you'd have issues with things like turning traffic
From what I can see in the video they seem to have thought of that. These mega-busses would be in the left-most lanes, and if they need to turn at an intersection, the lights at that intersection go red in all directions. The mega-bus then has the right of way to make a wide turn, cutting across many lanes safely because everyone is stopped.
I wasn't talking about the tram making a turn, I was talking about other vehicles making turns when the tram/bus is going straight. Surely drivers would realize if they're underneath, but what if a bus approaching from behind a car and blocks the car's intended turn (without them realizing it)?
That's why I said it was the similar to the problem you face on a bike with inattentive drivers (and one of many reasons not to ride on the sidewalk).
This looks cool, but I have to wonder how practical it is. First, you'd have to design all your roads and bridges to accommodate it, but second, you'd have issues with things like turning traffic (don't forget to look for a giant bus over your head or coming from behind before you make that turn!) and possibly even pedestrians, although I'm sure they'll have a clever solution like not putting it right next to the sidewalk.
Just thinking of how things are on my bike sometimes, though, the turning traffic was the first thing that came to my mind.
I know this is a small issue, but can Slashdot please update their Firefox icon? The one they are currently using has not been in use since before version 1.0 and it has undergone at least two revisions since then See this creative brief for more. You can always root out this ridiculously old icon by the lack of outlining and gloss on the globe.
I'd say "maybe." Tabs are great for opening things, reading them, then closing them in ways that the "Back" button can't match. Back in the day, I loved Opera and then Mozilla for allowing me to silently load pages in the background as I read the current one; then they'd be ready for me when I was ready for them. This was especially important on my dial-up connection (hey, I did say "back in the day").
Basically, it was faster and more convenient. Of course, I could have always done the same in new windows--which, until tabs came along, I did. But this behavior--particularly, selective background loading--certainly could not have been done with just "Back." However, even on broadband, I'm finding ways to move beyond this, just as you mention (e.g., keeping Pandora or some reference material open in the background).
Microsoft played an even worse trick with Word for Windows when they released version 6 in '93 after their previous version 2 from '91. Afterall, WordPerfect was also at version 6, so now Word was up to speed as well.
Sort of. Microsoft Word for Mac was at version 5.1 at this point, and to synchronize version numbers between the platforms, they decided to call the next version on both Windows and Mac version 6. (This was also the first time the Windows and Mac versions shared siginficant amount of code, much to the detriment of the Mac version. In fact, MS offered free "downgrades" to 5.1 due to all the complaints. Anyway, this code-sharing is probably also responsible for their desire for version-number synchronization.)
Of course, I'm sure looking equal or better next to WordPerfect didn't hurt, either.:)
If you install Xcode, you will get a sample app called Sketch. It's pretty much a light version of MacPaint.
I have Xcode installed, and Sketch is nowhere to be found. I suspect it comes with only older versions of Xcode, unless someone can prove this guess wrong.
Following (or advocating) established rules is how we get along, yes?
This thinking shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how language is acquired. It is not something we have to "learn" by explicit instruction; it is something that children simply pick up on and discover the rules (i.e., grammar, although nonlinguists often use this term for a variety of nongrammatical entities) of for themselves. In fact, if you've been around linguistically developing children (I mean really young, not elementary-school aged), you'll notice that explicit teaching or correction does no good. Of course, I'm talking only about first language acquision; acquisition of a second language as an adult is a different story.
Keep in mind, however, that my beef with prescriptivism should not be interpreted as advocating a free for all. In many contexts, such as academia, there is a value in so-called "standard English," although I think of that as more of an abstraction than a concrete entity, which itself is also constantly changing. However, much like the white heterosexual male in a patriarchial society, this notion needs no defending; thus, I was defending only the other side.:)
But back to the "rules," it's important to note that no variety of English is inherently superior to another. What is considered the "standard" variety is arbitrary (and by "arbitrary," I usually mean "decided by social factors, like who has more power or more speakers"). Prescriptivism is a slightly different notion, but it's enough to say that many "rules" perpetuated by self-proclaimed "grammar experts" (i.e., prescriptivists) are, in fact, completely made up, imported from Latin grammar (and thus not really applicable to English), or attempts to suppress change. They are often more a source of confusion than anything, and they all rely on the fallacy that one English is "good" and another is "bad."
