Galaxies is so enormously unfun to play that I honestly wonder if they wouldn't be better served to close shop for a while and come back with a fresh offering in a year or year and a half.
Sweet gentle baby Jesus!
I'd completely forgotten about Connections with James Burke. That show rocked the casbah. Seriously.
The way he was able to bind together a show from so many seemingly boring and insignificant things truly made for some great television.
This pretty funny, but absolutely true for a lot of people.
The only thing my parents and grandparents would ever need a broadband internet connection for is downloading patches and service packs from Microsoft. Email, instant messaging, and basic websurfing doesn't need highspeed. When they visit me and use the internet they notice the speed but the value isn't there for their simple needs. Luckily they have me to download updates and service packs for them.
Occasionally I consider dropping my broadband connection but the forty bucks a month it costs easily offsets the money I save by downloading movies and music. Hmm, now I've forgotten the point of my post. Oh well.
The fact is that Americans don't simply have one ballot to fill out because the president isn't the only thing they have to choose they go to the polls. Americans sometimes have dozens of items to vote on ranging from presidents and judges, to various propositions and referendum items. That is why computerized systems are so popular.
The American system often gets trashed by the media, but like it or not, it's a brutally democratic system.
FYI, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) is the Canadian investor you're thinking of. They originally bought in for $30 million, while Baystar's stake was $20 million. RBC sold their stake to Baystar for a substantial loss.
Here's a link to a ZDnet article about RBC fleeing the SCO fiasco.
News about the Firefly movie is what I'm waiting to hear about from Comic-Con. I simply can't get excited about Star Wars anymore after the last movie. *sigh*
I'm Canadian, and while our system does have problems, it generally works very well. It's wonderful to be able to walk into a hospital or clinic and have them patch you up without worrying about the cost.
Please stop making so many little, cool geek products. I'm running out of money.
Love, Norm
Re:Try the County Assessor yet?
on
Open Maps?
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· Score: 1
Your local government (town/city/county) is definitely the quickest and best way to find out what's available for the area if you don't want to use TIGER data.
Something like a single line road network (slrn) for a city is pretty common and easy to create. Most city's will give you this data if you sign some papers adn agree not to sell or use it for a commercial endeavour. Failing that, you can grab a laptop and gps and drive around the city yourself easily (unless you live in a huge city).
Getting someone to give you aerial photos or satellite imagery can be extremely difficult because the agency that originally took those photos almost always retains exclusive rights to distribute.
Give your local city hall a shot. I manage the GIS system at a mid-sized Canadian city and deal with this stuff daily. The only information requests we regularly deny are those from businesses that will make money from the data or if the requests seem to have no purpose (other than they want the data).
Thanks to those of you that provide personal servers for us to download from.
Sometimes I'm terrified that Slashdot will link to my server and fry my poor little box. On the other hand, the thought also excites me.
I'd gladly pay $129 if Tiger removed the metallic look from Finder windows.
OS X version still confusing
on
Real Problems
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· Score: 1
After reading the CarTalk article on Slashdot a few days ago, I decided to download the RealPlayer and was pleasantly surprised that they had improved the process. But that was at work on Windows.
Earlier today I wanted to download Real for my Powerbook, but the OS X download still has several pages of forms to fill out and some confusing talk about 14 day free trials. Several of the pages said "You will not be billed" and that freaked me out enough to run back to the BBC's website for their hassle-free download.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought of WoW when I saw this article too.
Galaxies is so enormously unfun to play that I honestly wonder if they wouldn't be better served to close shop for a while and come back with a fresh offering in a year or year and a half.
Sweet gentle baby Jesus! I'd completely forgotten about Connections with James Burke. That show rocked the casbah. Seriously. The way he was able to bind together a show from so many seemingly boring and insignificant things truly made for some great television.
It's playing on the Space Channel in Canada. [ spacecast.com ] Saturday night and then repeated on Sunday.
CityTV played the movie a few days ago.
This pretty funny, but absolutely true for a lot of people. The only thing my parents and grandparents would ever need a broadband internet connection for is downloading patches and service packs from Microsoft. Email, instant messaging, and basic websurfing doesn't need highspeed. When they visit me and use the internet they notice the speed but the value isn't there for their simple needs. Luckily they have me to download updates and service packs for them. Occasionally I consider dropping my broadband connection but the forty bucks a month it costs easily offsets the money I save by downloading movies and music. Hmm, now I've forgotten the point of my post. Oh well.
The fact is that Americans don't simply have one ballot to fill out because the president isn't the only thing they have to choose they go to the polls. Americans sometimes have dozens of items to vote on ranging from presidents and judges, to various propositions and referendum items. That is why computerized systems are so popular.
The American system often gets trashed by the media, but like it or not, it's a brutally democratic system.
FYI, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) is the Canadian investor you're thinking of. They originally bought in for $30 million, while Baystar's stake was $20 million. RBC sold their stake to Baystar for a substantial loss.
Here's a link to a ZDnet article about RBC fleeing the SCO fiasco.
News about the Firefly movie is what I'm waiting to hear about from Comic-Con. I simply can't get excited about Star Wars anymore after the last movie. *sigh*
It impressed me. ;-)
I thought all the people with low IDs, like 10, were in nursing homes or had passed on.
Having a built-in radio receiver would be nice, but I'd hardly call it a "must-have, life-saving" feature.
Maybe you should ask Steve Jobs to include a weeks dry rations and heart defibrillator too.
I'm Canadian, and while our system does have problems, it generally works very well. It's wonderful to be able to walk into a hospital or clinic and have them patch you up without worrying about the cost.
Those were good times. Sometimes I get upset that Bungie is now owned by Microsoft, but at least they're still producing awesome games.
:)
At home my macs are called Tycho, Durandal, and Leela. Thanks, Bungie.
My email is my slashdot username @yahoo.ca
Dear Apple,
Please stop making so many little, cool geek products. I'm running out of money.
Love, Norm
Your local government (town/city/county) is definitely the quickest and best way to find out what's available for the area if you don't want to use TIGER data.
Something like a single line road network (slrn) for a city is pretty common and easy to create. Most city's will give you this data if you sign some papers adn agree not to sell or use it for a commercial endeavour. Failing that, you can grab a laptop and gps and drive around the city yourself easily (unless you live in a huge city).
Getting someone to give you aerial photos or satellite imagery can be extremely difficult because the agency that originally took those photos almost always retains exclusive rights to distribute.
Give your local city hall a shot. I manage the GIS system at a mid-sized Canadian city and deal with this stuff daily. The only information requests we regularly deny are those from businesses that will make money from the data or if the requests seem to have no purpose (other than they want the data).
The article mentions that so far only a few users are testing the 1,000,000 MB limit.
It never hurts to read the actual article.
Thanks to those of you that provide personal servers for us to download from. Sometimes I'm terrified that Slashdot will link to my server and fry my poor little box. On the other hand, the thought also excites me.
I'd gladly pay $129 if Tiger removed the metallic look from Finder windows.
After reading the CarTalk article on Slashdot a few days ago, I decided to download the RealPlayer and was pleasantly surprised that they had improved the process. But that was at work on Windows. Earlier today I wanted to download Real for my Powerbook, but the OS X download still has several pages of forms to fill out and some confusing talk about 14 day free trials. Several of the pages said "You will not be billed" and that freaked me out enough to run back to the BBC's website for their hassle-free download.
I usually have have a whole slew of tabs open and haven't noticed any performance issues. But faster is better, so I'm all for that! Woo!
Last night I watched My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance and Average Joe: Hawaii. I'm hanging my head in shame.