If you want something that's not tied into some specific hardware (ala Tivo) but that still provides free monthly listings, and the ability to extend it with your own code, try out SageTV. It works on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and is extremely easy to set up. It's stable, and has great support. Oh, and as per the point of this post, it include free TV listings.
The difference between "Evil" and "Not Evil" is only a matter of opinion. Some people would say all ads are evil. Others, text ads are acceptable. Others, would say images with no video. Some would say video is fine, as long as they don't display it overlayed on the content. Other people would have no problem with any ads.
Would humans be smart enough to not create a machine that is smarter than us, and could theoretically destroy us? Or would humans build it just because they can and who cares about the consequences, as has been the case with so many other technologies. It reminds me of a story about a particle accelerator that was so advanced, that it may have been possible for it to create a black hole. Apparently people were going to go ahead and build/use it anyway. I'm not sure how much danger this actually put anybody in, or if it was just a sensationalist story, but it kind of makes you think. If humans developed and built thousands of nuclear bombs, which have the ability to destroy us all, what's to stop us from building an ultraintelligent machine that may wipe us all out, just because we have the ability to. With these machines, would we even be aware how dangerous they were until it was too late?
Which really makes a lot of sense. Humans show compassion. Lions, tigers and other less intelligent animals do not. They just eat their prey, and don't give a second thought to it. Many humans have some compassion for the animals which died for their meal. Some to the point where they won't eat animals. There's no vegetarian Lions because they just hunt out of instinct and feel no compassion.
Just because somebody can verify the code, doesn't mean I want to spend days/weeks looking through all the code in a newly downloaded program, just to verify that it isn't doing something I don't want it to, and hope that I didn't miss anything in the millions of lines of code. Do most people who use Gentoo even bother reading more than 1% of the code? Sure it's good after the fact if you find malware that you can pin it on someone, but the best way to deal with this stuff is don't run software from untrusted sources, regardless of whether or not it's open source. I'd much rather run most of my stuff out of some sort of sandbox, at least the stuff that isn't speed critical (like RDBMSs and such) so that I can monitor what they are trying to do. Things such as going on the internet should be flagged, as well as writing to certain folders. Think of it like a firewall, only for all conceivably bad actions, not just network traffic.
I grew up in a small town, and was used to driving on very dark roads. When I went to university, I went to the city. I borrowed a friends car once, and drove around for about 10 minutes before I realized that the headlights weren't on. I was so used to driving around on dark roads, that just the light from the street lights seemed like more than enough light to be driving.
The villain's ship in the 1997 James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies was based on Sea Shadow although the movie version of the ship had geometric features that would make it non-stealthy. The ship in the movie also appeared to have an interior larger than its exterior. Due to its shape, the Sea Shadow's interior is actually rather small and cramped compared to the size of the ship.
That just really made me laugh. The kind of thing that makes wikipedia much better than any other encyclopedia, such as Britannica.
I've personally never seen any memory problems with firefox. Currently I have about 15 tabs open between 2 windows, and it's been running for about a week. I hibernate my machine at night, so it's easier to resume work the next morning without restarting a whole bunch of programs. Currently it's only using 120 MB of memory. I suspect that all the rampant memory usage is due to some plugin that I don't use (although I use a lot of them). I think I remember it going up to 1 Gig of memory once, and that was because I left a web page open overnight, where some developer kept on creating new DOM elements every few seconds. Stuff like that the browser can't protect against. Or maybe they could monitor how much memory a page is using, and limit that to some sane amount.
I would also like to say 2 words. "Web Developer". That's all. As a web developer, the web developer plugin makes web development so much easier. If there's a rendering bug, or something else on Firefox, then I don't worry about it too much, because I know it will be easy to fix. Change a cookie value, see hidden form values, edit HTML and CSS and see the results instantly, without reloading the page. I know that there's "web developer" plugins for IE and such, but I have yet to see one with the functionality and ease of use of the firefox one. And that is the reason I'll continue to use Firefox as my main browser, until something beats them on this front.
