i don't understand how there's been a 1,000 bugfixes in the 1.5 release... i've been using mozilla for ages and ages and ages and i don't remember the last time i had a crash or noticed a bug... from all i can tell mozilla achieved perfection in the 1.3 release... it's probably the most stable app i've ever used... who notices or reports these bugs...
if you want a manual camera as a student that'll be good enough for a long time as you learn, just go for a ricoh manual SLR... great cams, i had one in the late 1980s, highly dependable and just sweet..
from time to time there are such ambitious projects set up, but consider the following... the NHS is by far one of the most conservative and conservatively minded orgationisations in the UK...
The secretaries won't like it... i personally installed staroffice for a couple of NHS secretaries to try it 'cos it had some good features that might've helped their work and they just looked at it and went back to MS word...
The NHS's computer staff, scattered in many hospitals, won't want to give up their MS products and use linux... it's just too much work for them...
the same mindset the NHS has for treatments and therapies they'll have too towards any computer systems... while the US and Europe, and the rest of the industrialised world, embrace state-of-the-art treatments and therapies... the NHS people look at anything trendy with despise and ridicule and stick to their 1940s ways...
The NHS is an organisation that has more administrative staff than hospital beds... if something needs to be done... no matter how trivial it is... they'll employ someone to do it... corporate efficiency isn't something that drives the NHS... that's just their mindset... they like to create a job, make someone responsible and accountable for it, and then totally forget about the whole thing... a hospital recently created a job called 5 portion coordinator... it basically is someone who tells people to eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day!... this mindset stretches throughout the NHS.. don't look at the NHS to be an early adopter of anything... this is not a dynamic corporation
I am going to bet a 1000 to 1 (or is it a 1 to 1000, i never really bet... ) that this entire exercise is just something to get microsoft to give them a discount... the actual deal will definitely go to microsoft... as for the NHS adopting linux... wait till the entire world did... then wait a couple of decades... and then the NHS will...
regarding past, present and future... what's most remarkable is my surprise to realize that the guy is still alive... some people i guess seem to have been there forever.... henry kissinger is an example..
i know... it's retard... it makes you wonder if people who submit stories even bother to read them... the article itself says that... "The law, which was signed by former Gov. Gray Davis, was written to also include future technologies and could be enforced against people recording all or parts of a film with a tape recorder, handheld computer or even a cell phone."
i really worry about the excessive computerization of society; it's as for whatever problem you have there will be a digital solution of some sort that'll make you trouble-free, and worry-free. And we seem to be further instilling this mindset into kids.
I say this out of experience as i've depended on computing as a thought platform for 4 years till i recently adopted a different approach of going back to basics. If we are to teach kids anything of value, we need to teach them how to think for themselves, and thinking, actually, doesn't require computation at every move.
My life has been much better since i abandoned computation as a cornerstone of my work. Yes it's a useful too, but it's not everything. Kids need to learn how to use their memory, and how to use a pen and a paper. They need to use good ol' trusted methods of simplifying something until they are manageable and memorable, and seeking patterns and strategies that'll ease problem-solving. While computing might be useful, it might also hinder the development of such thinking.
i guess it's a sign of the immense success of a product when you forget that it was only introduced no more than 2 years ago... once a product feels like it's been there forever and it somewhat doesn't easily occur to you that a while ago it didn't even exist and no body heard of it, that is when it become a part of the popular culture.
kudos to apple; and also for the fact that 2 years on no one seems to have been able to bring to market a better product.
when i first read this i wondered why this was posted on slashdot, it didn't seem like anything worthy of regurgitating, but hey, i guess in the UK it isn't, because there already is a rating for games, where GTA is rated 18, meaning you gotta be at least 18 to purchase it.
it's only surprising that california didn't have such legislation until now.
well, that's a much better situation than australia, and many other countries, where GTA is banned altogether.
that said, i don't see a reason why i would miss such games. i enjoyed GTA III, and as for GTA vice city, which i own, i've only played it for 10 minutes and then switched it off... lately i've discovered nintendo, and i discovered the amount of fun you can have while unintentionally remaining on the innocent and cute side of life.
