Montreal actually has an excellent subway system, and fairly narrow, busy downtown roads. (More European-like than any other city I've been to in North America.)
As someone who learned to drive on the crazy downtown streets of Montreal, I feel I can happily endorse city's public transit.:)
A 401(k) plan, whatever that is, is in use in one of the countries where the GNUCash developers live.
There is a common tax system in use around the world, or when governments start approving free tax software implementations for filing.
Your bank switches to HBCI, the Home Banking Computer Information protocol, in use in Germany, where many of the GNUCash developers live.
Quicken exports to an open, or at least non-obfuscated file format.
More Americans start contributing to the development of new features for GNUCash.
GNUCash is free, and it does what many of its users want. It just happens that many of those users live in Europe, and for now, they seem to call the shots.
No, lager and cinnamon hearts is where it's at!
on
Skittlebrau
·
· Score: 1
A friend of mine, quite experienced in the skittlebrau phenomenon held a Christmas party in February. In light of the proximity to Valentine's day, he, of course, had a bucket of cinnamon hearts hanging from his living room ceiling. His girlfriend dumped out a bunch of cinnamon hearts at some point in the evening, and distributed them to those present. I added five or six to my bottle of beer. It was a rather interesting and pleasant experience. The rather boring bottle of Keith's India Pale Ale (which I prefer to think of as a lager) acquired some bite, while still introducing a certain sweet element. Good stuff. I recommend you try it.
Show me where they distribute the source for the RedHat Package Manager in a format I can read without installing RedHat's distro or somehow having the program already installed.
How about here? Note the file called rpm-4.1.tar.gz.
Sigh... why do people mod things up as "interesting" or "insightful" when they don't understand what they mean? The parent should potentially be modified up as +1 funny.
Note the following terms used (and think of associated acronyms):
Granted, OpenGL 1.5, with improved programmable shader support is indeed a step toward OpenGL 2.0, it is really a fairly minor evolutionary step.
When OpenGL 1.0 was initially proposed, it provided a standard implementation for fixed pipeline segments (with the idea that individual implementations could selectively choose which pieces of the pipe would be implemented in software, and which would be implemented in hardware). This was a very significant development, as it meant that everyone could operate with the same set of rules, and could do the same things, but those without hardware support may suffer some performance penalties (of course, with modern CPUs, some of the stages in the pipeline can have very high-perf implementations in software).
Since then, the rules have changed significantly. Hardware developers have started to suggest that the behaviour of the individual components of the pipeline could be programmable. NVidia and ATI have already responded to this, providing a wide variety of programmable shader technologies (e.g. programmable vertex and pixel shaders). I understand that OpenGL 1.5 essentially brings this level of programmability up to current levels (I think that DirectX 9.0 does the same thing, but I would love for someone to correct me on this. I haven't touched DirectX in a while, so I'm a little rusty. In fact, at the pace that hardware is evolving, I'm actually very rusty, and likely collapsing due to decay.) OpenGL 2.0 extends this idea of programmability to every stage of the pipeline. For most current video cards, this means that a lot of that programmability has to be implemented in software (which is essentially what people are doing anyway. If you want to implement programmable textures, you write software that interfaces with your video card's static texture routines.) 3DLabs is hoping to turn the computer graphics world on its ear by providing almost completely programmable graphics cards. Nearly every stage of the pipeline should be programmable in hardware. Of course, we will have to wait to see what they deliver, but I imagine that even if their cards suck ass in terms of performance (or they'll be targetted to the super high-end, so most of us will never see them), they should offer some features that will force some new developments from ATI and NVidia, which will eventually make their way down to regular consumers.
It's good that OpenGL 1.5 is out, to help keep OpenGL on the map of standards (especially since DirectX is a really inconvenient standard for those of us who don't run Windows), but I'm still pretty psyched for the release of OpenGL 2.0, w00t!
