Am I the only one that uses the middle button? It opens new tabs (middle-click a link) and closes old ones (middle-click the tab). No need for plug-ins, the functionality's right out of the box!
It is partially to be seen in the same class, but more importantly is not that the #2 mentions the #1, but that the #1 cannot mention the #2.
Everyone wants to be able to say "My product is better than product X" but to do so is to acknowledge that (a) product X exists, and (b) that product X is a viable alternative. The best image for a #1 is that they're the only one of their caliber, regardless of how superior their product is. It's negative publicity for someone with market dominance to say "I'm better than #2 by 1000%" even if its true. Customers realize there is an alternative to #1, and that #1 is worried enough about its competition to advertise against them.
Cheers. Save perfectly identical rendering is not the realm of HTML/CSS. There are plenty of technologies out there that allow full control over layout. A bitmap comes to mind.
But I think there is a point somewhere in there to be made. Remember HTML 1.0? Simply the fact that tags like STRONG, H1-H6, and ADDRESS exists points pretty clearly to the intent to allow a site to describe what was being presented but allow the browser to determine how it was presented. Of course, there were a load of problems with this and people's ideas of how it should be used, and we like to think we've come a long way. But in truth, we're still doing the same things.
Rather than trying to be the control-freak with everything exactly positioned, it's far more useful (and elegant to program) to have a site which can do without X, Y, or Z and still convey all the information it did before. A site that degrades gracefully may not impress the casual user, but the casual user will be able to use it.
Look at the most successful commercial sites out there today. Google's front page and search results are viewable in every possible browser I can come up with. eBay is one of the ugliest sites in existence, but its content is available to nearly any browser. Hit amazon.com with Lynx and you can still buy things.
Successful web sites are not pretty. They're functional. CSS is a tool to make more functional pages. Yes, you can also make them prettier, but if you set out with that as your goal, you'll fail the more important one.
Plus, I've never actually encountered a website (that I use often enough) to warrent NOT using Firefox. Seriously!
I could say the same until I got hooked on Settlers of Catan Online... great game on the board, and now I don't need friends to play. I still cringe every time I have to go Start->Run->iexplore to start playing. (Like hell I'm going to have that icon lurking around somewhere)
I agree that we probably wouldn't face nuclear weapons. Most religions/governments do claim to value human life, and nuking the hell out of America wouldn't do much to help that.
I don't think it would be due to fear of retaliationn, though. There seems to be some idea that the US is a military superpower and therefore unstoppable. Somehow Americans are proud of the fact that we will more willingly kill than other cultures. Is it that great a situation, that rather than being liked, or even feared due to our military power, we're feared because we will stoop lower than anyone else?
In retrospect, I realized I've used America to refer to the USA in this post. If this offends you, you know what I meant. I don't think Costa Ricans will nuke anyone who pisses them off.
80 degrees... I might be able to cool my laptop that far if I submerged it.
I've got an off-the-shelf 3GHz Gateway laptop that runs at 87-89 consistently. If I turn down the A/C, it'll hit low 90s, and all hell breaks loose.
A little off topic, but that reminds me of my first job out of college-- giant corporation, tons of phb's running around. Our app had a database backend, and for accounting reasons it needed to be dumped to a file from time to time so some other phb's could go through it if something went wrong.
It started out mild, using the common phrase "taking a dump of the database." Of course, I found this funny, but it escalated.
I'd come into work and have my boss ask, "Would you take a dump this morning before you get started on...?" Or someone would poke their head in my office and tell me pointblank, "I just took a dump, and..." I had incredible difficulty keeping my mind on whatever people were saying and not just cracking up, particularly people 30 years older than me.
The end-all comment was in a meeting when we were told, "Managment wanted me to let you all know that we're not taking enough dumps. Every day, each of us needs to be sure to take at least one dump..."
I still wonder if anyone else found it as funny as I did.
Card counting works because as you progress through a deck you occasionally are left with cards that, when dealt, are advantageous to the player. A good counter tracks these situations and makes higher bets when the odds are in his or her favor.