PS - Pronouncing the/h/ in "herb" is probably more of a spelling pronunciation (where people change the original pronunciation over time as they apparently think, "This letter is here, so I better prnounce it!"), whereas the novel/h/ in the name of the letter "H" is probably a surfacing of some desire for uniformity in letter names, many of which begin (or end) with their usual sound--although I suppose this is a similar hypercorrection to the likely "herb" story. But I doubt the French had anything to do with it--language change takes time, and it's rarey, if ever, deliberate.:)
I don't do prescriptivist "grammar" (I'm a linguist and value language as it is actually used, and many prescriptivists "rules" don't even make sense), but even if you do follow their advice, note:
Note: The choice of article is actually based upon the phonetic (sound) quality of the first letter in a word, not on the orthographic (written) representation of the letter.
Therefore, "an HTML5," as in the original headline, is correct, unless you really pronounce the letter "H" as something other than "aitch" (which, in all fairness, a minority of speakers in Britain and other places do). But note also the status of the sound/h/ itself isn't readily identifiable as a consonant or vowel--in fact, some consider it only a breathy version of the vowel it precedes or to be a segment marked only for phonation type and not place or manner (as with "real" consonants). I'll refer you to Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) or any of Ladefoged's other phonetics books for more.
Actually, it's only the diphthongs that raise in Canadian, and only (for most speakers who have it) before voiceless consonants. That's what Canadaian "out" sounds like General American "oat," but a word like "plug" is unaffected for two reasons: the final voiced consonant and the monophthong. ("Boot," too, since it's also only monophthong/u/.)
A higher-than-normal return rate, with the antenna issue being the stated reason, should achieve similar results. In theory.
But, of course, most people will not return it... because they actually like it. They just want to complain and maybe get something out of it. Perfect example: this lawsuit.
Unfortunately, not even Macs can magically replace themselves during the annual hardware replacement cycle, nor can they create new images of themselves with departmental software for rollouts and refreshes. They also can't create new AD (or other directory service...) accounts for new users or manage groups and permissions on their own. Additionally, in case of hardware failure...well, I guess they can actually cover you pretty well there (aside from the fact that you can't do a lot on many models yourself in a non-warranty-voiding fashion:)).
Oh, and they can't write and maintain the Web apps, but that's probably the least favorite part of my job (grumble, grumble...web apps for what should be an ordinary desktop aop...grumble, grumble).
We fall under the administrative division, specifically, the business/technology subdivision. I guess we're big enough (a couple hundred full-time employees and perhaps an equal number of student employees and a few part-time workers) to do that.
Before modern electronic news gathering, television news would often report the story at 6 PM and then have the "film" (footage shot on the scene) available for the 11 PM newscast.
I live in the Central Time Zone--my news is at 10, you insensitive clod!
How about you show some proof that matters instead if regurgitating crap.
Since you asked (even though nature is on my side, and the burden of proof is really on you to show that it doesn't matter):
How about the evolution of cows (they evolved to eat grass, not corn--they have a rumen and and eat grass; we can't, but we can eat them...should be a nice system, right?) and the sad state of both cattle and human health since the widespread adoption of corn diets for cows? Corn turns their stomach/rumen acidic (it's usually neutral), which both opens up the possibility for the evolution of acid-resistant E. coli and other bacteria (many are killed by our stomach's acid, but not the famed strains that kill people because of this--there's a reason we haven't heard about them until the last few decades) and also makes the cows themselves more prone to falling ill (one of the reasons, in addition to their crowded living conditions, that they are injected with antibiotics, even if they are not [yet?] sick--and I'm sure you know that overuse of antibiotics has consequences of its own).
Of course, there are benefits on the human side, too. Grass fed beef has lower levels of saturated fat than corn-fed beef. (The nutritiousness of your food depends on the health of the animal or plant it came from; not all is created equal, contrary to what the USDA seems to think.)
I could go on, but you can find information just as easily as I can. Feeding cows corn does matter, both for the animal, you, and the planet as a whole.
I just upgraded to the lastest version, and my URL field still shows "http://". Is this a platform-specific feature (I'm using a Mac), or is it some sort of preference that might have been carried over from an older version for me?
