You're obviously not Canadian then:) We live every day under the dichotomy of both being American and Not-American. "Talking To Americans" was not a single skit -- it was a series of skits run for an entire season of "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" (which has a similarly subtly humourous title, aimed at mass media instead of nationalism).
When the Islamists overthrow a nation with the resources capable of making a substantial war machine, wake me up. Even most of the Middle Eastern states aren't, other than oil, all that rich in natural resources and have to import important manufacturing products like steel.
Keep your eye on France and the UK then. The use of force in taking over a country is not always the appropriate method to use. Islam preaches a faith of peace and conversion, force only when necessary. What you'll notice is that the number of Muslims living in France and the UK is on a marked rise. Some of the major Muslim scholarship comes out of the UK now. I'm sure it won't be long before many of the influential people in those two nations are Muslim, and feel closer ties to Saudi Arabia than to the US.
However, this doesn't have much to do with religious political extremism -- anyone invading another country to "convert" it is most likely doing it for a personal or political reason, and is just using religion as a way to get support.
There is a thing called "subtle humour" which you appear to have missed. Think about the point of "Talking to Americans" and then think about the title of the clip. The word American is used in the same vein as what the "interviews" illustrate -- that many Americans only have a clue about their own small part of North America.
By the way, one of the shows asked some Canadians those questions at a later date to see what the response would be -- turns out we have rednecks and the ignorati up here too. Many can't even name all three Canadian Territories, let alone find them on a map of the world.
According to whom? I presume that's why Mainland China and Taiwan have different names for the island? Although it is true that most Taiwanese want reunification with the mainland Chinese people; many families have members living in both locations.
Looks like heresy to me just like every other statement out there. When I said that I want an official statement I mean OFFICIAL. From Apple on Apple.com.
I'm not sure that word means what you think it means;) Just to clarify, did you mean heresy, or hearsay?
Funny... I thought the "Why Go Pro?" dialog was pretty explicit -- if you want a multimedia player, just use the free download. If you want a multimedia editor, pay the $30 and you can edit video, add effects, transcode video, create interactive presentations based on video content, etc. As others have said, if the dialog drives you crazy, just do the date trick.
Of course, I get around all that by using IrFanView as my Quicktime player.
This is unless OS X provides a good framework to make sure that competition does not happen.
This is indeed the case. There are hacks to the OS, which are indeed unstable and can cause race conditions, but the APIs published by Apple allow for a lot of fully supported tweaking of the interface -- basicly, Apple has provided a lot of functionality in the OS that simply has no GUI interface tied to it. Therefore, a lot of programming on OS X involves writing a front end that ties together a novel collection of features built in to the OS in new ways.
(Personally, I hate how os x looks and works. I hate the extra layout confusion where some apps are in/bin and some are/Applications. It is not for me. Maybe with enough customization I can make it tolerable...but)
Hmm... let's see now.../bin,/usr/bin,/sbin,/usr/sbin,/opt/bin,/opt/sbin,/var/opt/bin,/var/opt/sbin,/usr/local/sbin,/usr/local/bin...
Since when did you need to differentiate where your command line apps were stored anyway? They're all in your path, and you just have to type the executable's name! A simple 'which' will tell you where the one is you're using. Personally, I like Apple's separation of graphical applications from command-line ones. Apps that are usable from the command line are viewable from the command line, and apps that are usable from the GUI are viewable from the GUI. To me, this makes sense.
While you are typing into, well, pretty much anything, if you misspell a word a squiggly red line appears under the work and you can control click it to select an alternate spelling.
I think this illustrates something about relying too heavily on built in spell checkers;)
I agree; there is no reason someone shouldn't start such a company.
However, MS is not a startup company building a new product -- they are a convicted monopolist, and if they decide to make this change, regular market forces will not come into play, as MS customers are already locked in to their product upgrade cycle.
