The information above about the special dyes will be the way to go if it is cheap enough since anyone can paint a car, or go down to your local body shop and get it done quite cheap plus the cost of materials. I just hardly find comparing replacing the entire "cover" to my car to a cheap cell phone cover very insightful.
Oh? When's the last time you priced a full color-change paint job? A nice, factory (or better) quality job will usually cost you several thousand dollars on today's cars. I wouldn't jump to the assumption that replacing the car's skin (a la the SMART car) would be more expensive than that.
Are there body shops that will do a good job cheaply today? Yes. Do most cheap body shops to a good job of painting? Not really. If you can completely reskin your car for what, in today's market, it would cost you to repaint your existing panels (note that a reskin could update body lines, completely remove even major imperfections, preclude the possibility of overspray and poor coverage in hard-to-reach areas, etc), why not go for the reskin? Unless you need a high-dollar custom job, but those will always be available... for the money... since you're mainly paying for the artist's talents.
Agreed. Just as anyone seriously into sound can attest, it takes a lot of work to step up the power. Anyone who thinks that a wall-wart can out muscle even a 30lb+ amplifier power supply (do I even need to say "cleanly" here?) has some education coming.
Not that there's anything wrong with that -- everyone has to start somewhere -- but be warned, gaining an appreciation for clean sound can destroy your love of crappy music and make significant dents in your wallet!
Further up in this thread, I saw two rather interesting posts. One said basically "stop being about characters and give me a setting and history and culture!" The other said "Screw this, give me characters that keep changing and getting challenged!" If the fan base can't make up its mind, how is Berman going to?:-)
Does it really matter? Quite seriously, either of the two would be welcomed at this point. Its this not-doing-anything that seems to get people all riled up. Ah, well.
Ahum, you've got to be kidding. With the same total swept volume, the smaller cilinders of the V8 should make it rev higher, and thus produce more bhp.
Welcome to the difference between torque and horsepower.
The small cylinder, high-reving V8 should indeed have higher bhp. This can translate directly into higher top speeds, and will allow better use of gears (more time in lower gears). It will also be smoother (more, smaller sparks), which is why luxury cars almost always come with V8s or even V12s.
The V6, while not reving as high, will have a stronger torque curve (each pulse provides more raw power) and, as was originally posted, can rev faster (but to a lower maximum rpm).
This helps to explain why Ferraris run V12s while Semis run V8s. The Ferrari is faster, but a nice diesel semi will be substantially more powerful.
Or, to bring it back to computer terms, bandwith != latency.
Also, as a previous poster pointed out, the back button also works unintuitively (compared to, say, the standard edit menu Undo function) when you browse to a new page from a page to which you've clicked back (works more like a tree than a chain in that case).
On the contrary, its exactly the same. Thae the following example:
User types "important stuff"
User hits UNDO
User types "stupid stuff"
User wants to go back to "important stuff"
Too bad for the user. UNDO works pretty much the same way that the BACK button does (or vice versa).
Doesn't FedEX have some responsibility in this case? After all, if you ship something COD and they accept a counterfit check, why is that completely your fault?
I'm not saying that it isn't legally your problem, just that in an ideal world it shouldn't be. After all, presumably it would be FedEX's fault if they accepted something written in crayon on a brown paper sack... where do you draw the line? Any ideas?
I just killed an Adobe Pagemaker sale today. No fanfare, no big deal, I just wrote "denied" on the purchase request and sent it back. I told him to find something else, and as long as it's not from Adobe I'll sign off on it.
That one's for you, Jon. And so's the next one. And the one after that. And as many as it takes until Adobe fully appreciates the delicacy of vendor-customer relationships, and acknowledges who's really in charge.
That's too bad, really, considering that Adobe: a) isn't charging him with anything, and b) can't drop charges brought by the state
From the well worded Adobe FAQ (you did check both sides of this story before posting, right?
Let's be clear that the U.S. Government is pursuing this case as a crime, acting independently of Adobe to enforce U.S. copyright law (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Adobe fully supports the U.S. Government's decision to investigate the potential violation of U.S. copyright laws by Elcomsoft and has cooperated with their investigations with their investigation.
So, in other words, you're annoyed because Adobe is cooperating with the US Government in full accordance of both the spirit and the letter of existing legislation? Shame on them.
Shareholders no longer want long term growth and stability, they want profits and dividends and they want them now! When they see dips, they panic and demand action.
Who are these mythical "shareholders" of whom you speak? In reality, they're everyone who has a 401(k) or other investments. Its funny how many of the same people (not a personal remark against the original poster, just a general one) who complain about employee treatment are the first in the crowd to complain when companies don't meet profit expectations (for whatever reason) and scream for them to do "whatever it takes" to get the numbers back.
