Is this the same author that I remember from the Pliocene novels (Non-Born King, Adversary, Golden Torc et al)? I hihgly recommend those books to the general slashdot readers weather its the same Julian May or not.
as a new dad myself (10 weeks now) I can only tell you that its nothing like what you would expect. Think of the worst child crying nightmare you have ever seen on TV or in the movies. Its worse than that, but before ou run screaming, think of the cutest baby momet you have ever seen anywhere, and when your baby smiles at you and giggles when you tickle him/her, its better than that. A few thoughts:
do not make any rash decisions about having a second child during the first few weeks
That desire you keep having to sit the child on the front lawn and leave him there is normal. As long as you don't actually do it, you are ok
Your days of telcommuting will likely be over unless you put the child in daycare even if you are workign from home, or unless your spouse is going to stay at home and is very understanding when you lock youself in a room and close the door.
All those little computer projects you would like to get done when you have time, are soon to be abandonenned for a while. Do what you can now, the rest will have to go on hold for a few months at best
the caffeine that you are currently imbibing to stay awake insane hours coding, is soon going to be barely enough to keep you awake 9-5... forget the late night coding sesisons for a while. I know it may seem like the only time you have to get thigns done, but it is also the only time you will have to sleep
There is nothing, and i mean nothign as terrifying as looking at your child and thinking, "I'm somebody's Dad"
everything in your life will now take 4 times longer to do. You and your spouse wil no longer just pick up and go to dinner. It now requires finding a sitter, or chaning diaper, feeding said child, clothing the child, getting car seat, putting child into care seat, packing bag with spare clothes and diapers, removing child from care seat to change diaper, changing diaper again, put child back into car seat, carrying everythign out to car and packing car, realizing its time to feed child again, feeding child, burping child, changing diaper again, putting child back in car seat and finally getting goign. I am not joking, this is your life now.
There is nothing, and i mean nothing as rewarding as looking at your child and thinking, "I'm somebody's Dad"
if you do not already have one, get a digital camera.
I have actually used textaloudMP3 (from nextUp) to real project gutenberg e-text aloud. Its not perfect, far from it, but it gets better since you can correct mispronunciations over time (my exceptions file now has about 200 entries) The program is a windows front end to ANY installed text to speach engine, be it Microsoft's or L&H or AT&T. I often have it read into mp3 files, which I burn onto CDs and listen to on the way to work I can usually get about 5-6 full books on a single CD, and its free (well...once you spend the $50 for the software and the TTS engine and the high quality voices)
I've heard a few of these and they are horrible. They are using what has got to be the world's worst text to speach engine to produce the reading. Great idea, but the tools they are using just make it completely unlistenable.
If you download some of the stuff they have there as far as making your own, it is far from automated.
actually you have already started playing with/sconsidering something that might be of use. I use textaloud mp3 as a front end for the att natural voices engine (with which I am MOST impressed) to actually read project gutenberg e-texts to mp3. I then burn 4 or 5 books to cd and listen to them on my commute. There is a server component of this that can be hooked into. They actually do something similar to this one the ATT natural voices web site you should be able to use wget your favorite means to get a page interactively, scrape the contents (a few perl Regex's perhaps) and then pipe it through the server component ont he fly to spit out wav or mp3 files. This would allow you to have any given page read out loud in real time.
Hey, it could have been worse: they could have paid him in VA Software stock.
In which case, it was worth $127,000 when he agreed to do the interview, $1,270 when they emailed him the questions and $1.27 by the time he answers them, and tries to cash out the stock.
This is truly useful on a laptop with a touchpad (I have also used it on a desktop with a tablet, but it just does nto feel as natural). Its a piece of sotware that is actually very useful. The only drawback, and this may have been corrected, is taht it hooks into the right click (you have to click and hold the right mouse button to gesture) and this is how you bring up context sensitive menus, such as display/desktop properties. When running sensiva, you have to do anything that uses the right mouse button the long way (through menus or control panels) One of those opportunities where a 3 button mouse would be really useful.
you poor misguided child...... There is nothing that government can not corrupt. ANY government, not just the US government (before we start any flame wars)
actually that is not true, the bending space (folding) was strictly for the movie. The navigators are able to use the spice to see slightly into the future, to know where things WILL be in space, and navigate around them before they are actualy there. You must be prescient to do this, as flight at those velocities would not allow you to react, so you must proactively steer your ship around where things WILL be in the future. Its not about folding space, its about seeing the future.
