I don't buy it. Academia may have some issues, but there are certainly things that Academia is good for and some things that an open-source-type community is good for.
It has been a long time dince academicians have developed a new pulic worthy OS, but I would be highly surprised to see the public at large develope something as difficult, complex, abstract and important as the PCP Theorem (probably the greatest recent comment on the P != NP conjecture--for those of you who are interested, the theorem says that supposing P!=NP, then there is a limit as to how close an approximation algorithm can approximate a solution, conversely, if an approximation algorithm can come closer than that limit, then P=NP).
I think that a better solution to the fat finger problem would be tactile feedback. The reason that touch screen keyboards have more of a fat finger problem is that the user can feel that they are pressing a key correctly.
That's probably true in a lot of cases, but has not been my experience. I had an internship at Xerox doing something that I thought at the time would be relevant to my career but turned out not to be. On the other hand, I thought it would be a great name to drop. It wasn't though. Because the project that I was working on was only very narrowly relevant, it didn't do much for my career.
On the other hand, a job that I had after graduation which was much more relevant but at a 4-6 person startup opened many doors.
Also, as an interviewer and interviewee, I have found that at most companies that I would want to work for, it's what you know, not who you know. I have been grilled for all of the jobs that I have done that were worthwhile. I have also always grilled people technically when I have been assigned to interview people.
That being said, why should the government care if someone wants to get right to the point and exchange money directly for sex?
Because far too often at least one of the parties doesn't really want to be there. And is 'consenting' to something out of financial desperation/outright fear. That isn't how business transactions are supposed to be conducted.
Ehhhm. What about they Bailout? The taxpayers want to hand over that money?
Come on, a huge number of transactions involve pople who don't have a better choice. In fact, they all do. That's called Economics. It's this crazy idea that Adam Smith came up with not too long ago. You should read up on it...
Another thing which is holding back the CIA, etc. from infiltrating the fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups is the lack of Arabic/Farsi/Urdhu speakers. There aren't enough teachers because people from those countries who want to migrate here to teach those languages are having a bugger of a time getting visas. It seems like that should be a priority for the government to make sure that people with those crucial skills are encouraged to come and have to deal with less bureaucracy--just expedite their background checks.
Besides reducing the glycemic effect of meals and contributing to colon health, there is evidence that fiber may benefit us in other ways. It seems to help lower cholesterol and triglycerides, and also may help to prevent ulcers, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
The simple passing of all tests doesn't necessarily means that you didn't broke anything.
It means only that you passed the tests.
If the tests don't provide coverage for ALL the business issues that the piece of software is supposed to solve, then you pass the tests, but will have no clue if you broke or not things apart.
Here here.
Test should also be developed at various levels of implementation. Both unit tests and integration tests are necessary.
I've worked with code that was fairly well covered by integration test, but which had little to know unit tests (due to the various modules being overly tightly coupled. It's very very difficult to reproduce issues in that case.
At the same time, I also feel that the term legacy should probably be used a bit more literally.
Re:What the problem with Gmail?
on
Good Email For Kids?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This is a good idea...
However, if you aren't fond of the idea of whitelisting (which would mean that you would be the keeper of your kids address book), then I would suggest you think a bit about the addresses that they use.
Of course, whitelisting techniques are the only ways to filter all spam. Other techniques will let some through. I would personally suggest that education is the most important component if your kids are using the internet at all.
I am concerned about the civil liberties implications of this wiki (or whatever they're calling it). There is quite a great risk that information gathered for foreign intelligence purposes could be used against US citizens in unrelated investigations.
This illustrates the biggest problem with the US intelligence agency/law enforecement: the schizophrenic nature of the FBI. The FBI has several mandates:
Counter intelligence
Pursuit of terrorists
Pursuit of organized crime
Pursuit of other serious federal crimes
Assistance to local law enforcement agencies
Because of the constitution, those roles have different civil liberties requirements. You have to get warrants to gather evidence to pursue crimes inside the US, but not to pursue terrorists abroad plotting to attack the US or other countries' spies trying to steal US military secrets.
