I don't know about the rest of the providers, but my US provider (US Cellular) has free incoming everything - texts, phone calls, picture messages - by default on all its plans. And unlimited outgoing texting is $15 a month (picture messaging is something extra). I guess they're the odd ones out?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a trekkie by any means, but I've always been a fan of the manual override switches that Picard and friends used to detatch the deflector dish from the enterprise in First Contact. Those suckers required moving around some mysterious, semi-transparent cards of some sort, pushing a (presumably top-secret) sequence of buttons on the touchscreen, and evidently a lot of effort to pull the switch out, twist, and re-seat it into the off position. So much effort that expendable crewman Hawk couldn't do it, got Borgified, so Worf had to take over his switch *and* dispose of the newly Borgified crewman. And there were three of them, not to mention Borg that would try to kill you if you did anything suspicious. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a picture of them anywhere, but those were some intense off switches.
http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbacular_Drop The predecessor to Portal (Portal was written by the ND guys, Valve hired them on the spot), with all the community-created levels, has the awesome problem-solving puzzle elements of Portal without the Valve graphics. It took a couple students from DigiPen to create the unique concept that was Portal, not some internal Valve guys. I'm glad that a company with the popularity/graphics expertise of Valve could bring it to a wider audience and make it more acceptable to the general gaming public. Just FAYI.
Yes. But if you're worrying about that, you should probably calculate air resistance from the negligible amount of air that is in the "vacuum" as well. And the objects' gravitational attraction to each other. Perhaps even the gravity of the moon (assuming we're on earth). And don't forget to make sure you know exactly what the gravity is at that point on earth - 9.81 won't do it any more.
Of course, I'm sure there's something in quantum mechanics or string theory or something that will screw this all up anyway.
My point being, don't be stupid. The concept that heavier isn't necessarily faster (yes, there's terminal velocity and air resistance, but you didn't say that, and the blanket statement that heavier == faster is incorrect) is important to the discussion. Gravitational forces that will tweak the final velocity by an imperceptible fraction of a millisecond aren't.
I hate to defend Vista... but the desktop effects can be disabled rather easily. Furthermore, the desktop effects in both Vista and OS X are incredibly stable. That's definitely something that can't be said for Compiz.
I'm not sure about Compiz, but I've been using Beryl, which is supposed to be less stable, and the only time that it's gone awry is when I've asked for it by screwing with stuff that I shouldn't have. Out of the box, it works like a charm. Now that they've merged back into Compiz Fusion, I have every confidence that the Compiz team will continue to ensure stability.
Why include something in the default install that's reasonably unstable? At the moment, Compiz doesn't even work on an extremely large subset of video cards.
Since we're making the comparison, Vista and OSX are a lot less video-card intensive "effects". Not to mention OS X doesn't have to worry about hardware anyway, since you can only get it with their pre-packaged hardware bundles in the first place. Vista's "effects" consist of what, window transparency and a cheap window flipper? In all fairness, Compiz Fusion (which it is now) is way more advanced and therefore demanding than either of the above options.
It's a lot less of a hassle for the people that want Compiz to install it themselves, than for the people who don't want it, or don't have supported hardware, to have to deal with crashes and other problems before figuring out how to disable it. There are plenty of packages that would be more appropriate to include on the installation CD.
What is this? People whine about Linux being ugly, Linux being klunky, Linux being for geeks. So just when we are finally getting to the point where we can put some stunning effects (that are also very functional and helpful in managing your desktop) that even put OS X to shame in some departments (I'm not claiming total superiority, that would be unspeakably foolish), and we get whining because "What if they don't want it?" In order to be accepted, Linux has to work, and be pretty out of the box. This kind of thing has to happen in order to work. I'll give you that crashes are a problem that need to be addressed, but overall it is a necessary step.
I never delete anything, and I'm only at 493MB (15%). Oh, and my two cents on archiving: I don't. I use labels (along with filters) extensively, but anything that doesn't get filed under a label just sits in my inbox. If there's really something I need to look at, but don't have time, I have a "To deal with" label that I put it under. I just don't see the point of having a totally empty inbox.
This CS major was probably one of the ones that was in it just for the money. If he was in it because he liked it, or actually wanted to do it, he would have already installed an operating system many, many times over in his life (for himself, his next of kin, his friends...) and would know a lot more than they teach you in college, just because that's what he does on the side.
