I didn't read any of it, but it has always irked me that people have issues calling the 3-1/2" diskettes "floppy." The container may be rigid plastic, unlike with the older diskettes such as 5-1/4", but the actual disk inside the container, on which the actual bits are written, is floppy. A hard disk, by contrast, contains rigid magnetic platters for storing your data. So I'm with you on point #1.
For point #2... 1440 / 15 = 96. I always remember the base capacity of 5-1/4" diskettes as being 360KB (with 720KB and 1.2MB also produced), so I checked Wikipedia and sure enough that's right. There doesn't appear to be a 96KB 5-1/4" format out there, as best I can tell. Those that come close to that size are basically weird formats.
Speaking of 5-1/4" diskettes, I was recently going to drop an old 5-1/4" drive into my parents' second most recent computer so they could transfer their various 5-1/4"-contained files to 3-1/2" diskettes or to the hard drive. However, it turned out that I had forgotten about the inability of that (and probably all other post-2000) machine to control two floppy drives, and thus it would have meant the sacrifice of the 3-1/2" drive that my dad still used for Quicken backups.
So, here's a question for you, the floppy diskette enthusiast (and anyone else who has an answer): Is there a company out there that I can ship a box of 5-1/2" diskettes to and receive a USB flash drive containing all their files, one folder per diskette?
I don't have time to read the whole thing that SCO filed at the moment, and likely won't, but a quick scan of the table of authorities shows that SCO cited an article entitled Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and
How It Threatens Creativity, 3 J. High Tech. L. 1 (2003) to support their campaign to threaten one of the greatest creative accomplishments in computer technology (an entirely free, open-source operating system available to all and competitive with thousand-dollar alternatives). Who wants to call Alanis this time?
I disagree. If 'to trial' is an infinitive verb form, then 'trialing' is a useful word even though many people would not use it, for the same reasons that synecdoche is a useful word even though fewer than 1% of the population believes that it's a word at all. If nothing else, it is useful in poetry to fit a meter where 'trying' would not. But I am ever skeptical and not accepting that 'trial' is a verb until shown a more credible etymological source than "because Vegeta99 says so."
Do you have a citation for the verb form? (Notwithstanding the AC's response, which appears to assume that you did not mean the infinitive form 'to trial' but rather a prepositional phrase.) I ask, because Merriam-Webster lacks any mention of it at the entry for trial. I'm not a grammar Nazi, as you suggest, but a stickler for being correct, which includes the ability to learn in those cases when I am not. Point me to a credible etymology so that I can learn.
As to talking technicalities, we are, indeed. Most of the people here actually enjoy a lesson in human language for the same reason that they enjoy dissecting the rules that govern other systems. It's just another area of hacking. Give them a lesson, as you appear to have superior knowledge to one of the most-respected modern dictionaries.
Trial is a noun, not a verb. It's the noun that refers to the act of trying something. To quote Old Biff, you sound like a damn fool when you say it wrong.
N/p. Just trying to save people some time looking since I started out really confused and worried for a minute about what federal reserve rider was hiding in the depths of H.R. 1206!
I can't wait for H.R. 1206 to pass. A Syrian democracy will do wonders for the federal reserve system. You probably meant H.R. 1207, apparently a companion bill to S. 604 Hope that helps some readers.
Sir, I simply cannot condone your inconsistent numbering scheme. The correct order is 1, B, Fourth, Delta,... You were really close, but need to learn the pattern better.
The worst are ads that scream in badly-recorded voices at you. "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE WON A FREE APPLE IPAD!" is the general form. And sometimes a page will have three of those on it, all of which start running at a slight offset. I want to find the morons who actually click on those and take away their computers so that the advertisers who do that to me go out of business.
Just so I'm clear on this, you believe that only programs with GUIs should be robust in checking for malformed input? (Which, for you, appears to include filenames with spaces in them.)
Also, you misquoted me and the parent again. It's not about "regular users." It's about "all the end users out in the world." That includes other programmers who are competent but do not share your assumptions about filename constraints, which are of course not based on any filesystem constraints but rather simply on your own preconceived notions.
It also includes people whose systems run the script for them, as is the case with/etc/init.d scripts and the like. Your position appears to be that competent programmers should allow their scripts to destroy users' data whenever the users have filenames containing spaces.
If you do release a script to the public for any reason, please sign it with your Slashdot ID so we can all sift through it for similar assumptions before running it and corrupting our data. Heaven knows what other idiosyncratic constraints you believe the world should follow.
