This is true... I (now) work at a company located in the CBOT, and it seems there's more of a "errors are more okay" attitude. Which is interesting, when you consider that when an exchange connection (or even a connection for just one major contract) goes down, millions of dollars are at stake.
This contrasts with my previous experience at a struggling airline company, where such failures were tagged with a price tag and flagged as "never, ever do this again".:-) Even if they weren't struggling, though, the tolerance of failure seemed much less.
I wouldn't exactly call it "hacking," but I've been modding juiceboxes for years. All it involves is a straw...
Have you ever noticed what color the hole that you stick the straw is? Silver. That's right. It's tinfoil.
There's something in these "juiceboxes" that they don't want us to know about, and someday our meddling with juiceboxes with straws will get us in trouble...
A good analysis for first-time buyers, but you've missed the target market for the Mini...
Get a Mac for Less
The modular design of Mac mini lets you upgrade your current system to the elegance, simplicity and reliability of Macintosh. BYODKM:* If you already own a monitor, keyboard and mouse, you can get up and running in minutes. Or choose any combination of new devices to match your setup. And yes, Mac mini will take advantage of your two-button USB mouse with scroll-wheel and your favorite USB keyboard. Just plug them in.
With a PC, don't forget anti-virus and yearly updates. And time lost to the spyware the eventually makes it in because your parents don't know to click "no" or don't know the difference between real dialog boxes and JPEGs masquerading as dialog boxes.
It won't suit everyone, but I grow tired of the "must clean Windows to make it workable" stuff. My PC at my parents' home has a 5 minute wait to do... something... before you can work on it. It's a 1.67 GHz VAIO -- that's unacceptable to me. It's acceptable to them, somehow... I guess that's how they think computers should work. I'll move on, thanks.
Gigli got 2.5 out of 4... and I haven't seen the movie, but people that critique reviews seem to not have understood why the star ratings are assigned as they are.
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are in love and plan to get married, as you already know unless you are sealed off from all media, in which case you are not reading this review, so put it down. Because they are a famous couple, starring in a movie romance, we expect something conventional and predictable and that is not what we get from "Gigli." The movie tries to do something different, thoughtful, and a little daring with their relationship, and although it doesn't quite work, maybe the movie is worth seeing for some scenes that are really very good.
So in other words, movies should probably be different to have a chance at a decent rating. Also, he doesn't like every J-Lo movie.
That's mostly true. His other comment about star ratings is that they're useless for comparing across genres:
'Shaolin Soccer" is like a poster boy for my theory of the star rating system. Every month or so, I get an anguished letter from a reader wanting to know how I could possibly have been so ignorant as to award three stars to, say, "Hidalgo" while dismissing, say, "Dogville" with two stars. This disparity between my approval of kitsch and my rejection of angst reveals me, of course, as a superficial moron who will do anything to suck up to my readers.
[snip]
...Not at all. What it means is that the star rating system is relative, not absolute. When you ask a friend if "Hellboy" is any good, you're not asking if it's any good compared to "Mystic River," you're asking if it's any good compared to "The Punisher." And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if "Superman" (1978) is four, then "Hellboy" is three and "The Punisher" is two. In the same way, if "American Beauty" gets four stars, then "Leland" clocks in at about two.
By the way, the movie in that review (Shaolin Soccer) was one of the funniest movies I'd watched last year, and definitely not for everyone. It depends on whether you think Stephen Chow is one of the modern era's best directors, or you don't know him at all.
"The console also will have downloadable access to 20 years of fan-favorite titles originally released for Nintendo® 64, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System® (SNES) and even the Nintendo Entertainment System® (NES)."
Hmm. Let me download Snake, Rattle n' Roll and The Guardian Legend for $.99 (or whatever's fair... that means LESS than $19.99) and you've got yourself a loyal customer again.
Nintendo... the next iTunes Music Store-like experience?
Would you be willing to be willing to save energy by turning off your computers when you're not at work/home? Would you do it to forego being on the top of this list? Or is finding aliens / folding proteins more important than saving energy?