no, it does nothing at all to your computer. It *DOES* do something to the content that you view on your computer, and that somethign is making sure that you actually paid for it, and that you do not make perfect digital copies and redistribute them to people who did not pay for it.
the second product is not better just because one of the factors is a three whereas its only a 2 in product 1. the first factor might be price, the second factor might be the specs, the third availability of media, the fourth, third party add-on availability. According to the average geek logic, the spec in number 2 is better, that makes product 2 better, but when you take the longer total product view, product 1 is better OVERALL even though in one aspect (the tech spec) its slightly lower.
The fact that you don't get it just proves his point.
That's not how it works here. There are a certain number of commercial free channels (Public television) akin to the free channels you have, they are supported by viewer contributiosn and some governement funding. The vast majority of the channels on broadcast television are supported by advertising dollars. The ratings for a particular show determine how much a network can charge for a 30 second interstitial run during that show.
Cable TV continues to baffle me. For that we actually pay to get the channel, then still have to watch commercials. its like the worst of both worlds.
because if they give it away for free, they are not very enterprising. A more enterprising individual would figure out how it worked, write documentation, adn get O'Reiley to publish the "someSoftware in a Nutshell" book
as of right now, it is not even available for developers with MSDN universal subscriptions to download. Don't know how long it'll be before the public can get their hands on it.
IIS does not install by default, you need to select to install it (go ahead, complain about this while praising that on other operating systems you can choose what to install). When installed it does run as a service. If, however, you are not using windows 2000 professional or above, then there are free alternatives..... my favorite, Sambar, among them which operates as a very fine web server as well as ftp server. There is no reason that anyone on windoes who wants to run an ftp server cannot, but, as stated before, this really has nothing to do with the topic.
Its all MS FUD, talking bout insecure linux boxes. Everyone on Slashdot knows that only Microsoft Windows is insecure. There is no such thing as an insecure linux box
think of this. several small video cams mounted in a had or headband or anything that the person wears around their person, all the images stitched together to forma mosaic panorama with no distortion, the image itself projected and visible inside the glasses that you are wearing.... Those secret service guys in dark shades would be able to view 360 degrees simultaneously, with the true front of them being the center ofthe display.
True this is not possible now, a wearable computer would never have the power to do this real time, but Moore's law, you know, could happen in a few years.
On the scarier side......get some sort of combat suit, that enhances the wearers strength / speed / endurance and provides additional armor and firepower, add this capability and the wearer can suddenly move faster, longer see in all directions simultaneously and target enemies....
Slashdot Mirror
Is this the same author that I remember from the Pliocene novels (Non-Born King, Adversary, Golden Torc et al)? I hihgly recommend those books to the general slashdot readers weather its the same Julian May or not.
Love the sig.......... at last...........someone else who understands
One of my favorite games for the original playstation is Devil Dice. Two players. Cooperative. Great Game
They will here too.... one way or another
Guaranteed Overnight Delivery
Been a company for many years
someone needs to look in the tools menu and select clean-up html every once ina while.
now *THAT*, is funny, unlike the article ;-)
probably more important that it is context-sensitive-phoneme-based, than just that it is phoneme based.
I have actually used textaloudMP3 (from nextUp) to real project gutenberg e-text aloud. Its not perfect, far from it, but it gets better since you can correct mispronunciations over time (my exceptions file now has about 200 entries) The program is a windows front end to ANY installed text to speach engine, be it Microsoft's or L&H or AT&T. I often have it read into mp3 files, which I burn onto CDs and listen to on the way to work I can usually get about 5-6 full books on a single CD, and its free (well...once you spend the $50 for the software and the TTS engine and the high quality voices)
I've heard a few of these and they are horrible. They are using what has got to be the world's worst text to speach engine to produce the reading. Great idea, but the tools they are using just make it completely unlistenable.
