I like LilyPond even more than Finale, actually. It's obviously not much in terms of a UI, but I find that if you're a good typist, it can be even faster. Plus it has a plethora of features. Fun.
Here's an "indie game quasi-success story": Vendetta Online is a space-based MMORPG developed by 4 people (Guild Software). It has been online for about a year now, and has a few players (several hundred, maybe more). The fact that it's made by such a small company is part of its charm- regular content updates and bugfixes, quick support from the dedicated devs, lots of personal contact, etc. We even get new features for free (like the upcoming player-controllable capital ships). Can a large company beat that? I think not. And, hell, it's only $10/month. Less if you buy multiple months. The tech's not bad- high poly models, high-resolution textures, some purty pixel+vertex shader effects. w00t!
Hmm. I may have to call you out on several elements of that argument. Firstly:
A Conestoga Wagon transported about 8 (short) tons of cargo (according to the wikipedia article). According to howstuffworks.com, coal produces approximately 2,460 kWh/ton. Now, your average computer/monitor combination draws between 150W and 200W, according to some basic research. That could also be written as.2kWh. So in 24 hours, this device draws, um, 4.8 kWh. Considering that a Conestoga Wagon's worth of coal would be about 19,680 kWh of power, I think we can safely assume that a computer uses about 1/12 of a Conestoga Wagon full of coal PER YEAR.
What else? Um. The thought that lots of power is spent on optical mice is kind of funny. I haven't been able to find any concrete information, but since an optical mouse can run solely off the power provided by a PS/2 port, I'm going to assume that there's virtually no power usage involved.
Strangely enough, though, I do agree with you. For basic tasks (word processing, web browsing, etc), I've never seen anybody who needed more than about a 1GHz machine. That's fast enough to handle the flashy graphics and jazz. I've always found it funny to see Intel advertising their latest 3.9GHz dual-core hyper-threading machine as good for web browsing. But, having played Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, I can tell you quite authoritatively that you can never have too much power in your graphics card.;)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't you start to run into increased latency issues over such a connection? 5km at 300km/ms means that you're talking, um, 0.016ms of travel time each way, per packet. While that does not seem significant, that's assuming perfect conditions (and my ability to do math in my head), and that could build up in the case of multiple transactions. Of course, considering that you're talking a minimum of about 30ms latency to any remote server, I guess it's irrelevant. Ignore me.:-)
Considering that they're both made of of petroleum derivatives, and a lot of the gas is converted into inert chemicals (rather little becomes carbon monoxide), probably the DVD. And that assumes you live 5mi from the video store (with a 20mpg city car, which, sadly, most are), and would go out solely for the purpose of renting a video (vs. combining tasks).
They'll sell doubly-well if Apple brings back the true mini-tablet, the Newton. Mmm. Inkwell (Newton's 2nd-gen HWR engine, after what is now Calligrapher/Transcriber) handwriting recognition has been built into OS X since X.2, isn't it time we got a device that can put it to good use?
PS: I doubt a device with a standard Lithium Polymer battery pack would take kindly to NiMH...:P
7-Zip - Use it all the time. Loads better than the competition. Much faster with zip files than the built-in Windows stuff
Abiword - I mostly use this on OS X, but I use it on Windows occassionally. Basic but useful
Cygwin - I prefer MiniGW, but Cygwin is the original...
Filezilla - There are other FTP clients for Windows?
Firefox - Duh.
Gimp - Cheaper than Photoshop by infinity percent
GTK+ - Needed for the GIMP, plus Inkscape (which wasn't on your list? wtf?)
OpenOffice.org - Not quite as nice as MS Office, but again, infinity percent cheaper.
Thunderbird - I like Thunderbird, although Mail.app is better
VLC - There are other video players for Windows?
I've submitted that as a feature request, um, maybe 3 times. Nothing yet, but perhaps if we keep bothering them, it'll come to pass. It's a shame, too, 'cause gmail is pretty cool otherwise. I'll pass on the "desktop experience", if you don't mind. Unless somebody would care to introduce the "BeOS desktop experience"... Mmm... Configurable boolean queries...
