it is usually (75% or so) user-related. In other words, they didn't know what the hell they were doing.
Is that really user related in all cases, though? Or can it me MS products simply don't lend themselves of a deep level of understanding because of their bloat and sometimes deliberate seeming obfuscation of even the simplest tasks?
The PCs around my work regularly do wacky things for no reason anyone can fathom. Just people using them normally and no mucking about with anything sensitive, and sometimes the PCs just start refusing to do simple things. Our MSCE techs come out and scratch their heads for a while before backing up any project data doing the old reformat/reinstall.
No "free alternative" can compete with an integrated unit with dual tuners and direct digital capture of the original DirecTV data streams combined with a mature GUI for (as of today) $99. Generic PC solutions will rarely beat a specialized device with embedded components dedicated to a single function.
The fanatics will cry about the monthly fee because, as far as I can tell, they place zero value on their time. Honestly, I sometimes get an image of these guys stuffing their uncashed paychecks into their mattresses while in the other room they are trying to reinvent the wheel.
It's up to the individual. I bought a digital SLR, and I started getting MORE good shots becuase I'm more willing to take risks and try more alternate angles and compositions. It was those alternates that I normally would not have done that started producing the most fruit. Don't blame lackadasical habits of the user on the camera.
Fractal desktops! They'd have infinite resolution and infinite detail.:-)
Great for artists, but your Quake framerate would fall to one per lifetime of the cosmos. So you gamers who want to finish a deathmatch better hope for a closed Universe.
My mum has a permanent shunt in her arm for her thrice weekly trips to the kidney dialysis center. She doesn't even know it's there when not hooked up. We call her the Borg Queen now.
So instead of passing the blood through an external filter, they send in little buggers to grab the bad molecules and take them out through a similar shunt.
One of the reasons the military, for example, uses a lot of encryption is that it's very hard to hide a signal of any kind. This is why frequencies are still so sensitive- you have to hide anything possible you can about which signal is yours because it's very easy to scan the spectrum and find them. I don't think any information signal can truly melt into the background and still carry usable information.
If there is anything coherent at all in a signal, it will differentiate itself from the background noise. Even spread spectrum (CDMA) signals can be found. Ultimately, any actual content you transmit will only achieve pseudorandomness.
If you need, say 28 districts, you identify the 28 peaks of population. You center the districts on the peaks, and start growing circles. When a district encompasses the right number of voters, it stops growing. All the circles eventually merge and create a district map derived strictly from where the population clustered.
They way it's done now, especially here in California, results in statehouses filled to the brim with extreme ideologues whose minds, in all honestly, have completely gone to seed. The folks running California really are some of the stupidest sacks of dog s*** that have ever held political office. I wouldn't hire any of those drooling, blithering fools to trim my freaking lawn. I wouldn't let them blow me if it was free.
People pick on Arnold, but at least he frigging accomplished something in his life. He was successful in business long before he was well known even in the bodybuilding world. Most of the twittering jackasses in the Legislature have never had real jobs, and their minds are utterly devoid of creativity and critical thought. I'm serious here... they dumber than a slag heap, and about as useful.
I just wonder if that loser Davis knows how many Latino votes he *lost* when he made fun of Arnold's accent. I know of six personally, and seeing as I only know about eight... Yeah, you were a real bright bulb on that one, Gray. One down, the rest of the Legislature to go.
The party in power can carefully draw the districts so it strategically spreads around their power while dividing and conquering the party out of power. It's complete and utter BS, and it leads to situations like California where the statehouse is full of extremists who pass bills giving driver's licences and free health care and free college education to illegal aliens.
Gerrymandering groups people according to ideology, not geography.
For God's sake, that's what are are doing NOW, and that the whole PROBLEM! They create major strongholds for their voters and parcel up the other voters and marginalize anyone who hasn't had their mind completely destroyed by ideology.
I was a supporter of term limits, in theory, until I moved to wonderfully wacky California. Here there are term limits for the State Legislature and guess what gets done. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.
Yes, but that's because of the gerrymandering, not the term limits. The gerrymandering fills the statehouse with nothing but extremists, and THAT leads to the bulls***.
