I also can't stand spotlight. It is a resource hog and doesn't work well, plus it takes up critical real estate on the menu bar.
"Critical real estate on the menu bar"? Exactly how big is your Spotlight icon? Mine is less than half the size of my little fingernail on my 12" iBook, as big across as the menu bar is thick. I hardly call that "critical" but if that's your opinion, then so be it.
Yes, much more fun for all those admins at high secure locations (without internet access).
If you don't have Internet access, do you really need most of the updates? I recall that most of the updates and patches fixed external security issues (i.e. threats from the Internet). For the few patches that really fix something that is applicable (hardware drivers come to mind) then bring them on a USB stick or CD.
Were there more patches for internal issues than I remember?
I agree. Unlike machines, people have no bias and would never commit fraud. Those computers though, they're constantly working against us for their own motives.
This is why the vote count is observed by, as a minimum, a representative from each candidate's election campaign. If a ballot is clearly marked for candidate A but is tallied as a vote for candidate B, that is easy to detect and such tomfoolery can be resolved by a fresh count of the physical ballots by different people.
Try auditing a purely digital, abstract vote count where there is no physical ballot to examine. How can you trust a machine count that has a total vote count in excess of the registered voter roll? How do you audit this? Ask the computer for the total a second time?
Is paper balloting the be-all and end-all of voter fraud and skewed elections? No. But as has been stated before, to effectively skew and election it would require many, many more people to fudge vote counts since there are so many counts going on at once, all being observed by the interested parties. This is in contrast to an electronically skewed election, where the voting machines are skewing many, many votes, undetected and possibly in some unauditable manner.
I'll vote this November with a paper ballot, thankyouverymuch. Granted it's a paper ballot counted by an optical reader, but at least there is a paper record of my vote in the event of a recount.
FUCK A PAPER TRAIL. We need PAPER ELECTIONS. Just that simple. Can paper elections be rigged? Of course they can. Can they be rigged as easily, as invisibly, as completely as digital elections? Hell no. What's mind boggling is that there's even a debate here. Get rid of digital voting machines. Hell, get rid of ANALOG voting machines. Piece of paper, ink pen, padlocked metal box. That's how sane people run elections. The notion of there being anything worth debating here is nothing but complete bullshit.
I have to agree--it has been proven that we, as a technologically advanced society, cannot reliably run an election using any sort of machine to count the ballots. I mean, when a machine counts more votes in a precinct than there are registered voters, that should be a big red flag lit up with a bright spotlight saying (no, SCREAMING) "Hey, something is all screwed up here, better take a look!" I wonder how many "irregularities" like this DON'T get caught.
I will still support the use of some form of digital voting machine to print these paper ballots with the voter's choice marked, so that the ballots are marked in a consistent fashion and help prevent spoiled ballots (two candidates marked for the same position for example) but to count them, you need people, and only people.
A rep from each candidate's election campaign to monitor the count and an official counter are what you need. Go ahead and use a spreadsheet to total up the counts if you like, since building a spreadsheet that can add two numbers is still something we can do reliably, but the official count for a precinct is done by hand.
I'm tired of all the reasonable things I'm not allowed to do because some organization's insurance company doesn't like or some fool sued someone.
Hear hear! You are 100% correct; some people are so scared of lawsuits that they stop themselves from enjoying life.
I recently suggested that my astronomy club hold a public viewing even on some club-owned property. It would have been a great place; several large telescopes would get some much-needed use, there are facilities in case of inclement weather, restrooms, and it would been a great way to show the public what astronomy really is about and promote the club and its facilities.
IMMEDIATELY the idea was shot down by the observatory director, because the club's insurance company wouldn't provide liability coverage to non-members. A great idea, once again, has been destroyed by fear of liability.
Tag--a great game, it gets kids active, destroyed by fear of liability.
I guess the US society has devolved into a "cover your ass" society.
Umm... this is a slightly different scale of power generation. Those ships and submarines which are nuclear powered have really small reactors. The power (and more importantly pressure) generated in a small Navy sub reactor is "small" compared to this beast. We're talking about TWO full scale reactors on a barge.