Re:how extraordinary
on
Isn't It Ironic?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I don't want to object that these aren't fine examples of rudimentary irony, but one could argue that they are mainly sarcastic. Zoe Williams laments that irony is often mixed up with hypocrisy, cynicism, laziness, and coincidence, but completely fails to mention sarcasm. Maybe this isn't a severe omission in the context of this article, because many more sarcastic statements actually show features of irony as there are ironic statements you could consider sarcastic.
To offer a handy followup (simply a supplement to the previous poster's insightful comment that I think may be helpful), it is of course useful to note that sarcasm is, as stated in the OED:
a sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter gibe or taunt.
Thus, contrary to what seems to be popular belief, it strictly has nothing to do with implying a meaning different or opposite from what is said. Of course, it just seems so much more effective when presented in an ironic context.
In fact, I think it is kind of ironic that saying "I love my boss" more effectively conveys the sentiment of "I hate my boss" than the latter. (Note that both could be considered "sarcastic", but only the first would be ironic. Unless of course, you actually do love your boss, in which case the the second would be ironic, but neither would be sarcastic, since you presumably don't have anything to be bitter about.)
Vivendi Universal is the owner of Blizzard. Vivendi Universal hates the free software movement, why? Because its assosiated [sic] with the Mp3/FileSharing movement.
Isn't this the same Vivendi Universal that owns EMusic? (An online subscription-based MP3 downloading service.)
Umm... I get the impression that you're implying that Egypt has an "Islamic" government. You do realize, of course, that Egypt has a constitutional ban on religious-based political parties.
You might want to check your facts before posting.
Some of the NVidia drivers seem to run into problems in conjunction with WineX and some version of glibc. When I switched to Gentoo, using the 4191 NVidia drivers, with glibc 2.3.1 (not positive of that, though), WineX would segfault on me something awful, whenever it would try to enable the DirectX. Running installers worked fine, but games would just crash. Reading the support pages, I read the suggestion to roll back to the 3123 NVidia drivers. Worked like a charm.
Of course, nowadays, I seem to be able to run WineX 3.0, with the same version of glibc, and the 4363 drivers. So, I imagine someone somewhere has worked out a bug or two.
For those who can't immediately infer what geographical area (or for that matter even what country) is being referred to, the article more clearly explains that they are referring to the U.S. state of New Hampshire.
It's great that Microsoft's advertising claims were shot down in this case for being unjustifiable, but they've still got some other pretty nasty falsehoods floating around out there.
I don't know if this particular campaign is appearing at American schools, but certainly at Canadian universities, Microsoft has launched a fairly heavy ad campaign for academic-priced software (I've seen the ads at Waterloo and Simon Fraser.) The ads feature bold print saying "Getting software for any less would be illegal", and in smaller print, below: "90% off the estimated retail price!". (See a banner ad of it at the University of Waterloo computer store.)
Hmm... given that I've paid less than their listed prices for the software on my computer, I guess they're accusing me of breaking the law. It's too bad that a lot of their competition's software is still cheaper (e.g. I use OpenOffice, myself, but I'm pretty sure I could get a full-priced copy of StarOffice for less than the student-priced Office XP.)
I would love to see Sun start a competing campaign saying "Getting certain other software at these prices would be illegal. Save money and keep yourself out of jail: use StarOffice."
Wow... this thread is really eerie... I just got back yesterday from visiting a friend on the other side of the country. Among other things, we spent our time together watching The Scooby-Doo Movie, Dude, Where's My Car?, and the last six episodes of Buffy.
I thought that admitting that would make me feel better, but now I just feel sort of dirty.
Sure... until we get CRUSHED BY THE MOON!
on
Tidal Power a Reality
·
· Score: 5, Funny
So, tidal power is really just harnessing the moon's gravitational pull on the oceans.
But, doesn't conservation of energy suggest that "we can't get something for nothing"?
By taking power away from the moon's orbit, aren't we just accelerating the decay of that orbit?
