I just expect the viewer to be under active scrutinty, including an electro-encephalogram proving they're not aroused at all: let's make the police afraid of their own weapons instead of whinning about the antiterrorism: we know they won't stop it.
So, look good naked and scan every scanner operator's brain waves.
that's lame. instead, put up a display so that everybody passing through the scanner can see the viewer through the exactly same scanner !
To which the answer is "have deep snow and persistent below-freezing temperatures every winter, so that you can justify the expense of maintaining the infrastructure and experience to deal with it".
i'm not sure about that. first, it might be hard to find a suggestion to drop fertilizer on roads. second, even countries with snow coming every winter have problems with it (well, at least ours does...), so there are lessons to learn on how to cope with it anyway. a few years ago (economic boom nshit) there were lots and lots of complaints about roads not being clean and dry during winters. that's below zero and snowing. authorities responded by oversalting the shit out of everything and (better) sending out snowploughs all the time. come crisis, and for the better part of the winter there are no complaints about it anymore. it's way below zero, roads are MUCH worse than before (some had ~ 40cm "wall" between opposing lanes for some time), but somehow people cope with it. one might even say - take more responsibility. despite of the worsening economic situation (not everybody getting new winter tires), i personally observed way less cars going off the road this winter (completely anecdotal experience from using countries busiest highway every day).
so, instead of oversalting or dropping contaminating shit on roads i'd expect a message like "it's fucking winter and we haven't seen one in 20 years. DEAL WITH IT. be responsible and reasonable."
searching. not as in search engine capabilities, but in my capabilities to determine - wtf. one would get too many results on nearly any name/surname search to be useful - people share these traits a _lot_.
I know one Very Large company that just upgraded its internal users from IE4 to IE6.
ergh. could you name the company ? as an ac, if required. just so that... you know... i could avoid their products as much as possible. "serious mismanagement" doesn't even sound right for that decision.
still, "extreme cold" in summary just sounds braindead.
as for decisions on salting and such, is ireland somehow isolated ? no internet, no traveling chances ? could have tried asking countries a bit to the east how to deal with snow...
anyway, salting is a very bad thing anyway. it does serious damage to plants/trees, cars, boots and probably doesn't improve water, as in this case. additionally, it indeed only works for a few degrees below zero, thus resulting in complete ice as soon as temperatures drop below some -10 or so.
ps. ok, travel shouldn't be obstructed - probably half of our population has emigrated to ireland anyway;>
ps. interesting thing - first hit for me results in "page not found" on cnet... ("An interview with the misguided RIAA"). actually, an interview with the snake lady mentioned in the summary is available in the google cache.
also love one of the image hits, displayed right on the search results page;)
you can. and it actually is easy. and it works in many countries all over the world already.
1. have a point system for more severe things. for example, passing a red light three times usually gets you past the threshold (you would also get rid of greedy companies operating cameras at red lights, but i'd call that a bonus);
2. make the point system count down - it supposedly is proved that such an approach is psychologically much more efficient (so if your limit is 20, it's not as threatening when you are at 15. if you have a credit of 20, 5 looks much worse);
3. make driving without licence a serious offense. lump of cash at first, then move upwards. i'd suggest jail time after 2nd or 3rd time, but not for usa... you already are pushing too many people for minor offenses in commercial prison system. bigger and bigger lumps of cash, followed by confiscating the car used might work.
4. done. that woman would have serious problems by now. depending on seriousness of offense, fine tune points. use common sense. for example, here driver can get "bonus" points for passengers that have not fastened their seatbelts. helps to convince some.
5. problems with the system - badly chosen points, corrupt officials assigning them, corrupt officials taking bribes to reduce them. probably more, but all seem solvable.
there. over here majority of cars have manual shifts. try holding your phone _and_ making a sharp turn. hint - you have to switch gears at least twice.
as an additional bonus, you get shitload of people failing driving exams -> less of them on streets, more work for training them and for the examiners - woohoo.
