Want to see something even more beautiful? If you want to do your own state taxes in PA (as opposed to buying the state package from HRBlock, Intuit, etc.), you go to www.pafreefile.com. There, you get sent to https://www.statefillableforms..., which is a domain run by... dum-dum-dummmmmm... Intuit.
Can't even print them out and fill them out on paper, you have to create an account and fill them out online on Intuit's site, then print them and mail them.
Fsck me. They ran their in-house system one last time for this year while "encouraging" us to use the new system. The new Intuit system is allegedly the only route next year.
> The brake pedal is for braking, dammit; simply lifting off the gas pedal should result in nearly coasting
You kids and your silly torque converters. In a proper car with three pedals, when you lift, as the motor slows it transmits braking torque to the drive wheels to which it is directly connected. It actually gives you more options for controlling the car. You can get it to rotate in a corner with a brief throttle-lift, upsetting the chassis less than if you touched the brakes.
What, you just sit in your car and aim it lazily at your destination? Where's the fun in that?
> If Firewire hadn't been an expensive pain in the ass, we'd be using USB for our keyboards and printers and Firewire for our portable drives as originally intended.
Again I'll ask you guys for confirmation (no one has said "no, you're wrong" the previous times I've asked): what I've understood all along about AGW is that man-made greenhouse gas contributions are increasing the _rate_ of warming.
To be clear, that seems to be pretty well agreed on. But "the increasing rate of global warming is man-made" is not the same thing as "global warming is man-made". We could be reducing the rate of warming, and we'd still frequently be having record high global average temperatures, because the trend in this interglacial period that predates our industrialized influence has been _warming_.
Can we still ask for accurate science reporting without being tarred and feathered as "denialists"? Or is that not allowed?
Unable to RTFA (server not responding), but seriously? They _can't_ be talking about actually using 2.4GHz ISM band, _unlicensed_ spectrum, full of all kinds of crap that you have to accept, to build even a supplimental safety system. That's just the submitter putting a generic name to "wireless communication", right? *boggle*
Isn't AGW supposed to be about _rate_ of change?
on
Bastardi's Wager
·
· Score: 1
So somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but what I _think_ I've heard from the AGW proponents once you get past the ad-hominems (on both sides!), is that yes, we are between ice ages, and yes, the planet does naturally warm as you come out of an ice age (duh!), and yes, the planet has been warmer in the distant past, but AGW is about the global average temp increasing _faster_ than it should be naturally. Is that close?
So am I wrong in seeing "this was the warmest decade recorded"-type headlines lately and thinking "yeah, so?"? What happened to the rate-of-change bit? How is that trending compared to what they think is supposed to be natural?
The extra negative camber in the rears is just to make the car understeer at the limit, which keeps the "general population" from losing the rear and suing the mfgr. It gives the minority something to undo to really make it enjoyable to drive.:)
Don't misunderstand me -- I hate that as much as anyone. I'm talking about ICEs in an appropriate setting (mostly closed-course competition); and even on the street, a nice V-8 doesn't have to be _loud_ to sound sweet. I've got cats and reasonable mufflers on mine; it's far from obnoxiously loud, but still has a nice song to it.
And honestly, here in my neck of the woods, subwoofers are a much bigger nuisance than loud exhausts. Self-centered idiots will be self-centered idiots, regardless what tools are available.
The electric motor beats the combustion engine in every way
Not quite _every_ way. What it's missing is "soul" (all you folks driving stock Hondas won't notice any change, har har): the howl of a GT-1-spec V8 that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, the growl of a boxer-6, the scream of a racebike at 16k RPMs, even the burble of a tuned street-V8 idling. I guess you can play pretty motor sounds from a speaker, but still, it's not the same.:)
And there really is a lot of cool engineering in modern ICEs. Some of us will miss that.
Don't get me wrong, I think something like an AWD rally car with independent electric wheel motors is going to be _fantastic_, performance-wise. But it won't have quite the same emotional pull as the old stuff.
I don't think it's applicable in the Prius case, but worth noting in general:
At WOT, the vacuum-assist for many power-assist brake systems just isn't there. You'll get one, maybe two applications from the vacuum reserve system. At that point, you have to be a little bit strong (and your seat has to be positioned properly) to generate that kind of braking force.
I'm not excusing it (your seat _should_ be positioned correctly, and you _should_ be strong enough to work the brakes without the assist), just pointing out that it's not quite that trivial.
Firefox resists to ship a Microsoft Installer (MSI) and Apple Installer (PKG) for some mysterious reason
You're not _supposed_ to use installer packages for simple self-contained apps (which Firefox is) on OS X. Drag-n-drop from a compressed DMG is the preferred way except for exceptional case that need to install frameworks or kernel extensions outside of the.app bundle.
