Perhaps this could be because they are already satisfied with the versions of Windows that they have? At least satisfied enough that they will put off upgrading and spending all that money until a few years from now.
Whatever.
I read a statistic a few years ago that said 60+% of companies wouldn't be upgrading to M$' new licensing scheme which had been released at the time. Among other things, it required businesses to upgrade to Windows XP (presumably from 2k).
Guess what? Most did. Linux and OS X are still not viable options for many businesses. We'll see how it goes when Vista finally matures.
They release both paper dust and toner dust. I've known people who've gotten several sinus infections over their tenure near large print/shred stations (several B/W and color printers, fax, fine grain shredders.)
That's one explanation. The BBC also says that "particle levels rise" during work hours... note that it doesn't specify the type of particles... well here are some other explanations:
1. Perfumes worn by employees 2. Dead skin (which is what 'dust' usually is) 3. Particulates stirred up by people walking around 4. Higher speed air due to cooling/heating systems which release and stir up dust
Does this remind anyone of "WiFi in schools causes cancer! Cell towers cause even more!" This was yet another BBC scare-story.
I can't believe anyone even reads the BBC's science and technology articles, especially after that.
This reminds me of Soviet Russia or a dictatorship. Having a political "officer" involved in every decision. This is why we hire experts, educate people, etc.
Imagine that: politicians in government.
The directive, according to TFA, "bans any regulation from moving forward without the approval of an agency's regulatory policy officer, who would be a political appointee."
Uh, isn't this a good thing? The alternative would be some guy hired for the job by some random person. This guy would have no accountability to anybody but his boss, who could also have little accountability.
This new directive will make politicians who appoint these people responsible for the actions of the department.
Regulation shouldn't move forward unless our elected officials say so. I'm shocked this wasn't in place before. I really hope they don't have any more agencies where this is necessary.
I mean, imagine a person writing regulations that affect your life who aren't even accountable to the person you voted for. Yes, it's bad to give the president more power, but if there's regulation happening, I want it under someone directly or indirectly accountable to the people. Having them appointed by an elected official is good enough. If it were up to me, I wouldn't even have most of these agencies, but since everyone loves government these days, I'll settle for accountability.
I think this group who wrote the article (UCS) is pretty obviously writing this article because they fear Bush (and specifically Bush, look at their site) will use this power to further bring this government away from environmental protection. That's a valid concern, but you can't have it both ways: either the government can regulate the environment, or they can't.
If you want to grant the government the power to mess things up, you have to accept that the people you elect may use that power.
Ok, let me rephrase that. I will not become illegal to use P2P, but the only way for colleges to stop the illegal transfer of data through P2P is to disallow them, essentially resulting in the same.
There's still a big difference.
Though I wonder, since the DMCA clearly states that ISPs are not accountable for their users' actions, how the gov't intends to reconcile that and these new laws, or if they're going to simply tell ISPs to regulate their own traffic. This is a lot bigger than the universities.
If comcast is forced to 'implement plans to curb illegal p2p', you can bet bad things will happen; more so than have occurred before with the 'track and sue' **AA death-squad. We're talking about ISPs monitoring your traffic, possibly even logging it. After they log it, the FBI (or whoever) could get a warrant to view it (or no warrant, depending on if they feel 'sossy').
Eventually, like AT&T's phone records, these logs would be given directly to the government no questions asked, and there's nothing you could do about it.
After all, what are you going to do? Vote republican?
You clearly have no clue what you're talking about. Saying Indie Rock is analogous to 'Emo' is like saying Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club is Death Metal.
"Indy Rock" technically means ANY music from the 'Rock' super-genre that is signed to a label not directly owned by the handful of big record companies.
I know a great assortment of emos, and trust me, they all call their 'screamo' and slow, sensitive cry-baby emo rock 'indie' (indy). This is sometimes even contrary to the publisher of the music; sometimes the 'indy' band is really contracted directly to one of the megamusic companies.
To say that indy rock is different from regular rock musically is actually a as-great a distortion of musical taxonomy as saying all indy is emo.
"Indy", in truth, shouldn't even imply any particular style of music. However, it is, I'm afraid, a colloquialism in the 'emo' community for emo and screamo music.
If you listen to independent music and it's not emo, I'd suggest calling it something other than 'indy'. It's sort of like when gay people stole the 'rainbow' color scheme and Apple had to change their logo.