Different counters' skill allows them to see these situations more clearly. More complex methods turn up more advantageous situations (by modifying play style as well as betting amount based on the cards remaining) as well as identify them better. Most counting styles will never tell a player "You've got a 0.7% edge this deal" but rather "You have a 80% that this deal will have an edge in your favor."
What this means is that a weak counter has to make much larger swings between the throwaway bets (dealer's edge) and the money bets (player's edge) in order to have an expected gain for the session. This is of course what the casinos look for, and why blackjack teams are so popular for "professional" counters.
As for the rules, no casual player cares what the special rules are. Most like more rules, as it makes them look more like a 'regular' when they know the specifics of a table. These are the same people that will play tables that have the bonus bet spots for specific hands-- like throw away another dollar and if you draw a 7-7-7 you get $100. Anyone playing to win doesn't look twice at this, but people out for fun often are looking for the big win. This is why casinos get away with adding all the extra rules:
In a single-deck, player vs. dealer, standard rules game that goes through 35 cards, a mediocre counter has a very good confidence when he/she has an edge. When you're playing 8 decks through 250 cards with dealer hitting soft 17, aces split once, a single card on split aces, double on 9-A only, no double after a hit (very common house rules), you need to be a very solid counter to make money.
All of this aside, there are really two types of counters out there-- casual players and professionals. Professionals are the ones who are making teams, pulling big bets, and making a living off the casinos. These are the ones you hear about that get blacklisted and come back in disguise or bring and train new people to go when they can't. They're playing the big money tables, and posting huge betting swings. If casinos weren't allowed to ban card counters and didn't change their rules, these guys could pull thousands of dollars per hour easily. I don't have a problem with casinos banning these players, or at least restircting them from blackjack.
I fall into the former category, casual players. I don't play anthing larger than a $50 table, usually $15 and $25. My bet swings between throwaway and money bets is usually around 1:3, not big enough to raise an alarm with the pit. It's also not enough to make serious money. On average, I make around $30-$40/hour. If I did this 18 hours a day for a three day vacation, they might care, but I'll usually play 12-15 hours over a weekend at a couple different casinos and then go home. I also drop money here and there on other table games where I know I'm going to lose.
When I was first learning, I'd play low stakes tables, and in retrospect, I was absurdly obvious. No one ever hassled me. I got a couple looks and felt like I needed to get up and leave, but I don't think anyone ever gave me a second thought. Partially because at a $5 table, you're taking perhaps $15/hour from the casino on a full table. As was stated in the parent post, for every legitimate counter, there are 10 people with different betting schemes that are losing $15/hour. It's difficult to tell them apart unless you watch them for a long time, so who's going to analyze 40 hours of play to find the one guy who took less than $50 from your business? I think low-stakes counting is written off by casinos, perhaps partly also because having one winner at a table keeps other players pulling money out of their wallet rather than moving on.
Long winded way to get to my point, but it is this-- the casin
lol-- my mother's a professor at OSU (not cs) who occasionally gets tasked with putting some or all of a course online via Blackboard. Of course, I've been brought in a couple times to help, and have come to the same conclusion she has-- it's a piece of crap, both hard to use and minimally functional.
I've never had any experience with Moodle. Is it worthwhile? Easy to use for fuzzy academs? I'm sure she'd like an alternative, and as the OSU cs dept is in no short supply of undergrads who live to set up servers, this could be a good alternative.
Number 3! Number 3!
I haven't had much problem with the first two (though commercials do piss me off in the theater), but the third is exactly what I've been thinking for a while.
There's something very strange about the price of a movie. At $6.50, I'll go to pretty much any crap for something to do when I've got time on my hands. Back at that price, I'd often go to the local 30-plex without even having a specific movie in mind. For $2.50 more, though, I think I watch one, maybe two movies in the theater a year. For some reason, there's a subconsious threshold between $6.50 and $9 that makes me actually want to get my money's worth.
It's probably just that i'm uncommon, but it's possible that a $2 reduction in ticket prices would reverse this glut instantly. I don't mind watching loud, flashy crap sometimes if we all agree it's loud, flashy crap. Just don't give me loud, flashy crap and tell me it's high-quality filmmaking with a high-quality filmmaking price.
Do you have another word for somebody who ignores all scientific evidence, and instead believes in some imaginary man who lives in the sky and performs miracles?