The 9/11 commission recommended breaking the FBI up into a federal law enforcement agency and a counter intelligence/counter terrorism agency. That way, the counter intelligence work would be hindered less by the trappings of domestic law enforcement and the domestic law enforcement would be less likely to violate the liberties of American citizens. The Bush Administration and Congress have ignored this suggestion.
If the FBI were split--as it properly should be--then, I would have no problem with this A space. As it is, I have reservations.
Re:Good analysis. MOD PARENT UP.
on
Chrome Vs. IE 8
·
· Score: 1
Google makes money through advertising. That makes it unlikely at there will ever be an Adblock Plus for any browser that Google makes.
Yes they will. They've already opened up their codebase. I don't know how easy to code addons to Chrome, but it will be doable. Google wants developers to create add-ons just as Mozilla does. Google knows that 95% of users won't bother with an add blocker and allowing the public to improve their product will make Google's browser better and increase their market share.
Any good fascist state function due to the hard work of strict compliance officers such as Pam Wilderman. Her work phone is (508) 408-4118. Give her a call and congratulate her on her good work.
This illustrates a big problem with our system. Someone files an unjust lawsuit. The risk/reward ratio is deemed to high to fight it and you have an automatic chilling affect.
In this case, perhaps Google doesn't get a huge amount of ad revenue from protest videos, so they don't want to fight this case... or maybe no single video generates enough revenue to justify fighting a copyright infringement case.
What needs to happen is that Judges need to start awarding punitive damages to defendants when the plaintiffs case is judged to be frivolous or an attempt to control legitimate legal behavior.
This same technique could reduce the malpractice burden for medical professionals.
If I had a website that offered full MS Office functionality and compatibility for $10/month... wanna bet I'd have some takers?
Interesting thought...
On the other hand, Google is making their on-line office utils more and more capable every day. Think there might be a price war? How do you undercut free?
Also, companies will feel pretty queasy about their highly sensitive data being hosted on some MS server somewhere...
[sarcasm]
If there's one thing a UI needs it's ribbons. Don't worry whether or not your users like it. A new fancy feature will earn you more money because more people will upgrade.
[/sarcasm]
The user can't change the standard size and location of a window, but your application can change the standard state when appropriate.
No way to override this?
When zooming a window, make sure it doesn't overlap with the Dock.
Yeah, I hate that. On other GUIs, I just hit maximize and it sizes the window so that it covers the whole screen aside from the taskbar. In Mac OS X, I have to adjust it so that it just barely touches the doc. And then there's the wasted space next to the end of the doc.
It's a new box... err... well at least a new motherboard, cpu, and RAM. I have never had Windows boot with this hardware. I have never even had the Windows CD boot properly.
I installed Linux first, because I needed to use it. I figured that I could install Windows afterward and that it would just overwrite the MBR.
The fullscreen thing is a different design philosophy, one that isn't based in a world where users are assumed to be so dumb that they're running their 256-bit quad-core 6GHz machine with a Geforce13900GTXS++ graphics card and a 42" LCD monitor in 800x600.
Basically, "maximize" is IMO a horrible legacy of the days when the average cheap-ass user had to run apps in full-screen mode to be able to be productive, these days there is no sane reason for just about any everyday app to run in fullscreen (why would you want Safari/Firefox or Mail.app running fullscreen on a 1920x1200 monitor?), and the few that have good reason to run in fullscreen generally have a "real" maximize button (like Maya).
It's simply the preferred default that apps don't just grab all available screen real estate.
/Mikael
Are you trying to imply that all Mac users have 1920x1200 monitors?... wanna buy one for me?
At 1280x1024 you can work with multiple windows visible at the same time and cut down on program switching.
Not if I'm working on my 13" tiny MacBook. Even on my 19" desktop, when I web browse, I want the experience of looking at one thing at a time. That cool widget on the new web page I found shouldn't have to share my screen. More fun that way. Similarly, often when I code, I want to see just the code. Expose does look pretty nifty. I think that I'll set it up, but I still want my fullscreen, too.