A self-contained app can be distributed by a network admin quite simply with rsync or ARD or an Automator script or umpteen other ways that are fully automatable. People need to stop expecting Microsoft-looking "solutions" for non-Microsoft platforms.
Eh, it's more open (with the Helix stuff?) and more multiplatform than Microsoft's alternatives (is even Mplayer with binary codecs able to play DRM'd WMVs? And even their new Silverlight, despite allegedly for Mac and Windows, is OSX x86-only -- there's a buttload of still-useful PowerPC machines still out here).
And with most sites I've seen that offer streaming content, those are my two choices -- Real or DRM'd MS (if I'm even lucky enough to have a choice of something non-MS!). Or Flash. Ooh, yeah, that's much bet....ter.
So yeah, Real is the (much) lesser of those three evils. The player isn't even all that bad on MacOS -- I never saw the bloatware Windows version everyone rips them for, so I don't know how bad it was. It's not like that now. And I don't even use it; I just have Mplayer using the installed Real player's codecs on OSX-PPC.
> we don't go to sites that are likely to be dangerous
Do you go to sites that host ads from adservers? Because lately, _that_ (adservers) has been one of the hot targets for compromise, and iirc there's been some success. "Only visit safe sites" isn't worth much more these days than the bits it's printed on, at least from a security standpoint.
You can use more than just the arrows for menu navigation once you hit C-F2. They use standard completion -- just start typing the menu item you want. I'm in Safari now; if I want to "Window", "Zoom", I hit C-F2, W, enter, Z, enter. For multiple menu items that are similar, you just type past the similarity: for "View", "Hide Status Bar" (there are several "Hide..." items) hit C-F2, V, enter, "hide s", enter.
Not to mention the accelerator keys for most common functions and the fact that you can add them to others if you prefer, in System Preferences/Keyboard and Mouse.
Once you get used to it, you may find you prefer it to the Windows (and KDE, and Gnome, and...) way of having an underlined accelerator key. I know I sure do.:)
http://wifinetnews.com/archives/007280.html ..."the University of Washington's patent-licensing arm has sued four electronics makers that incorporate Bluetooth chips made by CSR into their products: Nokia, Samsung, and both Matsushita and its subsidiary Panasonic of North America. "
All the reports I've read of the situation sound like the classic (patented?!) submarine-patent scheme.:-(
Boot from an alternate volume (like a Tiger install DVD -- after you select the language, there's a "utilities" menu or something where you can run terminal and disk utility), and use "asr -source $SOURCEVOL -target $TARGETVOL -erase" where $SOURCEVOL is your boot drive and $TARGETVOL is a sparse diskimage on a Firewire or USB disk.
It's fast, it's a pure copy, and it doesn't modify the access times of files on $SOURCEVOL. Make sure you're booted from a different volume and you use the "-erase" flag, though, or it can't unmount $SOURCEVOL and does a file-level copy instead. It still works, but it's a lot slower (and I'm not sure if it's modifying last-access times or not).
Technically, you can do the same thing with Disk Utility, I think, but I've been using asr.
> Even more annoying is the #$@#% Mighty Mouse, which has buttons out the wazoo but was designed in such a boneheaded way that it's no different from a one-button mouse from the perspective of someone who uses UNIX apps on their Mac. There's no way to left and right click at the same time, and none of the additional buttons register as a third mouse button to the operating system.
Click by pressing on the scroll ball. That's your middle mouse button.
Right. Like de-CSSing it to view the content (that you supposedly purchased a license to view) on the only player in your house, which happens to run FreeBSD.
There's nothing in that that violates copyright law, but according to the DMCA (which is intended to protect/enforce DRM), that's a big no-no.
Wow, have _you_ ever driven a car? Know what happens when you're at the limits of traction in a corner and you suddenly chop the throttle and don't have the option of applying further power?
Unless it's a FWD econobox that was pushing (understeering) like a pig right up until it happened, it's called a spin -- and it certainly fits _my_ definition of uncontrollable (at least unrecoverable).
Slashdot Mirror
... of course you can download the blank forms from the state site itself. But Intuit has solidly inserted itself into the online process.
Want to see something even more beautiful? If you want to do your own state taxes in PA (as opposed to buying the state package from HRBlock, Intuit, etc.), you go to www.pafreefile.com. There, you get sent to https://www.statefillableforms..., which is a domain run by... dum-dum-dummmmmm... Intuit.