Yes, this is a change in scale, but in the other direction...Naval reactor plants are BIGGER than these two plants, power-wise. The S6G plant in the Los Angeles-class subs alone is more powerful than these two plants. While I've never worked on this particular plant, I don't doubt what wikipedia has to say about it.
I DO have extensive experience operating older S5W reactor plants, and while I'm not about to give specs on it, I will say that it cranked out more power than one of these proposed floating plants.
As far as an aircraft carrier goes, the typical crew complement is 5000...and it can move in excess fo 30 knots. The electrical load ALONE is 32 MW, not to mention the power needed to drive 95,000 tons through the water at 30+ knots.
In short...these barges are small compared to Naval reactor plants.
All slids should use the background image. The image should not just be a rectangle you drew over a blacnk slide because you were too stupid to click file->new, and if all else, it should not show a different seizure-inducing color every slide.
(See fourth bullet in your post):)
Most of the time I prefer NO background image; it takes away from the content. I sat through a PowerPoint presentation at a seminar this past week, and it had bulleted lists, proper images, and no background at all. It was wonderful--it enhanced what the speaker was saying, without competing with what the speaker was saying.
If you are using PP as a visual aid then don't make it such that it distracts from the speaker; backgrounds, sound, and animation are for presentations that stand alone, i.e. do not have a speaker presenting the material.
Well shit, this seems like pretty good free advetising for these guys. I'd stop complaining if I were them...
Free advertising is useless advertising if it completely misses the target audience. How many of those "hits" looking for youtube.com are going to be interested in used machining equipment and hardware?
I whole-heartedly think each OS has a strength that 'tunes' itself for a specific task, and so using Linux or Mac for work (while leaving Windows for more time-wastable tasks) is a fair shake.
Why? Why should a version of Adobe Pagemaker for Windows work any better or worse than a version for OS X? (I'm making the assumption that such beasts exist for the sake of argument.) Isn't it the applications that make the computer useful, while the OS simply provides an interface between apps and hardware?
Maybe you're making the argument that it's easier to program certain tasks in a particular OS, but it's certainly possible to program a task to run on any OS.
Is this correct or is this an oversimplified view from a nonprogrammer?
Is it frame accurate? If something is to go to air at "midnight" you have to hit it within 1/30th of a second. You cant afford one frame-time error. Ever.
As a video production know-nothing, I ask: if you are playing back some video production, why the need for such accuracy? If I want to start a broadcast at 00:00:00 and it goes off at 00:00:00.34, what's the big deal? Am I misinterpreting the idea of "on the air?" (I must be, I can't imagine a 1/30 second inaccuracy being that important otherwise.)
All I can think of is that the transmission of a frame from the transmitter and the playback of a frame from the source have to be in sync, but I also launched a VCR signal across the room using a $5 folded dipole I made out of twin-lead antenna wire and I didn't worry about any sort of frams syncing (this probably happened inside the VCR.)
Like I said, I know next to nothing about video broadcasting so if I seem video stupid, it is because I am.
If someone who is not a citizen can expect to be protected by our constitution when not on our soil, can we enforce our constitution on them as well?
It was ruled unconstitutional because it violates the 4th Amendment rights of the American citizen on the other end of the line. The ruling doesn't protect the foreign participant; it protects the US citizen.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong please but that's my understanding.
Sure, I've collected all this great data, but now how to I find a buyer? Do I just walk up to the competition's CEO and say "Hey, I got the goods on company XYZ, how much is that worth to you?"
My kids are smart enough to check what's running on their PC. Can I install a logger on my WRT54G (running hyperWRT + Thibor 15c firmware)?
Here's the solution my brother and his wife had with their daughter (if I got the story right):
The only PC with Internet access was in the living room, where they could keep an eye on what she was doing. No, they didn't hover over her shoulder, but she did have to use the same machine they used in a "public" part of the house, where they COULD see what she was doing if they chose to do so. When they allowed her to have a PC in her room, it was with one condition: it had no Internet access. The modem and NIC were pulled out of the machine. They also talked to her about the dangers of pedophiles and sexual predators who will try to lure them out into the open in chat rooms and such.
