...Rendezvous with Rama would also be awesom choices, it done right.
Go for it JMS!!!!
Let me second RwR, the whole series. I believe it would have extra impact because the human technology involved is just on our cusp of possibility. Manned space ships roaming the solar system, intercepting asteroids for research. What a wonderful way to inspire our children.
what is the only point of reference for a technology that starts off crazy expensive and then gets cheap enough for consumers?
"Only point"? No. You're using one right now! Computers. Also, Cars, boats, CDs, desktop publishing, radio broadcasting (ignoring that it's illegal), cell phones... I'm pretty sure the list is quite large.
I have previously been responsible for my employer's GPL compliance.
Others have posted the link the explanation for the offer of source code, please read that. It turns out your understanding is wrong.
Switching to distributing the source code with the binary will make your *future distributions* compliant; very good and well done.
What it **will not do** is make your *past distributions* compliant. There is only one way to make your *past distributions* compliant and that is to honour source code requests *from anyone*, for the source code for those previous distributions.
I honestly do not know anyone who uses a Bluetooth headset regularly. I only make a handful of calls a day, lasting 3-4 minutes at most, so a Bluetooth headset would just be more trouble than it's worth.
By way of example: Our friends at Amazon have a bit over half a million products listed in their DVD section. They manage to make, in most cases, hunting by title, hunting by genre, hunting by 'other people like', hunting by 'people who like stuff I like liked', and any number of other parameters pretty trivial. The checkout process isn't exactly rocket surgery either.
Yeah, I'm not sure what's wrong with Netflix Canada. Maybe it's the fact that I use the Wii client? But the website sucks in exactly the same way... I can search by predefined categories like by genres, 'Netflix thinks I'd like this' which is usually wrong, by 'Recently Added' which is only updated once a month or less, 'New Releases' which is sort of okay but not updated very often, 'Popular on Facebook' wtf?, and 'these are like something you just watched' which is only partly useful since the client/website has no way to distinguish between me, the wife and each of the kids, none of us whom have the same preferences. And ALL of these continue to shows things we've already watched, so they are practically and effectively useless.
I can also search by title text (not quite regex but not keyword either, but only gives me the first 16 or so results).
What I want: to be able to search by title text (with keyword, free form and regex modes), rating classification, year of release, actor, producer, etc, and to be able to do all of them simultaneously. To be able to turn on or off the display of already watched items.
What I'd really like to see is this: every item has a link to IMDB, which links back to Netflix. So this could occur: I've just watched Prometheus in the theater and I know Michael Fassbender looks familiar. My buddy mentions yeah, he was in X-Men. When I get home I pull up X-Men: First Class on Netflix and rewatch his performance as Magneto. Then I use the IMDB link to bring up IMDB's page for First Class, scroll down, click Fassbender, scroll throug his movies, see that Fish Tank is available on Netflix, click and stream. This is totally achievable. Hook it up Netflix!
Also, I'd like to be able to rate something 0 stars. The current interface makes you choose between rating at least 1 star and non-rating. Since I use ratings to keep track of things I've watched, 0 stars needs to be an option.
Also, get on that content horse. I'm >< this close to paying for a VPN to get US Netflix, which is money that could instead go into Netflix's pockets.
Wait a minute. You can't do that. You need the internet service and the cable/DSL modem and a computer and all the other things before you can get HBOGo, so you're going to pay the other $50 (if that's what that stuff costs you) too. Just like the guy who wants HBO plus 2 for $15... it really costs a lot more, and $15 isn't going to cover the fixed costs of the system, much less the programming he wants.
The parent poster wants to get HBO somehow.
On one hand, they could pay a fee to get cable, which they don't already have and don't want and once subscribed can't use for any other purpose but to get HBO, then pay a fee to get HBO over cable.
On the other hand, they could pay a fee to get HBO over internet, which they already have and pay for and use to do many other fruitful activities.
So yes, comparing the full cost of cable+HBO vs the incremental cost of HBO over internet is in fact valid and the actual economic question that exists in real life for many people, myself included. Saying "You can't do that" is laughable at best, at worst makes you a cable company shill/troll.