Many people who would normally watch 6 hours of TV a day are now using myspace for a similar amount of time.
I'd say myspace has already disrupted television and will continue to do so, since a large portion of hours of television watched are these kids who are now using myspace.
Comparing the two, it's hard to say which is worse. Customizing your myspace and/or writing in a blog can help one practice essential computer savvy and writing skills, whereas TV has the benefit of not being plagued with emos.
It also could be argued that myspace 'comments'--which take up most of the average myspace user's time--actually diminish writing skills and intelligence (seriously, read somebody's comments; anybody).
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to comb my hair over my forehead at an angle and take subtly sad photos of myself from a downward angle and blog about how 'indy rock' (emo) is 'the only joy in my desilate, sole-crushing, nitemarish, interminible, bleak, black, life.' [sic.]
The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 5,051 in your whole lifetime. To give you some perspective, you're 5 times more likely to drown, 23 times more likely to fall to your death, and 60 times more likely to die in a car accident.
Therefore, a far more useful article would be "How to survive driving off a seaside cliff into the ocean."
It'd be a bitch to try and install two or three PCI tuner cards in one for a mythtv setup, and pretty few laptops come with digital audio out, much less HDMI ports.
You know HDMI is exactly the same as DVI except HDMI has audio and no VGA.
You can buy a cable online for $10 with DVI at one end and HDMI on the other.
As far as digital audio.. yeah, you're on your own.
And, finally, lets not forget about the USA PATRIOT act. That passed in 1 night in response to 9/11, and I'm sure my fellow Slashdotters will agree that it was brimming with righteousness and justice. Thank christ Congress acted quickly on that one.
Most if not all of the components of the Patriot Act had been previously written and people had been trying to tack it onto other legislation for years.
For as much as the Patriot Act gets the blame for all our "rights lost" in the past 6 years, it really was just a short piece of literature that merely 'connected the dots' on all this other crap that we had already established.
For example, the FISA (Foriegn Intelligence Surveillance Act) court was handing out secret warrants without accountability since Reagan created it in the 1980's. The Patriot Act simply turned that court against American citizens. Just one tiny change in wording can have profound effects.
Government moves slowly, but much of the time methodically, in taking away individual liberty.
But that only tells us what the market is willing to bear (what the fuel is worth), not the true costs of production.
Actually, it's especially easy with gas. The 'demand curve' is so steep, usually quantity demanded remains very constant regardless of price (at least, in the short term, obviously).
This is noted by gas taxes: the burden is almost entirely bore by the consumer, so an extra 18 cent tax adds nearly 18 cents to the price of gas because the companies know we'll pay it. In addition from gas taxes end up being nearly proportional to the rate.
Compare this with something like cigarettes taxes: The companies actually reduce the price of cigarettes and end up paying (I'm guessing here, from my days as a smoker) roughly half of the tax. This is directly related to the demand curve and the nature of the market. In addition, revenues are not nearly proportional to the tax rate increase because people generallydo buy many fewer cigarettes when they cost more. The companies have to balance the tax burden with their loss of revenues, and they hire really smart guys to do this.
By the way, the emboldened words in this post are there to indicate trends and averages.
Aspartame is evil. When ingested, it breaks down into several components, one of which is methanol, which further breaks down into formaldehyde and formic acid, a component of bee and ant sting venom. So after poisoning yourself, you'll be nicely preserved.
Yes, I know, I did a report on it for my Organic Chemistry class.
It doesn't exactly turn into methanol, by the way. However, the methyl ester in aspartame ends up being digested the same way. It turns out, the reason methanol causes blindness, death, and other uncool things, is because of the way it's metabolized. This is why when you drink the moonshine and go to the hospital, they pump you full of ethanol--to occupy your metabolite pathways while they remove the methanol another way.
Searle (the patent holder of aspartame), pointed out that fruit such as apples contained much more methanol than a can of coke. What they didn't mention was that the naturally-occurring pectin contained within fruit increases the absorption time by hours if not days (much of it does not get absorbed). In fact, it would be nearly impossible to overdose on the methanol in apples because of this. Aspartame, on the other hand, is usually fully absorbed in minutes... unless you're drinking Coca-Cola's new flavor: ChunkyCoke, with fiber!