Creationism isn't necessarily the belief that science is wrong. Many if not most religous educated people believe both in science and this imaginary man in the sky. When we speak of Creationism as an alternative to Evolution (as it usually comes up on/.) I may be in agreement with your point of view. But in general, Creationism merely implies the existence of a creator. Usually one can follow this line of thought with their logical faculties intact by admitting that faith is not logic-based, but rather a necessarily logicless belief in something without evidence for or against it.
Belief in God is not contrary to logic, it's just outside it. Belief that the world is 10,000 years old requires a little (lot) more bending of commonly agreed upon scientific knowledge and reasoning.
So of course this tech will wait until we find that one great use. But until, then there's plenty of druggery to be avoided:
You finish the orange juice, and scan the SKU. OJ is added to your shopping list, which your spouse can sync to their palm at work and use at the market on the way home.
Upon returning from shopping, you scan stuff as you put it away, or punch in produce codes (we all get jobskills as checkers as a side-effect). If you're like me, you buy some tomatoes, throw them in the crisper, and discover them three months later. A nice alert could be handy.
You plan out a couple meals, and the ingredients are added to your shopping list and you're alerted when mealtime comes what you had planned. On some random morning, you ask what you can have for breakfast and based on a recipe list and your current stock, you're given a set of choice. Choosing one, your fridge tells you to take out the milk and four eggs, and the cabinet tells you to take out the bread. (I'm not a cook-- we're making french toast). The stove tells you to turn it on medium and put battered bread on a skillet.
Obviously, for simple recipes this is useless and for complicated ones it doesn't save you anything more than looking back at a recipe, but if anything, we're a lazy population. More importanly, this could all be done with one standalone appliance with a barcode reader (kitchen pc, anyone?) But just because there's another way doesn't mean it can't catch on. People have powered toothbrushes and use the full-service pump at gas stations. We pay for others to wash our cars and change our oil, and buy lap dances rather than trying to pick up women and take them home. There may be a market for automating your grocery stock.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only one that uses the middle button? It opens new tabs (middle-click a link) and closes old ones (middle-click the tab). No need for plug-ins, the functionality's right out of the box!
Everyone wants to be able to say "My product is better than product X" but to do so is to acknowledge that (a) product X exists, and (b) that product X is a viable alternative. The best image for a #1 is that they're the only one of their caliber, regardless of how superior their product is. It's negative publicity for someone with market dominance to say "I'm better than #2 by 1000%" even if its true. Customers realize there is an alternative to #1, and that #1 is worried enough about its competition to advertise against them.
I dunno, when I go hiking, I take food and water. I don't think I would want 80 pounds of batteries on my back.
But I think there is a point somewhere in there to be made. Remember HTML 1.0? Simply the fact that tags like STRONG, H1-H6, and ADDRESS exists points pretty clearly to the intent to allow a site to describe what was being presented but allow the browser to determine how it was presented. Of course, there were a load of problems with this and people's ideas of how it should be used, and we like to think we've come a long way. But in truth, we're still doing the same things.
Rather than trying to be the control-freak with everything exactly positioned, it's far more useful (and elegant to program) to have a site which can do without X, Y, or Z and still convey all the information it did before. A site that degrades gracefully may not impress the casual user, but the casual user will be able to use it.
Look at the most successful commercial sites out there today. Google's front page and search results are viewable in every possible browser I can come up with. eBay is one of the ugliest sites in existence, but its content is available to nearly any browser. Hit amazon.com with Lynx and you can still buy things.
Successful web sites are not pretty. They're functional. CSS is a tool to make more functional pages. Yes, you can also make them prettier, but if you set out with that as your goal, you'll fail the more important one.
That people pay Windows for Microsoft? Who wants a Microsoft?
I must say I prefer Firefox's middle-click open and close for tabs. It seems unlikely, but I do occasionally double-click when I meant to click twice.
Plus, I've never actually encountered a website (that I use often enough) to warrent NOT using Firefox. Seriously! I could say the same until I got hooked on Settlers of Catan Online... great game on the board, and now I don't need friends to play. I still cringe every time I have to go Start->Run->iexplore to start playing. (Like hell I'm going to have that icon lurking around somewhere)
I agree that we probably wouldn't face nuclear weapons. Most religions/governments do claim to value human life, and nuking the hell out of America wouldn't do much to help that.
