Kinda makes you wonder, though, how much cool stuff could be produced if all the geeks in the other companies were allowed to do side-projects that get released. Too often managers look at geek projects and think "Why are you wasting company time/resources on this?" instead of trying to leverage it for their company.
Microsoft Research sounds like they have some smart people, but very little of it seems to actually get out to the public...
Too bad other companies have dismantled their R&D arms completely as "cost cutting".
As a collorary, do you feel flattered or annoyed that some OSS desktops seem to be trying to emulate the Windows 'look', down to the themes and widgets?
Do you feel that they actually impove on the Windows GUI with things like virtual desktops, or are they just a poor copy of the original?
Don't forget to run all example code with the '79 MIX machine - it just wouldn't do to use something as lowbrow as (gasp) an emulator to run Dr. Knuth's heavenly code. It has to be a '79, of course - I swear, they stopped making real computers after '79. They just don't make 'em like they used to.
And afterwards, a relaxing steam bath powered by the Pentium-4 watercooling kit, and a organic avocado facial to let the pure ephemeral brilliance of Dr. Knuth's equasions sink in.
The PATRIOT act passed because a majority in the House and Senate thought it was a good idea, and the President agreed.
You say that as if that means it's a good idea. The Tonkin Gulf resolution passed with what, two dissenters? And the declaration of war in WWI passed with only one dissenter. Not to mention all the downright unconstitutional laws that passed the same hurdles.
The fact is, on issues of knee-jerk nationalism politicians are actually *worse* than the average citizen, because they're afraid that the ones who are really nationalist and reactionary will rally against them, wheras more reasonable voters tend not to go after politicians for being too nationalistic.
Even if doing the 'patriotic' thing will actually *hurt* the country, they'll do it to look like they're all for mom and apple pie.
I think he was implying that law enforcement protection was lax in that area - neither National Guard nor Coast Guard patrols the beaches for crime. I doubt he was saying terrorists were going to make a beach landing invasion on the Oregon coast. I do recall hearing of some murders on the coast every now and then, though it didn't seem like a dangerous area.
Whether it's true or not, the implied connection to the war was that money and personnel were being funneled away from regular law enforcement to the military because of the war in Iraq.
Your arguments are bull - notebooks are not user-servicable, period. Except for upgrading RAM (which is possible on Apples), you're supposed to send it in to the shop for any upgrades/repairs.
And what are you going to do when your Cappuccino PC or other ultra-mini PC breaks? Those are typically made with proprietary components that are not user-servicable or replacable, and the Mac is not at a disadvantage there. Do you know if Shuttle or Cappuccino has support on the level of Apple? Because you sure as hell aren't going to fix it yourself.
Face it, your arguments are just "Wah, I'm afraid of anything new and shiny" - I'm not even a Mac usre, and I find your attitude distasteful. Linux would not have gotten anywhere if everyone had the attitude of "I'm not familiar with it, so I'll avoid it".
When my wife asks for the 'cute little Mac', what PC can I buy instead that will take...
How about, "When your wife asks for something, get her what she asked for"? I hope you like sleeping with the dog, 'cuase you ain't getting any action tonight. "Look honey! I made a cubic Zirconium in my garage that's just as good as that diamond you asked for!"
Speak for yourself, man - I converted to Linux for the chicks.
I mean, now that I hang out with HOTPLUG - Hot, Oversexed, Tanned, Pretty Linux User's Group - I have my hands completely full with hordes of cute geek chicks who can't wait to help me emerge my Gentoo and have all-night hacking session sleepovers:)
Why is it that my personal value as a human being is always tied 100% to the status of my server. Since last week the box has been cranky (a blown power supply, resulted in the harddrive being happily moved to a machine with 128 megs less RAM, which means the whole thing is just sluggish as hell today. And suddenly I feel like shit. I feel tired unhealthy, and burnt out. A few weeks ago, I was on top of the world: the machine was stable, kicking out 640,000 pages in one day, and performing snappy for everyone. And I was cheerful. Its really strange that a chunk of steel and silicon 3 time zones away defines my mood.
The airline lost my luggage... it contained 4 pairs of boxers.
So ya know that annoying ad with the damn taco bell dog and the cops that keep saying 'Drop the Chalupa' over and over again? I hate that ad.
Good gawd... Taco can put most teenage girls to shame when it comes to lame personal details publicized.
Don't worry, you'll get a Sealab in 2021 - and a Sea Quest in 2018! You'll have talking dolphins and shit, plus cray adventures involving space aliens that live underwater!
On second thought, I'd rather have the helicopter.
