Your final score: -2 points. You are not required to kill yourself, but some self-mutilation is necessary.
I choose self-mutilation via reading a computer screen in sub-optimal conditions: large amounts of text for an extended period of time, outdoors in natural light, with a CRT screen, brightness turned down. Hopefully my eyes will melt and my honor regained.
One easy change is to use an LCD monitor rather than a CRT. I've found fewer headaches, easier reading, and less screen glare.
Second, turn the screen brightness down to a comfortable level (especially when in a darkened room). The brighter the screen, the harder on your eyes. Likewise, if it's too dark you'll strain trying to read it, but most users don't have a problem with screens that are too dark. Most often users max out their screen brightness without thinking about it.
Third, the light source in your computer environment is important. Laptop screens don't have enough power to stand up to natural light easily. Using it inside, I've found that overhead lights are harder on your eyes than lamps. If you can get a desklamp or floorlamp (you can get a nice one from Ikea for $8) that will be much better than ceiling lighting. Soft white bulbs are nicer on your eyes than bright white, flourescent, or halogen (even though they are environmentally wasteful).
Finally, reading from paper is light years easier than reading on the screen, especially if you have a large volume of text to go through. If you can afford it, and don't mind killing a few extra trees, go ahead and print out long articles and read them on paper. Your eyes will thank you.
Does anyone else foresee Apple legal having a field day with this? Judging from their past behavior, Apple legal is not the most lenient or forgiving group of people on Earth. One wonders how Yahoo! could justify releasing a product with exactly equivalent functionality, with the same name. It would be like Apple releasing a web search branded "Apple Yahoo".
However, after perusing Apple's list of trademarks, I don't see Dashboard. Maybe Apple legal slipped up and forgot to register this one. Still, I can't see anyone over there being happy about this development...
Does anyone else foresee Apple legal having a field day with the name "Yahoo! Dashboard"? If Dashboard is a trademark, as I would assume Apple legal would have assured, then how can Yahoo! get away with naming their equivalent service the exact same thing? It would be like Apple coming out with a web search called "Apple Yahoo!".
"Two choices for president" is a straw man. Last year the Democrats fielded nine candidates for president in the primaries--you had your pick of that lot. Then everyone chose between the Republican, Democrats, Libertarian, Constitution, Green/Reform candidates. Just because no one pays attention to the other parties doesn't mean there were only two viable candidates. There were at least 10, counting all the democrats and republicans that ran.
You're right. Echelon didn't help deter 9/11. Nor did it help prevent 9/11 (which is what I think you intended to say). Read Imperial Hubris. The author makes the point that we have sufficient signals intelligence data. We have lots and lots. What we are missing is good analysts, and enough analysts to make sense of the data: what matters and what does not. Restricting our SIGINT isn't going to help. Expanding our SIGINT will only be a marginal help. What is needed is to bulk up the number of experienced analysts who can actually make some sense of the massive amounts of data we're pulling in. Without analysts, more surveillance doesn't actually improve our capabilities.
The real reason it would never ever happen in a million years is really quite simple (say it with me now): backward compatibility. Switching to Opera would break a billion websites made in Frontpage and "designed to be viewed best in IE 5-6.0". It's that simple. Time and again Microsoft has deferred 'innovation' for the sake of maintaining backward compatability with things written in the stone ages. Buying Opera, maybe, but only to quash their puny insurrection. Buying Opera and using it? Not a chance.
Next time try throwing in some over-the-top, sensationalized, flamebait speculation. More points if it's a complete non-sequitur. For example:
"It seems that Python creator Guido van Rossum has received an offer from Google, and accepted it. Here is also some confirmation. Does this finally confirm that vi is better than emacs?"
or
"It seems that Python creator Guido van Rossum has received an offer from Google, and accepted it. Here is also some confirmation. Is this move calculated to counter Apple's move to Intel?"
