Disk movement was most pronounced with a 90-degree upright sitting posture.
An "upright 90-degree sitting posture" usually isn't. Try sitting in a 90 position, without curving your lower back. Chances are you can't do it. If you can, you're either still young and flexible, or you've been doing yoga for a while.
No wonder the study concluded that sitting up straight isn't good for your back. The participants probably couldn't even do it properly.
Browsers and visual authoring tools need to tell users that the page they are looking at is non-conformant and warn that it may not behave correctly.
Like your GCC analogy. Web browsers are used like compilers by web developers, but unlike compilers, browsers don't warn on syntax errors. Except they do warn on JavaScript errors. Why they warn on JavaScript errors and not (X)HTML or CSS/XSS errors is beyond me.
There's a Firefox extension that does this automatically and sets a little icon in the status bar based on the validation result, but since it's just an extension, it's only optional.
Opera has a built-in validator, but it doesn't automatically inform the user whenever he or she navigates to a non-conforming web page.
Web developers need to be shamed into writing proper (X)HTML.
Developers of message board software could define macros like [IANAL] (better yet, let the message board admins define them), and let the software convert it to IANAL. It will show up as IANAL with a funny underline in the web browser, but when you hover your mouse over it, the abbreviation will be spelled out. (I would demonstrate it, but apparently Slashcode doesn't trust this particular markup.)
...taxing the crap out of [oil companies] to force [alternative fuels] defeats the free market...
Much as I like capitalism, it alone doesn't solve every problem. Take for example greenhouse gas emmissions. How do you keep people from contributing to global warming without taxing the sources of it?
...and ultimately ends up punishing the consumer.
For things like commuting alone in an SUV while living way out in the suburbs far from work. A tax on oil provides a disincentive for bad behavior.
C decides that B hasn't payed them enough money, and thus slows down packets to and from B that cross over C. From your end, it looks like service is degraded and your ISP sucks.
Your ISP *does* suck if it uses backbone C and can't be bothered to iron out the issues or switch to a different backbone. The customer doesn't need to know the technical reason for the slowdown. (Aren't all ISPs dual-homed these days anyway?)
If your web site keeps going down because the data center used by your web host can't supply continuous power, do you regulate the data center, or do you vote with your dollars by switching to a web host that has better uptimes? Does your web host keep their servers where they are and hope for the best, or do they migrate their servers to a different data center and/or find another way to mitigate the problem?
...if the telemarketers are following the rules - and they're subject to MASSIVE fines if they're not...
Except some companies make it harder to trace their calls by spoofing their caller ID numbers. I've received calls with obviously bogus numbers on my caller ID, so I wouldn't be surprised if companies are also spoofing legitimate-looking numbers, more and more now since the do-not-call list went into effect.
Seems to me like it's a pretty major design flaw in the whole telephone system that needs to be fixed.
This has to do with a for-profit company making money by making edited copies of someone else's work and selling those copies.
Cleanflix doesn't sell pirated copies. They pay the copyright holder for each DVD sold.
It isn't a bad thing that a for-profit company makes a little extra money by adding value to a DVD purchase. If it was, the studios would be suing any store that offers gift wrapping.
The consumers do not have the political or economic power to prevent the telcos from forcing us to take it up the ass.
When I was living in an apartment, I didn't have a landline, just a cell phone. Where I'm living now, if I don't like Qwest, Cox also provides phone service. No telco can force me into anything. Only the government can, by preventing competition.
Apple ought to sell their own branded, color-coordinated gaming controllers. Maybe create a "gaming pack" with that controller and some games to go along with it, which you could add to your shopping cart when you visit their online store. That ought to dispel the myth that Apples are bad for gaming (assuming they aren't).
"If we had true consumer choice in network providers, then we wouldn't need network neutrality laws - the market would work things out for itself."
I agree. So maybe the government should concern itself with increasing choice for consumers instead of putting additional restrictions on broadband providers.
"Maybe a later lesson could focus on the debugging potential of one IDE or another..."
You'll give your students an lesson in frustration if you wait until later to teach them how to debug their programs.
I recently took a college course on C, and I was one of the few students who knew how to use a debugger (which wasn't taught in the course). Most of the other students had a really hard time with the course because they were basically expected to get their programs right the first time.
So I'd say teach the students how to use a debugger from the beginning. Unless you intend the course to be one that "weeds out" any student who isn't 100% dedicated to earning a CS degree...
> Is BIND really that pathetic, or are they just not using it correctly?
