What's with everyone who's complaining about the control and capslock keys being in the wrong places or the @ symbol being where the " symbol should be or whatever?
Has nobody ever heard of xkeycaps?
The first thing I do when I use a new keyboard is whip xkeycaps out, map the keys to whatever operations I want (including the above switches) and never look back (or down) again.
Just because there's a symbol printed on a key doesn't mean that key has to produce that symbol!
I see the Internet as a place, like Amsterdam or Mars. A proper name of place is capitalized, hence i capitalize the Internet accordingly.
Well, just shot yerself in the foot there. The fact that you feel the need to put an article (i.e. "the") before the word "Internet" is a very good indicator (in the English language) that the thing is not a proper noun.
Not so sure about the foot-shooting. Like he said, the Internet is a place like Amsterdam, which happens to be in the Netherlands. That's right, the Netherlands.
I've been using Gmail and I find it incredibly useful. My favs: 1. The keyboard shortcuts: allows me to use web based email the way I use Pine.. do everything without touching the mouse even once.
2. The tracking of emails to display them as "conversations".. so neat, it looks almost obvious.
3. The much griped about text ads are totally unobtrusive, and (faint, faint) they do not even appear on all email pages. Google probably has some algorithm to decide which conversations can get targeted ads.
4. The address autocomplete - no more clicking on email addresses in a popup window to insert them. It works exactly like a proper client application (as different from a browser app)
5. To reply to an email, all I have to do is click in a textbox below the email and presto! the compose widgets are there.. great time saver.. and you can see the conversation on top.
6. The interface is so clean and clutter free - it has google written all over it!
For over a decade, I've been using a mail reader that gives me all of the above plus many more features such as configurability and a powerful editor and without all the ads and privacy concerns. It's called gnus.
If you have a decent mail reader, Gmail has nothing to offer you.
The sources are essentially no different than for your desktop but if you do the math you'll see that failure is much more common when you have a bunch of them.
What's the probability that your desktop will crash if you run it fully loaded for a week? Pick a number, say 1%. So it has 99% chance of completing the job.
Now suppose you have a job that runs in parallel on 100 such nodes flat out for a week. The probability that the job finishes successfully is (0.99)^100 or about 36%
So the job is about two-thirds as likely to fail. That's is why fault tolerance is such an issue on clusters.
By definition, half of all their customers are using "above average" bandwidth. Is their goal to drive all their customers to pay for zero bandwith usage?
Yeah right. Now stop and think about it.
More than 99.99% of all people have more than the average number of legs.
You've been able to do this for a long time in most search engines. Personally, I find myself often including the words -"buy" or -"search results" in Google to avoid all the spam.
This is exactly the point. Google has become so prominent that it has been spammed to death both for commercial ends and for mischief by groups of bloggers etc. This fact alone could account for the perceived effectiveness of Vivisimo.
If Google, or any other search engine, were to invest some time and effort on an "apparently commercial" button or on looking into when they're being bilked, it would make a huge improvement.
of course Linus is going to have little regard for software patents. He's a European and that's one bit of stupidity we have yet to import from the US (please God we never do).
Here's your chance. Set up a rebuttals website. Say http://www.rebuttals.eu
Now, if I say something about the Acme Widget company that they don't like, I can put their rebuttal on http://www.rebuttals.eu with a link to it from my site. It's win-win-win. Acme gets their rebuttal, I save on bandwidth, and www.rebuttals.eu can surround the rebuttal with advertising for Acme or even any other Widget company.
Now the big question is, how do I patent this business model?
I'm reminded of people who secure a $100 bicycle with a $200 lock.
And that's supposed to be a dumb idea how? Don't be obsessed by the cash value.
My lock is worth more than my bike. It needs to be.
The economics of the matter are simple if you look at it as supply and demand from the thief's point of view.
If my bike is worth more than the one beside it, then my bike becomes the target. If my lock is weaker than the one on the bike beside mine then my bike becomes the target.
