Recalling the immortal words of General Buck Turgidson,
I mean, we must be... increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mineshaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge! Mr. President, we must not allow... a mine shaft gap!
"14erCleaner" proves the point that others make; People need to read about candidates.
Actually, you're proving your own point, since you didn't read my post carefully. Dean did make a public outburst, and it KO'd his election chances, and it spread in large part on his beloved internet. Dean's yaaarrrggg speech was the political equivalent of Steve Ballmer's "developers! developers! developers!" speech: it made him an object of ridicule on the web. This is nothing new, really; the referenced NPR interview focused on the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate, in which Nixon lost points because he didn't look good on TV. Once might point out that Nixon was eventually elected to two terms as President (despite not shaving in 1960), and that he turned out to be a rather disappointing President ethically, so one could then conclude that the 1960 TV debate fiasco was actually revealing his true character, but hey, it doesn't count unless you "read about" it.
I had to laugh at an NPR interview yesterday with Howard Dean's campaign manager, who's also the author of a book on how the web is changing everything blah blah blah. He went on about how YouTube, MySpace, etc. have changed everything since 2004 blah blah blah, without once mentioning that his client in 2004 was taken out by a video of him bloviating after the Iowa caucuses, but that the video of Dean's war dance was instantly available on-line (which is where I first saw it), even though YouTube was still a glimmer in some PayPal programmer's eye at the time. Everything changed? Not really, Dean was removed from contention in 2004 in much the same way Allen was removed in 2006, by shooting his mouth off in front of a video camera.
Today's patch is expected to solve these issues, although initial reports show it might introduce other problems: when the voice recognition headset is used and the user pronounces the word "Linux", the patched unit sends 110V AC through the headphones.
Fortunately, nobody knows how to pronounce "Linux".
It's done by either having a "random" group keep diaries, or by observing their TV set's channel settings via remote sensors. Saying they can't do the same thing for handhelds is ludicrous. At the very least, they could count the number of downloads. Duh.
Because it's really hard to make software that doesn't suck.
Seriously.
There are a lot of subtle things that go into making a good user interface, and most programmers either aren't smart enough, or aren't aware of the problem, or don't care enough, to do them. And most of these things just require deep thought and hard work to get right.
That stupid-looking suckbusters.com sight appears to be a cause #1. I suspect that Pratt just isn't a particularly talented web programmer, and it shows in his site. I doubt if he has the ability to do better. Of course, if he were really aware of how hideous his site looks, he'd probably do something about it (or else maybe take it down), so maybe it's #2.
Now a team at Advanced Cell Technology - a private company - has found that it is possible to create human stem cells using one or two cells from an early embryo, without doing any damage to the embryo.
If you split cells off of an early embryo, aren't they also viable embryos in their own right? Isn't this what creates identical twins?
I expect the Bush administration to object to this technique on the basis that each separate cell bundle from the embryo is an "individual".
Since you can get a hardcover bound copy of your book this way for less than $40 a copy, this would be great for something like wedding pictures; you could print a few copies for parents and wedding party members without spending all the money you got as wedding gifts.
New release DVDs for $7 at walmart? how much more for a unicorn?
Just to pick an example from the article, Walmart's web site offers "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" for $5.50. Others will cost more obviously, but downloading this one yourself will be $9 minimum, plus the cost of the DVD.
The prices "start" at $9, plus I have to download a few gigabytes and then burn it myself? Plus no storage box or artwork? Thanks, but it'll be faster, cheaper, and result in a better product if I just drive to Wal-mart and buy the same DVD for $7.
Ideally, vcs (small-caps, version control software) should be invisible -- running in the background, checking out files as you need them, saving revisions with each change, maybe version stamping with each day/build/successful test pass/etc., and only intruding into the developer's thoughts when contention for a file exists.
I have to strongly disagree with this. Changes should only be checked in when the developer decides they're ready, not every time you experimentally change some mundane detail. CVS is great for this purpose, as it allows disposable copies to be checked out without having to lock out others all the time.
Automatic checkin would be a disaster in any project with a lot of developers sharing source code. If the incompetent asshat in the next cubicle accidentally deletes a file, do you want your builds to immediately start failing? Didn't think so.