And people worried about reelection are busy bending over for money for the next election.
To paraphrase Pratchett, they were so bad they went though the other side of bad and were simply not very good anymore.
A better paraphrase would have been "It's so bad that it's coming back from the other direction actually good." The original quote talks about something becoming so extreme (Rincewind's cowardice) it become the opposite (heroism).
...it turned Psychlo into the equivalent of a small star, so when any of their bases opened a teleportal to the homeworld, they got a face full of nuclear fission.:-) And because they sort of clustered their bases on other worlds around the portals, all the offworld Psychlos eventually got nuked as well.
Pretty silly science, but I had to admit at the time it was pretty cool. The book was actually decent space opera. I don't care a flip about Scientology, so I was able to read the book without an axe to grind, and I guess that helped. It *could* have made a good film in the right hands.
Go ahead. Destroy the current popular networks and replace them with only more intellectual ones. Unless you intend to go into people's homes and force them to watch Clockwork Orange style, it won't do a bit of good.
And there's nothing wrong with *some* mindless entertainment once in a while. If you're going to kill Joe Sixpack's sitcoms, you're going to have to kill my anime, too. No thanks.
You have to educate the populace so that they demand more intellectual diversions along with their fun. It's all about b a l a n c e.
His wife deserves the Nobel Prize for staying married to someone who quotes Hunter S. Thompson.
Gosh. *THE* top intelligence agency in the world is careful about who they hire. Thanks for the newsflash "Ralph".
I went through the same thing for my job, and it was pretty easy and straightforward. Polygraphs are actually very simple conceptually in what they are trying to detect. Sometimes there are faults, but that's why they retake them.
My neighbors thought it was sort of cool that my job required such scrutiny. I messed with one guys head, when he asked me what I did, I looked carefully into the sky for several moments before saying "Oh, can't talk about it now" and then glancing up in the sky again.:-)
But the Federation of American Scientists is a heavily ideological outfit, so what can you expect?
They barely understand the moon and mars, forget explaining Lagrange points.
This is the crux of almost all problems in our efforts to evolve any further as a society, be it a push into space or whatever.
People are just plain ignorant. Not stupid. Ignorant. Most people I know never even crack open a book on ANY subject, much less something scientific. Sufficient scientific knowledge to graduate high school is knwoing the sky is blue and the ability to point to the sun in the sky. There's parts of the world where if you tell them the Earth revolves around the Sun, you'll get blank stares, and some of those parts are here in the USA. Smart people continue to be generally depicted in the media as outcasts and acceptable objects of ridicule.
We won't be going to L4, L5, L2 or even the L-train unless knowledge (and especially scientific knowledge) starts getting more respct in this world.
That's the nice thing about MP3 streaming. It stays in the original digital format until the analog audio is reconstructed just before the wired outputs to the stereo/amplifier. It's more like a TCP/IP file transfer than some of the half-assed wireless audio links you see at Best Buy.
I'm thinking of buying three of these- one for the living room/home therater, one for the master bedroom and one for the garage (I'm out there a lot on the weekends tinkering and building stuff)- and just having them all synchronized, which the brochure claims can be done.
I really appreciate these guys for supporting Mac OS X and iTunes the way they are.
Why do I work 60 hour weeks if I can't splurge once in a while?
Where? Order more than $25 on Amazon, and it's free shipping. The prices are 20% to 30% off the cover price. Overstock.com is even cheaper, and after about $3 for shipping for the first couple items, all subsequent items ship free.
Did you mean buying *OLD* books online?
I ran into that when I hit the part in the Discworld series where Terry Pratchett appears to have switched publishers for two books. No new ones were being printed, and the only readily available used ones were from a bookstore in the UK.
But I have to ask myself, how much work would I have had to do to find those books if I stayed offline? I got these two books (in near new condition) use via Amazon's aftermarket section, and the shipping, even from overseas, wasn't bad. One way or another, there's going to be a premium for stuff that's hard to find. I might as well direct that premium toward convenience.
You have red LEDs down around 2 mA in some extreme cases, but the blues still require something close to 35mA. Greens are generally more than reds, but they have them at the 5mA point, I think.
