Absolutely correct! I used to buy my loratidine + decongstant at BJ'S Wholesale Club - don't start with the "bj" jokes, guys - in packs of 45 for about $28 for the lot. That comes down to about - what - 70 cents for each dose, roughly, and I didn't have to buy against for 6 weeks. Suddenly, I went down to get more and they don't sell it. Why? BECAUSE IT'S MORE THAN 15 PER DAY!
So now I'm stuck with having to pay at least 95 cents per dose because I can't take advantage of economies of scale, and I have to make three separate purchases in order to get the same quantity!
This absolutely astounds me! All of this work to find out the DNA code of Neanderthal man. And why the hell did they use such an old sample? They could have used fresh material just by using any of the politicians inside the Washington Beltway! In fact, it's one of the only locations where Neanderthal man can be observed in his native habitat!
I don't even know why I'm going to bother because of the massive amount of nay-sayers on Slashdot, but I'm going to relate one particular instance that completely freaked me out to the point that I most certainly believe in "paranormal" powers.
A friend of mine was big-time into things like tarot cards and so forth, and at one point he said that to read someone else's dream, wait until late at night, turn off all lights, imagine yourself floating out of your body, across to your "target", and floating into the other person's body. (Mmm... Catherine Zeta Jones... Whoa, sorry. Got sidetracked.) I thought this was a complete lark and paid no attention to it.
About a week later, I figured, "Ah, what the hell" and tried it with a friend who lived a few blocks away. I instantly saw a blue background with knives and other instruments as clear as though I was watching TV. A few seconds later a huge skull formed in front of me at which point I broke off the connection. When I called him the next day, I asked (as non-chalantly as possible) if he had some kind of a dream the previous night of death or dying or something like that.
After a brief pause he said, "Yeah. I was being chased by this big skull. You appeared out of no where. The skull went after you, then you screamed and disappeared." After a few seconds of shock at what he said, that was all that I needed to believe. I too was a paranormal doubter up until that point.
I've also had dozens upon dozens of "same thought" scenarios with my nephew, who I think of more as my little brother consiering how alike we are. I've also had instances when I would play games with random levels and accurately guess the next level up to eight times in a row out of a group of 24 levels that could be picked, sometimes with the same level multiple times in a row. I've also experienced several times a somewhat terrifying experience where I would become semi-conscious while asleep, come to the *realization* that I was dreaming, and have to physically exert myself to wake up. That's not an easy task to do when the muscles are in shut-down mode.
Yeah, yeah. I can't prove any of this. I must have been drunk - wait, I don't drink alcohol - or stoned - no, never taken illicit drugs either - or delusional - no, I was in perfect health. But, it's still just a wild tale as far as everyone here is concerned. Yessir, a story made up purely for everyone's enjoyment and ridicule. {/SARCASM}
Personally, I think the attitude among the people in this thread is more out of fear than anything else. Fear of what, I'm not sure; but to just discount as "irrational" anything paranormal just because it has not yet been definitively proven is an irrational action in and of itself as far as I'm concerned. Science is all about making discoveries - oh, unless it involves paranormal activities because that's just for kooks. I forgot that science is selectively factual. Frankly, the nay-sayers belong back in the dark ages when the world was flat. After all, if it can't be proven, it can't possibly be true -- ever. Funny, that's not what I thought science was all about.
Forget that! I've seen what can happen with these space stations and a stupid feline with a laser gun! He got what he deserved in the end, of course, but I'd hate to have to re-inflate a huge space station using only a bicycle pump!
(Think Tom and Jerry during the Chuck Jones years.)
Typos are acceptable. No, wait... That's right! When we say "communication" the two "m"s come together as one. Therefore, it only makes sense to drop that second "m"! It's redundant!
Oh no! I've fallen into the trap!
{ think two "m"s... happy thoughts... think two "m"s }
So... rather than try to get people to think about the words they want to use and rather than educate them on the proper spelling of words, we're going to dumb down the language because people don't want to learn how to spell difficult or similar-sounding words correctly.
Uh huh.