Actually, to take the planks out of my own eye first, I probably ought to shut down the PC at 5:00p myself. (I'm at work):-) The Macs at home (should) automatically go to sleep, though they haven't lately...
Yeah, but we have access to contraceptive technology now and people still forget to "take the pill" or let things get hot and heavy and "forget" to put on the condom... it could be arguable that in a Star Wars-like universe, it would be the Force that causes this. However, IANASWJ (star wars junkie).
That said, I do have a shirt that says "The Force Is In My Pants" from my frat. Maybe that explains everything.
Still others have suggested that instead of using an open-source Java, these components be rewritten in an entirely different language such as Ruby or Python.
However, some programmers have just gone ahead and found fixes for OO.o, which enables it to run with GCJ.
Caolán McNamara, a programmer with Red Hat who specializes in word processing, has created one such set of fixes.
A source at Sun said, "OO.o 2 works OK with GCJ" and that "Red Hat has been tremendously helpful in the effort to make that so, filing bug reports etc."
In addition, while OO.o will run without a JVM (Java Virtual Machine), it will use one if it's available, and its performance has been found to be much better if Sun's 5.0 JVM is used.
But, as Scott Carr, OO.o's quality assurance project co-lead pointed out, "OO.o will run perfectly well without any JVM, but if there is a JVM then it has to do checks to make sure what features are supported in the JVM as well as run various functions. These are only run in the presence of a JVM."
-- end FTA --
So... if there is a JVM, [something] runs better/faster than if there wasn't. For starters, the app works without Java. Secondly, it's been fixed to compile with an open-source Java compiler. Thirdly, what kind of code runs this way? The article didn't specify.
How odd.
Regardless, this is still a big deal about nothing, as per usual.
No problem... now that I've gotten my first impressions out of the way... it's time for the questions. Not towards you specifically, just for discussion. (I haven't DLed the app because I have no speakers at work... that would be pretty pointless.)
Plugins - Mozilla calls them "extensions"... I call them "underutilized"... but it seemed to be labeled a major selling point. How does it compare with Winamp?
Price - Since the $5.99 / mo is introductory for a year, what's the real price? Is it $9.99 / mo? It's hard not to interpret that as a profit tax later on after users have been hooked on the service.
Speed - I'm gonna rag on the awful Windows Media Player for this one, but everyone I know that still has Windows uses it... is it faster?
Overall, even though I can't use it, the more people stop using Windows Media Player for anything else, the better.
...for this relatively biased blog entry. He's the developer, though, so hey, I'll give him a break.
FWIW, I don't care if people label me a karma whore, and I'm in the "I own a Mac [you insensitive clod]!" segment of "Reasons why not to use Y! media player" below. I highly doubt Yahoo! could duplicate the existing ease-of-use between applications on the Apple platform anyway and still have it be worth their time and money.
Also, while iTunes was an obvious, admitted ploy to sell Apple hardware... it did work, didn't it?:-)
--crap lameness filter--crap lameness filter--crap lameness filter--pretend this is a separator--
While Yahoo! embarks on a proper marketing and PR campaign (shouts out to Liz and Charlene), I thought I'd give you (friends, family, fellow geeks) the real story, human to human, on why you should (or shouldn't) use the new Yahoo! Music Engine.
FWIW, my name is Ian Rogers. I used to work with Beastie Boys, for their record label Grand Royal, at Nullsoft (where Justin and Tom made Winamp, SHOUTcast, and Gnutella), and most recently had a very small company called Mediacode with my main man Rob Lord (who started IUMA and brought Nullsoft up with Justin). We sold Mediacode to Yahoo! in Dec 2003 and Y! has had us in a cave ever since building the Yahoo! Music Engine and some other stuff we can't tell you about yet.
But down to the reason you're reading this. I'm asking you to ditch Windows Media Player (aka WiMP, sorry John, Mark), Winamp (pour out a little liquor), iTunes (sorry Chris and Steve G), MusicMatch (apologies to my new brothers and sisters), Rhapsody (you were my first for-pay love, ya tramp), and Napster (THROW ANOTHER STACK OF BENJAMINS ON THE FIRE!), and use Yahoo! Music Engine instead. (If you're using Foobar2000, keep on, brother man, I ain't going to war with y'all purists.)
