The ABC was not really programmable (it lacked control structures), it was more of an automatic calculator than a computer. It was also slow, error-prone, and had a ridiculous output system involving burning (!) holes in paper cards.
A nice book talking about the early development of computing in the US (so no Z3 or Colossus, sorry) is ENIAC, by Scott McCartney. As the title implies, it's largely about the ENIAC, but ABC is given some treatment as well (particularly in contrast with the far more advanced ENIAC).
Since when is there any reasonable expectation of privacy in a more-or-less public place? In a bathroom, yes, but there is in my mind no justification for expecting privacy in a movie theater.
It may not cost the film industry much to implement this policy, but the biggest cost will be to their reputation.
Bull. Unlike the music industry's widely publicized lawsuit campaign, this anti-piracy measure does not cause any harm or inconvenience to ordinary patrons. Heck, most probably won't even notice it. It only stops folks who shouldn't be doing what they are doing anyway.
They are following the music industry by removing one of their best forms of publicity - the small-scale, private piracy that ultimately leads to increased sales of their products.
Do you have any statistics to back that up? I'm inclined to disbelieve it.
Interesting idea. But... how could you guarantee that viable offspring would be produced before the whole damn colony dies of radiation sickness? Evolution is not a real fast process. It seems to me that the more likely outcome would be the entire colony (and any babies they manage to produce) dead long before we can evolve some kind of radiation resistance. But then, I am not a biologist or astronomer.
That said, I still think it's an interesting idea.
Re:State of the art?
on
Shrek 2 How-To
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I don't know where anyone gets off comparing Shrek's animation to other movies, especially Pixar movies
I'm not sure why you feel that way. I saw Shrek myself the other day and was quite impressed with the quality and detail of the animation. As far as I could remember, it exceeded the first in quality.
The textures are very basic and the facial expressions lack subtlety
What on earth are you talking about? Shrek wasn't going for subtlety anyway, but the facial expressions were quite well done. Same goes for the textures.
Shrek just looks like it was a half-assed effort.
120-odd million dollars worth of tickets disagree with you.
Most people find that clicking-opens-a-new-window behaviour annoying. It makes browsing around your directory as annoying as closing popup ads - its the same experience, pretty much. Your screen clogs with shit you dont wanna see.
He makes the point that no modern desktop OS does that, and for a reason.
I personally like this particular interface style. Of course, I am a longtime Mac user. Though this is disabled by default, it is an option on Mac OS X.
I find that it is annoying without one little extra: hold Option while clicking a folder/file and it will open while the previous window closes.
To each his own, I guess. Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in as a user who likes this.
Though I see your point, I cannot imagine a lawyer being insane enough to use a vague phrase like that to include the somewhat ill-defined non-regular-season schedule. Seems to me that if they meant "everything", they would have it spelled out, otherwise it would actually refer to the regular season.
It would be valuable if the article actually quoted the relevant portion of the contract.
While I haven't read the contract, and am not a lawyer, based on the information in the article this is a stupid lawsuit by Real. They are alleging that the phrase "baseball season" in their contract with MLB includes the exhibition serieses and the World Series.
Every baseball fan knows the term "preseason" and "postseason". Apparently Real Networks does not, and thinks it's grounds for a lawsuit.
Google *does not* take money for higher placement. That's (partially) why they are revered here on Slashdot. Google's ads are separate, off to the side, and clearly marked.
I stand corrected. Isn't QT for Win missing bits though? You yourself said it's lightweight. Does it include, say, the File Manager? CoreFoundation? Resources?
Sorry for my misinformation... I've never had much experience with QT.
Are you aware of the incredible amount of work that would take? Carbon is a *huge* system. Even if it wasn't Mac specific (which it is, and HFS specific, and big-endian specific...) it would take a good team a long, long time to get Carbon to work multiplatform. By comparison with Carbon, Cocoa is a very small (and well designed and documented) API.
Besides which, Carbon's sort of in transition. Old APIs being phased out (thankfully!) and new ones like CoreFoundation being used in their place. CF, I believe, is partially open source.
