In addition, capacitors and other parts DO have a limited lifetime
To expand on this - as components get smaller, they become more susceptible to Electromigration. The current and flow of electrons in one direction causes a (very slow, but present) movement of the positive metal ions in the opposite direction - because they're in the tens of thousands of times more massive than individual electrons (1836*mass number more massive) it's slow, but over time it does cause change in the structure of the wire track, especially seen near sharp corners and near features on circuit boards. An impurity on a straight track will either eventually turn into a hole or into a pillar; there's some fantastic photos about. Older machinery, having whopping great wires and circuit boards, doesn't have much of a problem - it'll last for years and years and years. Newer machinery, especially with the downscaling of microchips and the compression of circuit boards, has far less tolerance to the disruption of the structure of the board tracks, and are so more prone to failure.
even the fastest typist (keyboard) or gamer (mouse) are still much slower than their own brains
While I agree with the gist of your post, I pick on a lot of your details. I type at 100 wpm, give or take - if I typed faster I'd be having to go back and delete things even faster. The only time typing speed is limiting is when copying out text - when there's no thinking going on. If I have to think about what I mean, what I want to write into a presentation, it has to both make sense and be contextual - so in the right language, if it's an internal work or something to be presented to a VP of some major company. I bet many/.ers have higher typing speeds; and to your example of mouse movements, remember that it has gone way beyond the conscious. The videos you can find of tetris championships are stupidly extreme - most people can't even think that fast. I play one puzzle game that requires around four directional mouse-sweep clicks per second, up to 7 or 8 if things happen along in the right order. That puzzle game is part of a ranking system, and I've been to a friend who's high in that ranking - by playing that puzzle a lot and having the skill for it, she can make those moves faster than I can even see them, flawlessly time after time after board after board after board, making a mistake few than one board in twenty. Her muscle memory reactions are fast enough that it's faster than thought. And there's a few hundred other people of a few tens of thousands playing that game at a similar ranking. Looking outside gaming, and you see sports players whose reaction timing, control, precision is fantastic. As a former coxswain and rowing coach, I know that beginners row in approximately the opposite way from optimum; however after an academic year of training, I can have 8 rowers in synch moving their hands down to a level that's co-ordinated with the others that the boat doesn't tip from the oar extraction; hands forward, bodies over, knees up, rotating the inside hand as the bodies reach out as the weight of the rowers comes onto the toes, 8 blade tips dropping into the water in the same fraction of a second as the legs start extending, legs push down as the shoulders stay forward, testing the load on the oar to make sure it's even and adjusting the press direction as needed if there's curve, the body weight lifting off the seat from the extension of the legs while still retaining enough contact with that rolling seat that they don't fall off it, transferring the power smoothly through into moving the back backwards as the power from the legs finishes off, ending with the arms drawing through at a precise enough speed that the rowers land back on their seats rather than falling onto them, hands spinning a quarter inch from the waist as the inside hand rotates back and ready for the start of the next stroke.
Approximately once per second.
It is utterly impossible to think that fast. Sure, it's an extreme example, but it makes the point - muscle memory takes over, no matter what the situation. I like your example of background tasks though - while my fingers ended each line I was typing out, I could be beginning to think about the next line. That disagrees with my first point, and agrees with yours that I quoted - but at the same time it's only for a second or so. My mind isn't done thinking about the next section before I'm done typing the first; it's a continuous flow. I have a mild suspicion that I thought that at 50 wpm and that I'll still think it if I ever get to 150 wpm, but you get the idea.
Finally, because I liked your post, I have to agree about hotkeys. I modify my hotkeys and write my own scripts for things that are missing. This works from things as simple as/assign in irc clients to the whole idea behind writing complete software items; productivity enhancement comes at a cost of time and effort in setup, but it pays for itself and over during time that is more valuable. The one thing I hope for is automation of the automation here - if you repeat a complex action or set of actions often enough, to not have to automate that yourself - but to be able to be recognised and simply be able to assign a simple action, such as a keypress.