I'm not sure if I'd feel that comfortable with a.5KG tank of butane right next to an internal combustion engine which is placed 4 feet in front of me, either. Those engine things do work based on explosions, you know...
A 450 gram liquid H2 cylinder would also be highly explosive. I'm pretty sure that the reason he's using water is to prevent cars from going boom, not to achieve the highest-density H2 storage.
Can anybody explain to me why they'd offer USB for this? Personally, I'd prefer it if they'd just give me a line-in jack. It'd work with everything, rather than requiring the car to have drivers for the player. The article's pretty sparse on details, too. Does this require the iPod to be formatted for Windows (in the case of the iPod)? Does it support anything that mounts as a generic USB Mass Storage Device? Is this some idiotic version of Microsoft's CarPC software, and therefore vulnerable to everything that CE is vulnerable to?
Which is why you break down complex angles into half-angle and double-angle identities, which lets you get the precise answer (with lots of addition of irrational radicals, but whatever)... Take the funky angle sin 22.5 for a simple example. Your calculator will tell you that the answer is 0.38blah. However, since you know that cos45 = sqrt(2)/2, and you know the half-angle identity for sin is sin(x/2) = sqrt((1-cosx)/2), then you know that sin(22.5) = sqrt((1-sqrt(2)/2)/2) = sqrt(2-sqrt(2))/2. Using repetition of this method, you can find out the exact values of very small angles, which you can then add together to find precise values of larger angles. Of course, it takes a long time, but how is that worse than finding the "spread" of an angle, particularly in curves, where you need the angle itself to calculate arclengths?
DHTML (as in using JavaScript to manipulate page elements) is usually much slower than even Flash (and anybody who's read my comment history knows that I hate Flash with a passion). JavaScript is a simplistic language that usually doesn't have a "nice" way of doing things. When you're using DHTML and having to deal with both JavaScript slowness and the browser having to move around styled HTML elements, it can get pretty hairy. Google uses DHTML for, well, almost everything, and even their extremely nice code can often bog down my Athlon XP+ 2800+/1GB. Reconciling the modern demands for real-time interactivity with the stateless, text data of HTML over HTTP and the requirement of backwards compatibility is a demanding challenge with buzzword-laden "solutions" such as AJAX, DHTML, Java, and Flash. Time will tell which, if any, will persevere.
Grammar can often only be determined by context, especially in English, where the rules of grammar change so much. Until a computer can for itself understand context, no grammar checker can be successful (or even marginally useful). Thus, my answer to your question is two words: "Artificial Intelligence." Artificial stupidity can also be used to simulate bad English.
That doesn't even come close to securely deleting data on your drive. Multiple overwrites with random data, followed by a zeroing, comes closer, but not really. There's a website out there (that I've lost the URL for) which details the process. Basically, you need to overwrite with random data and zeros in a pattern which is carefully crafted to erase the magnetic information, but the order in which the steps are performed must also be randomized. Pretty wild. Unless you're a terrorist, or you have the true Ultimate Question on your hard drive, you're probably okay with a few random overwrites and a zeroing.
A device that is a cell phone and only a cell phone. No mp3 player. No camera. No video playing. No web browsing. Other devices do those better- 'tis better to have many small, great devices than one large, batteryless, shitty one. SMS is okay, because that's a cell phone feature. If given the choice between a large, readable black and white screen (Visor Edge quality) and a tiny, ugly, battery-draining color screen, give me the color screen. Give me a long-lasting battery. Give me Bluetooth2 to connect it to other devices that do other things (like browse the web and take pictures, and use the phone as a modem). And make it look cool.
Slashdot Mirror
Now all we need to do is combine this with giant Internet-guided robots and we'll be all set for World War
Perhaps he was using "libs" to mean "liberals" instead of "Libertarians"?
As opposed to one day later? The game got to retailers yesterday, man.
I like LilyPond even more than Finale, actually. It's obviously not much in terms of a UI, but I find that if you're a good typist, it can be even faster. Plus it has a plethora of features. Fun.