I don't think it would be due to fear of retaliationn, though. There seems to be some idea that the US is a military superpower and therefore unstoppable. Somehow Americans are proud of the fact that we will more willingly kill than other cultures. Is it that great a situation, that rather than being liked, or even feared due to our military power, we're feared because we will stoop lower than anyone else?
In retrospect, I realized I've used America to refer to the USA in this post. If this offends you, you know what I meant. I don't think Costa Ricans will nuke anyone who pisses them off.
so will that go Pew pew or Brzzap?
80 degrees... I might be able to cool my laptop that far if I submerged it. I've got an off-the-shelf 3GHz Gateway laptop that runs at 87-89 consistently. If I turn down the A/C, it'll hit low 90s, and all hell breaks loose.
A little off topic, but that reminds me of my first job out of college-- giant corporation, tons of phb's running around. Our app had a database backend, and for accounting reasons it needed to be dumped to a file from time to time so some other phb's could go through it if something went wrong.
...?" Or someone would poke their head in my office and tell me pointblank, "I just took a dump, and ..." I had incredible difficulty keeping my mind on whatever people were saying and not just cracking up, particularly people 30 years older than me.
It started out mild, using the common phrase "taking a dump of the database." Of course, I found this funny, but it escalated.
I'd come into work and have my boss ask, "Would you take a dump this morning before you get started on
The end-all comment was in a meeting when we were told, "Managment wanted me to let you all know that we're not taking enough dumps. Every day, each of us needs to be sure to take at least one dump..."
I still wonder if anyone else found it as funny as I did.
Card counting works because as you progress through a deck you occasionally are left with cards that, when dealt, are advantageous to the player. A good counter tracks these situations and makes higher bets when the odds are in his or her favor.
Different counters' skill allows them to see these situations more clearly. More complex methods turn up more advantageous situations (by modifying play style as well as betting amount based on the cards remaining) as well as identify them better. Most counting styles will never tell a player "You've got a 0.7% edge this deal" but rather "You have a 80% that this deal will have an edge in your favor."
What this means is that a weak counter has to make much larger swings between the throwaway bets (dealer's edge) and the money bets (player's edge) in order to have an expected gain for the session. This is of course what the casinos look for, and why blackjack teams are so popular for "professional" counters.
As for the rules, no casual player cares what the special rules are. Most like more rules, as it makes them look more like a 'regular' when they know the specifics of a table. These are the same people that will play tables that have the bonus bet spots for specific hands-- like throw away another dollar and if you draw a 7-7-7 you get $100. Anyone playing to win doesn't look twice at this, but people out for fun often are looking for the big win. This is why casinos get away with adding all the extra rules:
In a single-deck, player vs. dealer, standard rules game that goes through 35 cards, a mediocre counter has a very good confidence when he/she has an edge. When you're playing 8 decks through 250 cards with dealer hitting soft 17, aces split once, a single card on split aces, double on 9-A only, no double after a hit (very common house rules), you need to be a very solid counter to make money.
All of this aside, there are really two types of counters out there-- casual players and professionals. Professionals are the ones who are making teams, pulling big bets, and making a living off the casinos. These are the ones you hear about that get blacklisted and come back in disguise or bring and train new people to go when they can't. They're playing the big money tables, and posting huge betting swings. If casinos weren't allowed to ban card counters and didn't change their rules, these guys could pull thousands of dollars per hour easily. I don't have a problem with casinos banning these players, or at least restircting them from blackjack.
I fall into the former category, casual players. I don't play anthing larger than a $50 table, usually $15 and $25. My bet swings between throwaway and money bets is usually around 1:3, not big enough to raise an alarm with the pit. It's also not enough to make serious money. On average, I make around $30-$40/hour. If I did this 18 hours a day for a three day vacation, they might care, but I'll usually play 12-15 hours over a weekend at a couple different casinos and then go home. I also drop money here and there on other table games where I know I'm going to lose.
