Luckily the coconut had panicked the turn before and dropped its weapon - and as everyone knows, nonhuman combatants are unable to pick up a weapon once they've dropped it. The researchers proceeded to use the Stun Rod on the coconut, but it later died because the base didn't have a Containment Unit.
(Okay, so most/.ers are not going to get that one. Who cares?)
Slashdot is news for nerds who are also ISO latin-1 fanboys. We won't have any of this newfangled Unicode stuff, whether as UTF-8 or as HTML entities, no sir. The eight bits afforded by ISO-8859-1 ought to be enough for anyone.
Kad is extremely finicky about NAT, though. Forwarding the relevant ports on both TCP and UDP doesn't seem to be enough. Unless your computer is directly connected to the net, there's a chance you're never going to get decent Kad peers.
Different markets. If what you're looking for is not both current and popular (or either very current or very popular) you're not going to find it on a BitTorrent network. People don't put an obscure album from 1995 or a DOS game that didn't have mainstream appeal on BitTorrent. That's where eDonkey and similar networks shine.
Let's do a Microsoft and extend it after embracing it. I propose the interrosemicolon. It's to the semicolon what the interrobang is for the exclamation mark. The interrosemicolon is used to conjoin a question with a noninquisitive statement.
Actually, I should patent that: "Method and apparatus to syntactically denote a logical connection between two statements, the first of which shall be inquisitive and the second of which shall be noninquisitive - on the internet." (Last part added so the USPTO rubber-stamps the application.)
The asteroid has a 1 in 45000 chance of hitting Earth. Due to the satellites we have note one but 40001 objects up there, making the asteroid's chances of hitting something 40001 in 45000 or roughly 8 in 9. It's practically certain that the asteroid will hit a satellite.
What, now comic book heroes are supposed to make sense all of a sudden? If they would be adopted as I just wrote them we could be relieved. I'd expect Marvel to have the Free crowd use CDDL and the Open Sourceror use the zlib license.
Someone else mentioned the Wilhelm Gustloff. That reminds me, there hasn't yet been a movie about Leonardo DiCaprio getting hit by a torpedo. We really ought to rectify that.
The Open Sourceror: Wants the whole world to be covered by the GPL. Has a Shield of Arrogance labeled "RTFM" that can absorb the damage of any attack and turn it into a blast of pure rejection. Can use his package manager to quickly construct mostly-working devices for everything. Thinks the Free Initiative are his best friends.
The Free Initiative: Don't want to be called "Freedom Initiative" because they don't want freedom, they want Free-as-in-freedom. Insist that there's a big difference. Hate the Open Sourceror, the non-Free world and each other, because they can't agree which variant of the BSD licence they want to put the world under.
The Consultant: Sent by IBM manufacturer, the Consultant wears a heavy mechanized armor called the Z System. His goal is to destroy the world (except for IBM) and replace it with a virtual clone running on IBM mainframes. Attacks by throwing blade servers with deadly precision. Has the mysterious ability to drain cash from people's wallets at frightening speed.
Sunray: Sent by Sun, this combatant lugs around a 500 liter canister of Java on his back, which e constantly drinks from by means of a straw. Insists that the caffeine in the Java makes him slower, despite the fact that he can barely move with the canister on his back. Has a on-again-off-again alliance with the Open Sourceror.
Emmessdeeann: This mysterious alien was hired by Microsoft to ensure that every single person on the planet has a valid licence for every product Microsoft manufactures, plans to manufacture at some point or doesn't manufacture but wish they did. Has a Cash Launcher, which suffocates his enemies under wads of Dollar bills, then sets them alight. Also has a Crash Launcher, which causes his power armor to shut down until a service techician can fix it. Unfortunately, both are built into the same weapon. Insists on ending each sentence with ".NET" instead of a full stop. Has a son and a daughter, both called "hWnd".
Google: Omnipresent and omniscient. Insist they aren't doing actual evil while using thir vast archive of footage of illegal activities to blackmail everyone into looking at their context-sensitive ads. Even though they are targetting the entire population of the planet, nobody could yet topple their "we only target evil people" argument.
I think it's awesome to apply to comic-book storylines. Aliens attack the Earth? Terrorism. An evil scientist wanrts to blow up the sun for no apparent reason? Terrorism. Unicron eats a planet? Terrorism. Someone digs up an old bomb from the WW2 in his garden and dies? Terrorism! Hell, if Dr. Xavier gets a bedsore from sitting in his wheelchair all the time that's terrorism.
The following decade of comics will be known as the Bomb The Shit Out Of Third-World Countries Era.
