"the pre-release backlash on Vista has indicated that people might not be willing to pay $200 every couple of years for upgrades, no matter how many glass-effects those upgrades might have"
Unless they're Mac OS X users.
Mac OS X v10.0 (Cheetah) = March 24, 2001
Mac OS X v10.1 (Puma) = September 25, 2001
Mac OS X v10.2 (Jaguar) = August 24, 2002
Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther) = October 24, 2003
Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger) = April 29, 2005
Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard) = "Spring 2007"
LCD displays produce crisp images only in their "native resolution" and fractions of that native resolution. Attempting to run LCD display panels at non-native resolutions usually results in the panel scaling the image, which introduces blurriness or "blockiness".
I object to this in the same way as I object a bit to homeschooling - sure the kid will learn stuff, but they won't learn to be around other people their own age, how to work with others, or how to be a member of society in general. Some may consider that a blessing, but I certainly wouldn't. I think it'll lead to some serious problems when they finally are turned out into the world.
This is just wrong. <alert style="bias">I am a home schooling parent</alert> and my kids (1st Grade and 4th Grade) are *much* better "socialized" than their peers. They don't spend all day inside... they also go on field trips, deliver food to the elderly, go grocery shopping, play with kids in the neighborhood, etc. Who do you believe is going to be better adjusted: a young kid thrown into an unfamiliar room with 25 (or 30. 35. 40?) other kids their own age and a complete stranger to manage them, or a kid left in a comforatable environment with family members present with individual attention and frequent trips "outside" to interact with others of all ages?
When their schooling is done, my children won't need to be "turned out into the world" as they will have spent their entire lives a lot closer to it than most other kids. Plus, what's the make-up of your workplace look like? I haven't been "around other people (my) own age" since college... in a department of 13, I've got co-workers 10+ years younger and 25+ years older than me.
Now, just as there are public schools that suck, home-schooling is no guarantee of a good education. It's frankly more work than I would have imagined, but it's work I wouldn't have anyone else doing and wouldn't miss for the world.
The story goes like this. Al wanted to do a parody of Coolio's 'Gangstas Paradise' called "Amish Paradise". He tells his record label to get permission. They do. Al records and releases the song. Coolio then hears the song and says he never gave permission for it and wasn't happy about it. Al figures there was a communications breakdown somewhere and sends Coolio a public and sincere apology for the mixup saying he wouldn't have done the song if there was no permission. Coolio doesn't respond. This all took place back in the day of 1996, and by now, it's old boring news.
We're not talking about "if I put one foot in front of the other, I can walk!" ideas. Anything so obvious at the time of patent submission should be thrown out by the patent office. We're talking about ideas that were ground breaking at the time of conception. "I think the world is round" ideas. They don't have to be as important as that, but unique. Most of Burst's patents are over 10 years old! 10 years ago, there was no iTunes or Akamai, and QuickTime was at version 2.0. They appear to have been truly ahead of their time and should be recognized for it. How much they should be recognized is another matter...
Once upon a time, just about everything we see as being "obvious" today wasn't obvious at all, except to one person. Why shouldn't that one person, if they also had the foresight to patent their idea, be rewarded?
Not if your Crackberry gets email as often as mine does (even with plenty of filters in place). Only getting buzzed every five minutes (on an IMAP check) instead of every two (with the current push model) would be a relaxing change, not to mention much better on the batteries...
The Sunbird/Calendar development team keeps a development weblog. Last updated 5 days ago. Oracle also has (as of May 2005, anyway) three employees working on the Lightning project.
Not "PCI", but "PCIe" aka PCI-Express -- big difference.
"AGP, much as it's been a faithful companion for many a year, is a dead end. While SLI systems may not outperform their older siblings, one has to take into account that PCI-Express, SATA and DDR2 were not chosen as future PC standards for their immediate advantages, but for their open-ended architecture, which opens up avenues of development that will eventually lead to much better performance than AGP/EIDE systems."
(Taken from the first hit on a quick google search.)
Here's what I sent to Steve regarding his info. He replied:
Unfortunately we have pretty much beaten the topic
to death now, or I would *definitely* mention your thoughts. Every point
you make is very good and very "real world" as you say.
What do you think?
