I like the pretty pictures that the AC posted in the parent message, but here's a disclaimer boys and girls: These pictures are from the Mac OS D's Gallery of Fake Macs.
Yes, the images are lovely, but you have Photoshop to thank for them, not Apple.
Much to my surprise, I find myself seriously considering buying one of these $500 Macs.
I have wanted a Mac since I got to use one of the originals which was on display at Science North in Sudbury, Ontario the summer after their commercial release in 1984.
Price has always been the major sticking point. When I was thinking of upgrading my Commodore 128, I had a few choices. In the Time Before the Internet (for us home computer users), I wrote Apple and got brochures back for their two new models, the Mac SE and the Mac II. According to the price list that came with them, the cheaper Mac SE cost more than three times as much as a similarly equipped Commodore Amiga or Atart ST. Remember, all of these computers were roughly equivalent at the time.
In the 1990s, I started buying the horrid, commodity IBM PC clones, starting with 486s, and I have not changed since then. If Apple were to release a cheap Mac, I would be seriously tempted to buy it.
Why? Because my recent brushes with Apple hardware and software have been positive. I used iTunes on my PC to convert my CD collection to MP3s. Later, I bought a used 10GB second-generation iPod, and have been pleased with it too. After the front-page articles on Slashdot, I even have downloaded and run Mac OSX on my 2.5GHz 32-bit PC using Pear PC. The emulation was slow (the two times I tried it), but it did give me some idea of what a Mac is like.
So, now to my question: I have a favourite keyboard, an IBM ModelM. What kind of keyboard port is standard on Macs these days?
From my limited knowledge, I would guess that this new headless Mac would take a USB keyboard, in which case I would need some kind of USB to PS/2converter.
Does anyone have any experience with present-day Macs using IBM PS/2 keyboards?
The Microsoft Core Fonts [...]
Some people say these fonts are free only for who have a Microsoft Windows license.
Actually, according to Microsoft's licensing agreement, these fonts are only free for use with Microsoft Windows.
It does not matter if you have a Windows license or not, as the fonts are only to be used within Windows itself.
This was covered on Slashdot before, months or years ago in fact. Why won't the keepers of the new FAQ admit as much and let their readers decide what they want to do?
In my earlier post, the point I was making is this: There are some universal values which everyone the world over would agree furthers humanity.
A research in the mid-to-late 1990s did a comprehensive survey of different cultures and societies the world over, and came up with a list of universal human values. I must have read it in New Scientist, Discover Magazine, or Scientific American, but I could not find it tonight. (If you, dear reader, can provide a link to the research I am describing, I would appreciate it.)
What I did find is this Short List of Universal Human Values:
Commitment to something greater than oneself
Self-respect, but with humility, self-discipline, and acceptance of personal responsibility
Respect and caring for others
Caring for other living things and the environment
(Source: A Short List of Universal Moral Values. Therese M. Dautheribes, Jerry L. Kernes, Richard T. Kinnier. Counseling and Values. Volume 45, Issue 1, Page 4.)
That's the full list. The reason media conglomerates are having a hard time is because file sharers believe that they are acting in accordance with these values. To their eyes, it is the media companies that are the villains, using legal contortions to stop people from doing what they feel is good or beneficial to society at large.
Yes, the MPAA is acting on behalf of its members and copyright holders, ensuring that intellectual property is not distributed for free. They have the law on their side, and can probably buy or lobby anyone of importance that disagrees with them.
That said, I think the MPAA is fighting a losing battle. People like to share, to spread what little wealth and happiness they have around.
BitTorrent enables a system where people of like interests and hobbies can reward one another as they are connected to the same torrent. And yes, this includes both legitimate and illegitimate uses.
Sharing is part of human nature and any organization that throws its weight around in an attempt to circumvent our instinct to share will ultimately prove to be futile.
While DRM is disliked by end users, a DRM free system will never be launched.
I disagree completely, for two reasons.
My computer is my machine, and it is my fundamental right to manipulate the data on it. If anyone wants to run protected code that is walled off from me, they should be paying me for the right to do so.
If copyright holders make it more convenient to download from them than from pirates, free sites will win.
Take MP3s for example. I like them. They do not have any Digital Restriction Management abilities. (Sure, Fraunhofer owns the patents on them, while Ogg is free. I don't need the lecture.)
