Actually I was thinking the car looks TOO shiny. Like it has a perfect mirror finish. I suppose it is possible to see that on a showroom car with the right paint, but on a race car it looks a bit odd, IMHO.
One other odd point, the car looks curiously disconnected from the road.
Its a fun hoax, brazen enough to be worth laughing at instead of just ignoring.
But what's the motivation? The usual reason is to try and get investment, but it seems too over the top for that. Perhaps they guy is just mentally unstable. Given his "awards" that seems pretty likely.
Possibly he is seeing how far he can push an obviously ridiculous story in the media. Could be an amusing study:)
Not sure if you're joking, but why do they need to "avoid" rounding issues? Rounding always happens in commerce.
Gas stations specify price to 3 decimal places, most of the time. Possibly 4 decimals in a few countries with high-valued currency. (Not speculation: I work on this stuff)
Maybe, but have you read anything about them? They require a custom XML application (server program? can't tell), don't currently accept any international charges, don't seem to accept online signup, and by implication are only suitable for large merchants with lots of customers.
In other words, useless for 99% of Paypal's customers.
Good grief. The picture simply is not as simplea s you say. Sure, Paypal do some seemingly random things. But in reality, that is the only way they can provide the service for the low fees they charge: automated fraud checks and balances, minimal customer interaction, try to do as much online as possible.
Moneybookers is an alternative, but it has been so little used compared to Paypal that honestly we have no idea whether they are any better.
So basically, you can either have Paypal as it is now, complete with occasional account freezes and inconvenience, or nothing at all, because it would not be profitable for Paypal to operate with lots of manual intervention and careful checking like a bank unless they put their fees up, like a bank.
Yes, I have been a "seller" with both Moneybookers and Paypal. Paypal never froze my account, but they did cause me some confusion over a credit card. It was annoying, but I can see why they did it. Moneybookers only resulted in one single transaction compared to hundreds from Paypal, and had no problems.
Yeap. To avoid this you need proper security, such as captchas, biometric data, passwords, etc, and that makes the micropayments too much bother to do. Back to square one.
To be fair, Microsoft largely address this in Windows 2000 and later. An application which tries to focus itself, normally just gets its taskbar icon flashed.
There is obviously still a way for applications to actually pop themselves up - It makes sense that some few things really do need your attention no - and some programs still abuse this - notably some Microsoft apps such as installers.
But for the most part I consider this problem solved.
For history, I think this was due to the fact that whenever an application focused one of it's child windows (say, a button) this caused the application to be focussed as well. Thus reasonable behaviour by the program (say, preparing for the next user action) became really irritating due to the OS.
Of course, I didn't come in laden down with a million little details that I would scream about if they changed.
I didn't know anything about the comic, and I enjoyed the movie, and that's perfectly fine. Of course it would be nice if the original fans could be happy as well, but that isn't essential for movie success.
HDDVD/BluRay might become like Laserdisc was: an expensive high-end format for the real home cinema junkie, who is prepared to pay more for the high quality, and has a system that will justify it.
Laserdisc wasn't exactly a failure, but it wasn't a success like DVD was.
To tell the truth though, I am working with Office 2000 while my colleagues use XP or 2003 on the same docs. We haven't noticed any real problems... admittedly our documents are not that complex.
Thanks for responding, SM. I feel the submission might not be as interesting as you thought, but I think your decision making process is reasonable and useful, and I don't think Slashdot editors need to be so constantly slammed. So, hang in there:)
PDF is useful and convenient to the author, less so to an online reader. PDF viewers are invariably clunky and painful compared to a modern web browser (largely because they insist on being different; like having to choose a text selection tool).
An "email blast" eh? What a spammy sounding term that is.
Also, you are basically accusing spamcop staff of abusing the system, because no-one else *knows* the spam-trap addresses. That is possible I suppose, nobody is perfect:/
What are you talking about? It's only places you are unsure of (ie. any commercial website) that you give a fake email address to, and those "fake" email addresses go to your normal one, until you need to stop it.
Personal friends or trustworthy organisations can have your real address.
The only thing I can think of is that a PDA is a bit more expensive. But then comparing the higher end calculators with the lower end PDAs, that doesn't seem true.