In response to your last two episodes on passwords, I feel strongly that
you need to be a little more realistic. I support PCs at a major university
where just about every PC is an Internet-facing PC (no hardware firewalls).
Here's what I tell my users:
- Longer is better = using 14 lowercase letters, it will take a brute force
attack of one million attempts per second over two million years to go
through all possible combinations. Start your password with a
late-in-the-alphabet letter to put it at the end of those attempts.
- Dictionary words are fine, as long as you use more than one or two = a
dictionary attack of one million attempts per second using a 350,000 word
dictionary would take almost 1,360 years to go through all possible
combinations of a three word phrase. Put in a single number, symbol, or
intentional misspelling and you increase the difficulty of cracking your
password immeasurably.
- In the real world, it's not about *you*. Almost no hacker is looking for
what's on Joe User's PC. They're looking for what's *not* on the PC: the
unused space on the hard drive (for warez storage) and the unused CPU
cycles (for zombie attacks). The vast majority of password attacks on a
single PC are going to be brief automated attacks using a dictionary of 100
or so of the most likely passwords, then moving on to the next target.
- Regarding web site passwords, I agree that you should have a "throw-away"
password for sites like nytimes.com and separate passwords for truly
secured sites, but even those don't have to be as hard as you made them
last week. Nobody is going to sit there trying to brute force or dictionary
attack a web site that allows (at most due to the unavoidable lag of http
communications) *one* attempt per second. They're going to either (a)
attack the web site in ways that are out of your control and get your info
without your password, or (b) try a few basic passwords, hoping that you're
dumb enough to use something like "password" or "topsecret".
So, even though something like "mystr0ngpasswerd" (or even
"mystrongpassword") doesn't look very strong to our human eyes, it's
actually very strong to a computer and stronger than something like
"x2&e1B9$o" simply due to its length. It's also fairly easy to remember,
which the other is certainly not.
A University Security Officer I know said this about it:
"Regarding password strength, the method of comparing differing
authentication methods that I am trying to promote is the concept of bits
of entropy. This has a very firm foundation in information theory and can
yield some very interesting results. For your specific comparison
("mystrongpassword" vs "x2&e1B9$o"), I believe that given a 100k
dictionary (sorry, don't believe that most ppl's vocabulary is larger than
this) that "mystrongpassword" contains about 50 bits of entropy (250
possible randomly distributed combinations). "x2&e1B9$o" which is 9
characters drawn randomly from a set of ~90 characters has 58 bits of
entropy and so is somewhat larger. So both of these compare roughly to
the goverment's deprecated 56 bit encryption mechanism: DES.
That said, for anything above ~30 bits of entropy, the difference is
mostly academic. Password guessing attempts aren't going to try more than
a few thousand combinations."
Have you two met? Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot. You apparently don't know what you're talking about, either.
"Windows Update" is a web site, complete with "express" and "custom" buttons.
"Automatic Updates" are a part of the Windows OS, are done in the background, and when the update process is completed, the user is prompted to reboot.
Going forward, you should really reconsider going forward.
I haven't examined both from the coding standpoint (I can't imagine they'd be *that* different there), but Konfabulator's display options put it at least a *few notched above Apple's Dashboard. I find the "floating" option especially useful, with the widget showing up on to of every program *BUT* without actually interfering with the programs below , i.e. if you (right-)click on the widget, you are actually (right-)clicking on the window below. K's new "Konspose'" layer mimics Apple's Expose layer (the *only* place you can see Apple widgets), and you can decide where to display widgets on a widget-by-widget basis. Konfabulator is *definitely* a better implementation, at least from a usability and flexibility standpoint... (This text refers to the Windows edition.)
Slashdot Mirror
"the pre-release backlash on Vista has indicated that people might not be willing to pay $200 every couple of years for upgrades, no matter how many glass-effects those upgrades might have"
Unless they're Mac OS X users.
Mac OS X v10.0 (Cheetah) = March 24, 2001
Mac OS X v10.1 (Puma) = September 25, 2001
Mac OS X v10.2 (Jaguar) = August 24, 2002
Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther) = October 24, 2003
Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger) = April 29, 2005
Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard) = "Spring 2007"
(source: Wikipedia)
Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger - $129.00
How likely is it that you have the Dell monitors set to the wrong resolution? My Dell 19" is razor sharp...