This would be patent nonsense, if the statement itself had any real meaning. First of all, what is meant by "artificial intelligence", "successful", and "application", in this context.
That depends on what you mean by "is".
(c) Bill Clinton
The more I look at XML and the whole circus surrounding it, the more I get the impression that these people are doing nothing more than reinventing the whole of computer science in between tags.
For example, XML Schema and RELAX NG both look like nothing more than minor extensions on regular expression matching. It looks like so much new notation but no new content.
Write some code for your new app. Write a code obfuscator; a program that takes some C code and produces some more C code that's functionally equivalent but virtually unreadable to humans. (Even changing all identifier names to foo1, foo2 would make it difficult enough to figure out what the code does. Of course, far more obfuscatory obfuscations are possible.) Finally, run the code for your app through the code obfuscator and publish the resulting code under the GPL, claiming it to be the original source. Charge to see the documentation and include a NDA.
Isn't there at least a moral imperative to publish readable source code under the GPL?
The dotGnu folks seem to want you to have as little exposure as possible to.NET but, as one
who has had zero exposure to.NET, the dotGnu web page tells me nothing about what the project is about except that it's kinda like.NET but it isn't.
Infrequently asked but apparently difficult to answer question number 1: Without any reference whatsoever to.NET, what is the dotGnu project about?
No, no and no. The three things that a linux desktop needs are not simplicity, uniformity and elegance but extensibility, extensibility and extensibility. Let me do what I want how I want it. Extensibility is what made emacs the single most useful tool any computer user could want. The two things that linux is crying out for at the moment are an extensible desktop and an extensible browser. They could be the same thing for all I care but let us extend to suit ourselves!
It will be interesting to see which way this will go when it comes to advertizing at sports events.
If the TV company that's carrying the event can replace all the ads on and around the field of play and even on the players' shirts with ads for their clients, then the clubs and the organizations that run the sports won't be too happy about it.
Putting your company name on a top European soccer team's shirt for a year can cost you upwards of 10M Euros. And then to find that your competitor's name gets pasted over it...
Slashdot Mirror
What's with everyone who's complaining about the control and capslock keys being in the wrong places or the @ symbol being where the " symbol should be or whatever?
Has nobody ever heard of xkeycaps?
The first thing I do when I use a new keyboard is whip xkeycaps out, map the keys to whatever operations I want (including the above switches) and never look back (or down) again.
Just because there's a symbol printed on a key doesn't mean that key has to produce that symbol!
I see the Internet as a place, like Amsterdam or Mars.
A proper name of place is capitalized, hence i capitalize the Internet accordingly.
Well, just shot yerself in the foot there. The fact that you feel the need to put an article (i.e. "the") before the word "Internet" is a very good indicator (in the English language) that the thing is not a proper noun.
Not so sure about the foot-shooting. Like he said, the Internet is a place like Amsterdam, which happens to be in the Netherlands. That's right, the Netherlands.
For over a decade, I've been using a mail reader that gives me all of the above plus many more features such as configurability and a powerful editor and without all the ads and privacy concerns.
It's called gnus.
If you have a decent mail reader, Gmail has nothing to offer you.
The sources are essentially no different than for your desktop but if you do the math you'll see that failure is much more common when you have a bunch of them.
What's the probability that your desktop will crash if you run it fully loaded for a week? Pick a number, say 1%. So it has 99% chance of completing the job.
Now suppose you have a job that runs in parallel on 100 such nodes flat out for a week. The probability that the job finishes successfully is (0.99)^100 or about 36%
So the job is about two-thirds as likely to fail. That's is why fault tolerance is such an issue on clusters.
Yeah right. Now stop and think about it.
More than 99.99% of all people have more than the average number of legs.
This is exactly the point. Google has become so prominent that it has been spammed to death both for commercial ends and for mischief by groups of bloggers etc. This fact alone could account for the perceived effectiveness of Vivisimo.
