It just makes me feel a little sad that there is no chance that there will be any more Culture novels.
Don't neglect his other works, though. IMO his best work was written under his name without the "M" in the middle.
My personal favourites are The Crow Road (which has one of the best opening lines ever) and Complicity, both of which I have re-read several times. The Wasp Factory is equally as good, though I have never been tempted to re-read that.
More like the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy GUI design... Every time I press one of these black controls, labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let me know I've done it.
Maybe it's time to take off those Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses.
Now in my private life, a backdoor for Chinese intelligence services might bother me less than a backdoor for the NSA.
Why?
Let's turn that around. Assume, for the moment that (like myself) you are not a US citizen. Now you are told that this surveillance is only carried out on non-US nationals, as if that is somehow OK and the action of a good neighbour.
Because for years Gnome and KDE were only copying what Microsoft was doing with Windows' GUI?
If you take a look outside your little Windows-centric world, you might notice that rather than aping MS products, Gnome and KDE both developed from and expanded on what we had seen in CDE some 2 years before Win95 was released. Furthermore, some features (multiple desktops come to mind) of CDE (which persist in other DEs) took over a decade to get taken up by Apple, and not at all by Microsoft, unless Windows just isn't usable enough to tell.;)
Incidentally, every time someone loads that damn fugly eyesore known as Metro, God kills a kitten.
It would have to. Gnome 3 couldn't possibly have got much worse.
BTW, I'm not flamebaiting here: I was a big fan of Gnome since pre-1.0, right up to the end of the 2.x versions, while KDE (although more feature-rich and reliable) was still kluttered and kfugly. Sure, there are other desktops, among which XFCE is (IMO) one of the best, but I like to have a more full-featured desktop environment.
Trouble is, the Gnome developers have a long-standing habit of removing or breaking features, and defending their perspective by being condescending to the user. It seems the author of TFA had a taste of this at the start (and yes, I know I'm not supposed to RTFA, but too bad):
I found a hidden option that enabled workspaces on all monitors, but as of GNOME 3.0 it was thoroughly broken and caused a lot of crashes (which I was told by the GNOME developers they weren’t going to look at, since it wasn’t a supported configuration), so I was forced to revert.
This seems a comparatively minor aspect of their asshattery, but I would have thought it might be politic to give a RedHat employee more of a hearing than that. I, and most other users often didn't merit any kind of response.
Fortunately, when Gnome 3.0 came out, KDE had got over the worst atrocities of its 4.0 release and was quite usable, and 3 years on, I have nothing but praise for KDE 4.10 running on my Slackware box.
Contracting quite often did involve boring jobs, especially at that site. However, that little task at least got me out of COBOL for a day or so (plus time for testing). And they did pay me a lot of money for my time.
Exactly. We're dealing with the usual economies of waste, since the money the Government is throwing away isn't theirs to start with.
They just employ a contractor who ticks all the boxes just right, who will then just carry on along his merry way by fixing only the most urgent of basket cases while leaving the majority of machines untouched.
I think we're probably long overdue for a decent energy solution for consumer electronics. Hydrogen fuel-cell batteries still seem to be some way off, and cold fusion is just a pipe-dream. So in the meantime, if someone can supply a battery with four times the energy density of Li-ion cells, then I say "bring it on".
I don't even need to do that, because I still have one I wrote in Fortran 4 back in the early '70s when I was converting a suite of banking programs to migrate them off Burroughs mainframes. I'm quite sure it'll go through the GNU Compiler Collection without much modification.
It might be dangerous, but not evil. Microsoft has a habit of dragging their heels over securing their software. This simply is a kick to tell them to get their asses in gear. This kind of exploit would be totally ridiculed in the open source world, so Microsoft, with its effectively unlimited budget and manpower resources has no excuse.
The sooner they get started, the sooner it'll be fixed. And no, it is not acceptable to keep customers waiting until the Tuesday after next. Or longer.
Exactly. I am upset that I won't be able to read the last books of my very favourite author (who is dying) for some years until they are eventually available DRM-free
That wouldn't happen to be Iain Banks, would it? If so, I commend your patience, but can't follow your example.
No. In present-day England, and in many other parts of the Commonwealth, "spelt" and "spelled" may be used interchangeably, and both are regarded as correct.
Go to a library, the bigger and less "modernised" the better.