Sure, we've got the power now, but what good will it be when the moon comes crashing down to KILL US ALL!
It got some amazing (for the time) pre-rendered 3d cut scenes and probably the first LucasArts game to have a "celebrity" voice actor - Robert Patrick from T2 and later X-Files. He did a good job.
I guess it doesn't really count, but Day of the Tentacle did feature the voice of Richard Sanders (Les Nessman from "WKRP in Cincinnati"). If I recall correctly, he played the voice of Bernard. I remember being surprised at the time that I actually recognized the voice (as WKRP was in syndication in my area.)
>How should minority views (such as the views of Black or Gay Americans) be represented? [snip] >Thus, the maximum possible return is achieved for the taxpayers, and the highest bidder has paid a fair price for the scarce resource they need. Capitalism works - period.
The second of the above two lines seems to answer the first (unless, of course, you are referring to a minority which somehow has more liquid assets than the associated complementary majority.) Somehow, ensuring that a minority doesn't get a say due to their reduced numbers (and by extension, their expected reduced assets) doesn't really strike me as fair. In fact, it sort of seems like an example of capitalism not working (or at least not working in an optimal fashion.)
>The lesson comes at a high cost for many Canadians (witness the breakdown of their health care system), but recognizing the problem is the first step in finding a solution and joining the rest of the Western world in becoming a capitalist country.
As posted elsewhere, the Canadian healthcare system really isn't "that bad". Sure the wealthy might have to wait for a couple of hours in the emergency room, but at least noone gets turned away.
My particular confusion, though, arises from the second half of the above sentence. From my years living in Europe, I seem to remember most Western countries having national health care, heavily subsidized (if not free) post-secondary education, and government control/influence over the airwaves. I suppose when you say "the rest of the Western world", you are referring to the United States, which seems to be the only Western country which springs to mind as more capitalist than "Canadia [sic]". This seems like a tremendously narrowminded view of the world. I do hope that you might someday get the opportunity to travel and realize that much of the world seems get by reasonably well with a social-democratic approach.
I think my favourite part of the computer museum's website is their inclusion of music performed by an old IBM 1403 printer.
Apparently, some engineers managed to find the right lines of characters to produce printer noise of a known pitch. Feeding in punch cards appropriately, they were able to produce output which would form certain tunes. They have some recordings available for download
here.
Actually, support seems to be coming along quite nicely for ext2. Patches are available here. I've been using the acl implementation (just a special case of Extended Attributes) for about two years now on a production server. Works beautifully for finer-grained file permissions. Also, the project leader (Andreas Gruenbacher) seems to communicate frequently with both the Samba team (to allow modification of Linux ACLs from an NT client) and the XFS team (to ensure that the API is common across implementations.)
Similarly, didn't Be try offering various OEMs free copies of the BeOS, provided that they installed them on new machines? It didn't even have to be the primary OS: set it up to boot into Windows, and include a desktop icon, saying "Reboot to BeOS".
I seem to remember a story like that a year or two ago. Noone took them up on the offer, since everyone was afraid of losing the "sweet discounts" they were getting from Microsoft (i.e. getting a free OS didn't provide sufficient compensation for losing a discounted OS.)
Could this change now? (and, these days, would Be be in a position to repeat that offer?)
the Dell on the other hand, can you put a price on a mobile system of this incredible spec!?
Well, actually, Dell did... Unfortunately, it looks to be at least $2900 (before tax.) So, one would hope that it would outperform the iBook (sounds more like a G4 Titanium competitor to me.)
Also, the last laptop I used had a 750 Mhz PIII CPU, if I recall correctly. Beautifully powerful machine, but noisy as anything! (That kind of power in a small case required a small fan, spinning REALLY quickly.) I understand that the iBook (and PowerPC-based machines in general) are much quieter thanks to the lower power requirements of the CPU.
