If you'd read the article you would understand that this isn't the Canadian government collecting taxes/royalties - it's a private business arrangement between various Canadian ISPs and SOCAN.
One of the many problems with this idea that you'll only be getting a license from SOCAN to download as much as you want without threat from them, but you would still be a target for CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association, representing the various recording labels) and any criminal/civil actions brought by the government.
The services company I work for deals with multi-site corporates around the world. Some of these corporates are still running IE5.5 on Windows 2000 desktops, having never ever wanted or needed to upgrade to Windows XP. These companies just aren't interested in upgrading. Sometimes its because their cheap, but mostly it's because they have legacy apps that won't work on newer browsers or OSes - so they're either unwilling or unable to make the switch.
Whilst Microsoft has *finally* ended support for Windows 2000, they continue to encourage situations like this by extending Windows XP support up until 2014!. If they really want corporates to stop using these old browsers and OSes maybe they should remember that they are a software company and help them to move forward. That helps to line their pockets, too.
The AMEE robot and its UAV were cool tech that will probably become reality because of projects like this. What a shame the rest of Red Planet was so crappy.
I would say that Office 2007 was the pinnacle of Office. Lots of people (including me) bitched and moaned about the ribbon interface, but it turned out to be a good decision that exposed all of the functionality of Office instead of hiding things in obscure and/or arbitrary menus.
The uber magical ribbon interface didn't seem to help Outlook at all. To resend or recall a message, which is not something uncommon to do in corporate environments, you've still got to go to the Sent Items folder double-click on the message to open it in a new window then hunt through Message tab/Other Actions to find the recall/resend options.
Your first point is wrong. The CFL will last years longer.
No they don't.
Except for downlights in our kitchen and a pair of touch lamps, we've switched to CFL's throughout and have been using them for a few years now. Not even the "dimmable" CFLs work in our dimming touch lamps otherwise we'd be using them there, too. I'm seriously considering switching back to incandescents - whilst CFLs have had a minor impact on our power bill (they must consume a *lot* more power when warming up), they do fail far more frequently and so cost more overall than incandescents. On top of that there's legal issues with our local councils on disposals - it's technically illegal to put dead CFLs in the refuse because of their mercury content yet there are no alternatives in the form of recycling facilities available.
I'm looking forward to LED lightning getting past its First Gen issues.
Democratic governments are supposed to be all about market-driven economies, right? So if CFLs are some great then why does the government need to enforce a protectionist economy for them? They should be able to stand on their own merit.
Also, "18-bit" is an implication, not a buffer depth. Although 262,144 is 2^18 HAM/HAM-8 modes don't work that way. HAM-8, because it's palette driven, is limited to 256 colours per scanline. In 1,024x768 mode you could get a maximum of 196,608 (256x768) colours, but by employing overscan tricks as well you could get to 262,144 (256*1,024) colours.
Right and Amiga has a 4000 color palette youngling.
So, so sorry to burst your bubble but... the Amiga 500/1000 (and the Apple IIgs as well) had 12-bit RGB video output yielding a total of 4,096 possible colours. Palettes were always a subset of those 4,096 colours. Hence the usage of the name "palette".
Palettes on the A500/1000 were 16 or 32 colours (OCS had 6bpp graphic buffers) and 16 or 256 colours on the Apple IIgs, though more colours could be displayed on either platform by employing palette-switching tricks during horizontal retrace periods. This is essentially what HAM (Hold and Modify Mode) was and it could only really be used for stills. Half-Brite mode was a trick that switched palettes during the vertical retrace period and got you 64 colours on A500/1000.
It wasn't until the A1200 came along that with the AGA (and its 8bpp buffers) Amiga got 24-bit RGB output, but it was still limited 256 colour palettes or 262,144 colours (18-bit) in HAM-8 mode.