And sniff.
Now think of ANY location that smells like that.
A Solicitor's office, maybe. MAYBE.
But in neither case would a DRM'd ebook be considered an ebook.
From time to time, if you are into using ebooks, you will find that there are titles you want that are not available in non-DRM versions.
My own take on it (which is based more on common sense than appreciation for the law as it stands) is simply that I should be able to use an ebook in exactly the same way as I might a paper volume: read it, or lend it to friends or family. Sure, in the latter case, the publication may end up residing permanently on their hard drive or reader device, but it doesn't necessarily end up being read more than the same number of times.
That being the case, I have absolutely no compunction in stripping out the DRM in any book I buy.
I got into using ePubs only a couple of years ago, since I had some reservations about them at first, but now find I usually prefer them. I have replaced a proportion of my existing dead-tree books with ebooks, which, given that I recently moved home is a big plus, since I don't have to worry so much about having to reinforce my floors.
I'll be keeping the nicer of my paper books (which still leaves me with several thousand volumes), but the electronic format just means I get to be more selective about what takes up physical shelf space.
Heh. If it's self-aware, then it should be able to anticipate when I'm going to swear at it for "correcting" my perfectly spelt text to something ridiculous or meaningless.
This would push things over the limit. No companies or government branches outside of USA(or even in USA!) would stand for this.
How much do you want to bet?
Our illustrious Federal Government of Australia (before or after the election, it'll make no difference) will just roll over and say "ooh, that's nice, tickle me just there, that's the spot..."
That's what Free Trade Agreements are for. Just a formal way of saying "I'm your bitch".
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It just makes me feel a little sad that there is no chance that there will be any more Culture novels.
Don't neglect his other works, though. IMO his best work was written under his name without the "M" in the middle.
My personal favourites are The Crow Road (which has one of the best opening lines ever) and Complicity, both of which I have re-read several times. The Wasp Factory is equally as good, though I have never been tempted to re-read that.
I'm pretty damn certain you can record everyone and everything in public
Only if you're tired of living.
More like the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy GUI design... Every time I press one of these black controls, labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let me know I've done it.
Maybe it's time to take off those Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses.
USB stick is a terrible idea. The method for update needs to be inconvenient enough that it not be done needlessly.
Exactly. That's why I insist that all updates are carried out via 80-column punchcards.
Brave words from someone who goes by the handle Runaway1956!
Only because "Sir Robin" was already taken...
You are wrong. The U.S. was the terrorist in vietnam , and they killed more than a million
Exactly. Something you won't usually read in American books is that the Vietnamese call that conflict the "American War'.
As I am writing this I realised I sound a bit like an old preacher droning on about original sin :-S
Just wait till you're my age.
;-)
I'll let you into a secret: Sin wasn't very original even when I was a boy.
Now in my private life, a backdoor for Chinese intelligence services might bother me less than a backdoor for the NSA.
Why?
Let's turn that around. Assume, for the moment that (like myself) you are not a US citizen. Now you are told that this surveillance is only carried out on non-US nationals, as if that is somehow OK and the action of a good neighbour.
How would that make you feel?
Because for years Gnome and KDE were only copying what Microsoft was doing with Windows' GUI?
If you take a look outside your little Windows-centric world, you might notice that rather than aping MS products, Gnome and KDE both developed from and expanded on what we had seen in CDE some 2 years before Win95 was released. Furthermore, some features (multiple desktops come to mind) of CDE (which persist in other DEs) took over a decade to get taken up by Apple, and not at all by Microsoft, unless Windows just isn't usable enough to tell. ;)
Incidentally, every time someone loads that damn fugly eyesore known as Metro, God kills a kitten.
GNOME genuinely looks like it is getting better.
It would have to. Gnome 3 couldn't possibly have got much worse.
BTW, I'm not flamebaiting here: I was a big fan of Gnome since pre-1.0, right up to the end of the 2.x versions, while KDE (although more feature-rich and reliable) was still kluttered and kfugly. Sure, there are other desktops, among which XFCE is (IMO) one of the best, but I like to have a more full-featured desktop environment.
Trouble is, the Gnome developers have a long-standing habit of removing or breaking features, and defending their perspective by being condescending to the user. It seems the author of TFA had a taste of this at the start (and yes, I know I'm not supposed to RTFA, but too bad):
I found a hidden option that enabled workspaces on all monitors, but as of GNOME 3.0 it was thoroughly broken and caused a lot of crashes (which I was told by the GNOME developers they weren’t going to look at, since it wasn’t a supported configuration), so I was forced to revert.
