MS Notepad never gets issues either because it and your other examples are plain text editors. WordPad has all sorts of MS Word functionality built into it so you can view Word documents if you dont have Word installed.
Incidentally, you can no longer open.doc files on WordPad in Windows Vista and higher (see the Wikipeda article). I guess Microsoft really wants users to buy Office.
I probably should've clarified that, but I realize that. I often criticize browsers for not having the standard keyboard shortcuts - for instance, IE is the only browser that doesn't go to the location bar with Ctrl+L - it's Alt+D instead, and that throws me off.
Same with Safari's Cmd+Shift+[ and Cmd+Shift+] - not only is it different from every other browser, but it's also a really awkward key combination that can't be remapped (strange, too, since most other key combinations can be remapped just fine, and their Windows version even uses Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab).
I wish it where. What I find annoying these days is how bad pretty much all browsers are at producing readable webpages. Do a simple change from the defaults settings, like increase the font size, and lots of webpages will become unusable, text will overflow boxes, overlap with other text and all kinds of mess, its ridiculous and yet I have never seen it mentioned in any browser review.
Another thing that I find highly annoying is Firefox image scaling algorithm or better lack there of. What good is a zoom function when it will make all images look like crap? Bilinear filtering isn't all that complicated, yet Firefox doesn't have it and goes the ugliest possible route in making an image larger. I just don't get how such a basic feature is still not in there after over a decade.
Firefox 3, Opera, and IE all zoom without changing the layout, and reviewers praised them for adding those features. Firefox 3 does bilinear filtering on image scaling, and has been stable for 6 months now.
It's kind of ridiculous to say something "still isn't there" when it's been in the latest stable for six months.
Here, I'll say something more constructive, rather than just criticizing browsers I've never used.
Firefox: The only real browser right now. Supports a bunch of anti-crapware plugins (like adblock plus, which gets rid of/. ads) and general power-user scripts for those who want them. Aside from that, its everywhere on every platform that supports any form of graphical manager.
Still starts to lag if it hasn't been restarted in a while, although it's gotten a lot better about it lately. It does have very many good add-ons, and I've only found around three bugs in its rendering engine, ever (and one of them had to do with nested tables, which shouldn't be used, anyway). However, it's much slower than Safari or Opera about passing the Acid tests.
The problem with add-ons is that the more you have, the slower Firefox gets (and the more cluttered the interface gets - I still haven't figured out how to get rid of all the addons adding their logos to the bottom right).
Remember, add-ons (such as GreaseMonkey, Adblock, Tab Mix Plus) are different from plugins (such as Flash, Java, Silverlight).
IE: MS has had to work because they prior have sucked and dragged down most every website that does "IE only" websites. It's a good thing that Firefox and standards are taking a front seat.
Well, it's arguably "not bad" now. Although I don't use it much, my impression is that it can't get you viruses just by accidentally clicking the wrong link these days. And its standards support is steadily improving, although it still has weird bugs crop up, it doesn't support more modern technologies (SVG, canvas, HTML 5's <video> tag...), and I often have to use weird hacks like hasLayout to get it to render correctly. It's also very slow compared to other modern browsers.
Still, it's on par with last-generation browsers, which means it's come a long way from the mess that was IE6.
Opera: They're still around on X86 platforms? I thought they died out and only did DS and Wii browsers and diddled with X86 adware. Havent looked at them since their software didnt fit on a floppy.
It's a pretty good browser, and still as fast as ever. Its benefits include coming with most of the functionality built-in that Firefox requires plug-ins for, as well as support for GreaseMonkey scripts to add the rest of the functionality. The benefit is that its interface is nowhere near as slow as Firefox with all those plugins.
Notably, it's the only browser here that doesn't have inline find with Ctrl+F (even IE does these days), but inline find can be brought up with the / button.
Chrome: eh? Its alpha buggyware with none of the plugins we're used to. Im not going to even look at it until it has more what I would consider basic features.
For "alpha buggyware", it doesn't have very many bugs, and is as stable as any other browser. In addition, its interface is very well done, and arguably much easier to use than any other browser currently available. What would you consider basic features? Nightlies even have GreaseMonkey support.
It's also the only other browser on this list resistant to JavaScript alert DoSing.
