I work with a *NIX almost every day, in one form or another. While I'm no guru, I'd like to think I'm capable enough to keep a basic web server running.
The part that really causes me grief is the GUI and the hardware configuration that goes along with it. I have no idea what graphics card is in my computer, and I shouldn't need to care - Windows and OS X both seem perfectly capable of deducing that on their own, so why can't Linux?
I think Linux is an incredible server OS, but it's lacking as a desktop OS for now. I have incredible faith that the FOSS hackers are going to fix that eventually; the question is whether it'll happen before this laptop bites the dust and I have to figure out where to spend my money next.
Tell you what - when Video Professor offers me a "free just pay shipping and handling" lesson for Linux, that's probably when I'll admit it's ready for the mainstream.
I don't think anybody so far has said that Amazon setting up a market for web services (which is essentially what this is) is a bad thing. What they've said is that they shouldn't be able to take out a patent on it.
TFA says Amazon wants the exclusive right to have a search engine for web services, allow users of these services to leave comments, and collect money on the user and companies' behalf. In other words, they want to combine something like http://www.xmethods.net/ and PayPal and call it an invention.
Taken one level of abtraction further, they want to patent markets which sell web services. Markets have been around at least as long as capitalism itself has.
More power to Amazon if they launch a web service directory and make money on collecting payments. I just wish they wouldn't pretend it took a great deal of thought or effort.
Re:I liked Internet Explorer 7 the first time...
on
IE7 Bugs and Reviews
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· Score: 2, Informative
Interestingly, Netscape 8 did this long before IE7, and it ships turned on if I recall correctly.
I'm not sure if I'm understanding you, so please excuse me if I repeat something you know or make an incorrect assumption about your question.
In developing Google Maps, the problem was that while Internet Explorer lets you draw vector graphics with VML, Mozilla browsers (and most others) have no such capability at the moment. (SVG will enable this when Firefox 1.whatever is released, but Google will still need to change their code to take advantage of it.) Because of this problem, it's easy to overlay streets in Internet Explorer but not in Firefox.
To solve this problem, the Maps code detects the browser it's running in. For Internet Explorer, the code uses the built-in VML engine to draw lines directly in the browser. On Firefox and other browsers, there's no vector capabilities. As a workaround, the Javascript asks the Google servers to draw the lines as a transparent PNG, and overlays the image over the map.
It sounds like what you're trying to do is take an existing PNG line and resample the image to change the slope of the line. PNG isn't a vector format. It's a bitmap, a block of pixels with color values and (often) alpha transparency. You can't resize the image and expect the picture to remain sharp, because it's working within the limits of the existing pixels. A vector image, on the other hand, can be sharp at any size you want because you start from a math formula that tells you what pixels should be lit at any given image size.
What you could do is create a CGI script that does nothing but draw lines at the width, height, and slope you request. That's basically what Google is doing for Firefox in Maps.
Are you sure IE is rendering in standards-compliant* mode? I discovered that it's really easy to knock IE back into quirks mode with things as simple as a XML declaration. After I tracked down what IE was choking on, I was able to create a valid XHTML Strict document that IE likes, too.
*IE's standards-compliant mode isn't, but at least it doesn't have the box model bug.
Sure. PNG is just a bitmap format, so you can put whatever image you want in it. You draw the lines in whatever configuration you need, then anti-alias the edges. The best part is the support for alpha channel, meaning the lines are smooth regardless of what the background is.
Google, however, has everything nailed. The hybrid mode works great - maps and photos match exactly - but their geocoding has been consistently off by a couple of blocks for me. Not enough to keep me from where I'm going, but enough to make it more difficult to get there. On Google Earth, however, some streets aren't quite lined up with the photos.
I do have to admit they're better than the competition, however.
Pen, paper, and possibly battery-powered calculator. If the cashiers don't know the prices, keep 1-2 lanes open and send the rest of the cashiers into the stores to read prices off the shelves, write them out on slips of paper, and hand them to customers along with the product. Once power returns, key purchases into the POS system manually. If this doesn't quite work for whatever reason, any competent manager should be able to tweak it.
There's no reason cash sales of non-perishable items should stop during a power outage, provided there's no hurricane or similar natural disaster outside. The drug store is still paying the employees; why should they stand around waiting for the lights to come back on?
Perhaps it's the people that find that for highly esoteric queries, Yahoo! kicks Google's, umm, yahoo.