This movement appears to be indicative of the propensity of lackadaisical or indeed preposterous individuals to repudiate the necessities of encouraging a proper enlightenment of the intricacies of linguistic comunication. Unquestionably, this preposterous recommendation can only be indicative of a desire to bring forth an ideology resulting in the reduction of the instruction of responsibilty upon one's self. One must ponder the disappearance of intellectual progress when considering why our many progenitors incurred no difficulty in the attainments of the identical language. Yet for reasons unknown the current populous has in some way been deemed too intellectually challenged to educate themselves of the same vocabulary. This indicates a very bankrupt, mental capacity with respect to the educational capacities of my fellow homo sapiens and should not be looked upon favorably.
Yes, but at that point there wasn't much that he could have done. He had already gone through training; the manual was right there at his desk and I wrote the manual, so there is no way he could have shifted the blame there either. He was cornered and he knew it. SInce there was someone else in the room, he took the way that saved face, even if his face had a bit of egg on it.:)
I still remember just about everything from that incident - my manager's vocal tone and the look on her face, the way the director was flinging his arms up when he saw me walk in, the reactions of my fellow IT people. It was great!
You also have to keep in mind also that that was around the time when we were migrating everyone off of shared DOS PCs over to everyone having a Windows PC on their desks. So, there were a lot of learning curves that gave IT the source material for a lot of laughs.
Part of that conversion was 13 weeks of training. One of the other IT guys and I were solely responsible for training everyone in the depratment how to use Windows, Word, Excel, and Mail with one group of people each week over 13 weeks. We exchanged roles every week. One would do Windows and Word; the other Excel and Mail; switch the next week, and switch back the week after. Few people had Windows experience; some had DOS experience; most were clueless. I could go on for hours about some of the things we went through during those 13 weeks of hell.
And, yes, I swear to whatever deity might be out there -- we really did have one guy who lifted his mouse up and pointed at the screen!! Now in retrospect the one thing that I regret is that we didn't have a video camera in the training sessions. Some would be video contest material.
Here's another e-mail related incident that I experienced a few years ago.
Back in the days of Windows 3.1, I installed a small Microsoft Mail post office for our department, a state government agency. My manager got a call one morning from one of our... er... "repeat customers", screaming that his e-mail wasn't working and that the Commissioner had sent him very important e-mails that he absolutely needed. So, she - me manager - came over, rolling her eyes, and said, "Will you see what he's doing wrong?"
I went over to his office where he was with some other employee. As soon as he saw me, he started up. "This e-mail sucks! The Commissioner sent me several important e-mails yesterday and I never got them! This is ridiculous! What the hell is wrong with tis thing?!" I calmly wlaked over and stated, "Let me look at it."
After about two seconds of looking at the screen, I calmly stated, "You're not in your Inbox." { click on Inbox }
{ dramatic pause as his stupidity sinks in while the wind howls and a tumbleweed blows by }
"I am so sorry. I can't believe I didn't see it."
"Not a problem. Let me know if you have any other issue with it." as I walked out with no indication of the "You moron!" attitude on my face.
I even had the gratification of hearing, "I feel so stupid" as I walked out the door. Well, who am I to argue with management?
"If you come after us with a 'bandwidth invoice', we're coming after you with a federal law suit."
I'm all in favor of Google on this one -- if it works. We all know that Google is a big target of these greedy telcos, which I find interesting due to how lightweight Google really is compared to most graphics/HTML-intensive web sites. Hopefully, other organizations will jump on-board with Google in telling the telcos where they can stick their plans for a tiered Internet.
I know that several Slashdotters are pissed at Google for activities in China and elsewhere that seem to go against the "Do No Evil" mantra, but frankly what the telcos have in mind is just as evil - if not more - than whatever Google has done.
Yes, but the guitar is a much more difficult instrument to play. MUCH more difficult.
For guitar you have frets, closely-positioned strings and six of them at that (four for bass), very precise finger placement, pressure considerations on the strings, and so forth. It's the only instrument that I know of that is actually more difficult to play with a melody than it is with a full chord. A strum is simple. Picking individual notes on individual strings while trying to place your finger on the correct string in the correct fret with the right amount of pressure is very, very difficult - nay, I would say impossible except for musical vunderkinds - for beginners. The game had to be dumbed down as much as possible to make it work.
The keyboard is opposite. You start with one finger in order to strike the appropriate color-coded key. That's it. That's how you start. Only then do you progress to a simple melody/harmony combination, like "Chopsticks", followed by full chords. No guitar strings, no brass embouchure, no precise reed pressure. If you can type at a computer keyboard, you can play a musical keyboard. That's the main difference and the honest truth.