Maybe someday there will be some sort of widely deployed fully automated transportation. It won't look much like cars on roads though.
that's too easy. public transportation ! sucking more or less in various places across europe, nearly non-existent in usa. while many forms still require a driver, those drivers usually are way more skilled, and are more easily converted in automatic lines (some undergrounds and trams operate like that already).
usa-ians usually invoke distances as an argument against public transportation, but that's not working in big cities - if small towns in europe can have some sort of public transportation, surely it would work excellent in new york. no, taxis don't count as public transportation:)
what i'd like to see, some calculations for an average sized city of today, how much money would be required to make public transportation fully subsidised. americans would probably jump up and start screaming at this point, but it would be interesting to compare costs of implementing and maintaining fare gathering system, time spent by residents to use it, time spent by tourists... i'd certainly move a location up in my "want to visit" list if it had such a thing:)
egad. can we please expose, bring out and torture people who delete (or propose for deletion) such pages ? the power of wikipedia is finding all kinds of pretty obscure information, neatly laid out and described. if it's not, i sometimes fix a thing here or there myself. notability requirements are required, we wouldn't want an article on every person ever lived, but that's the opposite extreme.
i don't know. it still has the coolness factor. if my skills would match (which i don't know), if i was eligible (which i am not), i actually... would consider this. maybe for a short period, but it might be an interesting experience, whether mostly good or mostly bad.
oh MY. that is so true. when people discuss computer software usability issues, they somehow forget about lots of other software that... just sucks.
my gf has a bmw, a recent model. it has electronic dasboard. so far so good. then, some day, she gets a warning on there. by description, it looks like two parenthesis connected by a squirly thing at one end and a question mark in the middle. now that's a SERIOUS wtf. so she calls a relative with good automobile knowledge, who by description decides it's a sensor for handbrake/brake problem. now that's important... except that the icons turns out to represent a fucking tire pressure. instead of showing brake pads and a spring, it shows round tire walls and the tire surface.
hint, bmw developrs : that is NOT intuitive. it's crap for intuitivity.
now, the display itself is electronic. it could change from the icon to some text - whatever language, english would do, saying "tire pressure" - and actually it has enough place to show the icon and the text in smaller font at the same time.
also, if the dashboard decides there's some problem - like gasoline levels dropping below you being able to go for 100 km or so, it just shows a large icon where common everyday info is. as a result it means you have to fiddle with the controls on the light switch if you want to see some information like the temperature while having smaller amount of the gasoline. now that is surely not improving safety - instead it could flash the error icon every now and then so that user - driver - is not distracted from the road that much.
it seems like engineers in other industries are allowed to create really crap usability products, while general computer software industry gets the heat. of course, that might be a good thing overall and lead to better software:)
it's not just bmw, obviously. mobile phones suck big bertha usability wise, other car vendors are not any better and so on. i've decided that these people are trying hard, but just suck at making things really usable.
i did a brief research on the same topic some time ago. i seem to recall (and i'm lazy) that their server software worked on windows only, which pretty much makes dimdim not an option.
there's a project called openmeetings that i haven't noticed mentioned here yet.
it's true opensource solution (w/o some "pay-or-else" components), more or less works, has simple group document management and "chatroom" wide blackboards (sort of, they have white backgrounds:) ).
this is the best first advice. but maybe the submitter needs some hints on possible areas:)
one thing that i find missing is a decent manpage editor. several standalone projects have died, so maybe creating one as a plugin for an existing software would be best (maybe export plugin for oo.org or so).
as submitter mentioned documentation and translating, helping out with projects that are meant for documentation writing and localisation is a decent choice - for example, i've heard that pootle web translation gui is too slow to be used for some projects, maybe improving that could be helpful. as wikis are often used for documentation, improving some aspects for those also might be an option (like allowing to branch documentation etc).
but still, submitter should keep in mind the original suggestion and start by solving whatever issues he has encountered himself.
Slashdot Mirror
to be even more pedantic, presto since opera 7. opera 6 had elektra :)
(which probably isn't affecting stats much by now...)
I just expect the viewer to be under active scrutinty, including an electro-encephalogram proving they're not aroused at all: let's make the police afraid of their own weapons instead of whinning about the antiterrorism: we know they won't stop it.
So, look good naked and scan every scanner operator's brain waves.
that's lame. instead, put up a display so that everybody passing through the scanner can see the viewer through the exactly same scanner !