So, in summary, the answer to your question is "because it would be infinitely more trouble than it's worth."
Actually, I know of several (Performa series) Macs which revert to August 8 (?) 1956 when the battery dies.
I can't remember exactly what my G4 tower did when it's battery died, but I think that one does 1956 too (anybody sure about this?)
I *loved* Night Watch. I think Terry Pratchett is, humor aside, an excellent writer, and I was delighted to read a more serious book by him. Not that I don't like the comedy, but NW instantly became my favorite Discworld novel.
On the other hand, I hated Monstrous Regiment. It felt quite predictable to me (from the middle on, mainly), and the plot was, well, boring. Not at all what I've come to expect from Pratchett. Maybe it's just me, but I didn't even think it was especially funny.
Not really. In Xenocide, the humans could already kill the Descolada virus. The problem was that the entire ecosystem of Lusitania had been altered by the Descolada, making it dependent on the existence of the virus to reproduce. Ela Ribeira created the Recolada virus which filled the reproductive functions of the Descolada but did not kill. It was then used to replace the Descolada in Lusitania's ecosystem.
Most rational people can tell the difference between "I dream of Jenna" and what's found in an Arts Museum.
Where do you draw the line? Look at the case that happened in Cincinatti a few years ago - there were some controversial photos by Robert Mapplethorpe exhibited in an art museum that raised a furor in Cinci because of their content. Art can also be called porn and porn might also be called art, depending only on who you ask.
There is no objective standard of morality or artistic merit. It is entirely subjective and that is why we cannot allow one group to dictate what is art and what is not for the rest of the country.
This idea has been advanced a thousand times and it is still just as stupid as the first time. If you were to create a.XXX TLD and require all porn to live there, that mysterious question comes up again:
Who the hell is defining porn??
Presumably, in the scenario you want to see we'd get a corporation or a federal entity defining porn. I think we can all see that this would not be a good thing for the Web as a whole.
Besides which, how do you expect to compel overseas companies to obey? And what about USENET, the biggest porn repository there is?
The solution to the online porn "problem" is: if you don't like it, either use a filter or keep your kids' computers somewhere you can see them. NOT unenforceable laws and filterable TLDs.
I agree with you in one sense. Yes, as soon as something leaves the DRM system it can be copied freely. What the DRM implementors are banking on, in my opinion, is that most computer users won't be able to do it.
Let's face it, you and I would be totally unfazed by burning to CD and re-importing to remove the DRM. But do you really think your average computer-using non-techie would even think of that? Or be able to do it without detailed instructions?
My dad's a computer user. He's a well-educated, intelligent guy. He keeps the books for a local organization, he checks his e-mail, browses the Web. I don't think he knows what the Clipboard is, let alone what it means to encode a song. Faced with DRM, he will simply put up with it rather than work around it. And there are a lot of users like him.
Now, I'm not trying to insult or smear the average computer user. What I'm trying to point out is that for these folks who don't understand (or want to understand) technical topics, circumventing DRM is not an option.
I didn't mean to imply "America is the best and only system", and I apologize if that was the impression you got, as that is not my belief.
I didn't know about Sweden specifically. Kudos to the Swede lawmakers for being so wise.
"Given that India's form of government is clearly different, this is much more chilling."
This is going to happen, sooner of later, in any nation which doesn't have some analogue of the First Amendment. Even in democracies like India, either the government will do it unilaterally or they will scare the people enough to push it through.
A Constitution like ours (US), however flawed, is a wonderful thing.
AOL won't lock out iChat, because it is not an unauthorized third-party client. Apple has a deal with AOL, which presumably involves large sums of money.
iChat, thankfully, ain't goin nowhere.
Hopefully this will help show people that using Linux is not "dangerous". A big company like HP offering to defend any of their users sued by SCO? That sends a nice, big "frivolous lawsuit" message that suits will understand.
Slashdot Mirror
The ABC was not really programmable (it lacked control structures), it was more of an automatic calculator than a computer. It was also slow, error-prone, and had a ridiculous output system involving burning (!) holes in paper cards.