If Google, or any other search engine, were to invest some time and effort on an "apparently commercial" button or on looking into when they're being bilked, it would make a huge improvement.
Puleez. Call it what it is.
Public Libraries selling assets for cash.
While they're at it, they may as well sell off the buildings, the contents and the staff.
There's not much "public" left in the public library then, is there?
Who cares what it says on the keycaps? I sure don't.
Just whip out xkeycaps, spend a little time setting the keys to do what you want them to do and then never look down again!
of course Linus is going to have little regard for software patents. He's a European and that's one bit of stupidity we have yet to import from the US (please God we never do).
Emphasis on the "yet".
Have a look at this European Commission proposal to make all useful ideas patentable
Here's your chance. Set up a rebuttals website.
Say http://www.rebuttals.eu
Now, if I say something about the Acme Widget company that they don't like, I can put their rebuttal on http://www.rebuttals.eu with a link to it from my site. It's win-win-win. Acme gets their rebuttal, I save on bandwidth, and www.rebuttals.eu can surround the rebuttal with advertising for Acme or even any other Widget company.
Now the big question is, how do I patent this business model?
And that's supposed to be a dumb idea how? Don't be obsessed by the cash value.
My lock is worth more than my bike. It needs to be. The economics of the matter are simple if you look at it as supply and demand from the thief's point of view. If my bike is worth more than the one beside it, then my bike becomes the target. If my lock is weaker than the one on the bike beside mine then my bike becomes the target.
The relative cash value is immaterial.
(c) Bill Clinton
The more I look at XML and the whole circus surrounding it, the more I get the impression that these people are doing nothing more than reinventing the whole of computer science in between tags.
For example, XML Schema and RELAX NG both look like nothing more than minor extensions on regular expression matching. It looks like so much new notation but no new content.
What real insights are being gained here, if any?
Somebody make this phone and I will pay $500 for it today.
I agree. And if that same somebody were to sell the above in Europe, I'd even go so far as 500 Euro.
This suggests a possible loophole in the GPL.
Write some code for your new app. Write a code obfuscator; a program that takes some C code and produces some more C code that's functionally equivalent but virtually unreadable to humans. (Even changing all identifier names to foo1, foo2 would make it difficult enough to figure out what the code does. Of course, far more obfuscatory obfuscations are possible.) Finally, run the code for your app through the code obfuscator and publish the resulting code under the GPL, claiming it to be the original source. Charge to see the documentation and include a NDA.
Isn't there at least a moral imperative to publish readable source code under the GPL?
Exportation from where? Where *is* Linux?
Nobody is preventing "people" around here from exporting crypto.
The dotGnu folks seem to want you to have as little exposure as possible to .NET but, as one
who has had zero exposure to .NET, the dotGnu web page tells me nothing about what the project is about except that it's kinda like .NET but it isn't.
.NET, what is the dotGnu project about?
Infrequently asked but apparently difficult to answer question number 1: Without any reference whatsoever to
If you could get any kind of a fix on travel time rather than distance, this could be useful.
Cost would be even better.
Besides, the real center of mass is somewhere way underground.
No, no and no. The three things that a linux desktop needs are not simplicity, uniformity and elegance but extensibility, extensibility and extensibility. Let me do what I want how I want it. Extensibility is what made emacs the single most useful tool any computer user could want. The two things that linux is crying out for at the moment are an extensible desktop and an extensible browser. They could be the same thing for all I care but let us extend to suit ourselves!
Doh! That poll was about the average working day. Nobody said how many days a week they worked!
It will be interesting to see which way this will go when it comes to advertizing at sports events.
If the TV company that's carrying the event can replace all the ads on and around the field of play and even on the players' shirts with ads for their clients, then the clubs and the organizations that run the sports won't be too happy about it.
Putting your company name on a top European soccer team's shirt for a year can cost you upwards of 10M Euros. And then to find that your competitor's name gets pasted over it...
We'll be hearing more about this one, methinks.