That's another problem between computer and keyboard... any guide to dual booting will tell you to install Windows first, and then Linux because Windows puts NTLDR on the MBR and NTLDR won't boot Linux, so you have to install Linux with GRUB second and overwrite NTLDR. If Windows doesn't boot after installing Linux, then I'd guess it's a GRUB issue, and you should try to check your partitions. Some OEM machines come with a recovery partition, and sometimes that gets detected as the Windows partition. Happened to me with LILO on Slackware 10, although I've found GRUB to be better at detecting partitions. If all else fails, create a BartPE disc and boot into Windows that way, it's essentially a Windows live CD. Google for it. The more you know...
I've installed a dual boot before by installing Linux first and Linux second. Windows just overwrites the MBR and you have to reinstall GRUB. But if Windows won't even boot... I'm not going to repartition/reformat my Linux install just to get Windows to work.
Never heard of BartPE, but may try it out... it's just that I'm so happy with my Ubuntu set up that it's hard to motivate myself to troubleshoot installing Windows. If I had been totally without a computer, I'm sure that I would have made it work by now...
I find the user interface to be very good. But I did run into these kinds of troubles with getting acclimated. It just takes some time to get used to the subtle differences.
We could all do it in windows instantly (well, after the long delay for the control panel subscreen to open), but how many years have we had to familiarize ourselves with Windows?
I'm not saying that I'll never get used to OS X. It's just... painful. I also recently installed Ubuntu with KDE on my desktop... and found the GUI pretty easy to figure out.
Maybe I picked a bad example, but there are tons of other things that annoy me in OS X. The maximize button doesn't work properly (I've had this flame war on Mac boards before... bottom line is, I want to be able to click a button and have a window be fullscreen. Period.)
The doc is terrible. I would much rather have all the windows of a particular application grouped together and see their titles rather than have tiny images of the windows that I can't see. It also just looks less clean than the KDE or Windows task bar. There other things that I hate. I just can't remember them all because my Mac is essentially mothballed at this point until I can fix it (i.e. run either KDE or another OS).
Slashdot Mirror
I don't buy it. Academia may have some issues, but there are certainly things that Academia is good for and some things that an open-source-type community is good for.
It has been a long time dince academicians have developed a new pulic worthy OS, but I would be highly surprised to see the public at large develope something as difficult, complex, abstract and important as the PCP Theorem (probably the greatest recent comment on the P != NP conjecture--for those of you who are interested, the theorem says that supposing P!=NP, then there is a limit as to how close an approximation algorithm can approximate a solution, conversely, if an approximation algorithm can come closer than that limit, then P=NP).
I think that a better solution to the fat finger problem would be tactile feedback. The reason that touch screen keyboards have more of a fat finger problem is that the user can feel that they are pressing a key correctly.
Let them know what you think:
Ontario Highway Transport Board
10th Floor, 151 Bloor Street West
Toronto, Ontario M5S 2T5
Canada
Telephone: 416-326-6732
Fax: 416-326-6738
e-mail: ohtb@mto.gov.on.ca
That's probably true in a lot of cases, but has not been my experience. I had an internship at Xerox doing something that I thought at the time would be relevant to my career but turned out not to be. On the other hand, I thought it would be a great name to drop. It wasn't though. Because the project that I was working on was only very narrowly relevant, it didn't do much for my career.
On the other hand, a job that I had after graduation which was much more relevant but at a 4-6 person startup opened many doors.
Also, as an interviewer and interviewee, I have found that at most companies that I would want to work for, it's what you know, not who you know. I have been grilled for all of the jobs that I have done that were worthwhile. I have also always grilled people technically when I have been assigned to interview people.
That being said, why should the government care if someone wants to get right to the point and exchange money directly for sex?
Because far too often at least one of the parties doesn't really want to be there. And is 'consenting' to something out of financial desperation/outright fear. That isn't how business transactions are supposed to be conducted.
Ehhhm. What about they Bailout? The taxpayers want to hand over that money?
Come on, a huge number of transactions involve pople who don't have a better choice. In fact, they all do. That's called Economics. It's this crazy idea that Adam Smith came up with not too long ago. You should read up on it...
They are including games and games hardware. To be fair, they should include dvd players big screen TVs and stereo systems.
What makes them so great?
