I could not agree more with you. I too was staring at my watch, and I would have walked out of there, had I not been in the middle of the packed row. This is by far the worst movie out right now (I've seen most of the others), if not the worst movie I have ever seen. And I know I wasn't alone, because once the credits starting rolling, all I heard was moans and mumbles. All the great acting in the world would not be enought to save this plotless movie.
Critics love it? What does that prove? Critics are either blind, or easy to buy off. There's no other explanation I can think of for this, and other crappy movies, getting good reviews (I once read a positive review for Speed 2! If that is not enough to invalidate everything critics say, I dont know what is). PLEASE don't pay to see this movie. I would love to see this monstrosity not break $30m, despite the "critics"
Are there any projects out there that use eye control, rather than mouse? Do we all remember that special about Stephen Hawking on PBS a while back? He uses a system that allows him to use his eyes to look at certain spots on the screen. Through a hierarchical type of software system, he can look at a certain category of words, which will lead him to a list of sub-categories, on and on, until he reaches the word he wants to "say." He stairs or blinks at it (I forget which) and it gets spoken (or written, if he's writing a paper or something). The way his machine "sees" his eye movement, IIRC, is by two sensors attached on the sides of his monitor. I've read of other physically impaired people using similar systems.
Couldn't X be the same way? If the position where your eye was looking was interpreted as the mouse cursor, and blinks==clicks and double blinks==double clicks, you could do everything you do with a mouse (except the little scrolly-wheel thingy-something I've grown to require.:)I imagine this would cause a great deal of eye strain though...
Can you imagine, after years of terraforming, and hard work, being the first human to trek out of an air-tight dome on Mars, walking a few paces, and slowly taking off your suit's helmet... to breath in fresh clean air? What a moment that would be for humanity. It gives me goose bumps.
As much as I would like to see a successful manned mission to mars, such a goal seems to me highly unlikely for at least 10-15 years. The cost of such an operation is simply too high at this point for congress to even consider it, and for the American people to pay for it.
IIRC, quake2 was released without any DM maps (I think subsequent presses of the game shipped with them, but not the original pre-christmas shipment; they weren't done yet). Fact is, game houses like to make money. Release now, and reap the rewards of a pre-christmas release. Bugs? sure. Maybe not many, but who cares? You'll sell a million copies and everyone will download the patches in a couple months anyway!
Don't get me wrong, the id guys have always proclaimed they'll ship the game "when it's done" and they pretty much stick to that. And if I'm not mistaken, their games usually have less ship-time bugs than others (chalk that up to excellent quality code). But when you weigh the importance of "sell a million christmas copies" and "ship a 100% bug free game," I dont blame them, and I think anyone would do the same thing.
----------------- Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
I emailed one of the koffice guys a long while ago about MSOffice file format interoperability. He said that the framework was in place to allow modular file format conversions, so MSOffice file formats would be OK. This was a while ago though, so I would like your question answered by the developers, in case they changed their strategy/made progress on this subject.
----------------- Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
Couldn't agree more. Now, I expect a million and a half replies saying "bad PROGRAMMERS write bad code" Yes, I agree with you there, but perl makes it easier for even GOOD programmers to write sloppy unintelligble code, and for BAD programmers to write line noise.
The perl community (Larry Wall too, if I'm not mistaken) often touts "There's more than one way to do it!" with perl. Well, is that necessarily a good thing? That translates, in my mind, to "There's no discernable syntax you have to follow!" This makes it an almost write-only language.
Personally, I keep my perl code looking as much like C code as I can. That means no fancy-shmancy 12 function, one liners. If I have to press shift + a number more than twice in one line of code, it's a bad line of code! I think there is somewhat of a status symbol that goes along with writing convoluted perl code in this fashion, which is nightmare for the code maintainer.
----------------- Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
Indeed, with the activex security holes, microsoft has made it possible for these worm writers to cause amazing damage. I can only see these worms/email viruses to get smarter and smarter (how about self modifying worms, that change the subject line of further forwards to any of, oh say, 100 different things, making it pretty impossible to avoid opening the naughty email), while causing more and more damage (Let's not forget that bubbleboy could have done a lot more than it does because apparently, it has full access to a win9x machine's registry.) I dont know about you, but I can't wait for increasingly nasty emails to ravage every outlook user into submission.