Kudos to nintendo, i'd totally turst them with my kids.
I have always been impressed by the scandanavians; Those Scandanavian sure look fit, healthy, happy, more evolved and civilised creatures than us... for some reason i was delighted with schadenfreude when i saw this pic ... in the foreground there is a a beautiful example of what scandanavia always represented... and there, in the background, behind her, was a headless, dangling ape.
all those people who comment with a "he" demonstrate that a good proportion of slashdotters don't even click the links and see the stuff linked to... it's a SHE!!!... and she's got a cute belly and a sweet smile too...
wow... imagine taking her to bed... i don't know if it'd turn me on that she's a published mathematician of extraordinary achievement or if it'd make me having an erection an infinitesmially remote possibility.
if i had any sympathy for the RIAA, they've squandered it totally with this.
It's ironic that those who seek to apply the full, unmerciful "justice-is-blind", force of the law to its maximum penalty, even to children, student, senior citizens, single mothers... etc now want to be exempt from the law where it applies to them.
Have they never heard of "do unto other as you'd to be done unto you"...
The only market realities are that consumers remain puzzled by why CDs can reach $20, and artists are no much happier; market realities for artists is that many of them had filed for bankruptcy after selling millions of records, thanks to one-sided contracts with record labels, such artists include tony braxton who filed for bankruptcy after selling 15,000,000 records, TLC who filed for bankruptcy after selling 11,000,000 records, run DMC and many others, and in fact, you can sell millions of records and still owe money to your record label. Market realities are that artists in droves have launched lawsuits against their record labels for moden-day slavery, such artists include george michael, courtney love, prince... and many others.
It's ironic that record labels use the rights of the artists as a noble cause to exterminate consumers into financial and legal oblivion, yet no one has abused the artists more than the record companies.
Unknown artists face even worse situations than those famous ones cited above.
This one-sided approach to the law by the record labels isn't unusual. They've mastered it in their contractual dealings with artists. Yet it never ceases to amaze me.
This is an essential reading for those who wanna know more.
You need something like this if you want to rest a laptop on in your lap while sitting in a sofa or on a couch. It's a simple do-it-yourself and it doesn't get any better than this. Amazingly my Sony Vaio is the exact width to a standard A4 folder. The folder adds hardly any significant weight, and it will sheild a significant amount of heat from your thighs, as air and carboard, which is still tough enough and durable if good quality, are poor conductors of heat. Also, as long as you don't rest your wrists, which you should never do anyway, typing will be comfortable with this tilted angle. In addition, the tilted angle will lift the screen up, especially when you adjust the screen hinge to unfold it a little further, so instead of looking down, you're looking a little more forward. You can even use two folders on top of each other, in either of two combinations, either for a more horizontal or a more tilted towards vertical position. You can also use two thick rubber bands if you don't trust the quality of those you purchased.
Interestingly, IBM has recently demonstrated a prototype that does something similar, which mimics a lot of this simple trick that you can have for almost free.
Okay; there are big advantages to a "desktop-replacement" laptop over an actual desktop; I now have my second desktop-replacement laptop and I doubt I will ever buy a desktop again.
First of all, a laptop doesn't take as much space as a desktop; just try to fit a desktop computer into a dining room or a living room, or even a bedroom, it's just damn unsightly and unweilding, let alone unportable, a laptop will fit into these with no trouble at all, and if you wish to you can unplug it in throw it into the drawer.
A laptop can easily become a portable DVD player. My Sony Vaio has TV out, so I can plug it into the scart to watch movies on the TV. Or, if I watch those foreign or independent movies that no one else wants to see, I switch off the lights, lie comfortable on my side or back, and either unfold the laptop and rest it on its side so it has an angle that'll keep it up, or rest it on my stomach with an empty A4 sized folder attached to it with a thick rubber band, amazingly they're exactly the same width, and the folder both gives it a good angle and sheild the heat from my stomach, and it weighs almost nothing. From this close distance, it feels so much like watching a movie in the cinema, sizewise!!! Now try watching a movie on a desktop... argh, it's an ordeal.