That site was alternately hilarious and terrifiying. I can't believe people put ideas like that into kids' minds. It was so bizzare that I thought it was a parody site at first, but it appears to be legit.
'"Pokemon Prove Evolutionism Is False" - Paul Sanborn (grade 4)' is funny, but what the hell is up with '"Dinosaur & Man Walked Together" - Donny Findlay (grade 6)' ??? How can parents teach kids this stuff in good conscience? Stuff like this makes me wonder about the future of this country - obviously there are fundamentalists in every country, but the ones in America seem the most organized and well-funded, at least in the developed world.
Oh, and check out the page on their crusade against Landover Baptist, a parody site:
"The Internet was created by the United States of America - a Christian nation [ref. 1, 2, 3] - and should not be used to spread anti-Christian, secular, or non-Christian propaganda and hatespeech. This is our Internet, and we should exercise our position as its owners and as the guardians of civilization to stop its misuse."... "For this blasphemous atrocity, the Landover Baptist website must be removed from our Internet."
Later on the page:
"Their modus operandi is simple: post articles that take good Christian values and twist them - beyond recognition - such that they look arrogant, hateful, or just idiotic."
Right, there's no way real christians can sound arrogant or idiotic! I didn't particularly like Landover because their parody is designed to confuse people, but this response is so over the top it's hilarious.
Okay, I think some people may not have understood what I was talking about originally. Imagine yourself writing a counter program in English, and all the special exceptions you would need to use to get the suffix right, not to mention the spelling.
..."One" is "ichi", and "day" is "hi", so we put them together and get "tsuitachi". Then for the second, "two" is "ni", so we put that together with "hi" and naturally that produces "futsuka"...
... And you missed the point. I may have confused you because of my second complaint, which was different than my first. The problem you point out is that if you were to pronounce them it would be pretty wierd because Japanese has more than one pronounciation of each number. However, if you were coding up a program to write them out, you wouldn't need to worry about it, as you would just write the kanji. I've never seen them written out phonetically, because you just need to write the character for the number, then the character for 'day'. The problems I pointed out in English would appear no matter what, because you *have* to write it out like that for it to be correct in English.
Er, what did you think "fourteen" was, other than "four-ten"?
If "fourteen" = 14, then does "fourtwenty" = 24? Why do the teens ave diffent syntax from twenties and thirties? It should be ten-four, not fourteen.
Again, imagine yourself writing a program that needs to output a number as text. In English, you need to write special exceptions for the teens when spelling them out, and special exceptions for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of each set of ten, except for the teens. That is if you can even change the suffixes - many times, I will just see "(number)th" written, so it ouputs stuff like "23th" or "2th".
How about all the 'bugs' in the English language itself? For example, the counting system. There are often occasions where you have to code up incremental counters, and the effort to make them grammatically correct in English is such a chore most people never bother.
When you're counting something, for example days, you need to put a suffix on the number like '1st, 2nd, 3rd'. Suffixes by itself wouldn't be so bad, but the way it's determined is quite wierd. It goes 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, then from 4th to 20th it's all 'th', but then becomes 21st, 22nd, 23rd, and the same for the 30s, 40s, and so on even tough the teens were all 'th'. In Japanese, you write it without suffixes, and even without plural forms, making it much easier to code incremental counts.
And what about the teens themselves, anyway? Why don't you just write it as ten-one, ten-two, ten-three, like you do for twenties and beyond? That's how it's done for Japanese, and I find it much simpler. I know German also has the concept of 'teens', does anyone know why they're treated differently in western languages?
Whatever happened to old summer camp standbys like throwing a blanket party for annoying counselors, setting fire to the outhouse, and sneaking vodka into canteens?
Summer camp is supposed to be about having fun the old-fashioned way, none of this techo-nonsense.
Re:What about the studly men!?
on
Getting the Girl
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Jesus, this topic is filled with so many misconceptions of what women find attractive that I feel the need to interject. (disclaimer: I am a guy, but I tend to pay attention to what women want more than to the latest kernel release, unlike most slashdoters)
You know what videogame character I've heard women I know be attracted to the most? It's goddamn Link, from the Zelda series. Not some steroid-abusing freak from Serious Sam or Duke Nukem, but the cute little dude with elf ears. The Final Fantasy guys are popular with girls, too.
The muscle-bound tough guy is more of an asperation for guys than an attraction for girls, though girls like that to a certain extent. Girls tend to like the more realistic, cuter guys who have an personality than one-liners about kicking ass.
Simple question: have you ever seen Arnie or Stallone on the poster for some chick flick? No, it's always some relatively wimpy-looking guy like Cusack or Cruise. So stop pretending that Nukem & pals are trying to attract women - they're clearly not.