Yahoo! does an amazing job when you can only remember a sentence or two from what you're looking for. An identical query in Google will often turn up nothing. If more people tried Yahoo! again, they might be pleasantly surprised.
Better to have one federal law to simplify things. Many people feel the federal law is inadequate - it doesn't affect charities, political organizations, or surveys, and any company you have an "existing business relationship" with. Many state laws take care of these gaps, but elminating them at the federal level would be an easy way to nullify their effects.
And I still wonder, why do those telemarketers want to call me if I'm on this list. Seems like they are being done a service here. I'm not going to buy their crap so no sense wasting time on a call. Because somebody, somewhere who's on the do-not-call list would cave with the right kind of persuasion. It's the same argument as spam - they continue to market to people, even people that have removed themselves, because every so often those people will make a purchase.
Seriously, I don't think two buttons is that much of a problem. I usually tell the people I'm teaching, "Always click the left button unless I say otherwise," and they get the message.
I think Ctrl+Clicking everywhere in OS X is a sign that there really is a need for the second button. The context menus dramatically cut down on mouse travel. Having a wheel is great too - you don't really understand how helpful it is until you work on a computer that doesn't have one after you're used to it.
Now, if Macs did the underlined access keys, I'd be absolutely thrilled. I navigate most menus by keyboard instead of mouse, and full keyboard access in Mac's Accessibility preferences just isn't the same.
Opera does a terrible job of lying. Regardless of what browser you tell it to masquerade as, it always appends Opera/n.nn to the end of the User Agent string.
I think what you'd find if you talked with a Christian who makes his or her faith a priority in life, they'd say that they are no better than non-believers. The whole point of Christianity is that we're just as screwed up (living in sin) as a non-believer. ("All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.")
The reason Christians look like hypocrites is (surprise!) we are. We try to live a moral life, but because we're human, we will foul it up and make a mess.
I don't precisely know what your position is on "gay rights" and "female equality", so I don't want to argue a point that you're not making. I do want to say that the debate between different Christians comes from an imperfect understanding of the Bible, and perhaps from not wanting to do what it plainly says (again, that's sin).
I'm a virgin, so I can't say anything about the physical part of sex, but I do know that it's pleasurable, powerful, and not at all sinful - but only in marriage. I think like many other beliefs Christians hold, science backs this up - oxytocin released during orgasm causes emotional bonding. It seems to me that emotional bonding would be a great thing to help keep a marriage together, but might not be so cool if you don't know if the person you're with is going to be around next week.
Your girlfriends didn't need to pray for hours - once you make a commitment to follow Jesus, he forgives all your sins - even the ones you don't ask about. (Trust me, I've missed quite a few.) My guess is that they either didn't understand this, or were feeling guilty.
It's not my goal to tell you how to live your life (and as you can probably tell from the horrible writing, I'm no preacher). I do think you might find that you misjudged Christianity if you gave it a closer look. It gives me a lot of peace knowing that regardless of how badly I screw this life up, Jesus has taken care of it and I'll do better in the next one. The fact that the Bible is so logically consistent with itself and science makes my geek side happy, too.
Please don't hate me for being a Christian. I just want you to find the peace I have.
Creative Commons seems to define non-commercial as activity that is "primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation." To me, that sounds like pretty broad protection - you could argue that if the cable company distributes it, even when included in the basic package, they are gaining "commercial advantage" because it provides an incentive for people to subscribe to their service.
On the other hand, you (not the cable company) might be able to broadcast it on public access, provided the presenter isn't gaining a "commercial advantage" themselves. I think this would be possible where I live, except that the underwriting at the beginning and end of the program would probably be too commercial for their policies.
Are you an American qualified to run for the Senate or House? If so, we desperately need you in office right now.
Very clever. I was going to post that I didn't particularly care if the government could turn off the Internet in the plane, but this reasoning made me reconsider.
Good job. This is by far the most insightful post in the topic.
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I work with a *NIX almost every day, in one form or another. While I'm no guru, I'd like to think I'm capable enough to keep a basic web server running.
The part that really causes me grief is the GUI and the hardware configuration that goes along with it. I have no idea what graphics card is in my computer, and I shouldn't need to care - Windows and OS X both seem perfectly capable of deducing that on their own, so why can't Linux?
I think Linux is an incredible server OS, but it's lacking as a desktop OS for now. I have incredible faith that the FOSS hackers are going to fix that eventually; the question is whether it'll happen before this laptop bites the dust and I have to figure out where to spend my money next.
