Clocks set ahead? Leap year is a really well-known edge case. There's no acceptable reason that setting the date to the boundaries in a leap year (including February 29, and the day before, and the day after) shouldn't be part of the standard tests.
Well, judging from the number of Zune owners who couldn't listen to music on new years eve, it probably should be.
What could it be that makes the device not boot on leapdays? I could understand if the date/time would be wrongly displayed or something, but not functioning at all? WTF?
I think the most interesting thing about this, is that Volvo (like any car maker) is currently getting a lot of revenue by selling parts for broken and/or crashed cars. So apparently they think that selling a car that doesn't crash will still benefit their income, even though they wont be fixing as many broken Volvo's anymore.
The only things a typical Mac application leaves behind when you remove it from your/Applications/ folder are configuration files. These are mere text files that define how you want the program to operate. They dont clog up your hard drive, they dont slow down your system. They do absolutely nothing, besides re-enabling your settings if you decide to reinstall the application.
This is terrible. You can't put websites at the bottom of the parrot cage!
So instead of using newspapers, people will seek other forms of paper for this kind of thing. For example the stuff that's in their printer or copier. And so once again Xerox is likely to benefit from a changing society through advances in technology, without actually changing themselves.
Why don't they put some logic in CAPTCHAs which is easy for a human to understand, but impossible for a bot to get right?
Instead of having to repeat what is on your screen or speakers, you could ask the user a simple question to verify if the user is indeed human. You could for example ask the color of something, or ask for the user to do a simple calculation and post the results. You could also give four objects and ask which one doesn't belong with the other three.
This would mean that a bot would have to understand the question in order to give the right answer, which is a lot harder to achieve than simply repeating what is displayed.
And as an extra added bonus, if these type of CAPTCHAs are also cracked, then at least we'll have some major breakthrough in AI development.
ALSO, Your employees WILL need to be re-trained to use Evolution instead of Outlook or Openoffice instead of Microsoft Office
I've read this argument over and over again: employees need training in order to use basic software. But is this really true?
I've worked quite a few jobs that all involved office-type computer work and I've never ever received any form of training for the software that I had to use. I wonder how many employees out there really have been trained in working with the software they use. I'm guessing: not a whole lot.
I wonder if the people who develop these chess and go algorithms ever considered a "training first" approach
Deep Blue was trained by professional Chess masters before it was put up against Kasparov. Learning from previous games is one of Deep Blue's design principles.
Linux desktop adoption has nothing at all to do with Mac market share.
I don't think that's true at all. A lot of people think they need Windows in order to do useful stuff on a computer. A larger adoption of Macs might get people less afraid of trying a non-Windows environment in general and thus might help Linux adoption on the desktop.
I saw this behaviour with a friend of mine, who is not particulary technological inclined. He always assumed that Windows was required in order to properly do his computer work and exclusively owned Windows-based PC's for over a decade. Then one day he decided to get a Mac and found out that working without Windows is no pain at all. Now he owns two computers: a MacBook and an Asus Eee PC with Ubuntu Linux. So thats from 100% Windows to no Windows at all within two years. He never would have bought a Linux-based computer if it wasn't for his Mac experience first.
Obviously, the Firefox team wanted the servers to go down by all this. "Firefox Servers Down Because Of Massive Downloads" is a great headline to give the project more exposure. Getting in the news is what this whole action has been about from the start.
I was thinking the same thing. Context Free can be rendered at enormous resolutions, so it's pretty suitable for printing huge posters. And there are plenty of cool designs available from the gallery, or you could try to create your own. You could even run a contest at the CS department and the print the best 5 entries or so.
And their fears aren't exactly unfounded. Only way to get the majority of people to stop driving heavy cars is to increase gas prices to the point where lighter cars are the only option, or having a flag day where everybody agrees to switch, i.e. not gonna happen in the near future:)
Gas prices increasing to the point where driving a light, efficient car is the only option is not going to happen you say? I beg to differ. Here in The Netherlands, it's already happening. There has been an extreme increase in gas pricing the past year. You now pay E 1.65 per liter, which is about $ 9.21 per gallon. Yes, you read that right. For a full tank in a small to medium sized car (40 liters), you easily spend over 60 euros. That's $ 100 for a tank of gasoline.
Over here, even in the rich suburbs people are selling their SUV's and buying small cars like Mini's and Fiat Panda's. The number of SUVs sold is dropping rapidly. It was recently in the news that last year, the amount of SUV's sold was only 1/5 of the year before that.
I guess the N64 isn't as easy on the user as the NES and SNES. While this is true to some extend, Miyamoto always makes sure the learning curve isn't too steep for anyone. Zelda: Ocarina Of Time for example (a game that was supposed to be released at the same time the N64 was introduced, but was delayed and improved for 2 years by mr Miyamoto until he felt it was good enough) starts off with a village that is designed as a practice zone where you can get to know the controls and interface. If you are an experienced player you can get to the action right away, but if you don't there's easily half an hour of gameplay there for you to explore and learn the game. Whatever your initial level, by the time you've spent a few hours with it, you'll be attacking monsters, solving puzzles and finding secrets like it's second nature to you.
It's absolutely ridiculous to state that old games are harder to understand or play than newer ones, especially the high quality works of Shigeru Miyamoto.
You've got to be kidding me. The interfaces of Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros and The Legend Of Zelda don't work? Well, these guys disagree and so do I. I doubt that you actually tried playing these games recently, because I really don't understand what problems you could be having. Screen and controller are basically the same as in present games. I play lots of games that are 10 years or older on a regular basis and the stuff created by Shigeru Miyamoto stands the test of time without a doubt. The fact that the graphics and sounds are outdated doesn't mean the games are not a lot of fun to play.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't like no double negatives.