Safari: I dont own a mac. I dont care to own a mac. And I dont even want to pirate OSX for my very compatible Thinkpad-T61 to run it. And pretty much every software ported from OSX to Windows is bad, and I mean BAD.
Safari on a Mac is a very good browser. It lacks Ctrl+Tab to switch tabs, GreaseMonkey-like functionality, or ad blocking. Aside from these, it's the fastest browser around, especially in nightlies.
Safari on Windows works fairly well. Aside from the debatably ugly color scheme
Furthermore, advertising dehumidifiers with filters on them as "OMG Drinking Water Out of Thin Air" is nothing new. Heck, I've even done contract work for one such company selling them. I don't see anything new about this.
Wow, this comment box would indeed sure suck if I weren't using a browser that lets you change the size of any text area (Safari does this. Doesn't FF3, too?)
No. The only browsers that do this are Safari and Chrome.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying you should avoid spoilers until you need them, and read them in moderation. For the *vast* majority of people it's not worth trying to ascend without any spoilers. But at the same time, if you're playing with wikihack open in your browser, you're really not getting the full intended experience.
On the contrary, as LotsOfPhil mentioned, no one's known to have won a game of NetHack without being spoiled, and Ellora's Saga is notable for being the closest anyone's ever gotten, and some still think it was written by someone who had been spoiled and was pretending otherwise.
From when I used to read and participate in r.g.r.n and #nethack, the consensus is that NetHack is meant to be played spoiled, and that spoilers are not considered cheating.
however, with something like a digital photo, all a user has to do is make a few very minor alterations (like a small watermark) to the image and it would produce a different md5 hash--essentially exploiting the inherent design of the md5 hash algorithm--and be missed by the md5 scan. these small changes could be as simple as flipping a single bit in the file, but with a standard 24-bit RGB bitmap image, each pixel is stored as three 8 bit values representing the red, green, and blue color channels. by flipping the least significant bit in each channel, you can alter up to 1/8th (12.5%) of the file without creating any perceptible changes (to human eyes at least) to the displayed image.
another method would be to employ lossy compression schemes like JPEG image compression. convert all your images to JPEG (or if they are already JPG, just compress it again at minimal compression strength) and the MD5 hashes will be completely altered. yet another method is to resize the image by a small amount--say reduce both width and height by just 1 pixel--using bicubic interpolation to scale the image up or down would preserve the image quality while completely changing the md5 signature of the file.
all of these methods would be simple to automate and allow you to easily hide known child porn images from detection using md5 comparisons.
Why are you suggesting "minor alterations" like flipping every least significant bit, or recompressing an image? The whole point of a hash like MD5 is that it becomes unrecognizably different if you change even one bit; flipping every least significant bit is no different from flipping just one bit. Not to mention that there are many completely lossless ways to change an image file (i.e. with no visible alterations whatsoever). One is simply to append a byte to the end of the image; most image specifications are designed so that extra data at the end is ignored. Alternatively, if using an image format using indexed color (PNGs in index mode, or all GIFs), you can just reorder the index.
Actually, I think you only need to go up to the halfway point.
You're still working too hard. You only need go up to the square root. Your reasoning works just fine at that point.
He was listing all the possibilities, i.e. a proof by exhaustive search. Sure, he could count up to the square root, then prove that all larger numbers cannot be a factor, but that wouldn't be "listing all the possibilities" anymore.
This is no more a "non-proof" than the proof of the 4-color map theorem in two dimensions, which was also "shown" using an exhaustive search.
I agree with you on your other points, but this? I'm pretty sure the proof of the Four-Color Theorem I know was proven by induction, not exhaustive search. Kind of hard to prove a theorem that applies to infinite situations with exhaustive search, don't you think?
I can't link to it because of Dell's site, but for about $100 more Dell currently has an XPS 1330 which whips the Macbook in virtually every respect: much better graphics, much more RAM and HDD, significantly faster CPU, bigger battery, better connectivity, and so on. Mysteriously, the reviewer has instead selected a relatively poor quality Dell as a comparison point.
I'm curious about a few things.
First, your claim of "much better graphics". Is a GeForce 8400M (the best video card on an XPS 1330) significantly better than a GeForce 9400M (the MacBook video card)? Their names would suggest otherwise - Nvidia's naming system says one is a medium-end 8th generation video card, while the other is an equivalent medium-end 9th generation.