Here's an "indie game quasi-success story": Vendetta Online is a space-based MMORPG developed by 4 people (Guild Software). It has been online for about a year now, and has a few players (several hundred, maybe more). The fact that it's made by such a small company is part of its charm- regular content updates and bugfixes, quick support from the dedicated devs, lots of personal contact, etc. We even get new features for free (like the upcoming player-controllable capital ships). Can a large company beat that? I think not. And, hell, it's only $10/month. Less if you buy multiple months. The tech's not bad- high poly models, high-resolution textures, some purty pixel+vertex shader effects. w00t!
Hmm. I may have to call you out on several elements of that argument. Firstly:
A Conestoga Wagon transported about 8 (short) tons of cargo (according to the wikipedia article). According to howstuffworks.com, coal produces approximately 2,460 kWh/ton. Now, your average computer/monitor combination draws between 150W and 200W, according to some basic research. That could also be written as .2kWh. So in 24 hours, this device draws, um, 4.8 kWh. Considering that a Conestoga Wagon's worth of coal would be about 19,680 kWh of power, I think we can safely assume that a computer uses about 1/12 of a Conestoga Wagon full of coal PER YEAR.
What else? Um. The thought that lots of power is spent on optical mice is kind of funny. I haven't been able to find any concrete information, but since an optical mouse can run solely off the power provided by a PS/2 port, I'm going to assume that there's virtually no power usage involved.
Strangely enough, though, I do agree with you. For basic tasks (word processing, web browsing, etc), I've never seen anybody who needed more than about a 1GHz machine. That's fast enough to handle the flashy graphics and jazz. I've always found it funny to see Intel advertising their latest 3.9GHz dual-core hyper-threading machine as good for web browsing. But, having played Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, I can tell you quite authoritatively that you can never have too much power in your graphics card. ;)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't you start to run into increased latency issues over such a connection? 5km at 300km/ms means that you're talking, um, 0.016ms of travel time each way, per packet. While that does not seem significant, that's assuming perfect conditions (and my ability to do math in my head), and that could build up in the case of multiple transactions. Of course, considering that you're talking a minimum of about 30ms latency to any remote server, I guess it's irrelevant. Ignore me. :-)
Considering that they're both made of of petroleum derivatives, and a lot of the gas is converted into inert chemicals (rather little becomes carbon monoxide), probably the DVD. And that assumes you live 5mi from the video store (with a 20mpg city car, which, sadly, most are), and would go out solely for the purpose of renting a video (vs. combining tasks).
They'll sell doubly-well if Apple brings back the true mini-tablet, the Newton. Mmm. Inkwell (Newton's 2nd-gen HWR engine, after what is now Calligrapher/Transcriber) handwriting recognition has been built into OS X since X.2, isn't it time we got a device that can put it to good use?
:P
PS: I doubt a device with a standard Lithium Polymer battery pack would take kindly to NiMH...
7-Zip - Use it all the time. Loads better than the competition. Much faster with zip files than the built-in Windows stuff
Abiword - I mostly use this on OS X, but I use it on Windows occassionally. Basic but useful
Cygwin - I prefer MiniGW, but Cygwin is the original...
Filezilla - There are other FTP clients for Windows?
Firefox - Duh.
Gimp - Cheaper than Photoshop by infinity percent
GTK+ - Needed for the GIMP, plus Inkscape (which wasn't on your list? wtf?)
OpenOffice.org - Not quite as nice as MS Office, but again, infinity percent cheaper.
Thunderbird - I like Thunderbird, although Mail.app is better
VLC - There are other video players for Windows?
I have a copy of "Disney Animation Studio Gold Edition" for DOS around here somwhere...
I've submitted that as a feature request, um, maybe 3 times. Nothing yet, but perhaps if we keep bothering them, it'll come to pass. It's a shame, too, 'cause gmail is pretty cool otherwise. I'll pass on the "desktop experience", if you don't mind. Unless somebody would care to introduce the "BeOS desktop experience"... Mmm... Configurable boolean queries...