The keyboard IMHO is the perfect instrument to learn for those who have never played an instrument before. As such, a regular keyboard is so perfectly matched for a game like this.
No, you're assuming that they'd require full use of both hands and feet, bit that's far too advanced for a game like this. There could, however, easily be several modes of difficulty, such as:
* melody only
* melody and one harmony
* melody, one harmony, pedals
* melody, more advanced use of left hand (keep it clean, perverts), pedals
* full play mode, but using simple pieces, not something like a grand, Mozart piano concerto
Many music stores also sell stickers or labels that are color-coded to help people more easily locate the proper keys. I would expect this to be the case with this game.
Fortunately, there are a ton of songs that require nothing more than four notes, such as "Mary Had A Little Lamb". MHALL is to keyboards what "Hello, world!" is to programming. It's almost the very first thing that you learn. So, really there is no need for abstraction. Make it a real keyboard that people will really be able to play afterwards. There are numerous ways to vary it from absolute beginner to expert.
Not that it necessarily means anything, but I play both keyboard and guitar. So, I've been through the learning pains and I've successfully taught others by the methods that I mention above.
No, I didn't RTFA but most likely the next one will be Piano Hero or more generally Keyboard Hero.
Consider all of the extremely popular songs that could be included that just about everyone knows: Piano Man, Jump with that awesome, heavy synth riff, and a number of others. Hell, there are even a number of basic concertos or orchestral pieces that could be included that wouldn't be too difficult as long as the whole thing isn't expected to be played: Moonlight Sonata, Minute Waltz, and various Bach inventions.
Additionally, Considering that you can buy cheap keyboards for kids for less than $20 and even mini-keyboards can be bought for less than $50, this would be a natural sequel, I would think. Also take into consideration that the four most common instruments in just about every band are keyboard, guitar, bass, and drums.
Obviously, I would expect bass and drums/percussion to be in the "most likely to appear next" list.
The grand accumulation of those would be to have all four at once with the ultimate "Band Heroes". Gather your friends with all four "Hero" instruments and jam as your own rock band.
One of the main reasons behind OpenSolaris is for people outside of Sun to make drivers, tools, utilities, etc. that can be included into future versions of (non-open) Solaris. Because of the nature of the systems that run on Solaris, it's critical for Sun to make sure that changes, regardless of how benign it might seem, have no impact on any kind of potential, mission-critical appliction.
What one indeveloper might think is a great driver or enhancement for their partcular use could possibly break something else. Considering how much is riding on Sun -- not the least of which is rebuilding Sun's own reputation -- they have every reason in the world to make sure that everything that "everyone else on crack" submits will have zero impact on anything else in Solaris.
I've been running multiple PCs for years doing exactly everything that was mentioned above. I've never gotten hit by spyware or viruses. Yet the parent got modded down. God, the moderators on this board for clueless.
Once you go into 1,024 x 768 resolution or higher, you're running HD because you've gone beyond 720p scanning. (PC monitors are progressive, not interlacing.) The size of the screen itself is NOT synonymous with the number of pixels on the screen.
Okay, someone explain to me why this was given a "troll". The statements are completely valid. There are many other things throughout history that engineers and historians would no doubt consider to be far more "disasterous" in terms of both engineering and human life than the exaples that the original article writer quoted. Look at the article as well and you'll see that he gives absolutely no reasons whatsoever for choosing those disasters nor does he quote anyone else more qualified than he to determine what are the worst engineering disasters.
Personally, I can name a few engineering disasters as well that I think would be far more apt to be on such a list, the biggest of which would be CHERNOBYL, which not only showed the problems of a flawed design but also contaminated a large area for the next 600 years or so. Granted, human error was also to blame, but all of the documentaries that were shown as of late seem to come to the conclusion that the design was bad from the start.
Yet a molasses tank rupture (or whatever goo was in it) makes the list as does the sinking of a ship, and the parent gets smacked as a troll. Wow...!
You're buying a 750GB hard drive but you can't at least afford two for a mirror? If you can't afford to lose the data on that 750GB drive, what the hell are you doing by buying such a large drive in the first place?
You're obviously a religious man because you're putting a lot of faith in the reliability of that drive.
Whereas I'm not surprised that Slashdot is bringing out the normal anti-Sun's-attitude-towards-Java dogma, is this really a surprise? Jonathan Schwartz is closer to being a pro-Slashdot geek than Scott McNealy ever was. If anything, McNealy was just an arrogant ass who liked staying in his ivory tower with Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. Schwartz has always shown to be more of a geek than McNealy, and releasing the source code to Java has been a "cry of the geeks" for a long time.
