I wish people would stop using that expression "sex-up". Mainly because it sounds damn stupid, and describing anything non-living as "sexy" (such as the latest "boy's-toy" gadget) is way overdone (unless you have a genuine fetish for techno-crap... hang on, this *is* Slashdot).
But also because it brings back memories of that foul Color Me Badd song, "I wanna sex you up". I'd almost managed to forget it existed- who said repressing memories was a bad thing?
Just out of interest, I remember reading 'Atari User' magazines when I was a kid. There was at least one program, possibly more, written by a guy called 'Mike Rowe'.
I remember thinking, "Is this the guy's real name? Really?"... bearing in mind that "micro" was a common abbreviation for "microcomputer" (which most were at the time).
'Fascinating' fact: This would have been around the same time that the 'famous' Mike Rowe was born.
Yeah, okay, I'll shut up now. (And, yep, this post *did* go in the Iraqi LUG thread before, by mistake. It's not my day.)
Just out of interest, I remember reading 'Atari User' magazines when I was a kid. There was at least one program, possibly more, written by a guy called 'Mike Rowe'.
I remember thinking, "Is this the guy's real name? Really?"... bearing in mind that "micro" was a common abbreviation for "microcomputer" (which most were at the time).
Fascinating fact: This would have been around the same time that the 'famous' Mike Rowe was born.
If you have enough free time to read Slashdot, then there are people working under far worse conditions than you. If you can even access the internet or a computer full stop, then by definition, your life, and therefore your job is unlikely to be that bad.
I could start rambling about people in third-world countries walking miles to get clean water for their families, or some 8-year-old kid in a sweatshop, or whatever.... but you get the picture.
The lighting sucks IMHO. She's standing in a hallway with a bright fluorescent light straight above her and I doubt that's going to do anyone any favours in general.There looks like some fill-in flash, but there's still too much light above her. Where are the whites of her eyes? In shadow, I'd guess.
IIRC (and bear in mind my photographic 5ki115 are lousy), it would be better if it was a reasonably diffuse light source coming from one side.
Of course, this obviously wasn't shot in a studio with multiple-flash, diffusers etc... I'm guessing it was taken in a corridor beside the hall at a trade show with a lone digital camera. In which case, it's not that bad, just unfortunate.
The UK price seems about right for the time(*), for non-chart CDs... total ripoff (chart CDs were usually slightly cheaper).
*BUT* it does include sales tax (specifically, VAT at 17.5%). Nowadays, online and supermarket competition has forced down the price of chart CDs to under UKP 10.00, and nice shops like Fopp sell many CDs for UKP 5.00-7.00 (US$9-13). Major chains still try to stiff you on the non-chart stuff, but I'm not paying that.
(*) Assuming 1996 exchange rate was 1:1.5 and 2003 rate of 1:1.8
Huh? IIRC (from reading about it), BBC2 did colour from 1967 and BBC1 started in colour in 1969.
Virtually all BBC shows from the 1970s are in colour(*), although I'm assuming that colour sets were rare at first- they were still expensive by today's standards and far from universal in the (very) early '80s. But the programs themselves were in colour long before then...
IIRC (again) the BBC supported the old 425-line B&W transmission standard (though only for the station later named BBC1, I'd guess) until *1985* or thereabouts. Maybe that's what you meant.
(*) Some Doctor Who episodes from the era had B&W copies made for foreign markets; when the originals were later wiped(!), only the mono copies remained, but the originals were colour.
I tend to agree that the 2D-->Bomb, 3D-->Success thinking is grossly oversimplistic, if there is truth in it at all (probably a small amount).
Have you ever seen the Animatrix *cough*... okay, not a great example, but the way in which the superficially '2D' animation "Beyond" added convincing depth to the street scenes was *obviously* done by a computer with 3D capabilities. Ditto the way the backgrounds got thrown out of focus- but it still *looked* like a 2D animation.
The 2D vs 3D argument will become obselete soon, if it isn't already. Many 2D animations include 3D CGI now, without becoming 'computer-generated 3D animations'. Even ten years ago, Disney were using CGI in Aladdin.
Who cares? Looks like the nice people at Wal-Mart will install RFID in any ordinary watch *at no extra cost*! (Damn, I *so* miss not being American and not getting great stuff like that; never mind, they'll introduce it to the UK soon).
Seriously, this has to be the laziest, lamest pseudo-convenience ever. I sincerely hope some criminals crack this privacy-invading lame-ass bull**** soon, so all the useless-gadget buying weenies who have nothing better to do with their money or privacy and want something "cool" (ha ha) to impress their friends for a couple of hours get to act as sacificial lambs in the fight against RFID bullshit.
when I was quite young, I came to the part about the zebra crossing and became very confused.
