Note that all their other systems (including their "Amiga"s) are just cheap Chinese off-the-line volume machines available to anybody to throw their badge on it.
Oh yes- I remember those same guys selling what appeared to be generic HTPC cases with absolutely *no* Amiga connection using the "classic" Amiga model numbers (e.g. A1000, A500, etc.)
And the clusterf*** that is the Amiga rights is shown up by the fact that they're selling a computer with the "Commodore" and "Amiga" badges on it, that has nothing to do with that line otherwise, yet different companies are selling the "real" successor to the Amiga, running Amiga OS4.0.
Except that even those Amigas aren't (AFAIK) directly compatible with the old Amigas, and they're basically just overpriced hardware that's been made to a proprietary design solely so they can monetise the latest Amiga OS (which is what people are really paying for), and possibly so the rabid hardcore buyers that it's meant to exploit can feel good that they haven't wasted all that money on a generic PC. Even though it would probably have been better to have the new Amiga OS run on masses-of-bang-per-buck commodity Wintel-compatible hardware instead.
But back to the point- the latter machines are sold under the "AmigaOne" name, apparently they don't have the rights to call it plain "Amiga", yet some generic name-exploiting toss gets to use it(!)
Some days I miss my old Atari 800 computer, with the 32MB ram
32MB? Yeah, *you* wish! Would've made one *heck* of a RAM disk, but you'd still have had to bank-switch it in 16KB chunks into the 6502's 64KB address space;-)
Those who get dewy eyed about their B&W soundless ZX80/81s would be surprised to find say the Atari 800 came out in 78/79 and offered colour, high res (at the time), sprites, hardware scrolling, display interrupts and most of the hardware features the Amiga built on later
The Atari 400 and 800 were absolutely fantastic, state-of-the-art machines by 1979 standards, but they were also very expensive back then- many times more expensive than the ZX80 and ZX81.
Few people will truly deny that the latter machines were basic- even by the standards of the time- but their great significance was producing something that was still a workable home computer, albeit one that was pared to the bare miniumum, for such a low price.
It wasn't until 1982 that the extra cost of a Z80 could be justified for home use.
The 1980 Sinclair ZX80 used a Z80 (though apparently most ones produced used an equivalent part manufactured by NEC).
That was the first machine under £100 in the UK, and one whose design used every cost-saving, corner-cutting trick in the book to keep its cost down (e.g. the display generation was primarily done in software, which meant that the screen went blank when the CPU was busy with other things).
Certainly not a place for expensive frivolities.:-)
Bear in mind that the C16 and Plus/4 were released after Tramiel left. I heard that the chipset was apparently designed for what was meant to be a very low-cost machine that would combat the perceived Japanese threat (apparently the rubber-keyed Europe-only C116 was the first-designed model and the closest to the original intended vision).
Tramiel was ousted, the threat didn't materialise, and the management apparently didn't know what to do with the chipset, hence the rather nonsensical release of mid-range machines that were competing too closely with their own C64.
Another issue that most of the accounts are written by Americans, and the Apple ][ ruled in the USA.
Actually from what I understand, the Commodore 64 was- if anything- most successful in the USA, in part because it was sold so cheaply there (for what was actually a very good computer at the time) due to Tramiel wanting to win the home computer market. AFAIK the Apple II did well in educational and early business markets, but the C64 was *the* home computer in the US.
But you're absolutely right- there's a problem with history being written by the victors, because it gives a misleading picture of the time. Sure, the IBM PC (and MS-DOS), predecessor to today's Wintel PCs, was big in the business market, but in its early days it wasn't a home machine. Who'd want to pay thousands of pounds for a machine with (at best) CGA graphics and *very* primitive sound when you could get a C64 for a fraction of the cost? Kids at home probably didn't give a **** about some horribly expensive green-screen machine that wasn't even that hot at games.
I've heard that part of the problem with the C64- and the reason Tramiel was forced to leave C= - was that Tramiel was *so* aggressive with the price and driving competitors out of the market- that C= weren't actually making that much money on them (even though apparently they'd been exceptionally good at driving down the production cost, in part by becoming vertically integrated).
