Completely different approach, though. It's not "integrated into the OS" as such, it's just a wrapper for other functionality which it calls upon as and when necessary. The effect is very similar from where the user's sitting, but underneath there's a clear separation between it and the components it provides an outlet for. Personally I think it's rather elegant.
I'd say the average home user is far more likely to care about that than, say, a 20% increase in processor power. Even the cheapest machines are More Than Fast Enough for anything a typical user needs it to do nowadays, so if they can still do their browsing and word processing and iTunes unhindered and use less electricity while they're about it, so much the better.
Hmm. Sounds like our server room. In the summer we throw the windows open and have one fan blowing air in through one window, and another blowing air out through another. There's a thermometer attached to the inside of the window in the door so that anybody walking past can see the temperature and take action if it gets too hot. It's a terrible bodge, but the old building can't cope with more air-con than it already has, apparently.
I dunno. Seems to me that with ADSL and particularly cable connections here in the UK, downstream bandwidth has gone up and up while upstream hasn't changed so much. For instance, one provider offers 10Mb/s downstream, but only 512k upstream.
That's because a) like so many things governments do, it's less about doing The Right Thing and more about being seen to be doing Something, and b) because illegal immigrants actually play a rather important role in keeping things ticking over by taking all the shitty low-paid jobs everybody else thinks are beneath them, but admitting as much would be political suicide.
I did just that the last two times I travelled to the US (from London). Flew to Toronto because I was working just over the border, because I had friends there who I wanted to catch up with, and because it's generally a more interesting place to spend a bit of time than upstate New York, and then drove over the border.
Boy, did those immigration idiots give us a hard time. We were ready for it - their obstinacy and general stupidity is well known. We turned up at the border with comprehensive details of where we were staying, who we were working with, where we were working, why we'd chosen to travel through Toronto, everything we could think of. But, for reasons best known to themselves, they didn't believe us.
So they ordered us out of the car and up to their office (wasn't too impressed about that, it was absolutely bloody freezing), took my colleague into a room on his own and asked him the same questions in slightly different ways several times, obviously to try and trip him up and expose holes in our story. Some time later, they did the same on me, although they didn't give me such a grilling, maybe because they'd already heard it from him. Anyway, after an hour and more of this pointless bollocks, they let us go on our way, once we'd been fingerprinted like common criminals, of course.
I couldn't help noticing that in all the time we spent in their office, we were the only white people that were hauled in, but that's by the by.
On the way back over to Canada, the border guard didn't even ask me to show him my passport. Just asked me where I was going and sent me on my way with a smile.
Currently, the US is in the fortunate position of being big and important enough to persuade the rest of the world to dance to their tune, no matter how stupid their demands. I hope the authorities soon learn that treating every single visitor as a suspect is no way to make any friends.
Maybe he's one of their legendarily cheerful and friendly immigration officers. That's pretty much the vibe I get from those fuckers every time I go there. It's a real shame, because as you say, once you get past them, people are overwhelmingly polite and helpful.
Bananas. They're cloned. All of 'em. Doesn't seem to stop the world eating them in gigantic quantities, and it doesn't seem to be doing anybody any harm. Sure, they're cloned the old-fashioned way, by propagation, but they're a genetic monoculture nonetheless.
You know, when I first heard that song, I thought it might have been some clever allegorical commentary on the artist's fears about the effect on society of the neverending war on terror. Then I remembered it was Green Day.
Wimps, the lot of ya. I'm a shade under 6' and I can cart my 28" widescreen CRT (Loewe, doncha know) about no problem at all. Admittedly I've got freakishly long arms for my height, but c'mon lads, put a bit of backbone into it...
Well, I remember seeing a documentary on Discovery years ago, where they were looking for giant squid. At one point, there was a guy in a shark cage tormenting a "middle-sized" squid (like, the size of a man or thereabouts. The squid was flashing red and white, letting him know it was a bit pissed off with him winding it up. Now, remember this is a shark cage, and as well as the vertical bars, there's a horizontal gap across its whole width, probably about eight inches high, that you would put a pole through to dangle bait for the sharks. Mr. Squid spotted this gap and squeezed itself through it, into the cage with the diver, who understandably shit himself. It ended up taking a big lump out of him, through his wetsuit, before swimming off again.
Moral of the story is, you might think you're safe, but squid are pretty ingenious for invertebrates...