I'm a CS/EE double major, and know a lot more than I have learned (granted, I'm only a Sophomore), because I love CS/EE and that's what I've been doing in my spare time for the past four years. I've learned a lot more in fiddling with stuff in my spare time, and working as the IT guy at two jobs, than I ever have in classes.
And yes, I've installed several distros of Linux, Windows 98,2000,XP, and Mac 9 and OS X. In case you were wondering. Oh, and I'd have to guess to tell you what a bubble sort was. I learned that in class, it's not like I actually remember it.
they could just put it through an X-Ray scanner by itself, away from the clutter of the bag. I mean, passengers would have to take their laptops out of their bags, which would be a bit of a hassle, not like the airlines would care. And maybe even have some kind of bomb chemical wipes for especially suspicious cases. Yeah, that'd work.
It's kind of a pain to tune with the command line, but it works well.
May I suggest MythTV?
I tried it back with 6.06 and it was way more of a pain than I was willing to go through (I don't even have a TV tuner), but I just tried it with 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) and it's in the repositories and worked like a charm - it was dead easy to set up. Now as I said, I don't have a TV tuner, so I don't know how much more effort that would be. But if you've already got it working on the command line, I would guess it should work fine. If you haven't given it a try, or have with previous versions, I'd recommend looking at it again. I've got it running FCEUltra/MAME/ZSNES just fine. (All with games that I own...of course...)
(adj) absolute, downright, out-and-out, rank, right-down, sheer (complete and without restriction or qualification; sometimes used informally as intensifiers) "absolute freedom"; "an absolute dimwit"; "a downright lie"; "out-and-out mayhem"; "an out-and-out lie"; "a rank outsider"; "many right-down vices"; "got the job through sheer persistence"; "sheer stupidity"
(n) shear ((physics) a deformation of an object in which parallel planes remain parallel but are shifted in a direction parallel to themselves) "the shear changed the quadrilateral into a parallelogram" (there isn't an adjective form)
I believe you're looking for the first one. Now you've learned something today.
Looks like if these are the number we're looking at, Google is way ahead. But IANAFG, so I haven't the foggiest whether any of these matter or not. They're just the numbers.
I'm sorry, I'm going to have to take your geek card. As many others have said, the first web browser was WorldWideWeb, clearly on a NeXT system. Not NCSA Mosaic. But good try.
Random Numbers are only random once.
If you have to call this function next time,its no longer random.
Uhh...
Duh?
Pardon me while I go beat my head against the wall repeatedly, in deep despair due to the utter lack of comprehension in any way, shape, or form in that statement.
And all this time I thought every human being had at least some shred of a sense of humor...thank you for pointing out the fallacy in my assumption. I forgot this was slashdot.
And we all know the opposition to OOXML is purely because it's being put forth by MS. Had it been put forth by OOO or some other pro-Lunix group, you know ANSI would have been really eager to drink from their mule.
And that's a bad thing? "Open" and "Microsoft" don't fit together. There's already an open format put forth by OOO or some other pro-Lunix group - it's called ODF. Why would Microsoft release their own, if not to try to control it as much as they can? There is a reason we don't trust Microsoft - it's a big corporation, with vested interests, whereas the people behind ODF are not a big corporation, but an organization that's dedicated to openness. ODF is a lot safer than OOXML because of it.
In summary...
Duh?
What the crap? Killing machine? Are you referring to the couple of elk that would be inconvenienced by drilling AMWR? Cause last I checked, people were pretty upset about gas prices...and I'm sorry, but inconveniencing (and, yes, perhaps even killing) a few animals that I consider meat (note the part about them being animals...you know, the things we eat?) doesn't bother me too much when the result is oil from our own soil, and reducing our dependency on oil from the Middle East.
And the ACLU hates him? Good, cause I hate the ACLU. Stopping some crazy, expensive governmental plans for oil reduction that is doomed to failure? Sounds good to me.
Somehow, berating a REPUBLICAN senator for voting very...umm...REPUBLICAN seems kind of idiotic. Kind of like criticizing/. for having a bias towards tech/geeky news. It's stupid.
Oh, and GP: in case you hadn't made the connection, the sin he was talking about was...prostitution. Not voting to kill elk. Just wanted to make that clear.
Oh, and by the way, I'm a grammar nazi - and it's hypocrite. And yes, I do think less of you and your comment because you can't spell right, or at least put forth the effort use a spell checker (Google Toolbar? FF2.0?).