1) If you have cataracts, corneal irritation, or smudged glasses, bright objects against a dark background are MUCH harder to resolve than dark images against a white background. With black-on-white, you just get reduced contrast; with white-on-black, you get distracting smears and rays all over the page.
I can't comment on the eye conditions, but maybe clean your glasses? That works for my glasses anyway.
2) In a dim room, your pupils dilate more if the scene before you is mostly dark, and dilated pupils generally produce poorer acuity. A bright background causes your pupils to contract, and just like stopping down a cheap camera lens, it improves the focus of the image hitting your retina.
In 2 decades of BoW vs WoB debates, this is the first reasonable argument I've heard for BoW. OTOH, if using WoB causes you eye not to be able to focus, you need to get to an optometrist.
3) In a bright room, a mostly-dark display will be more obscured by reflections and glare.
I've never had a problem with glare/reflections except when in direct sunlight, which hurts both BoW and WoB equally. Also, when I've had a hard-walled office I keep the lights off. More earth-friendly, cooler, and nicer to work in.
We used to have Sybase, but not much of that company exists today. Then we had Silicon Graphics, and not much of that company exists today. Then we had Borland that went away with all of its products. How about Eudora? The list goes on...
Sybase did (are they still around?)
Rumours of Sybase's not-much-edness have been greatly exaggerated. Several of my friends work for Sybase. They're just fine.
This. I really wish they would split it up... one company is responsible for the last mile, and that's all they do. Just the physical medium. It can be municipally owned, whatever.
Then let whoever wants in hook up at the central office. That way we'd get some real competition, which just isn't happening here. Too much conflict of interest when the line owners are also the service providers.
Seconded. It's the only sane decision. C'mon CRTC, make 2011 the year you do 2 Right Things(tm).
In any given area, there's one company that owns the phone lines (say, Bell) and one other company that owns the cable lines (say, Rogers). That's it. Any Internet access you can get runs over their last mile lines or is horribly expensive and/or slow (satellite, wireless).
Generally true, but there are (rare) exceptions:
Atria is mostly business but will service some multi-unit residential.
Wightman has been doing FTTH for a few years, but you have to live in small-town ON.
I live north of Kingston, and a CLEC just buried conduit from the pole in my front yard to the back of my house.... to go with the fiber that they strung on that pole last summer. I should have fiber internet Real Soon Now.
Thank God not all the small telcos were bought by Bell. These guys bought a mom-n-pop ISP and expanded instead.
Please post the name of the CLEC so others may also benefit.
Relatively few people buy a car with fuel efficiency as their primary concern. That might change if gasoline were suddenly $7/gallon but that simply is not going to happen.
Not going to happen? I did some BOE calculations. In the past 14 years the price of gas has risen at an annual rate of 7%, roughly. Google tells me the average price of gas in Detroit is $3.36/gallon today. At 7% inflation, $7/gallon is 2022, just over a decade from now.
Well, I suppose it is possible that we could run out of oil before then.
You're trying to find someone who will work for free to maintain a piece of software with dubious usefulness just because you like it.
You got 2 options:
1. Learn to program it and maintain it yourself.
2. Pay someone to do it for you.
I'll take this opportunity to point out that, if this had been a piece of commercial software where the corporation behind it was gone, your options would be:
1.
2.
This is the power of OSS. You still have options when things don't go the way you'd hoped.
You can't. Because they didn't like the look of the big, floor-to-ceiling look of the old XP system, they shrunk it all down so that it only shows 5-6 items at a time and has a scrollbar.
In short, they made it harder to use and less functional than the XP Start Menu
For instance, in scrabble, using the X (8) points on a triple letter score (played in both directions) will net a minimum base score of 52 points. An example of this would be a combination of AX, XU, AT.
There is literally nothing in most parts of rural Ontario that exceed 3mbps down / 1mbps up, and with unlimited (or at least, overage charges that won't make you go broke) caps.
True, but in some parts of rural Ontario, you get Fibre to the Home.
The naivety of this is amazing. When the mafia burning down someone's shop, it is not because they are trying to recup [sic] any losses, but rather to send a "Don't mess with us" message to OTHER shop owners.
The naivety of this is amazing. When the mafia send a message to OTHER shop owners, there are a limited number of them, they're all nearby, and can't easily relocate.
