Considering that there are some excellent televisions shows rarely available, I think the television stations and production houses should lift their game to the higher standard instead of being concerend with technological whizz bangery.
The average cretin will accept whatever served up to them so long as it looks and sounds nice, hence the popularity of shows like Survivor, Temptation Island and Fox News. So essentially, yes, the dunces should stop what they're doing. If there were better shows on, then I might perhaps watch them. Of course American television is probably the worst offender when it comes to general poor quality, so a country like England might not need do as much work, since having the BBC. Certainly HDTV over IP would be a minor accomplishment at for a good television provider, as their good production would overshadow any technological enhancement.
"I'm a bit different in this regard. I find myself watching TV less and less, and surfing the internet less and less."
Then may I suggest that you continue this highly comendable public service. Your journal seems to contradict this claim however, as you give pithy insights into sich weighty matters as cooling fans and the sheer evil of javascript. Although riveting stuff, I imagine your avid readers, will manage without your insightful and witty comments. On behalf of all your loyal readers, we bid you a fond farewell.
Whilst developing all these new television technologies, perhaps someone will eventually consider that the majority of television programs are terrible regardless of their high quality sound and pictures etc.
Whether the program is interactive or on demand, or how it's delievered, doesn't matter to me so much as what I'm actually watching. and I'm getting less and less impressed every year.
I find myself watching less and less television, and using the Internet more and more. As for the phone, most people I know use it mainly to talk about television. I'm getting close to the point where I almost solely use email.
"she approached Today Tonight claiming McDonalds was setting her son up for a life of gambling addiction."
Yeah, what a great parent - it's okay the give them a lifetime fat ass, but a big no to lifetime gambling.
It might be worth mentioning to all those not from the great southern land, that Today Tonight is a pretty low brow show, that mainly revolves around inciting public outrage, however reasonable it may actually be to keep gambling from children.
*whoops*
He's literally blaming aliens for making Internet Explorer so crap. Next thing, he'll start the "problems with variable hardware" routine.
Well, Mr Gates, if it's all to hard for you to do the job properly, step aside, and let someone else show you how it's done.
Honestly, could these pack of has-been sink any lower, or get any more sleezy than this? Probably, but it's beyond me exactly how.
Imagine it, a couple of PR people, writing about how SCO are maximising profits, enhancing shareholder value, and serving it up to the Linux community. It's pure deperation, and makes me depressed even thinking about it, it's so pathetic. Throw in a web designer, and a graphic artist, there they are sitting around the table wondering, how they're going to save their jobs, and continue their corporate bullshit and thievery.
One look at their share price, and that's all the information you need on SCO.
I imagine they do indeed propose to do away with null, however the article doesn't argue why null should be done away with. Instead, it criticises null's functionality whilst misunderstanding (or perhaps misrepresenting) it's correct syntax and use.
So it's not a compelling arguement.
Null is the absence of any data, but the author is criticising it because he thinks it should behave the way numeric zero does in a variable. If he wants his attribute to act like "0", then it should in fact be "0".
SQL by design distinguishes null from "0" - it's not a limitation or a flaw in the design, it's quite deliberate, but it's a distinction that people who are not familiar with SQL often get confused about.
The Hall of fame seems to completely disregard Dr Who and English sci-fi in general. No Cybermen, no K-9, no Daleks (semi-organics), no Tim from the Tomorrow People... and where's R. Daneel? If the longest ever running sci-fi television show, and the proposer of the positronic brain and the three laws of robotics can't get in the door, then the Bat computer will probably win it next year.
The article criticises SQL but the author has little familiarity with SQL for example:
"but the syntax is often inconsistent and unless you use one of the many vendor-specific supersets of SQL it can be tricky to express complex series of operations in a concise manner."
But in fact, SQL is so popular because complex expressions need little changing from specific vendor offerings. If people choose to program using the subsets, then well and good, but the ANSI standard is generally thought to be sufficient. This is like arguing for the abolishment of HTML and XHTML because Microsoft make a flawed browser - hopefully the database language is better than the reasoning here.
It then goes on to say "The idea is that there should be no arbitrary restrictions on the syntax of the query language, but at a lower level the database shouldn't run up against idiotic limitations. The limitation in existing implementations that generates the most comment from the various parties in the debate is the problem with "null" values in relational databases. Put simply, a database field has a type (50 characters, for instance, or a floating point number to two decimal places, or an 8-bit integer), but when you don't fill the field in (i.e. it's "null") it loses all its meaning. Even the ANSI standards state that if a field is null it's said not to exist - so if you ask a database for "all entries where field X is not equal to 47" it won't return any of those where field X is null because instead of saying "Null doesn't equal 47", the value "null" is deemed not to be comparable with any non-null field."