The other two ingredients that Aspartame turns into when digested are naturally-occurring as well, but it's the same story: too much too fast. Phenylalanine penetrates the blood-brain barrier easily. This makes aspartame dangerous to fetuses or even children who are intolerant to phenylalanine due to a not-uncommon condition called phenylketonuria (PKU). It's common sense that you don't want a chemical imbalance of any type occurring within the brain.
It's hard to fight common sense, and that's why aspartame is quietly being removed from chewing gum. Often, gum will have aspartame and sorbitol (another sugar substitute). My guess is they're trying to wean their customers away from the aspartame flavor before any of them get cancer or something.
Oh, and if you're wondering how aspartame got through the FDA, you really should look into it. It's so sketchy it'll make you sick.
Dan Lyons - notorious anti-Free Software disinformation specialist
I would not say that's a fair description. His most famous article is the prescient 1999 Red Hat article in which he states that Red Hat is a great business venture and M$ is on the slow, declining power curve.
Forbes is a great magazine and usually tends to think outside the box about things. That's not always good, but in this case, it certainly was. 1999 was not the smartest year to call M$ a loser.
Oh wait, it won't matter because surely they will be raptured up long before then. Right?
Yep, any day now... Like right.. *NOW!*... Wait, Ok, guess not... what about... *NOW!*... alright but that doesn't mean it's not going happen *NOW!* Oh well it was obvious it wasn't going to be then, because we have Nostradamus' prediction that the world will end in the year--... oh wait, that has already passed... Well Newton says it's gonna be in 2060, and if he's wrong, we can probably dig up some other doom-sayers as well.
Eventually, someone's bound to get it right. You may as well hold your breath, it's neigh I tells ya! THE END IS NEIGH!!
And just how many websites use transparent PNGs (let alone PNGs in general)?
Well, to start off, this website uses PNGs.
Transparent PNGs are AWESOME. They're they only way to overlay alpha graphics in web pages. They allow you to save time both in writing the page and loading it if you want to have a neat looking page.
Say you have a website with a repeating pattern for a background and you want a foreground image to perfectly blend in with that background. Without transparent PNGS, you can use GIFs--whose pixels can either be "opaque" or "transparent", no translucency allowed--or you can make a huge image with both the background pattern and the overlay image combined, which would take forever to load.
Not many websites use transparent PNGs as a direct result of IE6 not directly supporting them. There is no reason, other than IE6, that transparent PNGs are not more common.
On some of the pages I've made, I've gone through great lengths to make alpha PNGs work in IE6 because they are just that useful. Ironically, it was Apple who discovered the best way to fix PNGs in IE (using CSS and a.htc file), here is something based on that, which I use on most of my sites.
Old: Download a hunk of HTML. Browser renders it. If the ISP's spotty (maybe the setup of that HTTP transaction fails 5% of the time), then one out of 20 times you don't get any HTML to render. So you reload and all's well. New: Download a hunk of HTML. Download a separate.css file, or two, or three, or four, sometimes from the same server, other times from some other server. If the ISP flakes out on you 5% of the time, and you have 5 different files to download, then (.95^5 = 0.76) about one time out of four, you get nothing, and have to reload.
If the ISP flakes out 5% of the time, somebody needs a new ISP.
Caching CSS files and using CSS effectively can make the total code smaller and, since.css files are cached, drastically decrease future load times. So the page is smaller now, and requires yet even less downloading later.
Old: Javashit is a security risk. New: Javashit is still a security risk, but we'll make damn sure that none of our content renders correctly unless you turn it on, because how else are we going to run our browser-detection script that determines which of the half-dozen stylesheets (see above) we want your browser to use.
'Javashit' is what allows web pages to function as cross-platform software applications without having to rewrite. Though coding for 5 web browsers at once is a bitch, it's a price I pay gladly.
Also, the evolution of the internet into 'efficiency' and 'efficacy' using javascript and CSS isn't nearly as big a problem as all the different browsers interpreting the code differently.
Christ, you have to upgrade to IE7 just to get transparent PNGs to work correctly (unless you work around it).
Old: Any font you like, as long as it's Helvetica, Courier, or Times Roman. But it'll be the version of Helvetica, Courier, and Times Roman that your OS designers knew would look good with its engine, at the sizes that look good on your display device. New: Any font you like, as long as you're running the same DPI on your monitor as the web designer was running on his screen. If not, it'll look about two sizes too small, or two sizes too large. But it'll never look like the "right" default font that the pre-CSS browser would default to.