Let me elaborate on point #2. If Sony Music, for example, made their whole back catalog available as MP3s, would I sign up on a subscription or per song basis? You bet.
Right now, the P2P software is faster and more convenient than what the record companies are offering. If Sony Music's site completely saturated my download connection while feeding me MP3s, I'd sign up.
Record companies have to realize that it is not just the cost but the convenience of digital files that are responsible for their ever increasing popularity.
[...] there are a lot of other Internet-connected countries that have no interesting in being "harmonized" with the United States' brain-damaged copyright system (Canada, say... more power to them.)
If the federal government actually ratifies this treaty, a made-in-Canada Internet policy dies. Suddenly, intellectual property owners will issue threatening letters to ISPs, and ISPs will pull user accounts. This is the "notice and takedown" system so popular in the U.S., backed up by horrible laws like the DMCA.
If Canada wants to "solve" the problems of the Internet, it should be looking to find "Internet-native" solutions.
Canada's Internet laws should treat copying as a feature, not a bug. It should empirically evaluate which sectors are negatively impacted by file-sharing (mounting evidence suggests that almost none of the entertainment industry's woes can be blamed on the net) and then solve those industries' problems with blanket licenses and other tools that don't seek to regulate copying, something that's impossible to do without breaking the Internet.
Solutions that approach the Internet as a problem are no solutions at all.
The emphasis is mine, not Will's.
So, listen up Canadians: Find your MP's e-mail address and tell him or her that you oppose ratifying the WIPO treaty.
This is why I like the solution of machine generated, but human readable paper ballots. I think it can help cut down on ballot spoilage
I agree that machine generated but human readable paper ballots could reduce the number of spoiled ballots.
Acting as a Deputy Returning Officer in my province's last election, I remember finding two spoiled ballots out of the 224 in the ballot box I counted that night.
I live in a neighbourhood where 65% of the population are immigrants . With so many people whose first language isn't English and who probably think voting is still a new and novel thing, I still counted fewer than 1% in spoiled ballots.
I agree that computers could reduce this number further still, but I wonder if it is worth the effort of implementing installing machines to catch this 1%.
I actually have worked as an election official, so I can answer these questions for you.
Q1: What do your exection boards do when someone marks an X in BOTH spots? A1: This ballot is spoiled and is not counted.
Q2: What if someone puts a slash in one, and a slash in the other? A2: This ballot is spoiled and is not counted.
Q3: What if someone circles a candidate's name, and doesn't put an X? A3: This ballot is spoiled and is not counted.
Q4: What if on the 10th counting, the light pencil marks on a ballot have been smudged off completely? A4: When the ballots are counted, they are separated into separate piles, each pile for a separate candidate. Then each candidate's votes are put in an envelope and sealed.
Usually, if the votes are not contested, they will never be counted again. If the vote is contested, each of these envelopes is reopened and recounted. At this point a faint vote for a candidate will still be counted.
In general, the ballots see so little handling that the likelihood of the voter's intention being lost is exceedingly unlikely.
Q5: What if they just put a tiny dot in the middle of the first candidate's box (like they rested the pencil there), then didn't mark anything else in either? A5: The instructions state the voter must make an X, but it is actually left for the individual officials to make the decision if the ballot counts or not. The general guideline is to count the ballot according to the voter's intention. A misshapen X or a round dot would probably be approved, so long as no other mark could be found on the ballot.
I'm asking because this is the kind of nonsense that put Florida on the map 4 years ago. I agree, and they are good questions. In a tight election, a recount may be the best idea. Paper ballots do not do away with recounts in tightly-contested elections, but they do make vote counting very, very simple.
Before you write back saying that my answer to your first three questions (which was that the ballot is spoiled and is not counted) is unacceptable, ask yourself this: How hard is it to make a single, unambiguous mark (preferably an X as instructed) in a big white circle beside a candidate's name? And yes, to answer another question, for those people that have physical problems marking their ballot, they are allowed to bring an assistant or aide with them to mark their ballot.
Chuck Herrin's website is recommended reading for anyone concerned with the abuses possible with electronic voting.
My favourite excerpt is the following:
No less than 5 people [...] involved with the management and development of Diebold's systems are convicted felons, including Senior Vice President Jeff Dean, and topping the list are his twenty-three counts of felony Theft in the First Degree.
[...]
[Jeff Dean] was convicted of 23 felony counts of theft from by - get this - planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection.