Well, first off, Alaska and Hawaii never really counted as *actual* states. They're more like gag states. So that's 48. New England we're going to roll into one unified state, since it's just too much of a pain in the ass to tell which stuck-up pretentious twit is from which micro-state. So that's 43. New Mexico is going back to Mexico, Minnesota we're sending to Canada, and Oklahoma's going back to the Indians--40. California's Austrian governor has decided to reunify all Pacific coasters, so Washington and Oregon are going to be part of California (plus having Washington State and Washington DC was too confusing for lawmakers)--38. Louisiana is under water--37. We don't like to count Mississippi and Alabama as states since they always come in last place in nearly every metric--35. New Jersey has de facto been a part of New York for the past 100 years, so I think they're making that official--34. West Virginia and Virginia are reunifying, as well as the Dakotas--32. That leaves Wyoming and Delaware, both of which are not states, but are in fact clever myths created during the Cold War to trick to Soviets--30.
Of course, if you count all the additional U.S. states like Canada, Mexico, the UK, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Japan, Australia, Puerto Rico, Guam, Saipan, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Moon (Mars--you're next, bitch!), we're back up to 43. So it depends on how you count them
Still, even though it's only a guideline, it would have been better for him to have raised the points on the talk page rather than making the edits himself. It's just not cricket otherwise.
This is the end of it. Everyone can mark their calendars that this deal with AOL is the day that Google officially jumped the shark. Not only is there a story about Google giving preferential results to AOL, now we see AOL coaxing them to put images in their formerly fluffy and nice text ads. It's all downhill from here.
They don't need to take bloated slow code like OpenOffice. They've already got Pages, Keynote, iCal, Mail, and Keynote has some built in spreadsheet code. A year of breakneck development work on those and ta-da, you've got an office suite. If they wanted to go overboard, they could buy several of OmniGroup's applications, like OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner, to really fill out the suite.
Camino is not nearly as feature-rich as Firefox, but it runs much much better. It's not a memory or processor hog, I find it handles opening and loading tabs better than Safari, and it renders quickly. The best extensions suite for Camino is CamiTools.
I'm reminded of a story, not sure if it's true or not.
Some medieval mathematician was trying to figure out the relationship between regular shapes and circles. He saw that every time you added a side to a regular shape it came closer to approximating a circle. A triangle becomes a square becomes a pentagon becomes a hexagon and so forth, until you reach an n-sided shape that is very very close to being a circle as perceived by the eye. Then the mathematician realized that contrary to becoming more like a circle, by adding sides he was in fact moving further away from approximating a circle: a circle has no sides, whereas he was moving towards more and more and more sides.
What's needed is not a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, n-th party. What's needed is no parties. Parties are essentially money-laundering organizations. What's money-laundering? "To conceal the source of money as by channeling it through an intermediary." That's their function: concealing the big money interests purchasing votes in Congress and purchasing influence throughout the government. Adding more parties just adds more avenues for the corrupt to practice their quasi-legitimized venality.
What need to happen is not some goofball third party candidate. We need to see politicians get put in jail. In significant numbers. Set up an FBI whiteroom and have a group of Mormon agents set up sting operations. Prosecute the hell out of them with independent prosecutors. It's the only way to scare them straight.
Maybe Google wants better quality/faster/more mobile friendly code?
Exactly. A lot of people on Slashdot had the same beef when Apple used KHTML to make Safari, instead of choosing Gecko/Firefox. A big corporation doesn't want to be saddled with a complex browser/platform. Apple didn't, and Google doesn't either. They want something small that their programmers can grok and begin developing quickly. The smaller the initial codebase, the easier it is for them to ramp up the pace of their own development. Here, Opera has Gecko/Firefox/XUL beat, hands down.