1) How will you play music in a machine, which is responding to voice?. If a song has a word "SHUTDOWN", the computer's microphone will respond to that and might power off the system
This is a solved problem, long long ago. If the computer is also playing the music it simply removes the music output stream from the sampling input stream (through whatever means the implementor chooses, be it simple acoustic subtraction or dynamic filtering).
Re:Voice recognition has been around since years!
on
Talking To Computers?
·
· Score: 1
They had it far before that too, back in the MacOS 8 days I believe.
I think Casper was kicking around in System 7.5 or 7, even.
Digital distribution, with easy and non-intrusive copy protection -- you need an internet connection to install, but that's it unless the publisher (e.g. Ubisoft) insists on more.
Last time I checked you absolutely had to login to the Steam application before you could play any games. Even if you start the game directly from its own executable (as opposed to the desktop shortcuts that launch the game via the Steam application) you still get the Steam application starting and prompting for username/password details before you can start to play. If there's particular games that don't do this I'd like to know which.
Apparently you need to login to even see the list of 240 proposed games. I hope they've got Dragon's Lair in there somewhere, but I won't be finding out.
...and of a limited, braindamaged modeling of timezone data which cannot keep past records without restrictions. So, don't expect the system to get time conversion right for DST of a few years ago, it has to forget them.
Can you provide some more information on this? I'm not attacking, I'm genuinely interested in why you think this is the case.
I know the time zone data in the registry is a mess, but I didn't think there were any limits on how far back in time DST start/end dates for particular years were kept especially since the API takes years 1-9,999 (there's a Y10K bug) and I've seen dozens of entries in some time zones (seems they can't make up their mind from year-to-year).
is it 'cool' when you embed the links with their link texts being parts of sentences ? what about usability, user friendliness ?
Others have already supplied the link, but agreed. It seems to be all about keeping you on the current site so you can be exposed to more advertising, click tracking, etc.. Gone is fashion where external links used to be preceded by little shortcut icons and go directly to that site, not passing go, not collecting $200 - not that shortcut icons were a particularly great idea either, but at least it made the links stand out from the body text.
There's always add-ons like the Web Developer add-on with its Outline External Links option, or GreaseMonkey scripts.
Long before you become "grizzled", you learn time. You learn calendars. You think in UTC. All the jobs happen on UTC. With the correct leap years plotted out for the next thousand years.
And then along come leap seconds, thus enhancing your grizzledness.
Yes it is rather strange, isn't it (trusting you enough to run your application but not enough to log error reports)?
We go to a great detail of trouble showing the user what information will be logged (given that this is running inside the application's exception handler we have to be very careful about triggering more exceptions) so that users can make an informed decision about the Ok/Cancel buttons on the exception dialog. Still, we occasionally get users (staff or customers) that complain to us through other channels (phone/email) about problems that they've been having and then have to fess-up that they've never bothered to log an exception report.
Sometimes they've been experiencing the problem for months and we could have fixed it in a couple of minutes and had it out in the wild a couple of releases ago. Maybe we should take a leaf out of Sony/BMG's book and just do it without their consent. (jk)
There are still "good citizens" out there that will report bugs without an expectation of payment.
One of our applications files cases for exceptions through FogBugz, giving users the opportunity to add their own comments before submission. We know some users just click Cancel (thus not reporting an issue) but maybe 10% of submissions have a comment and about 10% of those say anything meaningful to help us replicate the bug. I don't recall anybody asking for money before telling us what they did to break it.
Given that PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) has been around longer than Internet Explorer, I could never understand why autorun.inf files weren't signed. Didn't Microsoft learn from all the problems induced by autorun-like behaviours on Amiga and Macintosh?
Up until about MacOS 8 (I think) the Finder used to automatically execute.CODE resources in files on disk/HDD/CD whenever a new disc came online which is how most Mac viruses got propagated.
Slashdot Mirror
Well that comment just shows that you've never shopped at Dell.
If you'd read the article you would understand that this isn't the Canadian government collecting taxes/royalties - it's a private business arrangement between various Canadian ISPs and SOCAN.