It's the 21st century and you're amazed that computers have rewriteable code?
While it doesn't say whether they rewrote a module to do this or simply set Opportunity to listen on a particular frequency (they don't even have to tell it what it's looking for - if it picks up a relatively strong signal, it's going to be the MGS) - it'd be more astounding if they hadn't built in flexibility in this day and age.
Note that whatever you search for in google finds you near-synonyms for various words; both words stemming from the same verb, and synonyms. Just put in a single random (but common) word and see what gets highlighted.
I suspect that someone at Google with access to the synonyms database has a sense of humour...
While not definite, having 'ski' be a synonym of 'water' means there could well be errant second-level associations as well.
cause 1% less profits, it's their legal _duty_ to _not_ do it
Not quite. There are grey elements there too - if you can improve your public image by being sane, responsible, ethical, then more people will buy your product. My pension advisor asked me whether I wanted to invest into strictly ethical companies, it seemed to be a standard question; the implication then is that companies with ethical policies get some more investment. Sure, the companies with unethical policies can make more money by those actions, but the companies still have a choice; Google could make more money by being evil! But they somehow still manage to be one of the most lucrative companies.
It seems like the implementation might be a bit strange/broken when the person who wrote and played a song can't get a good score. Or is the controller too different from a real guitar?
/wonders whether to suggest being able to plug in a real or midi electric... at the moment my housemate, who is a little tone deaf, is attempting to learn the guitar. Apps on every platform can register a midi signal, and a real signal can be fouriered into played notes. Much of the implementation must be there in the code; would it be difficult to create a more... professional version? I for one would not be averse to my housemate being able to see where and what he was doing wrong!
Even though the same tags come up, the order in which they appear reflects how much they have been tagged. There is information in the order of the words, more than if there was only one. Yes no maybe means it's a contended viewpoint, with more people tagging yes. On some articles, you just see the word 'no'. If there were only one of yes or no, you'd never get a straw poll of opinion - the way it is at the moment, you do.
I was under the impression that the CIA was supposed to be more good than evil. And co-operating with one section while refusing to co-operate with another, under the grounds of a good/evil data purposes, isn't even double standards - sure, there's a minor element in that they're dealing with the same organisation, but while they've got that clarity of separation between the parts of the data they do and don't give, they're not suddenly aligning to evil. While I don't know the details, I'm pretty sure that the CIA itself is large enough to do that. Similarly, using MSN's messenger service does not make anyone a staunch MS supporter/pawn/bitch.
That's why the tune to the page is now Mozart's "Lacrimosa" from Requiem. It was probably Sanctus earlier (a lot more glory-to-god going on) but after seeing what was happening to their poor server they'll have decided to change it.../wonders if he should get + or - geek points for recognising specific Mozart sequences...
Threatening to cripple [...] this? If their reasoning is "it'll be available for free download anyway", they're only crippling the people who can't/won't download the patches, ie the 56k modems and the lazy. You're asking them to spend money on compiling a whole load of patches into a free product, when those patches are already available. Sure, it comes in bitesize chunks, but *you don't have to wait until $releasedate*. Rather than waiting for a bulk patch, they're applying patches as and when written.
I don't use windows, I'm not a MS fanboy - but hollering because they won't release a giant conglomeration of patches when those patches will already be available (and for the most part available earlier) seems a fairly strange thing to do. Sure, yell at them, but at least yell at them for something there isn't already a solution provided for.
What? No. Wrong. A conversation between you and I would not have 1 participants (0 you 1 me). It has 2 participants (0 null value 1 you [2|10] me)
0 - null set. Don't try to put people in it, because this category does not exist.
1 - the unwashed masses
10 - the washed masses
11 - the gripping hand masses
Your final joke only works if you set the context to binary AND count yourself out of the set that can count in binary (potentially true, from your post).
The original joke (10 types of people) stands.
