Oh please. You're telling me you can implement a webcam viewer with Javascript?
The only real alternative for Java applets is Flash. Of course, compared to Flash, Java applets have a lot of downfalls. The VM takes a ridiculous amount of time to start up, and it's really intrusive when it sits in your system tray and constantly announces its new updates.
However, this is Slashdot, which means there's lots of open-source advocates around. So for all the OSS advocates out there, stop and think for a minute before you bash Java applets. They're not great, but they're the only open alternative to Flash right now.
If you have a Vista license, your key is good for the 32-bit or 64-bit version of whatever edition you have; in fact, the retail version comes with both on the disc, if I'm not mistaken. So if you buy a Vista license, you can always upgrade to a 64-bit OS.
With XP, however, the 64-bit versions are distinct (and rare!) editions. Even if you know of a place that still sells (or ever sold) x64 XP, I wouldn't suggest it for most people, since it never has been and never will be broadly used or supported. It's doomed to obscurity.
Oh, and PAE would never have solved the issue. It was always just a short-term work-around. It allows Windows to access more RAM, but the individual apps are still limited to a 32-bit address space.
It's great that you're not having any trouble playing a game that's four years old. I'm really happy for you.
For those of us playing modern games, or using those oh-so-advanced features of Visual Studio like Intellisense or interactive debugging, or working with high-resolution images in Photoshop, or 3D modelling, or all of the above at once (multitasking! gasp!) we find 4GB of RAM to be quite useful.
That's not even to mention what a poor monetary decision it is to downgrade to XP. Even you will want more than 3GB of ram in a couple years, so if you buy a new computer and spend $150 to downgrade to XP, you'll just have to spend more money later on to get a modern OS that can handle more RAM.
It's kind of weird how much Slashdot's anti-Microsoft crowd seems to worship XP.
And this whole "Vista downgrade" thing is getting old. How can you honestly claim that switching to an operating system that only supports 3GB of RAM is an upgrade? Unless you're suggesting that people switch to x64 XP, but nobody in their right mind would really suggest that.
I'm not entirely surprised that it was filed under Technology, but I am kind of surprised it wasn't also filed under Idle.
Anyway, if you use the beta index, this story is sort of 'minimized', so you only see the title of the story unless you click on it. You could also vote it down to make it disappear completely.
Surely you must be attempting -- poorly attempting -- to make a joke. Anybody who reads Slashdot at least understands how touch typing works, even if they don't do it properly themselves.
They've also been using the section for "oddball" stories, of which this clearly fits.
In fact, with the exception of a few YouTube videos that showed up early in the life of Idle, most of the stuff posted in Idle that's made it to the front page is stuff that would have been posted on Slashdot anyway, but under a different category.
Touchscreens - only if there's a paper trail (preferably one that's easily read by both machines and humans, which is easy enough).
Maybe not as easy as you think. Watch the videos; they've come up with some very clever ways that the voting machines can tamper with the paper trail.
I'd much rather use scantron cards, so that my paper trail can't be messed with. But there's a couple extra precautions I'd still like to see implemented:
1) Counting the ballots by hand should be mandatory. In fact, the people counting the ballots should have no access to the voting machine tally, lest they feel lazy and simply agree with the voting machine.
2) The voters should be required to feed the paper ballot into the machine themselves, to ensure that none of the vote counters are maliciously "losing" any of the voter's ballots. The design of the machine would also have to ensure that it couldn't maliciously spit out the paper ballot after the voter has walked away.
The problem is that it's encouraging "creativity" in the wrong places. If the industry abandoned traditional business models, we'd never have Portal or Ico. These games would not have been improved with online-play.
Apparently the official reason that the NT kernel's version number isn't being bumped to 7.0 is for backward compatibility. You know, for all those legacy Vista apps that won't work if the first character of the NT kernel version number isn't '6'.
Yeah, it seems like a pretty weak argument to me too.
I did read the article, TYVM. Can the boys and girls at home figure out why I may not have read the text under the heading "Update 2"?
The update to the article kind of explains the numbering, but the more I think about that explanation, the less it makes sense. The only code I can imagine it would help would be something like this:
if(verString[0] == '6') use new features else use old features
Hopefully that kind of code is pretty rare. Even if it's not, what is Microsoft planning to do? Never bump the major version of the kernel? It's not even like these applications can't be fixed. How many legacy applications has Vista really collected over a total of two years?
Even then, we have compatibility mode, which -- in this case -- would actually be faced with a problem it can solve. That's something I haven't seen happen with any software written in the last eight years!
Actually, I'm Canadian, and I can't hear a difference between Canadian and US accents, but people from the US tell me otherwise. I was in a diner in New Jersey and the waitress said "Wow, you have a really thick Canadian accent." Even worse, I knew a girl from Texas and she laughed whenever she heard me say "about".
But often when swapping parts you need to turn the case on its side. If you have a really tall and long case, like most of the cases I use, this takes an awful lot of desk space. My desk never has that much space, so I'm inevitably stuck unplugging everything and transferring the computer to the floor.
If you compare this to a case that's lying flat, it actually uses a lot less space.
Slashdot Mirror
That's really a distro problem. If you have a 32-bit version of Firefox, your distro should make it easy to install 32-bit plugins.
Of course, with 64-bit support taking off, it's a problem that may not need to be solved.
Oh please. You're telling me you can implement a webcam viewer with Javascript?
The only real alternative for Java applets is Flash. Of course, compared to Flash, Java applets have a lot of downfalls. The VM takes a ridiculous amount of time to start up, and it's really intrusive when it sits in your system tray and constantly announces its new updates.
However, this is Slashdot, which means there's lots of open-source advocates around. So for all the OSS advocates out there, stop and think for a minute before you bash Java applets. They're not great, but they're the only open alternative to Flash right now.