I have to admit to having mixed feelings about Tramiel, as from what I've heard some of his business practices were very questionable, with- for example- some blaming him for contributing to the downfall of Synapse Software (well-known for developing many well-regarded early Atari 800 games) when he reneged on a supposedly binding agreement after taking over Atari's computer division. YMMV, there appears to be an interesting (archived) discussion here. (One comment; "Not paying suppliers, forcing them into bankruptcy, and them making them an offer to settle lawsuits for pennies on the dollar was a standard practice for him").
At any rate, I think he at least deserves some credit for his successes- mainly with Commodore (and some level of respect for surviving Auschwitz) even if there were some aspects to him that were questionable.
Circa the mid-to-late 90s, I'm sure that the suggestion that Apple (back then still primarily a personal computer manufacturer, with no experience in what was back then the very different and separate consumer audio market) would even be a threat to Sony's dominance would have had their executives in fits of apoplectic laughter.
Re:Electronics and music hugely profitable
on
Sony Slashes 10,000 Jobs
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· Score: 4, Interesting
The Walkman is a histroical footnote nowadays...
It's worth remembering that the Walkman was *the* portable music player for almost two decades. Sony was a big company with brand recognition and the resources to develop devices that would continue that lead into the MP3 era. The market was theirs to lose.
But they squandered the opportunity, letting *Apple* become the dominant player. (Circa the mid-to-late 90s, I'm sure that the suggestion that Apple- a company that was primarily a personal computer manufacturer back when that was a very different market to audio entertainment- was likely to take over their dominant market position).
Much as I dislike aspects of Apple's behaviour, their foresight in developing and promoting the iPhone- even though they would have known that it would eat into classic-style iPod sales- cannibalising their own product, rather than letting someone else cannibalise it, and reaching even greater heights in the process- contrasts sharply with Sony's protectionist, insular, NIH approach to file-based digital media and the MP3 age.
Nobody's innocent anymore. There is too much information flowing about - we're all guilty of something. Even if you don't quite no what it is - it's not important. You're just guilty of something so it's important that somebody keep tags on you.
Just in case.
That's more right than you think. One author claims that the average citizen commits three felonies a day without knowing it (due to the byzantine legal code which can be interpreted any number of ways): Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent [amazon.com]. It's an interesting read if you're into that sort of thing.
While it's probably true that the majority of such cases weren't intentional on the part of those who originally drafted the laws (maybe I'm being naive there), it's certainly true to say that as a rule it's more beneficial for those who value power *not* to have the average citizen be 100% perfect and law-abiding, as knowledge of lawbreaking gives them a legitimised form of pressure and control over them that they can exert if need be.
Clearly, they won't punish the majority of such infractions- and really don't care about them in themselves- but the potential to be able to do so is the main thing.
This alone is one (but not the only) reason that those who say that "those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear" (i.e. "law abiding citizens") as justification for government surveillance and intrusion are either exceptionally stupid or exceptionally disingenuous.
Life in any country where every transgression of the law was punished would be absolutely impossible and break down quickly. Of course, that would be assuming "good faith" use of the information that let us know this- as I said above, in practice, it would be more beneficial to those in power to simply accumulate knowledge of such offenses and use it against those it deemed most problematic.
Article:"The question is, does anyone really want or need a light for their Kindle?"
No.
That wasn't the headline though. I'm wondering if this is the first sign of lots of Slashdotters seizing upon the (very perceptive) Betteridge's Law and overusing it- sometimes out of context and/or incorrectly- to show how perceptive they supposedly are, as has happened with similar observations in the past.
or the non-touch version for £49 @ asda, vs £89 for the kindle basic
Assuming you can actually get it for that price at Asda. I've heard they've had similar "great" prices on things like that in the past, then it turned out that they were sold out because they only ever had a very few on sale, i.e. it was a gimmick to get you into their store.
That said, IIRC and AFAIK you *can* get them for around £60 from some sources without too much difficulty.
At least post the link, instead of just teasing and/or confusing everyone: http://xkcd.com/327/ [xkcd.com]
Yes, God forbid that 99% of people should be allowed to "get" a joke without having it helpfully explained for them because 1% might experience the trauma of not getting it.
Given that the "Bobby Tables" cartoon strip is pretty widely-known and referenced here, I didn't see the point in spoiling what was (meant to be) funny by explaining the damn thing, patronising the audience in the process and taking away the pleasure they'd have got from understanding the joke and spotting the reference for themselves:-/
See, even my explicitly spelling out the implicit social understanding that underpinned my joke in this analytical way is quite unfunny.