So you need a red, green and blue to make one pixel just like a phospher display, and the circuitry to provide a precise analog current to all three LED chips and every pixel. And you have to avoid crosstalk between pixels.
Still, I use blue LEDs on my front panels a lot as simple indicators. They am kool.:-)
You know... knowing our software engineers... I think I agree with you.;-)
To be fair, though, I think it has something to do with category 5 software assurance where they check every line of code with a magnifying glass. Twice. And then they check again. Three times.
...that we use VxWorks extensively around where I work, and everytime we need some minor addition to an embedded application, it's like we asked the software engineers to sacrifice their own mothers to some dark Old God. And it isn't even like it's *real* embedded applications where it's all solid state and firmware and PROMs. This is stuff like VXI Slot 0 PCs with hard drives and monitor/mouse/keyboard ports.
I never knew what "ashen faced" was until I asked if I could add a couple bits to a status packet (and this was still in the design phase when things are supposed to be fluid).
Slashdot Mirror
So try another town. Are you rooted to one spot?
Is that really user related in all cases, though? Or can it me MS products simply don't lend themselves of a deep level of understanding because of their bloat and sometimes deliberate seeming obfuscation of even the simplest tasks?
The PCs around my work regularly do wacky things for no reason anyone can fathom. Just people using them normally and no mucking about with anything sensitive, and sometimes the PCs just start refusing to do simple things. Our MSCE techs come out and scratch their heads for a while before backing up any project data doing the old reformat/reinstall.
No "free alternative" can compete with an integrated unit with dual tuners and direct digital capture of the original DirecTV data streams combined with a mature GUI for (as of today) $99. Generic PC solutions will rarely beat a specialized device with embedded components dedicated to a single function.
The fanatics will cry about the monthly fee because, as far as I can tell, they place zero value on their time. Honestly, I sometimes get an image of these guys stuffing their uncashed paychecks into their mattresses while in the other room they are trying to reinvent the wheel.
It's up to the individual. I bought a digital SLR, and I started getting MORE good shots becuase I'm more willing to take risks and try more alternate angles and compositions. It was those alternates that I normally would not have done that started producing the most fruit. Don't blame lackadasical habits of the user on the camera.
Great for artists, but your Quake framerate would fall to one per lifetime of the cosmos. So you gamers who want to finish a deathmatch better hope for a closed Universe.
Sorry, she already called dibs on Rick Berman, or was it Piller she was dating? In either case, it proves there is no God in this Universe.
So instead of passing the blood through an external filter, they send in little buggers to grab the bad molecules and take them out through a similar shunt.
If there is anything coherent at all in a signal, it will differentiate itself from the background noise. Even spread spectrum (CDMA) signals can be found. Ultimately, any actual content you transmit will only achieve pseudorandomness.
They way it's done now, especially here in California, results in statehouses filled to the brim with extreme ideologues whose minds, in all honestly, have completely gone to seed. The folks running California really are some of the stupidest sacks of dog s*** that have ever held political office. I wouldn't hire any of those drooling, blithering fools to trim my freaking lawn. I wouldn't let them blow me if it was free.
People pick on Arnold, but at least he frigging accomplished something in his life. He was successful in business long before he was well known even in the bodybuilding world. Most of the twittering jackasses in the Legislature have never had real jobs, and their minds are utterly devoid of creativity and critical thought. I'm serious here... they dumber than a slag heap, and about as useful.
I just wonder if that loser Davis knows how many Latino votes he *lost* when he made fun of Arnold's accent. I know of six personally, and seeing as I only know about eight... Yeah, you were a real bright bulb on that one, Gray. One down, the rest of the Legislature to go.
The party in power can carefully draw the districts so it strategically spreads around their power while dividing and conquering the party out of power. It's complete and utter BS, and it leads to situations like California where the statehouse is full of extremists who pass bills giving driver's licences and free health care and free college education to illegal aliens.
Gerrymandering groups people according to ideology, not geography.
For God's sake, that's what are are doing NOW, and that the whole PROBLEM! They create major strongholds for their voters and parcel up the other voters and marginalize anyone who hasn't had their mind completely destroyed by ideology.