Uh in CSS you can change the sizes of items based on pixels and 'em' (not sure what that means). Basically, 'em' scales the dimensions based on font size, so you can zoom in on a page and have the elements change size as well.
As far as the new way of dealing with fonts and the problems with differing DPI's.. wouldn't that be the case in the old way as well?
Yeah, let's just go ahead and bitch about how people have multiple monitors and 30" displays now--things were so much better when 1024x768 was the biggest you had to worry about.
Also, having vector-based elements such as flash can up-scale sites to any resolution while keeping elements the same size (called resolution independence). Nobody seems to be doing much of that though.
Old way: Simple pages which take forever to load and have few fonts New way: Complex pages which require good programmers to setup, some of whom are inconsiderate to users of rare resolutions/browsers.
My very first thought when I read the headline was, 'If whales live so long, we should not be hunting them. They probably have a very finite rate of reproduction, their numbers are low and getting lower, and we're even killing the old ones.' I wish we would stop killing whales.
It's true, estimated whale populations have been declining, but are estimates really accurate?
People used to think that there were only a tiny amount of Giant squid--maybe in the thousands--worldwide.
When whales eat giant squid, the squid beaks are indigestible and remain in the whales stomach for its entire life (they are relatively tiny).
One day, a rather large whale washed up on a beach (I believe in cali). An autopsy and examination of the stomach revealed not hundreds but thousands of beaks. Magically, oceanographers reversed their view and decided that there are probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of giant squid.
People in general really don't realize just how big the ocean is.
1) Take all the land in the world--every country and every continent (India, China, I mean EVERYWHERE) 2) Multiply times 2.4 to get the ocean's the area of SURFACE 3) Multiply times the average depth of the ocean.
For those who are too lazy, I'll spare you the time: 323 MILLION cubic MILES (1.3 BILLION km^3).
4) Get over it: we know DICK about what's going on in the ocean. Pretending we can project anything whose habitat is as big as a whales is really just jibber jabber.
Yes, I agree, we should probably keep whaling in check. However, to say that we know just how much damage we've done is ridiculous.
and don't forget that you can just right click the non-DRM file now and convert to another format that DOES NOT have your user information embedded in it. it's a very simple, fast process for the paranoid.
Also, don't forget that you can now legally delete said information from the file legally, since it's not bypassing DRM.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps this could be because they are already satisfied with the versions of Windows that they have? At least satisfied enough that they will put off upgrading and spending all that money until a few years from now.
Whatever.
I read a statistic a few years ago that said 60+% of companies wouldn't be upgrading to M$' new licensing scheme which had been released at the time. Among other things, it required businesses to upgrade to Windows XP (presumably from 2k).
Guess what? Most did. Linux and OS X are still not viable options for many businesses. We'll see how it goes when Vista finally matures.
They release both paper dust and toner dust. I've known people who've gotten several sinus infections over their tenure near large print/shred stations (several B/W and color printers, fax, fine grain shredders.)
That's one explanation. The BBC also says that "particle levels rise" during work hours... note that it doesn't specify the type of particles... well here are some other explanations:
1. Perfumes worn by employees
2. Dead skin (which is what 'dust' usually is)
3. Particulates stirred up by people walking around
4. Higher speed air due to cooling/heating systems which release and stir up dust
Does this remind anyone of "WiFi in schools causes cancer! Cell towers cause even more!" This was yet another BBC scare-story.
I can't believe anyone even reads the BBC's science and technology articles, especially after that.
They don't want to have every PS3 impounded and destroyed. They want MONEY. By pushing for nuclear option they hope Sony will pay them off.
I think it's more along the lines of making headlines so people will take notice of their crappy company before the suit gets thrown out.
How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's cost?
...
AWESOME! They're going to pass their savings onto me, right!?
This reminds me of Soviet Russia or a dictatorship. Having a political "officer" involved in every decision. This is why we hire experts, educate people, etc.
Imagine that: politicians in government.
The directive, according to TFA, "bans any regulation from moving forward without the approval of an agency's regulatory policy officer, who would be a political appointee."
Uh, isn't this a good thing? The alternative would be some guy hired for the job by some random person. This guy would have no accountability to anybody but his boss, who could also have little accountability.
This new directive will make politicians who appoint these people responsible for the actions of the department.
Regulation shouldn't move forward unless our elected officials say so. I'm shocked this wasn't in place before. I really hope they don't have any more agencies where this is necessary.