Can't even print them out and fill them out on paper, you have to create an account and fill them out online on Intuit's site, then print them and mail them.
Fsck me. They ran their in-house system one last time for this year while "encouraging" us to use the new system. The new Intuit system is allegedly the only route next year.
> The brake pedal is for braking, dammit; simply lifting off the gas pedal should result in nearly coasting
You kids and your silly torque converters. In a proper car with three pedals, when you lift, as the motor slows it transmits braking torque to the drive wheels to which it is directly connected. It actually gives you more options for controlling the car. You can get it to rotate in a corner with a brief throttle-lift, upsetting the chassis less than if you touched the brakes.
What, you just sit in your car and aim it lazily at your destination? Where's the fun in that?
> If Firewire hadn't been an expensive pain in the ass, we'd be using USB for our keyboards and printers and Firewire for our portable drives as originally intended.
Um, you mean some of you _aren't_ doing that? :-\
Again I'll ask you guys for confirmation (no one has said "no, you're wrong" the previous times I've asked): what I've understood all along about AGW is that man-made greenhouse gas contributions are increasing the _rate_ of warming.
To be clear, that seems to be pretty well agreed on. But "the increasing rate of global warming is man-made" is not the same thing as "global warming is man-made". We could be reducing the rate of warming, and we'd still frequently be having record high global average temperatures, because the trend in this interglacial period that predates our industrialized influence has been _warming_.
Can we still ask for accurate science reporting without being tarred and feathered as "denialists"? Or is that not allowed?
Linux distros. After I'm done, I try to keep seeding for the next night or two to try to "give back" at least a little bit.
Anyone else who's read Niven's "Fallen Angels" recognizing way too much of it coming true? It was supposed to be _fiction_, Larry! (Wasn't it?)
> I closed it right away and the Mac installer started and asked me to install Mac Protector, so I quit the installer and all is well
No, not _all_ is well. You need to turn off the Safari pref 'Open "safe" files after downloading', which should not even _exist_. :-(
Unable to RTFA (server not responding), but seriously? They _can't_ be talking about actually using 2.4GHz ISM band, _unlicensed_ spectrum, full of all kinds of crap that you have to accept, to build even a supplimental safety system. That's just the submitter putting a generic name to "wireless communication", right? *boggle*
So somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but what I _think_ I've heard from the AGW proponents once you get past the ad-hominems (on both sides!), is that yes, we are between ice ages, and yes, the planet does naturally warm as you come out of an ice age (duh!), and yes, the planet has been warmer in the distant past, but AGW is about the global average temp increasing _faster_ than it should be naturally. Is that close?
So am I wrong in seeing "this was the warmest decade recorded"-type headlines lately and thinking "yeah, so?"? What happened to the rate-of-change bit? How is that trending compared to what they think is supposed to be natural?
IANACS...
Actually, Michelin did sort of what you're asking for a few years back -- the TWEEL.
http://www.gizmag.com/go/3603/
Apparently it hasn't been all that disruptive. At least not yet... :)
The extra negative camber in the rears is just to make the car understeer at the limit, which keeps the "general population" from losing the rear and suing the mfgr. It gives the minority something to undo to really make it enjoyable to drive. :)
Don't misunderstand me -- I hate that as much as anyone. I'm talking about ICEs in an appropriate setting (mostly closed-course competition); and even on the street, a nice V-8 doesn't have to be _loud_ to sound sweet. I've got cats and reasonable mufflers on mine; it's far from obnoxiously loud, but still has a nice song to it.
And honestly, here in my neck of the woods, subwoofers are a much bigger nuisance than loud exhausts. Self-centered idiots will be self-centered idiots, regardless what tools are available.
The electric motor beats the combustion engine in every way
Not quite _every_ way. What it's missing is "soul" (all you folks driving stock Hondas won't notice any change, har har): the howl of a GT-1-spec V8 that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, the growl of a boxer-6, the scream of a racebike at 16k RPMs, even the burble of a tuned street-V8 idling. I guess you can play pretty motor sounds from a speaker, but still, it's not the same. :)
And there really is a lot of cool engineering in modern ICEs. Some of us will miss that.
Don't get me wrong, I think something like an AWD rally car with independent electric wheel motors is going to be _fantastic_, performance-wise. But it won't have quite the same emotional pull as the old stuff.
I don't think it's applicable in the Prius case, but worth noting in general:
At WOT, the vacuum-assist for many power-assist brake systems just isn't there. You'll get one, maybe two applications from the vacuum reserve system. At that point, you have to be a little bit strong (and your seat has to be positioned properly) to generate that kind of braking force.