To which the answer is "have deep snow and persistent below-freezing temperatures every winter, so that you can justify the expense of maintaining the infrastructure and experience to deal with it".
i'm not sure about that. first, it might be hard to find a suggestion to drop fertilizer on roads.
second, even countries with snow coming every winter have problems with it (well, at least ours does...), so there are lessons to learn on how to cope with it anyway.
a few years ago (economic boom nshit) there were lots and lots of complaints about roads not being clean and dry during winters. that's below zero and snowing. authorities responded by oversalting the shit out of everything and (better) sending out snowploughs all the time.
come crisis, and for the better part of the winter there are no complaints about it anymore. it's way below zero, roads are MUCH worse than before (some had ~ 40cm "wall" between opposing lanes for some time), but somehow people cope with it. one might even say - take more responsibility. despite of the worsening economic situation (not everybody getting new winter tires), i personally observed way less cars going off the road this winter (completely anecdotal experience from using countries busiest highway every day).
so, instead of oversalting or dropping contaminating shit on roads i'd expect a message like "it's fucking winter and we haven't seen one in 20 years. DEAL WITH IT. be responsible and reasonable."
searching. not as in search engine capabilities, but in my capabilities to determine - wtf.
one would get too many results on nearly any name/surname search to be useful - people share these traits a _lot_.
I know one Very Large company that just upgraded its internal users from IE4 to IE6.
ergh. could you name the company ? as an ac, if required. just so that... you know... i could avoid their products as much as possible.
"serious mismanagement" doesn't even sound right for that decision.
especially given that salt at -12 will just get you that - salt on top of ice. with all the added environmental damage when it gets warmer.
still, "extreme cold" in summary just sounds braindead.
as for decisions on salting and such, is ireland somehow isolated ? no internet, no traveling chances ? could have tried asking countries a bit to the east how to deal with snow...
anyway, salting is a very bad thing anyway. it does serious damage to plants/trees, cars, boots and probably doesn't improve water, as in this case. additionally, it indeed only works for a few degrees below zero, thus resulting in complete ice as soon as temperatures drop below some -10 or so.
ps. ok, travel shouldn't be obstructed - probably half of our population has emigrated to ireland anyway ;>
...and passengers of the cars (in europe, we use a car to transport more than one person at a time as well :) )
"Cara Duckworth" seems to have badly warped view of that.
maybe slashdot people should try to enlighten her.
ps. interesting thing - first hit for me results in "page not found" on cnet... ("An interview with the misguided RIAA"). actually, an interview with the snake lady mentioned in the summary is available in the google cache.
also love one of the image hits, displayed right on the search results page ;)
you can. and it actually is easy. and it works in many countries all over the world already.
1. have a point system for more severe things. for example, passing a red light three times usually gets you past the threshold (you would also get rid of greedy companies operating cameras at red lights, but i'd call that a bonus);
2. make the point system count down - it supposedly is proved that such an approach is psychologically much more efficient (so if your limit is 20, it's not as threatening when you are at 15. if you have a credit of 20, 5 looks much worse);
3. make driving without licence a serious offense. lump of cash at first, then move upwards. i'd suggest jail time after 2nd or 3rd time, but not for usa... you already are pushing too many people for minor offenses in commercial prison system. bigger and bigger lumps of cash, followed by confiscating the car used might work.
4. done. that woman would have serious problems by now.
depending on seriousness of offense, fine tune points. use common sense. for example, here driver can get "bonus" points for passengers that have not fastened their seatbelts. helps to convince some.
5. problems with the system - badly chosen points, corrupt officials assigning them, corrupt officials taking bribes to reduce them. probably more, but all seem solvable.
hey. i know a solution. it just dawned on me.
tadaaaaa.... (suspension building tone)...
BAN AUTOMATIC GEARBOXES.
there. over here majority of cars have manual shifts. try holding your phone _and_ making a sharp turn. hint - you have to switch gears at least twice.
as an additional bonus, you get shitload of people failing driving exams -> less of them on streets, more work for training them and for the examiners - woohoo.
Maybe someday there will be some sort of widely deployed fully automated transportation. It won't look much like cars on roads though.
that's too easy. public transportation !
sucking more or less in various places across europe, nearly non-existent in usa. while many forms still require a driver, those drivers usually are way more skilled, and are more easily converted in automatic lines (some undergrounds and trams operate like that already).
usa-ians usually invoke distances as an argument against public transportation, but that's not working in big cities - if small towns in europe can have some sort of public transportation, surely it would work excellent in new york. no, taxis don't count as public transportation :)
what i'd like to see, some calculations for an average sized city of today, how much money would be required to make public transportation fully subsidised. americans would probably jump up and start screaming at this point, but it would be interesting to compare costs of implementing and maintaining fare gathering system, time spent by residents to use it, time spent by tourists... :)
i'd certainly move a location up in my "want to visit" list if it had such a thing
egad. can we please expose, bring out and torture people who delete (or propose for deletion) such pages ?