When I was in highschool my school used Wyse Terminals which was the most bad and ironic name I've ever seen. I hated those things..every one hated those things. They broke all the time and had to constantly be reflashed with a new image. They were so awful that by my Senior year they were being phased out entirely.
YMMV. I had an admin job back in the late 90s that involved entering information into a dumb green-screen terminal. It was as tedious as hell, but at least the dumb Wyse terminal I was using- some of the time- had arguably the best mechanical key action (*) of any keyboard I've used, marginally beating the late-era Model B BBC Micros. Crappily, they later got some beige box PCs running a terminal emulator under NT that came with some mediocre generic membrane crap. To be fair, I'm not anti-membrane, as some modern ones can be quite good, but those were pretty "meh".
I got a mechanical Cherry keyboard a few years later on that was supposed to have a similar action- it was okay, but had just a bit too much resistance on the keys to have that satisfyingly effortless typing I was after.
(*) The type that goes "tap" when it hits the bottom of its travel, not the tediously-fetishised "clicky pressure point halfway down" action of the IBM Model M, whose obsessive fans seem to love it but anyone not already used to it would likely find strange- and noisy. (I didn't like it, even though I'd used plenty of mechanical keyboards previously).
I have to agree with this article, I've always assumed it was just the American preconception of "old worlde". Different enough to be remote but still in the same language.
On the other hand as an Irishman I often find it hard to find escapism in Irish TV and to a lesser extent, film. The familiarity of it all doesn't work as well while on the other hand so much of our media is American that even when I visit the USA there is an element of otherworldliness about the whole experience.
I wonder if this is why people prefer the "film look" for drama. Traditional interlaced video has greater temporal resolution (50/60 fields per second instead of 24 frames) which gives a more fluid "live" appearance more like actually being there. Film has a more "distant" feel, mostly due to its slower frame rate (though there are other differences between the two media).
On paper, video's higher temporal resolution is "better", yet people seem to prefer film. I've heard people complain that TVs with a frame interpolation facility made movies look like a cheap soap opera. Some people have speculated that this is because they're used to "film for big-budget drama, video for cheap and/or live TV" and the preference is learned snobbery. Though there may be some truth in that, I also suspect that film's "distance" may be another form of "abstraction" that aids in suspension of disbelief, i.e. they *don't* just look like people in front of a camera.
Then again, that may just be cultural programming after all, in that video looks like "real life people in front of a camera" because a high proportion of video footage *was* for non-fictional live TV, wheras drama tends to use film. It's surprising how you get used to things, like how Doctor Who (and many other 60s to early-80s BBC shows) used to shoot location footage on film and studio footage on video, which looked very different (especially with the sterile bright lighting required for video back then). Yet you mentally got used to "film = outside, video = inside".
But back on-topic, I suspect that escapism maybe does need some "distance", and that may extend beyond accents.
I will note that when the UK director Gerry Anderson produced Thunderbirds, for a UK audience, he gave the puppets US accents.
Actually, I suspect that it they always had a potential sale to the Americans in mind at the very least. Lew Grade, the owner of ATV and ITC who funded and distributed the programme (along with many others during the 60s and the 70s) was well-known for wanting to sell to the American market.
Apparently, they tried to sell Thunderbirds to the US, but it all went wrong, though it was still moderately successful in syndication.
C++ is not a strict superset of C. Your example doesn't work.
As far as I'm aware, one of the C++ standards was- if not a strict superset- then at least a close enough superset of C that the OP's assertion should still have been able to be applied.... if that assertion had been valid in the first place, which it wasn't, for the reasons I gave! In other words, I was arguing that *regardless* of whether C++ was a superset of C or not, "knowing" C++ did not automatically imply that one would know C.
Administration is used strategically in the UK too.
There's the now-common "pre-pack" insolvency here- which I would say *is* reasonably well-known about- that often results in the same people that owned the company before buying it again without having to take on its debts or obligations- sometimes more than once(!)
This isn't the first time that this has happened to a British game store. Back in the 1990's, a local store was set up by a local kid who had left school at 16. The local papers were hyping his store as going up may the major chains like Virgin, Dixons and HMV.
That does ring a faint bell. Was that the chain that was called "Star UK" or something like that?
