
I had to be really careful about lending the HP48 to anybody; since not everyone "gets" RPN straight away, attempts to use the machine like an algebraic device also tended to cause lockups.
Maybe my calculator was just a dud, but I just didn't need the hassle when I was already under pressure in assessments, so it had to go. The TI-89, despite its faults, has at least been 100% reliable.
...because I would have hated to get my Moleskin notebook wet
You needn't worry. Provided that you write in a waterproof ink (or with pencil) your moleskine will stand up to a direct blast from a hose if necessary. It has happened to me and mine on several occasions.
So did I. Fortran was (and still is) fun, COBOL was tedious and Burroughs B3700 Assembler should have been even more so if it were not for the fact that it is that much harder to do.
It is trendy to disparage COBOL, but it was and is a very reliable and effective language for dealing with business transactions. The only times it tended to break were when the data input contained funky characters which would precipitate a "subscript out of range" error. I found the best way to prevent that was to disable the keypunch-ops' "CTRL" keys.
If TI were smart, they'd make their calculators as open as possible.
Well, TI are not smart. For instance, I can see absolutely no logical reason why they have to restrict sale of their external QWERTY keyboard to US/Canada only. It's not as if it's ground-breaking or innovative technology. TI are just being bloody-minded for the sake of it when it would be to their commercial advantage to sell as many units as possible.
As a MS/Phd engineering student I haven't seen a HP calculator in 6 years except at a store.
I used to have a HP48G+ until it let me down too many times in various exams and other assessments over the first 2 years of my biotech degree. I really preferred the RPN input and really liked the firm, clicky buttons with the nice big fat "enter" key right under the index finger where it belongs.
I replaced it with a TI-89 which has been good, in that it is much faster. In some ways it's much more powerful, e.g. it does implicit differentiation and integration by parts if I want, amongst a host of other things. But if only I could depend on the HP I would still prefer it despite its deficiencies in functionality.
If a fountain pen causes you hand fatigue, you're holding it wrong. You don't need to clutch it as if you are carving Trajan's Column. Just relax. The point of the nib only needs to touch the paper to allow the ink to flow evenly as you write.
The thing with "doesn't matter to me" is that opinion on cursive writing is always going to be polarised. On a forum like Slashdot there's usually no point even raising the issue. The forum is largely populated with philistines who couldn't give a fuck about anything as individual as handwriting.
OK, I guess I made my own position clear enough in the last sentence. Yes, I still write with a fountain-pen (and sometimes even a quill) on paper in addition to using a keyboard.
There is still a lot to be said for a low-tech approach that is not vulnerable to power blackouts, viruses, malware or spyware.
Playing chicken with them just doesn't seem worth the thrill.
About 25 years ago when I was living in Paris, it was generally held that cars were not actually required to stop for pedestrians at crosswalks; these were simply an indication of where it was likely that someone would want to cross. (The actual law said something quite different, but the French are notoriously bloody-minded.)
So a common way of approaching the matter was to step out in front of a (hopefully slowly-)moving car and slap its bonnet (hood) hard, scaring the crap out of the driver. Yes, playing chicken can be fun, but I can't say I recommend it for those who need crutches to walk.:-)
OK, they might not be brown any more (small mercies), but in what ways do you believe they are superior to iPods? I'm not trolling, I'm simply asking, since Microsoft is keeping this world-beating product secret from most of the world, and I've never yet seen a Zune.
Incidentally, the sound quality is entirely dependent on your compression algorithm for this kind of device.
I would suggest that a useful policy might be to get your content right (which includes recognising the difference between "lose" and "loose"), and THEN worry about how your indentation or bullet points look.
In fact, you would do well to leave bullet-points to powerpoint shows and try writing sentences and paragraphs in your documents. It might be a novelty, but it was good enough for Shakespeare.
There is still a learning curve, but after producing immaculate looking PDFs or printout...
I won't argue against the output I have seen from LaTex - some of it looks very good indeed. But no better than I was able to produce years ago with WordPerfect 4.5 and 5.1. Now if WordPerfect could be revived with all the usefulness of its text-mode form rather than the horrible emasculated and bowdlerised so-called WYSIWYG versions of the late '90s, I would be happy as a pig in shit.
But then I suppose I have to admit that I was able to make WP5.1 sit up and beg because I had invested so much time in learning how to use it properly...
That's why I still prefer to use OpenOffice. Google Docs is useful for generating content, especially as a collaborative effort, but for word processing or spreadsheet work it blows. There are times when you have to unplug the outside world (especially in my case, since I'm easily distracted when I need to get work done) and having an office suite is seriously useful.