As a side note, Nintendo seems to be doing a much better job of attracting women than other companies. The girls that I knew in high school who played lots of video games always seemed to be talking about Nintendo games like Pokemon, Mario, Donkey Kong, Kirby, etc.
No, but companies go, "I think this bestselling console will be the one we develop for", and that leads to more games being released for that one, and the others getting left out.
Same goes for any platform that software runs on, really - Linux, Windows, Java,.Net, x86, Itanium, etc. We could debate the techinical merits of each all day, but the market tends to develop for the one with the biggest marketshare.
I do love Nintendo, but I will be selling my Gamecube to a friend - all the games I want are on GBA, not GC.
Well, DUH Apple isn't god.... Steve Jobs is god. Haven't you read the scriptures, sonny?
You'd better start repentin', 'cause Steve is a wrathful and vengeful god, and he hears all the slanders against his followers on the internet through his mystical iGod powers.
In all seriousness, the people complaining about how LCDs don't stack up stats-wise compared to CRTs are missing the point. They're both good enough.
It's just like how the iPod is the 'hot' consumer electronics this year, and part of a whole category of products (MP3 players) that play lossy, compressed audio (yes, I know they can play lossless audio, too). Their whole point is that they sacrifice audio quality for convienience.
At some point, the output quality became good enough that most people were unable to distinguish between audio formats based on quality alone, and convienience and design became the selling point. Already happened with audio, now it's happening with video.
This is partly why I think the entertainment industry is going to have a hard time displacing CD, DVD, and MP3 with more DRM-restricted formats - people just can't get much more out of media quality wise, now it's all going to be about convienience.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, cause Americans are so tolerant of "thought crimes" like making CDs and DVDs, and using computers to spread "Anti-coalition propaganda".
One man's "free speech" is another's "propaganda", I guess...
Kinda makes you wonder, though, how much cool stuff could be produced if all the geeks in the other companies were allowed to do side-projects that get released. Too often managers look at geek projects and think "Why are you wasting company time/resources on this?" instead of trying to leverage it for their company.
Microsoft Research sounds like they have some smart people, but very little of it seems to actually get out to the public...
Too bad other companies have dismantled their R&D arms completely as "cost cutting".
I nominate the one on the far right. I mean, I *wish* all UNIX geeks looked like that : )
As a collorary, do you feel flattered or annoyed that some OSS desktops seem to be trying to emulate the Windows 'look', down to the themes and widgets?
Do you feel that they actually impove on the Windows GUI with things like virtual desktops, or are they just a poor copy of the original?
Don't forget to run all example code with the '79 MIX machine - it just wouldn't do to use something as lowbrow as (gasp) an emulator to run Dr. Knuth's heavenly code. It has to be a '79, of course - I swear, they stopped making real computers after '79. They just don't make 'em like they used to.
And afterwards, a relaxing steam bath powered by the Pentium-4 watercooling kit, and a organic avocado facial to let the pure ephemeral brilliance of Dr. Knuth's equasions sink in.
Careful now, threatening the President is liable to get you a visit from the Feds... You don't want to go to Gitmo, now do you?
The PATRIOT act passed because a majority in the House and Senate thought it was a good idea, and the President agreed.
You say that as if that means it's a good idea. The Tonkin Gulf resolution passed with what, two dissenters? And the declaration of war in WWI passed with only one dissenter. Not to mention all the downright unconstitutional laws that passed the same hurdles.
The fact is, on issues of knee-jerk nationalism politicians are actually *worse* than the average citizen, because they're afraid that the ones who are really nationalist and reactionary will rally against them, wheras more reasonable voters tend not to go after politicians for being too nationalistic.
Even if doing the 'patriotic' thing will actually *hurt* the country, they'll do it to look like they're all for mom and apple pie.
I think he was implying that law enforcement protection was lax in that area - neither National Guard nor Coast Guard patrols the beaches for crime. I doubt he was saying terrorists were going to make a beach landing invasion on the Oregon coast. I do recall hearing of some murders on the coast every now and then, though it didn't seem like a dangerous area.
Whether it's true or not, the implied connection to the war was that money and personnel were being funneled away from regular law enforcement to the military because of the war in Iraq.
Your arguments are bull - notebooks are not user-servicable, period. Except for upgrading RAM (which is possible on Apples), you're supposed to send it in to the shop for any upgrades/repairs.
And what are you going to do when your Cappuccino PC or other ultra-mini PC breaks? Those are typically made with proprietary components that are not user-servicable or replacable, and the Mac is not at a disadvantage there. Do you know if Shuttle or Cappuccino has support on the level of Apple? Because you sure as hell aren't going to fix it yourself.