It is easier to do layout with tables. The first time anyway. Then if you want to change your layout, you mostly have to start all over from scratch (depending on how much you want the layout changed). It really depends on your needs. If you don't plan on ever changing your design, or it has to look exactly the same on every browser, down to the pixel, then tables are probably the way to go. However, if you want a layout that can be easily changed, and don't really care about if things are 1 pixel different on different browsers, then it's probably best to use CSS. Also, even with table layouts, for layouts that are sufficiently complicated, I've often had to resort to hacks and such to make the layout work in all browsers. So either way you're going to have to do browser specific hacks. Also, sometimes, not always, but sometimes, it's a result of not knowing CSS well enough, or getting bad information on how to do things properly. One example you see all the time, is someone asking how to set the same styles on every cell in a table. There's two solutions as follows.
Option 1.
Inside each <td>, put <td class="foo">
Then define your style as so.
td.foo { padding: 3px; }
Option 2. (the right solution that never seems to get mentioned.
In your <table> element, use <table class="bar">
Then define your style as so.
table.bar td{ padding: 2px; }
So while you might see a lot of solutions that are quite convoluted, but work, there might be a much easier way to accomplish the exact same thing.
Kind of like Sony. They make some great portable digital music players. Good battery life. Lots of features. Good Price. The problem is they load them up with so much DRM and Sony proprietary flash media formats and Sony Atrac that nobody wants to use, that it makes them completely unusable.
So, with the cost of registered mail, as well as all the time you spent (8 months) getting that rebate, was it really worth the $50? If you had just paid the extra $50 and got a comparable product, without the rebate, you probably would have had much more time to enjoy whatever it was you bought, instead of running around chasing rebates.
My biggest pet peeve with rebates (other than not receiving them) is that in Ontario, we have 14% sales tax. And we have to pay sales tax, and don't get it refunded on the amount of the rebate. This can add up to quite a bit ($14 on a $100 rebate for those who can't do math). Whereas if they just take the rebate amount off the extra purchase price, then you don't have to pay the tax.
You'd have to look at how much actual reading or writing to the drive is done by a computer from that era. Currently, hard drive space is really cheap, so we write lots of stuff to the disk, like temp files, log files, swap out programs, and even with some filesystems and operating systems write to the drive every time a file is accessed. A computer from that era wouldn't be writing so much stuff too the hard drive, as hard drives were small and expensive. It would likely only write to the drive when you need a program to save actual human created data, or when you install a new program. Reading would only be done when you start up the computer, a new program, or load a file.
I'm not sure about the Mandriva Repositories, which are quite large, but once you use Easy URPMI to add the contrib and PLF sources, then I don't think there's a piece of software that I haven't been able to find.
I've been using Mandriva for 6 years and I am thoroughly unimpressed with Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, and all the other Linux distros that seem to be garnering so much attention. Ubuntu especially unimpresses me because it's supposed to be some big jump in desktop usability, but doesn't seem to offer anything that Mandriva doesn't offer, and actually tends to be lacking in quite a few areas.
Except Zelda, Twilight Princess. I'm 40 hours into the game, and there's no end in sight. And you can't accomplish anything unless you plan on spending at least 1 hour, probably close to 2 hours.
They say that shows like Sesame Street are really bad for this, because they consist entirely of 30 second commercials for things such as "the letter T" or "The Number 7". Shows which contain an actual story for them to follow, like Dora the Explorer, tend to be much less harmful to their attention spans. What I like is that most kids shows on PBS, Treehouse, and other networks tend to be commercial free, because they've found that most parents don't want their kids subjected to so much advertising.
Yes they are. But once you bring driver quality and stability into the equation, then Intel wins hands down. I'd rather have a slower video card that actually works, than a fast one that doesn't. Also, unless you are playing games, you won't notice the speed difference. Even if you're running a 3D desktop.
Exactly. I got a laptop with an Intel GMA. Not a powerful video chip, but it has enough power to do all that 3D desktop stuff. And there was no fuss getting drivers. No extra stuff to download. No configuration to do. Everything just worked. For all my new computers (for the foreseeable future, until other graphics cards manufacturers release good open source drivers), they will all be using Intel GMA, because these video chips are good enough for my uses, and the drivers are extremely solid. If I want to play video games, I'll use my console (Wii).