A PDA is bound to be more flexible, and have a sheadload more software, and benefits from the economies of scale - there must be many more PDAs sold than fancy calculators.
Not bad! I typed in a couple of semi-obscure bands and the suggestions were reasonable (although not stunning). (FWIW, "e-type" and "sonata arctica").
Might be worth giving it a try.
At the moment I listen to digitallyimported.net. Problem they have is that for maybe 75% of the songs, the "buy" links get no results, and none to any way to buy single songs right away. Of course it's still a step up from FM radio.
Human nature is not one to accept controls, especially on breeding or acquisition, unless there is some other factor: such as nationwide communism or dictatorship that can force it on people with military and governmental force. ie. China and their population limits.
Most people, even intelligent ones, have a knee jerk "never" reaction to the idea of population controls, unless they have already personally come to terms with the idea.
What a miserable view of the future you have. It's gonna be a really interesting world with just farm and domestic animals. Reality is we are obviously wiping out everything we don't farm or that can live off our scraps.
What, all the previous companies and technologies they blatantly shafted wasn't enough for you, but a wee royalty on iPod is?
No, I'm not going to explain every detail of the history of Microsoft's business practices here. My point is, I'm astonished that you could be disgusted by this and none of the other things they have done.
Actually that is a part of the problem. We now have so much computer power that we can simulate space travel - well enough that there is no need to actually go. Games are good enough that other worlds are just a CD away.
Sure, I know: it's not really the same thing. But the ready availability of games and simulations and CGI movies dulls our interest like junk food takes away your hunger without either tasting really good or being good for you.
Slashdot Mirror
Awesome! Thanks to you and others! Firefox is good, but too dumbed down for me, and TB is not very compelling - so the suite wins for me.
Those error pages have been a looooooong time coming. Bug 28586 which is just the meta bug for the whole issue, was opened in 2000!
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28586
(Copy and paste the URL as moz disables slashdot referrer).
It's great to see them finally enabled in a release and working well - one of the last remaining minor points where IE was preferable.
Congratulations and thanks to all those people who worked on delivering them!
Actually I was thinking the car looks TOO shiny. Like it has a perfect mirror finish. I suppose it is possible to see that on a showroom car with the right paint, but on a race car it looks a bit odd, IMHO.
One other odd point, the car looks curiously disconnected from the road.
Its a fun hoax, brazen enough to be worth laughing at instead of just ignoring.
:)
But what's the motivation? The usual reason is to try and get investment, but it seems too over the top for that. Perhaps they guy is just mentally unstable. Given his "awards" that seems pretty likely.
Possibly he is seeing how far he can push an obviously ridiculous story in the media. Could be an amusing study
I can only imagine the amount of tedium that has gone into this effort. Well done guys. And thank you.
Not sure if you're joking, but why do they need to "avoid" rounding issues? Rounding always happens in commerce.
Gas stations specify price to 3 decimal places, most of the time. Possibly 4 decimals in a few countries with high-valued currency. (Not speculation: I work on this stuff)
Maybe, but have you read anything about them? They require a custom XML application (server program? can't tell), don't currently accept any international charges, don't seem to accept online signup, and by implication are only suitable for large merchants with lots of customers.
In other words, useless for 99% of Paypal's customers.
Good grief. The picture simply is not as simplea s you say. Sure, Paypal do some seemingly random things. But in reality, that is the only way they can provide the service for the low fees they charge: automated fraud checks and balances, minimal customer interaction, try to do as much online as possible.
Moneybookers is an alternative, but it has been so little used compared to Paypal that honestly we have no idea whether they are any better.
So basically, you can either have Paypal as it is now, complete with occasional account freezes and inconvenience, or nothing at all, because it would not be profitable for Paypal to operate with lots of manual intervention and careful checking like a bank unless they put their fees up, like a bank.
Yes, I have been a "seller" with both Moneybookers and Paypal. Paypal never froze my account, but they did cause me some confusion over a credit card. It was annoying, but I can see why they did it. Moneybookers only resulted in one single transaction compared to hundreds from Paypal, and had no problems.