When I was first learning, I'd play low stakes tables, and in retrospect, I was absurdly obvious. No one ever hassled me. I got a couple looks and felt like I needed to get up and leave, but I don't think anyone ever gave me a second thought. Partially because at a $5 table, you're taking perhaps $15/hour from the casino on a full table. As was stated in the parent post, for every legitimate counter, there are 10 people with different betting schemes that are losing $15/hour. It's difficult to tell them apart unless you watch them for a long time, so who's going to analyze 40 hours of play to find the one guy who took less than $50 from your business? I think low-stakes counting is written off by casinos, perhaps partly also because having one winner at a table keeps other players pulling money out of their wallet rather than moving on.
Long winded way to get to my point, but it is this-- the casin
lol-- my mother's a professor at OSU (not cs) who occasionally gets tasked with putting some or all of a course online via Blackboard. Of course, I've been brought in a couple times to help, and have come to the same conclusion she has-- it's a piece of crap, both hard to use and minimally functional.
I've never had any experience with Moodle. Is it worthwhile? Easy to use for fuzzy academs? I'm sure she'd like an alternative, and as the OSU cs dept is in no short supply of undergrads who live to set up servers, this could be a good alternative.
Number 3! Number 3! I haven't had much problem with the first two (though commercials do piss me off in the theater), but the third is exactly what I've been thinking for a while. There's something very strange about the price of a movie. At $6.50, I'll go to pretty much any crap for something to do when I've got time on my hands. Back at that price, I'd often go to the local 30-plex without even having a specific movie in mind. For $2.50 more, though, I think I watch one, maybe two movies in the theater a year. For some reason, there's a subconsious threshold between $6.50 and $9 that makes me actually want to get my money's worth. It's probably just that i'm uncommon, but it's possible that a $2 reduction in ticket prices would reverse this glut instantly. I don't mind watching loud, flashy crap sometimes if we all agree it's loud, flashy crap. Just don't give me loud, flashy crap and tell me it's high-quality filmmaking with a high-quality filmmaking price.
Do you have another word for somebody who ignores all scientific evidence, and instead believes in some imaginary man who lives in the sky and performs miracles?
/.) I may be in agreement with your point of view. But in general, Creationism merely implies the existence of a creator. Usually one can follow this line of thought with their logical faculties intact by admitting that faith is not logic-based, but rather a necessarily logicless belief in something without evidence for or against it.
Creationism isn't necessarily the belief that science is wrong. Many if not most religous educated people believe both in science and this imaginary man in the sky. When we speak of Creationism as an alternative to Evolution (as it usually comes up on
Belief in God is not contrary to logic, it's just outside it. Belief that the world is 10,000 years old requires a little (lot) more bending of commonly agreed upon scientific knowledge and reasoning.
CSC Brands, the owner of the Campbell's soup trademark is suing the estate of Andy Warhol for copyright violation.
So of course this tech will wait until we find that one great use. But until, then there's plenty of druggery to be avoided:
You finish the orange juice, and scan the SKU. OJ is added to your shopping list, which your spouse can sync to their palm at work and use at the market on the way home.
Upon returning from shopping, you scan stuff as you put it away, or punch in produce codes (we all get jobskills as checkers as a side-effect). If you're like me, you buy some tomatoes, throw them in the crisper, and discover them three months later. A nice alert could be handy.
You plan out a couple meals, and the ingredients are added to your shopping list and you're alerted when mealtime comes what you had planned. On some random morning, you ask what you can have for breakfast and based on a recipe list and your current stock, you're given a set of choice. Choosing one, your fridge tells you to take out the milk and four eggs, and the cabinet tells you to take out the bread. (I'm not a cook-- we're making french toast). The stove tells you to turn it on medium and put battered bread on a skillet.
Obviously, for simple recipes this is useless and for complicated ones it doesn't save you anything more than looking back at a recipe, but if anything, we're a lazy population. More importanly, this could all be done with one standalone appliance with a barcode reader (kitchen pc, anyone?) But just because there's another way doesn't mean it can't catch on. People have powered toothbrushes and use the full-service pump at gas stations. We pay for others to wash our cars and change our oil, and buy lap dances rather than trying to pick up women and take them home. There may be a market for automating your grocery stock.