What amazes me, though, is how seemingly no one who uses these insecure applications ever says "OK, enough's enough! I'm not going to play microsoft's upgrade/patch/wait-for-next-exploit game any longer." Instead, everyone waits patiently for the next MSNBC article proclaiming the latest bug, and then upgrades their virus software, or patches their insecure app.
It feels good to run an OS with an actual security model (and no, I'm not talking about NT)...
----------------- Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
I don't think this has been brought up before, so here goes. Why doesn't the internet community come up with a single program that uses the LZW compression, pay UNISYS for the license, and then distrubute this program/api/sdk/whatever freely/more-cheaply-than-$5000 to other image software developers? This way, all the image software developers would only be responsible for creating images in some other intermediate format (that behaves *exactly* like a gif--transparency, animatability, etc) then feed it to the mentioned sdk/library, and out comes a real gif. This way, the only component in the chain that uses the LZW compression is the said library, which has already been licensed at the start.
It all stems from what UNISYS means by "creating" a gif image. Technically, the image creation software is not creating a gif, but something else.
Does this hold up legally?
----------------- Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
I understand UCLA has done a lot of good work with laser eye surgery. More info can be consumed at www.universitylaser.com
On a side note, there was an article in the paper a while ago that discussed an alternative to laser eye surgery. It consisted of making a small slit under the pupil of the eye, and sliding in a thin piece of fingernail shaped plastic. It squeezes the lens of the eye in a particular (corrective) shape, and although uncomfortable at first (the eye feels "tight"), it is a good alternative to laser surgery because it is completely reversible (they just take out the little plasic piece). I tried to find more info on this on the web but couldn't.:(
----------------- Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
..which is a damn shame. Let people do some thinking on their own, guys. besides, if every slashdotter knows the answer and submits, there go the odds of winning for everyone who actually did some work and thought it up on their own (like me). thats always the problem with online contests like this.
oh well..
----------------- Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
I would argue that installing stuff is just as dangerous in linux as it is with autorun in windows. 1) You have to 'su' to 'make install.' In windows (NT at least) you have to be logged in as administrator. so the potential is there in both places: full control of the system. 2) It's just as easy to have a 'configure' script consisting of '#!/bin/sh rm -Rf/etc' as it is to have an autorun that nukes your DLL's, registry, etc. (Granted a tarball with such a configure script would not last long --the beauty/safety of opensource-- but a binary that does the same thing could also exist).
That's an awesome sig, by the way. Every once in a while, you read a sig that makes you smile.
----------------- Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather have two factions competing for my desktop environment of choice. This encourages competition and improvement of all products involved (ie, people said "GNOME is pertier than KDE"; result: KDE/Qt hackers spend a lot of time and effort putting themes and other pertiness into KDE). Having only one choice in anything is not good. It leads to stagnation and poorer and poorer quality products because they're the only game in town.
:)
----------------- Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
Serious actors have no respect for movies such as Star Wars. Alec Guinness is a serious actor--not a movie star, but an actor. There is a difference. As such, he only sees the "banal" lines, and trillions of $$ of toys, games, jar-jar crap, crazed fans, etc. It's my impression, from all the interviews I've read, etc, that Neeson and McGreger have similar contempt for Star Wars.
And let's not forget Patrick Stewart. I can't picture him saying anything good about Star Trek, can you? He has absolute contempt for it.
People like Shatner and Hamill made their names (not to mention their fortunes) on Star Trek/Wars. It's all they'll ever be, so they praise the movies/shows, and collect the royalty checks. People like Stewart or Guinness never needed Star *.
----------------- Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
I havent been able to load up the MS site since this whole cracking business first started. I've always gotten "server unavailable" errors. I would kinda like to know what it looks like, and see what kind of crap they're spewing on there.:)
Incidentally, does anyone else find this whole thing really funny? I especially like the "weather caused my system to go down" excuse from the Redmond boys. thats just too funny.
I remember seeing this on TV. After the first airing of the commercial where the Harrier was 7m points, Pepsi changed subsequent airings of the commercial to say that the Harrier was in fact 700m points. So, they knew, (or suspected) that maybe some joker try to come up with 7m, so they upped it a little.
Slashdot Mirror
I could not agree more with you. I too was staring at my watch, and I would have walked out of there, had I not been in the middle of the packed row. This is by far the worst movie out right now (I've seen most of the others), if not the worst movie I have ever seen. And I know I wasn't alone, because once the credits starting rolling, all I heard was moans and mumbles. All the great acting in the world would not be enought to save this plotless movie.