Here's a performance comparison of the ubiquitous Apache web server with Yaws, an Erlang-based web server. (Erlang is a programming language and virtual machine designed for distributed processing.) To summarize, "Apache dies at about 4,000 parallel sessions. Yaws is still functioning at over 80,000 parallel connections." The author goes on to speculate that the reason Apache dies so quickly is due to limitations in the host operating system.
If Erlang can keep a web server going under nearly infinite load, imagine what it could do for DNS.
A related problem is when an episode is shown in another country first. An example is the new Dr. Who series from England. By the time an episode makes its way here to the U.S., TiVo thinks it's a rerun, even though it hasn't been shown here before. So for shows like that, you can't set it for First Run Only like you would for any other show.
TiVo is so close to perfect that issues like this are all the more annoying.
“How could they let someone have an email address of 'null'? NULL is generally a reserved keyword in most places where it is used; apparently the designers of Verizon's email system forgot some basic computing.”
The problem goes deeper than reserved keywords. They apparently didn’t understand the concept of “in-band signaling--the sending of metadata and control information in the same channel used for data,” instead of using separate channels. Using unescaped, reserved keywords in software is one example of this. You should be able to use NULL or PRN or COM1 or whatever you want in the e-mail address instead of telling the user, ”you can’t use this as your e-mail address.”
A better design than using NULL to indicate “pretend like you’re sending this message but don’t actually deliver it” would be to have a separate field in the message header to say the same thing. Then you wouldn’t have to arbitrarily deny the use of certain e-mail addresses just because you designed the system poorly.
"I won't make earth uninhabitable bit it will make it more miserable. We can adapt after the population has been culled and after the resource wars have been settled."
I think you've hit on something important: the goal isn't to save the planet, it's to save ourselves from the planet. It's raising the sea level, making parts of the planet uninhabitable and replacing CO2-producing machines with swamps until equilibrium between CO2 producers and CO2 consumers is reached.
To do to save ourselves, we need to adjust the equilibrium point in our favor by reducing our CO2 emissions and/or increasing our CO2 consumption.
This seems much better than my idea of putting a big drain in the floor and using giant sprinklers hanging from the ceilings to clean my house; sort of like living in a giant dishwasher.
“Various sources quote costs of 0.81 cents (81/100th of a cent) or 0.93 cents (93/100th of a cent) to make a penny. The U.S. Mint is paid a penny to make one, and what's left over represents a profit for the Government whenever pennies are taken out of circulation when the public loses or saves them (seigniorage).
“However, this doesn't tell the whole story. With the added cost to the Federal Reserve System of handling pennies, the General Accounting Office calculated that in 1994, there was a net cost of $8.5 million to $9.2 million to the government to produce pennies.”
Slashdot Mirror
Or just live on GMT/UTC time. If the Australians can have their winter in the middle of summer, then Californians can have their lunch at dinnertime.
From TFA:
An "upright 90-degree sitting posture" usually isn't. Try sitting in a 90 position, without curving your lower back. Chances are you can't do it. If you can, you're either still young and flexible, or you've been doing yoga for a while.
No wonder the study concluded that sitting up straight isn't good for your back. The participants probably couldn't even do it properly.
You really have to watch them. Once in a while they come up with terrorist handbooks.
Can you claim that as a defense?
Like your GCC analogy. Web browsers are used like compilers by web developers, but unlike compilers, browsers don't warn on syntax errors. Except they do warn on JavaScript errors. Why they warn on JavaScript errors and not (X)HTML or CSS/XSS errors is beyond me.
There's a Firefox extension that does this automatically and sets a little icon in the status bar based on the validation result, but since it's just an extension, it's only optional.
Opera has a built-in validator, but it doesn't automatically inform the user whenever he or she navigates to a non-conforming web page.
Web developers need to be shamed into writing proper (X)HTML.
And since when is a "fix" (as in "CSS fix") considered to be a "new feature"?
If I were a parent of an obese child, I'd sue the school for not providing enough exercise.
According to the title the gel quickly stops bleeding, but I think it would be better if it didn't bleed in the first place.
So I think I'll wait for version 2.
Developers of message board software could define macros like [IANAL] (better yet, let the message board admins define them), and let the software convert it to IANAL. It will show up as IANAL with a funny underline in the web browser, but when you hover your mouse over it, the abbreviation will be spelled out. (I would demonstrate it, but apparently Slashcode doesn't trust this particular markup.)