OS X is fairly memory intensive. Anyone interested in speed should, IMO, max out their memory. After all, moving from the minimum amount of memory (128mb) to the maximum (640mb) on the low-end iBook costs you $200 and is well worth it.
Also, with Quartz Extreme adding additional amounts of video RAM seems to make a difference, since the graphics card is doing a lot more work in day-to-day life. 32mb seems to be noticably better than 16mb, with diminishing returns expected as you go up.
One thing that a lot of people seem to ignore is that most people are pretty clueless about the relatively easy methods of circumvention.
Then again, for a while now those people are also the least likely to try to copy a CD so I guess there is some truthfulness to the original claim.
Either way, we all know that there's an industry model change on the way. That's easy to predict. Knowing what it is or when it will hit, that's the hard part (always has been, always will be). It reminds me of Warren Buffet's comments about the invention of the automobile -- (paraphrased) nobody could have predicted how it would develop with any kind of guaranteed accuracy, but it would be fairly obvious that buggy-whip manufacturers were on the way out.
If you don't mind the 1024x768 display (and its a great screen, good antialiasing etc), the new low-end iBook is quite a deal. From apple.com, a 700mhz G3 (faster than PIII-800s seen in many low-end notebooks) with 640mb RAM (OSX is pretty memory intensive) can be yours for $1189. That's getting nicely price-competitive with Dell, etc on the low end.
A somewhat nicer model with the 800mhz G3, a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive and the same 640mb of RAM lists for $1489. That gets you a very potent UN*X box with a lot of wonderful features, a lovely OS, and a massively high portability level.
All this, and an amazing attention to detail as well. Really, switching to Apple is like moving from Chevy to BMW. Sure it may not stack up on paper (horsepower per dollar, etc) but you can end up with an incredibly friendly machine that's a pure pleasure to use! Do yourself a favor and go check 'em out if you've been on the fence.
I'm not saying this is unethical - I think it clearly isn't - but mightn't it have been polite to sit on this until the stock market closed, or at least until just before it closed?
So you're saying that the justice department should withold information based on when an unrelated private entity is open for business? No thanks. They should be as agnostic as possible to issues like this. Any other reaction, while it may be useful in the (Very) short term, will be harmful over time.
Besides, haven't you ever heard of after-hours trading? Its not like Joe Average Consumer is the number one shareholder of MSFT after all...
This will make ICANN a much more efficient and effective organization that will get things done better and faster...
Efficient and effective are not always the same thing. After all, something humming away in an idle loop and not trying to do anything else can be 100% efficient...
... and be more plugged-in to the community than we are now
Nothing like removing community input to increase reactiveness to the community. Er, well, sort-of...
I know that I'm ignoring the rest of the post... but really. A whole penny per CPU second? $864 per day per processor? Come on, at least attempt to be realistic here...
Although if anyone's interested, they can borrow my CPU for 1/10 that price. However many you want (with 1 week minimum:) ).
$150K is "expensive" to movie theater operators? I don't know about elsewhere, but in my city there are new 20+ screen movie theaters popping up left and right
Or approximately $3 million. Hardly chump change if you're spending it left and right. Even the article points out, "[A]t current prices, a digital projector would cost more than some of the smaller nearby theaters."
it took him 6 years to double the speed of a projector and camera???
Yup. You try taking something like a film projector, with the uptimes expected by a modern moviegoing audience, and doubling the speed. Its not that easy. All of a sudden you're moving a lot more real physical material -- not bits, actual solid film. Doubling the speed is much more difficult than you might think.
Check out the IMAX projectors (also double speed -- and larger, for that matter). They're huge, due to the added space (can't just double the size of the spools and spin 'em the same, after all) and quite ingenious in the way that they take care of stresses, et cetera.
All in all, not a bad timeframe for one person with effectively no budget.
Gnome 2 does not come without its problems. I do not have sounds on my Gnome 2. I think that Gnome 2 assumes that you have Gnome 1.4 installed
From the previous post:
That's an issue with packaging, not Gnome2 itself. The same goes for many of the other grips that the author has.
And a more perfect example of the kind of geek-superiority that people accuse the Linux community of I don't think I've seen in a long time.
Here's a newsflash for you: people don't care about technical quibbles like this. Imagine going to a new car dealership and finding out that the car you're looking at doesn't come with a Stereo. Upon commenting on this fact, people tell you, "Its still a good car, that's a packaging issue -- check out the engine timing! Besides, look at the huge hole in the dash into which you could install your own stereo (or even two or three of them) -- most of the wiring is even there for you!"
