IIRC anything less than about 250 ms *seems* instantatneous.
I've always heard the magic number is 1/10 s, not 1/4. And I'm much more inclined to go with the 1/10 of a second from my uses of computers. (*Thinks of some piss-poor Swing apps*)
It's usually USians who get these things wrong, of course. Those I've talked to really don't seem to care much and explain it away as "evolution of the language".
I guess there's an argument there somewhere, but I look to history and find 'reports' of 'people' (iirc, Webster) deliberately changing the language - not out of ignorance, but just to piss off the English. It worked - and is still working.
And I can give you many examples of where typical British use (I don't say "English use" so as to remain unambiguous) has changed in the last couple hundred years and US use hasn't. Is England allowed to change the language and the US isn't?
Present-day British is no closer to that earlier [16th century] form than present-day American is. Indeed, in some ways present-day American is more conservative, that is, closer to the common original standard than is present-day British. [p. 179].... On balance, it is hard to say which variety of English, American or British, is the more conservative and which is the more innovative. [p. 180 of Language Myths, Bauer and Trudgill, "America Is Ruining the English Language"]
part of the US culture (is that an oxymoron?)
We're still behind Europe in some sense, but we're also a quarter as old as most European countries.
Even given that, we're by no means devoid of our own culture. Would you like me to go through and name some American* authors, artists, composers, etc.?
Wow - you actually used 'correctly' correctly! Awesome! Obviously, you're not an Apple user, else you'd spell it different.
Heh. That always did bug me.
BTW, for anyone who's interested, it's not "British English", it's just "English".
"British English" is "the English language as spoken or written in the British Isles; esp. the forms of English usual in Great Britain, as contrasted with those characteristic of the U.S.A. or other English-speaking countries." [The OED under "British"]
The Scotts, Welsh and Irish each have their own language - some even use them.
What does that have to do with whether there is a British English?
*American. I know you apparently don't like this term. To be honest, I'm not exactly happy about it either. However, I cannot think of a term for us that is pronouncable and doesn't sound stupid. ("USians" is too hard to say if you pronounce it "U S ians" and stupid if you pronounce it "us ieans", and isn't consistant with not pronouncing "The US" as "The U S".) "Americans" is generally understood as referring to inhabitants of the US, especially in context, so for lack of a better term I'll use it.
It doesn't increase the range of values that can be represented probably, just the resolution. (I don't mean resolution in the 1080p sense, but the bit depth of each pixel. E.G. the 24-bit part of 24-bit, 48 kHz.) It decreases the difference in between successive levels of each color.
Maybe, or maybe not. There's a couple possibilities in here. The article isn't specific enough to say if either of these are true, so these are just guesses.
First, consider storing each channel in 8 bits. That gives 256 possible levels. Say our eyes can distinguish 400 levels. 8 bits isn't enough then, so you need 9 bits. But that gives 512 levels, beyond our level of perception. But you can't use 8 1/2 bits for each channel (at least without more complicated encoding).
Second, say it was easier for some technical reason to use 12 bits per channel instead of 9. It might be worth it to use those 12 bits if it would simplify the hardware.
Third, it might simplify some software stuff. Photoshop CS 2 has a feature called HDR for high dynamic range images. Basically if you take three to five photos from the same position but exposed differently it will combine them into a single image with 36 bits per channel. In this Adobe might have either used or created a defacto standard for deep colors.
Fourth, it might be not MUCH over, so if you get a really eyesight-gifted person they might actually be able to distingush colors.
So if I have, say, one day in Oslo, where should I go?
What about two non-contiguous days?
(Just FYI I'll be flying into Oslo in a week, spending about 12 hours there, then leaving. I might be dead then after a 7 hour bus ride to NYC, a 7 hour flight NYC to Stockholm, and an hour flight Stockholm to Oslo, so I don't know what I'd do then. But the ride back I'll be getting in a Sat morning and staying over until Sun morn, and that's after only like 3 or 4 hours travel, so I might be able to do something.)