Of course, there is no proof that these gentleman have continued their illegal ways. They could have become completely reformed, law-abiding citizens by the time they started work on the Diebold voting systems.
I have a low-tech solution to the voting problem: Use paper ballots.
Here is the process:
A voter arrives at their polling station.
An election official confirms that the voter is eligible to cast a ballot.
The official hands the voter a paper ballot and is told to make their choice in private behind a screen or inside a booth.
The voter takes the ballot, goes into the private area, and makes their choice by placing an X next to the candidate of their choice.
The voter returns with their folded ballot and deposits it into a sealed ballot box.
At the end of the night, the official opens the ballot box, tallies the totals for each candidate, and reports the totals to the main office conducting the election.
Elections held this way are simple and secure. There is no worry about paper trails or verification, because the ballots themselves are the proof.
As for the ballots themselves, they look something like this:
NAME OF POSITION BEING VOTED FOR
[ ] Joe BLOW The Name of Some Party
[ ] Somebody ELSE The Name of Some Other Party
I guess what I am trying to say is that elections do not need to be complicated by technology. The method I am proposing there depends on the ability of people to count, nothing else.
The method I propose here really works too. Where I live, it is the standard for both my provincial and federal elections.
I really hope that the voting method throughout every county in the U.S. is reformed. Personally, I know it is hard to accept election results when your preferred candidate loses, but at least where I live, I know that the vote itself was fair.
To ensure that videos are not locked into proprietary video formats, I wish the BBC the best of luck with their codec named Dirac. If I was any good at video compression algorithms, I would help them out.
On the Internet, No One Can Hear You Advertise
on
TV Piracy is Next
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· Score: 1
One of the biggest advantages of watching downloaded television shows is that the people who create these files usually edit out the ads.
An episode of The Simpsons, for example, usually runs between 20 and 22 minutes, including the intro and end credits. (I suppose you could skip both of these and save yourself an additional minute or two.)
Television is already such a big waste of time, why waste more with meaningless ads for productions you don't need?
TV Piracy for the TV-less
on
TV Piracy is Next
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· Score: 1, Interesting
none of these shows are available in the uk
In addition to geographic unavailability, another good reason that people download shows is that they don't own a television at all.
I offer myself as an example. About a year and a half ago, I realized that the only show I enjoyed was The Simpsons. The rest was a regrettable waste of time.
So I freed up space in my house by getting rid of the box itself, freed up personal time to do interesting things, and thanks to robotolabs' Simpsons torrents, I still get to watch this Sunday's episode of The Simpsons without having to wait the decade or so before it comes out on DVD.
SHHHHHHH! remember that the REAL first rule of Robot Fight Club is You do not talk about Robot Fight Club!
And the second rule of Robot Fight Club is You do not talk about Robot Fight Club!.
Still, to make this translation requires so many assumptions about the binary stream, it is a good illustration of how retrievable digital content will be in a few decades.
Imagine people asking: Hum, is that ASCII? Seven bit ASCII? Eight bit ASCII? EBCDIC? UNICODE? Man, are we ever going to be in trouble with encodings run amok.
When she was in technical college, one of my old girlfriends used to hang out with a couple of our fellow students who lived in a big, dirty, old, run-down apartment block that was absolutely infested with cockroaches.
Well, one day the microwave stopped working. This was a blow to these poor popcorn-fed students. Since they knew what Ohm's Law was and could identify a capacitor from a resistor, they decided to open the microwave up and fix it themselves.
They were not prepared for what they saw: All the open spaces inside the microwave where choked with cockroaches. Some were dead. Some were alive.
Worst of all, some cockroaches were three times larger than any of the openings they could find.
Although it's possible that they grew this big because of the relative safety and ample supply of dead cockroaches for food, I like to think that the radiation addled their DNA somehow.
Re:Good Review, Nice wander thru Memory Lane
on
Digital Retro
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· Score: 1
It was a great time because the people who were using computers were doing so because they were the coolest thing (the computers, not the people) in the entire world. They **wanted to understand them**. People who didn't want to understand them could just stay away from them.
I had been using computers for more than a decade when I bumped into a woman in her twenties in 1993 who said "Oh, I know everything about computers!"
From my computer experience up until then, I knew what she probably meant. Knowing computers meant programming them. It meant an understanding of BASIC at the least, and quite possibly assembly. It probably meant knowing about cables and pinouts, voltages and frequencies, hexadecimal and character maps.