Second, the closest I can find to "about $100 more" is the $150 more $1449 M1330, which comes with a T8300. If $150 is negligible, then the 2.4GHz MacBook for another $150 more has an even better P8600. (Personally, I'm not sure how much I'd really feel a 20% difference in CPU speed; it doesn't sound like anything dramatic.)
Third, I'm not sure how a "bigger battery" is better; I'd assume people would prefer a lighter and smaller battery. Perhaps you meant a longer battery life? According to Notebook Review, on an M1330 with the best non-deforming battery and aforementioned video card, you get 3 and a half hours browsing the web. Having used a MacBook advertised for 5 hours of battery life, I've gotten around 4 hours browsing the web, so I'd assume the new MacBook is comparable.
I would agree that the XPS M1330 is better, it is a non-trivial $150 more expensive, and I wouldn't say it's as much better as you say it is.
It'sgenerallyknownon Slashdot that Apple's MacBooks are competitive with Windows PCs at their price, when all of their features are considered (specifically, screen size and battery life), when first released. It's usually the higher-end MacBook Pros and Mac Pros that are considered overpriced (and the upgrades).
And there are the other arguments, such as the increased stability and usability that comes when an OS manufacturer has such control over hardware (although whether this is a good or bad thing is left as an exercise for the reader).
This is actually redundant but it was rewarded with "Funny" because it implies that Monroe has lots of sex. You guys like Monroe and heaven forbid if you could separate the moderation guidelines from your personal feelings. Therefore, this is complimentary of Monroe and gets modded up. I made a very similar post that, while intended to be humorous, could have been taken as derogatory of Monroe since it suggested that the three-fourths part did not include sex, so I get modded down into oblivion. That's alright; to be honest, in hindsight, I don't think my own post was any good and it probably deserves the moderation it received. However, this post is a carbon copy of mine and was modded up. I contend that either they are both funny or they are both redundant.
No, the difference is that Munroe's original intention in saying "do math, play with staple guns, mess around on the Internet, and have lots of sex. It's about three-fourths autobiographical" was to imply that he does not "have lots of sex". Thus, pointing this out is redundant (because Munroe is already attempting to point it out), while misinterpreting it to mean he doesn't play with staple guns is humorous. Understand the difference?
Believe me, your post would have been funny if you weren't just pointing out what Munroe was trying to say.
Too many people make this mistake, calling Google Apps a beta product.
First off: Gmail is only called "beta" because it is constantly being improved. If you use the version of Gmail within Google Apps, which is stable and not beta, you will find that its features are usually a few months behind Gmail. The same goes for all of Google Apps - it is not a beta product (although it's possible to opt-in to beta features).
His note that if you go too small of screen size you cant click on the buttons of the dialog. This happens a LOT in windows with dons of the dialogs and YES even the screen size dialog.
She would have failed that test under windows. While others have pointed out that you can Alt+drag to move windows in Linux, the idea is that you can't change the screen resolution. In Windows, at least most of the system is designed to be usable at 640x480; it's usually the third-party applications that have problems. The Display Properties dialog that lets you set screen resolution is only around 450 pixels high. In Linux (Both KDE and GNOME), the dialog is huge, and any novice user who doesn't know how to Alt+drag will indeed have a hard time getting out of a 640x480 resolution (Which is troublesome, since driver problems will sometimes kick you back to that resolution; at least Windows will only kick you back to 800x600) (God forbid you actually want to use a desktop Linux distro at 640x480).
I took the AB exam when it was in C++ and somehow managed a 5, even though I swear I couldn't even read the code I was scrawling. My handwriting was terrible, and on top of that our class hadn't finished studying the material. Our class was a joke, and we spent most of our time playing games. During the exam, I had a headache from all the iteration I was trying to work through in my head, I'm pretty sure I misunderstood some of the questions. I really don't think I penned syntactically correct code at all. Maybe if the exam were graded in pseudo-code it would have been correct algorithmically. Perhaps the grader, seeing my handwriting and not wanting to slog through the mess, just gave me the benefit of the doubt and marked it 5.
This, combined with your experience, points to maybe some serious irregularities with the College Board's grading system.