Actually, I reckon many kids in the UK nowadays (including, I guess, England, although I actually live in Scotland) wouldn't be familiar with a "zebra crossing" either; I saw one in another town last week, for the first time in ages(*)- they're virtually extinct.
I remember seeing quite a few when I was a pretty small kid (probably not that long after the book first came out), but I *think* they were all replaced with red/green-man crossings (in conjunction with 'proper' traffic lights) because they were safer.
(*) An odd exception I saw recently is a set installed on a newly-built road on private land. This may be temporary; I'm not sure.
The warranty will expressly not cover (in fine print) anything that's likely to break. Extended warranties are a sucker's bet.
If the US retailers are like the UK retailers, then you're probably right- the Dixons group (AFAIK the largest electrical goods retailer in the UK) make more money on the warranties; you can supposedly get a far better deal by shopping around for the warranty.
The great-grandparent to this post wasn't intended as a recommendation of extended warranties, only a defence of the principle of warranties or insurance in the face of the fact that the retailer almost always knows more than you.
Essentially it is a bet between me and the company giving out the warranty.
The other reply to this post sort of indirectly said this, but to put it more simply:-
In theory what you say is true, but relies on money having the same 'value' to everyone. Of course, if I'm penniless (and, say, need something to eat), $2 will be 'worth' more to me than it would be to a millionaire.
Would you risk everything you owned on a double-or-nothing bet; even if the odds were 60:40 in your favour? Probably not.
It has been shown (don't ask me for a reference for this) that the value of money is logarithmic compared to the amount you already have.
So a big insurance company can make a profit with little risk, even if the odds are only *slightly* skewed in their favour, and the small guy who doesn't have tons of cash in the bank will accept this (otherwise) unfair bet as protection against him being destroyed by a single disaster.
Well, sucks for Apple: they're not getting my $400 because they don't support Vinyl, the format in which my 1,200 LP's/14,000 tracks are all pressed in.
But seriously.... vinyl isn't a "format" in the way that MP3 or WMA are formats; it's a medium for holding music in the "analogue" file format, which has a great bit-rate, but lousy error-checking and compensation.
You mean because Yahoo are dropping Google? Man, *that* was unexpected, no-one knew that was coming.
Seriously, if that's your reason, then you (or they) obviously didn't do any thinking or research in the first place.
As for Yahoo fighting back, I didn't see *that* coming either.
Of course, banks rarely have good flash animation.
Unless it's on their recruitment site; I bloody hate wading my way through some badly-designed (ergonomically) Flash crap, trying to find out something important or apply for a job, knowing I can't use my usual browser tricks because (for example) 'back' will restart the whole flash caboodle. Banks and financial companies seem *especially* prone to this.
All this so that they can fade in and slide about some photographs that are almost certainly photo-library stock images anyway.
I do not give a f*** for this kind of bullshit.
OTOH, I apologise if I parsed your use of the phrase "good" to mean "superficially impressive". Perhaps you were right; it's *not* good...
Pretty much anyone who doesn't have a fair say in how they can conduct their own lives and offer their labour. Anyone who lives in a country where their life and/or liberty is in danger if, for example, they were to organise a strike or protest. Anyone who is being held to laws created by (at best) an unelected government or (at worst) a dictatorship ruining the country for its own ends and relying on force and the complicity of foreign governments who are willing to support this (un-)free trade.
So, tell me that this is the way that the world has always been, and I might agree with you. But don't tell me that much of what many people call "free trade" is anything like free.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Sex-up Iraq dossier
I wish people would stop using that expression "sex-up". Mainly because it sounds damn stupid, and describing anything non-living as "sexy" (such as the latest "boy's-toy" gadget) is way overdone (unless you have a genuine fetish for techno-crap... hang on, this *is* Slashdot).
But also because it brings back memories of that foul Color Me Badd song, "I wanna sex you up". I'd almost managed to forget it existed- who said repressing memories was a bad thing?
Just out of interest, I remember reading 'Atari User' magazines when I was a kid. There was at least one program, possibly more, written by a guy called 'Mike Rowe'.
I remember thinking, "Is this the guy's real name? Really?"... bearing in mind that "micro" was a common abbreviation for "microcomputer" (which most were at the time).
'Fascinating' fact: This would have been around the same time that the 'famous' Mike Rowe was born.
Yeah, okay, I'll shut up now. (And, yep, this post *did* go in the Iraqi LUG thread before, by mistake. It's not my day.)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAW F************!