Well, for starters, null is not numeric zero, null is the absence of any data whatsoever, and every SQL doc in the world tells you to not mistake it for zero. Any arithmetic expression containing a null always evaluates to null. For example, null added to 7 is null. All operators (except concatenation) return null when given a null operand. That's exactly why it's the ANSI standard.
If you want to find "all entries where field X is not equal to 47" then pass your attribute a value like "0".
SQL is neither clunky nor obsolete. Tutorial D may actually be a better database modelling method, but the article's criticisms aren't sufficient to exault Tutorial D whatsoever. The "Project D" syntax and model may possibly be better, but these criticisms aren't a convincing reason to scrap SQL.
I repeated the quote because the Industry Minister stipulated that "calls made outside...must not be affected. He actually didn't mention inside emergency calls.
- So I'd imagine that the blocking device would be given a limited range and not extend outside of the actual building's perimeter.
As to inside, I'd imagine that if they were bothered to do so, they differentiate the numbers dialled.
If they eventually include art galleries, libraries and restaurants, then I'm packing my bags.
I've seen a person unabashedly use a mobile at a church funeral service. Perhaps churches would be keen on them, however in Australia, most church steeples are used as mobile antennas. In many cases, the cross on the steeple is disguised to match the original building's features.
If I was an alien, I'd probably assume that God had a mobile phone.
I quote from the article-
"Devedjian specified however that emergency calls and calls made outside theaters and other performance spaces must not be affected."
It's interesting that the mutation has been found in the Asian population, but I'm concerned that the article places an emphasis on ideas of race, which has been an obsolete scientific term since genetic research in the 1940s and 50s.
Race and the idea of race have are not medical ideas. The reason why so many Europeans (not merely Caucasians) have one or two copies of the mutant gene is because of the bottle neck of the black plague throughout Europe. It afforded them some or cmplete resistance to it. It is entirely possible that the Chinese people found to have the gene may have these ancestors themselves. As Chinese "asians" are just as much a mix of people from different places as "caucasians".
There is no scientific basis for ideas of race whatsoever - we are all homo sapiens.
Of all the genes in human being, about 75 per cent are identical in every person; only 25 per cent vary from person to person. And of that variable amount, 85 per cent of the difference would be present even if the two people were fairly closely related; that is, an ethnic subgroup, like Norwegians. Another 9 per cent of the genetic variation will result from individuals being members of separate nations or tribes within a "race"--a Spaniard and an Italian, for example. And only about 6 per cent is the result of the two people being from what we call separate races. Any person's race accounts for only about 0.24 per cent (or 6 per cent of 25 per cent) of his genetic make-up. Info taken from here.
I agree that bias is inherent in a person's world view, however I don't think that this is too say that there is solely bias and objective viewpoints in the human scope of understanding.
I think that there is a world of objective facts, and in my view that's what journalism should represent instead of (vested interest) interpretations disguised as facts. People dying in a war for instance are facts, however the reasons for and against are not facts.
I think that free speech isn't enough, as people need to be free to make their own minds up about things with the real facts at hand. Michael Moore, Bush and Kerry - all of them propose a particular simplistic world view, and in my opinion, they're all as equally flawed, and just taylored for popular consumption. Bias aside, people aren't even given an opportunity to make up their own minds in a balanced way - regardless of whatever their person's political alligance may be.
My problem with Fox news is that it's simplistic with a tremendous bias towards the right wing. It's essentially a propaganda/entertainment tool and not news at all, and that's fine - goverments and corporations need them to control the plebians, but personally, it's just not to my taste mainly because it's not very sophisticated.
I don't always disagree with the gist of their simplified ideas, however I wouldn't like to be using their news service to form my opinions.
If I did, I'd be likely to be the sort of person who can only make a point by resorting to movie references or swearing, which I imagine accounts for the majority of their viewers.
My criticism is about it's simplicity, and it's a pity that people don't have the smarts to see it's realy agenda, but hey, it ain't my problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering that there are some excellent televisions shows rarely available, I think the television stations and production houses should lift their game to the higher standard instead of being concerend with technological whizz bangery.
The average cretin will accept whatever served up to them so long as it looks and sounds nice, hence the popularity of shows like Survivor, Temptation Island and Fox News. So essentially, yes, the dunces should stop what they're doing. If there were better shows on, then I might perhaps watch them. Of course American television is probably the worst offender when it comes to general poor quality, so a country like England might not need do as much work, since having the BBC. Certainly HDTV over IP would be a minor accomplishment at for a good television provider, as their good production would overshadow any technological enhancement.