The poster's sig joke (11 types of people) stands by adding an extra layer of abstraction; by pissing off the people who get the 10 joke but don't get the 11. It's got a nice duality of being either clever or stupid; you can read that as reflecting yourself. Perhaps the poster didn't understand the original joke, and pseudonerded it wrong; or he was being weird and just pissing off the nerd sticklers. Either of those ways, and I'm trying to be too clever by half; but either way round you're still wrong. If you count dec2 as bin1, then "1 types of people" is grammatically correct, too - just your idea of binary no longer matches up with the rest of the mathematical workd.
Tell that to the MMORPG players. If you want to be able to go up and down rather than having gravity pulling you down to the ground, then think back to even early versions of UT - being able to zoom around the map in flying mode. Mouse - point. Aim. Whatever. WASD or arrow keys, go towards aim; this includes flying, flying backwards, going straight up or down, or looping round in a climbing spiral with a half twist at the top. That isn't "awkward". Any beginner user in any system has trouble; think of the expense of driving lessons. In a computerised 3D realm, you can zoom around and bump into things without harm, so the learning curve is easier, and the range of movement much higher.
Movement and navigation in a 3D realm is no barrier whatsoever.
The tagging system is taking out of its original context, but it still works. If I'm skimming the front page, then I can get a measure of the response to the article; seeing 'wretchedhiveofscumandvillainy' may not be something I can search for, but by damn does it give a fantastic insight into the article contents. Even one of the other respondent's comments - that questions get asked with all of "yes, no, maybe" - has its own silver lining - you can see which tags have been used most, showing a quick dipstick test of what the answer might be. Sure, it's only a glance and doesn't give you details about why the votes were cast or how much the leader leads by, but for a glance it's fantastic. And those tags of diebold and maryland will still be there.
Argh! NO! Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects are about the spread of information. Don't ask for money to be spent on a standard so you can fire up one music player over another, when they can actually be using that money to be able to get more source information.
You utterly have the ability to listen to ogg files; you just don't want to. However, copyright is an absolute blocker (fair use is very limited and dangerous territory) which cannot be circumvented - that's what this money is aiming towards. Don't vote to squander it on trivialities.
How many people do you think use Google? Can you imagine how ridiculous an amount of energy has been saved by the availablility of that resource? While I have no figures at all, I suspect that the amount saved will be significantly higher.
That wouldn't work either - remember that the default search on a vanilla install of windows is MSN search. The greater population of internet users includes the people who don't have the knowhow or care to change their browser, default search site, etc; as such, a good proportion of the internet's userbase (so throwing off your truly accurate indication) won't visit google. These numbers are fairly useless anyway without context; even if there was a way to pin down the number of people with different browsers, you need to reevaluate the proportions you'll get for the site you're trying to design. A mac fan forum will need safari, ff, opera support. A site about gardening is, more likely than not, going to have a *very* low proportion of visits from people who have the savvy to change their browser; they're more likely to get visited by those with less IT competence and so will have a greater proportion of IE users. It's not 100%, but it'll be higher than the 82% we see here.
DVD Jon is a bastard for not simply releasing this to the public
You're calling him a bastard for giving his company good business? Welcome to capitalism - it's been around for years. While I don't know the details of the Sony vs Connectix case, if it's relevant then he's got himself, his employees and his investors money. Sure, the public will have to pay $rand for the features, but it's a feature that wasn't there before. You can't grudge someone for selling you a luxury instead of giving it to you for free. If you think you can, then you can also grudge your computer and OS vendor for selling you that hardware and software in the first place...