That would have been circa 1990-91. I vaguely remember they had a branch *very* briefly open in my home town (think I must have been in there once as that was where I first saw a Mega Drive) and went bankrupt within a very short period of time.
Objective C is a superset of C, so if you know Objective C, you know C.
I don't know much about Objective C, so I'll accept that first part is true. However, as a general principle, one can't use formal logic to say that "language B is a superset of language A, therefore if you know language B you know language A".
For a start, it depends on one means by "know".
For example, IIRC some of the C++ standards are supersets of C, but it doesn't follow that someone who learned C++ first will know C well. In fact, even though C++ inherits the C facilities (by definition), they're not the best way to do things in the former language, and any good course teaching C++ would start from the newer object-oriented direction.
Similarly, the skills and mindset that one needs to be a good C programmer aren't necessarily those of a good C++ programmer, and I could easily see someone who had started out with C++ not being used to dealing with the more limited and low-level (and arguably more straightforward) way of doing things in C.
Maybe it *is* quite easy to transition from Objective C to traditional C, but it doesn't follow that "knowing" the superset always makes one well-equipped to use the smaller language.
I started to mod this insightful. Then, I thought "Wow, that's so cool I'm going to go actually buy that system and put chips in all my stuff". Then I did the research and realized it's $400 (source: http://www.dpl-surveillance-equipment.com/1000066086.html) .
I'll just keep putting the keys on my nightstand and the remote on the end table.
Either that or you could spend peanuts on one of those silly little whistle-sensitive beeping keyrings that have been around for at least 20 years.:-)
I disagree. I am working on this system right now (no joke) and it will be available to the consumer in 3-5 years.
Posting as AC because of NDA issues.
Posting as AC because you're pulling our legs, more like.;-)
If any such system was so near being a consumer-ready product that it stood any prospect of being released in the "3 to 5 year" timespan, we'd have heard about and seen the prototype technology working long before now!
I lost interest after the summary.:( Seriously, America, when are you going to use meters and kilograms, again?
Of course, there's always the possibility that the parent AC is really just an American troll trying to stir up trouble, as we spell it "metres" in Britain.
They *could* be from elsewhere in Europe and using the American spelling when writing in English, but I wouldn't put the likelihood of trolldom past the OP...:-)
They use the phrase "our copyrights or trademarks," and immediately after that phrase, they have a list of terms. They are saying that they own the "copyrights or trademarks" for or to those terms. They say that "You will not use" said terms unless your use of said terms agrees with them, either by way of their guidelines or their written permission. When you sign an agreement, you are agreeing to what that agreement says. By signing Facebook's new agreement, you are agreeing that "book" and "wall" are two of their "copyrights or trademarks."
I'm not convinced by this. They say that "you will not use our copyrights or trademarks", which is quite clear- for things that *are* clearly their copyrights and trademarks.
Let's assume for a second that the list included the word "Atari". It's clear-cut that they don't own that trademark. Therefore, the clause when applied to "Atari" would clearly be predicated on false information and (I doubt) applicable. (*)
It may be argued that "book" is or isn't their trademark, but if it clearly is, then the clause probably applies and if it clearly isn't, then it almost certainly won't(?) If it's not clear either way, and the case is to be established by use, then because the user is not being required to actively agree that Facebook owns the trademark, I'm not convinced that it bolsters their use claim (to "book") in itself.
They probably want to strengthen their claim by making it in as many places as possible, but I'm not sure that the user is actually agreeing to this.
Of course, neither of us are lawyers, and the law doesn't necessarily work in the way that we might think it would (or should), so this discussion is really just intellectual masturbation(!)
(*) Might be different if it was used in an agreement relating to use of competitor's trademarks on their site or elsewhere- I don't know. But that would have nothing to do with bolstering their ownership of it.
.
"You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Book and Wall)
IANAL either, but I note that they're not claiming that "by accepting this agreement you agree that Book (etc.) is our trademark and yadda yadda....", i.e. they're not actively requiring the user to accept or directly agree with the assertion that they own those trademarks.
It may be argued that by implication the user is accepting this anyway, but I'm not convinced. If that isn't the case, then does including the assertion in the user agreement give it any more strength than claiming elsewhere that they own those trademarks?
What the implication is of this would be though, I don't know.