Or maybe there are other explanations. Perhaps they gave me the wrong person's score. Sigh. I took the AB exam two years ago, when it was in Java, and got a 5, despite spending 45 minutes reading the fish thingy we were supposed to read ahead of time, and not having time to fill in in a bit more than half the answers (I don't like filling them in while I'm answering questions, so I just mark them, then go back and fill them in later).
I think the grading system just varies a bit from year to year.
That of course depends on what qualifies as a move. If turning the middle layers is allowed, then the middle sides can certainly chance places (e.g. a turn left of the cube can then be done with three moves: turn upper layer left, turn horizontal middle layer left, turn lower layer left). I don't know how exactly the moves are defined for this proof (I didn't RTFA), but there are certainly many possibilities. Note that allowing only moving the outer slides, while universal for the 3x3x3 cube, won't generalize to higher cubes (you'll not get all possible configurations on the 4x4x4 cube this way). Turning the middle layer is equivalent to turning the two side layers parallel to it, and counts as two moves by pretty much everyone's definition. No, this is not generalizable to higher cubes, but we're not talking about higher cubes.
Wait, how did this get modded Interesting? A solved cube is indeed a member of all starting point, and it would be the only member of its set of essentially similar ones (and, for that matter, the member of the only set of essentially similar ones solvable in zero moves). I fail to see anything interesting about that.
Now, I haven't run the new beta but I looked through the article and some of the past ones that have come up and noticed all this crap about theming, new features, etc, etc, etc but nothing really talks about how much faster it is and how much less memory the program consumes -- especially when it's been open for more than 24 hours on XP.
So, are they going to go back to light, tight, and fast instead of this feature bloat that seems to have prevailed? Yes, it's nice to have bells and whistles but I think that it's just as important to have a browser that doesn't require me to close it and reopen it so that my machine doesn't grind to a halt every other day if I don't.
...Mozilla [has] gone back to basics and worked on what really matters to users -- security, speed and ease of use... Everything about Firefox 3.0 beta 1 is fast. The download package is small which means that it comes in fast, the installation is fast, the browser fires up fast, pages and tabs open fast, the browser shuts down fast... ...and when Firefox 3 beta 2 was released...
Beta 2 feels snappier and far more responsive than beta 1... No matter what [you're] doing... it all happens swiftly and smoothly. What surprises me about the Firefox 3.0 beta is how many memory leaks that Mozilla have fixed.
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MS Notepad never gets issues either because it and your other examples are plain text editors. WordPad has all sorts of MS Word functionality built into it so you can view Word documents if you dont have Word installed.
Incidentally, you can no longer open .doc files on WordPad in Windows Vista and higher (see the Wikipeda article). I guess Microsoft really wants users to buy Office.
I probably should've clarified that, but I realize that. I often criticize browsers for not having the standard keyboard shortcuts - for instance, IE is the only browser that doesn't go to the location bar with Ctrl+L - it's Alt+D instead, and that throws me off.
Same with Safari's Cmd+Shift+[ and Cmd+Shift+] - not only is it different from every other browser, but it's also a really awkward key combination that can't be remapped (strange, too, since most other key combinations can be remapped just fine, and their Windows version even uses Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab).
Ctrl+F works just fine, in addition to "." and "/".
It's not inline find (i.e. it doesn't find while you type). Compare it to the Ctrl+F functionality of Firefox, Safari, Chrome, or IE.
I wish it where. What I find annoying these days is how bad pretty much all browsers are at producing readable webpages. Do a simple change from the defaults settings, like increase the font size, and lots of webpages will become unusable, text will overflow boxes, overlap with other text and all kinds of mess, its ridiculous and yet I have never seen it mentioned in any browser review.
Another thing that I find highly annoying is Firefox image scaling algorithm or better lack there of. What good is a zoom function when it will make all images look like crap? Bilinear filtering isn't all that complicated, yet Firefox doesn't have it and goes the ugliest possible route in making an image larger. I just don't get how such a basic feature is still not in there after over a decade.
Firefox 3, Opera, and IE all zoom without changing the layout, and reviewers praised them for adding those features. Firefox 3 does bilinear filtering on image scaling, and has been stable for 6 months now.
It's kind of ridiculous to say something "still isn't there" when it's been in the latest stable for six months.
Here, I'll say something more constructive, rather than just criticizing browsers I've never used.