This review spent a lot of time talking about usability. If somebody does the "normal" things when obtaining a package, especially one designed (as a desktop is) to hide complexity and produce a more usable system than before it was installed, and it doesn't work as it could be reasonably expected to -- then there is a problem.
Sure, the internal code may be fine. But from a user's perspective, Gnome is Gnome. You could have the best algorithms on the planet, but if they're not enabled, or not included until you do some steps that only the developers know about, nobody will care. Okay, this is a packaging issue. You know what? This was a review of the whole package -- code, help, defaults, et ceteara. Including packaging.
Then again, far be it for anyone to offer a rational objection to a favored OSS project... That might lead to open discourse or, worse yet, improvements. Shame on all reviewers.
Actually, you're missing a big point. (Explanation below greatly simplified trading accuracy for space).
Many insurance companies take in less money than they pay out. The amount by which they pay out over the amount that they take in in any given year is known as their combined ratio -- that amount - 100% is their cost of float. Anyway, the idea is that they can take in large amounts of money and hold it for a while, paying out equally large amounts of money some time later. This allows them a period of time in which to invest the money that comes through.
Obviously if they can keep their combined ratio at 100% they could make money by investing the "float" (funds paid in premiums but not yet paid out) in very safe low-risk bonds. Many insurers do just that. A company headed by a genius could do somewhat better. Of course, there are some strict limits as to how much they can invest where to make sure that they retain enough liquidity to service upcoming claims.
For a fantastic overview, take a look at the company who now holds General Reinsurance and GEICO as wholly owned subsiduaries -- Berkshire Hathaway. They are chaired by possibly the world's finest investment minds in Warren Buffett (one of the 10 richest men in the world -- self made through investments) and Charlie Munger (likewise but not top 10).
If you read the Chairman's Letters (start at the beginning) you can get a pretty good grounding in what insurance companies do and how they make (or lose) their money.
The hardest problem to solve is the business one. Storing the data is easy -- scaling from 1TB to 2TB (or more) is a solved problem. The hard part is deciding what to do when an ASCII client requests information that you only have in Unicode.
Does your application support multiple languages now? If it does, it probably has a default language for everything that should be present in case the specific language asked for is missing. Rather than have that be "en_us" (or whatever), make that "US English ASCII-friendly". You can then add a new language "US English Unicode". Then alter your mandate so that everything has at least that language. I'd add Unicode and ASCII flavors for all other languages too, although anything that doesn't use high chars can just be stored as ASCII with the Unicode encoding generated (if space is that much of an issue).
If your application database is not multi-lingual already, then you have some serious architechture work to do. I'd look at it from that standpoint though -- there is a wealth of reference material describing how to add language support to existing data and apps. Think of Unicode as another language.
Concentrate on these issues, and let the technical issues (such as encoding scheme) be decided after you know what you want to do. As far as that specific one goes (seems to have the most interest on this page so far), just use whatever you DBMS supports most natively.
According to the press release, these little units only have a 1500 hour lifetime too. For anyone thinking about actually powering some intensive equipment that would require a good chunk of that power, that's not very long at all. 75% of a single man-year, in fact. Well, I guess that's one way to force an aggressive upgrade cycle.
If they're quiet enough IRL, this would be a great feature for RVs though. Both from the "green" standpoint and the fact that if you're at a park you won't be annoying the neighbors as much.
One of my personal favorites would have to be QT by Troll Tech. This is a cross-platform C++ toolset that cross-compiles into Windows and X code. There are no royalties or runtime costs charged, on any platform.
The popular UNIX desktop KDE is written using the free version of the QT/UNIX development package. If you've used it, you'll probably agree that its fast, comfortable and very solid -- all very important considerations when coding a real product.
This is a very good, clean, serious package. If you're interested in UNIX/Windows cross-platform development I strongly suggest that you check it out.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh? When's the last time you priced a full color-change paint job? A nice, factory (or better) quality job will usually cost you several thousand dollars on today's cars. I wouldn't jump to the assumption that replacing the car's skin (a la the SMART car) would be more expensive than that.
Are there body shops that will do a good job cheaply today? Yes. Do most cheap body shops to a good job of painting? Not really. If you can completely reskin your car for what, in today's market, it would cost you to repaint your existing panels (note that a reskin could update body lines, completely remove even major imperfections, preclude the possibility of overspray and poor coverage in hard-to-reach areas, etc), why not go for the reskin? Unless you need a high-dollar custom job, but those will always be available
What do you do now when you want to change the color of your celphone?
