>When development time runs over schedule, push the damned ship date back!
Not gonna happen. The vast majority of the time, the economic penalty associated with being late is much greater than the economic penalty associated with being buggy.
Why? Because customers don't mind paying huge amounts of money for buggy software?
If I'm paying money for a product, I'd rather get it slightly later and have it actually work than get it sooner and lose productivity to poor manufacturing standards. But I guess I'm far too picky to be a consumer.
Want to make better software? Make sure your programmers understand what you're trying to do and make sure that enough people have "the big picture" of how all the system components interact that your vision can be driven to completion.
Well said. It's an extension of the "cubicle nature" of the working world. Here's your cubicle: you are part of the whole, but you're by yourself, and can't really see what's going on around you. Here's your project: it's a compenent of a larger piece of software, but you don't really need to know how the other pieces work. Just code your part and be happy.
I'm not saying we shoud ditch the cubicle (where else would we hang our Dilbert clippings?) but we should certainly ditch the cubicle atmosphere surrounding technical projects. Let everyone in. Big Picture, people.
I never did get around to asking him how he knew that, or if it was kind of a gut feeling he had.
It must have been intuition.
But in all seriousness, "intuitive" is a synonym for "personal preference" when it comes to abtract concepts like computing. After watching highly successful, highly intelligent professors (with PhDs, mind you) struggle with the basic concepts of computers, such as installing software, creating shortcuts, transferring files between two computers, etc., it became abundantly clear to me that "intuitive" is only what the creater of the "intuitive" system preferred. In fact, I know several professors who still write their highly complex numerical simulation code in FORTRAN, because "it's more like English than other languages." FORTRAN is highly counter-intuitive, but it's a damn fast number crunching language (rivaled only by C, if I remember my benchmarks correctly).
Computers are obtuse, and rightfully so. Turning millions of micropulses of electricity flowing through tiny bits of various metals into a 2-dimensional dancing paperclip boggles the mind. In order to write complex applications with millions of lines of code, and have that code run at a reasonable speed and/or efficiency, the programmer is going to need some knowledge of how the computer works. That will require that s/he has access to things like memory locations as s/he codes, and also be fairly intelligent. If all you need to write is a little macro for inserting customer records into Excel, then efficiency is not really a factor and "dumbed-down" development environments like Visual Basic are just fine for the purpose.
I'm all for making computers easy to use, but "intuitive development environments" are an Eldorado. Let's focus instead on creating programming languages that are not only stable, but secure, cross-platform, robust, *consistent*, and above all, efficient. Even if they are a little obtuse: steep learning curves are not the problem.
It depends highly on the application of the shared information.
I remember a story (and I unfortunately don't really have enough concrete facts about it to Google it) that involved the development of a Chinese missile. China subcontracted out some of the components, including to several companies in Europe. China was having a terrible time getting their missile to work properly, and several of the engineers from one of the subcontractors discovered the problem was in the flight control software. They pointed this out to the program's directors, and the problem was fixed. However, since the flight control software was not part of that company's contract, the engineers got into huge trouble with their country for giving away "national secrets" to China.
Could open sourced software fall into the same category? Could something seemingly innocuous (such as automated satellite image analysis code, for example) be seen by governments as "national secrets?" I'm all for NASA releasing its code, and I would hate to see the best stuff stifled because of nationalistic paranoia.
By the way, I heard the story from a professor of Aerospace Engineering who is always a reliable source of information, so I have no doubt as to its accuracy. However, I wish I had a Google link to post here so you don't all think I'm a crazed lunatic.
We agreed to form a bunch of states. We agreed to combine those states into a federation called The United States. We agreed on a single currency for all the states. We agreed on a method for choosing our leaders.
If you're old enough to have been at the founding of the U.S., how come your./ ID isn't lower?:-P
We founding fathers need to keep our IDs secret on/. so we don't get flamed by the redcoats. So we create new accounts every few decades.:-)
Imagine just a few people representing all of the citizens in a country.
Person A: "I think one of us should take care of writing the laws. Why don't YOU do it, and in return, if I don't like you, I can have someone else do it." Person B: "Sounds good to me." Person C: "I like that plan."
Throw in 250 million of their closest friends, all agreeing on the same principle of governing, and you have yourself a country. The constitution just writes it all down; the document itself is not required.
But it's all still just semantics. The point is the *big* *picture*, which is that countries govern themselves through agreements between the citizens. By definition, countries *have* to be governed by members of their populace. Not every agreement gives the entire populace an equal footing, but there is still an agreement: a dictator or totalitarian ruler is still just a person. If enough people came up with another agreement that didn't include him/her, then s/he would no longer have power (I really should restrict the pronouns to he/him when talking about totalitarian rulers since female members of that profession are so rare, but that's a whole different argument). Power only exists when other people recognize it. I could declare myself the President of the United States if I wanted to, but since no one agrees to that but me, it isn't so. However, if enough people agreed to it by electing me, then it would be a reality. If enough poeple in the country agreed to let me be dictator, then that would happen, too. Without the agreement, there is nothing.