Sounds like the Dell would be pretty cool as a desktop-replacement laptop (i.e. carry it with you on business trips and plug it in at your hotel, etc. Much nicer than lugging a desktop and monitor around:-) )
The iBook, though, would likely be really sweet for, say, going to class and typing notes (without annoying your classmates with a noisy fan.)
Am I the only one who was unable to read this article because of the repeated "Intel's new baby" analogy?
I appreciate that metaphor is sometimes a nice way of unifying your different points, but in this case, it just gets kind of insipid. I mean, it's a freaking processor! It's not a baby!
Sigh... a nice, dry, technical article would have been much more readable IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
Montreal actually has an excellent subway system, and fairly narrow, busy downtown roads. (More European-like than any other city I've been to in North America.)
:)
As someone who learned to drive on the crazy downtown streets of Montreal, I feel I can happily endorse city's public transit.
- A 401(k) plan, whatever that is, is in use in one of the countries where the GNUCash developers live.
- There is a common tax system in use around the world, or when governments start approving free tax software implementations for filing.
- Your bank switches to HBCI, the Home Banking Computer Information protocol, in use in Germany, where many of the GNUCash developers live.
- Quicken exports to an open, or at least non-obfuscated file format.
- More Americans start contributing to the development of new features for GNUCash.
GNUCash is free, and it does what many of its users want. It just happens that many of those users live in Europe, and for now, they seem to call the shots.Iomega's REV FAQ says the cartridges are 77m x 75mm x 10mm (i.e. 7.7cm x 7.5 cm x 1 cm), at a weight of 73g.
FAQ is available here.
A friend of mine, quite experienced in the skittlebrau phenomenon held a Christmas party in February. In light of the proximity to Valentine's day, he, of course, had a bucket of cinnamon hearts hanging from his living room ceiling. His girlfriend dumped out a bunch of cinnamon hearts at some point in the evening, and distributed them to those present. I added five or six to my bottle of beer. It was a rather interesting and pleasant experience. The rather boring bottle of Keith's India Pale Ale (which I prefer to think of as a lager) acquired some bite, while still introducing a certain sweet element. Good stuff. I recommend you try it.
How about here?
Note the file called rpm-4.1.tar.gz.
Sigh... why do people mod things up as "interesting" or "insightful" when they don't understand what they mean? The parent should potentially be modified up as +1 funny.
Note the following terms used (and think of associated acronyms):
Granted, OpenGL 1.5, with improved programmable shader support is indeed a step toward OpenGL 2.0, it is really a fairly minor evolutionary step.
When OpenGL 1.0 was initially proposed, it provided a standard implementation for fixed pipeline segments (with the idea that individual implementations could selectively choose which pieces of the pipe would be implemented in software, and which would be implemented in hardware). This was a very significant development, as it meant that everyone could operate with the same set of rules, and could do the same things, but those without hardware support may suffer some performance penalties (of course, with modern CPUs, some of the stages in the pipeline can have very high-perf implementations in software).
Since then, the rules have changed significantly. Hardware developers have started to suggest that the behaviour of the individual components of the pipeline could be programmable. NVidia and ATI have already responded to this, providing a wide variety of programmable shader technologies (e.g. programmable vertex and pixel shaders). I understand that OpenGL 1.5 essentially brings this level of programmability up to current levels (I think that DirectX 9.0 does the same thing, but I would love for someone to correct me on this. I haven't touched DirectX in a while, so I'm a little rusty. In fact, at the pace that hardware is evolving, I'm actually very rusty, and likely collapsing due to decay.) OpenGL 2.0 extends this idea of programmability to every stage of the pipeline. For most current video cards, this means that a lot of that programmability has to be implemented in software (which is essentially what people are doing anyway. If you want to implement programmable textures, you write software that interfaces with your video card's static texture routines.) 3DLabs is hoping to turn the computer graphics world on its ear by providing almost completely programmable graphics cards. Nearly every stage of the pipeline should be programmable in hardware. Of course, we will have to wait to see what they deliver, but I imagine that even if their cards suck ass in terms of performance (or they'll be targetted to the super high-end, so most of us will never see them), they should offer some features that will force some new developments from ATI and NVidia, which will eventually make their way down to regular consumers.