You don't even really have to invade or hold the country. You just execute a "brilliant first strike" on their nuclear weapons, bomb all their power plants, destroy the oil pipelines coming into the country, destroy the roads, bridges, and railroads coming in and out of the country, mine the harbors, and enforce a naval blockade. Then you just sit there for a year or two, doing nothing but enforcing the blockade. With no power, China reverts to an agricultural society, and hundreds of millions starve to death. No need to engage whatsoever. Heartless, I know, but that's war.
Slashdot Mirror
I seriously have no clue what you just wrote, or how it is even remotely related to my post. Would you like a copy of The Elements of Style as well?
I choose self-mutilation via reading a computer screen in sub-optimal conditions: large amounts of text for an extended period of time, outdoors in natural light, with a CRT screen, brightness turned down. Hopefully my eyes will melt and my honor regained.
Second, turn the screen brightness down to a comfortable level (especially when in a darkened room). The brighter the screen, the harder on your eyes. Likewise, if it's too dark you'll strain trying to read it, but most users don't have a problem with screens that are too dark. Most often users max out their screen brightness without thinking about it.
Third, the light source in your computer environment is important. Laptop screens don't have enough power to stand up to natural light easily. Using it inside, I've found that overhead lights are harder on your eyes than lamps. If you can get a desklamp or floorlamp (you can get a nice one from Ikea for $8) that will be much better than ceiling lighting. Soft white bulbs are nicer on your eyes than bright white, flourescent, or halogen (even though they are environmentally wasteful).
Finally, reading from paper is light years easier than reading on the screen, especially if you have a large volume of text to go through. If you can afford it, and don't mind killing a few extra trees, go ahead and print out long articles and read them on paper. Your eyes will thank you.
Why is a left-wing astroturfer like LukePieStalker being given a forum here? Let's be forthright and send him over to Kuro5hin.
Seriously. Someone needs to buy that author a copy of The Elements of Style. Lanier couldn't write a clear sentence if his life depended on it.
However, after perusing Apple's list of trademarks, I don't see Dashboard. Maybe Apple legal slipped up and forgot to register this one. Still, I can't see anyone over there being happy about this development...
Does anyone else foresee Apple legal having a field day with the name "Yahoo! Dashboard"? If Dashboard is a trademark, as I would assume Apple legal would have assured, then how can Yahoo! get away with naming their equivalent service the exact same thing? It would be like Apple coming out with a web search called "Apple Yahoo!".
Yes, just like the open source movement has taken down Microsoft on the desktop.
It is if you want your platform to be periodically replaced by a large photo of a penis.
"Two choices for president" is a straw man. Last year the Democrats fielded nine candidates for president in the primaries--you had your pick of that lot. Then everyone chose between the Republican, Democrats, Libertarian, Constitution, Green/Reform candidates. Just because no one pays attention to the other parties doesn't mean there were only two viable candidates. There were at least 10, counting all the democrats and republicans that ran.
You're right. Echelon didn't help deter 9/11. Nor did it help prevent 9/11 (which is what I think you intended to say). Read Imperial Hubris. The author makes the point that we have sufficient signals intelligence data. We have lots and lots. What we are missing is good analysts, and enough analysts to make sense of the data: what matters and what does not. Restricting our SIGINT isn't going to help. Expanding our SIGINT will only be a marginal help. What is needed is to bulk up the number of experienced analysts who can actually make some sense of the massive amounts of data we're pulling in. Without analysts, more surveillance doesn't actually improve our capabilities.
The real reason it would never ever happen in a million years is really quite simple (say it with me now): backward compatibility. Switching to Opera would break a billion websites made in Frontpage and "designed to be viewed best in IE 5-6.0". It's that simple. Time and again Microsoft has deferred 'innovation' for the sake of maintaining backward compatability with things written in the stone ages. Buying Opera, maybe, but only to quash their puny insurrection. Buying Opera and using it? Not a chance.
"It seems that Python creator Guido van Rossum has received an offer from Google, and accepted it. Here is also some confirmation. Does this finally confirm that vi is better than emacs?"
or
"It seems that Python creator Guido van Rossum has received an offer from Google, and accepted it. Here is also some confirmation. Is this move calculated to counter Apple's move to Intel?"