Slashdot Mirror
In addition, capacitors and other parts DO have a limited lifetime
To expand on this - as components get smaller, they become more susceptible to Electromigration. The current and flow of electrons in one direction causes a (very slow, but present) movement of the positive metal ions in the opposite direction - because they're in the tens of thousands of times more massive than individual electrons (1836*mass number more massive) it's slow, but over time it does cause change in the structure of the wire track, especially seen near sharp corners and near features on circuit boards. An impurity on a straight track will either eventually turn into a hole or into a pillar; there's some fantastic photos about. Older machinery, having whopping great wires and circuit boards, doesn't have much of a problem - it'll last for years and years and years. Newer machinery, especially with the downscaling of microchips and the compression of circuit boards, has far less tolerance to the disruption of the structure of the board tracks, and are so more prone to failure.
even the fastest typist (keyboard) or gamer (mouse) are still much slower than their own brains
/.ers have higher typing speeds; and to your example of mouse movements, remember that it has gone way beyond the conscious.
/assign in irc clients to the whole idea behind writing complete software items; productivity enhancement comes at a cost of time and effort in setup, but it pays for itself and over during time that is more valuable. The one thing I hope for is automation of the automation here - if you repeat a complex action or set of actions often enough, to not have to automate that yourself - but to be able to be recognised and simply be able to assign a simple action, such as a keypress.
While I agree with the gist of your post, I pick on a lot of your details. I type at 100 wpm, give or take - if I typed faster I'd be having to go back and delete things even faster. The only time typing speed is limiting is when copying out text - when there's no thinking going on. If I have to think about what I mean, what I want to write into a presentation, it has to both make sense and be contextual - so in the right language, if it's an internal work or something to be presented to a VP of some major company. I bet many
The videos you can find of tetris championships are stupidly extreme - most people can't even think that fast. I play one puzzle game that requires around four directional mouse-sweep clicks per second, up to 7 or 8 if things happen along in the right order. That puzzle game is part of a ranking system, and I've been to a friend who's high in that ranking - by playing that puzzle a lot and having the skill for it, she can make those moves faster than I can even see them, flawlessly time after time after board after board after board, making a mistake few than one board in twenty. Her muscle memory reactions are fast enough that it's faster than thought. And there's a few hundred other people of a few tens of thousands playing that game at a similar ranking.
Looking outside gaming, and you see sports players whose reaction timing, control, precision is fantastic. As a former coxswain and rowing coach, I know that beginners row in approximately the opposite way from optimum; however after an academic year of training, I can have 8 rowers in synch moving their hands down to a level that's co-ordinated with the others that the boat doesn't tip from the oar extraction; hands forward, bodies over, knees up, rotating the inside hand as the bodies reach out as the weight of the rowers comes onto the toes, 8 blade tips dropping into the water in the same fraction of a second as the legs start extending, legs push down as the shoulders stay forward, testing the load on the oar to make sure it's even and adjusting the press direction as needed if there's curve, the body weight lifting off the seat from the extension of the legs while still retaining enough contact with that rolling seat that they don't fall off it, transferring the power smoothly through into moving the back backwards as the power from the legs finishes off, ending with the arms drawing through at a precise enough speed that the rowers land back on their seats rather than falling onto them, hands spinning a quarter inch from the waist as the inside hand rotates back and ready for the start of the next stroke.
Approximately once per second.
It is utterly impossible to think that fast. Sure, it's an extreme example, but it makes the point - muscle memory takes over, no matter what the situation. I like your example of background tasks though - while my fingers ended each line I was typing out, I could be beginning to think about the next line. That disagrees with my first point, and agrees with yours that I quoted - but at the same time it's only for a second or so. My mind isn't done thinking about the next section before I'm done typing the first; it's a continuous flow. I have a mild suspicion that I thought that at 50 wpm and that I'll still think it if I ever get to 150 wpm, but you get the idea.
Finally, because I liked your post, I have to agree about hotkeys. I modify my hotkeys and write my own scripts for things that are missing. This works from things as simple as
It's the 21st century and you're amazed that computers have rewriteable code?
While it doesn't say whether they rewrote a module to do this or simply set Opportunity to listen on a particular frequency (they don't even have to tell it what it's looking for - if it picks up a relatively strong signal, it's going to be the MGS) - it'd be more astounding if they hadn't built in flexibility in this day and age.