What you're wishing for sounds like the old VMS file system, where every file had a version number, and when you changed a file you just created a copy with the version number incremented. It worked OK and kept people from making irrevocable screwups in many cases, but it wasn't an effective version control system. In particular, there were no revision comments and no binding of revisions to bug reports, features that are important in modern vcs systems, especially for large projects.
Of course, the funny characters are usually expanded by the shell, not rm, so it still won't work in many cases. Unix rules sometimes, doesn't it?
My favorite shell-expansion moment: when I was a new Unix user long, long ago (freshly coming over from VMS), I wanted to remove one funny-named file in a directory. I discovered that rm had this cool switch "-i" that would prompt for removal on each file. Great! I'd just say "yes" to the file named *, or whatever I'd accidentally created. So, being a VMS user (and thus used to switches that went anywhere on the command line), I typed this:
$ rm * -i
...and got the message "-i: No such file or directory". Ooops.... I learned a lot that day...
Wrong-o. The total number of accidents (fatal, injury, and property-damage only) DECREASED from 6.9 million to 6.2 million between 1988 and 2004, despite increases in drivers, vehicles, and miles driven. You can't blame that on smaller vehicles.
My guess is that Joe Blow finds it annoying to see somebody driving on the phone (perhaps because they think that person should be paying attention to Joe, not the person on the other end of the phone). So they make up stories about how dangerous it must be. But the statistics don't back up the stories.
Yeah, yeah, I know, anti-lock brakes, driver's ed, blah blah. Let's see some actual statistics to back up the "cell phones are evil" stuff, eh?
I know everybody assumes that cell phone usage while driving is dangerous, and (for about the 10th time) there is a study showing that it's equivalent to driving drunk, but...
US fatalities, per 100 million vehicle miles, have fallen steadily ever since cell phones started becoming common. According to this table, the rate has fallen from 1.73 in 1994 to 1.44 in 2004, and the rate either fell or stayed the same every year (despite economic variations, etc.).
If cell phones are such a menace, why aren't more people dying in auto accidents?
So I went to look at the list, and it wasn't in the article. There was a link to it, though. So I middle-clicked the link, to open it in a new tab, and... oops. The tab's empty.
Welcome to Web 2.0, brought to you by Business 2.0 magazine. Firefox users don't matter, since they can block all the ads, Flash videos, and Javascript crap. I had to use IE to read the list, and it really wasn't worth the trouble.
On the Symantec site, they estimate the number of infections as "50". Sounds like a pretty low threat to me. Also, Yahoo prescans emails for spamminess and moves suspect ones to a bulk folder automatically, so they'll likely be able to handle this "threat" pretty easily.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, we must be... increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mineshaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge! Mr. President, we must not allow... a mine shaft gap!
I'll say it was creepy...I just looked it up on YouTube, the new political website of record. Would you vote for this guy?
Actually, you're proving your own point, since you didn't read my post carefully. Dean did make a public outburst, and it KO'd his election chances, and it spread in large part on his beloved internet. Dean's yaaarrrggg speech was the political equivalent of Steve Ballmer's "developers! developers! developers!" speech: it made him an object of ridicule on the web. This is nothing new, really; the referenced NPR interview focused on the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate, in which Nixon lost points because he didn't look good on TV. Once might point out that Nixon was eventually elected to two terms as President (despite not shaving in 1960), and that he turned out to be a rather disappointing President ethically, so one could then conclude that the 1960 TV debate fiasco was actually revealing his true character, but hey, it doesn't count unless you "read about" it.
I had to laugh at an NPR interview yesterday with Howard Dean's campaign manager, who's also the author of a book on how the web is changing everything blah blah blah. He went on about how YouTube, MySpace, etc. have changed everything since 2004 blah blah blah, without once mentioning that his client in 2004 was taken out by a video of him bloviating after the Iowa caucuses, but that the video of Dean's war dance was instantly available on-line (which is where I first saw it), even though YouTube was still a glimmer in some PayPal programmer's eye at the time. Everything changed? Not really, Dean was removed from contention in 2004 in much the same way Allen was removed in 2006, by shooting his mouth off in front of a video camera.
I think it'd be cool if my cat could wash the dishes, too.
Fortunately, nobody knows how to pronounce "Linux".
It's done by either having a "random" group keep diaries, or by observing their TV set's channel settings via remote sensors. Saying they can't do the same thing for handhelds is ludicrous. At the very least, they could count the number of downloads. Duh.