Slashdot Mirror
Note that all their other systems (including their "Amiga"s) are just cheap Chinese off-the-line volume machines available to anybody to throw their badge on it.
Oh yes- I remember those same guys selling what appeared to be generic HTPC cases with absolutely *no* Amiga connection using the "classic" Amiga model numbers (e.g. A1000, A500, etc.)
And the clusterf*** that is the Amiga rights is shown up by the fact that they're selling a computer with the "Commodore" and "Amiga" badges on it, that has nothing to do with that line otherwise, yet different companies are selling the "real" successor to the Amiga, running Amiga OS4.0.
Except that even those Amigas aren't (AFAIK) directly compatible with the old Amigas, and they're basically just overpriced hardware that's been made to a proprietary design solely so they can monetise the latest Amiga OS (which is what people are really paying for), and possibly so the rabid hardcore buyers that it's meant to exploit can feel good that they haven't wasted all that money on a generic PC. Even though it would probably have been better to have the new Amiga OS run on masses-of-bang-per-buck commodity Wintel-compatible hardware instead.
But back to the point- the latter machines are sold under the "AmigaOne" name, apparently they don't have the rights to call it plain "Amiga", yet some generic name-exploiting toss gets to use it(!)
Some days I miss my old Atari 800 computer, with the 32MB ram
32MB? Yeah, *you* wish! Would've made one *heck* of a RAM disk, but you'd still have had to bank-switch it in 16KB chunks into the 6502's 64KB address space ;-)
Those who get dewy eyed about their B&W soundless ZX80/81s would be surprised to find say the Atari 800 came out in 78/79 and offered colour, high res (at the time), sprites, hardware scrolling, display interrupts and most of the hardware features the Amiga built on later
The Atari 400 and 800 were absolutely fantastic, state-of-the-art machines by 1979 standards, but they were also very expensive back then- many times more expensive than the ZX80 and ZX81.
Few people will truly deny that the latter machines were basic- even by the standards of the time- but their great significance was producing something that was still a workable home computer, albeit one that was pared to the bare miniumum, for such a low price.
It wasn't until 1982 that the extra cost of a Z80 could be justified for home use.
The 1980 Sinclair ZX80 used a Z80 (though apparently most ones produced used an equivalent part manufactured by NEC).
That was the first machine under £100 in the UK, and one whose design used every cost-saving, corner-cutting trick in the book to keep its cost down (e.g. the display generation was primarily done in software, which meant that the screen went blank when the CPU was busy with other things).
Certainly not a place for expensive frivolities. :-)
Bear in mind that the C16 and Plus/4 were released after Tramiel left. I heard that the chipset was apparently designed for what was meant to be a very low-cost machine that would combat the perceived Japanese threat (apparently the rubber-keyed Europe-only C116 was the first-designed model and the closest to the original intended vision).
Tramiel was ousted, the threat didn't materialise, and the management apparently didn't know what to do with the chipset, hence the rather nonsensical release of mid-range machines that were competing too closely with their own C64.
Another issue that most of the accounts are written by Americans, and the Apple ][ ruled in the USA.
Actually from what I understand, the Commodore 64 was- if anything- most successful in the USA, in part because it was sold so cheaply there (for what was actually a very good computer at the time) due to Tramiel wanting to win the home computer market. AFAIK the Apple II did well in educational and early business markets, but the C64 was *the* home computer in the US.
But you're absolutely right- there's a problem with history being written by the victors, because it gives a misleading picture of the time. Sure, the IBM PC (and MS-DOS), predecessor to today's Wintel PCs, was big in the business market, but in its early days it wasn't a home machine. Who'd want to pay thousands of pounds for a machine with (at best) CGA graphics and *very* primitive sound when you could get a C64 for a fraction of the cost? Kids at home probably didn't give a **** about some horribly expensive green-screen machine that wasn't even that hot at games.
I've heard that part of the problem with the C64- and the reason Tramiel was forced to leave C= - was that Tramiel was *so* aggressive with the price and driving competitors out of the market- that C= weren't actually making that much money on them (even though apparently they'd been exceptionally good at driving down the production cost, in part by becoming vertically integrated).