(And before you cut me down on humanitarian issues, I didn't mean that citizens of totalitarian states made a decision to place a ruthless dictator in power. Most members of a country like that "agree" by shrugging their shoulders and getting on with their lives, unconcerned with politics, or enough members of that country's army agreed to follow that dictator, and force it on other people. And, of course, having another country come in and forcefully change your system of government *for* you is a completely different issue. But I digress.)
I actually know several people who continue to use IE simply because they like having the address bar embedded in the taskbar in Windows XP (Right click on taskbar -> Toolbars -> Address Bar). And I have to admit, it would be pretty handy if I hadn't already committed myself to using Opera 7.
My question is, is it possible to change the browser used when you click "Go" in that address bar? Probably not, since that's an IE extension, but I thought is was worth asking the Slashdot masses.
What about Best Viewed with Telnet to Port 80? Seems to me that philosophy would fit neatly with current server-script-generated (php,cgi,etc) pages using the div/span/css model for layout. Keep the HTML as barebones and standards compliant as possible, and add the flair, like layout and colors, with CSS.
I remember A List Apart had an article on cleaning up the HTML generated by Slashcode. (It was posted here, too.) Such a model would even save bandwidth on high traffic sites, since the CSS files all get cached. It's standards compliant, too.
The internet is not a tool. It's how you hold a tool. That's why it can enable you to use millions of different tools.
So then why are so many of the companies producing those tools such tools?!
</joke> But in all seriousness, that's probably the best internet analogy I've heard yet. Too bad it will be lost on the typical AOLers. "I just upgraded the internet to version 9.0 yesterday. The CD came free in the mail!"
You didn't pay much attention in your high school government class, did you? Or maybe you were too involved in the details of the government to see the bigger picture.
There is nothing more to the constitution than "I will give up some of my freedoms and in return you will give up some of yours." The whole document, from Preamble to Amendment XXVII, is simply working out how the citizens, state governments, and federal government will divy up the available freedoms. That's it. That's the whole document. The minutae, the paragraphs of information, are just working out *how* those rights get split up. Just like the minutae of IP (packet sizes, routing, port numbers, backbone wiring) is just working out *how* the packets get from A to B. The citizens say, "We will give up our right to make laws directly, and in return the two governments give up the right to hold office longer than we want them to." The state government says, "I will give up my right to have my own army, and in return, the federal government will give up its right to not defend me." And so on. Anything else that's involved (such as the laws themselves, or the governmental departments, or the government-sponsored programs) is just building upon that one foundation. Everything goes back to the constitution, and anything that doesn't agree with it gets rewritten or thrown out by the Supreme Court. Just like additional protocols, like email, news, HTTP, UDP, and LAN are built upon the IP foundation to create a working system.
Take a step back and look at it as a big picture. We agreed to form a bunch of states. We agreed to combine those states into a federation called The United States. We agreed on a single currency for all the states. We agreed on a method for choosing our leaders. What happens if members of the system don't agree to the above? In small cases, the members are taken out of the system (prison). In more extreme cases, the whole system collapses into civil war (for reference, see 1861-1865). What happens when a computer doesn't agree to the IP, and refuses a packet? That computer is taken out of the system. In more extreme cases, many computers refuse packets, and the system falls apart. The bit doesn't get from A to B, and the internet is down.
The whole point of the article is the big picture. It doesn't matter what we call the internet. It's just a big system, and the authors of the article are simply defining what that system is, since most of the commercial sector seems to have lost track.
Oh, and Internet2 is not a seperate internet. It's a consortium of people working out new systems for the internet. Read the FAQ.
The internet is also not just for pornography anymore.
Oh, that must mean the "Better Parental Controls" work really well. A butterfly told me so. He also said that HIS internet was much better than AOL's internet.
And I'm going to upgrade to the newest Pentium as soon as its out, so I can download things faster.
No, he's right. What you and I use to connect to Slashdot and the rest of the WWW is "*an* internet." There are other internets (meaning inter-networks for data transfer) in existence: military data networks, AM/FM radio bands, the phone system, hell, even your motherboard bus is a type of internet. Things like the cable TV system are not counted as internets because they are one-way... the content starts at the center and winds up at the ends. On the others I mentioned, the data originates at an end and also winds up at an end. Now, many of these internets overlap and can communicate with each other, like internet telephony or uploading a file to someone else. But just because people have named the WWW "THE Internet" does not mean that it's the only one. What is special about this one is two things: 1). it is incredibly far-reaching, meaning anyone in the world (not accounting for monetary obstacles) can connect to it and talk to anyone else, and 2). the infrastructure (IP) only keeps track of barely enough information to make the data go where it's supposed to and no more. There are no services inherent to IP except for "here is a bit, please send it to so-and-so." Anything else is done at the ends.
And yes, the government (remember: not *a* government, or *our* government) is simply an agreement between people. Our agreement is called the U.S. Constitution. Other countries have their own agreements. And extra-national governments such as the E.U. or the U.N. are just agreements between nations.