Face it, your arguments are just "Wah, I'm afraid of anything new and shiny" - I'm not even a Mac usre, and I find your attitude distasteful. Linux would not have gotten anywhere if everyone had the attitude of "I'm not familiar with it, so I'll avoid it".
When my wife asks for the 'cute little Mac', what PC can I buy instead that will take...
How about, "When your wife asks for something, get her what she asked for"? I hope you like sleeping with the dog, 'cuase you ain't getting any action tonight. "Look honey! I made a cubic Zirconium in my garage that's just as good as that diamond you asked for!"
Speak for yourself, man - I converted to Linux for the chicks.
:)
I mean, now that I hang out with HOTPLUG - Hot, Oversexed, Tanned, Pretty Linux User's Group - I have my hands completely full with hordes of cute geek chicks who can't wait to help me emerge my Gentoo and have all-night hacking session sleepovers
No, that should be, GET A LIFE - LOSER!
Now excuse me while I wait in line for my tickets to Star Trek: The Search For More Profits.
Cut the poor bastards some slack, at least they have the excuse of "teen hormones".
Nothing, on the other hand, can excuse Taco's lame blog:
Why is it that my personal value as a human being is always tied 100% to the status of my server. Since last week the box has been cranky (a blown power supply, resulted in the harddrive being happily moved to a machine with 128 megs less RAM, which means the whole thing is just sluggish as hell today. And suddenly I feel like shit. I feel tired unhealthy, and burnt out. A few weeks ago, I was on top of the world: the machine was stable, kicking out 640,000 pages in one day, and performing snappy for everyone. And I was cheerful. Its really strange that a chunk of steel and silicon 3 time zones away defines my mood.
The airline lost my luggage... it contained 4 pairs of boxers.
So ya know that annoying ad with the damn taco bell dog and the cops that keep saying 'Drop the Chalupa' over and over again? I hate that ad.
Good gawd... Taco can put most teenage girls to shame when it comes to lame personal details publicized.
Don't worry, you'll get a Sealab in 2021 - and a Sea Quest in 2018! You'll have talking dolphins and shit, plus cray adventures involving space aliens that live underwater!
On second thought, I'd rather have the helicopter.
Oh... My.... Gawd....
... "For this blasphemous atrocity, the Landover Baptist website must be removed from our Internet."
That site was alternately hilarious and terrifiying. I can't believe people put ideas like that into kids' minds. It was so bizzare that I thought it was a parody site at first, but it appears to be legit.
'"Pokemon Prove Evolutionism Is False" - Paul Sanborn (grade 4)' is funny, but what the hell is up with '"Dinosaur & Man Walked Together" - Donny Findlay (grade 6)' ??? How can parents teach kids this stuff in good conscience? Stuff like this makes me wonder about the future of this country - obviously there are fundamentalists in every country, but the ones in America seem the most organized and well-funded, at least in the developed world.
Oh, and check out the page on their crusade against Landover Baptist, a parody site:
"The Internet was created by the United States of America - a Christian nation [ref. 1, 2, 3] - and should not be used to spread anti-Christian, secular, or non-Christian propaganda and hatespeech. This is our Internet, and we should exercise our position as its owners and as the guardians of civilization to stop its misuse."
Later on the page:
"Their modus operandi is simple: post articles that take good Christian values and twist them - beyond recognition - such that they look arrogant, hateful, or just idiotic."
Right, there's no way real christians can sound arrogant or idiotic! I didn't particularly like Landover because their parody is designed to confuse people, but this response is so over the top it's hilarious.
Okay, I think some people may not have understood what I was talking about originally. Imagine yourself writing a counter program in English, and all the special exceptions you would need to use to get the suffix right, not to mention the spelling.
..."One" is "ichi", and "day" is "hi", so we put them together and get "tsuitachi". Then for the second, "two" is "ni", so we put that together with "hi" and naturally that produces "futsuka"...
... And you missed the point. I may have confused you because of my second complaint, which was different than my first. The problem you point out is that if you were to pronounce them it would be pretty wierd because Japanese has more than one pronounciation of each number. However, if you were coding up a program to write them out, you wouldn't need to worry about it, as you would just write the kanji. I've never seen them written out phonetically, because you just need to write the character for the number, then the character for 'day'. The problems I pointed out in English would appear no matter what, because you *have* to write it out like that for it to be correct in English.
Er, what did you think "fourteen" was, other than "four-ten"?
If "fourteen" = 14, then does "fourtwenty" = 24? Why do the teens ave diffent syntax from twenties and thirties? It should be ten-four, not fourteen.