Critics love it? What does that prove? Critics are either blind, or easy to buy off. There's no other explanation I can think of for this, and other crappy movies, getting good reviews (I once read a positive review for Speed 2! If that is not enough to invalidate everything critics say, I dont know what is). PLEASE don't pay to see this movie. I would love to see this monstrosity not break $30m, despite the "critics"
Are there any projects out there that use eye control, rather than mouse? Do we all remember that special about Stephen Hawking on PBS a while back? He uses a system that allows him to use his eyes to look at certain spots on the screen. Through a hierarchical type of software system, he can look at a certain category of words, which will lead him to a list of sub-categories, on and on, until he reaches the word he wants to "say." He stairs or blinks at it (I forget which) and it gets spoken (or written, if he's writing a paper or something). The way his machine "sees" his eye movement, IIRC, is by two sensors attached on the sides of his monitor. I've read of other physically impaired people using similar systems.
:)I imagine this would cause a great deal of eye strain though...
Couldn't X be the same way? If the position where your eye was looking was interpreted as the mouse cursor, and blinks==clicks and double blinks==double clicks, you could do everything you do with a mouse (except the little scrolly-wheel thingy-something I've grown to require.
Can you imagine, after years of terraforming, and hard work, being the first human to trek out of an air-tight dome on Mars, walking a few paces, and slowly taking off your suit's helmet... to breath in fresh clean air? What a moment that would be for humanity. It gives me goose bumps.
:)
I hope against hope that I'm alive to see that.
As much as I would like to see a successful manned mission to mars, such a goal seems to me highly unlikely for at least 10-15 years. The cost of such an operation is simply too high at this point for congress to even consider it, and for the American people to pay for it.
IIRC, quake2 was released without any DM maps (I think subsequent presses of the game shipped with them, but not the original pre-christmas shipment; they weren't done yet). Fact is, game houses like to make money. Release now, and reap the rewards of a pre-christmas release. Bugs? sure. Maybe not many, but who cares? You'll sell a million copies and everyone will download the patches in a couple months anyway!
Don't get me wrong, the id guys have always proclaimed they'll ship the game "when it's done" and they pretty much stick to that. And if I'm not mistaken, their games usually have less ship-time bugs than others (chalk that up to excellent quality code). But when you weigh the importance of "sell a million christmas copies" and "ship a 100% bug free game," I dont blame them, and I think anyone would do the same thing.
-----------------
Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
For internal formats, I think the koffice team has chosen an XML based system. See http://lists.kde.org/?l=kd e-koffice&m=93052296812210&w=2 for a long thread about the formats. Also, the FAQ talks about it a little.
I emailed one of the koffice guys a long while ago about MSOffice file format interoperability. He said that the framework was in place to allow modular file format conversions, so MSOffice file formats would be OK. This was a while ago though, so I would like your question answered by the developers, in case they changed their strategy/made progress on this subject.
-----------------
Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
Does this mean microsoft will stop producing other security-risk software, such as IE, Office, and Windows?
-----------------
Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
Couldn't agree more. Now, I expect a million and a half replies saying "bad PROGRAMMERS write bad code" Yes, I agree with you there, but perl makes it easier for even GOOD programmers to write sloppy unintelligble code, and for BAD programmers to write line noise.
The perl community (Larry Wall too, if I'm not mistaken) often touts "There's more than one way to do it!" with perl. Well, is that necessarily a good thing? That translates, in my mind, to "There's no discernable syntax you have to follow!" This makes it an almost write-only language.
Personally, I keep my perl code looking as much like C code as I can. That means no fancy-shmancy 12 function, one liners. If I have to press shift + a number more than twice in one line of code, it's a bad line of code! I think there is somewhat of a status symbol that goes along with writing convoluted perl code in this fashion, which is nightmare for the code maintainer.
-----------------
Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
Indeed, with the activex security holes, microsoft has made it possible for these worm writers to cause amazing damage. I can only see these worms/email viruses to get smarter and smarter (how about self modifying worms, that change the subject line of further forwards to any of, oh say, 100 different things, making it pretty impossible to avoid opening the naughty email), while causing more and more damage (Let's not forget that bubbleboy could have done a lot more than it does because apparently, it has full access to a win9x machine's registry.) I dont know about you, but I can't wait for increasingly nasty emails to ravage every outlook user into submission.