I would agree that sites such as TeacherReviews and Slashdot have a slightly more unique standpoint legally, but I don't think TeacherReviews should have been taken down.
The site clearly stated that the postings were only the opinions of the students posting them, and not those of the site itself, in its legal disclaimer (Google cache). If any libel is to be brought forward, it would be against the student who posted the comment, not the site. Dylan should, theoretically, be in the clear.
However, since he does run a site that could have a slight effect on a professor's career (not that the review boards should be reading this site anyway...) he should also find some way to moderate the reviews. It might not have to be exactly what Slashdot uses, but at the very least give the [registered] users a "Trash this review" button or an Amazon-esque "Was this review helpful?" button. Self-feedback is a powerful thing, as long as it has accountability. To that end, I also think that you should have to be a registered user to post a review or moderate someone else's review, but should have the option of hiding your identity when others read the review you have posted, in case the professor is the petty type who would adjust grades or other opportunities for something like that. You don't have to tell the professor who you are, but the site administrator knows.
Yes, I've been pleased with the way Peter Jackson has released the LOTR DVDs. Almost every movie released on DVD has a widescreen and a fullscreen version, sometimes on the same 2-sided disc. The widescreen version is for those of us who care about the visuals in the movie and want to see the moviemakers' vision, and the fullscreen edition is for people who don't care that much or who have tiny TVs and can't afford to lose screen space to black nothingness. The Extended editions came out after the other two because Peter needed more time to recut the movies, not to mention create the DVDs... the bonus features are quite extensive, and the menus are fantastic. These things take time.
Peter has also been careful not to call the Extended DVDs "Director's Cuts." He says that the phrase "director's cut" usually implies that the director was somehow dissatisfied with the theatrical release, and that was not the case with LOTR. The Extended Editions, he said, just put back all the things that fans of the books would enjoy seeing, but that the moviegoer who has *not* read the books would not miss.
George Lucas, on the other hand, is not thinking of anyone but himself when he subsequent versions. This is what he wanted to see, and the fans be damned-- even if the 1977 Lucas knew far more about moviemaking than the 1997 Lucas.
Most people using Windows won't use WiMP to play DVDs.
Sure, but they do use WMP to play other video formats, and most.avi and MPEG-1 files use hardware acceleration. How about.asf files streaming from online? Or.wmv? My point was not the DVDs, but the fact that Windows Media Player, the self described "best Player yet" with "over 120 new features" (quoted here) does not have a screenshot button -- and hasn't had it for nine versions. Adding to the end users' confusion, everything Microsft-related, from the help files, to the online FAQs, to the tech support, to the Common Tasks bar, tells the user that if they are using Windows, they better be using Windows Media Player. Linux distros are all about choice. Their websites and literature say, "Here are four different media player programs, and their features. Choose one that you like the best."
But the point of this thread is the GUI... and that being said, WMP sucks. It's bloated with too many features, most of which are hard to find or understand (for Joe, not for Slashdotters-- and that doesn't imply Joe is stupid. He just doesn't need to know about codecs, keyframes, and audio streams to watch an emailed video of his nephew's baseball game.). And I will take predictable locations of buttons over skinability any day. Just fluff, if you ask me: not to be developed at the expense of functionality. If Microsoft took the time to write a stable, sleek, and easy to use media player, I would probably use it. But as it is, I stick with BSPlayer and Media Player Classic.
It seems like this is more of an environmental issue than it is a preservation issue. But just because the parts are lying rusting in the grass, that doesn't mean we should abandon what could conceivably be the most important piece of human history to future generations who are living on Moon Base Alpha. If they would spend all this money to disassemble it and cart it away, why not cart it to the backyard of the National Air and Space Museum in D.C.? I'll bet the museum would be proud to display it, and the country would love to see it. It's 20% shorter than the Washington Monument, so there would be no competition there (I seem to have heard that there are no skyscrapers in Washington because of the monument -- correct me if I'm wrong, though).
The moon landing was the single largest civilian effort in modern history, and we should be proud to display our trophies.
And, of course, we can't forget the tram tour of Tranquility Base from Moon Base Alpha. I'll be first in line.
You forgot one thing. It is only in Totem the screenshot feature works.
The article states that he uses a screenshot button in Totem, to take the shot.
If he had used PrintScreen and gnome, he would have gotten a black video too, because gnome doesn't turn off hardwareacceleration (how would it know?).
Try it.
But you will notice that Joe also looked around in WMP for an option to export a screenshot. Just about every Linux media player, such as MPlayer, Totem, Xine, and XMMS, includes a menu item in their GUI for creating a screenshot, which bypasses the hardware acceleration problem. WMP has no such extra option.
Like I said, Joe doesn't want to have to configure his video card to grab a screenshot. If it's not in the menus, he will get frustruated and quit.
Joe Sixpack is sitting at his computer, watching a DVD. He thinks to himself, "hey, this scene is really cool. I'd love to have a screenshot of that as my desktop wallpaper." He pauses the movie and presses the printscreen button.
If he's using Gnome: "Hey, this is cool. I'll select the part of the image I want to keep and save it to a file."