I have to admit to having mixed feelings about Tramiel, as from what I've heard some of his business practices were very questionable, with- for example- some blaming him for contributing to the downfall of Synapse Software (well-known for developing many well-regarded early Atari 800 games) when he reneged on a supposedly binding agreement after taking over Atari's computer division. YMMV, there appears to be an interesting (archived) discussion here. (One comment; "Not paying suppliers, forcing them into bankruptcy, and them making them an offer to settle lawsuits for pennies on the dollar was a standard practice for him").
At any rate, I think he at least deserves some credit for his successes- mainly with Commodore (and some level of respect for surviving Auschwitz) even if there were some aspects to him that were questionable.
Bad editing, should read:-
Circa the mid-to-late 90s, I'm sure that the suggestion that Apple (back then still primarily a personal computer manufacturer, with no experience in what was back then the very different and separate consumer audio market) would even be a threat to Sony's dominance would have had their executives in fits of apoplectic laughter.
The Walkman is a histroical footnote nowadays...
It's worth remembering that the Walkman was *the* portable music player for almost two decades. Sony was a big company with brand recognition and the resources to develop devices that would continue that lead into the MP3 era. The market was theirs to lose.
But they squandered the opportunity, letting *Apple* become the dominant player. (Circa the mid-to-late 90s, I'm sure that the suggestion that Apple- a company that was primarily a personal computer manufacturer back when that was a very different market to audio entertainment- was likely to take over their dominant market position).
Much as I dislike aspects of Apple's behaviour, their foresight in developing and promoting the iPhone- even though they would have known that it would eat into classic-style iPod sales- cannibalising their own product, rather than letting someone else cannibalise it, and reaching even greater heights in the process- contrasts sharply with Sony's protectionist, insular, NIH approach to file-based digital media and the MP3 age.
Nobody's innocent anymore. There is too much information flowing about - we're all guilty of something. Even if you don't quite no what it is - it's not important. You're just guilty of something so it's important that somebody keep tags on you. Just in case.
That's more right than you think. One author claims that the average citizen commits three felonies a day without knowing it (due to the byzantine legal code which can be interpreted any number of ways): Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent [amazon.com]. It's an interesting read if you're into that sort of thing.
While it's probably true that the majority of such cases weren't intentional on the part of those who originally drafted the laws (maybe I'm being naive there), it's certainly true to say that as a rule it's more beneficial for those who value power *not* to have the average citizen be 100% perfect and law-abiding, as knowledge of lawbreaking gives them a legitimised form of pressure and control over them that they can exert if need be.
Clearly, they won't punish the majority of such infractions- and really don't care about them in themselves- but the potential to be able to do so is the main thing.
This alone is one (but not the only) reason that those who say that "those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear" (i.e. "law abiding citizens") as justification for government surveillance and intrusion are either exceptionally stupid or exceptionally disingenuous.
Life in any country where every transgression of the law was punished would be absolutely impossible and break down quickly. Of course, that would be assuming "good faith" use of the information that let us know this- as I said above, in practice, it would be more beneficial to those in power to simply accumulate knowledge of such offenses and use it against those it deemed most problematic.
Article:"The question is, does anyone really want or need a light for their Kindle?"
No.
That wasn't the headline though. I'm wondering if this is the first sign of lots of Slashdotters seizing upon the (very perceptive) Betteridge's Law and overusing it- sometimes out of context and/or incorrectly- to show how perceptive they supposedly are, as has happened with similar observations in the past.
or the non-touch version for £49 @ asda, vs £89 for the kindle basic
Assuming you can actually get it for that price at Asda. I've heard they've had similar "great" prices on things like that in the past, then it turned out that they were sold out because they only ever had a very few on sale, i.e. it was a gimmick to get you into their store.
That said, IIRC and AFAIK you *can* get them for around £60 from some sources without too much difficulty.
At least post the link, instead of just teasing and/or confusing everyone: http://xkcd.com/327/ [xkcd.com]
Yes, God forbid that 99% of people should be allowed to "get" a joke without having it helpfully explained for them because 1% might experience the trauma of not getting it.
:-/
Given that the "Bobby Tables" cartoon strip is pretty widely-known and referenced here, I didn't see the point in spoiling what was (meant to be) funny by explaining the damn thing, patronising the audience in the process and taking away the pleasure they'd have got from understanding the joke and spotting the reference for themselves
See, even my explicitly spelling out the implicit social understanding that underpinned my joke in this analytical way is quite unfunny.