She seemed so certain of her skills, I was awed, thinking myself fortunate to have found one of the computer elite.
But then I questioned her, and to my horror I learned that "knowing computers" involved booting hers and then being able to punch a few paragraphs into Microsoft Word for Windows.
Great, now I get all the mental enjoyment of Windows crashing with all the physical pain of my car crashing.
When Microsoft's embedded nonsense starts being adopted by the automotive industry, I will take public transit exclusively: Trains, planes, and subways are heavier than the Blue Cars of Death that will be swarming around me. I might even be able to commute without dying. Oh joy!
The only reason that the ratio of MP3 files to other music formats is falling happens to be human stupidity.
When MP3 files first broke on the next back in the 1990s, it took a certain amount of knowledge and work to convert audio files.
Now there are a thousand and one useless music converters that do the job. Some even do it well. But now that digitizing music has become common and popular, we are having to deal with the masses.
The masses, as always, are busy doing other things, and are completely ignorant of the importance of having a shared, DRM-less standard, which MP3 is. They don't care that they can't transfer their files completely at well. Worse, some are so clueless that they just assume that files with DRM are "natural".
These clueless people will be the death of us all.
Personally, I plan to be part of the resistance, and plan to keep creating and enjoying MP3s. Damn these locked down formats. They can go to hell.
P.S. Don't tell me about ogg. I tried it, and I disliked it.
P.P.S. Don't tell me that MP3 isn't an open standard and that Fraunhofer owns me. I don't care.
I think that any software development tool that liberates people from being users to active developers is a good thing.
I know that BASIC does not appeal to the Slashdot crowd, but what about those people who have never programmed before? If this program helps a few people write a small program or two on their own, I think it is a great deal.
Personally, I am excited by the Computer Programming for Everybody (CP4E) proposal that Guido van Rossum proposed a while back. I think everybody in the modern, western world could benefit from a rudimentary, working knowledge of computer programming, considering the ubiquity of computers and other programmed devices.
I agree with the parent post. If you want to learn a powerful, interpreted, object-oriented, easy-to-use programming language, then choose Python.
I would suggest that you use wxPython instead of Pythonwin though. Apps written with wxPython look like native Windows applications, but have the added advantage of being compatible with other operating systems too.
Part of their marketing campaign is to create an association with Google, so when you think Google, you think of whatever the heck their name is.
I know Google prides itself on not dirtily manipulating its search results, but I think they should make an exception in this case. I would like to see a search for this astroturfing corporate website (that is, www.tableausoftware.com) return these results:
Slashdot Mirror
I like the pretty pictures that the AC posted in the parent message, but here's a disclaimer boys and girls: These pictures are from the Mac OS D's Gallery of Fake Macs.
Yes, the images are lovely, but you have Photoshop to thank for them, not Apple.
Much to my surprise, I find myself seriously considering buying one of these $500 Macs.
I have wanted a Mac since I got to use one of the originals which was on display at Science North in Sudbury, Ontario the summer after their commercial release in 1984.
Price has always been the major sticking point. When I was thinking of upgrading my Commodore 128, I had a few choices. In the Time Before the Internet (for us home computer users), I wrote Apple and got brochures back for their two new models, the Mac SE and the Mac II. According to the price list that came with them, the cheaper Mac SE cost more than three times as much as a similarly equipped Commodore Amiga or Atart ST. Remember, all of these computers were roughly equivalent at the time.
In the 1990s, I started buying the horrid, commodity IBM PC clones, starting with 486s, and I have not changed since then. If Apple were to release a cheap Mac, I would be seriously tempted to buy it.
Why? Because my recent brushes with Apple hardware and software have been positive. I used iTunes on my PC to convert my CD collection to MP3s. Later, I bought a used 10GB second-generation iPod, and have been pleased with it too. After the front-page articles on Slashdot, I even have downloaded and run Mac OSX on my 2.5GHz 32-bit PC using Pear PC. The emulation was slow (the two times I tried it), but it did give me some idea of what a Mac is like.
So, now to my question: I have a favourite keyboard, an IBM Model M. What kind of keyboard port is standard on Macs these days?
From my limited knowledge, I would guess that this new headless Mac would take a USB keyboard, in which case I would need some kind of USB to PS/2 converter.