Here's why you should switch to the Yahoo! Music Engine:
For the Friends/Family:
* PRICE! $5/month subscription service with subscription downloads (transfer your downloads to your subscription-capable device). Yes, this is the same set of features that Napster is charging you $15 for. This is what they call an "introductory price", kids. Buy a year now. I'm not kidding. It ain't going any lower than this, maybe ever. Buy now or regret missing out on the cheapest year of (legal) all-you-can-eat music ever in your life.
* Personalization! I dunno about you, but ALL the other music services and stores seem incapable of showing me music I actually want without me searching for it. Our pages are PERSONALIZED TO YOUR MUSIC TASTE. The front page for me at the moment contains The Fall, Muddy Waters, Stevie Wonder, Television, and Clikatat Ikatowi. If you know me, you know they're doing pretty damn good.
* CHOICE! If you don't like the idea of subscribing to your music, you can rip CDs, play downloaded music, or even spend $0.99/track if you'd like. Whatever your preference, we make it work. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PAY ANYTHING TO HAVE FUN WITH OUR PLAYER.
* Community! AOL has the most popular instant message program and not one of their 500 media apps takes advantage of it! LAMERS! Ours allows you to LISTEN TO MUSIC FROM YOUR FRIENDS via Yahoo! Messenger! LEGALLY! YOU HEARD ME! Also, you can find users with tastes similar to you, view their collections, instant message them, whateva. Rad.
* iPod support!Kinda! We support the iPod to the extent that Apple will let us -- which means we support transfer of non-DRM tracks (your ripped and "imported" content) to the iPod.
* Huge catalog of the highest quality files of any paid service. Our subscription service and download store spits out dual-pass 192kbps WMA files. They sound hearty, even in my living room. And, there's LOTS of them. Music everywhere I turn. From mainstream to obscure. 1M tracks and counting. Shatner! Fela! The Germs!
* Free, fast, MP3 (even high bitrates), AAC, Ogg, and FLAC encoding. We support the widest variety o
I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one that saw "PBX" and said, "WTF is a PBX?"
Short for private branch exchange, a private telephone network used within an enterprise. Users of the PBX share a certain number of outside lines for making telephone calls external to the PBX.
Most medium-sized and larger companies use a PBX because it's much less expensive than connecting an external telephone line to every telephone in the organization. In addition, it's easier to call someone within a PBX because the number you need to dial is typically just 3 or 4 digits.
A new variation on the PBX theme is the centrex, which is a PBX with all switching occurring at a local telephone office instead of at the company's premises.
the fact Apple has announced that from 10.4 forward there will be no more API changes.
So... applications developed for Tiger are guaranteed to work for OS X >= 10.4? The APIs have been thusly deemed perfect? Apple has start work on OS XI?
I largely agree, except for one 1.1.4 to 2.0 change...
Open Standards XML File Format (OASIS OpenDocument)
I run on ALL popular OSes, including Macintoshes.
Beginning with version 2.0 OpenOffice.org uses the open standard OASIS OpenDocument XML format as the default file format. The OASIS OpenDocument format is a vendor and implementation independent file format, and thus guarantees freedom and independence.
In addition to OpenOffice.org itself, the open source office suite KOffice as well as OpenOffice.org derivatives like the StarOffice software support the OASIS OpenDocument file format. The OASIS OpenDocument file format is also one of the file formats recommended by the European Commision.
I don't have a 1.1.4 installation anywhere nearby... can that version read this file format? If not, 4. OpenOffice (and its sister project NeoOffice/J) run on ALL popular OSes, including Macintoshes. is broken, because all we Mac users have is NeoOffice/J with 1.1.3 code.
Yes, I could save the doc in another format in 2.0 Beta, and in the long run this new format is a Good Thing, but unless 1.1.4 can handle this format, it seems to be there's going to be some level of pain during this time.