I'm not suggesting that you are relying on technology to take the place of parental interest/guidance; if you were disinterested, you wouldn't have asked the question in the first place. But if they are smart enough to see what's running, do you think that maybe they are smart enough to see what's going on at the router? Think of the Slashdot mentality regarding privacy/security...if encrypted IM/email is going to protect your data from exposure, do you think that your tech-saavy kids might do the same thing to hide stuff from you?
Relying on technology to take the place of parental involvement is begging for trouble; you can circumvent key loggers/packet sniffers/etc, but you can't get around concerned, interested, involved parents who will trust their children to make the right decisions, correct them when they screw up, and increase responsibilities/privleges when the children demonstrate that they can handle themselves.
I'm not a parent so this is all so easy for me to say since I don't deal with it day in and day out; but I've also picked up a lot from family members and friends who are parents, so take it for what you think it's worth.
I'm puzzled as to why MS would be offering a RC for public download from a site that is not part of microsoft.com. Surely MS isn't short on server capacity or bandwidth:)
Seriously though, why is this not part of the microsoft.com domain?
It seems UK and USA government hasnt learnt (because they dont want to I guess).
Or the two governments are too arrogant in their world status to think they can learn from others.
In the Battle of the Atlantic of WWII, British intelligence had broken the German communications encryption (it may have been ENIGMA, I' don't know) and could reliably track German U-boat sorties to the US east coast. In fact, the Brits were supplying this intel on nearly a daily basis.
The US Government, however, did nothing with this intel and so the u-boats roamed up and down the east coast with impunity until the US gov't finally started to listen to the Brits...18 MONTHS after the attacks started.
Winston Churchill is quoted as saying "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities." (http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/2313)
I guess this means that the US Gov't will do thr right thing in the "War on Terror" (a phrase I dislike since I don't recall a formal declaration from Congress, the ONLY gov't body that can declare war if I recall correctly) once they have:
-alienated every other country on the globe; -infringed on every article in the Constitution; -wasted untold trillions of dollars in the pursuit of terrorists.
There's probably more I'm missing, but that's what comes to mind right about now.
Funny you mention that...when my Prius was in for the 90k mile service, the rep told me that the bettery had passed some sort of test, maybe it was a deep discharge/load test or something. I didn't know the testing waws scheduled, but I didn't complain; it didn't show up on the bill.
Unless you're Ballmer or Jobs or a Linux distro company, does it really matter? I mean, really, really matter?
Do I, as a OS X user, see any sort of effect if OS X usage goes up or down?
In case you're wondering...no.
I guess I just get tired of Linux fanboys declaring that "we must get this to the desktops of the unwashed masses" or the Mac fanboys stomping around saying how much Microsoft is copying from OS X into Vista, and the Microsoft fanboys sitting around all smug with their favorite OS enjoying a practical monopoly status.
You use what works best for what you want to do, market share be damned. I use OS X for some things and WinXP for others because they each have their strengths in different areas. If John and Jane Public can easily get their digital photos of Junior's 8th birthday party by simply plugging their camera into their Windows box and pressing a button, more power to them. If you develop the Next Great Thing in an Unbuntu environment, congratualtions.
If a WinXP platform did what I want it to do as well as, or better than, OS X for a better value then I would have stuck with WinXP. If the engineering tools I need to use every day worked on a Linux platform as easily as on an WinXP or OS X platform, I would have stuck with Linux.
I coouldn't care less if OS X market share changed 0.02%, up, down, or sideways.
A true 'plan' would have coordinated the curb-cuts and road configurations to minimize traffic delays.
You mean like frontage roads? I can see that; for all establishements in a 1/8 to 1/4 mile stretch, they all use one common curb-cut to get off the main road and on to the frontage road. Get the slower traffic off the main road at one point instead of several. Maybe to speed it up a little more you could use on- and off-ramps like freeways do. I'm not exactly sure how to design this, but it makes sense.
IMO, this long life is because I always run my handsets, *without any charging at all*, until I get the "low battery" warning, then I place them on the charger for a minimum of 12-16 hours. This cycle of deep discharge / full recharge keeps them at their peak capacity for years.
That's because your cordless phones probably used Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) batteries, which benefit from deep discharge/recharge cycles (aka 'conditioning'.)
Now, regarding NiMH batteries...