Yes, but that's because of the gerrymandering, not the term limits. The gerrymandering fills the statehouse with nothing but extremists, and THAT leads to the bulls***.
And people worried about reelection are busy bending over for money for the next election.
undocumented workers
They're called ILLEGAL ALIENS.
I L L E G A L - A L I E N S
Got it?
A better paraphrase would have been "It's so bad that it's coming back from the other direction actually good." The original quote talks about something becoming so extreme (Rincewind's cowardice) it become the opposite (heroism).
Yeah, just a nitpick for a Friday.
Pretty silly science, but I had to admit at the time it was pretty cool. The book was actually decent space opera. I don't care a flip about Scientology, so I was able to read the book without an axe to grind, and I guess that helped. It *could* have made a good film in the right hands.
And there's nothing wrong with *some* mindless entertainment once in a while. If you're going to kill Joe Sixpack's sitcoms, you're going to have to kill my anime, too. No thanks.
You have to educate the populace so that they demand more intellectual diversions along with their fun. It's all about b a l a n c e.
Gosh. *THE* top intelligence agency in the world is careful about who they hire. Thanks for the newsflash "Ralph".
I went through the same thing for my job, and it was pretty easy and straightforward. Polygraphs are actually very simple conceptually in what they are trying to detect. Sometimes there are faults, but that's why they retake them.
My neighbors thought it was sort of cool that my job required such scrutiny. I messed with one guys head, when he asked me what I did, I looked carefully into the sky for several moments before saying "Oh, can't talk about it now" and then glancing up in the sky again. :-)
But the Federation of American Scientists is a heavily ideological outfit, so what can you expect?
This is the crux of almost all problems in our efforts to evolve any further as a society, be it a push into space or whatever.
People are just plain ignorant. Not stupid. Ignorant. Most people I know never even crack open a book on ANY subject, much less something scientific. Sufficient scientific knowledge to graduate high school is knwoing the sky is blue and the ability to point to the sun in the sky. There's parts of the world where if you tell them the Earth revolves around the Sun, you'll get blank stares, and some of those parts are here in the USA. Smart people continue to be generally depicted in the media as outcasts and acceptable objects of ridicule.
We won't be going to L4, L5, L2 or even the L-train unless knowledge (and especially scientific knowledge) starts getting more respct in this world.
And it's only 60 hour weeks once in a while.
That's the nice thing about MP3 streaming. It stays in the original digital format until the analog audio is reconstructed just before the wired outputs to the stereo/amplifier. It's more like a TCP/IP file transfer than some of the half-assed wireless audio links you see at Best Buy.
I really appreciate these guys for supporting Mac OS X and iTunes the way they are.
Why do I work 60 hour weeks if I can't splurge once in a while?
Where? Order more than $25 on Amazon, and it's free shipping. The prices are 20% to 30% off the cover price. Overstock.com is even cheaper, and after about $3 for shipping for the first couple items, all subsequent items ship free.
Did you mean buying *OLD* books online?
I ran into that when I hit the part in the Discworld series where Terry Pratchett appears to have switched publishers for two books. No new ones were being printed, and the only readily available used ones were from a bookstore in the UK.
But I have to ask myself, how much work would I have had to do to find those books if I stayed offline? I got these two books (in near new condition) use via Amazon's aftermarket section, and the shipping, even from overseas, wasn't bad. One way or another, there's going to be a premium for stuff that's hard to find. I might as well direct that premium toward convenience.
So you need a red, green and blue to make one pixel just like a phospher display, and the circuitry to provide a precise analog current to all three LED chips and every pixel. And you have to avoid crosstalk between pixels.
Still, I use blue LEDs on my front panels a lot as simple indicators. They am kool. :-)
To be fair, though, I think it has something to do with category 5 software assurance where they check every line of code with a magnifying glass. Twice. And then they check again. Three times.
I never knew what "ashen faced" was until I asked if I could add a couple bits to a status packet (and this was still in the design phase when things are supposed to be fluid).
...but it's still frustrating. How often do people come back to a site that requires 29 clicks?
Why would someone put a smock on a cock, other than the obvious poetic reason?
I didn't think chickens could paint.
Huh.