(Holds head in shame)
Reading two stories/threads at once and posting to the wrong one; never a good idea.
Sorry folks.
Just out of interest, I remember reading 'Atari User' magazines when I was a kid. There was at least one program, possibly more, written by a guy called 'Mike Rowe'.
I remember thinking, "Is this the guy's real name? Really?"... bearing in mind that "micro" was a common abbreviation for "microcomputer" (which most were at the time).
Fascinating fact: This would have been around the same time that the 'famous' Mike Rowe was born.
Yeah, okay, I'll shut up now.
The point of the project was to display the real first modern home PC revived twenty years after it's original conception
By the same logic, we can dig up decomposing corpses, wear their skin, and by such means, "revive" them?
Well, that was my excuse- the judge didn't buy it though.
If you have enough free time to read Slashdot, then there are people working under far worse conditions than you. If you can even access the internet or a computer full stop, then by definition, your life, and therefore your job is unlikely to be that bad.
I could start rambling about people in third-world countries walking miles to get clean water for their families, or some 8-year-old kid in a sweatshop, or whatever.... but you get the picture.
I see nothing unattractive there.
The lighting sucks IMHO. She's standing in a hallway with a bright fluorescent light straight above her and I doubt that's going to do anyone any favours in general.There looks like some fill-in flash, but there's still too much light above her. Where are the whites of her eyes? In shadow, I'd guess.
IIRC (and bear in mind my photographic 5ki115 are lousy), it would be better if it was a reasonably diffuse light source coming from one side.
Of course, this obviously wasn't shot in a studio with multiple-flash, diffusers etc... I'm guessing it was taken in a corridor beside the hall at a trade show with a lone digital camera. In which case, it's not that bad, just unfortunate.
I already ahve trouble fitting my bear hands into the case
You have my sympathy, but I don't think this product is aimed at the ursine market.
I'm so sick of pretentious twits who whine about how much better looking Apple's computers are. First, it's a matter of taste.
Taste? Apple's computers taste f*****g disgusting- more like raw plastic than apple. Plus, I broke a tooth trying to eat the latest iBook. Yuk.
The UK price seems about right for the time(*), for non-chart CDs... total ripoff (chart CDs were usually slightly cheaper).
*BUT* it does include sales tax (specifically, VAT at 17.5%). Nowadays, online and supermarket competition has forced down the price of chart CDs to under UKP 10.00, and nice shops like Fopp sell many CDs for UKP 5.00-7.00 (US$9-13). Major chains still try to stiff you on the non-chart stuff, but I'm not paying that.
(*) Assuming 1996 exchange rate was 1:1.5 and 2003 rate of 1:1.8
Proper 'pre-emptive' multitasking as standard?
It was definitely a low-end Mac I was using, but still... it was 1993.
Maybe it was huffing at having to print out Amiga documents, maybe I'm just ignorant, who knows...
Win95=Mac '84
In terms of interface- perhaps. I used some Macs in the early 90s and (IIRC) they had next to no multitasking (when did this change?).
No, Win95 gave us 'proper' multitasking, which Amiga owners had to wait until *1985* for.
Uh... hang on... Win95 = AmigaOS '85.
Or spending oodles of time creating a linux drink mixer
Well, I heard Linus sometimes mixes holy penguin pee with his whisky... does that count?
20 Years ago.. back when Slashdot was a BBS on Rob's Commodore Vic20
20-column display. Nice. Of course, they thought they were getting a lot of screen-widening trolls back then.
Actually turned out that it was a bunch of Apple II owners using the *full 40-columns* of their display to express themselves.
I think BBC1 switched over to color 625 in 1981
Huh? IIRC (from reading about it), BBC2 did colour from 1967 and BBC1 started in colour in 1969.
Virtually all BBC shows from the 1970s are in colour(*), although I'm assuming that colour sets were rare at first- they were still expensive by today's standards and far from universal in the (very) early '80s. But the programs themselves were in colour long before then...
IIRC (again) the BBC supported the old 425-line B&W transmission standard (though only for the station later named BBC1, I'd guess) until *1985* or thereabouts. Maybe that's what you meant.
(*) Some Doctor Who episodes from the era had B&W copies made for foreign markets; when the originals were later wiped(!), only the mono copies remained, but the originals were colour.
I tend to agree that the 2D-->Bomb, 3D-->Success thinking is grossly oversimplistic, if there is truth in it at all (probably a small amount).
Have you ever seen the Animatrix *cough*... okay, not a great example, but the way in which the superficially '2D' animation "Beyond" added convincing depth to the street scenes was *obviously* done by a computer with 3D capabilities. Ditto the way the backgrounds got thrown out of focus- but it still *looked* like a 2D animation.