There are a lot of hackers & crackers
This is the same tactic with the RIAA against filesharers (but there are simply too many to fight against),
(emphasis mine), they're distributed across the globe, and servers/data can be easily be moved.
Students graduating from the University of Waterloo's Math Faculty are invited to make one or more graduating pledges to support U(W). One of those pledges is the Dean's Prime Number Club, which confers upon you your very own Prime Number.
As others have noted, the binary sequence is a palindrome prime number in base 2. David Johnston is U(W)'s out-going President. It's likely that the Math Dean's Office has awarded him his very own Prime Number as an honorific (or for completing the pledge!) and he has chosen to incorporate it into his personal Coat of Arms.
I am unable to find the Prime Number registry online or in fact any mention of it at all, U(W) web pages about pledges aside. Digging out my old papers I see that the letter awarding one's Prime Number merely says "Here it is in the box at the bottom. Congratulations!" Perhaps the Dean's Office will confirm tomorrow.
...Stu, hopefully not the only member of the Dean's Prime Number Club reading Slashdot...
However, having had many protracted discussions with friends of mine who are teachers, I've found out that in many districts the principals identify the best teachers in the school themselves and assign the worst students to them. The "sampling" of sorts is most likely very unrandom and biased.
I'm certain this isn't captured in these test scores or being adjusted for. This would be difficult if not impossible to tease out but might be by looking for the expected patterns, i.e. a student's poor performance is less than it was with a previous teacher.
If you had RTFA you would have known that this is accounted for. The metric looks at a student's relative performance. A bad student, given an average teacher, will do just as poorly at the end of the year as at the start. Ditto for a good student, an average student, a corpse, a bird, a principal.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, hate speech is now protected. The exemption was repealed. http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/06/27/hate-speech-no-longer-part-of-canadas-human-rights-act/
...Rendezvous with Rama would also be awesom choices, it done right.
Go for it JMS!!!!
Let me second RwR, the whole series. I believe it would have extra impact because the human technology involved is just on our cusp of possibility. Manned space ships roaming the solar system, intercepting asteroids for research. What a wonderful way to inspire our children.
...Stu
I'm in Ontario and would love to buy from your parents. Link or corporate name?
what is the only point of reference for a technology that starts off crazy expensive and then gets cheap enough for consumers?
"Only point"? No. You're using one right now! Computers. Also, Cars, boats, CDs, desktop publishing, radio broadcasting (ignoring that it's illegal), cell phones... I'm pretty sure the list is quite large.
Hmm. I wonder if I wrote an app that was nothing BUT progress bar, if people would go for it.
Yes, yes they will: http://progressquest.com/
I have previously been responsible for my employer's GPL compliance.
Others have posted the link the explanation for the offer of source code, please read that. It turns out your understanding is wrong.
Switching to distributing the source code with the binary will make your *future distributions* compliant; very good and well done.
What it **will not do** is make your *past distributions* compliant. There is only one way to make your *past distributions* compliant and that is to honour source code requests *from anyone*, for the source code for those previous distributions.
I honestly do not know anyone who uses a Bluetooth headset regularly. I only make a handful of calls a day, lasting 3-4 minutes at most, so a Bluetooth headset would just be more trouble than it's worth.
http://www.lg.com/us/cell-phone-accessories/lg-HBS700-tone FTW!
Mostly I use it to listen to music without having to be tethered to my music device.
By way of example: Our friends at Amazon have a bit over half a million products listed in their DVD section. They manage to make, in most cases, hunting by title, hunting by genre, hunting by 'other people like', hunting by 'people who like stuff I like liked', and any number of other parameters pretty trivial. The checkout process isn't exactly rocket surgery either.
Yeah, I'm not sure what's wrong with Netflix Canada. Maybe it's the fact that I use the Wii client? But the website sucks in exactly the same way... I can search by predefined categories like by genres, 'Netflix thinks I'd like this' which is usually wrong, by 'Recently Added' which is only updated once a month or less, 'New Releases' which is sort of okay but not updated very often, 'Popular on Facebook' wtf?, and 'these are like something you just watched' which is only partly useful since the client/website has no way to distinguish between me, the wife and each of the kids, none of us whom have the same preferences. And ALL of these continue to shows things we've already watched, so they are practically and effectively useless.