Yeap. To avoid this you need proper security, such as captchas, biometric data, passwords, etc, and that makes the micropayments too much bother to do. Back to square one.
Re: stealing focus:
To be fair, Microsoft largely address this in Windows 2000 and later. An application which tries to focus itself, normally just gets its taskbar icon flashed.
There is obviously still a way for applications to actually pop themselves up - It makes sense that some few things really do need your attention no - and some programs still abuse this - notably some Microsoft apps such as installers.
But for the most part I consider this problem solved.
For history, I think this was due to the fact that whenever an application focused one of it's child windows (say, a button) this caused the application to be focussed as well. Thus reasonable behaviour by the program (say, preparing for the next user action) became really irritating due to the OS.
Yes, Constantine was quite enjoyable.
Of course, I didn't come in laden down with a million little details that I would scream about if they changed.
I didn't know anything about the comic, and I enjoyed the movie, and that's perfectly fine. Of course it would be nice if the original fans could be happy as well, but that isn't essential for movie success.
HDDVD/BluRay might become like Laserdisc was: an expensive high-end format for the real home cinema junkie, who is prepared to pay more for the high quality, and has a system that will justify it.
Laserdisc wasn't exactly a failure, but it wasn't a success like DVD was.
To tell the truth though, I am working with Office 2000 while my colleagues use XP or 2003 on the same docs. We haven't noticed any real problems ... admittedly our documents are not that complex.
Thanks for responding, SM. I feel the submission might not be as interesting as you thought, but I think your decision making process is reasonable and useful, and I don't think Slashdot editors need to be so constantly slammed. So, hang in there :)
PDF is useful and convenient to the author, less so to an online reader. PDF viewers are invariably clunky and painful compared to a modern web browser (largely because they insist on being different; like having to choose a text selection tool).
An "email blast" eh? What a spammy sounding term that is.
:/
Also, you are basically accusing spamcop staff of abusing the system, because no-one else *knows* the spam-trap addresses. That is possible I suppose, nobody is perfect
What are you talking about? It's only places you are unsure of (ie. any commercial website) that you give a fake email address to, and those "fake" email addresses go to your normal one, until you need to stop it.
Personal friends or trustworthy organisations can have your real address.
The only thing I can think of is that a PDA is a bit more expensive. But then comparing the higher end calculators with the lower end PDAs, that doesn't seem true.
A PDA is bound to be more flexible, and have a sheadload more software, and benefits from the economies of scale - there must be many more PDAs sold than fancy calculators.
Not bad! I typed in a couple of semi-obscure bands and the suggestions were reasonable (although not stunning). (FWIW, "e-type" and "sonata arctica").
Might be worth giving it a try.
At the moment I listen to digitallyimported.net. Problem they have is that for maybe 75% of the songs, the "buy" links get no results, and none to any way to buy single songs right away. Of course it's still a step up from FM radio.
Please learn to spell "definitely"... assuming that's what you mean... defiantly has a completely different meaning.
Human nature is not one to accept controls, especially on breeding or acquisition, unless there is some other factor: such as nationwide communism or dictatorship that can force it on people with military and governmental force. ie. China and their population limits.
Most people, even intelligent ones, have a knee jerk "never" reaction to the idea of population controls, unless they have already personally come to terms with the idea.
What a miserable view of the future you have. It's gonna be a really interesting world with just farm and domestic animals. Reality is we are obviously wiping out everything we don't farm or that can live off our scraps.
I find your attitude incomprehensible.
What, all the previous companies and technologies they blatantly shafted wasn't enough for you, but a wee royalty on iPod is?
No, I'm not going to explain every detail of the history of Microsoft's business practices here. My point is, I'm astonished that you could be disgusted by this and none of the other things they have done.
RTFA. They have a sensible methodology to avoid this problem.
Actually that is a part of the problem. We now have so much computer power that we can simulate space travel - well enough that there is no need to actually go. Games are good enough that other worlds are just a CD away.
Sure, I know: it's not really the same thing. But the ready availability of games and simulations and CGI movies dulls our interest like junk food takes away your hunger without either tasting really good or being good for you.