Well, if you've ever seen the footage from the BBC's Blue Planet series of two orcas torturing a seal to death and then playing with the carcass, you'd have to agree. They tossed it back and forth between each other like it was a Frisbee. Then when they got bored of that, they took it in turns to wallop the poor critter as high in the air as they could using their tails. And boy, were they getting some loft on it. Can anybody else name an animal which plays both co-operative and competitive games of this level of sophistication (i.e. something more complex than playfighting)?
I Am Not A Doctor. But I've a number of friends who are. And they're not generally the sort of people to make stuff up. One told me of a gentleman of his acquaintance who was a gynaecologist. Now, gynaecologists have famously low sex drives, for obvious reasons, but it never stopped this fella. However, his pillow talk left something to be desired. He has been known to inform a lady post-coitus that she may be infertile, purely on the basis of the scents and tastes he encountered whilst pleasuring her.
True or not, I couldn't tell you, but like I said, these fellas have enough great true stories that they've no real need to make them up.
Every time you think the new Home Secretary can't possibly be any more of a knee-jerk reactionary populist short-termist idiot than the last one, they manage to surprise you.
The public, generally, are cloth-eared. The great majority of people really couldn't care less about sound quality beyond a certain (low) threshold. Which is why 128kbps AAC is more than acceptable. Give them higher quality and most of them won't notice anyway. Now, I'm a real fusspot about sound quality, and I'll admit that for most circumstances, they're all right. But play them side by side with the CD track and there's a world of difference, and anyway, even if they sounded perfect, my objection to them is that they are in a lossy format at all - if I'm buying music to keep rather than just listen to it a few times and move on, then I want it to be lossless.
Slashdot Mirror
Stopping hunting for him would imply that they ever started.
(Whisper it: he's dead. Has been for years. But they need a bogeyman, an Immanuel Goldstein, and he's the man in the frame)
Completely different approach, though. It's not "integrated into the OS" as such, it's just a wrapper for other functionality which it calls upon as and when necessary. The effect is very similar from where the user's sitting, but underneath there's a clear separation between it and the components it provides an outlet for. Personally I think it's rather elegant.
I'd say the average home user is far more likely to care about that than, say, a 20% increase in processor power. Even the cheapest machines are More Than Fast Enough for anything a typical user needs it to do nowadays, so if they can still do their browsing and word processing and iTunes unhindered and use less electricity while they're about it, so much the better.
Hmm. Sounds like our server room. In the summer we throw the windows open and have one fan blowing air in through one window, and another blowing air out through another. There's a thermometer attached to the inside of the window in the door so that anybody walking past can see the temperature and take action if it gets too hot. It's a terrible bodge, but the old building can't cope with more air-con than it already has, apparently.
I dunno. Seems to me that with ADSL and particularly cable connections here in the UK, downstream bandwidth has gone up and up while upstream hasn't changed so much. For instance, one provider offers 10Mb/s downstream, but only 512k upstream.
That's because a) like so many things governments do, it's less about doing The Right Thing and more about being seen to be doing Something, and b) because illegal immigrants actually play a rather important role in keeping things ticking over by taking all the shitty low-paid jobs everybody else thinks are beneath them, but admitting as much would be political suicide.
I did just that the last two times I travelled to the US (from London). Flew to Toronto because I was working just over the border, because I had friends there who I wanted to catch up with, and because it's generally a more interesting place to spend a bit of time than upstate New York, and then drove over the border.
Boy, did those immigration idiots give us a hard time. We were ready for it - their obstinacy and general stupidity is well known. We turned up at the border with comprehensive details of where we were staying, who we were working with, where we were working, why we'd chosen to travel through Toronto, everything we could think of. But, for reasons best known to themselves, they didn't believe us.
So they ordered us out of the car and up to their office (wasn't too impressed about that, it was absolutely bloody freezing), took my colleague into a room on his own and asked him the same questions in slightly different ways several times, obviously to try and trip him up and expose holes in our story. Some time later, they did the same on me, although they didn't give me such a grilling, maybe because they'd already heard it from him. Anyway, after an hour and more of this pointless bollocks, they let us go on our way, once we'd been fingerprinted like common criminals, of course.
I couldn't help noticing that in all the time we spent in their office, we were the only white people that were hauled in, but that's by the by.