I can also search by title text (not quite regex but not keyword either, but only gives me the first 16 or so results).
What I want: to be able to search by title text (with keyword, free form and regex modes), rating classification, year of release, actor, producer, etc, and to be able to do all of them simultaneously. To be able to turn on or off the display of already watched items.
What I'd really like to see is this: every item has a link to IMDB, which links back to Netflix. So this could occur: I've just watched Prometheus in the theater and I know Michael Fassbender looks familiar. My buddy mentions yeah, he was in X-Men. When I get home I pull up X-Men: First Class on Netflix and rewatch his performance as Magneto. Then I use the IMDB link to bring up IMDB's page for First Class, scroll down, click Fassbender, scroll throug his movies, see that Fish Tank is available on Netflix, click and stream. This is totally achievable. Hook it up Netflix!
Also, I'd like to be able to rate something 0 stars. The current interface makes you choose between rating at least 1 star and non-rating. Since I use ratings to keep track of things I've watched, 0 stars needs to be an option.
Also, get on that content horse. I'm >< this close to paying for a VPN to get US Netflix, which is money that could instead go into Netflix's pockets.
... Okay, got off on a tangent there. Sorry.
Wait a minute. You can't do that. You need the internet service and the cable/DSL modem and a computer and all the other things before you can get HBOGo, so you're going to pay the other $50 (if that's what that stuff costs you) too. Just like the guy who wants HBO plus 2 for $15 ... it really costs a lot more, and $15 isn't going to cover the fixed costs of the system, much less the programming he wants.
The parent poster wants to get HBO somehow.
On one hand, they could pay a fee to get cable, which they don't already have and don't want and once subscribed can't use for any other purpose but to get HBO, then pay a fee to get HBO over cable.
On the other hand, they could pay a fee to get HBO over internet, which they already have and pay for and use to do many other fruitful activities.
So yes, comparing the full cost of cable+HBO vs the incremental cost of HBO over internet is in fact valid and the actual economic question that exists in real life for many people, myself included. Saying "You can't do that" is laughable at best, at worst makes you a cable company shill/troll.
1) If you have cataracts, corneal irritation, or smudged glasses, bright objects against a dark background are MUCH harder to resolve than dark images against a white background. With black-on-white, you just get reduced contrast; with white-on-black, you get distracting smears and rays all over the page.
I can't comment on the eye conditions, but maybe clean your glasses? That works for my glasses anyway.
2) In a dim room, your pupils dilate more if the scene before you is mostly dark, and dilated pupils generally produce poorer acuity. A bright background causes your pupils to contract, and just like stopping down a cheap camera lens, it improves the focus of the image hitting your retina.
In 2 decades of BoW vs WoB debates, this is the first reasonable argument I've heard for BoW. OTOH, if using WoB causes you eye not to be able to focus, you need to get to an optometrist.
3) In a bright room, a mostly-dark display will be more obscured by reflections and glare.
I've never had a problem with glare/reflections except when in direct sunlight, which hurts both BoW and WoB equally. Also, when I've had a hard-walled office I keep the lights off. More earth-friendly, cooler, and nicer to work in.
We used to have Sybase, but not much of that company exists today. Then we had Silicon Graphics, and not much of that company exists today. Then we had Borland that went away with all of its products. How about Eudora? The list goes on...
Sybase did (are they still around?)
Rumours of Sybase's not-much-edness have been greatly exaggerated. Several of my friends work for Sybase. They're just fine.
Dammit. Spoke too soon. See the Teksavvy news post elsethread.
This. I really wish they would split it up... one company is responsible for the last mile, and that's all they do. Just the physical medium. It can be municipally owned, whatever.
Then let whoever wants in hook up at the central office. That way we'd get some real competition, which just isn't happening here. Too much conflict of interest when the line owners are also the service providers.
Seconded. It's the only sane decision. C'mon CRTC, make 2011 the year you do 2 Right Things(tm).