The 2D vs 3D argument will become obselete soon, if it isn't already. Many 2D animations include 3D CGI now, without becoming 'computer-generated 3D animations'. Even ten years ago, Disney were using CGI in Aladdin.
Who cares? Looks like the nice people at Wal-Mart will install RFID in any ordinary watch *at no extra cost*! (Damn, I *so* miss not being American and not getting great stuff like that; never mind, they'll introduce it to the UK soon).
Seriously, this has to be the laziest, lamest pseudo-convenience ever. I sincerely hope some criminals crack this privacy-invading lame-ass bull**** soon, so all the useless-gadget buying weenies who have nothing better to do with their money or privacy and want something "cool" (ha ha) to impress their friends for a couple of hours get to act as sacificial lambs in the fight against RFID bullshit.
when I was quite young, I came to the part about the zebra crossing and became very confused.
Actually, I reckon many kids in the UK nowadays (including, I guess, England, although I actually live in Scotland) wouldn't be familiar with a "zebra crossing" either; I saw one in another town last week, for the first time in ages(*)- they're virtually extinct.
I remember seeing quite a few when I was a pretty small kid (probably not that long after the book first came out), but I *think* they were all replaced with red/green-man crossings (in conjunction with 'proper' traffic lights) because they were safer.
(*) An odd exception I saw recently is a set installed on a newly-built road on private land. This may be temporary; I'm not sure.
The warranty will expressly not cover (in fine print) anything that's likely to break. Extended warranties are a sucker's bet.
If the US retailers are like the UK retailers, then you're probably right- the Dixons group (AFAIK the largest electrical goods retailer in the UK) make more money on the warranties; you can supposedly get a far better deal by shopping around for the warranty.
The great-grandparent to this post wasn't intended as a recommendation of extended warranties, only a defence of the principle of warranties or insurance in the face of the fact that the retailer almost always knows more than you.
Essentially it is a bet between me and the company giving out the warranty.
The other reply to this post sort of indirectly said this, but to put it more simply:-
In theory what you say is true, but relies on money having the same 'value' to everyone. Of course, if I'm penniless (and, say, need something to eat), $2 will be 'worth' more to me than it would be to a millionaire.
Would you risk everything you owned on a double-or-nothing bet; even if the odds were 60:40 in your favour? Probably not.
It has been shown (don't ask me for a reference for this) that the value of money is logarithmic compared to the amount you already have.
So a big insurance company can make a profit with little risk, even if the odds are only *slightly* skewed in their favour, and the small guy who doesn't have tons of cash in the bank will accept this (otherwise) unfair bet as protection against him being destroyed by a single disaster.
Well, sucks for Apple: they're not getting my $400 because they don't support Vinyl, the format in which my 1,200 LP's/14,000 tracks are all pressed in.
But seriously.... vinyl isn't a "format" in the way that MP3 or WMA are formats; it's a medium for holding music in the "analogue" file format, which has a great bit-rate, but lousy error-checking and compensation.
This SCO notification is brought to you by the letters 'U' and 'O'
With the replies being brought to you by the letters 'F' and 'U', hopefully.
Might be time to rethink that IPO
You mean because Yahoo are dropping Google? Man, *that* was unexpected, no-one knew that was coming.
Seriously, if that's your reason, then you (or they) obviously didn't do any thinking or research in the first place.
As for Yahoo fighting back, I didn't see *that* coming either.
Of course, banks rarely have good flash animation.
Unless it's on their recruitment site; I bloody hate wading my way through some badly-designed (ergonomically) Flash crap, trying to find out something important or apply for a job, knowing I can't use my usual browser tricks because (for example) 'back' will restart the whole flash caboodle. Banks and financial companies seem *especially* prone to this.
All this so that they can fade in and slide about some photographs that are almost certainly photo-library stock images anyway.
I do not give a f*** for this kind of bullshit.
OTOH, I apologise if I parsed your use of the phrase "good" to mean "superficially impressive". Perhaps you were right; it's *not* good...
And who is being deprived of their choice here?
Pretty much anyone who doesn't have a fair say in how they can conduct their own lives and offer their labour. Anyone who lives in a country where their life and/or liberty is in danger if, for example, they were to organise a strike or protest. Anyone who is being held to laws created by (at best) an unelected government or (at worst) a dictatorship ruining the country for its own ends and relying on force and the complicity of foreign governments who are willing to support this (un-)free trade.
So, tell me that this is the way that the world has always been, and I might agree with you. But don't tell me that much of what many people call "free trade" is anything like free.