Then, you can take a laptop to work or with you to a hotel room.
As for ergonomics, the full-size screen of a sony vaio is immensely comfortable, and a 15" screen is quite generous.
Any modern laptop will have a processing power that'll last for years. I've upgraded my memory to 400mb. As for upgradeability, I have a Belkin 7-port USB hub, and i can daisy chain that to have 127 USB ports if i want to. I'm quite happy with this combo, the memory upgrade and the USB 7 port hub completely transformed my usage. I downloaded a virtual desktop utility from sourceforge, and now i keep my commonly used Apps running at startup, and my cybershot cam and clie handheld, and wireless gamepad, always plugged into the USB hub.
All that is required is to archive webpages that are cited in academic or scholarly research. Maybe all that is required is the creation of an academic resource designed in a way to overcome copyright issues and allow an academic or scholar who cites a webpage to submit an online request for its archival at the time of submitting his paper for publication. And then for readers who want to consult a webpage that is cited in an academic or scholarly publication to head to that site where they can either search for the webpage, or the author and/or title of the paper that cited it. Call it citedpages.com, the domain is even available.
Basically, citation is the requirement for archival. A logo can be awarded to pages that are cited to reward their creators for allowing their pages to be copied and archived, which they may proudly display on their page as a portrayal of credibility of their content, and evidence of scholarly or academic citation in a publication can be used to guard against fraudulent submision.
Come to think of it, this sounds like a potential business opportunity. Revenue may come from advertising to a vertical market audience. All is well until some university or governmental body create a competing site.
The best solution is e-bay; if you're anything like me, you probably store things for years and years without ever using them once, in the hope that one day you might wanna tinker with 'em.
However, almost anything you're likely to have will be on sale on e-bay, and not only that it generates cash for you in the interim, but if you're ever in the future likely to want that obscure thing you once had, then all you gotta do is search e-bay.
It will save you not only cash, but also valuable domestic space, and in the future everything will probably be cheaper anyway.
Make a list of all the things you haven't used in the past 6 months, then search for each on e-bay, if they're available, sell 'em, if they're hard to find for three weeks running and you really wanna keep 'em, then keep 'em.
I like this machine. It's amazing how the most beautiful solutions are often the simplest.
It also reminds me of this...
" It sometimes seems as if our planet has no secrets left - but deep beneath the great Antarctic ice sheet scientists have made an astonishing discovery. They've found one of the largest lakes in the world. It's very existence defies belief. Scientists are desperate to get into the lake because its extreme environment may be home to unique flora and fauna, never seen before, and NASA are excited by what it could teach us about extraterrestrial life. But 4 kilometres of ice stand between the lake and the surface, and breaking this seal without contaminating the most pristine body of water on the planet is possibly one of the greatest challenges science faces in the 21st century. transcript here
The difference in mindset between the Soviet solution and the NASA solution was really interesting.
With them taking the lead recently in passenger-carrier design, leave it to Airbus in Tolouse to come up with all the innovation.
Too bad for Boeing that all they seem to care about these days is administration-guruanteed purshases of military weapons. Their latest involvement in an industrial espionage case is a testament to their willingness to bypass fair competition and use corrupt methods.
I submitted this story 10 days ago, November 14, 2003, the day IBM published their press release online, almost verbatim as i quoted the same material, and it was rejected!!
Not only that this strikes me as old news, but its publication now completely baffles me.