It's good that OpenGL 1.5 is out, to help keep OpenGL on the map of standards (especially since DirectX is a really inconvenient standard for those of us who don't run Windows), but I'm still pretty psyched for the release of OpenGL 2.0, w00t!
To offer a handy followup (simply a supplement to the previous poster's insightful comment that I think may be helpful), it is of course useful to note that sarcasm is, as stated in the OED:
Thus, contrary to what seems to be popular belief, it strictly has nothing to do with implying a meaning different or opposite from what is said. Of course, it just seems so much more effective when presented in an ironic context.
In fact, I think it is kind of ironic that saying "I love my boss" more effectively conveys the sentiment of "I hate my boss" than the latter. (Note that both could be considered "sarcastic", but only the first would be ironic. Unless of course, you actually do love your boss, in which case the the second would be ironic, but neither would be sarcastic, since you presumably don't have anything to be bitter about.)
Isn't this the same Vivendi Universal that owns EMusic? (An online subscription-based MP3 downloading service.)
Hmm... this might be true, if Egypt had a theocratic government. They actually have a constitutional ban on religious-based political parties.
(ref)
Granted, there are significant religious pressures on their government (just as there are in the US, and in many other countries.)
You really shouldn't make sweeping generalizations about a country you've never been to. That's what they do in Russia.
Umm... I get the impression that you're implying that Egypt has an "Islamic" government. You do realize, of course, that Egypt has a constitutional ban on religious-based political parties.
You might want to check your facts before posting.
Some of the NVidia drivers seem to run into problems in conjunction with WineX and some version of glibc. When I switched to Gentoo, using the 4191 NVidia drivers, with glibc 2.3.1 (not positive of that, though), WineX would segfault on me something awful, whenever it would try to enable the DirectX. Running installers worked fine, but games would just crash. Reading the support pages, I read the suggestion to roll back to the 3123 NVidia drivers. Worked like a charm.
Of course, nowadays, I seem to be able to run WineX 3.0, with the same version of glibc, and the 4363 drivers. So, I imagine someone somewhere has worked out a bug or two.
For those who can't immediately infer what geographical area (or for that matter even what country) is being referred to, the article more clearly explains that they are referring to the U.S. state of New Hampshire.
It's great that Microsoft's advertising claims were shot down in this case for being unjustifiable, but they've still got some other pretty nasty falsehoods floating around out there.
I don't know if this particular campaign is appearing at American schools, but certainly at Canadian universities, Microsoft has launched a fairly heavy ad campaign for academic-priced software (I've seen the ads at Waterloo and Simon Fraser.) The ads feature bold print saying "Getting software for any less would be illegal", and in smaller print, below: "90% off the estimated retail price!". (See a banner ad of it at the University of Waterloo computer store.)
Hmm... given that I've paid less than their listed prices for the software on my computer, I guess they're accusing me of breaking the law. It's too bad that a lot of their competition's software is still cheaper (e.g. I use OpenOffice, myself, but I'm pretty sure I could get a full-priced copy of StarOffice for less than the student-priced Office XP.)
I would love to see Sun start a competing campaign saying "Getting certain other software at these prices would be illegal. Save money and keep yourself out of jail: use StarOffice."
Wow... this thread is really eerie... I just got back yesterday from visiting a friend on the other side of the country. Among other things, we spent our time together watching The Scooby-Doo Movie, Dude, Where's My Car?, and the last six episodes of Buffy.
I thought that admitting that would make me feel better, but now I just feel sort of dirty.
So, tidal power is really just harnessing the moon's gravitational pull on the oceans.
But, doesn't conservation of energy suggest that "we can't get something for nothing"?
By taking power away from the moon's orbit, aren't we just accelerating the decay of that orbit?