It amazes me that I haven't yet found one mention of DeWeirdifyer. I personally like the way GIMP works, but hey, for those that want them all in one window (which is annoying to me), Deweirdifyer is your ticket on Windows (assuming it's still compatible, I haven't used it in a while personally). For Linux, a quick google of "gimp one window" will find directions on how to do it with things like xnest.
Seriously, stop whining and do a bit of googling. I like the GIMP interface like it is, and I'd be upset if they all of a sudden switched it to a single-window system, and I'd need a de-deweirdifyer, which I'm guessing would be a lot harder to come by.
If you don't like it, this is open-source - there's usually a way to make it just like your little heart desires, probably two or three ways.
I can't help but think of Blender, which, once I spent a few days running through some tutorials that pulled me up the steep learning slope, is far and away the most intuitive user interface I have ever had the pleasure of using. It gets all kinds of guff becasue it's different, but it's really very easy once you get past the "Aah it's different and I hate it" stage.
Some of the weak animation (like at the beginning) was due to lack of time - they had to get it out the door and didn't have time to go back and redo the beginning...now where is that post about that...ah well, anyway yeah - little things like some lip syncing, etc, was due to lack of time - fyi. Not that I'm arguing that it's Pixar quality, just a disclaimer.
Not excessive, sensible. I've got the same, except that I have NoScript disabled (got annoying), but click-to-play flash (no more unwanted punch the monkey!), adblock, popup blocking...it's not to block one popup, it's to block millions upon millions of web annoyances.
I'd say it's quite practical.
Hmm, sounds a lot like NASA World Wind ( http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/ ) - Landsat7, 3D globe, free data. And hi-res ortho imagery to boot.
So what am I supposed to be excited about that's new?
Uhh, you seem to be stuck on the idea that they only use the mystery word for captcha.
Maybe you should actually read the comments you replied to...which quote the reCAPTCHA website:
But if a computer can't read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here's how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.
In other words, several of your points are entirely invalid. The mystery word is not used at all for verification.
Several of your other arguments are about how it's not any better of a CAPTCHA. Which is preposterous, because it's not supposed to better at being a CAPTCHA. It's supposed to be better at digitizing books, which the current CAPTCHA scheme has exactly 0 effectiveness at. Complaining that this isn't any better of a CAPTCHA is like complaining that charity golf tournaments aren't any better than the Masters. It's a ridiculous argument, because charity golf tournaments have an entirely different focus, while still being a golf tournament.
And it's got a reload button for hard words. You've got a somewhat valid point in that being not random, it is easier to guess. But/. CAPTCHAs are real words too, and they don't do anything towards digitizing books.
You've still got some fragment of an argument left, but most of it is destroyed by the simple facts that:
a) Verification is not based on the "mystery" word
b) It's supposed to be better at digitizing books, not better at being a CAPTCHA
It's just as good as most CAPTCHAs out there, and it digitizes books. It's a good idea.
Dangit, starting a sentence with a conjunction isn't gramatically incorrect, especially not any more. Much like the split infinitive, it's a myth that sadly continues to be perpetuated. Not that they are always okay, but it's not a hard and fast rule.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about the rest of the providers, but my US provider (US Cellular) has free incoming everything - texts, phone calls, picture messages - by default on all its plans. And unlimited outgoing texting is $15 a month (picture messaging is something extra). I guess they're the odd ones out?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a trekkie by any means, but I've always been a fan of the manual override switches that Picard and friends used to detatch the deflector dish from the enterprise in First Contact. Those suckers required moving around some mysterious, semi-transparent cards of some sort, pushing a (presumably top-secret) sequence of buttons on the touchscreen, and evidently a lot of effort to pull the switch out, twist, and re-seat it into the off position. So much effort that expendable crewman Hawk couldn't do it, got Borgified, so Worf had to take over his switch *and* dispose of the newly Borgified crewman.
And there were three of them, not to mention Borg that would try to kill you if you did anything suspicious.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find a picture of them anywhere, but those were some intense off switches.
http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbacular_Drop
The predecessor to Portal (Portal was written by the ND guys, Valve hired them on the spot), with all the community-created levels, has the awesome problem-solving puzzle elements of Portal without the Valve graphics. It took a couple students from DigiPen to create the unique concept that was Portal, not some internal Valve guys. I'm glad that a company with the popularity/graphics expertise of Valve could bring it to a wider audience and make it more acceptable to the general gaming public.
Just FAYI.