Every single piece of advice I have ever heard or read on rechargeable NiMH batteries says that to ensure the longest lifetime of a battery, you should *always* "run it try" then give it a full recharge. It is the incomplete "halfway" charging cycles that give the battery "false memory" and cause the chemicals to not assume their full capacity after the next charge.
The occasional deep discharge/recharge is acceptable, but not every time. From www.greenbatteries.com:
Do NiMH batteries have memory effect?
Technically, NiMH batteries do not have a "memory effect", but strictly speaking neither do NiCds. However NiMH batteries can experience voltage depletion, also called voltage depression, similar to that of NiCd batteries, but the effect is normally less noticeable. To completely eliminate the possibility of NiMH batteries suffering any voltage depletion effect manufacturers recommend an OCCASIONAL, complete discharge of NiMH batteries followed by a full recharge. NiMH batteries can also be damaged by overcharge and improper storage (see the NiCd section immediately above this one). Most users of NiMH batteries don't have to be concerned with this voltage depletion effect. But if you use a device say a flashlight, radio, or digital camera for only a short time every day and then charge the batteries every night, you will need to let the NiMH (or NiCd) batteries run down occasionally.
Note the word "OCCASIONAL."
It appears you are comparing your usage habits of NiCd batteries with the OP's statements about NiMH batteries.
Slashdot Mirror
"Critical real estate on the menu bar"? Exactly how big is your Spotlight icon? Mine is less than half the size of my little fingernail on my 12" iBook, as big across as the menu bar is thick. I hardly call that "critical" but if that's your opinion, then so be it.
Which is why I have decided to cancel my cable subscription. When I turn in my cable box, I'll be attaching a letter explaining why I'm canceling.
If you don't have Internet access, do you really need most of the updates? I recall that most of the updates and patches fixed external security issues (i.e. threats from the Internet). For the few patches that really fix something that is applicable (hardware drivers come to mind) then bring them on a USB stick or CD.
Were there more patches for internal issues than I remember?
This is why the vote count is observed by, as a minimum, a representative from each candidate's election campaign. If a ballot is clearly marked for candidate A but is tallied as a vote for candidate B, that is easy to detect and such tomfoolery can be resolved by a fresh count of the physical ballots by different people.
Try auditing a purely digital, abstract vote count where there is no physical ballot to examine. How can you trust a machine count that has a total vote count in excess of the registered voter roll? How do you audit this? Ask the computer for the total a second time?
Is paper balloting the be-all and end-all of voter fraud and skewed elections? No. But as has been stated before, to effectively skew and election it would require many, many more people to fudge vote counts since there are so many counts going on at once, all being observed by the interested parties. This is in contrast to an electronically skewed election, where the voting machines are skewing many, many votes, undetected and possibly in some unauditable manner.
I'll vote this November with a paper ballot, thankyouverymuch. Granted it's a paper ballot counted by an optical reader, but at least there is a paper record of my vote in the event of a recount.
I have to agree--it has been proven that we, as a technologically advanced society, cannot reliably run an election using any sort of machine to count the ballots. I mean, when a machine counts more votes in a precinct than there are registered voters, that should be a big red flag lit up with a bright spotlight saying (no, SCREAMING) "Hey, something is all screwed up here, better take a look!" I wonder how many "irregularities" like this DON'T get caught.
I will still support the use of some form of digital voting machine to print these paper ballots with the voter's choice marked, so that the ballots are marked in a consistent fashion and help prevent spoiled ballots (two candidates marked for the same position for example) but to count them, you need people, and only people.
A rep from each candidate's election campaign to monitor the count and an official counter are what you need. Go ahead and use a spreadsheet to total up the counts if you like, since building a spreadsheet that can add two numbers is still something we can do reliably, but the official count for a precinct is done by hand.
If this is your idea of "fun" on the weekends...you need to get out a little more
(he says as he plans to spend the weekend studying for a midterm exam)
Yeah, and that might get modded (-1) Rude
Hear hear! You are 100% correct; some people are so scared of lawsuits that they stop themselves from enjoying life.
I recently suggested that my astronomy club hold a public viewing even on some club-owned property. It would have been a great place; several large telescopes would get some much-needed use, there are facilities in case of inclement weather, restrooms, and it would been a great way to show the public what astronomy really is about and promote the club and its facilities.