On the way back over to Canada, the border guard didn't even ask me to show him my passport. Just asked me where I was going and sent me on my way with a smile.
Currently, the US is in the fortunate position of being big and important enough to persuade the rest of the world to dance to their tune, no matter how stupid their demands. I hope the authorities soon learn that treating every single visitor as a suspect is no way to make any friends.
Maybe he's one of their legendarily cheerful and friendly immigration officers. That's pretty much the vibe I get from those fuckers every time I go there. It's a real shame, because as you say, once you get past them, people are overwhelmingly polite and helpful.
Bananas. They're cloned. All of 'em. Doesn't seem to stop the world eating them in gigantic quantities, and it doesn't seem to be doing anybody any harm. Sure, they're cloned the old-fashioned way, by propagation, but they're a genetic monoculture nonetheless.
Spoken like a true American.
Except that those very same Vikings were settling there long before Columbus ever turned up. They called it Vinland.
Well, there you go. Tony Blair hasn't made a single right decision for years...
You know, when I first heard that song, I thought it might have been some clever allegorical commentary on the artist's fears about the effect on society of the neverending war on terror. Then I remembered it was Green Day.
Wimps, the lot of ya. I'm a shade under 6' and I can cart my 28" widescreen CRT (Loewe, doncha know) about no problem at all. Admittedly I've got freakishly long arms for my height, but c'mon lads, put a bit of backbone into it...
Well, I remember seeing a documentary on Discovery years ago, where they were looking for giant squid. At one point, there was a guy in a shark cage tormenting a "middle-sized" squid (like, the size of a man or thereabouts. The squid was flashing red and white, letting him know it was a bit pissed off with him winding it up. Now, remember this is a shark cage, and as well as the vertical bars, there's a horizontal gap across its whole width, probably about eight inches high, that you would put a pole through to dangle bait for the sharks. Mr. Squid spotted this gap and squeezed itself through it, into the cage with the diver, who understandably shit himself. It ended up taking a big lump out of him, through his wetsuit, before swimming off again.
Moral of the story is, you might think you're safe, but squid are pretty ingenious for invertebrates...
Well, if you've ever seen the footage from the BBC's Blue Planet series of two orcas torturing a seal to death and then playing with the carcass, you'd have to agree. They tossed it back and forth between each other like it was a Frisbee. Then when they got bored of that, they took it in turns to wallop the poor critter as high in the air as they could using their tails. And boy, were they getting some loft on it. Can anybody else name an animal which plays both co-operative and competitive games of this level of sophistication (i.e. something more complex than playfighting)?
I'll happily settle for Trailer Park Boys...
I'm loving the fact that some hairy-arsed nerd on Slashdot is implying that he'd kick Halle fucking Berry out of bed for farting.
Now, admittedly, if she was eating toast in my bed, and got crumbs everywhere, I'd have to consider my options. But really, c'mon...
I Am Not A Doctor. But I've a number of friends who are. And they're not generally the sort of people to make stuff up. One told me of a gentleman of his acquaintance who was a gynaecologist. Now, gynaecologists have famously low sex drives, for obvious reasons, but it never stopped this fella. However, his pillow talk left something to be desired. He has been known to inform a lady post-coitus that she may be infertile, purely on the basis of the scents and tastes he encountered whilst pleasuring her.
True or not, I couldn't tell you, but like I said, these fellas have enough great true stories that they've no real need to make them up.
A dog's sense of smell is a million times better? I don't believe that for a second. Wny, my dog doesn't even know a claret from a burgundy...
Be thankful for small mercies, eh?
Every time you think the new Home Secretary can't possibly be any more of a knee-jerk reactionary populist short-termist idiot than the last one, they manage to surprise you.
I'll get my mother to crochet a MASSIVE net to catch it.
The public, generally, are cloth-eared. The great majority of people really couldn't care less about sound quality beyond a certain (low) threshold. Which is why 128kbps AAC is more than acceptable. Give them higher quality and most of them won't notice anyway. Now, I'm a real fusspot about sound quality, and I'll admit that for most circumstances, they're all right. But play them side by side with the CD track and there's a world of difference, and anyway, even if they sounded perfect, my objection to them is that they are in a lossy format at all - if I'm buying music to keep rather than just listen to it a few times and move on, then I want it to be lossless.
Quite right. They should all be encouraged to put their skills to the best possible use. TRy and make the best out of a bad situation, y'know?