Yes. But if you're worrying about that, you should probably calculate air resistance from the negligible amount of air that is in the "vacuum" as well. And the objects' gravitational attraction to each other. Perhaps even the gravity of the moon (assuming we're on earth). And don't forget to make sure you know exactly what the gravity is at that point on earth - 9.81 won't do it any more.
Of course, I'm sure there's something in quantum mechanics or string theory or something that will screw this all up anyway.
My point being, don't be stupid. The concept that heavier isn't necessarily faster (yes, there's terminal velocity and air resistance, but you didn't say that, and the blanket statement that heavier == faster is incorrect) is important to the discussion. Gravitational forces that will tweak the final velocity by an imperceptible fraction of a millisecond aren't.
I never delete anything, and I'm only at 493MB (15%). Oh, and my two cents on archiving: I don't. I use labels (along with filters) extensively, but anything that doesn't get filed under a label just sits in my inbox. If there's really something I need to look at, but don't have time, I have a "To deal with" label that I put it under. I just don't see the point of having a totally empty inbox.
This CS major was probably one of the ones that was in it just for the money. If he was in it because he liked it, or actually wanted to do it, he would have already installed an operating system many, many times over in his life (for himself, his next of kin, his friends...) and would know a lot more than they teach you in college, just because that's what he does on the side. I'm a CS/EE double major, and know a lot more than I have learned (granted, I'm only a Sophomore), because I love CS/EE and that's what I've been doing in my spare time for the past four years. I've learned a lot more in fiddling with stuff in my spare time, and working as the IT guy at two jobs, than I ever have in classes. And yes, I've installed several distros of Linux, Windows 98,2000,XP, and Mac 9 and OS X. In case you were wondering. Oh, and I'd have to guess to tell you what a bubble sort was. I learned that in class, it's not like I actually remember it.
Oh, stop making suc*CRUNCH*
they could just put it through an X-Ray scanner by itself, away from the clutter of the bag. I mean, passengers would have to take their laptops out of their bags, which would be a bit of a hassle, not like the airlines would care.
And maybe even have some kind of bomb chemical wipes for especially suspicious cases. Yeah, that'd work.
Oh wait...
I tried it back with 6.06 and it was way more of a pain than I was willing to go through (I don't even have a TV tuner), but I just tried it with 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) and it's in the repositories and worked like a charm - it was dead easy to set up. Now as I said, I don't have a TV tuner, so I don't know how much more effort that would be. But if you've already got it working on the command line, I would guess it should work fine. If you haven't given it a try, or have with previous versions, I'd recommend looking at it again. I've got it running FCEUltra/MAME/ZSNES just fine. (All with games that I own...of course...)
*raises forefinger*
Sheer
(adj) absolute, downright, out-and-out, rank, right-down, sheer (complete and without restriction or qualification; sometimes used informally as intensifiers) "absolute freedom"; "an absolute dimwit"; "a downright lie"; "out-and-out mayhem"; "an out-and-out lie"; "a rank outsider"; "many right-down vices"; "got the job through sheer persistence"; "sheer stupidity"
Shear
(n) shear ((physics) a deformation of an object in which parallel planes remain parallel but are shifted in a direction parallel to themselves) "the shear changed the quadrilateral into a parallelogram" (there isn't an adjective form)
I believe you're looking for the first one. Now you've learned something today.
</grammar nazi>
- AT & T: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=T (242B, 2.57B/61.67B)
- Sprint: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=S (53B, 2.42B/22.9B)
- T-Mobile: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=DT (80B, 4.88B/61.5B)
- Verizon: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=VZ (121B, 2.36B/32.53B)
- Google: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=GOOG (160B, 12.5B/0B)
Where parens are Market Cap, Cash/Debt.Looks like if these are the number we're looking at, Google is way ahead. But IANAFG, so I haven't the foggiest whether any of these matter or not. They're just the numbers.
I'm sorry, I'm going to have to take your geek card. As many others have said, the first web browser was WorldWideWeb, clearly on a NeXT system. Not NCSA Mosaic. But good try.
Duh?
Pardon me while I go beat my head against the wall repeatedly, in deep despair due to the utter lack of comprehension in any way, shape, or form in that statement.
And all this time I thought every human being had at least some shred of a sense of humor...thank you for pointing out the fallacy in my assumption. I forgot this was slashdot.
And that's a bad thing? "Open" and "Microsoft" don't fit together. There's already an open format put forth by OOO or some other pro-Lunix group - it's called ODF. Why would Microsoft release their own, if not to try to control it as much as they can? There is a reason we don't trust Microsoft - it's a big corporation, with vested interests, whereas the people behind ODF are not a big corporation, but an organization that's dedicated to openness. ODF is a lot safer than OOXML because of it.