I run a cheap Belkin router. Nothing special but not that expensive.
Another thing which is holding back the CIA, etc. from infiltrating the fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups is the lack of Arabic/Farsi/Urdhu speakers. There aren't enough teachers because people from those countries who want to migrate here to teach those languages are having a bugger of a time getting visas. It seems like that should be a priority for the government to make sure that people with those crucial skills are encouraged to come and have to deal with less bureaucracy--just expedite their background checks.
Why replace fiber?
Besides reducing the glycemic effect of meals and contributing to colon health, there is evidence that fiber may benefit us in other ways. It seems to help lower cholesterol and triglycerides, and also may help to prevent ulcers, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Can wireless really do all of that?
I don't run Windows, you insensitive clod!
The simple passing of all tests doesn't necessarily means that you didn't broke anything.
It means only that you passed the tests.
If the tests don't provide coverage for ALL the business issues that the piece of software is supposed to solve, then you pass the tests, but will have no clue if you broke or not things apart.
Here here.
Test should also be developed at various levels of implementation. Both unit tests and integration tests are necessary.
I've worked with code that was fairly well covered by integration test, but which had little to know unit tests (due to the various modules being overly tightly coupled. It's very very difficult to reproduce issues in that case.
At the same time, I also feel that the term legacy should probably be used a bit more literally.
This is a good idea...
However, if you aren't fond of the idea of whitelisting (which would mean that you would be the keeper of your kids address book), then I would suggest you think a bit about the addresses that they use.
This slashdot article discusses some ways to form less spammed email addresses.
Of course, whitelisting techniques are the only ways to filter all spam. Other techniques will let some through. I would personally suggest that education is the most important component if your kids are using the internet at all.
I am concerned about the civil liberties implications of this wiki (or whatever they're calling it). There is quite a great risk that information gathered for foreign intelligence purposes could be used against US citizens in unrelated investigations.
This illustrates the biggest problem with the US intelligence agency/law enforecement: the schizophrenic nature of the FBI. The FBI has several mandates:
Because of the constitution, those roles have different civil liberties requirements. You have to get warrants to gather evidence to pursue crimes inside the US, but not to pursue terrorists abroad plotting to attack the US or other countries' spies trying to steal US military secrets.
The 9/11 commission recommended breaking the FBI up into a federal law enforcement agency and a counter intelligence/counter terrorism agency. That way, the counter intelligence work would be hindered less by the trappings of domestic law enforcement and the domestic law enforcement would be less likely to violate the liberties of American citizens. The Bush Administration and Congress have ignored this suggestion.
If the FBI were split--as it properly should be--then, I would have no problem with this A space. As it is, I have reservations.
Google makes money through advertising. That makes it unlikely at there will ever be an Adblock Plus for any browser that Google makes.
Yes they will. They've already opened up their codebase. I don't know how easy to code addons to Chrome, but it will be doable. Google wants developers to create add-ons just as Mozilla does. Google knows that 95% of users won't bother with an add blocker and allowing the public to improve their product will make Google's browser better and increase their market share.
Any good fascist state function due to the hard work of strict compliance officers such as Pam Wilderman. Her work phone is (508) 408-4118. Give her a call and congratulate her on her good work.
This illustrates a big problem with our system. Someone files an unjust lawsuit. The risk/reward ratio is deemed to high to fight it and you have an automatic chilling affect.
In this case, perhaps Google doesn't get a huge amount of ad revenue from protest videos, so they don't want to fight this case ... or maybe no single video generates enough revenue to justify fighting a copyright infringement case.
What needs to happen is that Judges need to start awarding punitive damages to defendants when the plaintiffs case is judged to be frivolous or an attempt to control legitimate legal behavior.
This same technique could reduce the malpractice burden for medical professionals.
Mod parent up. New Radio is truly a forgotten classic.
If I had a website that offered full MS Office functionality and compatibility for $10/month... wanna bet I'd have some takers?
Interesting thought...
On the other hand, Google is making their on-line office utils more and more capable every day. Think there might be a price war? How do you undercut free?
Also, companies will feel pretty queasy about their highly sensitive data being hosted on some MS server somewhere...