Tell you what - when Video Professor offers me a "free just pay shipping and handling" lesson for Linux, that's probably when I'll admit it's ready for the mainstream.
My whole plan was to switch away from Microsoft to Apple due to the (relatively) benign copy protection in OS X and other products.
I may have to rethink that strategy now.
(And no, don't say Linux - I don't have enough time to learn it well enough to use it as a desktop machine on a daily basis.)
I don't think anybody so far has said that Amazon setting up a market for web services (which is essentially what this is) is a bad thing. What they've said is that they shouldn't be able to take out a patent on it.
TFA says Amazon wants the exclusive right to have a search engine for web services, allow users of these services to leave comments, and collect money on the user and companies' behalf. In other words, they want to combine something like http://www.xmethods.net/ and PayPal and call it an invention.
Taken one level of abtraction further, they want to patent markets which sell web services. Markets have been around at least as long as capitalism itself has.
More power to Amazon if they launch a web service directory and make money on collecting payments. I just wish they wouldn't pretend it took a great deal of thought or effort.
Interestingly, Netscape 8 did this long before IE7, and it ships turned on if I recall correctly.
I'm not sure if I'm understanding you, so please excuse me if I repeat something you know or make an incorrect assumption about your question.
In developing Google Maps, the problem was that while Internet Explorer lets you draw vector graphics with VML, Mozilla browsers (and most others) have no such capability at the moment. (SVG will enable this when Firefox 1.whatever is released, but Google will still need to change their code to take advantage of it.) Because of this problem, it's easy to overlay streets in Internet Explorer but not in Firefox.
To solve this problem, the Maps code detects the browser it's running in. For Internet Explorer, the code uses the built-in VML engine to draw lines directly in the browser. On Firefox and other browsers, there's no vector capabilities. As a workaround, the Javascript asks the Google servers to draw the lines as a transparent PNG, and overlays the image over the map.
It sounds like what you're trying to do is take an existing PNG line and resample the image to change the slope of the line. PNG isn't a vector format. It's a bitmap, a block of pixels with color values and (often) alpha transparency. You can't resize the image and expect the picture to remain sharp, because it's working within the limits of the existing pixels. A vector image, on the other hand, can be sharp at any size you want because you start from a math formula that tells you what pixels should be lit at any given image size.
What you could do is create a CGI script that does nothing but draw lines at the width, height, and slope you request. That's basically what Google is doing for Firefox in Maps.
If you need further clarification, ask away.
Are you sure IE is rendering in standards-compliant* mode? I discovered that it's really easy to knock IE back into quirks mode with things as simple as a XML declaration. After I tracked down what IE was choking on, I was able to create a valid XHTML Strict document that IE likes, too.
*IE's standards-compliant mode isn't, but at least it doesn't have the box model bug.
It may not be a requirement, but if you're going to spend time writing a file to disk, why not update your metadata index at the same time?
Sure. PNG is just a bitmap format, so you can put whatever image you want in it. You draw the lines in whatever configuration you need, then anti-alias the edges. The best part is the support for alpha channel, meaning the lines are smooth regardless of what the background is.
OK.... what's next?
Create and delete the links, instantly, when new files meet the criteria, or old files don't anymore.
I don't get it. TFA says they're Power Mac G5s. Do they have Power Macs also, or did somebody screw up (hopefully, not the team)?
Google, however, has everything nailed.
The hybrid mode works great - maps and photos match exactly - but their geocoding has been consistently off by a couple of blocks for me. Not enough to keep me from where I'm going, but enough to make it more difficult to get there. On Google Earth, however, some streets aren't quite lined up with the photos.
I do have to admit they're better than the competition, however.
Pen, paper, and possibly battery-powered calculator. If the cashiers don't know the prices, keep 1-2 lanes open and send the rest of the cashiers into the stores to read prices off the shelves, write them out on slips of paper, and hand them to customers along with the product. Once power returns, key purchases into the POS system manually. If this doesn't quite work for whatever reason, any competent manager should be able to tweak it.
There's no reason cash sales of non-perishable items should stop during a power outage, provided there's no hurricane or similar natural disaster outside. The drug store is still paying the employees; why should they stand around waiting for the lights to come back on?
Perhaps it's the people that find that for highly esoteric queries, Yahoo! kicks Google's, umm, yahoo.