Sure, we've got the power now, but what good will it be when the moon comes crashing down to KILL US ALL!
*runs and hides*
>How should minority views (such as the views of Black or Gay Americans) be represented?
[snip]
>Thus, the maximum possible return is achieved for the taxpayers, and the highest bidder has paid a fair price for the scarce resource they need. Capitalism works - period.
The second of the above two lines seems to answer the first (unless, of course, you are referring to a minority which somehow has more liquid assets than the associated complementary majority.) Somehow, ensuring that a minority doesn't get a say due to their reduced numbers (and by extension, their expected reduced assets) doesn't really strike me as fair. In fact, it sort of seems like an example of capitalism not working (or at least not working in an optimal fashion.)
>The lesson comes at a high cost for many Canadians (witness the breakdown of their health care system), but recognizing the problem is the first step in finding a solution and joining the rest of the Western world in becoming a capitalist country.
As posted elsewhere, the Canadian healthcare system really isn't "that bad". Sure the wealthy might have to wait for a couple of hours in the emergency room, but at least noone gets turned away.
My particular confusion, though, arises from the second half of the above sentence. From my years living in Europe, I seem to remember most Western countries having national health care, heavily subsidized (if not free) post-secondary education, and government control/influence over the airwaves. I suppose when you say "the rest of the Western world", you are referring to the United States, which seems to be the only Western country which springs to mind as more capitalist than "Canadia [sic]". This seems like a tremendously narrowminded view of the world. I do hope that you might someday get the opportunity to travel and realize that much of the world seems get by reasonably well with a social-democratic approach.
I think my favourite part of the computer museum's website is their inclusion of music performed by an old IBM 1403 printer.
Apparently, some engineers managed to find the right lines of characters to produce printer noise of a known pitch. Feeding in punch cards appropriately, they were able to produce output which would form certain tunes. They have some recordings available for download here.
Actually, support seems to be coming along quite nicely for ext2. Patches are available here. I've been using the acl implementation (just a special case of Extended Attributes) for about two years now on a production server. Works beautifully for finer-grained file permissions. Also, the project leader (Andreas Gruenbacher) seems to communicate frequently with both the Samba team (to allow modification of Linux ACLs from an NT client) and the XFS team (to ensure that the API is common across implementations.)
Similarly, didn't Be try offering various OEMs free copies of the BeOS, provided that they installed them on new machines? It didn't even have to be the primary OS: set it up to boot into Windows, and include a desktop icon, saying "Reboot to BeOS".
I seem to remember a story like that a year or two ago. Noone took them up on the offer, since everyone was afraid of losing the "sweet discounts" they were getting from Microsoft (i.e. getting a free OS didn't provide sufficient compensation for losing a discounted OS.)
Could this change now? (and, these days, would Be be in a position to repeat that offer?)
Well, actually, Dell did... Unfortunately, it looks to be at least $2900 (before tax.) So, one would hope that it would outperform the iBook (sounds more like a G4 Titanium competitor to me.)
Also, the last laptop I used had a 750 Mhz PIII CPU, if I recall correctly. Beautifully powerful machine, but noisy as anything! (That kind of power in a small case required a small fan, spinning REALLY quickly.) I understand that the iBook (and PowerPC-based machines in general) are much quieter thanks to the lower power requirements of the CPU.
Sounds like the Dell would be pretty cool as a desktop-replacement laptop (i.e. carry it with you on business trips and plug it in at your hotel, etc. Much nicer than lugging a desktop and monitor around :-) )
The iBook, though, would likely be really sweet for, say, going to class and typing notes (without annoying your classmates with a noisy fan.)
Am I the only one who was unable to read this article because of the repeated "Intel's new baby" analogy?
I appreciate that metaphor is sometimes a nice way of unifying your different points, but in this case, it just gets kind of insipid. I mean, it's a freaking processor! It's not a baby!
Sigh... a nice, dry, technical article would have been much more readable IMHO.