I'm not sure if I'd feel that comfortable with a .5KG tank of butane right next to an internal combustion engine which is placed 4 feet in front of me, either. Those engine things do work based on explosions, you know...
A 450 gram liquid H2 cylinder would also be highly explosive. I'm pretty sure that the reason he's using water is to prevent cars from going boom, not to achieve the highest-density H2 storage.
Not really. Then you have to live with the car's (probably abyssmal) menu system, the lack of portability of your audio device, etc.
Can anybody explain to me why they'd offer USB for this? Personally, I'd prefer it if they'd just give me a line-in jack. It'd work with everything, rather than requiring the car to have drivers for the player. The article's pretty sparse on details, too. Does this require the iPod to be formatted for Windows (in the case of the iPod)? Does it support anything that mounts as a generic USB Mass Storage Device? Is this some idiotic version of Microsoft's CarPC software, and therefore vulnerable to everything that CE is vulnerable to?
Which is why you break down complex angles into half-angle and double-angle identities, which lets you get the precise answer (with lots of addition of irrational radicals, but whatever)... Take the funky angle sin 22.5 for a simple example. Your calculator will tell you that the answer is 0.38blah. However, since you know that cos45 = sqrt(2)/2, and you know the half-angle identity for sin is sin(x/2) = sqrt((1-cosx)/2), then you know that sin(22.5) = sqrt((1-sqrt(2)/2)/2) = sqrt(2-sqrt(2))/2. Using repetition of this method, you can find out the exact values of very small angles, which you can then add together to find precise values of larger angles. Of course, it takes a long time, but how is that worse than finding the "spread" of an angle, particularly in curves, where you need the angle itself to calculate arclengths?
I'm not sure that I could live without code folding, and I'm much too lazy to write a Ruby syntax highlighter for Crimson Editor. :P
Really. I do everything using SciTE, except the stuff I do with vim.
DHTML (as in using JavaScript to manipulate page elements) is usually much slower than even Flash (and anybody who's read my comment history knows that I hate Flash with a passion). JavaScript is a simplistic language that usually doesn't have a "nice" way of doing things. When you're using DHTML and having to deal with both JavaScript slowness and the browser having to move around styled HTML elements, it can get pretty hairy. Google uses DHTML for, well, almost everything, and even their extremely nice code can often bog down my Athlon XP+ 2800+/1GB. Reconciling the modern demands for real-time interactivity with the stateless, text data of HTML over HTTP and the requirement of backwards compatibility is a demanding challenge with buzzword-laden "solutions" such as AJAX, DHTML, Java, and Flash. Time will tell which, if any, will persevere.
Grammar can often only be determined by context, especially in English, where the rules of grammar change so much. Until a computer can for itself understand context, no grammar checker can be successful (or even marginally useful). Thus, my answer to your question is two words: "Artificial Intelligence." Artificial stupidity can also be used to simulate bad English.
Here's some useful linkage:
_ del.html
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure
http://dban.sourceforge.net/
That doesn't even come close to securely deleting data on your drive. Multiple overwrites with random data, followed by a zeroing, comes closer, but not really. There's a website out there (that I've lost the URL for) which details the process. Basically, you need to overwrite with random data and zeros in a pattern which is carefully crafted to erase the magnetic information, but the order in which the steps are performed must also be randomized. Pretty wild. Unless you're a terrorist, or you have the true Ultimate Question on your hard drive, you're probably okay with a few random overwrites and a zeroing.
Give me the black and white screen, that is. Damned typos.
What I want in my next cell phone:
A device that is a cell phone and only a cell phone. No mp3 player. No camera. No video playing. No web browsing. Other devices do those better- 'tis better to have many small, great devices than one large, batteryless, shitty one. SMS is okay, because that's a cell phone feature. If given the choice between a large, readable black and white screen (Visor Edge quality) and a tiny, ugly, battery-draining color screen, give me the color screen. Give me a long-lasting battery. Give me Bluetooth2 to connect it to other devices that do other things (like browse the web and take pictures, and use the phone as a modem). And make it look cool.
Thanks.