One of the many problems with this idea that you'll only be getting a license from SOCAN to download as much as you want without threat from them, but you would still be a target for CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association, representing the various recording labels) and any criminal/civil actions brought by the government.
The services company I work for deals with multi-site corporates around the world. Some of these corporates are still running IE5.5 on Windows 2000 desktops, having never ever wanted or needed to upgrade to Windows XP. These companies just aren't interested in upgrading. Sometimes its because their cheap, but mostly it's because they have legacy apps that won't work on newer browsers or OSes - so they're either unwilling or unable to make the switch.
Whilst Microsoft has *finally* ended support for Windows 2000, they continue to encourage situations like this by extending Windows XP support up until 2014!. If they really want corporates to stop using these old browsers and OSes maybe they should remember that they are a software company and help them to move forward. That helps to line their pockets, too.
The AMEE robot and its UAV were cool tech that will probably become reality because of projects like this. What a shame the rest of Red Planet was so crappy.
There's more details on the maker's web site: http://www.batslyadams.com/
Want
Oh yes, because iPhone has never ever once had a vulnerability.
I would say that Office 2007 was the pinnacle of Office. Lots of people (including me) bitched and moaned about the ribbon interface, but it turned out to be a good decision that exposed all of the functionality of Office instead of hiding things in obscure and/or arbitrary menus.
The uber magical ribbon interface didn't seem to help Outlook at all. To resend or recall a message, which is not something uncommon to do in corporate environments, you've still got to go to the Sent Items folder double-click on the message to open it in a new window then hunt through Message tab/Other Actions to find the recall/resend options.
Your first point is wrong. The CFL will last years longer.
No they don't.
Except for downlights in our kitchen and a pair of touch lamps, we've switched to CFL's throughout and have been using them for a few years now. Not even the "dimmable" CFLs work in our dimming touch lamps otherwise we'd be using them there, too. I'm seriously considering switching back to incandescents - whilst CFLs have had a minor impact on our power bill (they must consume a *lot* more power when warming up), they do fail far more frequently and so cost more overall than incandescents. On top of that there's legal issues with our local councils on disposals - it's technically illegal to put dead CFLs in the refuse because of their mercury content yet there are no alternatives in the form of recycling facilities available.
I'm looking forward to LED lightning getting past its First Gen issues.
Democratic governments are supposed to be all about market-driven economies, right? So if CFLs are some great then why does the government need to enforce a protectionist economy for them? They should be able to stand on their own merit.
Gak, typo: OCS had 5bpp graphic buffers
Also, "18-bit" is an implication, not a buffer depth. Although 262,144 is 2^18 HAM/HAM-8 modes don't work that way. HAM-8, because it's palette driven, is limited to 256 colours per scanline. In 1,024x768 mode you could get a maximum of 196,608 (256x768) colours, but by employing overscan tricks as well you could get to 262,144 (256*1,024) colours.
Right and Amiga has a 4000 color palette youngling.
So, so sorry to burst your bubble but... the Amiga 500/1000 (and the Apple IIgs as well) had 12-bit RGB video output yielding a total of 4,096 possible colours. Palettes were always a subset of those 4,096 colours. Hence the usage of the name "palette".
Palettes on the A500/1000 were 16 or 32 colours (OCS had 6bpp graphic buffers) and 16 or 256 colours on the Apple IIgs, though more colours could be displayed on either platform by employing palette-switching tricks during horizontal retrace periods. This is essentially what HAM (Hold and Modify Mode) was and it could only really be used for stills. Half-Brite mode was a trick that switched palettes during the vertical retrace period and got you 64 colours on A500/1000.
It wasn't until the A1200 came along that with the AGA (and its 8bpp buffers) Amiga got 24-bit RGB output, but it was still limited 256 colour palettes or 262,144 colours (18-bit) in HAM-8 mode.