Paint it? Or just snap the not-very-structural covers off and replace them?
Agreed. Just as anyone seriously into sound can attest, it takes a lot of work to step up the power. Anyone who thinks that a wall-wart can out muscle even a 30lb+ amplifier power supply (do I even need to say "cleanly" here?) has some education coming.
Not that there's anything wrong with that -- everyone has to start somewhere -- but be warned, gaining an appreciation for clean sound can destroy your love of crappy music and make significant dents in your wallet!
The small cylinder, high-reving V8 should indeed have higher bhp. This can translate directly into higher top speeds, and will allow better use of gears (more time in lower gears). It will also be smoother (more, smaller sparks), which is why luxury cars almost always come with V8s or even V12s.
The V6, while not reving as high, will have a stronger torque curve (each pulse provides more raw power) and, as was originally posted, can rev faster (but to a lower maximum rpm).
This helps to explain why Ferraris run V12s while Semis run V8s. The Ferrari is faster, but a nice diesel semi will be substantially more powerful.
Or, to bring it back to computer terms, bandwith != latency.
- User types "important stuff"
- User hits UNDO
- User types "stupid stuff"
- User wants to go back to "important stuff"
Too bad for the user. UNDO works pretty much the same way that the BACK button does (or vice versa).Doesn't FedEX have some responsibility in this case? After all, if you ship something COD and they accept a counterfit check, why is that completely your fault?
... where do you draw the line? Any ideas?
I'm not saying that it isn't legally your problem, just that in an ideal world it shouldn't be. After all, presumably it would be FedEX's fault if they accepted something written in crayon on a brown paper sack
a) isn't charging him with anything, and
b) can't drop charges brought by the state
From the well worded Adobe FAQ (you did check both sides of this story before posting, right?So, in other words, you're annoyed because Adobe is cooperating with the US Government in full accordance of both the spirit and the letter of existing legislation? Shame on them.
Who are these mythical "shareholders" of whom you speak? In reality, they're everyone who has a 401(k) or other investments. Its funny how many of the same people (not a personal remark against the original poster, just a general one) who complain about employee treatment are the first in the crowd to complain when companies don't meet profit expectations (for whatever reason) and scream for them to do "whatever it takes" to get the numbers back.
Just a thought...
Next on Slashdot, a complete HOWTO on adding those leftover red LEDs to your car's window washer nozzles.
I mean, really. I know that we've been getting sillier lately, but this? Not exactly News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. Is it?
In unrelated news, a Japanese study shows another link between computer use and health problems. But hey, that sort of thing just isn't as k3wl....
OS X is fairly memory intensive. Anyone interested in speed should, IMO, max out their memory. After all, moving from the minimum amount of memory (128mb) to the maximum (640mb) on the low-end iBook costs you $200 and is well worth it.
Also, with Quartz Extreme adding additional amounts of video RAM seems to make a difference, since the graphics card is doing a lot more work in day-to-day life. 32mb seems to be noticably better than 16mb, with diminishing returns expected as you go up.
Just my opinions, yadda yadda...
One thing that a lot of people seem to ignore is that most people are pretty clueless about the relatively easy methods of circumvention.
Then again, for a while now those people are also the least likely to try to copy a CD so I guess there is some truthfulness to the original claim.
Either way, we all know that there's an industry model change on the way. That's easy to predict. Knowing what it is or when it will hit, that's the hard part (always has been, always will be). It reminds me of Warren Buffet's comments about the invention of the automobile -- (paraphrased) nobody could have predicted how it would develop with any kind of guaranteed accuracy, but it would be fairly obvious that buggy-whip manufacturers were on the way out.
A somewhat nicer model with the 800mhz G3, a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive and the same 640mb of RAM lists for $1489. That gets you a very potent UN*X box with a lot of wonderful features, a lovely OS, and a massively high portability level.
All this, and an amazing attention to detail as well. Really, switching to Apple is like moving from Chevy to BMW. Sure it may not stack up on paper (horsepower per dollar, etc) but you can end up with an incredibly friendly machine that's a pure pleasure to use! Do yourself a favor and go check 'em out if you've been on the fence.
Besides, haven't you ever heard of after-hours trading? Its not like Joe Average Consumer is the number one shareholder of MSFT after all...
---
Although if anyone's interested, they can borrow my CPU for 1/10 that price. However many you want (with 1 week minimum :) ).
-Richard
Let's do the math, shall we?
Or approximately $3 million. Hardly chump change if you're spending it left and right. Even the article points out, "[A]t current prices, a digital projector would cost more than some of the smaller nearby theaters."