Yahoo! does an amazing job when you can only remember a sentence or two from what you're looking for. An identical query in Google will often turn up nothing. If more people tried Yahoo! again, they might be pleasantly surprised.
It looks like you're launching a rocket. Would you like help?
Better to have one federal law to simplify things.
Many people feel the federal law is inadequate - it doesn't affect charities, political organizations, or surveys, and any company you have an "existing business relationship" with. Many state laws take care of these gaps, but elminating them at the federal level would be an easy way to nullify their effects.
And I still wonder, why do those telemarketers want to call me if I'm on this list. Seems like they are being done a service here. I'm not going to buy their crap so no sense wasting time on a call.
Because somebody, somewhere who's on the do-not-call list would cave with the right kind of persuasion. It's the same argument as spam - they continue to market to people, even people that have removed themselves, because every so often those people will make a purchase.
Nope. Steve's in your camp.
Seriously, I don't think two buttons is that much of a problem. I usually tell the people I'm teaching, "Always click the left button unless I say otherwise," and they get the message.
I think Ctrl+Clicking everywhere in OS X is a sign that there really is a need for the second button. The context menus dramatically cut down on mouse travel. Having a wheel is great too - you don't really understand how helpful it is until you work on a computer that doesn't have one after you're used to it.
Now, if Macs did the underlined access keys, I'd be absolutely thrilled. I navigate most menus by keyboard instead of mouse, and full keyboard access in Mac's Accessibility preferences just isn't the same.
None of the (probably millions of) people who use My Yahoo! would find themselves able to edit their Atom-supporting blog.
Opera does a terrible job of lying. Regardless of what browser you tell it to masquerade as, it always appends Opera/n.nn to the end of the User Agent string.
If it has than it's thanks to lax grammatical policing by people such as yourself who are happy to misuse "affect" and misspell "lose."
Surely you mean "then"?
I think what you'd find if you talked with a Christian who makes his or her faith a priority in life, they'd say that they are no better than non-believers. The whole point of Christianity is that we're just as screwed up (living in sin) as a non-believer. ("All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.")
The reason Christians look like hypocrites is (surprise!) we are. We try to live a moral life, but because we're human, we will foul it up and make a mess.
I don't precisely know what your position is on "gay rights" and "female equality", so I don't want to argue a point that you're not making. I do want to say that the debate between different Christians comes from an imperfect understanding of the Bible, and perhaps from not wanting to do what it plainly says (again, that's sin).
I'm a virgin, so I can't say anything about the physical part of sex, but I do know that it's pleasurable, powerful, and not at all sinful - but only in marriage. I think like many other beliefs Christians hold, science backs this up - oxytocin released during orgasm causes emotional bonding. It seems to me that emotional bonding would be a great thing to help keep a marriage together, but might not be so cool if you don't know if the person you're with is going to be around next week.
Your girlfriends didn't need to pray for hours - once you make a commitment to follow Jesus, he forgives all your sins - even the ones you don't ask about. (Trust me, I've missed quite a few.) My guess is that they either didn't understand this, or were feeling guilty.
It's not my goal to tell you how to live your life (and as you can probably tell from the horrible writing, I'm no preacher). I do think you might find that you misjudged Christianity if you gave it a closer look. It gives me a lot of peace knowing that regardless of how badly I screw this life up, Jesus has taken care of it and I'll do better in the next one. The fact that the Bible is so logically consistent with itself and science makes my geek side happy, too.
Please don't hate me for being a Christian. I just want you to find the peace I have.
From the point of view of the advertisers, distractions are a feature, not a bug.
I think they took it down. Here's a partial transcript.
So the 107 cameras pointed at the orbiter during launch can see anything that falls off the shuttle but isn't supposed to.
IANAL.
Creative Commons seems to define non-commercial as activity that is "primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation." To me, that sounds like pretty broad protection - you could argue that if the cable company distributes it, even when included in the basic package, they are gaining "commercial advantage" because it provides an incentive for people to subscribe to their service.
On the other hand, you (not the cable company) might be able to broadcast it on public access, provided the presenter isn't gaining a "commercial advantage" themselves. I think this would be possible where I live, except that the underwriting at the beginning and end of the program would probably be too commercial for their policies.
Are you an American qualified to run for the Senate or House? If so, we desperately need you in office right now.
Very clever. I was going to post that I didn't particularly care if the government could turn off the Internet in the plane, but this reasoning made me reconsider.
Good job. This is by far the most insightful post in the topic.