What, like... Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo?
Note that whatever you search for in google finds you near-synonyms for various words; both words stemming from the same verb, and synonyms. Just put in a single random (but common) word and see what gets highlighted.
I suspect that someone at Google with access to the synonyms database has a sense of humour...
While not definite, having 'ski' be a synonym of 'water' means there could well be errant second-level associations as well.
It could be worse... it could just constantly be hammer time...
Umm.... Nike boots of swiftness? Advertising doesn't have to be billboardy, remember...
cause 1% less profits, it's their legal _duty_ to _not_ do it
Not quite. There are grey elements there too - if you can improve your public image by being sane, responsible, ethical, then more people will buy your product. My pension advisor asked me whether I wanted to invest into strictly ethical companies, it seemed to be a standard question; the implication then is that companies with ethical policies get some more investment. Sure, the companies with unethical policies can make more money by those actions, but the companies still have a choice; Google could make more money by being evil! But they somehow still manage to be one of the most lucrative companies.
It's never black and white.
It seems like the implementation might be a bit strange/broken when the person who wrote and played a song can't get a good score. Or is the controller too different from a real guitar?
/wonders whether to suggest being able to plug in a real or midi electric... at the moment my housemate, who is a little tone deaf, is attempting to learn the guitar. Apps on every platform can register a midi signal, and a real signal can be fouriered into played notes. Much of the implementation must be there in the code; would it be difficult to create a more... professional version? I for one would not be averse to my housemate being able to see where and what he was doing wrong!
Even though the same tags come up, the order in which they appear reflects how much they have been tagged. There is information in the order of the words, more than if there was only one. Yes no maybe means it's a contended viewpoint, with more people tagging yes. On some articles, you just see the word 'no'. If there were only one of yes or no, you'd never get a straw poll of opinion - the way it is at the moment, you do.
I was under the impression that the CIA was supposed to be more good than evil. And co-operating with one section while refusing to co-operate with another, under the grounds of a good/evil data purposes, isn't even double standards - sure, there's a minor element in that they're dealing with the same organisation, but while they've got that clarity of separation between the parts of the data they do and don't give, they're not suddenly aligning to evil. While I don't know the details, I'm pretty sure that the CIA itself is large enough to do that. Similarly, using MSN's messenger service does not make anyone a staunch MS supporter/pawn/bitch.
That's why the tune to the page is now Mozart's "Lacrimosa" from Requiem. It was probably Sanctus earlier (a lot more glory-to-god going on) but after seeing what was happening to their poor server they'll have decided to change it... /wonders if he should get + or - geek points for recognising specific Mozart sequences...
Threatening to cripple [...] this? If their reasoning is "it'll be available for free download anyway", they're only crippling the people who can't/won't download the patches, ie the 56k modems and the lazy. You're asking them to spend money on compiling a whole load of patches into a free product, when those patches are already available. Sure, it comes in bitesize chunks, but *you don't have to wait until $releasedate*. Rather than waiting for a bulk patch, they're applying patches as and when written.
I don't use windows, I'm not a MS fanboy - but hollering because they won't release a giant conglomeration of patches when those patches will already be available (and for the most part available earlier) seems a fairly strange thing to do. Sure, yell at them, but at least yell at them for something there isn't already a solution provided for.
> 10.6 million square miles
I think that should answer your question.
Funny mod, gains no good karma
Parent poster writes long short stories...
What? No. Wrong. A conversation between you and I would not have 1 participants (0 you 1 me). It has 2 participants (0 null value 1 you [2|10] me)
0 - null set. Don't try to put people in it, because this category does not exist.
1 - the unwashed masses
10 - the washed masses
11 - the gripping hand masses
Your final joke only works if you set the context to binary AND count yourself out of the set that can count in binary (potentially true, from your post).
The original joke (10 types of people) stands.