This is out of my ass but I would guess since they kept tabs on what happened to each of them and conducted surveillance that they would have been on the lookout for other people snagging them. I would also think that it wouldn't be that hard to, at the end of the day, say "hey guys, those USB drives? we need them back."
You first say you take down 5 (virtual servers). What happens why you fry a motherboard? Not one but 5 servers now go down but later A lot of small shops don't have the funds for [redundant servers].
If you weren't virtualizing, how could you afford those five servers if you can't afford two (albeit beefier) servers for a primary and backup of the virtualized server?
And if you run those servers on one machine as services instead of VMs, then you're in the same boat; if the MB fries all five services go down.
Another rendering bug: lists are indented so that the numbers stick out to the left. This alone isn't a bad thing, but to do it you need to indent non-lists more (with respect to, say, the green headings). Currently this causes problems. One instance is in the comments display, where the indentation is already very bad, the numbers sticking out into negative padding further decreases intelligability. It also looks pretty bad IMO. A second place where this causes obvious problems is this help page (screenshot). Stuff like that just makes this look unprofessional in my opinion.
All that I can relate is my 'user experience' which is that Adobe actively breaks the PDF standard and/or extends it to break it every few years.
They added new features and new ways of doing things. Such is the cost of progress, you sometimes have to change things.
my investment of $300 is now crippling, because my Acrobat 4.0 won't 'read' the newer PDFs that many organizations are now 'publishing'
That's what Acrobat READER is for. You can have both Acrobat Professional (say 4.0) installed for creating PDFs and the latest reader (or even a 3rd party program!) to read the latest PDFs.
I do NOT want to throw away my editing/creation tool by downloading some crappy 'free reader.'
You don't need to! You can have both installed at once!
Don't believe me? Penn State has both installed on all of the lab PCs on campus. Still don't believe me? See for yourself.
(If you have a Mac I can't verify that you'd have both installed; PSU just has professional in their labs. But it seems like Macs would be even more open to having multiple versions than PCs.)
Also, the Adobe "free" readers have lately become gargantual bloatware monsters, with spyware links and nagware built right into the menu bar.
Then use a third party tool. There are a ton. Ghostscript. Foxit. Or use Acrobat Speed-Up to make it run faster.
Also, at least in my experience, Acrobat Reader 7 is a substantial improvement over 6, so they're getting better about it.
(BTW, what spyware? What nagware in the menu bar? There's a Yahoo link and a item in the help menu to purchase Acrobat, but if you take offense at those I suggest you get a life.)
pdflatex can and does produce bookmarked pdf's rather happily with the hyperref package (at least since 2002). So I am pretty sure that the bookmarking features are very much a part of the standard.
Re-read his comment. He's not saying bookmarking isn't in PDF, he's saying you don't get a bookmarked PDF if you print to a file then use ps2pdf (which is true) or use OO (which, I think, isn't).
It is possible to do, and it isn't terribly difficult... if you can figure out how to use LaTeX you can figure out how to use Insert -> Reference -> Cross Reference.
If you are on a page that doesn't have much content (e.g. the page with *just* this post until someone replies to it) the footer rides too far up, at least running with a height of 1200. (Looks like it'd be the same in 1280x1024 by my estimation.) There should be more vertical space added so that there isn't a couple inches of black at the bottom of the screen; it's distracting.
A possibly related problem (yeah, I'm replying to myself a lot, sue me):
At least for me, on pages where the footer is visible (and maybe even on some where it's not), the page seems to render twice. It pops up for about 1/10 sec without the footer visible, then flashes black for about anothor 1/10s, then comes up right. Does it do this for anyone else?
Damn it, I screwed up the second link there. That should link to .
Which brings up another possible suggestion. When you put a link in a replay,/. could automatically add the http:/// at the beginning. I pasted in just evanparity.com/..., which/. took as literal and just fed back to the browser (you'll see if you view source). If it had added http:/// that wouldn't have happened.
I don't know if that's the right behavior or not. Maybe a poll, I dunno.