1) How will you play music in a machine, which is responding to voice?. If a song has a word "SHUTDOWN", the computer's microphone will respond to that and might power off the system
This is a solved problem, long long ago. If the computer is also playing the music it simply removes the music output stream from the sampling input stream (through whatever means the implementor chooses, be it simple acoustic subtraction or dynamic filtering).
They had it far before that too, back in the MacOS 8 days I believe.
I think Casper was kicking around in System 7.5 or 7, even.
Digital distribution, with easy and non-intrusive copy protection -- you need an internet connection to install, but that's it unless the publisher (e.g. Ubisoft) insists on more.
Last time I checked you absolutely had to login to the Steam application before you could play any games. Even if you start the game directly from its own executable (as opposed to the desktop shortcuts that launch the game via the Steam application) you still get the Steam application starting and prompting for username/password details before you can start to play. If there's particular games that don't do this I'd like to know which.
Apparently you need to login to even see the list of 240 proposed games. I hope they've got Dragon's Lair in there somewhere, but I won't be finding out.
...and of a limited, braindamaged modeling of timezone data which cannot keep past records without restrictions. So, don't expect the system to get time conversion right for DST of a few years ago, it has to forget them.
Can you provide some more information on this? I'm not attacking, I'm genuinely interested in why you think this is the case.
I know the time zone data in the registry is a mess, but I didn't think there were any limits on how far back in time DST start/end dates for particular years were kept especially since the API takes years 1-9,999 (there's a Y10K bug) and I've seen dozens of entries in some time zones (seems they can't make up their mind from year-to-year).
is it 'cool' when you embed the links with their link texts being parts of sentences ? what about usability, user friendliness ?
Others have already supplied the link, but agreed. It seems to be all about keeping you on the current site so you can be exposed to more advertising, click tracking, etc.. Gone is fashion where external links used to be preceded by little shortcut icons and go directly to that site, not passing go, not collecting $200 - not that shortcut icons were a particularly great idea either, but at least it made the links stand out from the body text.
There's always add-ons like the Web Developer add-on with its Outline External Links option, or GreaseMonkey scripts.
Just to answer my own question, it seems Cannonical have their own maintainers for this. http://packages.ubuntu.com/maverick-updates/i386/krb5-kdc
Isn't the krb5 package supplied from upstream? Could this affect other distributions?
Damn programmers and their butterflies, the bane of a real sys admin.
What, they've built Angry Birds into emacs now?
Long before you become "grizzled", you learn time. You learn calendars. You think in UTC. All the jobs happen on UTC. With the correct leap years plotted out for the next thousand years.
And then along come leap seconds, thus enhancing your grizzledness.
Yes it is rather strange, isn't it (trusting you enough to run your application but not enough to log error reports)?
We go to a great detail of trouble showing the user what information will be logged (given that this is running inside the application's exception handler we have to be very careful about triggering more exceptions) so that users can make an informed decision about the Ok/Cancel buttons on the exception dialog. Still, we occasionally get users (staff or customers) that complain to us through other channels (phone/email) about problems that they've been having and then have to fess-up that they've never bothered to log an exception report.
Sometimes they've been experiencing the problem for months and we could have fixed it in a couple of minutes and had it out in the wild a couple of releases ago. Maybe we should take a leaf out of Sony/BMG's book and just do it without their consent. (jk)
There are still "good citizens" out there that will report bugs without an expectation of payment.
One of our applications files cases for exceptions through FogBugz, giving users the opportunity to add their own comments before submission. We know some users just click Cancel (thus not reporting an issue) but maybe 10% of submissions have a comment and about 10% of those say anything meaningful to help us replicate the bug. I don't recall anybody asking for money before telling us what they did to break it.
Given that PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) has been around longer than Internet Explorer, I could never understand why autorun.inf files weren't signed. Didn't Microsoft learn from all the problems induced by autorun-like behaviours on Amiga and Macintosh?
Up until about MacOS 8 (I think) the Finder used to automatically execute .CODE resources in files on disk/HDD/CD whenever a new disc came online which is how most Mac viruses got propagated.