It's like infinity + 1, which, as you know, is the biggest number in the world.
Thanks, but I know all that stuff already.
If you have a Vista license, your key is good for the 32-bit or 64-bit version of whatever edition you have; in fact, the retail version comes with both on the disc, if I'm not mistaken. So if you buy a Vista license, you can always upgrade to a 64-bit OS.
With XP, however, the 64-bit versions are distinct (and rare!) editions. Even if you know of a place that still sells (or ever sold) x64 XP, I wouldn't suggest it for most people, since it never has been and never will be broadly used or supported. It's doomed to obscurity.
Oh, and PAE would never have solved the issue. It was always just a short-term work-around. It allows Windows to access more RAM, but the individual apps are still limited to a 32-bit address space.
even when compiling while playing GTA:SA
It's great that you're not having any trouble playing a game that's four years old. I'm really happy for you.
For those of us playing modern games, or using those oh-so-advanced features of Visual Studio like Intellisense or interactive debugging, or working with high-resolution images in Photoshop, or 3D modelling, or all of the above at once (multitasking! gasp!) we find 4GB of RAM to be quite useful.
That's not even to mention what a poor monetary decision it is to downgrade to XP. Even you will want more than 3GB of ram in a couple years, so if you buy a new computer and spend $150 to downgrade to XP, you'll just have to spend more money later on to get a modern OS that can handle more RAM.
It's kind of weird how much Slashdot's anti-Microsoft crowd seems to worship XP.
And this whole "Vista downgrade" thing is getting old. How can you honestly claim that switching to an operating system that only supports 3GB of RAM is an upgrade? Unless you're suggesting that people switch to x64 XP, but nobody in their right mind would really suggest that.
And if you refuse to take them off your face, someone can draw a pair of glasses on your photo!
"License and registration, please."
"Hold on, officer, I need to put on my eyebrows."
Do you pay taxes?
I'm not entirely surprised that it was filed under Technology, but I am kind of surprised it wasn't also filed under Idle.
Anyway, if you use the beta index, this story is sort of 'minimized', so you only see the title of the story unless you click on it. You could also vote it down to make it disappear completely.
Surely you must be attempting -- poorly attempting -- to make a joke. Anybody who reads Slashdot at least understands how touch typing works, even if they don't do it properly themselves.
Actually, it's true. Both Doc Manhattan and his father were watchmakers. That part of the story has one of my favourite scenes in the whole comic.
They've also been using the section for "oddball" stories, of which this clearly fits.
In fact, with the exception of a few YouTube videos that showed up early in the life of Idle, most of the stuff posted in Idle that's made it to the front page is stuff that would have been posted on Slashdot anyway, but under a different category.
You people. First you complain that Idle isn't any good, and now you're complaining that it shouldn't be any good?
While I disagree with your assertion that Firefly wasn't good, I completely agree with your use of the word 'was'.
Touchscreens - only if there's a paper trail (preferably one that's easily read by both machines and humans, which is easy enough).
Maybe not as easy as you think. Watch the videos; they've come up with some very clever ways that the voting machines can tamper with the paper trail.
I'd much rather use scantron cards, so that my paper trail can't be messed with. But there's a couple extra precautions I'd still like to see implemented:
1) Counting the ballots by hand should be mandatory. In fact, the people counting the ballots should have no access to the voting machine tally, lest they feel lazy and simply agree with the voting machine.
2) The voters should be required to feed the paper ballot into the machine themselves, to ensure that none of the vote counters are maliciously "losing" any of the voter's ballots. The design of the machine would also have to ensure that it couldn't maliciously spit out the paper ballot after the voter has walked away.
The problem is that it's encouraging "creativity" in the wrong places. If the industry abandoned traditional business models, we'd never have Portal or Ico. These games would not have been improved with online-play.
Apparently the official reason that the NT kernel's version number isn't being bumped to 7.0 is for backward compatibility. You know, for all those legacy Vista apps that won't work if the first character of the NT kernel version number isn't '6'.
Yeah, it seems like a pretty weak argument to me too.
That's why I said often, not always. If you're only swapping expansion cards and hard drives, this is overkill.
I did read the article, TYVM. Can the boys and girls at home figure out why I may not have read the text under the heading "Update 2"?
The update to the article kind of explains the numbering, but the more I think about that explanation, the less it makes sense. The only code I can imagine it would help would be something like this:
if(verString[0] == '6') use new features
else use old features
Hopefully that kind of code is pretty rare. Even if it's not, what is Microsoft planning to do? Never bump the major version of the kernel? It's not even like these applications can't be fixed. How many legacy applications has Vista really collected over a total of two years?
Even then, we have compatibility mode, which -- in this case -- would actually be faced with a problem it can solve. That's something I haven't seen happen with any software written in the last eight years!
If you read the summary, you'd see that Windows 7 is NT 6.1.
But I assume marketing made the same mistake you did: if Vista was the sixth version of Windows, then the next one must be the seventh!
Even that's illegal.
Well, if you catch anybody saying "Rrroll up the rrrim to win", there's a good chance they're Canadian.
Actually, I'm Canadian, and I can't hear a difference between Canadian and US accents, but people from the US tell me otherwise. I was in a diner in New Jersey and the waitress said "Wow, you have a really thick Canadian accent." Even worse, I knew a girl from Texas and she laughed whenever she heard me say "about".
they need to define categories of Beta.
They have.
But often when swapping parts you need to turn the case on its side. If you have a really tall and long case, like most of the cases I use, this takes an awful lot of desk space. My desk never has that much space, so I'm inevitably stuck unplugging everything and transferring the computer to the floor.
If you compare this to a case that's lying flat, it actually uses a lot less space.