Plus what happens when code is shared between developers. Does the ignore list on spellings get stored in the repository with the rest of the code? What happens with some developer checks in a list with some words added that shouldn't be there?
Why not just mount everything except/home in readonly mode. That way you can actually boot off a hard drive, speeding up the system. It would also allow you to have a user account for each person, so that they could have bookmarks, different home pages, and customized settings such as font size. Make sure that the permissions on each person's home directory are such that they can't write to eachother's directory, and you're set. If something happens to one person's settings, just wipe it clean, and they can start over. You might want to schedule weekly backups so they don't lose everything.
Now if only the wii browser supported a USB or Wireless (via bluetooth) keyboard. Seriously Nintendo. It wouldn't be that hard. Just give us a keyboard. While the browser works quite well, It sucks not being able to use it to type up a quick email.
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If you want something that's not tied into some specific hardware (ala Tivo) but that still provides free monthly listings, and the ability to extend it with your own code, try out SageTV. It works on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and is extremely easy to set up. It's stable, and has great support. Oh, and as per the point of this post, it include free TV listings.
The difference between "Evil" and "Not Evil" is only a matter of opinion. Some people would say all ads are evil. Others, text ads are acceptable. Others, would say images with no video. Some would say video is fine, as long as they don't display it overlayed on the content. Other people would have no problem with any ads.
Would humans be smart enough to not create a machine that is smarter than us, and could theoretically destroy us? Or would humans build it just because they can and who cares about the consequences, as has been the case with so many other technologies. It reminds me of a story about a particle accelerator that was so advanced, that it may have been possible for it to create a black hole. Apparently people were going to go ahead and build/use it anyway. I'm not sure how much danger this actually put anybody in, or if it was just a sensationalist story, but it kind of makes you think. If humans developed and built thousands of nuclear bombs, which have the ability to destroy us all, what's to stop us from building an ultraintelligent machine that may wipe us all out, just because we have the ability to. With these machines, would we even be aware how dangerous they were until it was too late?
Which really makes a lot of sense. Humans show compassion. Lions, tigers and other less intelligent animals do not. They just eat their prey, and don't give a second thought to it. Many humans have some compassion for the animals which died for their meal. Some to the point where they won't eat animals. There's no vegetarian Lions because they just hunt out of instinct and feel no compassion.
Just because somebody can verify the code, doesn't mean I want to spend days/weeks looking through all the code in a newly downloaded program, just to verify that it isn't doing something I don't want it to, and hope that I didn't miss anything in the millions of lines of code. Do most people who use Gentoo even bother reading more than 1% of the code? Sure it's good after the fact if you find malware that you can pin it on someone, but the best way to deal with this stuff is don't run software from untrusted sources, regardless of whether or not it's open source. I'd much rather run most of my stuff out of some sort of sandbox, at least the stuff that isn't speed critical (like RDBMSs and such) so that I can monitor what they are trying to do. Things such as going on the internet should be flagged, as well as writing to certain folders. Think of it like a firewall, only for all conceivably bad actions, not just network traffic.
I grew up in a small town, and was used to driving on very dark roads. When I went to university, I went to the city. I borrowed a friends car once, and drove around for about 10 minutes before I realized that the headlights weren't on. I was so used to driving around on dark roads, that just the light from the street lights seemed like more than enough light to be driving.
I misread it as "spider-like Cartman". Now that would make a good episode of South Park.
I've personally never seen any memory problems with firefox. Currently I have about 15 tabs open between 2 windows, and it's been running for about a week. I hibernate my machine at night, so it's easier to resume work the next morning without restarting a whole bunch of programs. Currently it's only using 120 MB of memory. I suspect that all the rampant memory usage is due to some plugin that I don't use (although I use a lot of them). I think I remember it going up to 1 Gig of memory once, and that was because I left a web page open overnight, where some developer kept on creating new DOM elements every few seconds. Stuff like that the browser can't protect against. Or maybe they could monitor how much memory a page is using, and limit that to some sane amount.
