I've got a Palm, I think PalmOS is great, it's got a clean and simple GUI that my 4 yr old cousin understands, and there are milions of freeware applications out there that run on it, everything from a colouring in program(for said cousin) to various media players that allow me to use my Palm as an mp3 player.
Is it time to learn from the nature and build some artificial barrier islands, rather than further changing the face of the earth?
Firstly how is building artificial islands not "hanging the face of the earth", secondly, learning from us here in Europe isn't a bad thing, building flood gates and better costal defence like those in london and the Netherlands is worth it in the long run. From TFA: "[the Netherlands] erected a futuristic system of coastal defenses that is admired around the world today as one of the best barriers against the sea's fury - one that could withstand the kind of storm that happens only once in 10,000 years."
it cost them $8bn, but it's lased over 50 years and counting, and they havn't suffered any New Orleans type situation. Pay the money now to invest in the future of your country. Generations will thank you for it
If MS is really concerned about that issue they could always release the.doc document specification, I'm sure many other people would pick it up and develop readers\writers for it, like with pdf. Would that have Mass. continue to use MS Office as.doc woul be open?
>I think the reason they went with PIN is because they know cashier plebs are lazy assholes, most of whom would even >take a glance at the sig the customer gave and the sig in the database, whereas they dont HAVE to with PIN as the >computer system can reliably check for them.
Actually they went with chip and pin because it's been tested widley on the Europian mainland, and now being rolled out across the rest of the continent.
Also most petty criminals can't get hold of your pin just by stealing you wallet and looking at the card. However they coud get hold of your signature, I still believe that it is more secure than the old system
>Which is easier to do, given that both source materials are available?
How is somone's pin "available"? I always protect my pin from view eiter at an ATM or when paying by chip and pin; I also always check for skimmers etc. at ATMs. If people were just sensible, a 4 digit pin would be fool proof, but as the sying goes, a fool and his money are eaisly parted.
>I'd assumed that the aim was to shift responsibility off the CCs' shoulders and onto someone else's.
No, the aim of chip and pin was to increase security. Because signatures can be forged, pin numbers can't. IMO this reasearh is flawed because actually getting hold of somone's pin is much harder than copying their signature. When I used to sign for my card, my signatire hardly ever looked like that on the back of my card, but with chip and pin my signature (my pin) is always identical, and noone can see it to try and forge.
Using your logic, the dutch should never have built Holland, afterall it's mostly below sea level. It's been around a lot longer than New Orleans, or even the USA for that matter, just because it's below sea level dosn't mean it's a "disaster waiting to happen". If it's rebuilt using hurricane resistant architectural technologies it'll be fine, and it'll last a long time.
While such devices exist, they are currently not widespread enough.
I'm not sure they do, I have a PDA (which is what I assume you're talking about), and for note-taking, for example, they aren't anywhere near as good as pen and paper; even with systems such as Palm's Grafitti. They're getting better, no doubt and are useful for all sorts of thigns. But not as a replacement for paper, and they have a long way too go.
Actually many libaries (at least here in the UK) also distibute books in forign languages, , braille, large text and other accesible mediums. As you say the job of a libary is to make content as widly available as possible; that includes disabled and non-english speaking minorities. Some would say they have more responsibility too these people as regular bookshops often do not cater for them.
"39% of the children polled said they were happy to pay a high price for games they especially wanted" From my experience it's usually mummy and daddy doing the paying, despite what the children say.
I'll adress both those articles, the BBC one is 3 year old, and to quote it says " People who watch BBC television through a computer could be forced to buy a TV licence" which I don't think is unacceptable, besides IIRC it's more or less the status quo anyway, TV cards require a TV licence. The register article is much more relivant, however it suggests that a form of broadcasting tax (and notes the difficulties of this) is imposed *instead* of the licence fee, not additional to it, if that were to happen a form of top-slicing would occor where different broadcasters would compete for public money. No need fot the tin-foil hat just yet. Your money is safe until at least 2017 according to your own article.
I'm not advocating forced payment to anyone, Sky or BBC, it's just that using a Times article to justify a paranoia that the BBC is going to get a licence fee from PC users is just absurd; of course mr Murdoch wants you to believe the worst of the BBC. But if you look at the facts, the BBC's charter is coming up for renewal and the momentum is the other way: for abolition of the licence fee (although the government has said the licence fee will stay this charter). The various comittees that have looked at the issue have said that the licence fee is becoming more and more unsustainable in it's current form, things like top sliceing[sic](giving part of the fee to other broadcasters with a public service remit: ITV, Channel4 and Channel 5) are being proposed. No offence but I believe your fear is just paranoia based on rupert Murdoch spin and nothing more.
Ahh yes because The owner of the Times, Rupert Murdoch, is going to be fair and unbias when it comes to his main competitor in the UK TV industry. Sky and the BBC are the two main players, and I know which one I think is better value for money, and it's not Sky.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got a Palm, I think PalmOS is great, it's got a clean and simple GUI that my 4 yr old cousin understands, and there are milions of freeware applications out there that run on it, everything from a colouring in program(for said cousin) to various media players that allow me to use my Palm as an mp3 player.
There are various emulators around, I can't remember the names off the top of my head, but if you google for it you're bound to find them.
Is it time to learn from the nature and build some artificial barrier islands, rather than further changing the face of the earth?