the power of wikipedia is finding all kinds of pretty obscure information, neatly laid out and described. if it's not, i sometimes fix a thing here or there myself.
notability requirements are required, we wouldn't want an article on every person ever lived, but that's the opposite extreme.
can you run wine for windows in it ?
the button to start the test is an image without alt text or other controls.
eff, please make the site usable without loading images.
thanks.
signed : gprs and other crappy internet connection users worldwide.
i don't know. it still has the coolness factor.
if my skills would match (which i don't know), if i was eligible (which i am not), i actually... would consider this. maybe for a short period, but it might be an interesting experience, whether mostly good or mostly bad.
that was my thought exactly - we had -31 a couple of days ago. probably somebody from... souther europe submitted this :)
anyway, that seems awfully suspicious, so i suspect "average of -30" might mean that for some periods of time it actually drops way, way below that.
of course, obligatory userfriendly reference (this and next comics) : http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20040827
oh MY. that is so true. when people discuss computer software usability issues, they somehow forget about lots of other software that... just sucks.
my gf has a bmw, a recent model. it has electronic dasboard. so far so good. then, some day, she gets a warning on there. by description, it looks like two parenthesis connected by a squirly thing at one end and a question mark in the middle. now that's a SERIOUS wtf. so she calls a relative with good automobile knowledge, who by description decides it's a sensor for handbrake/brake problem. now that's important... except that the icons turns out to represent a fucking tire pressure. instead of showing brake pads and a spring, it shows round tire walls and the tire surface.
hint, bmw developrs : that is NOT intuitive. it's crap for intuitivity.
now, the display itself is electronic. it could change from the icon to some text - whatever language, english would do, saying "tire pressure" - and actually it has enough place to show the icon and the text in smaller font at the same time.
also, if the dashboard decides there's some problem - like gasoline levels dropping below you being able to go for 100 km or so, it just shows a large icon where common everyday info is. as a result it means you have to fiddle with the controls on the light switch if you want to see some information like the temperature while having smaller amount of the gasoline. now that is surely not improving safety - instead it could flash the error icon every now and then so that user - driver - is not distracted from the road that much.
it seems like engineers in other industries are allowed to create really crap usability products, while general computer software industry gets the heat. of course, that might be a good thing overall and lead to better software :)
it's not just bmw, obviously. mobile phones suck big bertha usability wise, other car vendors are not any better and so on. i've decided that these people are trying hard, but just suck at making things really usable.
openmeetings is based on red5, as far as i could tell by setting it up - maybe that's useful to you
i did a brief research on the same topic some time ago. i seem to recall (and i'm lazy) that their server software worked on windows only, which pretty much makes dimdim not an option.
there's a project called openmeetings that i haven't noticed mentioned here yet.
it's true opensource solution (w/o some "pay-or-else" components), more or less works, has simple group document management and "chatroom" wide blackboards (sort of, they have white backgrounds :) ).
the problem - client frontend is flash based.
maybe eu approved the deal because they got annoyed by monty
this is the best first advice. but maybe the submitter needs some hints on possible areas :)
one thing that i find missing is a decent manpage editor. several standalone projects have died, so maybe creating one as a plugin for an existing software would be best (maybe export plugin for oo.org or so).
as submitter mentioned documentation and translating, helping out with projects that are meant for documentation writing and localisation is a decent choice - for example, i've heard that pootle web translation gui is too slow to be used for some projects, maybe improving that could be helpful.
as wikis are often used for documentation, improving some aspects for those also might be an option (like allowing to branch documentation etc).
but still, submitter should keep in mind the original suggestion and start by solving whatever issues he has encountered himself.
opera has a surprisingly large market share on various embedded devices (as you mentioned) and in included on very large share of mobile devices.
what i found funny in the summary - "past two years have seen Microsoft, Apple, and Opera close the features gap significantly".
if anything, firefox has mighe have been closing the feature gap with opera, which had absolute majority of the features first.
disclaimer - opera user for many years here.
exactly. how do you even "manage" images with gimp ?
one of the best choices seems to be digikam - especially with the gallery export
it's late... and i'm tired... but i really missed the space before "it" when reading this the first time.