I expect someone will jump in here and say I should be using LaTex, and maybe I should. I have just never made time to master it.
Slashdot Mirror
Can you give an example of an abuser that gets bitten by the GPL?
Of course we can. That French firm Edu4.
Either RTFA or go back to sleep.
Well, it seems the judge was equally ambivalent, given the derisory payment demanded from the offender of 8,000 (which for those who count in US dollars amounts to about $11,616) plus court costs. I'd say that was pretty much a slap on the wrist.
Seems like this kind of airship would be extremely vulnerable flying over hostile territory.
Exactly. I'm not exactly sure what weaponry would be able to hit a target at 20,000 feet but it's a big, slow-moving target.
On the other hand, I love the whole idea of gasbags as a means of transport, and would really like to see them come back for civilian use. I can see their time coming again as fuel bills rise or the carbon emissions of winged craft become too scary.
Airships got a bad rap as a result of some messy crashes, but by of perspective, even with the Hindenburg crash 63% of the passengers survived. Whereas if you're in a plane when it crashes, you can usually guarantee that you're toast.
...linux compatible.
:-(
Cool. Has anyone here had experience with handwriting recognition on Linux? That's one thing I've never tried in over 15 years of using Linux. Trouble is, my handwriting is pretty idiosyncratic, so I suspect it might be a tall order for any software to cope with it...
I wonder how rare this situation actually is. The same thing happened to me in about 1998 when I was a customer of Q-net, which later got absorbed by Eftel. Some certifiable cretin emailed out the ISP's entire customer contact list to every one of its customers. The managing director of Q-Net was a total creep, and rather than admitting responsibility and eating crow, his letter of "apology" was more of an exhortation to customers to secure their passwords. Needless to say, I was unamused, and changed ISPs shortly after.
Handwriting recognition is actually pretty good.
In my case, it would have to be. No tablet machine I've come across has been able to cope with my generally italic script, which is generally regarded as attractive but not always easily readable for those unfamiliar with it. And I'm too old to learn how to print, given that I can manage a keyboard reasonably well.
Apart from your excellent points, there is the pleasure in serendipity to be found when a friend lends you a book which finds resonance in your being (incidentally, I found this just recently when I read Vikram Seth's "An Equal Music"), and there is much pleasure to be found in passing on your own discoveries likewise.
E-books with proprietary formats just don't fill that space. Sure, sometimes you can manage to snag a PDF or whatever of your text, but many (I would say most) people would say reading a text of any length on a computer screen sucks.
I guess its antecedents are open to debate. One thing that concerns me (but only a little) is from having looked at the demo video, it looks rather as if Microsoft have adopted the finger gestures (or whatever they're called) that Apple just nabbed a patent for a couple of months ago. IIRC there was a /. thread about it, but I can't find it at the moment.
OT: Given how long Slashdot has been in existence, one might be forgiven for getting a bit cranky over Slashcode's inability to perform a simple keyword search on their own content.
Anyway, back on-topic, the patent might only extend to mobile phones, but in a way (for once) I hope it doesn't. Having a 400-lb legal team with Microsoft's budget behind it might be just what it takes to nuke the patent from orbit.
Fortunately for you, I just used up my mod points, otherwise your post (and any other FTFY...) would have been modded "-1 Redundant" in the absence of a "-1 Obnoxious and Unfunny" tag.
We're all getting away from the point here, partly due to a bad summary which takes Linus' words out of context. Sure, the kernel (if you use all of it) is big, but the bashers are the first to poke fun at inadequate functionality. Linux is big simply because it now does a lot. I don't believe anyone can say any of the Linux kernel is badly coded.
If you don't need all of those modules, you don't have to build them. Here's a quick comparison: on my Arch Linux box, the default kernel is built with 75 MB of modules. My stripped kernel is built with only 21 MB, and that's without probing very deeply to find redundancies, and it would probably run on the majority of reasonably-up-to-date-but-not-bleeding-edge consumer-grade hardware.
How did it let you down?
It had a habit of randomly rebooting itself, or worse, locking up in such a way that swapping batteries and the other hard-reset techniques didn't work reliably. And of course, when I did finally get the machine to work, all my userland software would be gone and I'd have to restore it from backup.
I had to be really careful about lending the HP48 to anybody; since not everyone "gets" RPN straight away, attempts to use the machine like an algebraic device also tended to cause lockups.
Maybe my calculator was just a dud, but I just didn't need the hassle when I was already under pressure in assessments, so it had to go. The TI-89, despite its faults, has at least been 100% reliable.