"I'm a bit different in this regard. I find myself watching TV less and less, and surfing the internet less and less."
Then may I suggest that you continue this highly comendable public service. Your journal seems to contradict this claim however, as you give pithy insights into sich weighty matters as cooling fans and the sheer evil of javascript. Although riveting stuff, I imagine your avid readers, will manage without your insightful and witty comments. On behalf of all your loyal readers, we bid you a fond farewell.
Any good software programmer knows that good design and elegance beats bloat every time.
Whilst developing all these new television technologies, perhaps someone will eventually consider that the majority of television programs are terrible regardless of their high quality sound and pictures etc.
Whether the program is interactive or on demand, or how it's delievered, doesn't matter to me so much as what I'm actually watching. and I'm getting less and less impressed every year.
I find myself watching less and less television, and using the Internet more and more. As for the phone, most people I know use it mainly to talk about television. I'm getting close to the point where I almost solely use email.
So where's Chucky?
"she approached Today Tonight claiming McDonalds was setting her son up for a life of gambling addiction." Yeah, what a great parent - it's okay the give them a lifetime fat ass, but a big no to lifetime gambling. It might be worth mentioning to all those not from the great southern land, that Today Tonight is a pretty low brow show, that mainly revolves around inciting public outrage, however reasonable it may actually be to keep gambling from children.
*whoops* He's literally blaming aliens for making Internet Explorer so crap. Next thing, he'll start the "problems with variable hardware" routine. Well, Mr Gates, if it's all to hard for you to do the job properly, step aside, and let someone else show you how it's done.
...and the dog ate my source code. He's
Honestly, could these pack of has-been sink any lower, or get any more sleezy than this? Probably, but it's beyond me exactly how. Imagine it, a couple of PR people, writing about how SCO are maximising profits, enhancing shareholder value, and serving it up to the Linux community. It's pure deperation, and makes me depressed even thinking about it, it's so pathetic. Throw in a web designer, and a graphic artist, there they are sitting around the table wondering, how they're going to save their jobs, and continue their corporate bullshit and thievery. One look at their share price, and that's all the information you need on SCO.
I imagine they do indeed propose to do away with null, however the article doesn't argue why null should be done away with. Instead, it criticises null's functionality whilst misunderstanding (or perhaps misrepresenting) it's correct syntax and use. So it's not a compelling arguement.
Null is the absence of any data, but the author is criticising it because he thinks it should behave the way numeric zero does in a variable. If he wants his attribute to act like "0", then it should in fact be "0".
SQL by design distinguishes null from "0" - it's not a limitation or a flaw in the design, it's quite deliberate, but it's a distinction that people who are not familiar with SQL often get confused about.
The Hall of fame seems to completely disregard Dr Who and English sci-fi in general. No Cybermen, no K-9, no Daleks (semi-organics), no Tim from the Tomorrow People. .. and where's R. Daneel? If the longest ever running sci-fi television show, and the proposer of the positronic brain and the three laws of robotics can't get in the door, then the Bat computer will probably win it next year.
The article criticises SQL but the author has little familiarity with SQL for example:
"but the syntax is often inconsistent and unless you use one of the many vendor-specific supersets of SQL it can be tricky to express complex series of operations in a concise manner."
But in fact, SQL is so popular because complex expressions need little changing from specific vendor offerings. If people choose to program using the subsets, then well and good, but the ANSI standard is generally thought to be sufficient. This is like arguing for the abolishment of HTML and XHTML because Microsoft make a flawed browser - hopefully the database language is better than the reasoning here.
It then goes on to say "The idea is that there should be no arbitrary restrictions on the syntax of the query language, but at a lower level the database shouldn't run up against idiotic limitations. The limitation in existing implementations that generates the most comment from the various parties in the debate is the problem with "null" values in relational databases. Put simply, a database field has a type (50 characters, for instance, or a floating point number to two decimal places, or an 8-bit integer), but when you don't fill the field in (i.e. it's "null") it loses all its meaning. Even the ANSI standards state that if a field is null it's said not to exist - so if you ask a database for "all entries where field X is not equal to 47" it won't return any of those where field X is null because instead of saying "Null doesn't equal 47", the value "null" is deemed not to be comparable with any non-null field."