In summary... Duh?
That was the funniest thing I've read in a long time, and it can't be modded up. Sad.
What the crap? Killing machine? Are you referring to the couple of elk that would be inconvenienced by drilling AMWR? Cause last I checked, people were pretty upset about gas prices...and I'm sorry, but inconveniencing (and, yes, perhaps even killing) a few animals that I consider meat (note the part about them being animals...you know, the things we eat?) doesn't bother me too much when the result is oil from our own soil, and reducing our dependency on oil from the Middle East.
/. for having a bias towards tech/geeky news. It's stupid.
And the ACLU hates him? Good, cause I hate the ACLU. Stopping some crazy, expensive governmental plans for oil reduction that is doomed to failure? Sounds good to me.
Somehow, berating a REPUBLICAN senator for voting very...umm...REPUBLICAN seems kind of idiotic. Kind of like criticizing
Oh, and GP: in case you hadn't made the connection, the sin he was talking about was...prostitution. Not voting to kill elk. Just wanted to make that clear.
Oh, and by the way, I'm a grammar nazi - and it's hypocrite. And yes, I do think less of you and your comment because you can't spell right, or at least put forth the effort use a spell checker (Google Toolbar? FF2.0?).
If you don't like it, change it...use the deweirdifyer. Or xnest on Linux. Problem solved. I went more in-depth in my comment below.
It amazes me that I haven't yet found one mention of DeWeirdifyer. I personally like the way GIMP works, but hey, for those that want them all in one window (which is annoying to me), Deweirdifyer is your ticket on Windows (assuming it's still compatible, I haven't used it in a while personally). For Linux, a quick google of "gimp one window" will find directions on how to do it with things like xnest.
Seriously, stop whining and do a bit of googling. I like the GIMP interface like it is, and I'd be upset if they all of a sudden switched it to a single-window system, and I'd need a de-deweirdifyer, which I'm guessing would be a lot harder to come by.
If you don't like it, this is open-source - there's usually a way to make it just like your little heart desires, probably two or three ways.
I can't help but think of Blender, which, once I spent a few days running through some tutorials that pulled me up the steep learning slope, is far and away the most intuitive user interface I have ever had the pleasure of using. It gets all kinds of guff becasue it's different, but it's really very easy once you get past the "Aah it's different and I hate it" stage.
Some of the weak animation (like at the beginning) was due to lack of time - they had to get it out the door and didn't have time to go back and redo the beginning...now where is that post about that...ah well, anyway yeah - little things like some lip syncing, etc, was due to lack of time - fyi. Not that I'm arguing that it's Pixar quality, just a disclaimer.
Not excessive, sensible. I've got the same, except that I have NoScript disabled (got annoying), but click-to-play flash (no more unwanted punch the monkey!), adblock, popup blocking...it's not to block one popup, it's to block millions upon millions of web annoyances. I'd say it's quite practical.
Hmm, sounds a lot like NASA World Wind ( http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/ ) - Landsat7, 3D globe, free data. And hi-res ortho imagery to boot. So what am I supposed to be excited about that's new?
Maybe you should actually read the comments you replied to...which quote the reCAPTCHA website:
In other words, several of your points are entirely invalid. The mystery word is not used at all for verification.
Several of your other arguments are about how it's not any better of a CAPTCHA. Which is preposterous, because it's not supposed to better at being a CAPTCHA. It's supposed to be better at digitizing books, which the current CAPTCHA scheme has exactly 0 effectiveness at. Complaining that this isn't any better of a CAPTCHA is like complaining that charity golf tournaments aren't any better than the Masters. It's a ridiculous argument, because charity golf tournaments have an entirely different focus, while still being a golf tournament.
And it's got a reload button for hard words. You've got a somewhat valid point in that being not random, it is easier to guess. But
You've still got some fragment of an argument left, but most of it is destroyed by the simple facts that:
a) Verification is not based on the "mystery" word
b) It's supposed to be better at digitizing books, not better at being a CAPTCHA
It's just as good as most CAPTCHAs out there, and it digitizes books. It's a good idea.
Dangit, starting a sentence with a conjunction isn't gramatically incorrect, especially not any more. Much like the split infinitive, it's a myth that sadly continues to be perpetuated. Not that they are always okay, but it's not a hard and fast rule.