Does anyone have any experience with present-day Macs using IBM PS/2 keyboards?
Actually, according to Microsoft's licensing agreement, these fonts are only free for use with Microsoft Windows.
It does not matter if you have a Windows license or not, as the fonts are only to be used within Windows itself.
This was covered on Slashdot before, months or years ago in fact. Why won't the keepers of the new FAQ admit as much and let their readers decide what they want to do?
In my earlier post, the point I was making is this: There are some universal values which everyone the world over would agree furthers humanity.
A research in the mid-to-late 1990s did a comprehensive survey of different cultures and societies the world over, and came up with a list of universal human values. I must have read it in New Scientist, Discover Magazine, or Scientific American, but I could not find it tonight. (If you, dear reader, can provide a link to the research I am describing, I would appreciate it.)
What I did find is this Short List of Universal Human Values:
(Source: A Short List of Universal Moral Values. Therese M. Dautheribes, Jerry L. Kernes, Richard T. Kinnier. Counseling and Values. Volume 45, Issue 1, Page 4.)
That's the full list. The reason media conglomerates are having a hard time is because file sharers believe that they are acting in accordance with these values. To their eyes, it is the media companies that are the villains, using legal contortions to stop people from doing what they feel is good or beneficial to society at large.
the MPAA is co-operating in criminal investigations with police in Finland, the Netherlands and France, so it is reasonable to infer that reports of raids in more European countries are likely to surface shortly.
Yes, the MPAA is acting on behalf of its members and copyright holders, ensuring that intellectual property is not distributed for free. They have the law on their side, and can probably buy or lobby anyone of importance that disagrees with them.
That said, I think the MPAA is fighting a losing battle. People like to share, to spread what little wealth and happiness they have around.
BitTorrent enables a system where people of like interests and hobbies can reward one another as they are connected to the same torrent. And yes, this includes both legitimate and illegitimate uses.
Sharing is part of human nature and any organization that throws its weight around in an attempt to circumvent our instinct to share will ultimately prove to be futile.
I disagree completely, for two reasons.
- My computer is my machine, and it is my fundamental right to manipulate the data on it. If anyone wants to run protected code that is walled off from me, they should be paying me for the right to do so.
- If copyright holders make it more convenient to download from them than from pirates, free sites will win.
Take MP3s for example. I like them. They do not have any Digital Restriction Management abilities. (Sure, Fraunhofer owns the patents on them, while Ogg is free. I don't need the lecture.)Let me elaborate on point #2. If Sony Music, for example, made their whole back catalog available as MP3s, would I sign up on a subscription or per song basis? You bet.
Right now, the P2P software is faster and more convenient than what the record companies are offering. If Sony Music's site completely saturated my download connection while feeding me MP3s, I'd sign up.
Record companies have to realize that it is not just the cost but the convenience of digital files that are responsible for their ever increasing popularity.
This could all come to an end soon. The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage (CHPC) has recommended that Canada ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization's Copyright Treaty.
If the federal government actually ratifies this treaty, a made-in-Canada Internet policy dies. Suddenly, intellectual property owners will issue threatening letters to ISPs, and ISPs will pull user accounts. This is the "notice and takedown" system so popular in the U.S., backed up by horrible laws like the DMCA.
I agree with Will Pate on his blog:
The emphasis is mine, not Will's.
So, listen up Canadians: Find your MP's e-mail address and tell him or her that you oppose ratifying the WIPO treaty.
Non-Canadians can help too: E-mail the chair of the committee, Marlene Catterall and tell her that Canada has an obligation to help draft progressive policies for the betterment of the world.
This is why I like the solution of machine generated, but human readable paper ballots. I think it can help cut down on ballot spoilage
I agree that machine generated but human readable paper ballots could reduce the number of spoiled ballots.
Acting as a Deputy Returning Officer in my province's last election, I remember finding two spoiled ballots out of the 224 in the ballot box I counted that night.
I live in a neighbourhood where 65% of the population are immigrants . With so many people whose first language isn't English and who probably think voting is still a new and novel thing, I still counted fewer than 1% in spoiled ballots.
I agree that computers could reduce this number further still, but I wonder if it is worth the effort of implementing installing machines to catch this 1%.
I actually have worked as an election official, so I can answer these questions for you.
Q1: What do your exection boards do when someone marks an X in BOTH spots?