(It also brings up another idea, which is what happens if you put in a www before the address? Let's see: link. *previews* Okay,/. adds the http:/// then. I dunno what the right thing to do is... maybe see if it matches [a-zA-Z0-9].["com"|"org"|"edu"...]? (In some sort of regular expression syntax))
After using it more, I have a couple other suggestions (or complaints, depending on what tone you want to read it in):
* If you are on a page that doesn't have much content (e.g. the page with *just* this post until someone replies to it) the footer rides too far up, at least running with a height of 1200. (Looks like it'd be the same in 1280x1024 by my estimation.) There should be more vertical space added so that there isn't a couple inches of black at the bottom of the screen; it's distracting.
* No "parent" link when you're replying to a post. I'm pretty sure there used to be one 'cause I went for it instanctively. (So if you wanted to see the parent of the post you're replying to you could get to it with one link, as opposed to two (opening the comment you're replying to directly via the #15469727 link, then parent).)
* Another poster mentions that if you click the sidebar links too fast then the arrows can get out sync with whether the menus are up or down. Minor issue I think, but one someone should take a look at eventually.
* Did there used to be ads above the header? I never noticed them before if so. They'll probably fade from consciousness though. (When I used Opera I would go for a couple months without realizing there were ads. I'd then notice them, be like "oh yeah!" then forget about them the next day for another couple months.)
* I agree with the other posters that the score for comments being right-aligned makes browsing harder. (This *might* be a 'get used to it' thing.)
* There's what I consider an indentation bug. If a comment with a score above the current threshold for showing the full comment is a parent to a comment with a score below the threshold, the indentation is almost non-existant. I posted a screenshot of such a configuration. (I don't want to link to one because moderations can change.) I don't think this is a "get used to it" change.
* I also don't like the spacing between comments. (Assume that all comments in this aren't displayed; you just see the title.) If a top level comment has children, there's a significant space following the last child. But if it doesn't, there's no space. Again, a screenshot (and hastily added and barely-readable comments) shows what I mean. At a glance, it looks like that chunk of four comments in the middle are all part of the same thread. I don't think this is a "get used to it" change.
I don't want to sound too negative, because I think the change is okay overall, but it's harder to find nitpicks than it is things that are good. Though I can say I like the arrows that appear over the links on hover in the nav bar to the left.
if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!
I think it'll take a bit of getting used to... but I think the "read more" links back on the front page should move back to their old location. There was a bit of a shock when I couldn't find it at first. I don't think this is a "wait 'till you're used to it thing" because my cursor tends to hang out in the middle of the screen, so the links used to be closer to their common position.
If anything, it's proof that the RIAA isn't insane, and realizes that it needs to control different distribution channels if it's gonna last more than another decade.
Really, a 10GB install isn't that bad, considering that I can get a weenie 250GB drive for $80, and it doesn't even make a dent in the new 750GB drive.
LAPTOPS! Why does everyone forget about laptops?
The largest 2.5" drive Newegg sells is 160 GB. And that's $224. Some other samples: 100GB starts at $109 60GB starts at $70
Even with the 100 gig drive, that's 10% going to your OS! I don't know about you, but that seems a bit large.
And the problem's worse if you don't look at buying drives separately. The IBM X41 tablet has a max hard drive of 60 gigs. Once you add in swap, you're looking at 18% of your hard drive as being unusable!
So I love this, SUSE takes 8GIG and OSX takes 8GIG, VISTA will take maybe at most 10
I can't speak to OS X (but I think it's somewhere between Suse and Vista), but comparing the space provided by Suse and Vista is utterly ridiculous. That 8 gigs of Suse will get you binaries at least to more programs than you can imagine. It might get you source to all of them too. I have a 3.43 gig virtual machine with SLES 9 that has programs for more things than Windows comes with.
You've got to spend more time with laptops. The IBM X41 tablet has a max hard drive offering of 60GB. Using 1/6 of the hard drive for the OS is ridiculous, especially when you take into account another 500 megs at least of swap. Together that's almost 18% of the hard drive.
Slashdot Mirror
IIRC anything less than about 250 ms *seems* instantatneous.