Slashdot Mirror
i don't understand how there's been a 1,000 bugfixes in the 1.5 release... i've been using mozilla for ages and ages and ages and i don't remember the last time i had a crash or noticed a bug... from all i can tell mozilla achieved perfection in the 1.3 release... it's probably the most stable app i've ever used... who notices or reports these bugs...
if you want a manual camera as a student that'll be good enough for a long time as you learn, just go for a ricoh manual SLR... great cams, i had one in the late 1980s, highly dependable and just sweet..
what you call state-of-the-art computing equipment is likely a 1980s model thta's now obsolete in france the US
from time to time there are such ambitious projects set up, but consider the following... the NHS is by far one of the most conservative and conservatively minded orgationisations in the UK...
The secretaries won't like it... i personally installed staroffice for a couple of NHS secretaries to try it 'cos it had some good features that might've helped their work and they just looked at it and went back to MS word...
The NHS's computer staff, scattered in many hospitals, won't want to give up their MS products and use linux... it's just too much work for them...
the same mindset the NHS has for treatments and therapies they'll have too towards any computer systems... while the US and Europe, and the rest of the industrialised world, embrace state-of-the-art treatments and therapies... the NHS people look at anything trendy with despise and ridicule and stick to their 1940s ways...
The NHS is an organisation that has more administrative staff than hospital beds... if something needs to be done... no matter how trivial it is... they'll employ someone to do it... corporate efficiency isn't something that drives the NHS... that's just their mindset... they like to create a job, make someone responsible and accountable for it, and then totally forget about the whole thing... a hospital recently created a job called 5 portion coordinator... it basically is someone who tells people to eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day!... this mindset stretches throughout the NHS.. don't look at the NHS to be an early adopter of anything... this is not a dynamic corporation
I am going to bet a 1000 to 1 (or is it a 1 to 1000, i never really bet... ) that this entire exercise is just something to get microsoft to give them a discount... the actual deal will definitely go to microsoft... as for the NHS adopting linux... wait till the entire world did... then wait a couple of decades... and then the NHS will...
regarding past, present and future... what's most remarkable is my surprise to realize that the guy is still alive... some people i guess seem to have been there forever.... henry kissinger is an example..
i know... it's retard... it makes you wonder if people who submit stories even bother to read them... the article itself says that... "The law, which was signed by former Gov. Gray Davis, was written to also include future technologies and could be enforced against people recording all or parts of a film with a tape recorder, handheld computer or even a cell phone."
Keep shaking your booty, mandrakesoft... i heard rumors that you'll soon be acquired by a significant, streetwise player...
i really worry about the excessive computerization of society; it's as for whatever problem you have there will be a digital solution of some sort that'll make you trouble-free, and worry-free. And we seem to be further instilling this mindset into kids.
I say this out of experience as i've depended on computing as a thought platform for 4 years till i recently adopted a different approach of going back to basics. If we are to teach kids anything of value, we need to teach them how to think for themselves, and thinking, actually, doesn't require computation at every move.
My life has been much better since i abandoned computation as a cornerstone of my work. Yes it's a useful too, but it's not everything. Kids need to learn how to use their memory, and how to use a pen and a paper. They need to use good ol' trusted methods of simplifying something until they are manageable and memorable, and seeking patterns and strategies that'll ease problem-solving. While computing might be useful, it might also hinder the development of such thinking.
i guess it's a sign of the immense success of a product when you forget that it was only introduced no more than 2 years ago... once a product feels like it's been there forever and it somewhat doesn't easily occur to you that a while ago it didn't even exist and no body heard of it, that is when it become a part of the popular culture.
kudos to apple; and also for the fact that 2 years on no one seems to have been able to bring to market a better product.
when i first read this i wondered why this was posted on slashdot, it didn't seem like anything worthy of regurgitating, but hey, i guess in the UK it isn't, because there already is a rating for games, where GTA is rated 18, meaning you gotta be at least 18 to purchase it.
it's only surprising that california didn't have such legislation until now.
well, that's a much better situation than australia, and many other countries, where GTA is banned altogether.
that said, i don't see a reason why i would miss such games. i enjoyed GTA III, and as for GTA vice city, which i own, i've only played it for 10 minutes and then switched it off... lately i've discovered nintendo, and i discovered the amount of fun you can have while unintentionally remaining on the innocent and cute side of life.