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCD_monitor#Drawbacks :
Anyone else think that they have a pretty big hurdle to overcome before truly human-looking digital actors are anything but creepy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
"The Uncanny Valley is the region of negative emotional response for robots that seem 'almost human'. Movement amplifies the emotional response."
I'm looking forward to Portal and Spore:
r e)
= 1
Portal Info - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_(Valve_Softwa
Portal Preview - http://pc.ign.com/articles/718/718911p1.html
Spore Info - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(video_game)
Spore Preview - http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3138792&did
When their schooling is done, my children won't need to be "turned out into the world" as they will have spent their entire lives a lot closer to it than most other kids. Plus, what's the make-up of your workplace look like? I haven't been "around other people (my) own age" since college... in a department of 13, I've got co-workers 10+ years younger and 25+ years older than me.
Now, just as there are public schools that suck, home-schooling is no guarantee of a good education. It's frankly more work than I would have imagined, but it's work I wouldn't have anyone else doing and wouldn't miss for the world.
- John
"Starcraft: The Forsaken Universe"
Now, they just need to find a storyline that fits the title and we can all play "STFU"!
I crack me up...
From http://www.al-oholicsanonymous.com/faq/#coolio:
9. What's the beef with Coolio?
Added: 8/12/03
The story goes like this. Al wanted to do a parody of Coolio's 'Gangstas Paradise' called "Amish Paradise". He tells his record label to get permission. They do. Al records and releases the song. Coolio then hears the song and says he never gave permission for it and wasn't happy about it. Al figures there was a communications breakdown somewhere and sends Coolio a public and sincere apology for the mixup saying he wouldn't have done the song if there was no permission. Coolio doesn't respond. This all took place back in the day of 1996, and by now, it's old boring news.
Please note I said "should be", not "will be". It was a wishful opinion statement, not a factual one (unfortunately).
We're not talking about "if I put one foot in front of the other, I can walk!" ideas. Anything so obvious at the time of patent submission should be thrown out by the patent office. We're talking about ideas that were ground breaking at the time of conception. "I think the world is round" ideas. They don't have to be as important as that, but unique. Most of Burst's patents are over 10 years old! 10 years ago, there was no iTunes or Akamai, and QuickTime was at version 2.0. They appear to have been truly ahead of their time and should be recognized for it. How much they should be recognized is another matter...
Once upon a time, just about everything we see as being "obvious" today wasn't obvious at all, except to one person. Why shouldn't that one person, if they also had the foresight to patent their idea, be rewarded?
Not if your Crackberry gets email as often as mine does (even with plenty of filters in place). Only getting buzzed every five minutes (on an IMAP check) instead of every two (with the current push model) would be a relaxing change, not to mention much better on the batteries...
The Sunbird/Calendar development team keeps a development weblog. Last updated 5 days ago. Oracle also has (as of May 2005, anyway) three employees working on the Lightning project.
Not "PCI", but "PCIe" aka PCI-Express -- big difference.
"AGP, much as it's been a faithful companion for many a year, is a dead end. While SLI systems may not outperform their older siblings, one has to take into account that PCI-Express, SATA and DDR2 were not chosen as future PC standards for their immediate advantages, but for their open-ended architecture, which opens up avenues of development that will eventually lead to much better performance than AGP/EIDE systems."
(Taken from the first hit on a quick google search.)
Have you two met? Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot. You apparently don't know what you're talking about, either.
"Windows Update" is a web site, complete with "express" and "custom" buttons.
"Automatic Updates" are a part of the Windows OS, are done in the background, and when the update process is completed, the user is prompted to reboot.
Going forward, you should really reconsider going forward.
I haven't examined both from the coding standpoint (I can't imagine they'd be *that* different there), but Konfabulator's display options put it at least a *few notched above Apple's Dashboard. I find the "floating" option especially useful, with the widget showing up on to of every program *BUT* without actually interfering with the programs below , i.e. if you (right-)click on the widget, you are actually (right-)clicking on the window below. K's new "Konspose'" layer mimics Apple's Expose layer (the *only* place you can see Apple widgets), and you can decide where to display widgets on a widget-by-widget basis. Konfabulator is *definitely* a better implementation, at least from a usability and flexibility standpoint...
(This text refers to the Windows edition.)