Firefox: The only real browser right now. Supports a bunch of anti-crapware plugins (like adblock plus, which gets rid of /. ads) and general power-user scripts for those who want them. Aside from that, its everywhere on every platform that supports any form of graphical manager.
Still starts to lag if it hasn't been restarted in a while, although it's gotten a lot better about it lately. It does have very many good add-ons, and I've only found around three bugs in its rendering engine, ever (and one of them had to do with nested tables, which shouldn't be used, anyway). However, it's much slower than Safari or Opera about passing the Acid tests.
The problem with add-ons is that the more you have, the slower Firefox gets (and the more cluttered the interface gets - I still haven't figured out how to get rid of all the addons adding their logos to the bottom right).
Remember, add-ons (such as GreaseMonkey, Adblock, Tab Mix Plus) are different from plugins (such as Flash, Java, Silverlight).
IE: MS has had to work because they prior have sucked and dragged down most every website that does "IE only" websites. It's a good thing that Firefox and standards are taking a front seat.
Well, it's arguably "not bad" now. Although I don't use it much, my impression is that it can't get you viruses just by accidentally clicking the wrong link these days. And its standards support is steadily improving, although it still has weird bugs crop up, it doesn't support more modern technologies (SVG, canvas, HTML 5's <video> tag...), and I often have to use weird hacks like hasLayout to get it to render correctly. It's also very slow compared to other modern browsers.
Still, it's on par with last-generation browsers, which means it's come a long way from the mess that was IE6.
Opera: They're still around on X86 platforms? I thought they died out and only did DS and Wii browsers and diddled with X86 adware. Havent looked at them since their software didnt fit on a floppy.
It's a pretty good browser, and still as fast as ever. Its benefits include coming with most of the functionality built-in that Firefox requires plug-ins for, as well as support for GreaseMonkey scripts to add the rest of the functionality. The benefit is that its interface is nowhere near as slow as Firefox with all those plugins.
Notably, it's the only browser here that doesn't have inline find with Ctrl+F (even IE does these days), but inline find can be brought up with the / button.
It's also one of the few browsers resistant to JavaScript alert DoSing.
Chrome: eh? Its alpha buggyware with none of the plugins we're used to. Im not going to even look at it until it has more what I would consider basic features.
For "alpha buggyware", it doesn't have very many bugs, and is as stable as any other browser. In addition, its interface is very well done, and arguably much easier to use than any other browser currently available. What would you consider basic features? Nightlies even have GreaseMonkey support.
It's also the only other browser on this list resistant to JavaScript alert DoSing.
Safari: I dont own a mac. I dont care to own a mac. And I dont even want to pirate OSX for my very compatible Thinkpad-T61 to run it. And pretty much every software ported from OSX to Windows is bad, and I mean BAD.
Safari on a Mac is a very good browser. It lacks Ctrl+Tab to switch tabs, GreaseMonkey-like functionality, or ad blocking. Aside from these, it's the fastest browser around, especially in nightlies.
Safari on Windows works fairly well. Aside from the debatably ugly color scheme
Furthermore, advertising dehumidifiers with filters on them as "OMG Drinking Water Out of Thin Air" is nothing new. Heck, I've even done contract work for one such company selling them. I don't see anything new about this.
Wow, this comment box would indeed sure suck if I weren't using a browser that lets you change the size of any text area (Safari does this. Doesn't FF3, too?)
No. The only browsers that do this are Safari and Chrome.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying you should avoid spoilers until you need them, and read them in moderation. For the *vast* majority of people it's not worth trying to ascend without any spoilers. But at the same time, if you're playing with wikihack open in your browser, you're really not getting the full intended experience.
On the contrary, as LotsOfPhil mentioned, no one's known to have won a game of NetHack without being spoiled, and Ellora's Saga is notable for being the closest anyone's ever gotten, and some still think it was written by someone who had been spoiled and was pretending otherwise.