(Note that I don't use "geek" derogatorily as I fondly consider myself to be one.)
Sun is giving us a ton of surprises in the past few years with Schwartz on board - from AMD processors to their first, AFFORDABLE powerhouse workstations (Ultra 20). I'm not surprised by this move at all, but I also don't blame them for wanting to be able to protect one of their revenue streams. At least Sun is trying. I guess the Slashdot "make it free or forget it" is still too strong, based on the responses I've seen so far in this thread. Looks like when it comes to Java, Sun is damned whether they do or don't. Pity.
Um.. you do realize that you proved my point, don't you? Newer forms of social communication took over for previous forms. Regardless of why (dial-up, etc.) social communication has evolved, the simple fact is that BBSes went to AOL/Prodigy which went to Usenet which went to on-line forums which went to blogs and therefore MySpace. It's a very unsurprising migration from one form of social communication to another. At least, it's unsurprising to me. What is surprising to me is that this is apparently suprising to others!
And, by the way, we still have fees... unless you're only using public Internet terminals.
Humans are social animals, isolated geeks not withstanding. We have always loved interaction with others. Back in the Commodore/Apple II days, BBSes were extrememly popular. Then came national/global entities like America On-Line and Prodigy. The message and chat areas were enormous draws to those entities. Of course, Usenet replaced BBSes when the Internet became the rage, but people were then turned off by spam and trolls.
So, now blogging and other social web sites have replaced BBSes, AOL, Prodigy, and Usenet as social gathering places. Eventually something will replace blogs. Am I the only one who finds this to be anything other than a surprise worthy of a Slashdot headline?
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely correct! I used to buy my loratidine + decongstant at BJ'S Wholesale Club - don't start with the "bj" jokes, guys - in packs of 45 for about $28 for the lot. That comes down to about - what - 70 cents for each dose, roughly, and I didn't have to buy against for 6 weeks. Suddenly, I went down to get more and they don't sell it. Why? BECAUSE IT'S MORE THAN 15 PER DAY!
So now I'm stuck with having to pay at least 95 cents per dose because I can't take advantage of economies of scale, and I have to make three separate purchases in order to get the same quantity!
God damned government!
This absolutely astounds me! All of this work to find out the DNA code of Neanderthal man. And why the hell did they use such an old sample? They could have used fresh material just by using any of the politicians inside the Washington Beltway! In fact, it's one of the only locations where Neanderthal man can be observed in his native habitat!
:)
Sheesh!
I don't even know why I'm going to bother because of the massive amount of nay-sayers on Slashdot, but I'm going to relate one particular instance that completely freaked me out to the point that I most certainly believe in "paranormal" powers.
A friend of mine was big-time into things like tarot cards and so forth, and at one point he said that to read someone else's dream, wait until late at night, turn off all lights, imagine yourself floating out of your body, across to your "target", and floating into the other person's body. (Mmm... Catherine Zeta Jones... Whoa, sorry. Got sidetracked.) I thought this was a complete lark and paid no attention to it.
About a week later, I figured, "Ah, what the hell" and tried it with a friend who lived a few blocks away. I instantly saw a blue background with knives and other instruments as clear as though I was watching TV. A few seconds later a huge skull formed in front of me at which point I broke off the connection. When I called him the next day, I asked (as non-chalantly as possible) if he had some kind of a dream the previous night of death or dying or something like that.
After a brief pause he said, "Yeah. I was being chased by this big skull. You appeared out of no where. The skull went after you, then you screamed and disappeared." After a few seconds of shock at what he said, that was all that I needed to believe. I too was a paranormal doubter up until that point.
I've also had dozens upon dozens of "same thought" scenarios with my nephew, who I think of more as my little brother consiering how alike we are. I've also had instances when I would play games with random levels and accurately guess the next level up to eight times in a row out of a group of 24 levels that could be picked, sometimes with the same level multiple times in a row. I've also experienced several times a somewhat terrifying experience where I would become semi-conscious while asleep, come to the *realization* that I was dreaming, and have to physically exert myself to wake up. That's not an easy task to do when the muscles are in shut-down mode.