I've always heard the magic number is 1/10 s, not 1/4. And I'm much more inclined to go with the 1/10 of a second from my uses of computers. (*Thinks of some piss-poor Swing apps*)
Speaking as a programmer, I can put up with GUI sluggishness in programs I write for myself if it means I never have to track down a memory leak.
But speaking as a user, I'd rather have a program crash occasionally, or have to restart it because it's ballooning in size, then have it be sluggish.
Just my opinion.
In full generality, it's undecidable.
I guess there's an argument there somewhere, but I look to history and find 'reports' of 'people' (iirc, Webster) deliberately changing the language - not out of ignorance, but just to piss off the English. It worked - and is still working.
And I can give you many examples of where typical British use (I don't say "English use" so as to remain unambiguous) has changed in the last couple hundred years and US use hasn't. Is England allowed to change the language and the US isn't?
part of the US culture (is that an oxymoron?)
We're still behind Europe in some sense, but we're also a quarter as old as most European countries.
Even given that, we're by no means devoid of our own culture. Would you like me to go through and name some American* authors, artists, composers, etc.?
Wow - you actually used 'correctly' correctly! Awesome! Obviously, you're not an Apple user, else you'd spell it different.
Heh. That always did bug me.
BTW, for anyone who's interested, it's not "British English", it's just "English".
"British English" is "the English language as spoken or written in the British Isles; esp. the forms of English usual in Great Britain, as contrasted with those characteristic of the U.S.A. or other English-speaking countries." [The OED under "British"]
The Scotts, Welsh and Irish each have their own language - some even use them.
What does that have to do with whether there is a British English?
*American. I know you apparently don't like this term. To be honest, I'm not exactly happy about it either. However, I cannot think of a term for us that is pronouncable and doesn't sound stupid. ("USians" is too hard to say if you pronounce it "U S ians" and stupid if you pronounce it "us ieans", and isn't consistant with not pronouncing "The US" as "The U S".) "Americans" is generally understood as referring to inhabitants of the US, especially in context, so for lack of a better term I'll use it.
It doesn't increase the range of values that can be represented probably, just the resolution. (I don't mean resolution in the 1080p sense, but the bit depth of each pixel. E.G. the 24-bit part of 24-bit, 48 kHz.) It decreases the difference in between successive levels of each color.
BTW, I don't mean to suggest that the 400 number is correct; it's WAY too low. I'm just using it for illustration.
Also,
Fifth, you want your cat to enjoy TV more.
Maybe, or maybe not. There's a couple possibilities in here. The article isn't specific enough to say if either of these are true, so these are just guesses.
First, consider storing each channel in 8 bits. That gives 256 possible levels. Say our eyes can distinguish 400 levels. 8 bits isn't enough then, so you need 9 bits. But that gives 512 levels, beyond our level of perception. But you can't use 8 1/2 bits for each channel (at least without more complicated encoding).
Second, say it was easier for some technical reason to use 12 bits per channel instead of 9. It might be worth it to use those 12 bits if it would simplify the hardware.
Third, it might simplify some software stuff. Photoshop CS 2 has a feature called HDR for high dynamic range images. Basically if you take three to five photos from the same position but exposed differently it will combine them into a single image with 36 bits per channel. In this Adobe might have either used or created a defacto standard for deep colors.
Fourth, it might be not MUCH over, so if you get a really eyesight-gifted person they might actually be able to distingush colors.
They didn't put it there, but they mandated it there, so the programmers have no choice.
So if I have, say, one day in Oslo, where should I go?
What about two non-contiguous days?
(Just FYI I'll be flying into Oslo in a week, spending about 12 hours there, then leaving. I might be dead then after a 7 hour bus ride to NYC, a 7 hour flight NYC to Stockholm, and an hour flight Stockholm to Oslo, so I don't know what I'd do then. But the ride back I'll be getting in a Sat morning and staying over until Sun morn, and that's after only like 3 or 4 hours travel, so I might be able to do something.)
Smash your finger with a hammer and end up with chunks of metal floating around.
I don't know about you, but if I smash my fingers with a hammer it wouldn't be the chunks of metal that are on my mind.