I mean, imagine a person writing regulations that affect your life who aren't even accountable to the person you voted for. Yes, it's bad to give the president more power, but if there's regulation happening, I want it under someone directly or indirectly accountable to the people. Having them appointed by an elected official is good enough. If it were up to me, I wouldn't even have most of these agencies, but since everyone loves government these days, I'll settle for accountability.
I think this group who wrote the article (UCS) is pretty obviously writing this article because they fear Bush (and specifically Bush, look at their site) will use this power to further bring this government away from environmental protection. That's a valid concern, but you can't have it both ways: either the government can regulate the environment, or they can't.
If you want to grant the government the power to mess things up, you have to accept that the people you elect may use that power.
Ok, let me rephrase that. I will not become illegal to use P2P, but the only way for colleges to stop the illegal transfer of data through P2P is to disallow them, essentially resulting in the same.
There's still a big difference.
Though I wonder, since the DMCA clearly states that ISPs are not accountable for their users' actions, how the gov't intends to reconcile that and these new laws, or if they're going to simply tell ISPs to regulate their own traffic. This is a lot bigger than the universities.
If comcast is forced to 'implement plans to curb illegal p2p', you can bet bad things will happen; more so than have occurred before with the 'track and sue' **AA death-squad. We're talking about ISPs monitoring your traffic, possibly even logging it. After they log it, the FBI (or whoever) could get a warrant to view it (or no warrant, depending on if they feel 'sossy').
Eventually, like AT&T's phone records, these logs would be given directly to the government no questions asked, and there's nothing you could do about it.
After all, what are you going to do? Vote republican?
You clearly have no clue what you're talking about. Saying Indie Rock is analogous to 'Emo' is like saying Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club is Death Metal.
"Indy Rock" technically means ANY music from the 'Rock' super-genre that is signed to a label not directly owned by the handful of big record companies.
I know a great assortment of emos, and trust me, they all call their 'screamo' and slow, sensitive cry-baby emo rock 'indie' (indy). This is sometimes even contrary to the publisher of the music; sometimes the 'indy' band is really contracted directly to one of the megamusic companies.
To say that indy rock is different from regular rock musically is actually a as-great a distortion of musical taxonomy as saying all indy is emo.
"Indy", in truth, shouldn't even imply any particular style of music. However, it is, I'm afraid, a colloquialism in the 'emo' community for emo and screamo music.
If you listen to independent music and it's not emo, I'd suggest calling it something other than 'indy'. It's sort of like when gay people stole the 'rainbow' color scheme and Apple had to change their logo.
Many people who would normally watch 6 hours of TV a day are now using myspace for a similar amount of time.
I'd say myspace has already disrupted television and will continue to do so, since a large portion of hours of television watched are these kids who are now using myspace.
Comparing the two, it's hard to say which is worse. Customizing your myspace and/or writing in a blog can help one practice essential computer savvy and writing skills, whereas TV has the benefit of not being plagued with emos.
It also could be argued that myspace 'comments'--which take up most of the average myspace user's time--actually diminish writing skills and intelligence (seriously, read somebody's comments; anybody).
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to comb my hair over my forehead at an angle and take subtly sad photos of myself from a downward angle and blog about how 'indy rock' (emo) is 'the only joy in my desilate, sole-crushing, nitemarish, interminible, bleak, black, life.' [sic.]
The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 5,051 in your whole lifetime. To give you some perspective, you're 5 times more likely to drown, 23 times more likely to fall to your death, and 60 times more likely to die in a car accident.
Therefore, a far more useful article would be "How to survive driving off a seaside cliff into the ocean."
It'd be a bitch to try and install two or three PCI tuner cards in one for a mythtv setup, and pretty few laptops come with digital audio out, much less HDMI ports.
You know HDMI is exactly the same as DVI except HDMI has audio and no VGA.
You can buy a cable online for $10 with DVI at one end and HDMI on the other.
As far as digital audio.. yeah, you're on your own.
The UASPA, which DID get passed is the law that began the rise of the police state mentality we now labor under.
Surely, you're joking.
But alas, I've written this rant before.
And, finally, lets not forget about the USA PATRIOT act. That passed in 1 night in response to 9/11, and I'm sure my fellow Slashdotters will agree that it was brimming with righteousness and justice. Thank christ Congress acted quickly on that one.
Most if not all of the components of the Patriot Act had been previously written and people had been trying to tack it onto other legislation for years.