Seriously.
There are a lot of subtle things that go into making a good user interface, and most programmers either aren't smart enough, or aren't aware of the problem, or don't care enough, to do them. And most of these things just require deep thought and hard work to get right.
That stupid-looking suckbusters.com sight appears to be a cause #1. I suspect that Pratt just isn't a particularly talented web programmer, and it shows in his site. I doubt if he has the ability to do better. Of course, if he were really aware of how hideous his site looks, he'd probably do something about it (or else maybe take it down), so maybe it's #2.
Why do you say For a slash-bot you are not very convincing?
Now a team at Advanced Cell Technology - a private company - has found that it is possible to create human stem cells using one or two cells from an early embryo, without doing any damage to the embryo.
If you split cells off of an early embryo, aren't they also viable embryos in their own right? Isn't this what creates identical twins?
I expect the Bush administration to object to this technique on the basis that each separate cell bundle from the embryo is an "individual".
What's next, identity theft?
Most self-titled professional writers will look at this and say "do you want fries with that"?
Since you can get a hardcover bound copy of your book this way for less than $40 a copy, this would be great for something like wedding pictures; you could print a few copies for parents and wedding party members without spending all the money you got as wedding gifts.
Just to pick an example from the article, Walmart's web site offers "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" for $5.50. Others will cost more obviously, but downloading this one yourself will be $9 minimum, plus the cost of the DVD.
The prices "start" at $9, plus I have to download a few gigabytes and then burn it myself? Plus no storage box or artwork? Thanks, but it'll be faster, cheaper, and result in a better product if I just drive to Wal-mart and buy the same DVD for $7.
I have to strongly disagree with this. Changes should only be checked in when the developer decides they're ready, not every time you experimentally change some mundane detail. CVS is great for this purpose, as it allows disposable copies to be checked out without having to lock out others all the time.
Automatic checkin would be a disaster in any project with a lot of developers sharing source code. If the incompetent asshat in the next cubicle accidentally deletes a file, do you want your builds to immediately start failing? Didn't think so.
What you're wishing for sounds like the old VMS file system, where every file had a version number, and when you changed a file you just created a copy with the version number incremented. It worked OK and kept people from making irrevocable screwups in many cases, but it wasn't an effective version control system. In particular, there were no revision comments and no binding of revisions to bug reports, features that are important in modern vcs systems, especially for large projects.
My favorite shell-expansion moment: when I was a new Unix user long, long ago (freshly coming over from VMS), I wanted to remove one funny-named file in a directory. I discovered that rm had this cool switch "-i" that would prompt for removal on each file. Great! I'd just say "yes" to the file named *, or whatever I'd accidentally created. So, being a VMS user (and thus used to switches that went anywhere on the command line), I typed this:
$ rm * -i
See my response to the other guy. TOTAL accidents are way down, and accident rates down even more, since 1988. See http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/TSFAn n/TSF2004.pdf
Reference: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/TSFAn n/TSF2004.pdf
My guess is that Joe Blow finds it annoying to see somebody driving on the phone (perhaps because they think that person should be paying attention to Joe, not the person on the other end of the phone). So they make up stories about how dangerous it must be. But the statistics don't back up the stories.
Yeah, yeah, I know, anti-lock brakes, driver's ed, blah blah. Let's see some actual statistics to back up the "cell phones are evil" stuff, eh?
US fatalities, per 100 million vehicle miles, have fallen steadily ever since cell phones started becoming common. According to this table, the rate has fallen from 1.73 in 1994 to 1.44 in 2004, and the rate either fell or stayed the same every year (despite economic variations, etc.).
If cell phones are such a menace, why aren't more people dying in auto accidents?
No, but Gbay will.
Just a guess, but you're a "Linus", not a "Bill"?
Welcome to Web 2.0, brought to you by Business 2.0 magazine. Firefox users don't matter, since they can block all the ads, Flash videos, and Javascript crap. I had to use IE to read the list, and it really wasn't worth the trouble.
On the Symantec site, they estimate the number of infections as "50". Sounds like a pretty low threat to me. Also, Yahoo prescans emails for spamminess and moves suspect ones to a bulk folder automatically, so they'll likely be able to handle this "threat" pretty easily.
Deja vu.