IMMEDIATELY the idea was shot down by the observatory director, because the club's insurance company wouldn't provide liability coverage to non-members. A great idea, once again, has been destroyed by fear of liability.
Tag--a great game, it gets kids active, destroyed by fear of liability.
I guess the US society has devolved into a "cover your ass" society.
Yes, this is a change in scale, but in the other direction...Naval reactor plants are BIGGER than these two plants, power-wise. The S6G plant in the Los Angeles-class subs alone is more powerful than these two plants. While I've never worked on this particular plant, I don't doubt what wikipedia has to say about it.
S6G: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S6G_reactor
I DO have extensive experience operating older S5W reactor plants, and while I'm not about to give specs on it, I will say that it cranked out more power than one of these proposed floating plants.
As far as an aircraft carrier goes, the typical crew complement is 5000...and it can move in excess fo 30 knots. The electrical load ALONE is 32 MW, not to mention the power needed to drive 95,000 tons through the water at 30+ knots.
In short...these barges are small compared to Naval reactor plants.
(See fourth bullet in your post)
Most of the time I prefer NO background image; it takes away from the content. I sat through a PowerPoint presentation at a seminar this past week, and it had bulleted lists, proper images, and no background at all. It was wonderful--it enhanced what the speaker was saying, without competing with what the speaker was saying.
If you are using PP as a visual aid then don't make it such that it distracts from the speaker; backgrounds, sound, and animation are for presentations that stand alone, i.e. do not have a speaker presenting the material.
Free advertising is useless advertising if it completely misses the target audience. How many of those "hits" looking for youtube.com are going to be interested in used machining equipment and hardware?
My guess is not very much.
I'll bite...
If a system is "fully patched," how do you apply an update? Doesn't the need for an update require that a system is, by definition, not fully patched?
Why? Why should a version of Adobe Pagemaker for Windows work any better or worse than a version for OS X? (I'm making the assumption that such beasts exist for the sake of argument.) Isn't it the applications that make the computer useful, while the OS simply provides an interface between apps and hardware?
Maybe you're making the argument that it's easier to program certain tasks in a particular OS, but it's certainly possible to program a task to run on any OS.
Is this correct or is this an oversimplified view from a nonprogrammer?
As a video production know-nothing, I ask: if you are playing back some video production, why the need for such accuracy? If I want to start a broadcast at 00:00:00 and it goes off at 00:00:00.34, what's the big deal? Am I misinterpreting the idea of "on the air?" (I must be, I can't imagine a 1/30 second inaccuracy being that important otherwise.)
All I can think of is that the transmission of a frame from the transmitter and the playback of a frame from the source have to be in sync, but I also launched a VCR signal across the room using a $5 folded dipole I made out of twin-lead antenna wire and I didn't worry about any sort of frams syncing (this probably happened inside the VCR.)
Like I said, I know next to nothing about video broadcasting so if I seem video stupid, it is because I am.
It was ruled unconstitutional because it violates the 4th Amendment rights of the American citizen on the other end of the line. The ruling doesn't protect the foreign participant; it protects the US citizen.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong please but that's my understanding.
You could do something like that...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
Here's the solution my brother and his wife had with their daughter (if I got the story right):
The only PC with Internet access was in the living room, where they could keep an eye on what she was doing. No, they didn't hover over her shoulder, but she did have to use the same machine they used in a "public" part of the house, where they COULD see what she was doing if they chose to do so. When they allowed her to have a PC in her room, it was with one condition: it had no Internet access. The modem and NIC were pulled out of the machine. They also talked to her about the dangers of pedophiles and sexual predators who will try to lure them out into the open in chat rooms and such.
I'm not suggesting that you are relying on technology to take the place of parental interest/guidance; if you were disinterested, you wouldn't have asked the question in the first place. But if they are smart enough to see what's running, do you think that maybe they are smart enough to see what's going on at the router? Think of the Slashdot mentality regarding privacy/security...if encrypted IM/email is going to protect your data from exposure, do you think that your tech-saavy kids might do the same thing to hide stuff from you?