This is out of my ass but I would guess since they kept tabs on what happened to each of them and conducted surveillance that they would have been on the lookout for other people snagging them. I would also think that it wouldn't be that hard to, at the end of the day, say "hey guys, those USB drives? we need them back."
Though the article should probably have said.
Why don't you need a redundant box if you're not virtualizing?
You first say you take down 5 (virtual servers). What happens why you fry a motherboard? Not one but 5 servers now go down but later A lot of small shops don't have the funds for [redundant servers].
If you weren't virtualizing, how could you afford those five servers if you can't afford two (albeit beefier) servers for a primary and backup of the virtualized server?
And if you run those servers on one machine as services instead of VMs, then you're in the same boat; if the MB fries all five services go down.
Another rendering bug: lists are indented so that the numbers stick out to the left. This alone isn't a bad thing, but to do it you need to indent non-lists more (with respect to, say, the green headings). Currently this causes problems. One instance is in the comments display, where the indentation is already very bad, the numbers sticking out into negative padding further decreases intelligability. It also looks pretty bad IMO. A second place where this causes obvious problems is this help page (screenshot). Stuff like that just makes this look unprofessional in my opinion.
All that I can relate is my 'user experience' which is that Adobe actively breaks the PDF standard and/or extends it to break it every few years.
They added new features and new ways of doing things. Such is the cost of progress, you sometimes have to change things.
my investment of $300 is now crippling, because my Acrobat 4.0 won't 'read' the newer PDFs that many organizations are now 'publishing'
That's what Acrobat READER is for. You can have both Acrobat Professional (say 4.0) installed for creating PDFs and the latest reader (or even a 3rd party program!) to read the latest PDFs.
I do NOT want to throw away my editing/creation tool by downloading some crappy 'free reader.'
You don't need to! You can have both installed at once!
Don't believe me? Penn State has both installed on all of the lab PCs on campus. Still don't believe me? See for yourself.
(If you have a Mac I can't verify that you'd have both installed; PSU just has professional in their labs. But it seems like Macs would be even more open to having multiple versions than PCs.)
Also, the Adobe "free" readers have lately become gargantual bloatware monsters, with spyware links and nagware built right into the menu bar.
Then use a third party tool. There are a ton. Ghostscript. Foxit. Or use Acrobat Speed-Up to make it run faster.
Also, at least in my experience, Acrobat Reader 7 is a substantial improvement over 6, so they're getting better about it.
(BTW, what spyware? What nagware in the menu bar? There's a Yahoo link and a item in the help menu to purchase Acrobat, but if you take offense at those I suggest you get a life.)
pdflatex can and does produce bookmarked pdf's rather happily with the hyperref package (at least since 2002). So I am pretty sure that the bookmarking features are very much a part of the standard.
Re-read his comment. He's not saying bookmarking isn't in PDF, he's saying you don't get a bookmarked PDF if you print to a file then use ps2pdf (which is true) or use OO (which, I think, isn't).
It is possible to do, and it isn't terribly difficult... if you can figure out how to use LaTeX you can figure out how to use Insert -> Reference -> Cross Reference.
If you are on a page that doesn't have much content (e.g. the page with *just* this post until someone replies to it) the footer rides too far up, at least running with a height of 1200. (Looks like it'd be the same in 1280x1024 by my estimation.) There should be more vertical space added so that there isn't a couple inches of black at the bottom of the screen; it's distracting.
A possibly related problem (yeah, I'm replying to myself a lot, sue me):
At least for me, on pages where the footer is visible (and maybe even on some where it's not), the page seems to render twice. It pops up for about 1/10 sec without the footer visible, then flashes black for about anothor 1/10s, then comes up right. Does it do this for anyone else?
(This is FF 1.5.0.3 on XP.)
Damn it, I screwed up the second link there. That should link to .
/. could automatically add the http:/// at the beginning. I pasted in just evanparity.com/..., which /. took as literal and just fed back to the browser (you'll see if you view source). If it had added http:/// that wouldn't have happened.