Clocks set ahead? Leap year is a really well-known edge case. There's no acceptable reason that setting the date to the boundaries in a leap year (including February 29, and the day before, and the day after) shouldn't be part of the standard tests.
Well, judging from the number of Zune owners who couldn't listen to music on new years eve, it probably should be.
What could it be that makes the device not boot on leapdays? I could understand if the date/time would be wrongly displayed or something, but not functioning at all? WTF?
I think the most interesting thing about this, is that Volvo (like any car maker) is currently getting a lot of revenue by selling parts for broken and/or crashed cars. So apparently they think that selling a car that doesn't crash will still benefit their income, even though they wont be fixing as many broken Volvo's anymore.
The only things a typical Mac application leaves behind when you remove it from your /Applications/ folder are configuration files. These are mere text files that define how you want the program to operate. They dont clog up your hard drive, they dont slow down your system. They do absolutely nothing, besides re-enabling your settings if you decide to reinstall the application.
Then they couldn't garantee the stability anymore.
This is terrible. You can't put websites at the bottom of the parrot cage!
So instead of using newspapers, people will seek other forms of paper for this kind of thing. For example the stuff that's in their printer or copier. And so once again Xerox is likely to benefit from a changing society through advances in technology, without actually changing themselves.
Instead of having to repeat what is on your screen or speakers, you could ask the user a simple question to verify if the user is indeed human. You could for example ask the color of something, or ask for the user to do a simple calculation and post the results. You could also give four objects and ask which one doesn't belong with the other three.
This would mean that a bot would have to understand the question in order to give the right answer, which is a lot harder to achieve than simply repeating what is displayed.
And as an extra added bonus, if these type of CAPTCHAs are also cracked, then at least we'll have some major breakthrough in AI development.
Piet Zwart has absolutely nothing to do with Zwarte Piet you insensitive clod.
You're either dead or you're not. It's rather binary. There's no continuum.
There's no "rather binary". It's either binary or it's not.
ALSO, Your employees WILL need to be re-trained to use Evolution instead of Outlook or Openoffice instead of Microsoft Office
I've read this argument over and over again: employees need training in order to use basic software. But is this really true?
I've worked quite a few jobs that all involved office-type computer work and I've never ever received any form of training for the software that I had to use. I wonder how many employees out there really have been trained in working with the software they use. I'm guessing: not a whole lot.
in contrast to all those companies out there with a policy of spending as much as possible.
I get Datsun, but what's the British car brand you're trying to joke about?
Read the article instead - it appears to be concise, well-written and nicely formatted. It looks like a job well done by cnet UK.
How can you say this about an article that mixes up basic terms like "the internet" and "the web"?
Or maybe it's the same people who suddenly started to think different.
I wonder if the people who develop these chess and go algorithms ever considered a "training first" approach
Deep Blue was trained by professional Chess masters before it was put up against Kasparov. Learning from previous games is one of Deep Blue's design principles.
How many other tech companies from the late 1800's are still around?
Philips comes to mind, which was founded in 1891.
I'd even go as far as saying that cloud computing is fundamentally incompatible with Windows.
MS probably also figured this out, because now they're working on a post-Windows OS.
Linux desktop adoption has nothing at all to do with Mac market share.
I don't think that's true at all. A lot of people think they need Windows in order to do useful stuff on a computer. A larger adoption of Macs might get people less afraid of trying a non-Windows environment in general and thus might help Linux adoption on the desktop.
I saw this behaviour with a friend of mine, who is not particulary technological inclined. He always assumed that Windows was required in order to properly do his computer work and exclusively owned Windows-based PC's for over a decade. Then one day he decided to get a Mac and found out that working without Windows is no pain at all. Now he owns two computers: a MacBook and an Asus Eee PC with Ubuntu Linux. So thats from 100% Windows to no Windows at all within two years. He never would have bought a Linux-based computer if it wasn't for his Mac experience first.
Obviously, the Firefox team wanted the servers to go down by all this. "Firefox Servers Down Because Of Massive Downloads" is a great headline to give the project more exposure. Getting in the news is what this whole action has been about from the start.
I was thinking the same thing. Context Free can be rendered at enormous resolutions, so it's pretty suitable for printing huge posters. And there are plenty of cool designs available from the gallery, or you could try to create your own. You could even run a contest at the CS department and the print the best 5 entries or so.
Gas prices increasing to the point where driving a light, efficient car is the only option is not going to happen you say? I beg to differ. Here in The Netherlands, it's already happening. There has been an extreme increase in gas pricing the past year. You now pay E 1.65 per liter, which is about $ 9.21 per gallon. Yes, you read that right. For a full tank in a small to medium sized car (40 liters), you easily spend over 60 euros. That's $ 100 for a tank of gasoline.
Over here, even in the rich suburbs people are selling their SUV's and buying small cars like Mini's and Fiat Panda's. The number of SUVs sold is dropping rapidly. It was recently in the news that last year, the amount of SUV's sold was only 1/5 of the year before that.
It's absolutely ridiculous to state that old games are harder to understand or play than newer ones, especially the high quality works of Shigeru Miyamoto.
You've got to be kidding me. The interfaces of Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros and The Legend Of Zelda don't work? Well, these guys disagree and so do I. I doubt that you actually tried playing these games recently, because I really don't understand what problems you could be having. Screen and controller are basically the same as in present games. I play lots of games that are 10 years or older on a regular basis and the stuff created by Shigeru Miyamoto stands the test of time without a doubt. The fact that the graphics and sounds are outdated doesn't mean the games are not a lot of fun to play.
Please do not include your darkroom in your personal horror stories.