It also introduced the world to applications that are now part of the Windows experience; File Manager, Write, Paint Brush, Print manager and Program manager.
Windows Explorer essentially replaced File Manager in Windows 95, and they were actually included as separate programs for quite some time (altough File Manager only as the executabe if you knew where to look). I suppose you could argue that Explorer was derived from File Mananger, although they are actually quite different (especially after the Active Desktop update in Windows 95 and all future versions). Program Manager faced a similar fate: the Start menu (and desktop that could do something besides display running applications) substatially replaced it in Windows 95, although you could technically change your shell back to Program Manager instead if you really wanted. It didn't work as nicely, however, due to some changes to minimized window behavior, and I wouldn't be surprised if some app installers didn't play well with it in terms of creating icons.
Ignoring the comment about Write (which more or less morphed into Wordpad...), I just don't think it's accurate to say that File Manager and Program Manager are "now part of the Windows Experience" when many people haven't even used them in 15 years and some people have never used them at all.
Why did this app get rejected? It didn't even violate any rules. Apple could do the same thing to Hulu if they wanted--you never know, that's the thing.
Can we quit calling everything that uses HTML5 video "HTML5"? The HTML5 standard contains a lot more than just a new video element (although, I suppose, intentionally cutting down on the number of plugins you need for modern browsing is a significant feature).
Slashdot could "switch to HTML5," and it wouldn't mean anything about their videos (they have videos?). Also, Scribd could have switched to HTML5...and still use Flash.
Picky, I know, but I think it's important to realize the whole standard isn't about video.
No. NASA is an acronym; BBC is an initialism. Some style guides treat them differently, capitalizing only the first letter of the former but all letters of the latter. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviation#United_Kingdom.
Slashdot Mirror
you'd have issues with things like turning traffic
From what I can see in the video they seem to have thought of that. These mega-busses would be in the left-most lanes, and if they need to turn at an intersection, the lights at that intersection go red in all directions. The mega-bus then has the right of way to make a wide turn, cutting across many lanes safely because everyone is stopped.
I wasn't talking about the tram making a turn, I was talking about other vehicles making turns when the tram/bus is going straight. Surely drivers would realize if they're underneath, but what if a bus approaching from behind a car and blocks the car's intended turn (without them realizing it)?
That's why I said it was the similar to the problem you face on a bike with inattentive drivers (and one of many reasons not to ride on the sidewalk).
This looks cool, but I have to wonder how practical it is. First, you'd have to design all your roads and bridges to accommodate it, but second, you'd have issues with things like turning traffic (don't forget to look for a giant bus over your head or coming from behind before you make that turn!) and possibly even pedestrians, although I'm sure they'll have a clever solution like not putting it right next to the sidewalk.
Just thinking of how things are on my bike sometimes, though, the turning traffic was the first thing that came to my mind.
I know this is a small issue, but can Slashdot please update their Firefox icon? The one they are currently using has not been in use since before version 1.0 and it has undergone at least two revisions since then See this creative brief for more. You can always root out this ridiculously old icon by the lack of outlining and gloss on the globe.
Plus, I think the new one looks better, anyway. :)
I'd say "maybe." Tabs are great for opening things, reading them, then closing them in ways that the "Back" button can't match. Back in the day, I loved Opera and then Mozilla for allowing me to silently load pages in the background as I read the current one; then they'd be ready for me when I was ready for them. This was especially important on my dial-up connection (hey, I did say "back in the day").
Basically, it was faster and more convenient. Of course, I could have always done the same in new windows--which, until tabs came along, I did. But this behavior--particularly, selective background loading--certainly could not have been done with just "Back." However, even on broadband, I'm finding ways to move beyond this, just as you mention (e.g., keeping Pandora or some reference material open in the background).
Microsoft played an even worse trick with Word for Windows when they released version 6 in '93 after their previous version 2 from '91. Afterall, WordPerfect was also at version 6, so now Word was up to speed as well.