Yeah, you're pretty much spot on about giving better data than what NOAA provides, and that's really why I pay $8 / month for Accuweather's premium service...
-better / more discussions about severe weather, hurricane season
-longer radar loops... more convenient
-more accurate forecasts
-NOAA doesn't do real-time alerts
-Accuweather tends to shy away from the aggravating probability model... (what does "40% chance of X mean?")
That said, I use NOAA info already. I wrote a widget for Konfabulator using that info, and I routinely check a number of sites that are important to me in terms of weather... Severe Weather Prediction Center, National Weather Service, and the Chicago Area homepage to name a few... All that info is useful, but it should be up to the private companies to extend it. Or individual developers like me on my own free time.
When Accuweather starts to demonstrate real figures of loss caused by the government because of what the government does, then I'll reevaluate my position.
For the record, I consider myself an evangelical Christian, but I'm puzzled at times by the divisive attitude of some pastors in the evangelical church. (I'm more puzzled that the media often doesn't report the full story of what those pastors say, choosing to linger on inciting charges of anti-gay bashing) Face it, homosexuality was widespread in the culture at the time of the New Testament. It isn't new.
If you're a believer, you're expected to remain sexually pure... to not have a hint of sexual immorality. It really is that black and white.
If you're a government, the Bible says *nothing* about it.
I've heard arguments about how allowing gays to marry would induce the fall of society, and I just don't buy into that substructure-type view of society. Gay people will get married, life goes on.
Furthermore, this country was built on equality, and as the child of immigrants seeking freedom, I respect that view.
Anyways, there's always a lot of un-Christ-like flaming when this subject comes up... I'd rather just put it behind us and get back to love, because it's pretty clear that discrimination and flaming isn't making things any clearer.
Slashdot Mirror
l1nuxl33t87: 15 19 * * 1-5 "read
HotGurl69: wtf?
l1nuxl33t87: 30 20 * * 4 "dinner?"
No thanks. :-)
My bad. I regret the error.
Call it a toast to the benefits of the initial Windows 95 file naming scheme. :-)
I'm not sure how you managed to managed to repost a thread with a combined score of -1 to get a +4 Funny... but can you teach me that trick?
This contrasts with my previous experience at a struggling airline company, where such failures were tagged with a price tag and flagged as "never, ever do this again". :-) Even if they weren't struggling, though, the tolerance of failure seemed much less.
Click here.
It took me a little while before I realized that the fact it's computer equipment didn't exempt us nerds from the laws of biology and physics.
Have you ever noticed what color the hole that you stick the straw is? Silver. That's right. It's tinfoil.
There's something in these "juiceboxes" that they don't want us to know about, and someday our meddling with juiceboxes with straws will get us in trouble...
Get a Mac for Less
The modular design of Mac mini lets you upgrade your current system to the elegance, simplicity and reliability of Macintosh. BYODKM:* If you already own a monitor, keyboard and mouse, you can get up and running in minutes. Or choose any combination of new devices to match your setup. And yes, Mac mini will take advantage of your two-button USB mouse with scroll-wheel and your favorite USB keyboard. Just plug them in.
With a PC, don't forget anti-virus and yearly updates. And time lost to the spyware the eventually makes it in because your parents don't know to click "no" or don't know the difference between real dialog boxes and JPEGs masquerading as dialog boxes.
It won't suit everyone, but I grow tired of the "must clean Windows to make it workable" stuff. My PC at my parents' home has a 5 minute wait to do... something... before you can work on it. It's a 1.67 GHz VAIO -- that's unacceptable to me. It's acceptable to them, somehow... I guess that's how they think computers should work. I'll move on, thanks.
*With a custom --xbox flag, of course, to prevent piracy.
So in other words, movies should probably be different to have a chance at a decent rating. Also, he doesn't like every J-Lo movie.
By the way, the movie in that review (Shaolin Soccer) was one of the funniest movies I'd watched last year, and definitely not for everyone. It depends on whether you think Stephen Chow is one of the modern era's best directors, or you don't know him at all.