Yeah, yeah. I can't prove any of this. I must have been drunk - wait, I don't drink alcohol - or stoned - no, never taken illicit drugs either - or delusional - no, I was in perfect health. But, it's still just a wild tale as far as everyone here is concerned. Yessir, a story made up purely for everyone's enjoyment and ridicule. {/SARCASM}
Personally, I think the attitude among the people in this thread is more out of fear than anything else. Fear of what, I'm not sure; but to just discount as "irrational" anything paranormal just because it has not yet been definitively proven is an irrational action in and of itself as far as I'm concerned. Science is all about making discoveries - oh, unless it involves paranormal activities because that's just for kooks. I forgot that science is selectively factual. Frankly, the nay-sayers belong back in the dark ages when the world was flat. After all, if it can't be proven, it can't possibly be true -- ever. Funny, that's not what I thought science was all about.
Forget that! I've seen what can happen with these space stations and a stupid feline with a laser gun! He got what he deserved in the end, of course, but I'd hate to have to re-inflate a huge space station using only a bicycle pump!
(Think Tom and Jerry during the Chuck Jones years.)
Typos are acceptable. No, wait ... That's right! When we say "communication" the two "m"s come together as one. Therefore, it only makes sense to drop that second "m"! It's redundant!
... happy thoughts ... think two "m"s }
:P
Oh no! I've fallen into the trap!
{ think two "m"s
So ... rather than try to get people to think about the words they want to use and rather than educate them on the proper spelling of words, we're going to dumb down the language because people don't want to learn how to spell difficult or similar-sounding words correctly.
Uh huh.
This movement appears to be indicative of the propensity of lackadaisical or indeed preposterous individuals to repudiate the necessities of encouraging a proper enlightenment of the intricacies of linguistic comunication. Unquestionably, this preposterous recommendation can only be indicative of a desire to bring forth an ideology resulting in the reduction of the instruction of responsibilty upon one's self. One must ponder the disappearance of intellectual progress when considering why our many progenitors incurred no difficulty in the attainments of the identical language. Yet for reasons unknown the current populous has in some way been deemed too intellectually challenged to educate themselves of the same vocabulary. This indicates a very bankrupt, mental capacity with respect to the educational capacities of my fellow homo sapiens and should not be looked upon favorably.
Yes, but at that point there wasn't much that he could have done. He had already gone through training; the manual was right there at his desk and I wrote the manual, so there is no way he could have shifted the blame there either. He was cornered and he knew it. SInce there was someone else in the room, he took the way that saved face, even if his face had a bit of egg on it. :)
I still remember just about everything from that incident - my manager's vocal tone and the look on her face, the way the director was flinging his arms up when he saw me walk in, the reactions of my fellow IT people. It was great!
You also have to keep in mind also that that was around the time when we were migrating everyone off of shared DOS PCs over to everyone having a Windows PC on their desks. So, there were a lot of learning curves that gave IT the source material for a lot of laughs.
Part of that conversion was 13 weeks of training. One of the other IT guys and I were solely responsible for training everyone in the depratment how to use Windows, Word, Excel, and Mail with one group of people each week over 13 weeks. We exchanged roles every week. One would do Windows and Word; the other Excel and Mail; switch the next week, and switch back the week after. Few people had Windows experience; some had DOS experience; most were clueless. I could go on for hours about some of the things we went through during those 13 weeks of hell.
And, yes, I swear to whatever deity might be out there -- we really did have one guy who lifted his mouse up and pointed at the screen!! Now in retrospect the one thing that I regret is that we didn't have a video camera in the training sessions. Some would be video contest material.
Here's another e-mail related incident that I experienced a few years ago.
... er ... "repeat customers", screaming that his e-mail wasn't working and that the Commissioner had sent him very important e-mails that he absolutely needed. So, she - me manager - came over, rolling her eyes, and said, "Will you see what he's doing wrong?"
Back in the days of Windows 3.1, I installed a small Microsoft Mail post office for our department, a state government agency. My manager got a call one morning from one of our
I went over to his office where he was with some other employee. As soon as he saw me, he started up. "This e-mail sucks! The Commissioner sent me several important e-mails yesterday and I never got them! This is ridiculous! What the hell is wrong with tis thing?!" I calmly wlaked over and stated, "Let me look at it."
After about two seconds of looking at the screen, I calmly stated, "You're not in your Inbox." { click on Inbox }
{ dramatic pause as his stupidity sinks in while the wind howls and a tumbleweed blows by }
"I am so sorry. I can't believe I didn't see it."