The question wasn't about competent programmers. It was about the group consisting of "all the end users out in the world." If your script breaks anytime it is used by someone other than a competent programmer, then the blame for the results rests on your head.
My understanding of the parent was that his definition of a script revolves around it being automated, as in no user interaction. I agree with that. If there is a more complicated user interface than exceptional situations calling for a yes/no answer, then it should be programmed like an application and not like a script.
There's a reason that the only high-speed passenger rail in the USA is the northeast corridor - it's the place that needs it. For the rest of the nation, the interstate highway system is just fine, especially when supplemented with light rail in major cities (read: places with traffic problems). I wish we had a better national passenger rail network than we do, but it's just not feasible when most people end up driving anyhow and when our railroads are all built from the east coast out to the west.
I attribute this specifically to the fact that the American frontier was blazed when railroad technology already existed. In Europe, there was a good millennium or two of western civilization, permanent settlements that became major cities, and so on before the first rails were laid down. In America, rails were laid down at a time when many places were not even explored, much less settled. As a result, nobody knew when creating railroad grades and laying rail where the major cities were going to be. So they just made track out to Oregon and California. There was no call for a railroad from, for instance, Minneapolis to Dallas, so none was built.
By contrast, the interstate highway system came about basically 100 years later, and in that time the major cities had time to grow up enough that the highways could be built accordingly. And once those were built, there was even less call for north-south rail service. It also helps that interstates are a government thing while railroads are private, so nobody is going to lay track to get ten people a day from Missoula to Denver by rail.
As a result, if I want to get from Minnesota to Texas, I can ride a train via probably D.C. for about a week or I can just drive south on I-35 and make it in a day. And since that's the American mindset, it's hard to get any forward momentum on developing better passenger rail service in this country, except where the interstates are impractical, such as the northeast corridor.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't read any of it, but it has always irked me that people have issues calling the 3-1/2" diskettes "floppy." The container may be rigid plastic, unlike with the older diskettes such as 5-1/4", but the actual disk inside the container, on which the actual bits are written, is floppy. A hard disk, by contrast, contains rigid magnetic platters for storing your data. So I'm with you on point #1.
... 1440 / 15 = 96. I always remember the base capacity of 5-1/4" diskettes as being 360KB (with 720KB and 1.2MB also produced), so I checked Wikipedia and sure enough that's right. There doesn't appear to be a 96KB 5-1/4" format out there, as best I can tell. Those that come close to that size are basically weird formats.
For point #2
Speaking of 5-1/4" diskettes, I was recently going to drop an old 5-1/4" drive into my parents' second most recent computer so they could transfer their various 5-1/4"-contained files to 3-1/2" diskettes or to the hard drive. However, it turned out that I had forgotten about the inability of that (and probably all other post-2000) machine to control two floppy drives, and thus it would have meant the sacrifice of the 3-1/2" drive that my dad still used for Quicken backups.
So, here's a question for you, the floppy diskette enthusiast (and anyone else who has an answer): Is there a company out there that I can ship a box of 5-1/2" diskettes to and receive a USB flash drive containing all their files, one folder per diskette?
I don't have time to read the whole thing that SCO filed at the moment, and likely won't, but a quick scan of the table of authorities shows that SCO cited an article entitled Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity, 3 J. High Tech. L. 1 (2003) to support their campaign to threaten one of the greatest creative accomplishments in computer technology (an entirely free, open-source operating system available to all and competitive with thousand-dollar alternatives). Who wants to call Alanis this time?
That's not nice. I hate frozen pizza snacks! Or...wait, does the trailer have a microwave? Okay, we're cool.
I'd be happy if they regrew my same body, so I could have a do-over on that period between 18 and 28 when I let myself go.
Fry: I'm having one of those things. You know, a headache with pictures.
You mean that they want the whole head enchurito, right?
Hey TiVo, suggest this!
I disagree. If 'to trial' is an infinitive verb form, then 'trialing' is a useful word even though many people would not use it, for the same reasons that synecdoche is a useful word even though fewer than 1% of the population believes that it's a word at all. If nothing else, it is useful in poetry to fit a meter where 'trying' would not. But I am ever skeptical and not accepting that 'trial' is a verb until shown a more credible etymological source than "because Vegeta99 says so."