Well, for starters, null is not numeric zero, null is the absence of any data whatsoever, and every SQL doc in the world tells you to not mistake it for zero. Any arithmetic expression containing a null always evaluates to null. For example, null added to 7 is null. All operators (except concatenation) return null when given a null operand. That's exactly why it's the ANSI standard.
If you want to find "all entries where field X is not equal to 47" then pass your attribute a value like "0".
SQL is neither clunky nor obsolete. Tutorial D may actually be a better database modelling method, but the article's criticisms aren't sufficient to exault Tutorial D whatsoever. The "Project D" syntax and model may possibly be better, but these criticisms aren't a convincing reason to scrap SQL.
I can think of a more comprehensive bulletin:
1. Internet Explorer (All versions)
2. Microsoft Office (All versions)
3. Microsoft Windows OS (All versions)
I repeated the quote because the Industry Minister stipulated that "calls made outside ...must not be affected. He actually didn't mention inside emergency calls.
- So I'd imagine that the blocking device would be given a limited range and not extend
outside of the actual building's perimeter.
As to inside, I'd imagine that if they were bothered to do so, they differentiate the numbers dialled.
If they eventually include art galleries, libraries and restaurants, then I'm packing my bags.
I've seen a person unabashedly use a mobile at a church funeral service. Perhaps churches would be keen on them, however in Australia, most church steeples are used as mobile antennas. In many cases, the cross on the steeple is disguised to match the original building's features.
If I was an alien, I'd probably assume that God had a mobile phone.
I quote from the article- "Devedjian specified however that emergency calls and calls made outside theaters and other performance spaces must not be affected."
How do I get a postcard of the great firewall of China?
It's interesting that the mutation has been found in the Asian population, but I'm concerned that the article places an emphasis on ideas of race, which has been an obsolete scientific term since genetic research in the 1940s and 50s.
Race and the idea of race have are not medical ideas. The reason why so many Europeans (not merely Caucasians) have one or two copies of the mutant gene is because of the bottle neck of the black plague throughout Europe. It afforded them some or cmplete resistance to it. It is entirely possible that the Chinese people found to have the gene may have these ancestors themselves. As Chinese "asians" are just as much a mix of people from different places as "caucasians".
There is no scientific basis for ideas of race whatsoever - we are all homo sapiens.
Of all the genes in human being, about 75 per cent are identical in every person; only 25 per cent vary from person to person. And of that variable amount, 85 per cent of the difference would be present even if the two people were fairly closely related; that is, an ethnic subgroup, like Norwegians. Another 9 per cent of the genetic variation will result from individuals being members of separate nations or tribes within a "race"--a Spaniard and an Italian, for example. And only about 6 per cent is the result of the two people being from what we call separate races. Any person's race accounts for only about 0.24 per cent (or 6 per cent of 25 per cent) of his genetic make-up.
Info taken from here.
Once again, technology and bad taste combine to make the public's dreams a reality.
We need an Enterprise episode where the crew are transported into a TJ Hooker alternative universe.
- pure class, and Shatner stays happy.
In ten years time, I predict Windows will be just a bad memory.
Why would anyone loose faith in the American democratic system?
You get the best president money can buy.
I agree that bias is inherent in a person's world view, however I don't think that this is too say that there is solely bias and objective viewpoints in the human scope of understanding.
I think that there is a world of objective facts, and in my view that's what journalism should represent instead of (vested interest) interpretations disguised as facts. People dying in a war for instance are facts, however the reasons for and against are not facts.
I think that free speech isn't enough, as people need to be free to make their own minds up about things with the real facts at hand. Michael Moore, Bush and Kerry - all of them propose a particular simplistic world view, and in my opinion, they're all as equally flawed, and just taylored for popular consumption. Bias aside, people aren't even given an opportunity to make up their own minds in a balanced way - regardless of whatever their person's political alligance may be.
It's not as simple as a bias towards democracy and elections, but of course, if you haven't noticed, you're unlikely to be convinced otherwise.
Oh, and if you'd like to watch objective journalism, try BBC World.
My problem with Fox news is that it's simplistic with a tremendous bias towards the right wing. It's essentially a propaganda/entertainment tool and not news at all, and that's fine - goverments and corporations need them to control the plebians, but personally, it's just not to my taste mainly because it's not very sophisticated.
I don't always disagree with the gist of their simplified ideas, however I wouldn't like to be using their news service to form my opinions.
If I did, I'd be likely to be the sort of person who can only make a point by resorting to movie references or swearing, which I imagine accounts for the majority of their viewers.
My criticism is about it's simplicity, and it's a pity that people don't have the smarts to see it's realy agenda, but hey, it ain't my problem.