For as much as the Patriot Act gets the blame for all our "rights lost" in the past 6 years, it really was just a short piece of literature that merely 'connected the dots' on all this other crap that we had already established.
For example, the FISA (Foriegn Intelligence Surveillance Act) court was handing out secret warrants without accountability since Reagan created it in the 1980's. The Patriot Act simply turned that court against American citizens. Just one tiny change in wording can have profound effects.
Government moves slowly, but much of the time methodically, in taking away individual liberty.
But that only tells us what the market is willing to bear (what the fuel is worth), not the true costs of production.
Actually, it's especially easy with gas. The 'demand curve' is so steep, usually quantity demanded remains very constant regardless of price (at least, in the short term, obviously).
This is noted by gas taxes: the burden is almost entirely bore by the consumer, so an extra 18 cent tax adds nearly 18 cents to the price of gas because the companies know we'll pay it. In addition from gas taxes end up being nearly proportional to the rate.
Compare this with something like cigarettes taxes: The companies actually reduce the price of cigarettes and end up paying (I'm guessing here, from my days as a smoker) roughly half of the tax. This is directly related to the demand curve and the nature of the market. In addition, revenues are not nearly proportional to the tax rate increase because people generally do buy many fewer cigarettes when they cost more. The companies have to balance the tax burden with their loss of revenues, and they hire really smart guys to do this.
By the way, the emboldened words in this post are there to indicate trends and averages.
Aspartame is evil. When ingested, it breaks down into several components, one of which is methanol, which further breaks down into formaldehyde and formic acid, a component of bee and ant sting venom. So after poisoning yourself, you'll be nicely preserved.
Yes, I know, I did a report on it for my Organic Chemistry class.
It doesn't exactly turn into methanol, by the way. However, the methyl ester in aspartame ends up being digested the same way. It turns out, the reason methanol causes blindness, death, and other uncool things, is because of the way it's metabolized. This is why when you drink the moonshine and go to the hospital, they pump you full of ethanol--to occupy your metabolite pathways while they remove the methanol another way.
Searle (the patent holder of aspartame), pointed out that fruit such as apples contained much more methanol than a can of coke. What they didn't mention was that the naturally-occurring pectin contained within fruit increases the absorption time by hours if not days (much of it does not get absorbed). In fact, it would be nearly impossible to overdose on the methanol in apples because of this. Aspartame, on the other hand, is usually fully absorbed in minutes... unless you're drinking Coca-Cola's new flavor: ChunkyCoke, with fiber!
The other two ingredients that Aspartame turns into when digested are naturally-occurring as well, but it's the same story: too much too fast. Phenylalanine penetrates the blood-brain barrier easily. This makes aspartame dangerous to fetuses or even children who are intolerant to phenylalanine due to a not-uncommon condition called phenylketonuria (PKU). It's common sense that you don't want a chemical imbalance of any type occurring within the brain.
It's hard to fight common sense, and that's why aspartame is quietly being removed from chewing gum. Often, gum will have aspartame and sorbitol (another sugar substitute). My guess is they're trying to wean their customers away from the aspartame flavor before any of them get cancer or something.
Oh, and if you're wondering how aspartame got through the FDA, you really should look into it. It's so sketchy it'll make you sick.
Nothing says, "Thanks for inventing blogging!" like taking down your server
If they did invent blogging, that's certainly how I'd repay them.
buzzing in my head, hot flash, sweating, tightness in the chest, congested feeling
Sounds more like aspartame (NutraSweet). MSG can do that too to some extent, but it's rare.
I would not say that's a fair description. His most famous article is the prescient 1999 Red Hat article in which he states that Red Hat is a great business venture and M$ is on the slow, declining power curve.
Forbes is a great magazine and usually tends to think outside the box about things. That's not always good, but in this case, it certainly was. 1999 was not the smartest year to call M$ a loser.
Oh wait, it won't matter because surely they will be raptured up long before then. Right?
.. *NOW!*... Wait, Ok, guess not... what about... *NOW!*... alright but that doesn't mean it's not going happen *NOW!* Oh well it was obvious it wasn't going to be then, because we have Nostradamus' prediction that the world will end in the year--... oh wait, that has already passed... Well Newton says it's gonna be in 2060, and if he's wrong, we can probably dig up some other doom-sayers as well.
Yep, any day now... Like right
Eventually, someone's bound to get it right. You may as well hold your breath, it's neigh I tells ya! THE END IS NEIGH!!