If he's using Windows: "Hmm. Nothing happened. Maybe it's on the clipboard. I'll just open up MS Paint here, and type Ctrl+V... wait a minute! Where's the movie? It's just a black box! Maybe I have to use Media Player to do it. Let's see, not in the File menu... not in View... not in Play... not in Tools... not in Help... What the ^%#!@?! Why can't I take a screenshot?!"
Remember, Joe Sixpack does not want or need a configurable machine. If it doesn't work out of the box for him, it doesn't work.
Yes there are, but by definition, they will never integrate with Windows as fully and as elegantly as file managers like Nautilus do with Linux. Why? Because Windows is closed-source. Microsoft does not publish manuals detailing how to write window managers or file managers, nor do they condone such behavior. As such, any explorer.exe-replacing file manager needs to first reverse-engineer Windows, and thus it is far more difficult to get full integration.
Linux desktops, on the other hand, are completely open source. The programmers have full access to all the code required to integrate their file manager with the desktop, and they can therefore write a program that works perfectly in the environment for which it was intended.
That's really the only reason I don't replace the window manager on my Windows partition: because it is a third-party extension for a closed-source OS, and I frankly don't trust it to not hose my system.
Modding the self is nothing new, either. People have been getting plastic surgery for years.
However, sometimes they may be more in need of a psychotherapist than a surgeon... Dr. Rosen of the Dartmouth Medical center would be more than happy to literally give you wings.
Yes. Dreaming during REM sleep is primarily done with the right brain, which is mostly concerned with emotions and imagery. The reason they seem so jumbled and non-logical is because the act of *remembering* the dream afterwards is done by the left brain, which of course can't seem to make anything of the stream of images and emotions flowing from the right brain's memory.
However, if you dream during non-REM sleep, such as when you doze off in class for a second or two or during the first few hours of a night's rest (that's the Matrix-like experience of not really knowing if you're awake or still dreaming), it's the *left* brain that does the dreaming. Consequently, the dreams are more about speech and logic than normal dreams. This is the state that leads to talking in your sleep.
So based on that, we should all bring pillows with us to lecture. "But Professor, I was learning!"
[...] we will find a situation like the AT&T monopoly -- huge prices, bad service, unfair competition, etc.
The AT&T monopoly was a terrible example of privitization, I agree, but in those rare instances when such things happen, the Monopolies Commission steps in and makes sure that there is a competitive environment. And look at the phone companies now: there is so much pressure and so much competition from cell phones that land line prices are dropping like the proverbial stones! They're even offering unlimited long distance plans, unheard of only five years ago.
[...] science is better off today because of commercial research and the applications of that research, but after a while it stagnates. Think about the gasoline engine. We could have much better engines, but it is profitable to the auto makers and gasoline companies to make them less fuel efficient and require more maintenance. I don't want to see a plateau like this in space travel.
I wouldn't want to see that stagnation happen, either. But even now, car companies are starting to produce cars that have lower emissions, are covered by warrantees to 100,000 miles, and even run on hybrid engines. Why did this happen? Because the customers started to want it, and the companies needed to follow their customers' wants/needs or they would die in a competitive environment. Thus the private sector continues to innovate because the force behind their existence (customers' wallets) asked for it.
Besides, NASA has been stagnating in human space endeavors for 35 years. Congress doesn't seem too fired up about it, so we look to alternatives for exploring space: entrepreneurs with passion. The megacorps won't do it, because there's no return on their investment yet. The technology is still very much in the prototype stage. If every airline had to invent, design, test, and build their own airplane, there wouldn't be very many companies jumping at the chance. But since they can buy one from Boeing for a few hundred million, which they know they will easily make back, it's a sound investment. The airline industry didn't really take off (pardon the pun) until a full two decades of airplane research and development, both by the military and by barnstormers, had been completed. Since we know military development of space is out of the question (thanks to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967) we have to look to the barnstormers (spacestormers?) to further that development.
And the networks have a legitimate claim here. Their entire existence is based on advertising revenue, and if people don't watch the commercials anymore, companies won't want to pay to have their commercial aired.
The REAL problem comes with cable broadcasts. They *are* supported by commercials, to the point where they have just as many commercials as network stations, yet the consumers still have to pay a monthly fee for the privilege of watching these commercials. I'm not sure why people put up with this. If I am going to pay for a service, I don't want advertising cluttering it up.
Do I really need to see the same breakfast/car/deoderant/tampon advertisement 12 times, six of which are in the last half-hour of the movie?
Yes, because that's the entire point of commercials. The advertising firms are counting on repetition to drive the point home. The name of this game is brand recognition, and if that means playing the same damn jingle 12 times in a two hour movie broadcast, then so be it. The jingle will be so ingrained in your head that you can't forget it. This is considered a win by advertising firms.
Slashdot Mirror
>When development time runs over schedule, push the damned ship date back!
Not gonna happen. The vast majority of the time, the economic penalty associated with being late is much greater than the economic penalty associated with being buggy.