A1: This ballot is spoiled and is not counted.
Q2: What if someone puts a slash in one, and a slash in the other?
A2: This ballot is spoiled and is not counted.
Q3: What if someone circles a candidate's name, and doesn't put an X?
A3: This ballot is spoiled and is not counted.
Q4: What if on the 10th counting, the light pencil marks on a ballot have been smudged off completely?
A4: When the ballots are counted, they are separated into separate piles, each pile for a separate candidate. Then each candidate's votes are put in an envelope and sealed.
Usually, if the votes are not contested, they will never be counted again. If the vote is contested, each of these envelopes is reopened and recounted. At this point a faint vote for a candidate will still be counted.
In general, the ballots see so little handling that the likelihood of the voter's intention being lost is exceedingly unlikely.
Q5: What if they just put a tiny dot in the middle of the first candidate's box (like they rested the pencil there), then didn't mark anything else in either?
A5: The instructions state the voter must make an X, but it is actually left for the individual officials to make the decision if the ballot counts or not. The general guideline is to count the ballot according to the voter's intention. A misshapen X or a round dot would probably be approved, so long as no other mark could be found on the ballot.
I'm asking because this is the kind of nonsense that put Florida on the map 4 years ago.
I agree, and they are good questions. In a tight election, a recount may be the best idea. Paper ballots do not do away with recounts in tightly-contested elections, but they do make vote counting very, very simple.
Before you write back saying that my answer to your first three questions (which was that the ballot is spoiled and is not counted) is unacceptable, ask yourself this: How hard is it to make a single, unambiguous mark (preferably an X as instructed) in a big white circle beside a candidate's name? And yes, to answer another question, for those people that have physical problems marking their ballot, they are allowed to bring an assistant or aide with them to mark their ballot.
My favourite excerpt is the following:
Of course, there is no proof that these gentleman have continued their illegal ways. They could have become completely reformed, law-abiding citizens by the time they started work on the Diebold voting systems.
I have a low-tech solution to the voting problem: Use paper ballots.
Here is the process:
- A voter arrives at their polling station.
- An election official confirms that the voter is eligible to cast a ballot.
- The official hands the voter a paper ballot and is told to make their choice in private behind a screen or inside a booth.
- The voter takes the ballot, goes into the private area, and makes their choice by placing an X next to the candidate of their choice.
- The voter returns with their folded ballot and deposits it into a sealed ballot box.
At the end of the night, the official opens the ballot box, tallies the totals for each candidate, and reports the totals to the main office conducting the election.Elections held this way are simple and secure. There is no worry about paper trails or verification, because the ballots themselves are the proof.
As for the ballots themselves, they look something like this:
I guess what I am trying to say is that elections do not need to be complicated by technology. The method I am proposing there depends on the ability of people to count, nothing else.
The method I propose here really works too. Where I live, it is the standard for both my provincial and federal elections.
I really hope that the voting method throughout every county in the U.S. is reformed. Personally, I know it is hard to accept election results when your preferred candidate loses, but at least where I live, I know that the vote itself was fair.
Recently the great and glorious Beeb-beeb-ceeb started working on a codec intended to enable torrent-style netcasting of shows.
Really? You don't say?
I think I read something about that somewhere.
To ensure that videos are not locked into proprietary video formats, I wish the BBC the best of luck with their codec named Dirac. If I was any good at video compression algorithms, I would help them out.
One of the biggest advantages of watching downloaded television shows is that the people who create these files usually edit out the ads.
An episode of The Simpsons, for example, usually runs between 20 and 22 minutes, including the intro and end credits. (I suppose you could skip both of these and save yourself an additional minute or two.)
Television is already such a big waste of time, why waste more with meaningless ads for productions you don't need?
none of these shows are available in the uk
In addition to geographic unavailability, another good reason that people download shows is that they don't own a television at all.
I offer myself as an example. About a year and a half ago, I realized that the only show I enjoyed was The Simpsons. The rest was a regrettable waste of time.
So I freed up space in my house by getting rid of the box itself, freed up personal time to do interesting things, and thanks to robotolabs' Simpsons torrents, I still get to watch this Sunday's episode of The Simpsons without having to wait the decade or so before it comes out on DVD.
Hum? Do you mean like this:
SHHHHHHH! remember that the REAL first rule of Robot Fight Club is You do not talk about Robot Fight Club!