This seems a comparatively minor aspect of their asshattery, but I would have thought it might be politic to give a RedHat employee more of a hearing than that. I, and most other users often didn't merit any kind of response.
Fortunately, when Gnome 3.0 came out, KDE had got over the worst atrocities of its 4.0 release and was quite usable, and 3 years on, I have nothing but praise for KDE 4.10 running on my Slackware box.
:-)
Contracting quite often did involve boring jobs, especially at that site. However, that little task at least got me out of COBOL for a day or so (plus time for testing). And they did pay me a lot of money for my time.
Exactly. We're dealing with the usual economies of waste, since the money the Government is throwing away isn't theirs to start with.
They just employ a contractor who ticks all the boxes just right, who will then just carry on along his merry way by fixing only the most urgent of basket cases while leaving the majority of machines untouched.
I think we're probably long overdue for a decent energy solution for consumer electronics. Hydrogen fuel-cell batteries still seem to be some way off, and cold fusion is just a pipe-dream. So in the meantime, if someone can supply a battery with four times the energy density of Li-ion cells, then I say "bring it on".
Just Googled "ebcdic to ascii converter"
I don't even need to do that, because I still have one I wrote in Fortran 4 back in the early '70s when I was converting a suite of banking programs to migrate them off Burroughs mainframes. I'm quite sure it'll go through the GNU Compiler Collection without much modification.
It might be dangerous, but not evil. Microsoft has a habit of dragging their heels over securing their software. This simply is a kick to tell them to get their asses in gear. This kind of exploit would be totally ridiculed in the open source world, so Microsoft, with its effectively unlimited budget and manpower resources has no excuse.
The sooner they get started, the sooner it'll be fixed. And no, it is not acceptable to keep customers waiting until the Tuesday after next. Or longer.
Exactly. I am upset that I won't be able to read the last books of my very favourite author (who is dying) for some years until they are eventually available DRM-free
That wouldn't happen to be Iain Banks, would it? If so, I commend your patience, but can't follow your example.
No. In present-day England, and in many other parts of the Commonwealth, "spelt" and "spelled" may be used interchangeably, and both are regarded as correct.
Presumably because they fart in your general direction?
About time they stamped out this police brutality.
Go to a library, the bigger and less "modernised" the better. And sniff. Now think of ANY location that smells like that. A Solicitor's office, maybe. MAYBE.
Nope. Those smell of rich men's farts.
But in neither case would a DRM'd ebook be considered an ebook.
From time to time, if you are into using ebooks, you will find that there are titles you want that are not available in non-DRM versions.
My own take on it (which is based more on common sense than appreciation for the law as it stands) is simply that I should be able to use an ebook in exactly the same way as I might a paper volume: read it, or lend it to friends or family. Sure, in the latter case, the publication may end up residing permanently on their hard drive or reader device, but it doesn't necessarily end up being read more than the same number of times.
That being the case, I have absolutely no compunction in stripping out the DRM in any book I buy.
I got into using ePubs only a couple of years ago, since I had some reservations about them at first, but now find I usually prefer them. I have replaced a proportion of my existing dead-tree books with ebooks, which, given that I recently moved home is a big plus, since I don't have to worry so much about having to reinforce my floors.
I'll be keeping the nicer of my paper books (which still leaves me with several thousand volumes), but the electronic format just means I get to be more selective about what takes up physical shelf space.
why ?
Because in Australia, "to root" also means "to fuck".
Heh. If it's self-aware, then it should be able to anticipate when I'm going to swear at it for "correcting" my perfectly spelt text to something ridiculous or meaningless.
Fat chance.
This would push things over the limit. No companies or government branches outside of USA(or even in USA!) would stand for this.
How much do you want to bet?
Our illustrious Federal Government of Australia (before or after the election, it'll make no difference) will just roll over and say "ooh, that's nice, tickle me just there, that's the spot..."
That's what Free Trade Agreements are for. Just a formal way of saying "I'm your bitch".
The hilariously named 'Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property' ...
...Presumably hilarious by way of the inclusion of the words "American" and "Intellectual" consecutively.
Sigh...