When I was in highschool my school used Wyse Terminals which was the most bad and ironic name I've ever seen. I hated those things..every one hated those things. They broke all the time and had to constantly be reflashed with a new image. They were so awful that by my Senior year they were being phased out entirely.
YMMV. I had an admin job back in the late 90s that involved entering information into a dumb green-screen terminal. It was as tedious as hell, but at least the dumb Wyse terminal I was using- some of the time- had arguably the best mechanical key action (*) of any keyboard I've used, marginally beating the late-era Model B BBC Micros. Crappily, they later got some beige box PCs running a terminal emulator under NT that came with some mediocre generic membrane crap. To be fair, I'm not anti-membrane, as some modern ones can be quite good, but those were pretty "meh".
I got a mechanical Cherry keyboard a few years later on that was supposed to have a similar action- it was okay, but had just a bit too much resistance on the keys to have that satisfyingly effortless typing I was after.
(*) The type that goes "tap" when it hits the bottom of its travel, not the tediously-fetishised "clicky pressure point halfway down" action of the IBM Model M, whose obsessive fans seem to love it but anyone not already used to it would likely find strange- and noisy. (I didn't like it, even though I'd used plenty of mechanical keyboards previously).
9. Have you sanitised your data inputs?'); DROP TABLE secret_terrorism_targets;--
I have to agree with this article, I've always assumed it was just the American preconception of "old worlde". Different enough to be remote but still in the same language. On the other hand as an Irishman I often find it hard to find escapism in Irish TV and to a lesser extent, film. The familiarity of it all doesn't work as well while on the other hand so much of our media is American that even when I visit the USA there is an element of otherworldliness about the whole experience.
I wonder if this is why people prefer the "film look" for drama. Traditional interlaced video has greater temporal resolution (50/60 fields per second instead of 24 frames) which gives a more fluid "live" appearance more like actually being there. Film has a more "distant" feel, mostly due to its slower frame rate (though there are other differences between the two media).
On paper, video's higher temporal resolution is "better", yet people seem to prefer film. I've heard people complain that TVs with a frame interpolation facility made movies look like a cheap soap opera. Some people have speculated that this is because they're used to "film for big-budget drama, video for cheap and/or live TV" and the preference is learned snobbery. Though there may be some truth in that, I also suspect that film's "distance" may be another form of "abstraction" that aids in suspension of disbelief, i.e. they *don't* just look like people in front of a camera.
Then again, that may just be cultural programming after all, in that video looks like "real life people in front of a camera" because a high proportion of video footage *was* for non-fictional live TV, wheras drama tends to use film. It's surprising how you get used to things, like how Doctor Who (and many other 60s to early-80s BBC shows) used to shoot location footage on film and studio footage on video, which looked very different (especially with the sterile bright lighting required for video back then). Yet you mentally got used to "film = outside, video = inside".
But back on-topic, I suspect that escapism maybe does need some "distance", and that may extend beyond accents.
I will note that when the UK director Gerry Anderson produced Thunderbirds, for a UK audience, he gave the puppets US accents.
Actually, I suspect that it they always had a potential sale to the Americans in mind at the very least. Lew Grade, the owner of ATV and ITC who funded and distributed the programme (along with many others during the 60s and the 70s) was well-known for wanting to sell to the American market.
Apparently, they tried to sell Thunderbirds to the US, but it all went wrong, though it was still moderately successful in syndication.
C++ is not a strict superset of C. Your example doesn't work.
As far as I'm aware, one of the C++ standards was- if not a strict superset- then at least a close enough superset of C that the OP's assertion should still have been able to be applied.... if that assertion had been valid in the first place, which it wasn't, for the reasons I gave! In other words, I was arguing that *regardless* of whether C++ was a superset of C or not, "knowing" C++ did not automatically imply that one would know C.
Administration is used strategically in the UK too.
There's the now-common "pre-pack" insolvency here- which I would say *is* reasonably well-known about- that often results in the same people that owned the company before buying it again without having to take on its debts or obligations- sometimes more than once(!)
This isn't the first time that this has happened to a British game store. Back in the 1990's, a local store was set up by a local kid who had left school at 16. The local papers were hyping his store as going up may the major chains like Virgin, Dixons and HMV.
That does ring a faint bell. Was that the chain that was called "Star UK" or something like that?