...because I would have hated to get my Moleskin notebook wet
You needn't worry. Provided that you write in a waterproof ink (or with pencil) your moleskine will stand up to a direct blast from a hose if necessary. It has happened to me and mine on several occasions.
So did I. Fortran was (and still is) fun, COBOL was tedious and Burroughs B3700 Assembler should have been even more so if it were not for the fact that it is that much harder to do.
It is trendy to disparage COBOL, but it was and is a very reliable and effective language for dealing with business transactions. The only times it tended to break were when the data input contained funky characters which would precipitate a "subscript out of range" error. I found the best way to prevent that was to disable the keypunch-ops' "CTRL" keys.
Surely tilp can be compiled for x64?
If TI were smart, they'd make their calculators as open as possible.
Well, TI are not smart. For instance, I can see absolutely no logical reason why they have to restrict sale of their external QWERTY keyboard to US/Canada only. It's not as if it's ground-breaking or innovative technology. TI are just being bloody-minded for the sake of it when it would be to their commercial advantage to sell as many units as possible.
As a MS/Phd engineering student I haven't seen a HP calculator in 6 years except at a store.
I used to have a HP48G+ until it let me down too many times in various exams and other assessments over the first 2 years of my biotech degree. I really preferred the RPN input and really liked the firm, clicky buttons with the nice big fat "enter" key right under the index finger where it belongs.
I replaced it with a TI-89 which has been good, in that it is much faster. In some ways it's much more powerful, e.g. it does implicit differentiation and integration by parts if I want, amongst a host of other things. But if only I could depend on the HP I would still prefer it despite its deficiencies in functionality.
practice and discipline, concepts I find grossly underrepresented in modern education.
;-)
You'll get yourself burned as a heretic by saying that sort of thing here on Slashdot.
If a fountain pen causes you hand fatigue, you're holding it wrong. You don't need to clutch it as if you are carving Trajan's Column. Just relax. The point of the nib only needs to touch the paper to allow the ink to flow evenly as you write.
The thing with "doesn't matter to me" is that opinion on cursive writing is always going to be polarised. On a forum like Slashdot there's usually no point even raising the issue. The forum is largely populated with philistines who couldn't give a fuck about anything as individual as handwriting.
OK, I guess I made my own position clear enough in the last sentence. Yes, I still write with a fountain-pen (and sometimes even a quill) on paper in addition to using a keyboard.
There is still a lot to be said for a low-tech approach that is not vulnerable to power blackouts, viruses, malware or spyware.
Playing chicken with them just doesn't seem worth the thrill.
:-)
About 25 years ago when I was living in Paris, it was generally held that cars were not actually required to stop for pedestrians at crosswalks; these were simply an indication of where it was likely that someone would want to cross. (The actual law said something quite different, but the French are notoriously bloody-minded.)
So a common way of approaching the matter was to step out in front of a (hopefully slowly-)moving car and slap its bonnet (hood) hard, scaring the crap out of the driver. Yes, playing chicken can be fun, but I can't say I recommend it for those who need crutches to walk.
OK, they might not be brown any more (small mercies), but in what ways do you believe they are superior to iPods? I'm not trolling, I'm simply asking, since Microsoft is keeping this world-beating product secret from most of the world, and I've never yet seen a Zune.
Incidentally, the sound quality is entirely dependent on your compression algorithm for this kind of device.
I would suggest that a useful policy might be to get your content right (which includes recognising the difference between "lose" and "loose"), and THEN worry about how your indentation or bullet points look.
In fact, you would do well to leave bullet-points to powerpoint shows and try writing sentences and paragraphs in your documents. It might be a novelty, but it was good enough for Shakespeare.
There is still a learning curve, but after producing immaculate looking PDFs or printout...
I won't argue against the output I have seen from LaTex - some of it looks very good indeed. But no better than I was able to produce years ago with WordPerfect 4.5 and 5.1. Now if WordPerfect could be revived with all the usefulness of its text-mode form rather than the horrible emasculated and bowdlerised so-called WYSIWYG versions of the late '90s, I would be happy as a pig in shit.
But then I suppose I have to admit that I was able to make WP5.1 sit up and beg because I had invested so much time in learning how to use it properly...
That's why I still prefer to use OpenOffice. Google Docs is useful for generating content, especially as a collaborative effort, but for word processing or spreadsheet work it blows. There are times when you have to unplug the outside world (especially in my case, since I'm easily distracted when I need to get work done) and having an office suite is seriously useful.
I expect someone will jump in here and say I should be using LaTex, and maybe I should. I have just never made time to master it.
In other words, justice is in the hands of 12 people who aren't smart enough to get out of jury duty... :-|