[sarcasm] If there's one thing a UI needs it's ribbons. Don't worry whether or not your users like it. A new fancy feature will earn you more money because more people will upgrade. [/sarcasm]
The user can't change the standard size and location of a window, but your application can change the standard state when appropriate.
No way to override this?
When zooming a window, make sure it doesn't overlap with the Dock.
Yeah, I hate that. On other GUIs, I just hit maximize and it sizes the window so that it covers the whole screen aside from the taskbar. In Mac OS X, I have to adjust it so that it just barely touches the doc. And then there's the wasted space next to the end of the doc.
It's a new box ... err ... well at least a new motherboard, cpu, and RAM. I have never had Windows boot with this hardware. I have never even had the Windows CD boot properly.
I installed Linux first, because I needed to use it. I figured that I could install Windows afterward and that it would just overwrite the MBR.
The fullscreen thing is a different design philosophy, one that isn't based in a world where users are assumed to be so dumb that they're running their 256-bit quad-core 6GHz machine with a Geforce13900GTXS++ graphics card and a 42" LCD monitor in 800x600.
Basically, "maximize" is IMO a horrible legacy of the days when the average cheap-ass user had to run apps in full-screen mode to be able to be productive, these days there is no sane reason for just about any everyday app to run in fullscreen (why would you want Safari/Firefox or Mail.app running fullscreen on a 1920x1200 monitor?), and the few that have good reason to run in fullscreen generally have a "real" maximize button (like Maya).
It's simply the preferred default that apps don't just grab all available screen real estate.
/Mikael
Are you trying to imply that all Mac users have 1920x1200 monitors? ... wanna buy one for me?
At 1280x1024 you can work with multiple windows visible at the same time and cut down on program switching.
Not if I'm working on my 13" tiny MacBook. Even on my 19" desktop, when I web browse, I want the experience of looking at one thing at a time. That cool widget on the new web page I found shouldn't have to share my screen. More fun that way. Similarly, often when I code, I want to see just the code. Expose does look pretty nifty. I think that I'll set it up, but I still want my fullscreen, too.
That's another problem between computer and keyboard... any guide to dual booting will tell you to install Windows first, and then Linux because Windows puts NTLDR on the MBR and NTLDR won't boot Linux, so you have to install Linux with GRUB second and overwrite NTLDR. If Windows doesn't boot after installing Linux, then I'd guess it's a GRUB issue, and you should try to check your partitions. Some OEM machines come with a recovery partition, and sometimes that gets detected as the Windows partition. Happened to me with LILO on Slackware 10, although I've found GRUB to be better at detecting partitions. If all else fails, create a BartPE disc and boot into Windows that way, it's essentially a Windows live CD. Google for it. The more you know...
I've installed a dual boot before by installing Linux first and Linux second. Windows just overwrites the MBR and you have to reinstall GRUB. But if Windows won't even boot ... I'm not going to repartition/reformat my Linux install just to get Windows to work.
Never heard of BartPE, but may try it out ... it's just that I'm so happy with my Ubuntu set up that it's hard to motivate myself to troubleshoot installing Windows. If I had been totally without a computer, I'm sure that I would have made it work by now...
I find the user interface to be very good. But I did run into these kinds of troubles with getting acclimated. It just takes some time to get used to the subtle differences. We could all do it in windows instantly (well, after the long delay for the control panel subscreen to open), but how many years have we had to familiarize ourselves with Windows?
I'm not saying that I'll never get used to OS X. It's just ... painful. I also recently installed Ubuntu with KDE on my desktop ... and found the GUI pretty easy to figure out.
Maybe I picked a bad example, but there are tons of other things that annoy me in OS X. The maximize button doesn't work properly (I've had this flame war on Mac boards before ... bottom line is, I want to be able to click a button and have a window be fullscreen. Period.)
The doc is terrible. I would much rather have all the windows of a particular application grouped together and see their titles rather than have tiny images of the windows that I can't see. It also just looks less clean than the KDE or Windows task bar. There other things that I hate. I just can't remember them all because my Mac is essentially mothballed at this point until I can fix it (i.e. run either KDE or another OS).