Again, imagine yourself writing a program that needs to output a number as text. In English, you need to write special exceptions for the teens when spelling them out, and special exceptions for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of each set of ten, except for the teens. That is if you can even change the suffixes - many times, I will just see "(number)th" written, so it ouputs stuff like "23th" or "2th".
Oh yeah? You and what Army?
Well, at least that doesn't really affect code.
How about all the 'bugs' in the English language itself? For example, the counting system. There are often occasions where you have to code up incremental counters, and the effort to make them grammatically correct in English is such a chore most people never bother.
When you're counting something, for example days, you need to put a suffix on the number like '1st, 2nd, 3rd'. Suffixes by itself wouldn't be so bad, but the way it's determined is quite wierd. It goes 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, then from 4th to 20th it's all 'th', but then becomes 21st, 22nd, 23rd, and the same for the 30s, 40s, and so on even tough the teens were all 'th'. In Japanese, you write it without suffixes, and even without plural forms, making it much easier to code incremental counts.
And what about the teens themselves, anyway? Why don't you just write it as ten-one, ten-two, ten-three, like you do for twenties and beyond? That's how it's done for Japanese, and I find it much simpler. I know German also has the concept of 'teens', does anyone know why they're treated differently in western languages?
How convienient - team sets outrageously ambitious goal, deadline is after everyone involved will have retired...
Maybe they should volunteer to help Bush make a colony on Mars while they're at it.
Jeez, kids these days...
Whatever happened to old summer camp standbys like throwing a blanket party for annoying counselors, setting fire to the outhouse, and sneaking vodka into canteens?
Summer camp is supposed to be about having fun the old-fashioned way, none of this techo-nonsense.
Jesus, this topic is filled with so many misconceptions of what women find attractive that I feel the need to interject. (disclaimer: I am a guy, but I tend to pay attention to what women want more than to the latest kernel release, unlike most slashdoters)
You know what videogame character I've heard women I know be attracted to the most? It's goddamn Link, from the Zelda series. Not some steroid-abusing freak from Serious Sam or Duke Nukem, but the cute little dude with elf ears. The Final Fantasy guys are popular with girls, too.
The muscle-bound tough guy is more of an asperation for guys than an attraction for girls, though girls like that to a certain extent. Girls tend to like the more realistic, cuter guys who have an personality than one-liners about kicking ass.
Simple question: have you ever seen Arnie or Stallone on the poster for some chick flick? No, it's always some relatively wimpy-looking guy like Cusack or Cruise. So stop pretending that Nukem & pals are trying to attract women - they're clearly not.
As a side note, Nintendo seems to be doing a much better job of attracting women than other companies. The girls that I knew in high school who played lots of video games always seemed to be talking about Nintendo games like Pokemon, Mario, Donkey Kong, Kirby, etc.
No, but companies go, "I think this bestselling console will be the one we develop for", and that leads to more games being released for that one, and the others getting left out.
.Net, x86, Itanium, etc. We could debate the techinical merits of each all day, but the market tends to develop for the one with the biggest marketshare.
Same goes for any platform that software runs on, really - Linux, Windows, Java,
I do love Nintendo, but I will be selling my Gamecube to a friend - all the games I want are on GBA, not GC.
I was going to make a comment about "rounding up workers for underground C mines", but I figured that didn't sound painful enough.
So, I would like to remind Linus that I will be very useful in rounding up workers to toil in the underground Perl mines.
C'mon, we all know that's not true - Mac users can't figure out IRC, they'd be using AIM :P
Well, DUH Apple isn't god.... Steve Jobs is god. Haven't you read the scriptures, sonny?
You'd better start repentin', 'cause Steve is a wrathful and vengeful god, and he hears all the slanders against his followers on the internet through his mystical iGod powers.
(Bows in the direction of Cupertino)
No bulk. Less resolution than a CRT. Lame.
In all seriousness, the people complaining about how LCDs don't stack up stats-wise compared to CRTs are missing the point. They're both good enough.
It's just like how the iPod is the 'hot' consumer electronics this year, and part of a whole category of products (MP3 players) that play lossy, compressed audio (yes, I know they can play lossless audio, too). Their whole point is that they sacrifice audio quality for convienience.
At some point, the output quality became good enough that most people were unable to distinguish between audio formats based on quality alone, and convienience and design became the selling point. Already happened with audio, now it's happening with video.
This is partly why I think the entertainment industry is going to have a hard time displacing CD, DVD, and MP3 with more DRM-restricted formats - people just can't get much more out of media quality wise, now it's all going to be about convienience.