What's the point of having the world's best military if you don't use it to stomp on some evildoers now and again?;)
Not being one yourself. When you put the world's most powerful military and the world's most powerful corporations together and add one of the world's most important resources in an area occupied by people easy to label as evil, you end up with a very nasty situation in which it's hard to unambiguously define anyone as the "good guy".
As for DoStuffLikeFoo: I know that there has been work on that. While I still don't like how they solved the problem (defining deprecated legacy interfaces in a first-version format is not very clean) at least the standard doesn't rely on them anymore - except, of course, if you want to open files created with MS Office. Same for VML.
As for "one date format for spreadsheets": Can you make the same statement for every single component of the standard? If I remember corretly there were also issues of, for example, a text document having (a) different date format(s) than a spreadsheet.
As for ODF: Yes, I was aware that ODF would probably fail my criteria. The SVG stuff (if what the article you linked to is illustrative of the whole issue) does look like it could feasibly be addressed in a relatively moinor revision.
I never claimed that none of the issues were adressed (however, if what we know about the comments process, many weren't because every member could only bring a small number of issues to the table). However, OOXML is still a horribly complex beast of a standard, many of the issues the ISO members found with it were "solved" by bulk vote and the entire standardization process was highly dubious. Those are things we know pretty well, with data to back them up. While NO->YES switches are not inconceivable, there have been enough instances of extremely weird practices to seriously cast doubt on their credibility.
In the end ODF is much smaller, has spent much more time in the standardization process and does not have a history of weird voting practices associated with it. While it's not perfect, those are pretty serious advantages.
Microsoft has put it plainly: If the Ecma (now ISO) spec doesn't match what Microsoft wants to do with the file format then the file format will deviate from the spec. That pretty much ruins the whole "read files 50 years from now" plan, at least for Office 14 onwards. Combined with the fact that the OOXML spec and the Office file format already don't match up I'd say that the chances of Microsoft sticking to OOXML are rather slim.
As for ODF: That would instantly diminish Office's market value by making interoperability easier (the ODF spec is much easier to implement than the OOXML one, being 1/10th the size). Microsoft lives off the being the only ones who can open their formats. They're not going to let that position go to waste.
1. Available for implementation by everyone: Everyone can acquire the standard (an optional fee might be collected by the standards body) and it's unencumbered by patents or similar constructs
2. Completely specified within the standards framework: All behavior has to be defined either within the spec or within a different spec meeting these requirements already published by the same standards body
3. As concise as possible: Unneccessary complexity is to be avoided - OOXML's numerous date formats are a good counter-example
4. Based on other open standards meeting the requirements of requirement 2: If there's already a standard defining date representation then the new standard should use it or provide a sound reason against using it
5. Already implemented: At least one, preferably two implementations need to be in the wild
OOXML would fail requirements 2 (AutoSpaceLikeWord97, VML etc.), 3 (date representations), 4 (VML vs. SVG) and 5 (the OOXML spec has no implementations in the wild; the Office 2007 format does not match the spec). I'm not sure about requirement 1, but it's possible that OOXML fail that as well.
Actually, I seem to have without knowing it. I swear on Apple for notebooks and indeed my main machine is an MBP. However, whenever I connect an Apple to an external display it's always a projector and I always want to use mirroring... Hence I never got to try out screen spanning etc. on a Mac.
As for only Windows having problems: Sorry, but Linux is even worse. Whereas Windows kinda works but exhibits obscure issues, getting a Geforce to work with two monitors under X11 is an exercise in masochism*. Windows is still lightyears ahead of Linux in that area.
* Before anyone comments that it just requires a minor change to xorg.conf and that NView works perfectly: Yes, in theory that's true. In reality it's not.
I should've guessed that the only OS I haven't tried out screen spanning with does it well. It's even my main OS now, but because my desktop PC died a horrible death I don't have a monitor to try it out with.
Okay, I actually haven't seen a dual-screen Mac because the only Macs I've worked with so far have been my notebooks (iBook/MBP) and the iMacs at my university. The only external monitors I had plugged in so far have been projectors and my presentations (usually delivered via PDFs in Preview.app) work better with mirroring.
Given the fact that the last monitor I've owned has been a monstrous 21" CRT (in my opinion LCDs haven't been feasible CRT replacements until about this year) that took up all the real estate on my desk it's not really surprising that I didn't get to do much dualscreening on my notebooks.
Slashdot Mirror
Fishing in an area that is inherently empty also allows them to blare the Top Gun soundtrack when they take off.
/
We're going right into the danger zone
Fishing in the danger zoooone
Luckily the coconut had panicked the turn before and dropped its weapon - and as everyone knows, nonhuman combatants are unable to pick up a weapon once they've dropped it. The researchers proceeded to use the Stun Rod on the coconut, but it later died because the base didn't have a Containment Unit.