Firstly how is building artificial islands not "hanging the face of the earth", secondly, learning from us here in Europe isn't a bad thing, building flood gates and better costal defence like those in london and the Netherlands is worth it in the long run. From TFA:
"[the Netherlands] erected a futuristic system of coastal defenses that is admired around the world today as one of the best barriers against the sea's fury - one that could withstand the kind of storm that happens only once in 10,000 years."
it cost them $8bn, but it's lased over 50 years and counting, and they havn't suffered any New Orleans type situation. Pay the money now to invest in the future of your country. Generations will thank you for it
An (almost) comrehnsive list of greasemonke\slashdot user scripts.:c ific#head-ec4846dd1f06f8efd2d256a59577b3faaebbbf12
http://dunck.us/collab/GreaseMonkeyUserScriptsSpe
IIRC Slashcode uses HTML 3.2, but you're right anyway, it dosn't validate like that either.
Greasemonkey will probably let you do it.
That shouldn't be a problem if the developers remember to use the w3c CSS validatior:
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
But seeing as they don't bother using even the html validator I'm not counting on it.
And whilst you'ra st it, mabe you can make slashcode validate currently it the validator outpts this: http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3 A//slashdot.org/
If MS is really concerned about that issue they could always release the .doc document specification, I'm sure many other people would pick it up and develop readers\writers for it, like with pdf. Would that have Mass. continue to use MS Office as .doc woul be open?
>I think the reason they went with PIN is because they know cashier plebs are lazy assholes, most of whom would even >take a glance at the sig the customer gave and the sig in the database, whereas they dont HAVE to with PIN as the >computer system can reliably check for them.
Actually they went with chip and pin because it's been tested widley on the Europian mainland, and now being rolled out across the rest of the continent.
Also most petty criminals can't get hold of your pin just by stealing you wallet and looking at the card. However they coud get hold of your signature, I still believe that it is more secure than the old system
>Which is easier to do, given that both source materials are available?
How is somone's pin "available"? I always protect my pin from view eiter at an ATM or when paying by chip and pin; I also always check for skimmers etc. at ATMs. If people were just sensible, a 4 digit pin would be fool proof, but as the sying goes, a fool and his money are eaisly parted.
>I'd assumed that the aim was to shift responsibility off the CCs' shoulders and onto someone else's.
No, the aim of chip and pin was to increase security. Because signatures can be forged, pin numbers can't. IMO this reasearh is flawed because actually getting hold of somone's pin is much harder than copying their signature. When I used to sign for my card, my signatire hardly ever looked like that on the back of my card, but with chip and pin my signature (my pin) is always identical, and noone can see it to try and forge.
Using your logic, the dutch should never have built Holland, afterall it's mostly below sea level. It's been around a lot longer than New Orleans, or even the USA for that matter, just because it's below sea level dosn't mean it's a "disaster waiting to happen". If it's rebuilt using hurricane resistant architectural technologies it'll be fine, and it'll last a long time.
While such devices exist, they are currently not widespread enough.
I'm not sure they do, I have a PDA (which is what I assume you're talking about), and for note-taking, for example, they aren't anywhere near as good as pen and paper; even with systems such as Palm's Grafitti. They're getting better, no doubt and are useful for all sorts of thigns. But not as a replacement for paper, and they have a long way too go.
The context search plugin allows you to highlight any text and the right click menu allows you to search in any of the engines you have installed in the search box. https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=240
Actually many libaries (at least here in the UK) also distibute books in forign languages, , braille, large text and other accesible mediums. As you say the job of a libary is to make content as widly available as possible; that includes disabled and non-english speaking minorities. Some would say they have more responsibility too these people as regular bookshops often do not cater for them.
As I posted below, somone's already doing this: http://totl.net/STI/
Someone's already doing that: http://totl.net/STI/
I carried on using the old client, it still works. (I couldn't get BOINC to work either).
That's not meant to be funny; William Shatner really is doing All Bran adverts here in the UK.
"39% of the children polled said they were happy to pay a high price for games they especially wanted"
From my experience it's usually mummy and daddy doing the paying, despite what the children say.
I'll adress both those articles, the BBC one is 3 year old, and to quote it says " People who watch BBC television through a computer could be forced to buy a TV licence" which I don't think is unacceptable, besides IIRC it's more or less the status quo anyway, TV cards require a TV licence. The register article is much more relivant, however it suggests that a form of broadcasting tax (and notes the difficulties of this) is imposed *instead* of the licence fee, not additional to it, if that were to happen a form of top-slicing would occor where different broadcasters would compete for public money. No need fot the tin-foil hat just yet. Your money is safe until at least 2017 according to your own article.
I'm not advocating forced payment to anyone, Sky or BBC, it's just that using a Times article to justify a paranoia that the BBC is going to get a licence fee from PC users is just absurd; of course mr Murdoch wants you to believe the worst of the BBC. But if you look at the facts, the BBC's charter is coming up for renewal and the momentum is the other way: for abolition of the licence fee (although the government has said the licence fee will stay this charter). The various comittees that have looked at the issue have said that the licence fee is becoming more and more unsustainable in it's current form, things like top sliceing[sic](giving part of the fee to other broadcasters with a public service remit: ITV, Channel4 and Channel 5) are being proposed. No offence but I believe your fear is just paranoia based on rupert Murdoch spin and nothing more.
Ahh yes because The owner of the Times, Rupert Murdoch, is going to be fair and unbias when it comes to his main competitor in the UK TV industry. Sky and the BBC are the two main players, and I know which one I think is better value for money, and it's not Sky.
Santa is real!! (Age 22) ;)