"Not a problem. Let me know if you have any other issue with it." as I walked out with no indication of the "You moron!" attitude on my face.
I even had the gratification of hearing, "I feel so stupid" as I walked out the door. Well, who am I to argue with management?
"If you come after us with a 'bandwidth invoice', we're coming after you with a federal law suit."
I'm all in favor of Google on this one -- if it works. We all know that Google is a big target of these greedy telcos, which I find interesting due to how lightweight Google really is compared to most graphics/HTML-intensive web sites. Hopefully, other organizations will jump on-board with Google in telling the telcos where they can stick their plans for a tiered Internet.
I know that several Slashdotters are pissed at Google for activities in China and elsewhere that seem to go against the "Do No Evil" mantra, but frankly what the telcos have in mind is just as evil - if not more - than whatever Google has done.
Yes, but the guitar is a much more difficult instrument to play. MUCH more difficult.
For guitar you have frets, closely-positioned strings and six of them at that (four for bass), very precise finger placement, pressure considerations on the strings, and so forth. It's the only instrument that I know of that is actually more difficult to play with a melody than it is with a full chord. A strum is simple. Picking individual notes on individual strings while trying to place your finger on the correct string in the correct fret with the right amount of pressure is very, very difficult - nay, I would say impossible except for musical vunderkinds - for beginners. The game had to be dumbed down as much as possible to make it work.
The keyboard is opposite. You start with one finger in order to strike the appropriate color-coded key. That's it. That's how you start. Only then do you progress to a simple melody/harmony combination, like "Chopsticks", followed by full chords. No guitar strings, no brass embouchure, no precise reed pressure. If you can type at a computer keyboard, you can play a musical keyboard. That's the main difference and the honest truth.
The keyboard IMHO is the perfect instrument to learn for those who have never played an instrument before. As such, a regular keyboard is so perfectly matched for a game like this.
No, you're assuming that they'd require full use of both hands and feet, bit that's far too advanced for a game like this. There could, however, easily be several modes of difficulty, such as:
* melody only
* melody and one harmony
* melody, one harmony, pedals
* melody, more advanced use of left hand (keep it clean, perverts), pedals
* full play mode, but using simple pieces, not something like a grand, Mozart piano concerto
Many music stores also sell stickers or labels that are color-coded to help people more easily locate the proper keys. I would expect this to be the case with this game.
Fortunately, there are a ton of songs that require nothing more than four notes, such as "Mary Had A Little Lamb". MHALL is to keyboards what "Hello, world!" is to programming. It's almost the very first thing that you learn. So, really there is no need for abstraction. Make it a real keyboard that people will really be able to play afterwards. There are numerous ways to vary it from absolute beginner to expert.
Not that it necessarily means anything, but I play both keyboard and guitar. So, I've been through the learning pains and I've successfully taught others by the methods that I mention above.
No, I didn't RTFA but most likely the next one will be Piano Hero or more generally Keyboard Hero.
Consider all of the extremely popular songs that could be included that just about everyone knows: Piano Man, Jump with that awesome, heavy synth riff, and a number of others. Hell, there are even a number of basic concertos or orchestral pieces that could be included that wouldn't be too difficult as long as the whole thing isn't expected to be played: Moonlight Sonata, Minute Waltz, and various Bach inventions.
Additionally, Considering that you can buy cheap keyboards for kids for less than $20 and even mini-keyboards can be bought for less than $50, this would be a natural sequel, I would think. Also take into consideration that the four most common instruments in just about every band are keyboard, guitar, bass, and drums.
Obviously, I would expect bass and drums/percussion to be in the "most likely to appear next" list.
The grand accumulation of those would be to have all four at once with the ultimate "Band Heroes". Gather your friends with all four "Hero" instruments and jam as your own rock band.
Wow. The clue meter is reading zero.
One of the main reasons behind OpenSolaris is for people outside of Sun to make drivers, tools, utilities, etc. that can be included into future versions of (non-open) Solaris. Because of the nature of the systems that run on Solaris, it's critical for Sun to make sure that changes, regardless of how benign it might seem, have no impact on any kind of potential, mission-critical appliction. What one indeveloper might think is a great driver or enhancement for their partcular use could possibly break something else. Considering how much is riding on Sun -- not the least of which is rebuilding Sun's own reputation -- they have every reason in the world to make sure that everything that "everyone else on crack" submits will have zero impact on anything else in Solaris.