In any given area, there's one company that owns the phone lines (say, Bell) and one other company that owns the cable lines (say, Rogers). That's it. Any Internet access you can get runs over their last mile lines or is horribly expensive and/or slow (satellite, wireless).
Generally true, but there are (rare) exceptions:
I live north of Kingston, and a CLEC just buried conduit from the pole in my front yard to the back of my house.... to go with the fiber that they strung on that pole last summer. I should have fiber internet Real Soon Now.
Thank God not all the small telcos were bought by Bell. These guys bought a mom-n-pop ISP and expanded instead.
Please post the name of the CLEC so others may also benefit.
Relatively few people buy a car with fuel efficiency as their primary concern. That might change if gasoline were suddenly $7/gallon but that simply is not going to happen.
Not going to happen? I did some BOE calculations. In the past 14 years the price of gas has risen at an annual rate of 7%, roughly. Google tells me the average price of gas in Detroit is $3.36/gallon today. At 7% inflation, $7/gallon is 2022, just over a decade from now.
Well, I suppose it is possible that we could run out of oil before then.
You're trying to find someone who will work for free to maintain a piece of software with dubious usefulness just because you like it.
You got 2 options:
1. Learn to program it and maintain it yourself.
2. Pay someone to do it for you.
I'll take this opportunity to point out that, if this had been a piece of commercial software where the corporation behind it was gone, your options would be:
1.
2.
This is the power of OSS. You still have options when things don't go the way you'd hoped.
ClassicShell to the rescue.
Also, 7 Taskbar Tweaker.
For instance, in scrabble, using the X (8) points on a triple letter score (played in both directions) will net a minimum base score of 52 points. An example of this would be a combination of AX, XU, AT.
<pedant>50 points.</pedant>
There is literally nothing in most parts of rural Ontario that exceed 3mbps down / 1mbps up, and with unlimited (or at least, overage charges that won't make you go broke) caps.
True, but in some parts of rural Ontario, you get Fibre to the Home.
Viva la Wightman! (And please bring FTTH to KW.)
The naivety of this is amazing. When the mafia burning down someone's shop, it is not because they are trying to recup [sic] any losses, but rather to send a "Don't mess with us" message to OTHER shop owners.
The naivety of this is amazing. When the mafia send a message to OTHER shop owners, there are a limited number of them, they're all nearby, and can't easily relocate.
There are a lot of hackers & crackers
This is the same tactic with the RIAA against filesharers (but there are simply too many to fight against),
(emphasis mine), they're distributed across the globe, and servers/data can be easily be moved.
...Stu
Students graduating from the University of Waterloo's Math Faculty are invited to make one or more graduating pledges to support U(W). One of those pledges is the Dean's Prime Number Club, which confers upon you your very own Prime Number.
As others have noted, the binary sequence is a palindrome prime number in base 2. David Johnston is U(W)'s out-going President. It's likely that the Math Dean's Office has awarded him his very own Prime Number as an honorific (or for completing the pledge!) and he has chosen to incorporate it into his personal Coat of Arms.
I am unable to find the Prime Number registry online or in fact any mention of it at all, U(W) web pages about pledges aside. Digging out my old papers I see that the letter awarding one's Prime Number merely says "Here it is in the box at the bottom. Congratulations!" Perhaps the Dean's Office will confirm tomorrow.
...Stu, hopefully not the only member of the Dean's Prime Number Club reading Slashdot...
However, having had many protracted discussions with friends of mine who are teachers, I've found out that in many districts the principals identify the best teachers in the school themselves and assign the worst students to them. The "sampling" of sorts is most likely very unrandom and biased.
I'm certain this isn't captured in these test scores or being adjusted for. This would be difficult if not impossible to tease out but might be by looking for the expected patterns, i.e. a student's poor performance is less than it was with a previous teacher.
If you had RTFA you would have known that this is accounted for. The metric looks at a student's relative performance. A bad student, given an average teacher, will do just as poorly at the end of the year as at the start. Ditto for a good student, an average student, a corpse, a bird, a principal.
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/RapidsCCM/warning.asp?page=internetEng.htm&lang=E
...is a companion-like device (360 degree recording out to a distance of tens of feet), and the backing alibi archive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_Parallax#Government_and_justice
...Stu