I would also like to say 2 words. "Web Developer". That's all. As a web developer, the web developer plugin makes web development so much easier. If there's a rendering bug, or something else on Firefox, then I don't worry about it too much, because I know it will be easy to fix. Change a cookie value, see hidden form values, edit HTML and CSS and see the results instantly, without reloading the page. I know that there's "web developer" plugins for IE and such, but I have yet to see one with the functionality and ease of use of the firefox one. And that is the reason I'll continue to use Firefox as my main browser, until something beats them on this front.
Kind of like Sony. They make some great portable digital music players. Good battery life. Lots of features. Good Price. The problem is they load them up with so much DRM and Sony proprietary flash media formats and Sony Atrac that nobody wants to use, that it makes them completely unusable.
So, with the cost of registered mail, as well as all the time you spent (8 months) getting that rebate, was it really worth the $50? If you had just paid the extra $50 and got a comparable product, without the rebate, you probably would have had much more time to enjoy whatever it was you bought, instead of running around chasing rebates.
My biggest pet peeve with rebates (other than not receiving them) is that in Ontario, we have 14% sales tax. And we have to pay sales tax, and don't get it refunded on the amount of the rebate. This can add up to quite a bit ($14 on a $100 rebate for those who can't do math). Whereas if they just take the rebate amount off the extra purchase price, then you don't have to pay the tax.
You'd have to look at how much actual reading or writing to the drive is done by a computer from that era. Currently, hard drive space is really cheap, so we write lots of stuff to the disk, like temp files, log files, swap out programs, and even with some filesystems and operating systems write to the drive every time a file is accessed. A computer from that era wouldn't be writing so much stuff too the hard drive, as hard drives were small and expensive. It would likely only write to the drive when you need a program to save actual human created data, or when you install a new program. Reading would only be done when you start up the computer, a new program, or load a file.
I'm not sure about the Mandriva Repositories, which are quite large, but once you use Easy URPMI to add the contrib and PLF sources, then I don't think there's a piece of software that I haven't been able to find.
I've been using Mandriva for 6 years and I am thoroughly unimpressed with Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, and all the other Linux distros that seem to be garnering so much attention. Ubuntu especially unimpresses me because it's supposed to be some big jump in desktop usability, but doesn't seem to offer anything that Mandriva doesn't offer, and actually tends to be lacking in quite a few areas.
My 15 month old can do that. I find it very disturbing that a 6 year old could not do that, let alone an 11 year old.
They say that shows like Sesame Street are really bad for this, because they consist entirely of 30 second commercials for things such as "the letter T" or "The Number 7". Shows which contain an actual story for them to follow, like Dora the Explorer, tend to be much less harmful to their attention spans. What I like is that most kids shows on PBS, Treehouse, and other networks tend to be commercial free, because they've found that most parents don't want their kids subjected to so much advertising.
Yes they are. But once you bring driver quality and stability into the equation, then Intel wins hands down. I'd rather have a slower video card that actually works, than a fast one that doesn't. Also, unless you are playing games, you won't notice the speed difference. Even if you're running a 3D desktop.
Exactly. I got a laptop with an Intel GMA. Not a powerful video chip, but it has enough power to do all that 3D desktop stuff. And there was no fuss getting drivers. No extra stuff to download. No configuration to do. Everything just worked. For all my new computers (for the foreseeable future, until other graphics cards manufacturers release good open source drivers), they will all be using Intel GMA, because these video chips are good enough for my uses, and the drivers are extremely solid. If I want to play video games, I'll use my console (Wii).
Plus what happens when code is shared between developers. Does the ignore list on spellings get stored in the repository with the rest of the code? What happens with some developer checks in a list with some words added that shouldn't be there?
Why not just mount everything except /home in readonly mode. That way you can actually boot off a hard drive, speeding up the system. It would also allow you to have a user account for each person, so that they could have bookmarks, different home pages, and customized settings such as font size. Make sure that the permissions on each person's home directory are such that they can't write to eachother's directory, and you're set. If something happens to one person's settings, just wipe it clean, and they can start over. You might want to schedule weekly backups so they don't lose everything.
Now if only the wii browser supported a USB or Wireless (via bluetooth) keyboard. Seriously Nintendo. It wouldn't be that hard. Just give us a keyboard. While the browser works quite well, It sucks not being able to use it to type up a quick email.