See? It's not so hard.
Of course, if you count all the additional U.S. states like Canada, Mexico, the UK, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Japan, Australia, Puerto Rico, Guam, Saipan, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Moon (Mars--you're next, bitch!), we're back up to 43. So it depends on how you count them
I can't believe Apple got four of the top ten spots on Froogle with the iPod, iPod mini, iPod shuffle, and iPod nano. That's unbelievable.
Still, even though it's only a guideline, it would have been better for him to have raised the points on the talk page rather than making the edits himself. It's just not cricket otherwise.
Actually, that's redundant. You could change it to read AOL + ANYTHING = AOL, and it would still mean the same thing.
AOL really just stole their business model from FATMOUSE:
This is the end of it. Everyone can mark their calendars that this deal with AOL is the day that Google officially jumped the shark. Not only is there a story about Google giving preferential results to AOL, now we see AOL coaxing them to put images in their formerly fluffy and nice text ads. It's all downhill from here.
They don't need to take bloated slow code like OpenOffice. They've already got Pages, Keynote, iCal, Mail, and Keynote has some built in spreadsheet code. A year of breakneck development work on those and ta-da, you've got an office suite. If they wanted to go overboard, they could buy several of OmniGroup's applications, like OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner, to really fill out the suite.
Camino is not nearly as feature-rich as Firefox, but it runs much much better. It's not a memory or processor hog, I find it handles opening and loading tabs better than Safari, and it renders quickly. The best extensions suite for Camino is CamiTools.
This article has a more direct link to technology, which is ostensibly what this site is about. The others don't involve technology as directly.
Some medieval mathematician was trying to figure out the relationship between regular shapes and circles. He saw that every time you added a side to a regular shape it came closer to approximating a circle. A triangle becomes a square becomes a pentagon becomes a hexagon and so forth, until you reach an n-sided shape that is very very close to being a circle as perceived by the eye. Then the mathematician realized that contrary to becoming more like a circle, by adding sides he was in fact moving further away from approximating a circle: a circle has no sides, whereas he was moving towards more and more and more sides.
What's needed is not a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, n-th party. What's needed is no parties. Parties are essentially money-laundering organizations. What's money-laundering? "To conceal the source of money as by channeling it through an intermediary." That's their function: concealing the big money interests purchasing votes in Congress and purchasing influence throughout the government. Adding more parties just adds more avenues for the corrupt to practice their quasi-legitimized venality.
What need to happen is not some goofball third party candidate. We need to see politicians get put in jail. In significant numbers. Set up an FBI whiteroom and have a group of Mormon agents set up sting operations. Prosecute the hell out of them with independent prosecutors. It's the only way to scare them straight.
d00d, 1 fr4663d t3h $h1+ 0u+ 0f +4h+ \/\/3bp463, p\/\/nz0r3d!!!!11!1!eleven!
Exactly. A lot of people on Slashdot had the same beef when Apple used KHTML to make Safari, instead of choosing Gecko/Firefox. A big corporation doesn't want to be saddled with a complex browser/platform. Apple didn't, and Google doesn't either. They want something small that their programmers can grok and begin developing quickly. The smaller the initial codebase, the easier it is for them to ramp up the pace of their own development. Here, Opera has Gecko/Firefox/XUL beat, hands down.
You don't even really have to invade or hold the country. You just execute a "brilliant first strike" on their nuclear weapons, bomb all their power plants, destroy the oil pipelines coming into the country, destroy the roads, bridges, and railroads coming in and out of the country, mine the harbors, and enforce a naval blockade. Then you just sit there for a year or two, doing nothing but enforcing the blockade. With no power, China reverts to an agricultural society, and hundreds of millions starve to death. No need to engage whatsoever. Heartless, I know, but that's war.