From when I used to read and participate in r.g.r.n and #nethack, the consensus is that NetHack is meant to be played spoiled, and that spoilers are not considered cheating.
however, with something like a digital photo, all a user has to do is make a few very minor alterations (like a small watermark) to the image and it would produce a different md5 hash--essentially exploiting the inherent design of the md5 hash algorithm--and be missed by the md5 scan. these small changes could be as simple as flipping a single bit in the file, but with a standard 24-bit RGB bitmap image, each pixel is stored as three 8 bit values representing the red, green, and blue color channels. by flipping the least significant bit in each channel, you can alter up to 1/8th (12.5%) of the file without creating any perceptible changes (to human eyes at least) to the displayed image.
another method would be to employ lossy compression schemes like JPEG image compression. convert all your images to JPEG (or if they are already JPG, just compress it again at minimal compression strength) and the MD5 hashes will be completely altered. yet another method is to resize the image by a small amount--say reduce both width and height by just 1 pixel--using bicubic interpolation to scale the image up or down would preserve the image quality while completely changing the md5 signature of the file.
all of these methods would be simple to automate and allow you to easily hide known child porn images from detection using md5 comparisons.
Why are you suggesting "minor alterations" like flipping every least significant bit, or recompressing an image? The whole point of a hash like MD5 is that it becomes unrecognizably different if you change even one bit; flipping every least significant bit is no different from flipping just one bit. Not to mention that there are many completely lossless ways to change an image file (i.e. with no visible alterations whatsoever). One is simply to append a byte to the end of the image; most image specifications are designed so that extra data at the end is ignored. Alternatively, if using an image format using indexed color (PNGs in index mode, or all GIFs), you can just reorder the index.
The "infinite situations" you reference were shown to be equivalent to a collection of two different sets:
i) a set of 1936 (originally; later this was reduced to 1476 of them) maps. Each of these maps were checked one-by-one;
ii) a set of counter-counter-examples, which also had to be checked one-by-one.
Each of the successful proofs of the 4-color theorem has required the same sort of exhaustive search over these two kinds of sets (that I know of).
Oh, whoops, I was thinking of the Five Color Theorem, which is a lot easier to prove by induction.
Actually, I think you only need to go up to the halfway point.
You're still working too hard. You only need go up to the square root. Your reasoning works just fine at that point.
He was listing all the possibilities, i.e. a proof by exhaustive search. Sure, he could count up to the square root, then prove that all larger numbers cannot be a factor, but that wouldn't be "listing all the possibilities" anymore.
Two minor mistakes.
1.) 1 does indeed divide 7. So, you should only show that 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 does not divide 7.
2.) You need to state that numbers larger than 7 do not divide 7.
2. is a tautology and doesn't need to be stated.
Tautologies need to be stated; they simply don't need to be proven.
This is no more a "non-proof" than the proof of the 4-color map theorem in two dimensions, which was also "shown" using an exhaustive search.
I agree with you on your other points, but this? I'm pretty sure the proof of the Four-Color Theorem I know was proven by induction, not exhaustive search. Kind of hard to prove a theorem that applies to infinite situations with exhaustive search, don't you think?
I can't link to it because of Dell's site, but for about $100 more Dell currently has an XPS 1330 which whips the Macbook in virtually every respect: much better graphics, much more RAM and HDD, significantly faster CPU, bigger battery, better connectivity, and so on. Mysteriously, the reviewer has instead selected a relatively poor quality Dell as a comparison point.
I'm curious about a few things.
First, your claim of "much better graphics". Is a GeForce 8400M (the best video card on an XPS 1330) significantly better than a GeForce 9400M (the MacBook video card)? Their names would suggest otherwise - Nvidia's naming system says one is a medium-end 8th generation video card, while the other is an equivalent medium-end 9th generation.
Second, the closest I can find to "about $100 more" is the $150 more $1449 M1330, which comes with a T8300. If $150 is negligible, then the 2.4GHz MacBook for another $150 more has an even better P8600. (Personally, I'm not sure how much I'd really feel a 20% difference in CPU speed; it doesn't sound like anything dramatic.)
Third, I'm not sure how a "bigger battery" is better; I'd assume people would prefer a lighter and smaller battery. Perhaps you meant a longer battery life? According to Notebook Review, on an M1330 with the best non-deforming battery and aforementioned video card, you get 3 and a half hours browsing the web. Having used a MacBook advertised for 5 hours of battery life, I've gotten around 4 hours browsing the web, so I'd assume the new MacBook is comparable.
I would agree that the XPS M1330 is better, it is a non-trivial $150 more expensive, and I wouldn't say it's as much better as you say it is.
It's generally known on Slashdot that Apple's MacBooks are competitive with Windows PCs at their price, when all of their features are considered (specifically, screen size and battery life), when first released. It's usually the higher-end MacBook Pros and Mac Pros that are considered overpriced (and the upgrades).