/.ers are not going to get that one. Who cares?)
(Okay, so most
And suddenly all other clients introduce peer blocking mechanisms that selectively block harmful peers like your _2P client or BitComet.
Slashdot is news for nerds who are also ISO latin-1 fanboys. We won't have any of this newfangled Unicode stuff, whether as UTF-8 or as HTML entities, no sir. The eight bits afforded by ISO-8859-1 ought to be enough for anyone.
Kad is extremely finicky about NAT, though. Forwarding the relevant ports on both TCP and UDP doesn't seem to be enough. Unless your computer is directly connected to the net, there's a chance you're never going to get decent Kad peers.
Different markets. If what you're looking for is not both current and popular (or either very current or very popular) you're not going to find it on a BitTorrent network. People don't put an obscure album from 1995 or a DOS game that didn't have mainstream appeal on BitTorrent. That's where eDonkey and similar networks shine.
Let's do a Microsoft and extend it after embracing it. I propose the interrosemicolon. It's to the semicolon what the interrobang is for the exclamation mark. The interrosemicolon is used to conjoin a question with a noninquisitive statement.
Actually, I should patent that: "Method and apparatus to syntactically denote a logical connection between two statements, the first of which shall be inquisitive and the second of which shall be noninquisitive - on the internet." (Last part added so the USPTO rubber-stamps the application.)
We throw more satellites at it. No, wait. That makes it more likely for it to hit, so we clearly need to throw some satellites the other way.
The asteroid has a 1 in 45000 chance of hitting Earth. Due to the satellites we have note one but 40001 objects up there, making the asteroid's chances of hitting something 40001 in 45000 or roughly 8 in 9. It's practically certain that the asteroid will hit a satellite.
What, now comic book heroes are supposed to make sense all of a sudden? If they would be adopted as I just wrote them we could be relieved. I'd expect Marvel to have the Free crowd use CDDL and the Open Sourceror use the zlib license.
Do you do reenactments? How does that work? One guy broadcasts SOS and nobody listens to him for one hour?
Yes. The iceberg had weak rivets, which caused it to shatter. The razor-sharp ice fragments then sliced through the Titanic's hull.
Very true. I think people should just move on and let some of us have honest political careers.
Sincerely,
Franz Hitler
Party leader, German National Democratic Party (not associated with Socialism or workers in any way)
Someone else mentioned the Wilhelm Gustloff. That reminds me, there hasn't yet been a movie about Leonardo DiCaprio getting hit by a torpedo. We really ought to rectify that.
Okay, how about this set of villains:
The Open Sourceror: Wants the whole world to be covered by the GPL. Has a Shield of Arrogance labeled "RTFM" that can absorb the damage of any attack and turn it into a blast of pure rejection. Can use his package manager to quickly construct mostly-working devices for everything. Thinks the Free Initiative are his best friends.
The Free Initiative: Don't want to be called "Freedom Initiative" because they don't want freedom, they want Free-as-in-freedom. Insist that there's a big difference. Hate the Open Sourceror, the non-Free world and each other, because they can't agree which variant of the BSD licence they want to put the world under.
The Consultant: Sent by IBM manufacturer, the Consultant wears a heavy mechanized armor called the Z System. His goal is to destroy the world (except for IBM) and replace it with a virtual clone running on IBM mainframes. Attacks by throwing blade servers with deadly precision. Has the mysterious ability to drain cash from people's wallets at frightening speed.
Sunray: Sent by Sun, this combatant lugs around a 500 liter canister of Java on his back, which e constantly drinks from by means of a straw. Insists that the caffeine in the Java makes him slower, despite the fact that he can barely move with the canister on his back. Has a on-again-off-again alliance with the Open Sourceror.
Emmessdeeann: This mysterious alien was hired by Microsoft to ensure that every single person on the planet has a valid licence for every product Microsoft manufactures, plans to manufacture at some point or doesn't manufacture but wish they did. Has a Cash Launcher, which suffocates his enemies under wads of Dollar bills, then sets them alight. Also has a Crash Launcher, which causes his power armor to shut down until a service techician can fix it. Unfortunately, both are built into the same weapon. Insists on ending each sentence with ".NET" instead of a full stop. Has a son and a daughter, both called "hWnd".
Google: Omnipresent and omniscient. Insist they aren't doing actual evil while using thir vast archive of footage of illegal activities to blackmail everyone into looking at their context-sensitive ads. Even though they are targetting the entire population of the planet, nobody could yet topple their "we only target evil people" argument.