The poster's sig joke (11 types of people) stands by adding an extra layer of abstraction; by pissing off the people who get the 10 joke but don't get the 11. It's got a nice duality of being either clever or stupid; you can read that as reflecting yourself. Perhaps the poster didn't understand the original joke, and pseudonerded it wrong; or he was being weird and just pissing off the nerd sticklers. Either of those ways, and I'm trying to be too clever by half; but either way round you're still wrong. If you count dec2 as bin1, then "1 types of people" is grammatically correct, too - just your idea of binary no longer matches up with the rest of the mathematical workd.
I use mac OSX. I downloaded a free program (VLC, mplayer might handle it too) and I can play ogg files with no problem.
Thus, spending money to solve a problem that already has a solution seems like a Bad Idea.
Navigation in a 3D realm will always be awkward
Tell that to the MMORPG players. If you want to be able to go up and down rather than having gravity pulling you down to the ground, then think back to even early versions of UT - being able to zoom around the map in flying mode. Mouse - point. Aim. Whatever. WASD or arrow keys, go towards aim; this includes flying, flying backwards, going straight up or down, or looping round in a climbing spiral with a half twist at the top. That isn't "awkward". Any beginner user in any system has trouble; think of the expense of driving lessons. In a computerised 3D realm, you can zoom around and bump into things without harm, so the learning curve is easier, and the range of movement much higher.
Movement and navigation in a 3D realm is no barrier whatsoever.
The tagging system is taking out of its original context, but it still works. If I'm skimming the front page, then I can get a measure of the response to the article; seeing 'wretchedhiveofscumandvillainy' may not be something I can search for, but by damn does it give a fantastic insight into the article contents. Even one of the other respondent's comments - that questions get asked with all of "yes, no, maybe" - has its own silver lining - you can see which tags have been used most, showing a quick dipstick test of what the answer might be. Sure, it's only a glance and doesn't give you details about why the votes were cast or how much the leader leads by, but for a glance it's fantastic. And those tags of diebold and maryland will still be there.
Argh! NO! Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects are about the spread of information. Don't ask for money to be spent on a standard so you can fire up one music player over another, when they can actually be using that money to be able to get more source information.
You utterly have the ability to listen to ogg files; you just don't want to. However, copyright is an absolute blocker (fair use is very limited and dangerous territory) which cannot be circumvented - that's what this money is aiming towards. Don't vote to squander it on trivialities.
Maybe... but they're supremely well defended against sharks with frickin' lasers.
1.21GW? Pah. They're producing equipment around the world now that uses 100,000 times that much energy.
e ra01.gif
http://www.jaeri.go.jp/english/press/980618/gif/t
the ridiculous amount of energy they actually use
How many people do you think use Google? Can you imagine how ridiculous an amount of energy has been saved by the availablility of that resource? While I have no figures at all, I suspect that the amount saved will be significantly higher.
That wouldn't work either - remember that the default search on a vanilla install of windows is MSN search. The greater population of internet users includes the people who don't have the knowhow or care to change their browser, default search site, etc; as such, a good proportion of the internet's userbase (so throwing off your truly accurate indication) won't visit google. These numbers are fairly useless anyway without context; even if there was a way to pin down the number of people with different browsers, you need to reevaluate the proportions you'll get for the site you're trying to design. A mac fan forum will need safari, ff, opera support. A site about gardening is, more likely than not, going to have a *very* low proportion of visits from people who have the savvy to change their browser; they're more likely to get visited by those with less IT competence and so will have a greater proportion of IE users. It's not 100%, but it'll be higher than the 82% we see here.
DVD Jon is a bastard for not simply releasing this to the public
You're calling him a bastard for giving his company good business? Welcome to capitalism - it's been around for years. While I don't know the details of the Sony vs Connectix case, if it's relevant then he's got himself, his employees and his investors money. Sure, the public will have to pay $rand for the features, but it's a feature that wasn't there before. You can't grudge someone for selling you a luxury instead of giving it to you for free. If you think you can, then you can also grudge your computer and OS vendor for selling you that hardware and software in the first place...