Do you have a citation for the verb form? (Notwithstanding the AC's response, which appears to assume that you did not mean the infinitive form 'to trial' but rather a prepositional phrase.) I ask, because Merriam-Webster lacks any mention of it at the entry for trial. I'm not a grammar Nazi, as you suggest, but a stickler for being correct, which includes the ability to learn in those cases when I am not. Point me to a credible etymology so that I can learn.
As to talking technicalities, we are, indeed. Most of the people here actually enjoy a lesson in human language for the same reason that they enjoy dissecting the rules that govern other systems. It's just another area of hacking. Give them a lesson, as you appear to have superior knowledge to one of the most-respected modern dictionaries.
Trial is a noun, not a verb. It's the noun that refers to the act of trying something. To quote Old Biff, you sound like a damn fool when you say it wrong.
Media attention has commercial value to advertisers.
N/p. Just trying to save people some time looking since I started out really confused and worried for a minute about what federal reserve rider was hiding in the depths of H.R. 1206!
I can't wait for H.R. 1206 to pass. A Syrian democracy will do wonders for the federal reserve system. You probably meant H.R. 1207, apparently a companion bill to S. 604 Hope that helps some readers.
Sir, I simply cannot condone your inconsistent numbering scheme. The correct order is 1, B, Fourth, Delta, ... You were really close, but need to learn the pattern better.
I've been spending hundreds since they had small faces.
The worst are ads that scream in badly-recorded voices at you. "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE WON A FREE APPLE IPAD!" is the general form. And sometimes a page will have three of those on it, all of which start running at a slight offset. I want to find the morons who actually click on those and take away their computers so that the advertisers who do that to me go out of business.
Mostly bad for Kool-Aid.
The main difference between that and a cult is that the Apple team has to throw away bad ideas, while cult members aren't allowed to do that.
Just so I'm clear on this, you believe that only programs with GUIs should be robust in checking for malformed input? (Which, for you, appears to include filenames with spaces in them.)
/etc/init.d scripts and the like. Your position appears to be that competent programmers should allow their scripts to destroy users' data whenever the users have filenames containing spaces.
Also, you misquoted me and the parent again. It's not about "regular users." It's about "all the end users out in the world." That includes other programmers who are competent but do not share your assumptions about filename constraints, which are of course not based on any filesystem constraints but rather simply on your own preconceived notions.
It also includes people whose systems run the script for them, as is the case with
If you do release a script to the public for any reason, please sign it with your Slashdot ID so we can all sift through it for similar assumptions before running it and corrupting our data. Heaven knows what other idiosyncratic constraints you believe the world should follow.
The question wasn't about competent programmers. It was about the group consisting of "all the end users out in the world." If your script breaks anytime it is used by someone other than a competent programmer, then the blame for the results rests on your head.
My understanding of the parent was that his definition of a script revolves around it being automated, as in no user interaction. I agree with that. If there is a more complicated user interface than exceptional situations calling for a yes/no answer, then it should be programmed like an application and not like a script.
There's a reason that the only high-speed passenger rail in the USA is the northeast corridor - it's the place that needs it. For the rest of the nation, the interstate highway system is just fine, especially when supplemented with light rail in major cities (read: places with traffic problems). I wish we had a better national passenger rail network than we do, but it's just not feasible when most people end up driving anyhow and when our railroads are all built from the east coast out to the west.
I attribute this specifically to the fact that the American frontier was blazed when railroad technology already existed. In Europe, there was a good millennium or two of western civilization, permanent settlements that became major cities, and so on before the first rails were laid down. In America, rails were laid down at a time when many places were not even explored, much less settled. As a result, nobody knew when creating railroad grades and laying rail where the major cities were going to be. So they just made track out to Oregon and California. There was no call for a railroad from, for instance, Minneapolis to Dallas, so none was built.
By contrast, the interstate highway system came about basically 100 years later, and in that time the major cities had time to grow up enough that the highways could be built accordingly. And once those were built, there was even less call for north-south rail service. It also helps that interstates are a government thing while railroads are private, so nobody is going to lay track to get ten people a day from Missoula to Denver by rail.
As a result, if I want to get from Minnesota to Texas, I can ride a train via probably D.C. for about a week or I can just drive south on I-35 and make it in a day. And since that's the American mindset, it's hard to get any forward momentum on developing better passenger rail service in this country, except where the interstates are impractical, such as the northeast corridor.
Your message and signature, taken together, tell me your intention here.
I'm not sure I want to book transoceanic passage through someone's Hotmail address. =)