What amazes me, though, is how seemingly no one who uses these insecure applications ever says "OK, enough's enough! I'm not going to play microsoft's upgrade/patch/wait-for-next-exploit game any longer." Instead, everyone waits patiently for the next MSNBC article proclaiming the latest bug, and then upgrades their virus software, or patches their insecure app.
It feels good to run an OS with an actual security model (and no, I'm not talking about NT)...
-----------------
Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
I don't think this has been brought up before, so here goes. Why doesn't the internet community come up with a single program that uses the LZW compression, pay UNISYS for the license, and then distrubute this program/api/sdk/whatever freely/more-cheaply-than-$5000 to other image software developers? This way, all the image software developers would only be responsible for creating images in some other intermediate format (that behaves *exactly* like a gif--transparency, animatability, etc) then feed it to the mentioned sdk/library, and out comes a real gif. This way, the only component in the chain that uses the LZW compression is the said library, which has already been licensed at the start.
It all stems from what UNISYS means by "creating" a gif image. Technically, the image creation software is not creating a gif, but something else.
Does this hold up legally?
-----------------
Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
I understand UCLA has done a lot of good work with laser eye surgery. More info can be consumed at www.universitylaser.com
:(
On a side note, there was an article in the paper a while ago that discussed an alternative to laser eye surgery. It consisted of making a small slit under the pupil of the eye, and sliding in a thin piece of fingernail shaped plastic. It squeezes the lens of the eye in a particular (corrective) shape, and although uncomfortable at first (the eye feels "tight"), it is a good alternative to laser surgery because it is completely reversible (they just take out the little plasic piece). I tried to find more info on this on the web but couldn't.
-----------------
Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
..which is a damn shame. Let people do some thinking on their own, guys. besides, if every slashdotter knows the answer and submits, there go the odds of winning for everyone who actually did some work and thought it up on their own (like me). thats always the problem with online contests like this.
oh well..
-----------------
Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
I would argue that installing stuff is just as dangerous in linux as it is with autorun in windows. /etc' as it is to have an autorun that nukes your DLL's, registry, etc. (Granted a tarball with such a configure script would not last long --the beauty/safety of opensource-- but a binary that does the same thing could also exist).
1) You have to 'su' to 'make install.' In windows (NT at least) you have to be logged in as administrator. so the potential is there in both places: full control of the system.
2) It's just as easy to have a 'configure' script consisting of '#!/bin/sh rm -Rf
That's an awesome sig, by the way. Every once in a while, you read a sig that makes you smile.
-----------------
Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather have two factions competing for my desktop environment of choice. This encourages competition and improvement of all products involved (ie, people said "GNOME is pertier than KDE"; result: KDE/Qt hackers spend a lot of time and effort putting themes and other pertiness into KDE). Having only one choice in anything is not good. It leads to stagnation and poorer and poorer quality products because they're the only game in town.
:)
-----------------
Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
Serious actors have no respect for movies such as Star Wars. Alec Guinness is a serious actor--not a movie star, but an actor. There is a difference. As such, he only sees the "banal" lines, and trillions of $$ of toys, games, jar-jar crap, crazed fans, etc. It's my impression, from all the interviews I've read, etc, that Neeson and McGreger have similar contempt for Star Wars.
And let's not forget Patrick Stewart. I can't picture him saying anything good about Star Trek, can you? He has absolute contempt for it.
People like Shatner and Hamill made their names (not to mention their fortunes) on Star Trek/Wars. It's all they'll ever be, so they praise the movies/shows, and collect the royalty checks. People like Stewart or Guinness never needed Star *.
-----------------
Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
What do you mean if the gave us some kernel multithreading? Linux does offer kernel (ie system) level threads.
I havent been able to load up the MS site since this whole cracking business first started. I've always gotten "server unavailable" errors. I would kinda like to know what it looks like, and see what kind of crap they're spewing on there. :)
Incidentally, does anyone else find this whole thing really funny? I especially like the "weather caused my system to go down" excuse from the Redmond boys. thats just too funny.
I remember seeing this on TV. After the first airing of the commercial where the Harrier was 7m points, Pepsi changed subsequent airings of the commercial to say that the Harrier was in fact 700m points. So, they knew, (or suspected) that maybe some joker try to come up with 7m, so they upped it a little.
I guess the damage was done though...