Much as I like capitalism, it alone doesn't solve every problem. Take for example greenhouse gas emmissions. How do you keep people from contributing to global warming without taxing the sources of it?
For things like commuting alone in an SUV while living way out in the suburbs far from work. A tax on oil provides a disincentive for bad behavior.
Your ISP *does* suck if it uses backbone C and can't be bothered to iron out the issues or switch to a different backbone. The customer doesn't need to know the technical reason for the slowdown. (Aren't all ISPs dual-homed these days anyway?)
If your web site keeps going down because the data center used by your web host can't supply continuous power, do you regulate the data center, or do you vote with your dollars by switching to a web host that has better uptimes? Does your web host keep their servers where they are and hope for the best, or do they migrate their servers to a different data center and/or find another way to mitigate the problem?
Except some companies make it harder to trace their calls by spoofing their caller ID numbers. I've received calls with obviously bogus numbers on my caller ID, so I wouldn't be surprised if companies are also spoofing legitimate-looking numbers, more and more now since the do-not-call list went into effect.
Seems to me like it's a pretty major design flaw in the whole telephone system that needs to be fixed.
Cleanflix doesn't sell pirated copies. They pay the copyright holder for each DVD sold.
It isn't a bad thing that a for-profit company makes a little extra money by adding value to a DVD purchase. If it was, the studios would be suing any store that offers gift wrapping.
When I was living in an apartment, I didn't have a landline, just a cell phone. Where I'm living now, if I don't like Qwest, Cox also provides phone service. No telco can force me into anything. Only the government can, by preventing competition.
I'd think if you had a plan to hurt someone, the authorities would like to know about it. Seems they'd rather stick their heads in the sand.
Apple ought to sell their own branded, color-coordinated gaming controllers. Maybe create a "gaming pack" with that controller and some games to go along with it, which you could add to your shopping cart when you visit their online store. That ought to dispel the myth that Apples are bad for gaming (assuming they aren't).
I agree. So maybe the government should concern itself with increasing choice for consumers instead of putting additional restrictions on broadband providers.
You'll give your students an lesson in frustration if you wait until later to teach them how to debug their programs.
I recently took a college course on C, and I was one of the few students who knew how to use a debugger (which wasn't taught in the course). Most of the other students had a really hard time with the course because they were basically expected to get their programs right the first time.
So I'd say teach the students how to use a debugger from the beginning. Unless you intend the course to be one that "weeds out" any student who isn't 100% dedicated to earning a CS degree...
Here's a performance comparison of the ubiquitous Apache web server with Yaws, an Erlang-based web server. (Erlang is a programming language and virtual machine designed for distributed processing.) To summarize, "Apache dies at about 4,000 parallel sessions. Yaws is still functioning at over 80,000 parallel connections." The author goes on to speculate that the reason Apache dies so quickly is due to limitations in the host operating system.
If Erlang can keep a web server going under nearly infinite load, imagine what it could do for DNS.
A related problem is when an episode is shown in another country first. An example is the new Dr. Who series from England. By the time an episode makes its way here to the U.S., TiVo thinks it's a rerun, even though it hasn't been shown here before. So for shows like that, you can't set it for First Run Only like you would for any other show. TiVo is so close to perfect that issues like this are all the more annoying.
Mod parent up! And add Haiku and Zeta to the list. Or maybe Palm would be willing to license BeOS R5.
The problem goes deeper than reserved keywords. They apparently didn’t understand the concept of “in-band signaling--the sending of metadata and control information in the same channel used for data,” instead of using separate channels. Using unescaped, reserved keywords in software is one example of this. You should be able to use NULL or PRN or COM1 or whatever you want in the e-mail address instead of telling the user, ”you can’t use this as your e-mail address.”
A better design than using NULL to indicate “pretend like you’re sending this message but don’t actually deliver it” would be to have a separate field in the message header to say the same thing. Then you wouldn’t have to arbitrarily deny the use of certain e-mail addresses just because you designed the system poorly.
"I won't make earth uninhabitable bit it will make it more miserable. We can adapt after the population has been culled and after the resource wars have been settled."
I think you've hit on something important: the goal isn't to save the planet, it's to save ourselves from the planet. It's raising the sea level, making parts of the planet uninhabitable and replacing CO2-producing machines with swamps until equilibrium between CO2 producers and CO2 consumers is reached.
To do to save ourselves, we need to adjust the equilibrium point in our favor by reducing our CO2 emissions and/or increasing our CO2 consumption.