Sort of. Microsoft Word for Mac was at version 5.1 at this point, and to synchronize version numbers between the platforms, they decided to call the next version on both Windows and Mac version 6. (This was also the first time the Windows and Mac versions shared siginficant amount of code, much to the detriment of the Mac version. In fact, MS offered free "downgrades" to 5.1 due to all the complaints. Anyway, this code-sharing is probably also responsible for their desire for version-number synchronization.)
Of course, I'm sure looking equal or better next to WordPerfect didn't hurt, either. :)
If you install Xcode, you will get a sample app called Sketch. It's pretty much a light version of MacPaint.
I have Xcode installed, and Sketch is nowhere to be found. I suspect it comes with only older versions of Xcode, unless someone can prove this guess wrong.
Following (or advocating) established rules is how we get along, yes?
This thinking shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how language is acquired. It is not something we have to "learn" by explicit instruction; it is something that children simply pick up on and discover the rules (i.e., grammar, although nonlinguists often use this term for a variety of nongrammatical entities) of for themselves. In fact, if you've been around linguistically developing children (I mean really young, not elementary-school aged), you'll notice that explicit teaching or correction does no good. Of course, I'm talking only about first language acquision; acquisition of a second language as an adult is a different story.
Keep in mind, however, that my beef with prescriptivism should not be interpreted as advocating a free for all. In many contexts, such as academia, there is a value in so-called "standard English," although I think of that as more of an abstraction than a concrete entity, which itself is also constantly changing. However, much like the white heterosexual male in a patriarchial society, this notion needs no defending; thus, I was defending only the other side. :)
But back to the "rules," it's important to note that no variety of English is inherently superior to another. What is considered the "standard" variety is arbitrary (and by "arbitrary," I usually mean "decided by social factors, like who has more power or more speakers"). Prescriptivism is a slightly different notion, but it's enough to say that many "rules" perpetuated by self-proclaimed "grammar experts" (i.e., prescriptivists) are, in fact, completely made up, imported from Latin grammar (and thus not really applicable to English), or attempts to suppress change. They are often more a source of confusion than anything, and they all rely on the fallacy that one English is "good" and another is "bad."
PS - Pronouncing the /h/ in "herb" is probably more of a spelling pronunciation (where people change the original pronunciation over time as they apparently think, "This letter is here, so I better prnounce it!"), whereas the novel /h/ in the name of the letter "H" is probably a surfacing of some desire for uniformity in letter names, many of which begin (or end) with their usual sound--although I suppose this is a similar hypercorrection to the likely "herb" story. But I doubt the French had anything to do with it--language change takes time, and it's rarey, if ever, deliberate. :)
I don't do prescriptivist "grammar" (I'm a linguist and value language as it is actually used, and many prescriptivists "rules" don't even make sense), but even if you do follow their advice, note:
Note: The choice of article is actually based upon the phonetic (sound) quality of the first letter in a word, not on the orthographic (written) representation of the letter.
Therefore, "an HTML5," as in the original headline, is correct, unless you really pronounce the letter "H" as something other than "aitch" (which, in all fairness, a minority of speakers in Britain and other places do). But note also the status of the sound /h/ itself isn't readily identifiable as a consonant or vowel--in fact, some consider it only a breathy version of the vowel it precedes or to be a segment marked only for phonation type and not place or manner (as with "real" consonants). I'll refer you to Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) or any of Ladefoged's other phonetics books for more.
Funny. People seems to have more problems with products in version 4...
But Netscape 4 was amazing! Hmm, wait...
Do not eat iPhone 4.
Actually, it's only the diphthongs that raise in Canadian, and only (for most speakers who have it) before voiceless consonants. That's what Canadaian "out" sounds like General American "oat," but a word like "plug" is unaffected for two reasons: the final voiced consonant and the monophthong. ("Boot," too, since it's also only monophthong /u/.)
A higher-than-normal return rate, with the antenna issue being the stated reason, should achieve similar results. In theory.
But, of course, most people will not return it ... because they actually like it. They just want to complain and maybe get something out of it. Perfect example: this lawsuit.
Unfortunately, not even Macs can magically replace themselves during the annual hardware replacement cycle, nor can they create new images of themselves with departmental software for rollouts and refreshes. They also can't create new AD (or other directory service...) accounts for new users or manage groups and permissions on their own. Additionally, in case of hardware failure...well, I guess they can actually cover you pretty well there (aside from the fact that you can't do a lot on many models yourself in a non-warranty-voiding fashion :)).