Slashdot readers might form only a miniscule part of humanity, but slashdot readership does encapsulate (not consist of) much of the part of humanity that designs and creates computer software. There are also many critical thinkers who read and post here.
The rest of the computer-using part of humanity (especially in the US -- you can rest assured that China and the EU will never allow MS to gain full control in this manner) wouldn't dislike such a computer at first -- only after the boa constrictor stops being a neck warmer and decides to start squeezing its next meal.
He's got a good point -- ever since the whole Echelon thing, people have been thinking in terms of "keywords" that get searched for -- and yet at the same time, we have sophisticated SPAM filters that have no problem having a 90% accuracy rate flagging spam, based on more advanced heuristics. I'm sure training a spam filter on some desired internet correspondence could create a pretty effective "terrorist" or "revolutionary" or "industrial espinoge" filter in a pretty short amount of time.
OK, let's call it uninformed discussion points. Apple does not block MP3 files from anyone's hardware, as they also don't block AAC files -- they *do* block Real's hacks on their DRM -- this means that any non-DRM'd files play just fine, but anything that tries to restrict your freedom (except if it comes from Apple) won't work. I'd put this in a similar category to CD players that won't play hacked (DRM'd) redbook CDs.
After all, Apple makes their update logs public, as can be found here.
There is a problem with this method -- how do you organise the numbers, so that adding new meanings is possible?
For example, in one language (Mayan, I think), there is no word for pink. This is not a problem, until you discover there is no concept of "pink" in the society, and they don't even use the colour.
Going the other direction, you have situations like German, where new words are created by compounding meaning from old words -- does this become a new number, or just a compound of the other numbers?
Then there is the fact that meanings of words drift over time -- for example, the word corporal, which has two different meanings in english, both which originate in Latin; conversely the words virtue and virile both come from the latin word for man. Languages like Arabic have a central symbol for a concept, and variants on the written and spoken word denote variations in the original concept -- no word stands by itself, but carries degrees of connotation related to the words close to it in its word group.
The point of all this is that by the time such a lexicon was completed, the original meaning of words in many of the languages would have drifted from the original recorded value (look at how fast the word "gay" has changed meaning in english, also how many times "nice" has changed meaning), while in other languages it would have become more ingrained in the context of its position in the language. This is why some people prefer "dead" languages like Latin as a go-between language, because at least meanings don't shift in a language that is no longer commonly used.
I think the point is that it *is* broke. The reason MS doesn't charge for service packs is that they are the software vendor's version of a product recall -- Microsoft has realised that the original product is broken, and they are recalling the product to fix it. The benefit is that in the software world, you get to keep your product and the internet allows the company to make a house call and repair it on-site.
Of course, most people don't do a bi-annual check for recalls on their hardware, so they live in ignorant bliss untill that reported and supported issue rears its ugly head and creates a real problem... why should it be any different in the software world?
And if you go there, you see that the OCR accuracy is even questionable on articles as recent as 1996 -- but they do have the Edinburgh Intelligencer from 1776:)
Here's something to add to the equation: population.
China's Population USA's Population
So China's population is around 4 times as dense as that of the US; add to this that the US growth rate is higher than that of China, and you see that the farther back you go, the more disproportionate the numbers become.
I'll leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.
Terry Pratchett, makes a lot of money from his books, how many do you think he sells in India?
My guess is, quite a few -- Terry Pratchett is a UK author, published through Corgi, a UK publisher. English is a heavily-used language in India, and the Indian English culture lends itself much better to British humour than does current American culture.
having my email on a number of highly visible web sites, I usually get around 20 419mails a week -- if anyone wants a copy of any of them, let me know -- I usually just forward them off to the authorities, although on occasion I've baited one (pretending to be another scammer working in the same area, using another name/email addy I know is used by the same scammer to get him scamming himself, pretending to be the local authorities looking for a bribe, etc.)
Hopefully we'll see some high quality knock offs and the price will go down.
We probably will, but this will also undo the consumer-friendly price fixing in the printer market -- due to market pressures, you can expect not only Lexmark printer costs to go up, but also HP, Canon, Epson, and Brother printers -- after all, they no longer have as much low price competition, and so can afford to raise their prices to increase profit.
For some reason, this reminds me of cricket, as described in Tertiary Phase, ep 3:
Slartibartfast provides a rather startling Informational Illusion to give Arthur and Ford the history of the Krikkit Wars, an intergalactic conflict of billions of years ago, where a seemingly innocuous and pleasant race of hominids journeyed beyond the black and opaque dust cloud surrounding their solitary planet with its solitary star and were appalled to discover they were not alone in the universe but surrounded by many other planets teeming with life. The Krikkitmen built lethal white robots wielding war clubs which were used to propel small red grenades over vast distances, to destroy everything in their path - in fact, to kill everything everywhere but their masters.
Slashdot Mirror
You're obviously not Canadian then :) We live every day under the dichotomy of both being American and Not-American. "Talking To Americans" was not a single skit -- it was a series of skits run for an entire season of "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" (which has a similarly subtly humourous title, aimed at mass media instead of nationalism).
Keep your eye on France and the UK then. The use of force in taking over a country is not always the appropriate method to use. Islam preaches a faith of peace and conversion, force only when necessary. What you'll notice is that the number of Muslims living in France and the UK is on a marked rise. Some of the major Muslim scholarship comes out of the UK now. I'm sure it won't be long before many of the influential people in those two nations are Muslim, and feel closer ties to Saudi Arabia than to the US.
However, this doesn't have much to do with religious political extremism -- anyone invading another country to "convert" it is most likely doing it for a personal or political reason, and is just using religion as a way to get support.
Doesn't everyone who isn't USian?
By the way, one of the shows asked some Canadians those questions at a later date to see what the response would be -- turns out we have rednecks and the ignorati up here too. Many can't even name all three Canadian Territories, let alone find them on a map of the world.
According to whom? I presume that's why Mainland China and Taiwan have different names for the island? Although it is true that most Taiwanese want reunification with the mainland Chinese people; many families have members living in both locations.
So there really is freedom of religion and speech in China?
So the Chinese government does not make huge amounts of money from prison labor?
And the Chinese did not lob missiles over an island full of people to keep them in line?
Just asking if these are all myths that I have seen on TV?
Now there's definitely not a 1:1 match on any of those, but it makes you think about the "shades of gray" argument....
I'm not sure that word means what you think it means ;) Just to clarify, did you mean heresy, or hearsay?
Of course, I get around all that by using IrFanView as my Quicktime player.
This is indeed the case. There are hacks to the OS, which are indeed unstable and can cause race conditions, but the APIs published by Apple allow for a lot of fully supported tweaking of the interface -- basicly, Apple has provided a lot of functionality in the OS that simply has no GUI interface tied to it. Therefore, a lot of programming on OS X involves writing a front end that ties together a novel collection of features built in to the OS in new ways.
Hmm... let's see now... /bin, /usr/bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin, /opt/bin, /opt/sbin, /var/opt/bin, /var/opt/sbin, /usr/local/sbin, /usr/local/bin...
Since when did you need to differentiate where your command line apps were stored anyway? They're all in your path, and you just have to type the executable's name! A simple 'which' will tell you where the one is you're using. Personally, I like Apple's separation of graphical applications from command-line ones. Apps that are usable from the command line are viewable from the command line, and apps that are usable from the GUI are viewable from the GUI. To me, this makes sense.
I think this illustrates something about relying too heavily on built in spell checkers ;)
However, MS is not a startup company building a new product -- they are a convicted monopolist, and if they decide to make this change, regular market forces will not come into play, as MS customers are already locked in to their product upgrade cycle.
Slashdot readers might form only a miniscule part of humanity, but slashdot readership does encapsulate (not consist of) much of the part of humanity that designs and creates computer software. There are also many critical thinkers who read and post here.
The rest of the computer-using part of humanity (especially in the US -- you can rest assured that China and the EU will never allow MS to gain full control in this manner) wouldn't dislike such a computer at first -- only after the boa constrictor stops being a neck warmer and decides to start squeezing its next meal.
He's got a good point -- ever since the whole Echelon thing, people have been thinking in terms of "keywords" that get searched for -- and yet at the same time, we have sophisticated SPAM filters that have no problem having a 90% accuracy rate flagging spam, based on more advanced heuristics. I'm sure training a spam filter on some desired internet correspondence could create a pretty effective "terrorist" or "revolutionary" or "industrial espinoge" filter in a pretty short amount of time.
Here's your answer: http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/
After all, Apple makes their update logs public, as can be found here.
This isn't just Harvard that's involved...
For example, in one language (Mayan, I think), there is no word for pink. This is not a problem, until you discover there is no concept of "pink" in the society, and they don't even use the colour.
Going the other direction, you have situations like German, where new words are created by compounding meaning from old words -- does this become a new number, or just a compound of the other numbers?
Then there is the fact that meanings of words drift over time -- for example, the word corporal, which has two different meanings in english, both which originate in Latin; conversely the words virtue and virile both come from the latin word for man. Languages like Arabic have a central symbol for a concept, and variants on the written and spoken word denote variations in the original concept -- no word stands by itself, but carries degrees of connotation related to the words close to it in its word group.
The point of all this is that by the time such a lexicon was completed, the original meaning of words in many of the languages would have drifted from the original recorded value (look at how fast the word "gay" has changed meaning in english, also how many times "nice" has changed meaning), while in other languages it would have become more ingrained in the context of its position in the language. This is why some people prefer "dead" languages like Latin as a go-between language, because at least meanings don't shift in a language that is no longer commonly used.
Of course, most people don't do a bi-annual check for recalls on their hardware, so they live in ignorant bliss untill that reported and supported issue rears its ugly head and creates a real problem... why should it be any different in the software world?
And if you go there, you see that the OCR accuracy is even questionable on articles as recent as 1996 -- but they do have the Edinburgh Intelligencer from 1776 :)
China's Population
USA's Population
So China's population is around 4 times as dense as that of the US; add to this that the US growth rate is higher than that of China, and you see that the farther back you go, the more disproportionate the numbers become.
I'll leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.
My guess is, quite a few -- Terry Pratchett is a UK author, published through Corgi, a UK publisher. English is a heavily-used language in India, and the Indian English culture lends itself much better to British humour than does current American culture.
having my email on a number of highly visible web sites, I usually get around 20 419mails a week -- if anyone wants a copy of any of them, let me know -- I usually just forward them off to the authorities, although on occasion I've baited one (pretending to be another scammer working in the same area, using another name/email addy I know is used by the same scammer to get him scamming himself, pretending to be the local authorities looking for a bribe, etc.)
We probably will, but this will also undo the consumer-friendly price fixing in the printer market -- due to market pressures, you can expect not only Lexmark printer costs to go up, but also HP, Canon, Epson, and Brother printers -- after all, they no longer have as much low price competition, and so can afford to raise their prices to increase profit.
Think about this a bit before disagreeing.
well, actually, maybe not, as this is exactly what he just did on here :D
Slartibartfast provides a rather startling Informational Illusion to give Arthur and Ford the history of the Krikkit Wars, an intergalactic conflict of billions of years ago, where a seemingly innocuous and pleasant race of hominids journeyed beyond the black and opaque dust cloud surrounding their solitary planet with its solitary star and were appalled to discover they were not alone in the universe but surrounded by many other planets teeming with life. The Krikkitmen built lethal white robots wielding war clubs which were used to propel small red grenades over vast distances, to destroy everything in their path - in fact, to kill everything everywhere but their masters.