You'd have to think they've got some sort of business model worked out if they've progressed to the point of selling to customers.
Or it's a dead end that has no commercial value and will probably only be used in research.
That'd be my guess; the oil used to make plastic isn't that expensive... yet.
And just how many websites use transparent PNGs (let alone PNGs in general)?
.htc file), here is something based on that, which I use on most of my sites.
Well, to start off, this website uses PNGs.
Transparent PNGs are AWESOME. They're they only way to overlay alpha graphics in web pages. They allow you to save time both in writing the page and loading it if you want to have a neat looking page.
Say you have a website with a repeating pattern for a background and you want a foreground image to perfectly blend in with that background. Without transparent PNGS, you can use GIFs--whose pixels can either be "opaque" or "transparent", no translucency allowed--or you can make a huge image with both the background pattern and the overlay image combined, which would take forever to load.
Not many websites use transparent PNGs as a direct result of IE6 not directly supporting them. There is no reason, other than IE6, that transparent PNGs are not more common.
On some of the pages I've made, I've gone through great lengths to make alpha PNGs work in IE6 because they are just that useful. Ironically, it was Apple who discovered the best way to fix PNGs in IE (using CSS and a
If the ISP flakes out 5% of the time, somebody needs a new ISP.
Caching CSS files and using CSS effectively can make the total code smaller and, since
'Javashit' is what allows web pages to function as cross-platform software applications without having to rewrite. Though coding for 5 web browsers at once is a bitch, it's a price I pay gladly.
Also, the evolution of the internet into 'efficiency' and 'efficacy' using javascript and CSS isn't nearly as big a problem as all the different browsers interpreting the code differently.
Christ, you have to upgrade to IE7 just to get transparent PNGs to work correctly (unless you work around it).
Uh in CSS you can change the sizes of items based on pixels and 'em' (not sure what that means). Basically, 'em' scales the dimensions based on font size, so you can zoom in on a page and have the elements change size as well.
As far as the new way of dealing with fonts and the problems with differing DPI's.. wouldn't that be the case in the old way as well?
Yeah, let's just go ahead and bitch about how people have multiple monitors and 30" displays now--things were so much better when 1024x768 was the biggest you had to worry about.
Also, having vector-based elements such as flash can up-scale sites to any resolution while keeping elements the same size (called resolution independence). Nobody seems to be doing much of that though.
Old way: Simple pages which take forever to load and have few fonts
New way: Complex pages which require good programmers to setup, some of whom are inconsiderate to users of rare resolutions/browsers.
I am sympathetic to the plight of peoples whose culture have been so heavily influenced by outsiders, and their way of life being so changed.
So you're sympathetic to... Everybody?
My very first thought when I read the headline was, 'If whales live so long, we should not be hunting them. They probably have a very finite rate of reproduction, their numbers are low and getting lower, and we're even killing the old ones.' I wish we would stop killing whales.
It's true, estimated whale populations have been declining, but are estimates really accurate?
People used to think that there were only a tiny amount of Giant squid--maybe in the thousands--worldwide.
When whales eat giant squid, the squid beaks are indigestible and remain in the whales stomach for its entire life (they are relatively tiny).
One day, a rather large whale washed up on a beach (I believe in cali). An autopsy and examination of the stomach revealed not hundreds but thousands of beaks. Magically, oceanographers reversed their view and decided that there are probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of giant squid.
People in general really don't realize just how big the ocean is.
1) Take all the land in the world--every country and every continent (India, China, I mean EVERYWHERE)
2) Multiply times 2.4 to get the ocean's the area of SURFACE
3) Multiply times the average depth of the ocean.
For those who are too lazy, I'll spare you the time: 323 MILLION cubic MILES (1.3 BILLION km^3).
4) Get over it: we know DICK about what's going on in the ocean. Pretending we can project anything whose habitat is as big as a whales is really just jibber jabber.
Yes, I agree, we should probably keep whaling in check. However, to say that we know just how much damage we've done is ridiculous.
and don't forget that you can just right click the non-DRM file now and convert to another format that DOES NOT have your user information embedded in it. it's a very simple, fast process for the paranoid.
Also, don't forget that you can now legally delete said information from the file legally, since it's not bypassing DRM.
>When all the data are used,
Let it be noted where the article submitter is from...
Data is the plural of datum. A datum is a piece of information.