Oh, and they can't write and maintain the Web apps, but that's probably the least favorite part of my job (grumble, grumble...web apps for what should be an ordinary desktop aop...grumble, grumble).
We fall under the administrative division, specifically, the business/technology subdivision. I guess we're big enough (a couple hundred full-time employees and perhaps an equal number of student employees and a few part-time workers) to do that.
Before modern electronic news gathering, television news would often report the story at 6 PM and then have the "film" (footage shot on the scene) available for the 11 PM newscast.
I live in the Central Time Zone--my news is at 10, you insensitive clod!
As if it needs to taste any worse. (Would you like a mixer for that beer?)
This coming, of course, from an already non-beer-fan. :)
How about you show some proof that matters instead if regurgitating crap.
Since you asked (even though nature is on my side, and the burden of proof is really on you to show that it doesn't matter):
How about the evolution of cows (they evolved to eat grass, not corn--they have a rumen and and eat grass; we can't, but we can eat them...should be a nice system, right?) and the sad state of both cattle and human health since the widespread adoption of corn diets for cows? Corn turns their stomach/rumen acidic (it's usually neutral), which both opens up the possibility for the evolution of acid-resistant E. coli and other bacteria (many are killed by our stomach's acid, but not the famed strains that kill people because of this--there's a reason we haven't heard about them until the last few decades) and also makes the cows themselves more prone to falling ill (one of the reasons, in addition to their crowded living conditions, that they are injected with antibiotics, even if they are not [yet?] sick--and I'm sure you know that overuse of antibiotics has consequences of its own).
Of course, there are benefits on the human side, too. Grass fed beef has lower levels of saturated fat than corn-fed beef. (The nutritiousness of your food depends on the health of the animal or plant it came from; not all is created equal, contrary to what the USDA seems to think.)
I could go on, but you can find information just as easily as I can. Feeding cows corn does matter, both for the animal, you, and the planet as a whole.
New toys are fun, but these guys should find a different justification. How about more nutritious cattle feed?
Like ... grass instead of corn? Done. :)
I just upgraded to the lastest version, and my URL field still shows "http://". Is this a platform-specific feature (I'm using a Mac), or is it some sort of preference that might have been carried over from an older version for me?
From the article:
Windows Explorer essentially replaced File Manager in Windows 95, and they were actually included as separate programs for quite some time (altough File Manager only as the executabe if you knew where to look). I suppose you could argue that Explorer was derived from File Mananger, although they are actually quite different (especially after the Active Desktop update in Windows 95 and all future versions). Program Manager faced a similar fate: the Start menu (and desktop that could do something besides display running applications) substatially replaced it in Windows 95, although you could technically change your shell back to Program Manager instead if you really wanted. It didn't work as nicely, however, due to some changes to minimized window behavior, and I wouldn't be surprised if some app installers didn't play well with it in terms of creating icons.
Ignoring the comment about Write (which more or less morphed into Wordpad...), I just don't think it's accurate to say that File Manager and Program Manager are "now part of the Windows Experience" when many people haven't even used them in 15 years and some people have never used them at all.
Why would it get rejected from the app store?
Why did this app get rejected? It didn't even violate any rules. Apple could do the same thing to Hulu if they wanted--you never know, that's the thing.
Sometimes the truth hurts, Adobe.
4 will crash and burn. We need a successor to rise from the ashes. We could call it Phoenix.
Alas, that name is already taken. Maybe we could call it Firebird instead!
Can we quit calling everything that uses HTML5 video "HTML5"? The HTML5 standard contains a lot more than just a new video element (although, I suppose, intentionally cutting down on the number of plugins you need for modern browsing is a significant feature).
Slashdot could "switch to HTML5," and it wouldn't mean anything about their videos (they have videos?). Also, Scribd could have switched to HTML5...and still use Flash.
Picky, I know, but I think it's important to realize the whole standard isn't about video.
Then shouldn't that be the Bbc?
No. NASA is an acronym; BBC is an initialism. Some style guides treat them differently, capitalizing only the first letter of the former but all letters of the latter. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviation#United_Kingdom.