Kudos to nintendo, i'd totally turst them with my kids.
or just find out what their phone number is, thereby you can find them wherever they go and whack them.
I have always been impressed by the scandanavians; Those Scandanavian sure look fit, healthy, happy, more evolved and civilised creatures than us... for some reason i was delighted with schadenfreude when i saw this pic
not only that... but it's like she's showing off the ring too!!
all those people who comment with a "he" demonstrate that a good proportion of slashdotters don't even click the links and see the stuff linked to... it's a SHE!!!... and she's got a cute belly and a sweet smile too...
wow... imagine taking her to bed... i don't know if it'd turn me on that she's a published mathematician of extraordinary achievement or if it'd make me having an erection an infinitesmially remote possibility.
if i had any sympathy for the RIAA, they've squandered it totally with this.
It's ironic that those who seek to apply the full, unmerciful "justice-is-blind", force of the law to its maximum penalty, even to children, student, senior citizens, single mothers... etc now want to be exempt from the law where it applies to them.
Have they never heard of "do unto other as you'd to be done unto you"...
The only market realities are that consumers remain puzzled by why CDs can reach $20, and artists are no much happier; market realities for artists is that many of them had filed for bankruptcy after selling millions of records, thanks to one-sided contracts with record labels, such artists include tony braxton who filed for bankruptcy after selling 15,000,000 records, TLC who filed for bankruptcy after selling 11,000,000 records, run DMC and many others, and in fact, you can sell millions of records and still owe money to your record label. Market realities are that artists in droves have launched lawsuits against their record labels for moden-day slavery, such artists include george michael, courtney love, prince... and many others.
It's ironic that record labels use the rights of the artists as a noble cause to exterminate consumers into financial and legal oblivion, yet no one has abused the artists more than the record companies.
Unknown artists face even worse situations than those famous ones cited above.
This one-sided approach to the law by the record labels isn't unusual. They've mastered it in their contractual dealings with artists. Yet it never ceases to amaze me.
This is an essential reading for those who wanna know more.
Okay... let's see if this works better...
You need something like this if you want to rest a laptop on in your lap while sitting in a sofa or on a couch. It's a simple do-it-yourself and it doesn't get any better than this. Amazingly my Sony Vaio is the exact width to a standard A4 folder. The folder adds hardly any significant weight, and it will sheild a significant amount of heat from your thighs, as air and carboard, which is still tough enough and durable if good quality, are poor conductors of heat. Also, as long as you don't rest your wrists, which you should never do anyway, typing will be comfortable with this tilted angle. In addition, the tilted angle will lift the screen up, especially when you adjust the screen hinge to unfold it a little further, so instead of looking down, you're looking a little more forward. You can even use two folders on top of each other, in either of two combinations, either for a more horizontal or a more tilted towards vertical position. You can also use two thick rubber bands if you don't trust the quality of those you purchased.
Interestingly, IBM has recently demonstrated a prototype that does something similar, which mimics a lot of this simple trick that you can have for almost free.
Okay; there are big advantages to a "desktop-replacement" laptop over an actual desktop; I now have my second desktop-replacement laptop and I doubt I will ever buy a desktop again.
First of all, a laptop doesn't take as much space as a desktop; just try to fit a desktop computer into a dining room or a living room, or even a bedroom, it's just damn unsightly and unweilding, let alone unportable, a laptop will fit into these with no trouble at all, and if you wish to you can unplug it in throw it into the drawer.