Relying on technology to take the place of parental involvement is begging for trouble; you can circumvent key loggers/packet sniffers/etc, but you can't get around concerned, interested, involved parents who will trust their children to make the right decisions, correct them when they screw up, and increase responsibilities/privleges when the children demonstrate that they can handle themselves.
I'm not a parent so this is all so easy for me to say since I don't deal with it day in and day out; but I've also picked up a lot from family members and friends who are parents, so take it for what you think it's worth.
Yeah it is...I didn't think of trying a WHOIS on it (I don't do that sort of thing much.)
Besides, I went through a microsoft.com webpage (can't remember the link and it's late) but it wound up going to windowsvista.com.
Still, is there any good technical reason for not hosting under the microsoft.com domain? Or is it just a marketing thing?
I'm puzzled as to why MS would be offering a RC for public download from a site that is not part of microsoft.com. Surely MS isn't short on server capacity or bandwidth :)
Seriously though, why is this not part of the microsoft.com domain?
Or the two governments are too arrogant in their world status to think they can learn from others.
In the Battle of the Atlantic of WWII, British intelligence had broken the German communications encryption (it may have been ENIGMA, I' don't know) and could reliably track German U-boat sorties to the US east coast. In fact, the Brits were supplying this intel on nearly a daily basis.
The US Government, however, did nothing with this intel and so the u-boats roamed up and down the east coast with impunity until the US gov't finally started to listen to the Brits...18 MONTHS after the attacks started.
Winston Churchill is quoted as saying "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities." (http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/2313)
I guess this means that the US Gov't will do thr right thing in the "War on Terror" (a phrase I dislike since I don't recall a formal declaration from Congress, the ONLY gov't body that can declare war if I recall correctly) once they have:
-alienated every other country on the globe;
-infringed on every article in the Constitution;
-wasted untold trillions of dollars in the pursuit of terrorists.
There's probably more I'm missing, but that's what comes to mind right about now.
Funny you mention that...when my Prius was in for the 90k mile service, the rep told me that the bettery had passed some sort of test, maybe it was a deep discharge/load test or something. I didn't know the testing waws scheduled, but I didn't complain; it didn't show up on the bill.
Warning: Rant to follow
Unless you're Ballmer or Jobs or a Linux distro company, does it really matter? I mean, really, really matter?
Do I, as a OS X user, see any sort of effect if OS X usage goes up or down?
In case you're wondering...no.
I guess I just get tired of Linux fanboys declaring that "we must get this to the desktops of the unwashed masses" or the Mac fanboys stomping around saying how much Microsoft is copying from OS X into Vista, and the Microsoft fanboys sitting around all smug with their favorite OS enjoying a practical monopoly status.
You use what works best for what you want to do, market share be damned. I use OS X for some things and WinXP for others because they each have their strengths in different areas. If John and Jane Public can easily get their digital photos of Junior's 8th birthday party by simply plugging their camera into their Windows box and pressing a button, more power to them. If you develop the Next Great Thing in an Unbuntu environment, congratualtions.
If a WinXP platform did what I want it to do as well as, or better than, OS X for a better value then I would have stuck with WinXP. If the engineering tools I need to use every day worked on a Linux platform as easily as on an WinXP or OS X platform, I would have stuck with Linux.
I coouldn't care less if OS X market share changed 0.02%, up, down, or sideways.
I'm done ranting.
You mean like frontage roads? I can see that; for all establishements in a 1/8 to 1/4 mile stretch, they all use one common curb-cut to get off the main road and on to the frontage road. Get the slower traffic off the main road at one point instead of several. Maybe to speed it up a little more you could use on- and off-ramps like freeways do. I'm not exactly sure how to design this, but it makes sense.
That's because your cordless phones probably used Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) batteries, which benefit from deep discharge/recharge cycles (aka 'conditioning'.)
Now, regarding NiMH batteries...
The occasional deep discharge/recharge is acceptable, but not every time. From www.greenbatteries.com:
Note the word "OCCASIONAL."
It appears you are comparing your usage habits of NiCd batteries with the OP's statements about NiMH batteries.
Try here...
s e/press_release_0993.xml
y /prep_cyberstormreport_sep06.pdf
http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interapp/press_relea
I was just there and downloaded the 20-page report from
http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interweb/assetlibrar