Sheesh. Get off your damned high horse.
I've been running multiple PCs for years doing exactly everything that was mentioned above. I've never gotten hit by spyware or viruses. Yet the parent got modded down. God, the moderators on this board for clueless.
Once you go into 1,024 x 768 resolution or higher, you're running HD because you've gone beyond 720p scanning. (PC monitors are progressive, not interlacing.) The size of the screen itself is NOT synonymous with the number of pixels on the screen.
Okay, someone explain to me why this was given a "troll". The statements are completely valid. There are many other things throughout history that engineers and historians would no doubt consider to be far more "disasterous" in terms of both engineering and human life than the exaples that the original article writer quoted. Look at the article as well and you'll see that he gives absolutely no reasons whatsoever for choosing those disasters nor does he quote anyone else more qualified than he to determine what are the worst engineering disasters.
Personally, I can name a few engineering disasters as well that I think would be far more apt to be on such a list, the biggest of which would be CHERNOBYL, which not only showed the problems of a flawed design but also contaminated a large area for the next 600 years or so. Granted, human error was also to blame, but all of the documentaries that were shown as of late seem to come to the conclusion that the design was bad from the start.
Yet a molasses tank rupture (or whatever goo was in it) makes the list as does the sinking of a ship, and the parent gets smacked as a troll. Wow...!
You're buying a 750GB hard drive but you can't at least afford two for a mirror? If you can't afford to lose the data on that 750GB drive, what the hell are you doing by buying such a large drive in the first place?
You're obviously a religious man because you're putting a lot of faith in the reliability of that drive.
Being awake during certain surgeries is not common, but by no means is it unheard of.
d idates.html i n-mapping.html p inews03.shtml s p?id=137&page=3 4 01531700.htm
http://www.mayoclinic.org/awake-brain-surgery/can
http://www.mayoclinic.org/awake-brain-surgery/bra
http://www.expresshealthcaremgmt.com/20041015/hos
http://www.nmff.org/clinicaldepts/deptnewsstory.a
http://www.blonnet.com/2005/06/24/stories/2005062
In the words of Foamy, "Do a damned Google search!"
Whereas I'm not surprised that Slashdot is bringing out the normal anti-Sun's-attitude-towards-Java dogma, is this really a surprise? Jonathan Schwartz is closer to being a pro-Slashdot geek than Scott McNealy ever was. If anything, McNealy was just an arrogant ass who liked staying in his ivory tower with Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. Schwartz has always shown to be more of a geek than McNealy, and releasing the source code to Java has been a "cry of the geeks" for a long time.
(Note that I don't use "geek" derogatorily as I fondly consider myself to be one.)
Sun is giving us a ton of surprises in the past few years with Schwartz on board - from AMD processors to their first, AFFORDABLE powerhouse workstations (Ultra 20). I'm not surprised by this move at all, but I also don't blame them for wanting to be able to protect one of their revenue streams. At least Sun is trying. I guess the Slashdot "make it free or forget it" is still too strong, based on the responses I've seen so far in this thread. Looks like when it comes to Java, Sun is damned whether they do or don't. Pity.
This is clearly not true.
:) (Sorry...)
So, it's patently untrue?
Um .. you do realize that you proved my point, don't you? Newer forms of social communication took over for previous forms. Regardless of why (dial-up, etc.) social communication has evolved, the simple fact is that BBSes went to AOL/Prodigy which went to Usenet which went to on-line forums which went to blogs and therefore MySpace. It's a very unsurprising migration from one form of social communication to another. At least, it's unsurprising to me. What is surprising to me is that this is apparently suprising to others!
... unless you're only using public Internet terminals.
And, by the way, we still have fees
Is this any surprise? Really?
Humans are social animals, isolated geeks not withstanding. We have always loved interaction with others. Back in the Commodore/Apple II days, BBSes were extrememly popular. Then came national/global entities like America On-Line and Prodigy. The message and chat areas were enormous draws to those entities. Of course, Usenet replaced BBSes when the Internet became the rage, but people were then turned off by spam and trolls.
So, now blogging and other social web sites have replaced BBSes, AOL, Prodigy, and Usenet as social gathering places. Eventually something will replace blogs. Am I the only one who finds this to be anything other than a surprise worthy of a Slashdot headline?