Hmm. Let me download Snake, Rattle n' Roll and The Guardian Legend for $.99 (or whatever's fair... that means LESS than $19.99) and you've got yourself a loyal customer again.
Nintendo... the next iTunes Music Store-like experience?
Is it a standalone store (a la Michigan Avenue, or inside a mall?
Actually, to take the planks out of my own eye first, I probably ought to shut down the PC at 5:00p myself. (I'm at work) :-) The Macs at home (should) automatically go to sleep, though they haven't lately...
That said, I do have a shirt that says "The Force Is In My Pants" from my frat. Maybe that explains everything.
-- from the article --
Still others have suggested that instead of using an open-source Java, these components be rewritten in an entirely different language such as Ruby or Python.
However, some programmers have just gone ahead and found fixes for OO.o, which enables it to run with GCJ.
Caolán McNamara, a programmer with Red Hat who specializes in word processing, has created one such set of fixes.
A source at Sun said, "OO.o 2 works OK with GCJ" and that "Red Hat has been tremendously helpful in the effort to make that so, filing bug reports etc."
In addition, while OO.o will run without a JVM (Java Virtual Machine), it will use one if it's available, and its performance has been found to be much better if Sun's 5.0 JVM is used.
But, as Scott Carr, OO.o's quality assurance project co-lead pointed out, "OO.o will run perfectly well without any JVM, but if there is a JVM then it has to do checks to make sure what features are supported in the JVM as well as run various functions. These are only run in the presence of a JVM."
-- end FTA --
So... if there is a JVM, [something] runs better/faster than if there wasn't. For starters, the app works without Java. Secondly, it's been fixed to compile with an open-source Java compiler. Thirdly, what kind of code runs this way? The article didn't specify.
How odd.
Regardless, this is still a big deal about nothing, as per usual.
Plugins - Mozilla calls them "extensions"... I call them "underutilized"... but it seemed to be labeled a major selling point. How does it compare with Winamp?
Price - Since the $5.99 / mo is introductory for a year, what's the real price? Is it $9.99 / mo? It's hard not to interpret that as a profit tax later on after users have been hooked on the service.
Speed - I'm gonna rag on the awful Windows Media Player for this one, but everyone I know that still has Windows uses it... is it faster?
Overall, even though I can't use it, the more people stop using Windows Media Player for anything else, the better.
FWIW, I don't care if people label me a karma whore, and I'm in the "I own a Mac [you insensitive clod]!" segment of "Reasons why not to use Y! media player" below. I highly doubt Yahoo! could duplicate the existing ease-of-use between applications on the Apple platform anyway and still have it be worth their time and money.
Also, while iTunes was an obvious, admitted ploy to sell Apple hardware... it did work, didn't it? :-)
--crap lameness filter--crap lameness filter--crap lameness filter--pretend this is a separator--
While Yahoo! embarks on a proper marketing and PR campaign (shouts out to Liz and Charlene), I thought I'd give you (friends, family, fellow geeks) the real story, human to human, on why you should (or shouldn't) use the new Yahoo! Music Engine.
FWIW, my name is Ian Rogers. I used to work with Beastie Boys, for their record label Grand Royal, at Nullsoft (where Justin and Tom made Winamp, SHOUTcast, and Gnutella), and most recently had a very small company called Mediacode with my main man Rob Lord (who started IUMA and brought Nullsoft up with Justin). We sold Mediacode to Yahoo! in Dec 2003 and Y! has had us in a cave ever since building the Yahoo! Music Engine and some other stuff we can't tell you about yet.
But down to the reason you're reading this. I'm asking you to ditch Windows Media Player (aka WiMP, sorry John, Mark), Winamp (pour out a little liquor), iTunes (sorry Chris and Steve G), MusicMatch (apologies to my new brothers and sisters), Rhapsody (you were my first for-pay love, ya tramp), and Napster (THROW ANOTHER STACK OF BENJAMINS ON THE FIRE!), and use Yahoo! Music Engine instead. (If you're using Foobar2000, keep on, brother man, I ain't going to war with y'all purists.)