Why? Because customers don't mind paying huge amounts of money for buggy software?
If I'm paying money for a product, I'd rather get it slightly later and have it actually work than get it sooner and lose productivity to poor manufacturing standards. But I guess I'm far too picky to be a consumer.
Want to make better software? Make sure your programmers understand what you're trying to do and make sure that enough people have "the big picture" of how all the system components interact that your vision can be driven to completion.
Well said. It's an extension of the "cubicle nature" of the working world. Here's your cubicle: you are part of the whole, but you're by yourself, and can't really see what's going on around you. Here's your project: it's a compenent of a larger piece of software, but you don't really need to know how the other pieces work. Just code your part and be happy.
I'm not saying we shoud ditch the cubicle (where else would we hang our Dilbert clippings?) but we should certainly ditch the cubicle atmosphere surrounding technical projects. Let everyone in. Big Picture, people.
I never did get around to asking him how he knew that, or if it was kind of a gut feeling he had.
It must have been intuition.
But in all seriousness, "intuitive" is a synonym for "personal preference" when it comes to abtract concepts like computing. After watching highly successful, highly intelligent professors (with PhDs, mind you) struggle with the basic concepts of computers, such as installing software, creating shortcuts, transferring files between two computers, etc., it became abundantly clear to me that "intuitive" is only what the creater of the "intuitive" system preferred. In fact, I know several professors who still write their highly complex numerical simulation code in FORTRAN, because "it's more like English than other languages." FORTRAN is highly counter-intuitive, but it's a damn fast number crunching language (rivaled only by C, if I remember my benchmarks correctly).
Computers are obtuse, and rightfully so. Turning millions of micropulses of electricity flowing through tiny bits of various metals into a 2-dimensional dancing paperclip boggles the mind. In order to write complex applications with millions of lines of code, and have that code run at a reasonable speed and/or efficiency, the programmer is going to need some knowledge of how the computer works. That will require that s/he has access to things like memory locations as s/he codes, and also be fairly intelligent. If all you need to write is a little macro for inserting customer records into Excel, then efficiency is not really a factor and "dumbed-down" development environments like Visual Basic are just fine for the purpose.
I'm all for making computers easy to use, but "intuitive development environments" are an Eldorado. Let's focus instead on creating programming languages that are not only stable, but secure, cross-platform, robust, *consistent*, and above all, efficient. Even if they are a little obtuse: steep learning curves are not the problem.
It depends highly on the application of the shared information.
I remember a story (and I unfortunately don't really have enough concrete facts about it to Google it) that involved the development of a Chinese missile. China subcontracted out some of the components, including to several companies in Europe. China was having a terrible time getting their missile to work properly, and several of the engineers from one of the subcontractors discovered the problem was in the flight control software. They pointed this out to the program's directors, and the problem was fixed. However, since the flight control software was not part of that company's contract, the engineers got into huge trouble with their country for giving away "national secrets" to China.
Could open sourced software fall into the same category? Could something seemingly innocuous (such as automated satellite image analysis code, for example) be seen by governments as "national secrets?" I'm all for NASA releasing its code, and I would hate to see the best stuff stifled because of nationalistic paranoia.
By the way, I heard the story from a professor of Aerospace Engineering who is always a reliable source of information, so I have no doubt as to its accuracy. However, I wish I had a Google link to post here so you don't all think I'm a crazed lunatic.
Rocket Science is only trig.
...and Calculus, and discrete math, and differential equations, and chemistry, and fluid dynamics, and thermodynamics, and...
Oh, and we write code, too.
We agreed to form a bunch of states. We agreed to combine those states into a federation called The United States. We agreed on a single currency for all the states. We agreed on a method for choosing our leaders.
./ ID isn't lower? :-P
/. so we don't get flamed by the redcoats. So we create new accounts every few decades. :-)
If you're old enough to have been at the founding of the U.S., how come your
We founding fathers need to keep our IDs secret on
Oh, damn... I just gave myself away.
No, it still works as an agreement.
Imagine just a few people representing all of the citizens in a country.
Person A: "I think one of us should take care of writing the laws. Why don't YOU do it, and in return, if I don't like you, I can have someone else do it."
Person B: "Sounds good to me."
Person C: "I like that plan."
Throw in 250 million of their closest friends, all agreeing on the same principle of governing, and you have yourself a country. The constitution just writes it all down; the document itself is not required.
But it's all still just semantics. The point is the *big* *picture*, which is that countries govern themselves through agreements between the citizens. By definition, countries *have* to be governed by members of their populace. Not every agreement gives the entire populace an equal footing, but there is still an agreement: a dictator or totalitarian ruler is still just a person. If enough people came up with another agreement that didn't include him/her, then s/he would no longer have power (I really should restrict the pronouns to he/him when talking about totalitarian rulers since female members of that profession are so rare, but that's a whole different argument). Power only exists when other people recognize it. I could declare myself the President of the United States if I wanted to, but since no one agrees to that but me, it isn't so. However, if enough people agreed to it by electing me, then it would be a reality. If enough poeple in the country agreed to let me be dictator, then that would happen, too. Without the agreement, there is nothing.