A laptop can easily become a portable DVD player. My Sony Vaio has TV out, so I can plug it into the scart to watch movies on the TV. Or, if I watch those foreign or independent movies that no one else wants to see, I switch off the lights, lie comfortable on my side or back, and either unfold the laptop and rest it on its side so it has an angle that'll keep it up, or rest it on my stomach with an empty A4 sized folder attached to it with a thick rubber band, amazingly they're exactly the same width, and the folder both gives it a good angle and sheild the heat from my stomach, and it weighs almost nothing. From this close distance, it feels so much like watching a movie in the cinema, sizewise!!! Now try watching a movie on a desktop... argh, it's an ordeal.
Then, you can take a laptop to work or with you to a hotel room.
As for ergonomics, the full-size screen of a sony vaio is immensely comfortable, and a 15" screen is quite generous.
Any modern laptop will have a processing power that'll last for years. I've upgraded my memory to 400mb. As for upgradeability, I have a Belkin 7-port USB hub, and i can daisy chain that to have 127 USB ports if i want to. I'm quite happy with this combo, the memory upgrade and the USB 7 port hub completely transformed my usage. I downloaded a virtual desktop utility from sourceforge, and now i keep my commonly used Apps running at startup, and my cybershot cam and clie handheld, and wireless gamepad, always plugged into the USB hub.
What more is there to ask for.
All that is required is to archive webpages that are cited in academic or scholarly research. Maybe all that is required is the creation of an academic resource designed in a way to overcome copyright issues and allow an academic or scholar who cites a webpage to submit an online request for its archival at the time of submitting his paper for publication. And then for readers who want to consult a webpage that is cited in an academic or scholarly publication to head to that site where they can either search for the webpage, or the author and/or title of the paper that cited it. Call it citedpages.com, the domain is even available.
Basically, citation is the requirement for archival. A logo can be awarded to pages that are cited to reward their creators for allowing their pages to be copied and archived, which they may proudly display on their page as a portrayal of credibility of their content, and evidence of scholarly or academic citation in a publication can be used to guard against fraudulent submision.
Come to think of it, this sounds like a potential business opportunity. Revenue may come from advertising to a vertical market audience. All is well until some university or governmental body create a competing site.
The best solution is e-bay; if you're anything like me, you probably store things for years and years without ever using them once, in the hope that one day you might wanna tinker with 'em.
However, almost anything you're likely to have will be on sale on e-bay, and not only that it generates cash for you in the interim, but if you're ever in the future likely to want that obscure thing you once had, then all you gotta do is search e-bay.
It will save you not only cash, but also valuable domestic space, and in the future everything will probably be cheaper anyway.
Make a list of all the things you haven't used in the past 6 months, then search for each on e-bay, if they're available, sell 'em, if they're hard to find for three weeks running and you really wanna keep 'em, then keep 'em.
I like this machine. It's amazing how the most beautiful solutions are often the simplest.
It also reminds me of this...
" It sometimes seems as if our planet has no secrets left - but deep beneath the great Antarctic ice sheet scientists have made an astonishing discovery. They've found one of the largest lakes in the world. It's very existence defies belief. Scientists are desperate to get into the lake because its extreme environment may be home to unique flora and fauna, never seen before, and NASA are excited by what it could teach us about extraterrestrial life. But 4 kilometres of ice stand between the lake and the surface, and breaking this seal without contaminating the most pristine body of water on the planet is possibly one of the greatest challenges science faces in the 21st century. transcript here
The difference in mindset between the Soviet solution and the NASA solution was really interesting.
Well, that's it for me; i won't be wasting my time again submitting stories to slashdot.
With them taking the lead recently in passenger-carrier design, leave it to Airbus in Tolouse to come up with all the innovation.
Too bad for Boeing that all they seem to care about these days is administration-guruanteed purshases of military weapons. Their latest involvement in an industrial espionage case is a testament to their willingness to bypass fair competition and use corrupt methods.
Kings in Europe are no longer Rich... at least not compared to US tycoons.
I submitted this story 10 days ago, November 14, 2003, the day IBM published their press release online, almost verbatim as i quoted the same material, and it was rejected!!
Not only that this strikes me as old news, but its publication now completely baffles me.