That would have been circa 1990-91. I vaguely remember they had a branch *very* briefly open in my home town (think I must have been in there once as that was where I first saw a Mega Drive) and went bankrupt within a very short period of time.
Objective C is a superset of C, so if you know Objective C, you know C.
I don't know much about Objective C, so I'll accept that first part is true. However, as a general principle, one can't use formal logic to say that "language B is a superset of language A, therefore if you know language B you know language A".
For a start, it depends on one means by "know". For example, IIRC some of the C++ standards are supersets of C, but it doesn't follow that someone who learned C++ first will know C well. In fact, even though C++ inherits the C facilities (by definition), they're not the best way to do things in the former language, and any good course teaching C++ would start from the newer object-oriented direction.
Similarly, the skills and mindset that one needs to be a good C programmer aren't necessarily those of a good C++ programmer, and I could easily see someone who had started out with C++ not being used to dealing with the more limited and low-level (and arguably more straightforward) way of doing things in C.
Maybe it *is* quite easy to transition from Objective C to traditional C, but it doesn't follow that "knowing" the superset always makes one well-equipped to use the smaller language.
I started to mod this insightful. Then, I thought "Wow, that's so cool I'm going to go actually buy that system and put chips in all my stuff". Then I did the research and realized it's $400 (source: http://www.dpl-surveillance-equipment.com/1000066086.html) . I'll just keep putting the keys on my nightstand and the remote on the end table.
Either that or you could spend peanuts on one of those silly little whistle-sensitive beeping keyrings that have been around for at least 20 years. :-)
I disagree. I am working on this system right now (no joke) and it will be available to the consumer in 3-5 years.
Posting as AC because of NDA issues.
Posting as AC because you're pulling our legs, more like. ;-)
If any such system was so near being a consumer-ready product that it stood any prospect of being released in the "3 to 5 year" timespan, we'd have heard about and seen the prototype technology working long before now!
But better luck next time..... (^_^)
I lost interest after the summary. :( Seriously, America, when are you going to use meters and kilograms, again?
Of course, there's always the possibility that the parent AC is really just an American troll trying to stir up trouble, as we spell it "metres" in Britain.
:-)
They *could* be from elsewhere in Europe and using the American spelling when writing in English, but I wouldn't put the likelihood of trolldom past the OP...
They use the phrase "our copyrights or trademarks," and immediately after that phrase, they have a list of terms. They are saying that they own the "copyrights or trademarks" for or to those terms. They say that "You will not use" said terms unless your use of said terms agrees with them, either by way of their guidelines or their written permission. When you sign an agreement, you are agreeing to what that agreement says. By signing Facebook's new agreement, you are agreeing that "book" and "wall" are two of their "copyrights or trademarks."
I'm not convinced by this. They say that "you will not use our copyrights or trademarks", which is quite clear- for things that *are* clearly their copyrights and trademarks.
Let's assume for a second that the list included the word "Atari". It's clear-cut that they don't own that trademark. Therefore, the clause when applied to "Atari" would clearly be predicated on false information and (I doubt) applicable. (*)
It may be argued that "book" is or isn't their trademark, but if it clearly is, then the clause probably applies and if it clearly isn't, then it almost certainly won't(?) If it's not clear either way, and the case is to be established by use, then because the user is not being required to actively agree that Facebook owns the trademark, I'm not convinced that it bolsters their use claim (to "book") in itself.
They probably want to strengthen their claim by making it in as many places as possible, but I'm not sure that the user is actually agreeing to this.
Of course, neither of us are lawyers, and the law doesn't necessarily work in the way that we might think it would (or should), so this discussion is really just intellectual masturbation(!)
(*) Might be different if it was used in an agreement relating to use of competitor's trademarks on their site or elsewhere- I don't know. But that would have nothing to do with bolstering their ownership of it. .
Now this is brash. Read what they actually say:
"You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Book and Wall)
IANAL either, but I note that they're not claiming that "by accepting this agreement you agree that Book (etc.) is our trademark and yadda yadda....", i.e. they're not actively requiring the user to accept or directly agree with the assertion that they own those trademarks.
It may be argued that by implication the user is accepting this anyway, but I'm not convinced. If that isn't the case, then does including the assertion in the user agreement give it any more strength than claiming elsewhere that they own those trademarks?
What the implication is of this would be though, I don't know.