And there are the other arguments, such as the increased stability and usability that comes when an OS manufacturer has such control over hardware (although whether this is a good or bad thing is left as an exercise for the reader).
This is actually redundant but it was rewarded with "Funny" because it implies that Monroe has lots of sex. You guys like Monroe and heaven forbid if you could separate the moderation guidelines from your personal feelings. Therefore, this is complimentary of Monroe and gets modded up. I made a very similar post that, while intended to be humorous, could have been taken as derogatory of Monroe since it suggested that the three-fourths part did not include sex, so I get modded down into oblivion. That's alright; to be honest, in hindsight, I don't think my own post was any good and it probably deserves the moderation it received. However, this post is a carbon copy of mine and was modded up. I contend that either they are both funny or they are both redundant.
No, the difference is that Munroe's original intention in saying "do math, play with staple guns, mess around on the Internet, and have lots of sex. It's about three-fourths autobiographical" was to imply that he does not "have lots of sex". Thus, pointing this out is redundant (because Munroe is already attempting to point it out), while misinterpreting it to mean he doesn't play with staple guns is humorous. Understand the difference?
Believe me, your post would have been funny if you weren't just pointing out what Munroe was trying to say.
The same idiots that pay to use a BETA product.
Too many people make this mistake, calling Google Apps a beta product.
First off: Gmail is only called "beta" because it is constantly being improved. If you use the version of Gmail within Google Apps, which is stable and not beta, you will find that its features are usually a few months behind Gmail. The same goes for all of Google Apps - it is not a beta product (although it's possible to opt-in to beta features).
No, it has GPS.
The iPod touch and the old iPhone triangulate WiFi hotspots and cell tower, though.
Did you read that press release all by yourself? Let's wait for some solid testing before we judge eh?
Newer doesn't necessarily = better
http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-performance-rundown/
You mean like this solid testing?
She would have failed that test under windows. While others have pointed out that you can Alt+drag to move windows in Linux, the idea is that you can't change the screen resolution. In Windows, at least most of the system is designed to be usable at 640x480; it's usually the third-party applications that have problems. The Display Properties dialog that lets you set screen resolution is only around 450 pixels high. In Linux (Both KDE and GNOME), the dialog is huge, and any novice user who doesn't know how to Alt+drag will indeed have a hard time getting out of a 640x480 resolution (Which is troublesome, since driver problems will sometimes kick you back to that resolution; at least Windows will only kick you back to 800x600) (God forbid you actually want to use a desktop Linux distro at 640x480).
It looks like all those "In Soviet Russia" jokes will be on-topic for once.
This, combined with your experience, points to maybe some serious irregularities with the College Board's grading system.
Or maybe there are other explanations. Perhaps they gave me the wrong person's score. Sigh. I took the AB exam two years ago, when it was in Java, and got a 5, despite spending 45 minutes reading the fish thingy we were supposed to read ahead of time, and not having time to fill in in a bit more than half the answers (I don't like filling them in while I'm answering questions, so I just mark them, then go back and fill them in later).
I think the grading system just varies a bit from year to year.
I don't know how exactly the moves are defined for this proof (I didn't RTFA), but there are certainly many possibilities. Note that allowing only moving the outer slides, while universal for the 3x3x3 cube, won't generalize to higher cubes (you'll not get all possible configurations on the 4x4x4 cube this way). Turning the middle layer is equivalent to turning the two side layers parallel to it, and counts as two moves by pretty much everyone's definition. No, this is not generalizable to higher cubes, but we're not talking about higher cubes.
Wait, how did this get modded Interesting? A solved cube is indeed a member of all starting point, and it would be the only member of its set of essentially similar ones (and, for that matter, the member of the only set of essentially similar ones solvable in zero moves). I fail to see anything interesting about that.
So, are they going to go back to light, tight, and fast instead of this feature bloat that seems to have prevailed? Yes, it's nice to have bells and whistles but I think that it's just as important to have a browser that doesn't require me to close it and reopen it so that my machine doesn't grind to a halt every other day if I don't.
Well, that's probably because they talked about it when Firefox 3 beta 1 was released...
...Mozilla [has] gone back to basics and worked on what really matters to users -- security, speed and ease of use