I think it's awesome to apply to comic-book storylines. Aliens attack the Earth? Terrorism. An evil scientist wanrts to blow up the sun for no apparent reason? Terrorism. Unicron eats a planet? Terrorism. Someone digs up an old bomb from the WW2 in his garden and dies? Terrorism! Hell, if Dr. Xavier gets a bedsore from sitting in his wheelchair all the time that's terrorism.
The following decade of comics will be known as the Bomb The Shit Out Of Third-World Countries Era.
As for DoStuffLikeFoo: I know that there has been work on that. While I still don't like how they solved the problem (defining deprecated legacy interfaces in a first-version format is not very clean) at least the standard doesn't rely on them anymore - except, of course, if you want to open files created with MS Office. Same for VML.
As for "one date format for spreadsheets": Can you make the same statement for every single component of the standard? If I remember corretly there were also issues of, for example, a text document having (a) different date format(s) than a spreadsheet.
As for ODF: Yes, I was aware that ODF would probably fail my criteria. The SVG stuff (if what the article you linked to is illustrative of the whole issue) does look like it could feasibly be addressed in a relatively moinor revision.
I never claimed that none of the issues were adressed (however, if what we know about the comments process, many weren't because every member could only bring a small number of issues to the table). However, OOXML is still a horribly complex beast of a standard, many of the issues the ISO members found with it were "solved" by bulk vote and the entire standardization process was highly dubious. Those are things we know pretty well, with data to back them up. While NO->YES switches are not inconceivable, there have been enough instances of extremely weird practices to seriously cast doubt on their credibility.
In the end ODF is much smaller, has spent much more time in the standardization process and does not have a history of weird voting practices associated with it. While it's not perfect, those are pretty serious advantages.
And thus all governments have to use OOXML because the mandate an ISO-standardized format. Unwise.
Microsoft has put it plainly: If the Ecma (now ISO) spec doesn't match what Microsoft wants to do with the file format then the file format will deviate from the spec. That pretty much ruins the whole "read files 50 years from now" plan, at least for Office 14 onwards. Combined with the fact that the OOXML spec and the Office file format already don't match up I'd say that the chances of Microsoft sticking to OOXML are rather slim.
As for ODF: That would instantly diminish Office's market value by making interoperability easier (the ODF spec is much easier to implement than the OOXML one, being 1/10th the size). Microsoft lives off the being the only ones who can open their formats. They're not going to let that position go to waste.
I'd go with the following:
1. Available for implementation by everyone: Everyone can acquire the standard (an optional fee might be collected by the standards body) and it's unencumbered by patents or similar constructs
2. Completely specified within the standards framework: All behavior has to be defined either within the spec or within a different spec meeting these requirements already published by the same standards body
3. As concise as possible: Unneccessary complexity is to be avoided - OOXML's numerous date formats are a good counter-example
4. Based on other open standards meeting the requirements of requirement 2: If there's already a standard defining date representation then the new standard should use it or provide a sound reason against using it
5. Already implemented: At least one, preferably two implementations need to be in the wild
OOXML would fail requirements 2 (AutoSpaceLikeWord97, VML etc.), 3 (date representations), 4 (VML vs. SVG) and 5 (the OOXML spec has no implementations in the wild; the Office 2007 format does not match the spec). I'm not sure about requirement 1, but it's possible that OOXML fail that as well.
Actually, I seem to have without knowing it. I swear on Apple for notebooks and indeed my main machine is an MBP. However, whenever I connect an Apple to an external display it's always a projector and I always want to use mirroring... Hence I never got to try out screen spanning etc. on a Mac.
As for only Windows having problems: Sorry, but Linux is even worse. Whereas Windows kinda works but exhibits obscure issues, getting a Geforce to work with two monitors under X11 is an exercise in masochism*. Windows is still lightyears ahead of Linux in that area.
* Before anyone comments that it just requires a minor change to xorg.conf and that NView works perfectly: Yes, in theory that's true. In reality it's not.
BURMA SHAVE
I should've guessed that the only OS I haven't tried out screen spanning with does it well. It's even my main OS now, but because my desktop PC died a horrible death I don't have a monitor to try it out with.
As usual, awesome timing.
Okay, I actually haven't seen a dual-screen Mac because the only Macs I've worked with so far have been my notebooks (iBook/MBP) and the iMacs at my university. The only external monitors I had plugged in so far have been projectors and my presentations (usually delivered via PDFs in Preview.app) work better with mirroring.
Given the fact that the last monitor I've owned has been a monstrous 21" CRT (in my opinion LCDs haven't been feasible CRT replacements until about this year) that took up all the real estate on my desk it's not really surprising that I didn't get to do much dualscreening on my notebooks.