If you download some of the stuff they have there as far as making your own, it is far from automated.
actually you have already started playing with/sconsidering something that might be of use. I use textaloud mp3 as a front end for the att natural voices engine (with which I am MOST impressed) to actually read project gutenberg e-texts to mp3. I then burn 4 or 5 books to cd and listen to them on my commute. There is a server component of this that can be hooked into. They actually do something similar to this one the ATT natural voices web site you should be able to use wget your favorite means to get a page interactively, scrape the contents (a few perl Regex's perhaps) and then pipe it through the server component ont he fly to spit out wav or mp3 files. This would allow you to have any given page read out loud in real time.
Hey, it could have been worse: they could have paid him in VA Software stock.
In which case, it was worth $127,000 when he agreed to do the interview, $1,270 when they emailed him the questions and $1.27 by the time he answers them, and tries to cash out the stock.
This is truly useful on a laptop with a touchpad (I have also used it on a desktop with a tablet, but it just does nto feel as natural). Its a piece of sotware that is actually very useful. The only drawback, and this may have been corrected, is taht it hooks into the right click (you have to click and hold the right mouse button to gesture) and this is how you bring up context sensitive menus, such as display/desktop properties. When running sensiva, you have to do anything that uses the right mouse button the long way (through menus or control panels) One of those opportunities where a 3 button mouse would be really useful.
you poor misguided child...... There is nothing that government can not corrupt. ANY government, not just the US government (before we start any flame wars)
actually that is not true, the bending space (folding) was strictly for the movie. The navigators are able to use the spice to see slightly into the future, to know where things WILL be in space, and navigate around them before they are actualy there. You must be prescient to do this, as flight at those velocities would not allow you to react, so you must proactively steer your ship around where things WILL be in the future. Its not about folding space, its about seeing the future.
The truly scary part would be if you knew that from memory and did not have to look it up somewhere.
no, it does nothing at all to your computer. It *DOES* do something to the content that you view on your computer, and that somethign is making sure that you actually paid for it, and that you do not make perfect digital copies and redistribute them to people who did not pay for it.
no, its not like that at all, its like saying:
Product 1 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10
Product 2 = 1 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 6
the second product is not better just because one of the factors is a three whereas its only a 2 in product 1. the first factor might be price, the second factor might be the specs, the third availability of media, the fourth, third party add-on availability. According to the average geek logic, the spec in number 2 is better, that makes product 2 better, but when you take the longer total product view, product 1 is better OVERALL even though in one aspect (the tech spec) its slightly lower.
The fact that you don't get it just proves his point.
That's not how it works here. There are a certain number of commercial free channels (Public television) akin to the free channels you have, they are supported by viewer contributiosn and some governement funding. The vast majority of the channels on broadcast television are supported by advertising dollars. The ratings for a particular show determine how much a network can charge for a 30 second interstitial run during that show.
Cable TV continues to baffle me. For that we actually pay to get the channel, then still have to watch commercials. its like the worst of both worlds.
because if they give it away for free, they are not very enterprising. A more enterprising individual would figure out how it worked, write documentation, adn get O'Reiley to publish the "someSoftware in a Nutshell" book
as of right now, it is not even available for developers with MSDN universal subscriptions to download. Don't know how long it'll be before the public can get their hands on it.
IIS does not install by default, you need to select to install it (go ahead, complain about this while praising that on other operating systems you can choose what to install). When installed it does run as a service. If, however, you are not using windows 2000 professional or above, then there are free alternatives..... my favorite, Sambar, among them which operates as a very fine web server as well as ftp server. There is no reason that anyone on windoes who wants to run an ftp server cannot, but, as stated before, this really has nothing to do with the topic.
Its all MS FUD, talking bout insecure linux boxes. Everyone on Slashdot knows that only Microsoft Windows is insecure. There is no such thing as an insecure linux box
think of this. several small video cams mounted in a had or headband or anything that the person wears around their person, all the images stitched together to forma mosaic panorama with no distortion, the image itself projected and visible inside the glasses that you are wearing.... Those secret service guys in dark shades would be able to view 360 degrees simultaneously, with the true front of them being the center ofthe display.
True this is not possible now, a wearable computer would never have the power to do this real time, but Moore's law, you know, could happen in a few years.
On the scarier side......get some sort of combat suit, that enhances the wearers strength / speed / endurance and provides additional armor and firepower, add this capability and the wearer can suddenly move faster, longer see in all directions simultaneously and target enemies....