(And before you cut me down on humanitarian issues, I didn't mean that citizens of totalitarian states made a decision to place a ruthless dictator in power. Most members of a country like that "agree" by shrugging their shoulders and getting on with their lives, unconcerned with politics, or enough members of that country's army agreed to follow that dictator, and force it on other people. And, of course, having another country come in and forcefully change your system of government *for* you is a completely different issue. But I digress.)
I actually know several people who continue to use IE simply because they like having the address bar embedded in the taskbar in Windows XP (Right click on taskbar -> Toolbars -> Address Bar). And I have to admit, it would be pretty handy if I hadn't already committed myself to using Opera 7.
My question is, is it possible to change the browser used when you click "Go" in that address bar? Probably not, since that's an IE extension, but I thought is was worth asking the Slashdot masses.
What about Best Viewed with Telnet to Port 80? Seems to me that philosophy would fit neatly with current server-script-generated (php,cgi,etc) pages using the div/span/css model for layout. Keep the HTML as barebones and standards compliant as possible, and add the flair, like layout and colors, with CSS.
I remember A List Apart had an article on cleaning up the HTML generated by Slashcode. (It was posted here, too.) Such a model would even save bandwidth on high traffic sites, since the CSS files all get cached. It's standards compliant, too.
The internet is not a tool. It's how you hold a tool. That's why it can enable you to use millions of different tools.
So then why are so many of the companies producing those tools such tools?!
</joke>
But in all seriousness, that's probably the best internet analogy I've heard yet. Too bad it will be lost on the typical AOLers. "I just upgraded the internet to version 9.0 yesterday. The CD came free in the mail!"
You didn't pay much attention in your high school government class, did you? Or maybe you were too involved in the details of the government to see the bigger picture.
There is nothing more to the constitution than "I will give up some of my freedoms and in return you will give up some of yours." The whole document, from Preamble to Amendment XXVII, is simply working out how the citizens, state governments, and federal government will divy up the available freedoms. That's it. That's the whole document. The minutae, the paragraphs of information, are just working out *how* those rights get split up. Just like the minutae of IP (packet sizes, routing, port numbers, backbone wiring) is just working out *how* the packets get from A to B. The citizens say, "We will give up our right to make laws directly, and in return the two governments give up the right to hold office longer than we want them to." The state government says, "I will give up my right to have my own army, and in return, the federal government will give up its right to not defend me." And so on. Anything else that's involved (such as the laws themselves, or the governmental departments, or the government-sponsored programs) is just building upon that one foundation. Everything goes back to the constitution, and anything that doesn't agree with it gets rewritten or thrown out by the Supreme Court. Just like additional protocols, like email, news, HTTP, UDP, and LAN are built upon the IP foundation to create a working system.
Take a step back and look at it as a big picture. We agreed to form a bunch of states. We agreed to combine those states into a federation called The United States. We agreed on a single currency for all the states. We agreed on a method for choosing our leaders. What happens if members of the system don't agree to the above? In small cases, the members are taken out of the system (prison). In more extreme cases, the whole system collapses into civil war (for reference, see 1861-1865). What happens when a computer doesn't agree to the IP, and refuses a packet? That computer is taken out of the system. In more extreme cases, many computers refuse packets, and the system falls apart. The bit doesn't get from A to B, and the internet is down.
The whole point of the article is the big picture. It doesn't matter what we call the internet. It's just a big system, and the authors of the article are simply defining what that system is, since most of the commercial sector seems to have lost track.
Oh, and Internet2 is not a seperate internet. It's a consortium of people working out new systems for the internet. Read the FAQ.
The internet is also not just for pornography anymore.
Oh, that must mean the "Better Parental Controls" work really well. A butterfly told me so. He also said that HIS internet was much better than AOL's internet.
And I'm going to upgrade to the newest Pentium as soon as its out, so I can download things faster.
No, he's right. What you and I use to connect to Slashdot and the rest of the WWW is "*an* internet." There are other internets (meaning inter-networks for data transfer) in existence: military data networks, AM/FM radio bands, the phone system, hell, even your motherboard bus is a type of internet. Things like the cable TV system are not counted as internets because they are one-way... the content starts at the center and winds up at the ends. On the others I mentioned, the data originates at an end and also winds up at an end. Now, many of these internets overlap and can communicate with each other, like internet telephony or uploading a file to someone else. But just because people have named the WWW "THE Internet" does not mean that it's the only one. What is special about this one is two things: 1). it is incredibly far-reaching, meaning anyone in the world (not accounting for monetary obstacles) can connect to it and talk to anyone else, and 2). the infrastructure (IP) only keeps track of barely enough information to make the data go where it's supposed to and no more. There are no services inherent to IP except for "here is a bit, please send it to so-and-so." Anything else is done at the ends.
And yes, the government (remember: not *a* government, or *our* government) is simply an agreement between people. Our agreement is called the U.S. Constitution. Other countries have their own agreements. And extra-national governments such as the E.U. or the U.N. are just agreements between nations.