A nice book talking about the early development of computing in the US (so no Z3 or Colossus, sorry) is ENIAC, by Scott McCartney. As the title implies, it's largely about the ENIAC, but ABC is given some treatment as well (particularly in contrast with the far more advanced ENIAC).
Since when is there any reasonable expectation of privacy in a more-or-less public place? In a bathroom, yes, but there is in my mind no justification for expecting privacy in a movie theater.
It may not cost the film industry much to implement this policy, but the biggest cost will be to their reputation.
Bull. Unlike the music industry's widely publicized lawsuit campaign, this anti-piracy measure does not cause any harm or inconvenience to ordinary patrons. Heck, most probably won't even notice it. It only stops folks who shouldn't be doing what they are doing anyway.
They are following the music industry by removing one of their best forms of publicity - the small-scale, private piracy that ultimately leads to increased sales of their products.
Do you have any statistics to back that up? I'm inclined to disbelieve it.
Editors, please... the name of the probe is "Rosetta" (as in the famous stone).
Interesting idea. But... how could you guarantee that viable offspring would be produced before the whole damn colony dies of radiation sickness? Evolution is not a real fast process. It seems to me that the more likely outcome would be the entire colony (and any babies they manage to produce) dead long before we can evolve some kind of radiation resistance. But then, I am not a biologist or astronomer.
That said, I still think it's an interesting idea.
I don't know where anyone gets off comparing Shrek's animation to other movies, especially Pixar movies
I'm not sure why you feel that way. I saw Shrek myself the other day and was quite impressed with the quality and detail of the animation. As far as I could remember, it exceeded the first in quality.
The textures are very basic and the facial expressions lack subtlety
What on earth are you talking about? Shrek wasn't going for subtlety anyway, but the facial expressions were quite well done. Same goes for the textures.
Shrek just looks like it was a half-assed effort.
120-odd million dollars worth of tickets disagree with you.
Most people find that clicking-opens-a-new-window behaviour annoying. It makes browsing around your directory as annoying as closing popup ads - its the same experience, pretty much. Your screen clogs with shit you dont wanna see.
He makes the point that no modern desktop OS does that, and for a reason.
I personally like this particular interface style. Of course, I am a longtime Mac user. Though this is disabled by default, it is an option on Mac OS X.
I find that it is annoying without one little extra: hold Option while clicking a folder/file and it will open while the previous window closes.
To each his own, I guess. Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in as a user who likes this.
I believe you've forgotten "soft cushions" and "the Comfy Chair". *Nobody* expects the Spammish Inquisition!
Though I see your point, I cannot imagine a lawyer being insane enough to use a vague phrase like that to include the somewhat ill-defined non-regular-season schedule. Seems to me that if they meant "everything", they would have it spelled out, otherwise it would actually refer to the regular season.
It would be valuable if the article actually quoted the relevant portion of the contract.
While I haven't read the contract, and am not a lawyer, based on the information in the article this is a stupid lawsuit by Real. They are alleging that the phrase "baseball season" in their contract with MLB includes the exhibition serieses and the World Series.
Every baseball fan knows the term "preseason" and "postseason". Apparently Real Networks does not, and thinks it's grounds for a lawsuit.
Anybody got deeper info?
Google *does not* take money for higher placement. That's (partially) why they are revered here on Slashdot. Google's ads are separate, off to the side, and clearly marked.
I stand corrected. Isn't QT for Win missing bits though? You yourself said it's lightweight. Does it include, say, the File Manager? CoreFoundation? Resources? Sorry for my misinformation... I've never had much experience with QT.
Are you aware of the incredible amount of work that would take? Carbon is a *huge* system. Even if it wasn't Mac specific (which it is, and HFS specific, and big-endian specific...) it would take a good team a long, long time to get Carbon to work multiplatform. By comparison with Carbon, Cocoa is a very small (and well designed and documented) API.
Besides which, Carbon's sort of in transition. Old APIs being phased out (thankfully!) and new ones like CoreFoundation being used in their place. CF, I believe, is partially open source.