/. adds the http:/// then. I dunno what the right thing to do is... maybe see if it matches [a-zA-Z0-9].["com"|"org"|"edu"...]? (In some sort of regular expression syntax))
Which brings up another possible suggestion. When you put a link in a replay,
I don't know if that's the right behavior or not. Maybe a poll, I dunno.
(It also brings up another idea, which is what happens if you put in a www before the address? Let's see: link. *previews* Okay,
After using it more, I have a couple other suggestions (or complaints, depending on what tone you want to read it in):
* If you are on a page that doesn't have much content (e.g. the page with *just* this post until someone replies to it) the footer rides too far up, at least running with a height of 1200. (Looks like it'd be the same in 1280x1024 by my estimation.) There should be more vertical space added so that there isn't a couple inches of black at the bottom of the screen; it's distracting.
* No "parent" link when you're replying to a post. I'm pretty sure there used to be one 'cause I went for it instanctively. (So if you wanted to see the parent of the post you're replying to you could get to it with one link, as opposed to two (opening the comment you're replying to directly via the #15469727 link, then parent).)
* Another poster mentions that if you click the sidebar links too fast then the arrows can get out sync with whether the menus are up or down. Minor issue I think, but one someone should take a look at eventually.
* Did there used to be ads above the header? I never noticed them before if so. They'll probably fade from consciousness though. (When I used Opera I would go for a couple months without realizing there were ads. I'd then notice them, be like "oh yeah!" then forget about them the next day for another couple months.)
* I agree with the other posters that the score for comments being right-aligned makes browsing harder. (This *might* be a 'get used to it' thing.)
* There's what I consider an indentation bug. If a comment with a score above the current threshold for showing the full comment is a parent to a comment with a score below the threshold, the indentation is almost non-existant. I posted a screenshot of such a configuration. (I don't want to link to one because moderations can change.) I don't think this is a "get used to it" change.
* I also don't like the spacing between comments. (Assume that all comments in this aren't displayed; you just see the title.) If a top level comment has children, there's a significant space following the last child. But if it doesn't, there's no space. Again, a screenshot (and hastily added and barely-readable comments) shows what I mean. At a glance, it looks like that chunk of four comments in the middle are all part of the same thread. I don't think this is a "get used to it" change.
I don't want to sound too negative, because I think the change is okay overall, but it's harder to find nitpicks than it is things that are good. Though I can say I like the arrows that appear over the links on hover in the nav bar to the left.
if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!
I think it'll take a bit of getting used to... but I think the "read more" links back on the front page should move back to their old location. There was a bit of a shock when I couldn't find it at first. I don't think this is a "wait 'till you're used to it thing" because my cursor tends to hang out in the middle of the screen, so the links used to be closer to their common position.
If anything, it's proof that the RIAA isn't insane, and realizes that it needs to control different distribution channels if it's gonna last more than another decade.
Really, a 10GB install isn't that bad, considering that I can get a weenie 250GB drive for $80, and it doesn't even make a dent in the new 750GB drive.
LAPTOPS! Why does everyone forget about laptops?
The largest 2.5" drive Newegg sells is 160 GB. And that's $224. Some other samples:
100GB starts at $109
60GB starts at $70
Even with the 100 gig drive, that's 10% going to your OS! I don't know about you, but that seems a bit large.
And the problem's worse if you don't look at buying drives separately. The IBM X41 tablet has a max hard drive of 60 gigs. Once you add in swap, you're looking at 18% of your hard drive as being unusable!
So I love this, SUSE takes 8GIG and OSX takes 8GIG, VISTA will take maybe at most 10
I can't speak to OS X (but I think it's somewhere between Suse and Vista), but comparing the space provided by Suse and Vista is utterly ridiculous. That 8 gigs of Suse will get you binaries at least to more programs than you can imagine. It might get you source to all of them too. I have a 3.43 gig virtual machine with SLES 9 that has programs for more things than Windows comes with.
You've got to spend more time with laptops. The IBM X41 tablet has a max hard drive offering of 60GB. Using 1/6 of the hard drive for the OS is ridiculous, especially when you take into account another 500 megs at least of swap. Together that's almost 18% of the hard drive.