I would agree that sites such as TeacherReviews and Slashdot have a slightly more unique standpoint legally, but I don't think TeacherReviews should have been taken down.
The site clearly stated that the postings were only the opinions of the students posting them, and not those of the site itself, in its legal disclaimer (Google cache). If any libel is to be brought forward, it would be against the student who posted the comment, not the site. Dylan should, theoretically, be in the clear.
However, since he does run a site that could have a slight effect on a professor's career (not that the review boards should be reading this site anyway...) he should also find some way to moderate the reviews. It might not have to be exactly what Slashdot uses, but at the very least give the [registered] users a "Trash this review" button or an Amazon-esque "Was this review helpful?" button. Self-feedback is a powerful thing, as long as it has accountability. To that end, I also think that you should have to be a registered user to post a review or moderate someone else's review, but should have the option of hiding your identity when others read the review you have posted, in case the professor is the petty type who would adjust grades or other opportunities for something like that. You don't have to tell the professor who you are, but the site administrator knows.
But, of course, IANAL.
Yes, I've been pleased with the way Peter Jackson has released the LOTR DVDs. Almost every movie released on DVD has a widescreen and a fullscreen version, sometimes on the same 2-sided disc. The widescreen version is for those of us who care about the visuals in the movie and want to see the moviemakers' vision, and the fullscreen edition is for people who don't care that much or who have tiny TVs and can't afford to lose screen space to black nothingness. The Extended editions came out after the other two because Peter needed more time to recut the movies, not to mention create the DVDs... the bonus features are quite extensive, and the menus are fantastic. These things take time.
Peter has also been careful not to call the Extended DVDs "Director's Cuts." He says that the phrase "director's cut" usually implies that the director was somehow dissatisfied with the theatrical release, and that was not the case with LOTR. The Extended Editions, he said, just put back all the things that fans of the books would enjoy seeing, but that the moviegoer who has *not* read the books would not miss.
George Lucas, on the other hand, is not thinking of anyone but himself when he subsequent versions. This is what he wanted to see, and the fans be damned-- even if the 1977 Lucas knew far more about moviemaking than the 1997 Lucas.
Most people using Windows won't use WiMP to play DVDs.
.avi and MPEG-1 files use hardware acceleration. How about .asf files streaming from online? Or .wmv? My point was not the DVDs, but the fact that Windows Media Player, the self described "best Player yet" with "over 120 new features" (quoted here) does not have a screenshot button -- and hasn't had it for nine versions. Adding to the end users' confusion, everything Microsft-related, from the help files, to the online FAQs, to the tech support, to the Common Tasks bar, tells the user that if they are using Windows, they better be using Windows Media Player. Linux distros are all about choice. Their websites and literature say, "Here are four different media player programs, and their features. Choose one that you like the best."
Sure, but they do use WMP to play other video formats, and most
But the point of this thread is the GUI... and that being said, WMP sucks. It's bloated with too many features, most of which are hard to find or understand (for Joe, not for Slashdotters-- and that doesn't imply Joe is stupid. He just doesn't need to know about codecs, keyframes, and audio streams to watch an emailed video of his nephew's baseball game.). And I will take predictable locations of buttons over skinability any day. Just fluff, if you ask me: not to be developed at the expense of functionality. If Microsoft took the time to write a stable, sleek, and easy to use media player, I would probably use it. But as it is, I stick with BSPlayer and Media Player Classic.
It seems like this is more of an environmental issue than it is a preservation issue. But just because the parts are lying rusting in the grass, that doesn't mean we should abandon what could conceivably be the most important piece of human history to future generations who are living on Moon Base Alpha. If they would spend all this money to disassemble it and cart it away, why not cart it to the backyard of the National Air and Space Museum in D.C.? I'll bet the museum would be proud to display it, and the country would love to see it. It's 20% shorter than the Washington Monument, so there would be no competition there (I seem to have heard that there are no skyscrapers in Washington because of the monument -- correct me if I'm wrong, though).
The moon landing was the single largest civilian effort in modern history, and we should be proud to display our trophies.
And, of course, we can't forget the tram tour of Tranquility Base from Moon Base Alpha. I'll be first in line.
You forgot one thing. It is only in Totem the screenshot feature works. The article states that he uses a screenshot button in Totem, to take the shot. If he had used PrintScreen and gnome, he would have gotten a black video too, because gnome doesn't turn off hardwareacceleration (how would it know?). Try it.
But you will notice that Joe also looked around in WMP for an option to export a screenshot. Just about every Linux media player, such as MPlayer, Totem, Xine, and XMMS, includes a menu item in their GUI for creating a screenshot, which bypasses the hardware acceleration problem. WMP has no such extra option.
Like I said, Joe doesn't want to have to configure his video card to grab a screenshot. If it's not in the menus, he will get frustruated and quit.
Joe Sixpack is sitting at his computer, watching a DVD. He thinks to himself, "hey, this scene is really cool. I'd love to have a screenshot of that as my desktop wallpaper." He pauses the movie and presses the printscreen button.