And the second rule of Robot Fight Club is You do not talk about Robot Fight Club!.
Still, to make this translation requires so many assumptions about the binary stream, it is a good illustration of how retrievable digital content will be in a few decades.
Imagine people asking: Hum, is that ASCII? Seven bit ASCII? Eight bit ASCII? EBCDIC? UNICODE? Man, are we ever going to be in trouble with encodings run amok.
When she was in technical college, one of my old girlfriends used to hang out with a couple of our fellow students who lived in a big, dirty, old, run-down apartment block that was absolutely infested with cockroaches.
Well, one day the microwave stopped working. This was a blow to these poor popcorn-fed students. Since they knew what Ohm's Law was and could identify a capacitor from a resistor, they decided to open the microwave up and fix it themselves.
They were not prepared for what they saw: All the open spaces inside the microwave where choked with cockroaches. Some were dead. Some were alive.
Worst of all, some cockroaches were three times larger than any of the openings they could find.
Although it's possible that they grew this big because of the relative safety and ample supply of dead cockroaches for food, I like to think that the radiation addled their DNA somehow.
It was a great time because the people who were using computers were doing so because they were the coolest thing (the computers, not the people) in the entire world. They **wanted to understand them**. People who didn't want to understand them could just stay away from them.
I had been using computers for more than a decade when I bumped into a woman in her twenties in 1993 who said "Oh, I know everything about computers!"
From my computer experience up until then, I knew what she probably meant. Knowing computers meant programming them. It meant an understanding of BASIC at the least, and quite possibly assembly. It probably meant knowing about cables and pinouts, voltages and frequencies, hexadecimal and character maps.
She seemed so certain of her skills, I was awed, thinking myself fortunate to have found one of the computer elite.
But then I questioned her, and to my horror I learned that "knowing computers" involved booting hers and then being able to punch a few paragraphs into Microsoft Word for Windows.
I doubt that any of the more liberal supreme court justices will retire in the next 4 years, at least not voluntarily.
Ah yes, the only thing the liberal justices need to do now is look out for that cold, icy hand of death.
Great, now I get all the mental enjoyment of Windows crashing with all the physical pain of my car crashing.
When Microsoft's embedded nonsense starts being adopted by the automotive industry, I will take public transit exclusively: Trains, planes, and subways are heavier than the Blue Cars of Death that will be swarming around me. I might even be able to commute without dying. Oh joy!
The only reason that the ratio of MP3 files to other music formats is falling happens to be human stupidity.
When MP3 files first broke on the next back in the 1990s, it took a certain amount of knowledge and work to convert audio files.
Now there are a thousand and one useless music converters that do the job. Some even do it well. But now that digitizing music has become common and popular, we are having to deal with the masses.
The masses, as always, are busy doing other things, and are completely ignorant of the importance of having a shared, DRM-less standard, which MP3 is. They don't care that they can't transfer their files completely at well. Worse, some are so clueless that they just assume that files with DRM are "natural".
These clueless people will be the death of us all.
Personally, I plan to be part of the resistance, and plan to keep creating and enjoying MP3s. Damn these locked down formats. They can go to hell.
P.S. Don't tell me about ogg. I tried it, and I disliked it.
P.P.S. Don't tell me that MP3 isn't an open standard and that Fraunhofer owns me. I don't care.
I think that any software development tool that liberates people from being users to active developers is a good thing.
I know that BASIC does not appeal to the Slashdot crowd, but what about those people who have never programmed before? If this program helps a few people write a small program or two on their own, I think it is a great deal.
Personally, I am excited by the Computer Programming for Everybody (CP4E) proposal that Guido van Rossum proposed a while back. I think everybody in the modern, western world could benefit from a rudimentary, working knowledge of computer programming, considering the ubiquity of computers and other programmed devices.
I agree with the parent post. If you want to learn a powerful, interpreted, object-oriented, easy-to-use programming language, then choose Python.
I would suggest that you use wxPython instead of Pythonwin though. Apps written with wxPython look like native Windows applications, but have the added advantage of being compatible with other operating systems too.
There is one. It is called the spine.
Even if I had not already been cured for some time, this article would have done it.
I know Google prides itself on not dirtily manipulating its search results, but I think they should make an exception in this case. I would like to see a search for this astroturfing corporate website (that is, www.tableausoftware.com) return these results: