Even if these numbers are too large, this still makes you think about how inefficient our cars are.
No. It makes me think of how inefficient plants are. If plants contained more chemical engery, they would make more gasoline per ton. Plus, it's not like the only product of these 90 tons of plants is the gas. Refining gasoline from crude oil produces a number of other outputs (plastics, etc.)
The whole concept of a savior and other ideas mentioned in the article are universal themes, of which both Jesus and Neo are examples. It only seems to Christians like Neo is "Christ like" because they were first exposed to these universal themes through the Jesus example. If Christians whorshipped, for example, Moses instead of Jesus, this article would have been all about how Neo was "Moses like".
So, what you are saying is that "everyone should beleive in what I believe in"... or, put another way, "X is important to me, therefore you should find it important as well".
I've seen people who follow this reasoning who, like you, consider X to be "Being political". I've also seen people where X is "Following Jesus" who are just as adamant that doing the same is what I should be doing as well. I consider both breeds equally loathsome because they assume that it is moral to tell me what I should think. (Your milage may vary).
I applaud people like Linus who simply say "X is important to me". Period. Conviction, but not zealotry. The difference is an implication that "I have stated my opinion. I assume you are intelligent enough to figure out if you agree or not for yourself."
Take this as you will: nearly all of the software used in this test was not optimized for the G4, making the performance just like it would be on a G3. The G4 has an additional subprocessor with routines intended to speed up exactly this kind of of processing.
The tester, in an attempt to compare apples to apples (so to speak), only used software with versions on both platforms. Having ported a good deal of software to the Mac, I know that companies tend to treat their Mac versions as second class citizens. Often the Mac versions have an internal emulation layer of one kind or another.
In any case, what the tester was trying to do figure out which system was fastest. What he should have done was look for the fastest graphics software on each platform. On the Mac, I'm pretty sure that won't be software from the camera manufacturer. What needs to be tested is the speed of the task, regardless of which software performs it.
The real question is: how can we the consumers use this rift to hasten Microsoft's fall? Can we divide into groups and shout for certain products or features for the sole purpose of making the arguments between the two sides louder?
The "click and hold" action can be accomplished instantly with a control-click. Just hold down the control key (yes, control, not the command a.k.a. Apple key) and click. It's a two handed solution, but better than waiting, IMO.
Note, this also means that if you have software to configue your mouse, you can set a button to do a control-click for the "right-click" effect that you are used to. (As an earlier poster said, two button mice will have this mapping set up by default when plugged into a Mac.)
A quick search on eBay shows a thriving market and some fairly high prices (considering auction prices tend to balloon in the few hours before they close). I sold my 2100 on eBay for over $400 about a year ago. It seems significant to me that these machines still fetch more in the used market than most new PDAs. Had Apple continued making them, they probably could have hit that price point by now.
I've thought about this for a while, and while there are a number of symptoms that caused people to hate Wesley (e.g. "he's whiney", "he's a cry-baby", etc.) there is one root cause: the writers never convinced the audience that Wesley was a genius. This would require writers who were geniuses, which clearly the early Next Gen writers were not. We got told of Wes' genius, but I can't remember a single time when we were convincingly shown he was.
Bear in mind, here, that there is a big difference between being "really smart" and a "genius". Bill Gates is really smart; Alan Turing was a genius. Lots of people are really smart, but you know a genius when you see one.
Though I'm not a genius, I've met a couple in my life and it seems to me that none of them were the wide-eyed "gee whiz" types. They tended to be a bit flaky, but somehow avoided the stigma of being really flaky. Instead, they have this aura about them. It was somehow just subconsiously obvious to any observer that the flakiness is because the genius lives in a much different world from them; the observer knows that they just don't get it and never will. Even more interesting, the observer does not find this bothersome. They don't see it as a limitation of themselves, but rather an special enhancement of the genius that somehow makes the observer appreciate the human race. The observer holds the genius in awe, but not in an envious way.
To see how you might script this, read, for example, iterviews of people who worked with Turing and how they interacted with them.
The main mistake the writers made was in making the centerpoint of Wes' character his youth. Often you saw the conflict (of sorts) between the "adult world" and Wesley's world. Instead, the centerpoint of Wes should have been is genius. The conflict really should have been between how Wes sees the universe vs. the (to him) limited outlook of those around him.
In many episodes, Wes was dejected because he wasn't let into the adult world. It always seemed to me that a better way to do it would have been for Wes to have been irritated, not because he was not let in, but because those in command didn't understand what was so obvious to him.
Another writing tactic would have been to use the reaction of the other actors to something Wes did. Usually, he sort of got the equivalent to a "good boy" and patted on the head. Instead, I picture a scene where the senior staff is discussion how to get out of some urgent situation. Wes is on the margins of the conversation, barely paying attention. In a break in the conversation (or maybe after people admit that they are stumped), Wes says, in near monotone, the solution to the problem. Not a suggestion, not an idea, but a "this is what will happen" statement. The key to the scene is the reaction from the senior staff, which is what sells Wes' genius. They should look at him in stunned silence. The reaction should be a combination of "holy crap, that will work", "I would have never have thought of that in a million years" and "where the fuck did that come from?".
This kind of thing would have changed Wesley's character significantly. In particular, it would have given him what all genius have: ego. This would not need to be the overbearing "I'm a genius, respect me you oaf" ego. But, a genius who isn't sure he is right when he is is not really a genius. The writing challenge would be to pull that off without making Wes into a total asshole. Again, Turing (and Oppenhimer, maybe) could be used as guides here.
If you happen to have any old Macs, the game Fools Errand was (and still is) the best "puzzle game" ever. Unfortunately, it was catered to the 68000 architecture (the original 68000, that is, not 680x0), so it doesn't run on much these days (remember "odd address errors" anyone?) without a MacPlus emulator, and has never been updated. Totally cool game, though. Abandonware is such a drag.
Or have there been other sounds marketed in the past?
The average American is programmed with more associations between short sounds and brands than you might think. This kind of marketing is way more subtle, so most people don't even notice that they have these associations crawling around in their heads.
Some of these are short tunes or the specific way something is said, so I'm not sure if that qualifies as a "sound" per se.
Examples:
Plop-plop, fizz-fizz (the actual sound of the tablets dropping into water, not the jingle).
The "honk-honk" in the middle of that insurance companies name in radio adds (obviously not as successful, because I can't remember the name of the company. Something like "A. A. (honk-honk) M. C. O.")
HBO Picture's burst of static. (My pavlovian response to this is "Hey, the Soprano's is starting".)
Intel inside. (Only four notes, and instantly recgonizable.)
The Mac's boot sound, which appears in movies almost any time a computer of any brand is turned on.
John Madden saying "Boom".
The specific cadence, pronounciation and accent of "PlayStation".
This is pure rumor mongering, but it would interesting if a hidden motive for this move was to leverage technology from the Newton, which was built on the ARM and StrongARM processors. The Newton has been dead for years, and still no one has built anything even close to its utility.
For anyone looking to start an open source project, here is a product I would love to have. This isn't so much about managing a bunch of documents as wanting software to manage one really complex document.
I write a lot of functional specifications and technical specifications. The main problem with traditional methods for doing this is that most software doesn't handle new additions, multiple versions or variations as well as I'd like. For example, say I have a spec with an outline like so:
1. Introduction
2. Administration Features
2.1 Create users
2.2 Create groups
All easy enough in, say, Word. Now, say in section 1 I have a link to section 2.2. Because I want the link to be legible in a printed version, the link would contain the number of the section (e.g. "2.2"). All well and good. Word can do this.
But, suppose my software has been released, and now we are updating the spec with new features. I add a section before the old section 2. Word, being fairly good at outlining, correctly renumbers the sections, like so:
1. Introduction
2. New Feature
3. Administration Features
3.1 Create users
3.2 Create groups
Here is one problem: My link in section one still says "2.2", even though it links properly to the new 3.2 section. I have to manually update the label of the link.
Another issue: I'd like to output different versions of the specification. Sometimes, for example, we need to show the spec to a customer, but don't want to show certain particular sections. Maybe a given section, for example, was implemented specially for customer X, and customer Y is a direct competitor who should not see the section for legal reasons. Using Word, I now have to manually remove the section and renumber the links yet again.
Another issue: The structure of a functional specification is often identical to the technical specification for the same product, but the contents of each section are very different. It would be nice to only manage the structure (i.e. the outline) once, and have that carry into both the functional spec and the technical spec (and the test plans, online help and so on). Another way to look at this idea is to think of different languages. I'd like to be able to manage the outline for the English version, and have those changes carry over into the Spanish version.
Another issue: I'd like to be able to switch a set of screen shots with another set. For example, maybe I have a set in English and a set in Spanish, and want to switch them wholesale. Or, perhaps, my screens are skinned, and I want to show some clients one skin and others another.
Oh, yes, and I'd like to be able to have multiple people working on the same spec at one time.
So, my ideal product would treat each section of the spec as a record in a centralized database. Each record would have user defined fields. The fields could be images, rich text, whatever. Each field would have a robust rich text editor. Links could be embedded into the text of rich text fields. The link would hold a reference to another record and a style describing what the label of the link is in terms of its section number (which is.not. fixed).
A screen on the product would manage how the records link together (that is which are the children of others, and so on.)
Another screen would manage the base font styles of the "levels" of the records (i.e. all of the x.y headers in one style, the x.y.z headers in another).
Then, on another screen, you could select all of the sections you wanted, the fields from each record you wanted, the art set you wanted and the styles you wanted, and then render the selected items to a particular format. The software would organize the selected sections into the proper outline, then change the link labels to the proper section numbers. It could then output to PDF, HTML, XML, whatever.
One key feature is the selection of fields for this rendering process. For example, maybe my fields are: EnglishIntro, ScreenShot, EnglishFuncDesc, EnglishTechDesc, SpanishIntro, SpanishFuncDesc, EnglishTestPlan. Then, if I wanted an English technical specification, I'd choose to output the EnglishIntro, ScreenShot, and EnglishTechDesc, choosing the English artwork set. If I wanted a Spanish functional spec, I'd choose SpanishIntro, ScreenShot, and SpanishFuncDesc and the Spanish artwork set. For a test plan in English without graphics at all, choose EnglishTestPlan.
There are more complications, but this would very much improve my day.
The judge asked if the NYT specifically intends to disseminate every bit of info on every single page that it ever links to -- again Sullivan said yes.
This was a mistake. The answer should be 'no'. The argument is as follows: It may be the case that the NYT "specifically intends to disseminate every bit of info on every single page that it ever links to" at the exact moment the link is authored, but as the web is dynamic, this stance cannot be taken for any time beyond that. For example, say the NYT links to site A for what they feel is a legitimate purpose. Within minutes (or days, or years), site A is altered (or cracked) to display child pornography. Can a case be legitimately made against NYT for "intending to disseminate" child pornography? Why should they be responsible for the behavior of another web site?
Whats worse is that sony loves iee1384, this is a certain sign of its direction.
Sony is a special case, really, because it is big into the digial movie camera market. This is a market that firewire pretty much rules, so it should be no surprise that Sony wants Firewire to succeed.
Most of you will read this suggestion and snicker at it. I know I did when I first heard it. I've since learned how blind I was.
There is one simple thing you can do to make your code a lot better. It takes a bit of discipline, but once you do it for a while, it becomes second nature. It is this: whenever you write new code, make sure that you walk through every new line with a debugger. That's it.
At first blush, this seems kind of like a "duh" sort of step. After all, most people run their code through a debugger to check it. The key to it, though is the phrase "every line". Put breakpoints in every branch of the code you write. When you get into that branch, remove the breakpoint. When you think you are done, check for any breakpoints that are left. I was extremely surprised the first time I did this. I thought I had been thourough, but I hadn't checked three different branches. And there were bugs in two of them.
What I have learned after doing this for a number of years is that programmers pay more attention to the important part of a loop or branch and ignore the fringe cases. What ends up happening, then, is that the fringe cases contain a proportinally large number of the bugs. Worse, because they are fringe cases, they don't happen often, leading to bugs that are hard to reproduce.
That'll only happen if Apple can get it through Joe Average's thick skull that actual performance is only partly a function of MHz.
Apple tried to do this today by comparing performance between a 733MHz Power Mac system and a 1.5GHz Pentium 4. The Mac won handily. Naturally, Apple probably chose the operations that made the Mac look best, but that still implies a G4 is comparible to a Pentium with, say, 1.5 times the MHz.
Based on Clinton's musical preferences, I think he would really like Mr. Bungle's first album (which is also called Mr.Bungle). Extremely tight composition (by John Zorn) and you just can't loose with songs like "Girls of Porn" and "My Ass Is On Fire". Cannibal Corpse, on the other hand...
The situation described sucks, but Mozai (the original poster) needs to accept some of the blame for the misunderstanding. Any time someone new (i.e. "W.") enters the scene, make damn sure that you have them explain to you exactly what they think you have done. Had Mozai done this with the dean, a lot of the trouble could have been avoided.
Slashdot Mirror
In an office I saw at Harvard, there was similar graffitti changing "Colored Paper" to "Paper of Color".
Even if these numbers are too large, this still makes you think about how inefficient our cars are.
No. It makes me think of how inefficient plants are. If plants contained more chemical engery, they would make more gasoline per ton. Plus, it's not like the only product of these 90 tons of plants is the gas. Refining gasoline from crude oil produces a number of other outputs (plastics, etc.)
The whole concept of a savior and other ideas mentioned in the article are universal themes, of which both Jesus and Neo are examples. It only seems to Christians like Neo is "Christ like" because they were first exposed to these universal themes through the Jesus example. If Christians whorshipped, for example, Moses instead of Jesus, this article would have been all about how Neo was "Moses like".
So, what you are saying is that "everyone should beleive in what I believe in"... or, put another way, "X is important to me, therefore you should find it important as well".
I've seen people who follow this reasoning who, like you, consider X to be "Being political". I've also seen people where X is "Following Jesus" who are just as adamant that doing the same is what I should be doing as well. I consider both breeds equally loathsome because they assume that it is moral to tell me what I should think. (Your milage may vary).
I applaud people like Linus who simply say "X is important to me". Period. Conviction, but not zealotry. The difference is an implication that "I have stated my opinion. I assume you are intelligent enough to figure out if you agree or not for yourself."
Semi-on topic: a while ago, I gave some thought to pooling StringBuffer objects to improve performance. Bad idea. This page explains my findings.
A lot of ethics questions can be generated from the topic it discusses.
When the "US government will be clamping down on unpatriotic stories", what mechanism will it be using to do this?
The tester, in an attempt to compare apples to apples (so to speak), only used software with versions on both platforms. Having ported a good deal of software to the Mac, I know that companies tend to treat their Mac versions as second class citizens. Often the Mac versions have an internal emulation layer of one kind or another.
In any case, what the tester was trying to do figure out which system was fastest. What he should have done was look for the fastest graphics software on each platform. On the Mac, I'm pretty sure that won't be software from the camera manufacturer. What needs to be tested is the speed of the task, regardless of which software performs it.
The real question is: how can we the consumers use this rift to hasten Microsoft's fall? Can we divide into groups and shout for certain products or features for the sole purpose of making the arguments between the two sides louder?
The "click and hold" action can be accomplished instantly with a control-click. Just hold down the control key (yes, control, not the command a.k.a. Apple key) and click. It's a two handed solution, but better than waiting, IMO.
Note, this also means that if you have software to configue your mouse, you can set a button to do a control-click for the "right-click" effect that you are used to. (As an earlier poster said, two button mice will have this mapping set up by default when plugged into a Mac.)
A quick search on eBay shows a thriving market and some fairly high prices (considering auction prices tend to balloon in the few hours before they close). I sold my 2100 on eBay for over $400 about a year ago. It seems significant to me that these machines still fetch more in the used market than most new PDAs. Had Apple continued making them, they probably could have hit that price point by now.
Five syllable line
Line of seven syllables
Five syllable line
The mind boggles at the concept of a RedNeck focussed Linux distro. Not exactly what the story is talking about, but a freaky idea anyway.
Bear in mind, here, that there is a big difference between being "really smart" and a "genius". Bill Gates is really smart; Alan Turing was a genius. Lots of people are really smart, but you know a genius when you see one.
Though I'm not a genius, I've met a couple in my life and it seems to me that none of them were the wide-eyed "gee whiz" types. They tended to be a bit flaky, but somehow avoided the stigma of being really flaky. Instead, they have this aura about them. It was somehow just subconsiously obvious to any observer that the flakiness is because the genius lives in a much different world from them; the observer knows that they just don't get it and never will. Even more interesting, the observer does not find this bothersome. They don't see it as a limitation of themselves, but rather an special enhancement of the genius that somehow makes the observer appreciate the human race. The observer holds the genius in awe, but not in an envious way.
To see how you might script this, read, for example, iterviews of people who worked with Turing and how they interacted with them.
The main mistake the writers made was in making the centerpoint of Wes' character his youth. Often you saw the conflict (of sorts) between the "adult world" and Wesley's world. Instead, the centerpoint of Wes should have been is genius. The conflict really should have been between how Wes sees the universe vs. the (to him) limited outlook of those around him.
In many episodes, Wes was dejected because he wasn't let into the adult world. It always seemed to me that a better way to do it would have been for Wes to have been irritated, not because he was not let in, but because those in command didn't understand what was so obvious to him.
Another writing tactic would have been to use the reaction of the other actors to something Wes did. Usually, he sort of got the equivalent to a "good boy" and patted on the head. Instead, I picture a scene where the senior staff is discussion how to get out of some urgent situation. Wes is on the margins of the conversation, barely paying attention. In a break in the conversation (or maybe after people admit that they are stumped), Wes says, in near monotone, the solution to the problem. Not a suggestion, not an idea, but a "this is what will happen" statement. The key to the scene is the reaction from the senior staff, which is what sells Wes' genius. They should look at him in stunned silence. The reaction should be a combination of "holy crap, that will work", "I would have never have thought of that in a million years" and "where the fuck did that come from?".
This kind of thing would have changed Wesley's character significantly. In particular, it would have given him what all genius have: ego. This would not need to be the overbearing "I'm a genius, respect me you oaf" ego. But, a genius who isn't sure he is right when he is is not really a genius. The writing challenge would be to pull that off without making Wes into a total asshole. Again, Turing (and Oppenhimer, maybe) could be used as guides here.
In a similar genre, I liked Jewels of the Oracle. It's still available.
The average American is programmed with more associations between short sounds and brands than you might think. This kind of marketing is way more subtle, so most people don't even notice that they have these associations crawling around in their heads.
Some of these are short tunes or the specific way something is said, so I'm not sure if that qualifies as a "sound" per se.
Examples:
This is pure rumor mongering, but it would interesting if a hidden motive for this move was to leverage technology from the Newton, which was built on the ARM and StrongARM processors. The Newton has been dead for years, and still no one has built anything even close to its utility.
For anyone looking to start an open source project, here is a product I would love to have. This isn't so much about managing a bunch of documents as wanting software to manage one really complex document.
.not. fixed).
I write a lot of functional specifications and technical specifications. The main problem with traditional methods for doing this is that most software doesn't handle new additions, multiple versions or variations as well as I'd like. For example, say I have a spec with an outline like so:
1. Introduction
2. Administration Features
2.1 Create users
2.2 Create groups
All easy enough in, say, Word. Now, say in section 1 I have a link to section 2.2. Because I want the link to be legible in a printed version, the link would contain the number of the section (e.g. "2.2"). All well and good. Word can do this.
But, suppose my software has been released, and now we are updating the spec with new features. I add a section before the old section 2. Word, being fairly good at outlining, correctly renumbers the sections, like so:
1. Introduction
2. New Feature
3. Administration Features
3.1 Create users
3.2 Create groups
Here is one problem: My link in section one still says "2.2", even though it links properly to the new 3.2 section. I have to manually update the label of the link.
Another issue: I'd like to output different versions of the specification. Sometimes, for example, we need to show the spec to a customer, but don't want to show certain particular sections. Maybe a given section, for example, was implemented specially for customer X, and customer Y is a direct competitor who should not see the section for legal reasons. Using Word, I now have to manually remove the section and renumber the links yet again.
Another issue: The structure of a functional specification is often identical to the technical specification for the same product, but the contents of each section are very different. It would be nice to only manage the structure (i.e. the outline) once, and have that carry into both the functional spec and the technical spec (and the test plans, online help and so on). Another way to look at this idea is to think of different languages. I'd like to be able to manage the outline for the English version, and have those changes carry over into the Spanish version.
Another issue: I'd like to be able to switch a set of screen shots with another set. For example, maybe I have a set in English and a set in Spanish, and want to switch them wholesale. Or, perhaps, my screens are skinned, and I want to show some clients one skin and others another.
Oh, yes, and I'd like to be able to have multiple people working on the same spec at one time.
So, my ideal product would treat each section of the spec as a record in a centralized database. Each record would have user defined fields. The fields could be images, rich text, whatever. Each field would have a robust rich text editor. Links could be embedded into the text of rich text fields. The link would hold a reference to another record and a style describing what the label of the link is in terms of its section number (which is
A screen on the product would manage how the records link together (that is which are the children of others, and so on.)
Another screen would manage the base font styles of the "levels" of the records (i.e. all of the x.y headers in one style, the x.y.z headers in another).
Then, on another screen, you could select all of the sections you wanted, the fields from each record you wanted, the art set you wanted and the styles you wanted, and then render the selected items to a particular format. The software would organize the selected sections into the proper outline, then change the link labels to the proper section numbers. It could then output to PDF, HTML, XML, whatever.
One key feature is the selection of fields for this rendering process. For example, maybe my fields are: EnglishIntro, ScreenShot, EnglishFuncDesc, EnglishTechDesc, SpanishIntro, SpanishFuncDesc, EnglishTestPlan. Then, if I wanted an English technical specification, I'd choose to output the EnglishIntro, ScreenShot, and EnglishTechDesc, choosing the English artwork set. If I wanted a Spanish functional spec, I'd choose SpanishIntro, ScreenShot, and SpanishFuncDesc and the Spanish artwork set. For a test plan in English without graphics at all, choose EnglishTestPlan.
There are more complications, but this would very much improve my day.
This was a mistake. The answer should be 'no'. The argument is as follows: It may be the case that the NYT "specifically intends to disseminate every bit of info on every single page that it ever links to" at the exact moment the link is authored, but as the web is dynamic, this stance cannot be taken for any time beyond that. For example, say the NYT links to site A for what they feel is a legitimate purpose. Within minutes (or days, or years), site A is altered (or cracked) to display child pornography. Can a case be legitimately made against NYT for "intending to disseminate" child pornography? Why should they be responsible for the behavior of another web site?
Sony is a special case, really, because it is big into the digial movie camera market. This is a market that firewire pretty much rules, so it should be no surprise that Sony wants Firewire to succeed.
There is one simple thing you can do to make your code a lot better. It takes a bit of discipline, but once you do it for a while, it becomes second nature. It is this: whenever you write new code, make sure that you walk through every new line with a debugger. That's it.
At first blush, this seems kind of like a "duh" sort of step. After all, most people run their code through a debugger to check it. The key to it, though is the phrase "every line". Put breakpoints in every branch of the code you write. When you get into that branch, remove the breakpoint. When you think you are done, check for any breakpoints that are left. I was extremely surprised the first time I did this. I thought I had been thourough, but I hadn't checked three different branches. And there were bugs in two of them.
What I have learned after doing this for a number of years is that programmers pay more attention to the important part of a loop or branch and ignore the fringe cases. What ends up happening, then, is that the fringe cases contain a proportinally large number of the bugs. Worse, because they are fringe cases, they don't happen often, leading to bugs that are hard to reproduce.
Apple tried to do this today by comparing performance between a 733MHz Power Mac system and a 1.5GHz Pentium 4. The Mac won handily. Naturally, Apple probably chose the operations that made the Mac look best, but that still implies a G4 is comparible to a Pentium with, say, 1.5 times the MHz.
Based on Clinton's musical preferences, I think he would really like Mr. Bungle's first album (which is also called Mr.Bungle). Extremely tight composition (by John Zorn) and you just can't loose with songs like "Girls of Porn" and "My Ass Is On Fire". Cannibal Corpse, on the other hand...
It seems to me that a good, old-fashioned duel is in order for this election. I suggest swords, or possibly flintlocks.
The situation described sucks, but Mozai (the original poster) needs to accept some of the blame for the misunderstanding. Any time someone new (i.e. "W.") enters the scene, make damn sure that you have them explain to you exactly what they think you have done. Had Mozai done this with the dean, a lot of the trouble could have been avoided.