... wait a minute! Where's the movie? It's just a black box! Maybe I have to use Media Player to do it. Let's see, not in the File menu... not in View... not in Play... not in Tools... not in Help... What the ^%#!@?! Why can't I take a screenshot?!"
If he's using Gnome: "Hey, this is cool. I'll select the part of the image I want to keep and save it to a file."
If he's using Windows: "Hmm. Nothing happened. Maybe it's on the clipboard. I'll just open up MS Paint here, and type Ctrl+V
Remember, Joe Sixpack does not want or need a configurable machine. If it doesn't work out of the box for him, it doesn't work.
Yes there are, but by definition, they will never integrate with Windows as fully and as elegantly as file managers like Nautilus do with Linux. Why? Because Windows is closed-source. Microsoft does not publish manuals detailing how to write window managers or file managers, nor do they condone such behavior. As such, any explorer.exe-replacing file manager needs to first reverse-engineer Windows, and thus it is far more difficult to get full integration.
Linux desktops, on the other hand, are completely open source. The programmers have full access to all the code required to integrate their file manager with the desktop, and they can therefore write a program that works perfectly in the environment for which it was intended.
That's really the only reason I don't replace the window manager on my Windows partition: because it is a third-party extension for a closed-source OS, and I frankly don't trust it to not hose my system.
Modding the self is nothing new, either. People have been getting plastic surgery for years.
However, sometimes they may be more in need of a psychotherapist than a surgeon... Dr. Rosen of the Dartmouth Medical center would be more than happy to literally give you wings.
Yes. Dreaming during REM sleep is primarily done with the right brain, which is mostly concerned with emotions and imagery. The reason they seem so jumbled and non-logical is because the act of *remembering* the dream afterwards is done by the left brain, which of course can't seem to make anything of the stream of images and emotions flowing from the right brain's memory.
However, if you dream during non-REM sleep, such as when you doze off in class for a second or two or during the first few hours of a night's rest (that's the Matrix-like experience of not really knowing if you're awake or still dreaming), it's the *left* brain that does the dreaming. Consequently, the dreams are more about speech and logic than normal dreams. This is the state that leads to talking in your sleep.
So based on that, we should all bring pillows with us to lecture. "But Professor, I was learning!"
Here are a couple of sources.
Good idea, except the "private entrepreneurs" don't have the funds [...]
Yes they do. Check out the X-Prize.
[...] we will find a situation like the AT&T monopoly -- huge prices, bad service, unfair competition, etc.
The AT&T monopoly was a terrible example of privitization, I agree, but in those rare instances when such things happen, the Monopolies Commission steps in and makes sure that there is a competitive environment. And look at the phone companies now: there is so much pressure and so much competition from cell phones that land line prices are dropping like the proverbial stones! They're even offering unlimited long distance plans, unheard of only five years ago.
[...] science is better off today because of commercial research and the applications of that research, but after a while it stagnates. Think about the gasoline engine. We could have much better engines, but it is profitable to the auto makers and gasoline companies to make them less fuel efficient and require more maintenance. I don't want to see a plateau like this in space travel.
I wouldn't want to see that stagnation happen, either. But even now, car companies are starting to produce cars that have lower emissions, are covered by warrantees to 100,000 miles, and even run on hybrid engines. Why did this happen? Because the customers started to want it, and the companies needed to follow their customers' wants/needs or they would die in a competitive environment. Thus the private sector continues to innovate because the force behind their existence (customers' wallets) asked for it.
Besides, NASA has been stagnating in human space endeavors for 35 years. Congress doesn't seem too fired up about it, so we look to alternatives for exploring space: entrepreneurs with passion. The megacorps won't do it, because there's no return on their investment yet. The technology is still very much in the prototype stage. If every airline had to invent, design, test, and build their own airplane, there wouldn't be very many companies jumping at the chance. But since they can buy one from Boeing for a few hundred million, which they know they will easily make back, it's a sound investment. The airline industry didn't really take off (pardon the pun) until a full two decades of airplane research and development, both by the military and by barnstormers, had been completed. Since we know military development of space is out of the question (thanks to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967) we have to look to the barnstormers (spacestormers?) to further that development.
And the networks have a legitimate claim here. Their entire existence is based on advertising revenue, and if people don't watch the commercials anymore, companies won't want to pay to have their commercial aired.
The REAL problem comes with cable broadcasts. They *are* supported by commercials, to the point where they have just as many commercials as network stations, yet the consumers still have to pay a monthly fee for the privilege of watching these commercials. I'm not sure why people put up with this. If I am going to pay for a service, I don't want advertising cluttering it up.
Do I really need to see the same breakfast/car/deoderant/tampon advertisement 12 times, six of which are in the last half-hour of the movie?
Yes, because that's the entire point of commercials. The advertising firms are counting on repetition to drive the point home. The name of this game is brand recognition, and if that means playing the same damn jingle 12 times in a two hour movie broadcast, then so be it. The jingle will be so ingrained in your head that you can't forget it. This is considered a win by advertising firms.