Here's why you should switch to the Yahoo! Music Engine:
For the Friends/Family:
* PRICE! $5/month subscription service with subscription downloads (transfer your downloads to your subscription-capable device). Yes, this is the same set of features that Napster is charging you $15 for. This is what they call an "introductory price", kids. Buy a year now. I'm not kidding. It ain't going any lower than this, maybe ever. Buy now or regret missing out on the cheapest year of (legal) all-you-can-eat music ever in your life.
* Personalization! I dunno about you, but ALL the other music services and stores seem incapable of showing me music I actually want without me searching for it. Our pages are PERSONALIZED TO YOUR MUSIC TASTE. The front page for me at the moment contains The Fall, Muddy Waters, Stevie Wonder, Television, and Clikatat Ikatowi. If you know me, you know they're doing pretty damn good.
* CHOICE! If you don't like the idea of subscribing to your music, you can rip CDs, play downloaded music, or even spend $0.99/track if you'd like. Whatever your preference, we make it work. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PAY ANYTHING TO HAVE FUN WITH OUR PLAYER.
* Community! AOL has the most popular instant message program and not one of their 500 media apps takes advantage of it! LAMERS! Ours allows you to LISTEN TO MUSIC FROM YOUR FRIENDS via Yahoo! Messenger! LEGALLY! YOU HEARD ME! Also, you can find users with tastes similar to you, view their collections, instant message them, whateva. Rad.
* iPod support!Kinda! We support the iPod to the extent that Apple will let us -- which means we support transfer of non-DRM tracks (your ripped and "imported" content) to the iPod.
* Huge catalog of the highest quality files of any paid service. Our subscription service and download store spits out dual-pass 192kbps WMA files. They sound hearty, even in my living room. And, there's LOTS of them. Music everywhere I turn. From mainstream to obscure. 1M tracks and counting. Shatner! Fela! The Germs!
* Free, fast, MP3 (even high bitrates), AAC, Ogg, and FLAC encoding. We support the widest variety o
Clearly you've never tried to move a mouse pointer around with horizontal and vertical knobs. :-)
<stamp>
So... applications developed for Tiger are guaranteed to work for OS X >= 10.4? The APIs have been thusly deemed perfect? Apple has start work on OS XI?
I don't have a 1.1.4 installation anywhere nearby... can that version read this file format? If not, 4. OpenOffice (and its sister project NeoOffice/J) run on ALL popular OSes, including Macintoshes. is broken, because all we Mac users have is NeoOffice/J with 1.1.3 code.
Yes, I could save the doc in another format in 2.0 Beta, and in the long run this new format is a Good Thing, but unless 1.1.4 can handle this format, it seems to be there's going to be some level of pain during this time.
-better / more discussions about severe weather, hurricane season
-longer radar loops... more convenient
-more accurate forecasts
-NOAA doesn't do real-time alerts
-Accuweather tends to shy away from the aggravating probability model... (what does "40% chance of X mean?")
That said, I use NOAA info already. I wrote a widget for Konfabulator using that info, and I routinely check a number of sites that are important to me in terms of weather... Severe Weather Prediction Center, National Weather Service, and the Chicago Area homepage to name a few... All that info is useful, but it should be up to the private companies to extend it. Or individual developers like me on my own free time.
When Accuweather starts to demonstrate real figures of loss caused by the government because of what the government does, then I'll reevaluate my position.
If you're a believer, you're expected to remain sexually pure... to not have a hint of sexual immorality. It really is that black and white.
If you're a government, the Bible says *nothing* about it.
I've heard arguments about how allowing gays to marry would induce the fall of society, and I just don't buy into that substructure-type view of society. Gay people will get married, life goes on.
Furthermore, this country was built on equality, and as the child of immigrants seeking freedom, I respect that view.
Anyways, there's always a lot of un-Christ-like flaming when this subject comes up... I'd rather just put it behind us and get back to love, because it's pretty clear that discrimination and flaming isn't making things any clearer.