I'm not excusing it (your seat _should_ be positioned correctly, and you _should_ be strong enough to work the brakes without the assist), just pointing out that it's not quite that trivial.
Firefox resists to ship a Microsoft Installer (MSI) and Apple Installer (PKG) for some mysterious reason
You're not _supposed_ to use installer packages for simple self-contained apps (which Firefox is) on OS X. Drag-n-drop from a compressed DMG is the preferred way except for exceptional case that need to install frameworks or kernel extensions outside of the .app bundle.
A self-contained app can be distributed by a network admin quite simply with rsync or ARD or an Automator script or umpteen other ways that are fully automatable. People need to stop expecting Microsoft-looking "solutions" for non-Microsoft platforms.
Eh, it's more open (with the Helix stuff?) and more multiplatform than Microsoft's alternatives (is even Mplayer with binary codecs able to play DRM'd WMVs? And even their new Silverlight, despite allegedly for Mac and Windows, is OSX x86-only -- there's a buttload of still-useful PowerPC machines still out here).
And with most sites I've seen that offer streaming content, those are my two choices -- Real or DRM'd MS (if I'm even lucky enough to have a choice of something non-MS!). Or Flash. Ooh, yeah, that's much bet....ter.
So yeah, Real is the (much) lesser of those three evils. The player isn't even all that bad on MacOS -- I never saw the bloatware Windows version everyone rips them for, so I don't know how bad it was. It's not like that now. And I don't even use it; I just have Mplayer using the installed Real player's codecs on OSX-PPC.
> we don't go to sites that are likely to be dangerous
Do you go to sites that host ads from adservers? Because lately, _that_ (adservers) has been one of the hot targets for compromise, and iirc there's been some success. "Only visit safe sites" isn't worth much more these days than the bits it's printed on, at least from a security standpoint.
You can use more than just the arrows for menu navigation once you hit C-F2. They use standard completion -- just start typing the menu item you want. I'm in Safari now; if I want to "Window", "Zoom", I hit C-F2, W, enter, Z, enter. For multiple menu items that are similar, you just type past the similarity: for "View", "Hide Status Bar" (there are several "Hide..." items) hit C-F2, V, enter, "hide s", enter.
:)
Not to mention the accelerator keys for most common functions and the fact that you can add them to others if you prefer, in System Preferences/Keyboard and Mouse.
Once you get used to it, you may find you prefer it to the Windows (and KDE, and Gnome, and...) way of having an underlined accelerator key. I know I sure do.
Uh, right.
..."the University of Washington's patent-licensing arm has sued four electronics makers that incorporate Bluetooth chips made by CSR into their products: Nokia, Samsung, and both Matsushita and its subsidiary Panasonic of North America. "
:-(
http://wifinetnews.com/archives/007280.html
All the reports I've read of the situation sound like the classic (patented?!) submarine-patent scheme.
Boot from an alternate volume (like a Tiger install DVD -- after you select the language, there's a "utilities" menu or something where you can run terminal and disk utility), and use "asr -source $SOURCEVOL -target $TARGETVOL -erase" where $SOURCEVOL is your boot drive and $TARGETVOL is a sparse diskimage on a Firewire or USB disk.
It's fast, it's a pure copy, and it doesn't modify the access times of files on $SOURCEVOL. Make sure you're booted from a different volume and you use the "-erase" flag, though, or it can't unmount $SOURCEVOL and does a file-level copy instead. It still works, but it's a lot slower (and I'm not sure if it's modifying last-access times or not).
Technically, you can do the same thing with Disk Utility, I think, but I've been using asr.
`man asr` for the gory details.
> Even more annoying is the #$@#% Mighty Mouse, which has buttons out the wazoo but was designed in such a boneheaded way that it's no different from a one-button mouse from the perspective of someone who uses UNIX apps on their Mac. There's no way to left and right click at the same time, and none of the additional buttons register as a third mouse button to the operating system.
Click by pressing on the scroll ball. That's your middle mouse button.
Right. Like de-CSSing it to view the content (that you supposedly purchased a license to view) on the only player in your house, which happens to run FreeBSD. There's nothing in that that violates copyright law, but according to the DMCA (which is intended to protect/enforce DRM), that's a big no-no.
Wow, have _you_ ever driven a car? Know what happens when you're at the limits of traction in a corner and you suddenly chop the throttle and don't have the option of applying further power?
Unless it's a FWD econobox that was pushing (understeering) like a pig right up until it happened, it's called a spin -- and it certainly fits _my_ definition of uncontrollable (at least unrecoverable).
Even better: it's win - win - _no_ Win. ;-)