-Richard
Yup. You try taking something like a film projector, with the uptimes expected by a modern moviegoing audience, and doubling the speed. Its not that easy. All of a sudden you're moving a lot more real physical material -- not bits, actual solid film. Doubling the speed is much more difficult than you might think.
Check out the IMAX projectors (also double speed -- and larger, for that matter). They're huge, due to the added space (can't just double the size of the spools and spin 'em the same, after all) and quite ingenious in the way that they take care of stresses, et cetera.
All in all, not a bad timeframe for one person with effectively no budget.
-RichardFrom the review:
From the previous post:
And a more perfect example of the kind of geek-superiority that people accuse the Linux community of I don't think I've seen in a long time.
Here's a newsflash for you: people don't care about technical quibbles like this. Imagine going to a new car dealership and finding out that the car you're looking at doesn't come with a Stereo. Upon commenting on this fact, people tell you, "Its still a good car, that's a packaging issue -- check out the engine timing! Besides, look at the huge hole in the dash into which you could install your own stereo (or even two or three of them) -- most of the wiring is even there for you!"
This review spent a lot of time talking about usability. If somebody does the "normal" things when obtaining a package, especially one designed (as a desktop is) to hide complexity and produce a more usable system than before it was installed, and it doesn't work as it could be reasonably expected to -- then there is a problem.
Sure, the internal code may be fine. But from a user's perspective, Gnome is Gnome. You could have the best algorithms on the planet, but if they're not enabled, or not included until you do some steps that only the developers know about, nobody will care. Okay, this is a packaging issue. You know what? This was a review of the whole package -- code, help, defaults, et ceteara. Including packaging.
Then again, far be it for anyone to offer a rational objection to a favored OSS project... That might lead to open discourse or, worse yet, improvements. Shame on all reviewers.
-RichardMany insurance companies take in less money than they pay out. The amount by which they pay out over the amount that they take in in any given year is known as their combined ratio -- that amount - 100% is their cost of float. Anyway, the idea is that they can take in large amounts of money and hold it for a while, paying out equally large amounts of money some time later. This allows them a period of time in which to invest the money that comes through.
Obviously if they can keep their combined ratio at 100% they could make money by investing the "float" (funds paid in premiums but not yet paid out) in very safe low-risk bonds. Many insurers do just that. A company headed by a genius could do somewhat better. Of course, there are some strict limits as to how much they can invest where to make sure that they retain enough liquidity to service upcoming claims.
For a fantastic overview, take a look at the company who now holds General Reinsurance and GEICO as wholly owned subsiduaries -- Berkshire Hathaway. They are chaired by possibly the world's finest investment minds in Warren Buffett (one of the 10 richest men in the world -- self made through investments) and Charlie Munger (likewise but not top 10).
If you read the Chairman's Letters (start at the beginning) you can get a pretty good grounding in what insurance companies do and how they make (or lose) their money.
-Richard
Does your application support multiple languages now? If it does, it probably has a default language for everything that should be present in case the specific language asked for is missing. Rather than have that be "en_us" (or whatever), make that "US English ASCII-friendly". You can then add a new language "US English Unicode". Then alter your mandate so that everything has at least that language. I'd add Unicode and ASCII flavors for all other languages too, although anything that doesn't use high chars can just be stored as ASCII with the Unicode encoding generated (if space is that much of an issue).
If your application database is not multi-lingual already, then you have some serious architechture work to do. I'd look at it from that standpoint though -- there is a wealth of reference material describing how to add language support to existing data and apps. Think of Unicode as another language.
Concentrate on these issues, and let the technical issues (such as encoding scheme) be decided after you know what you want to do. As far as that specific one goes (seems to have the most interest on this page so far), just use whatever you DBMS supports most natively.
-Richard
If they're quiet enough IRL, this would be a great feature for RVs though. Both from the "green" standpoint and the fact that if you're at a park you won't be annoying the neighbors as much.
What will prevent the prettier, easier-to-install desktop win the battle?
How about ease of use, speed and overall gracefullness, combined with rock solid code stability?
-Richard
One of my personal favorites would have to be QT by Troll Tech. This is a cross-platform C++ toolset that cross-compiles into Windows and X code. There are no royalties or runtime costs charged, on any platform.
The popular UNIX desktop KDE is written using the free version of the QT/UNIX development package. If you've used it, you'll probably agree that its fast, comfortable and very solid -- all very important considerations when coding a real product.
This is a very good, clean, serious package. If you're interested in UNIX/Windows cross-platform development I strongly suggest that you check it out.