So, in summary, the answer to your question is "because it would be infinitely more trouble than it's worth."
Actually, I know of several (Performa series) Macs which revert to August 8 (?) 1956 when the battery dies. I can't remember exactly what my G4 tower did when it's battery died, but I think that one does 1956 too (anybody sure about this?)
I *loved* Night Watch. I think Terry Pratchett is, humor aside, an excellent writer, and I was delighted to read a more serious book by him. Not that I don't like the comedy, but NW instantly became my favorite Discworld novel.
On the other hand, I hated Monstrous Regiment. It felt quite predictable to me (from the middle on, mainly), and the plot was, well, boring. Not at all what I've come to expect from Pratchett. Maybe it's just me, but I didn't even think it was especially funny.
Not really. In Xenocide, the humans could already kill the Descolada virus. The problem was that the entire ecosystem of Lusitania had been altered by the Descolada, making it dependent on the existence of the virus to reproduce. Ela Ribeira created the Recolada virus which filled the reproductive functions of the Descolada but did not kill. It was then used to replace the Descolada in Lusitania's ecosystem.
I seriously doubt it. They'd have to change HFS+, which is case-insensitive, and that might well break a number of apps.
Most rational people can tell the difference
between "I dream of Jenna" and what's found
in an Arts Museum.
Where do you draw the line? Look at the case that happened in Cincinatti a few years ago - there were some controversial photos by Robert Mapplethorpe exhibited in an art museum that raised a furor in Cinci because of their content. Art can also be called porn and porn might also be called art, depending only on who you ask.
There is no objective standard of morality or artistic merit. It is entirely subjective and that is why we cannot allow one group to dictate what is art and what is not for the rest of the country.
This idea has been advanced a thousand times and it is still just as stupid as the first time. If you were to create a .XXX TLD and require all porn to live there, that mysterious question comes up again:
Who the hell is defining porn??
Presumably, in the scenario you want to see we'd get a corporation or a federal entity defining porn. I think we can all see that this would not be a good thing for the Web as a whole.
Besides which, how do you expect to compel overseas companies to obey? And what about USENET, the biggest porn repository there is?
The solution to the online porn "problem" is: if you don't like it, either use a filter or keep your kids' computers somewhere you can see them. NOT unenforceable laws and filterable TLDs.
I agree with you in one sense. Yes, as soon as something leaves the DRM system it can be copied freely. What the DRM implementors are banking on, in my opinion, is that most computer users won't be able to do it.
Let's face it, you and I would be totally unfazed by burning to CD and re-importing to remove the DRM. But do you really think your average computer-using non-techie would even think of that? Or be able to do it without detailed instructions?
My dad's a computer user. He's a well-educated, intelligent guy. He keeps the books for a local organization, he checks his e-mail, browses the Web. I don't think he knows what the Clipboard is, let alone what it means to encode a song. Faced with DRM, he will simply put up with it rather than work around it. And there are a lot of users like him.
Now, I'm not trying to insult or smear the average computer user. What I'm trying to point out is that for these folks who don't understand (or want to understand) technical topics, circumventing DRM is not an option.
I didn't mean to imply "America is the best and only system", and I apologize if that was the impression you got, as that is not my belief. I didn't know about Sweden specifically. Kudos to the Swede lawmakers for being so wise.
"Given that India's form of government is clearly different, this is much more chilling."
This is going to happen, sooner of later, in any nation which doesn't have some analogue of the First Amendment. Even in democracies like India, either the government will do it unilaterally or they will scare the people enough to push it through.
A Constitution like ours (US), however flawed, is a wonderful thing.
AOL won't lock out iChat, because it is not an unauthorized third-party client. Apple has a deal with AOL, which presumably involves large sums of money. iChat, thankfully, ain't goin nowhere.
Hopefully this will help show people that using Linux is not "dangerous". A big company like HP offering to defend any of their users sued by SCO? That sends a nice, big "frivolous lawsuit" message that suits will understand.
Recent version of Camino also have this feature.