They're pretty well stocked in my local store, last time I browsed through them. I guess it depends on who runs the store.
The staff has always been clueless. I used to just ask for the big Archer book, which apparently doesn't exist anymore. I could bemoan its loss, but as I said, they've never really been a good place to get components.
Electronics kits follow the times: it's a digital age, and just as transistors displaced tubes, IC's stand in place of discrete components. And as microcontrollers go, it's a freakin golden age for hobbyists. You have more choices than ever before. Hell, you can even mock up full-blown CPU's with FPGAs if that turns you on, and you can do that on a hobby budget.
I guess that's it's a lot cheaper to buy the product assembled and tested from China than it is to build your own.
It's been that way since the 70's, gramps, you just replaced Japan with China.
Every radio shack I've seen that wasn't in a mall has the Archer components in a modular shelf with nicely labeled color-coded drawers. Lo and behold they're full of resistors, caps, transistors, and so forth -- more selection than I remember from before. Radio Shack was never a very good place for getting components, they were always more like the 7-11 of electronics: a good place to pick up a can of Chef Boyardee, but you still need to head to A.G. Ferrari to get your fresh proscuitto-stuffed tortelloni.
I fully agree with you. I think the patent system needs a huge overhaul in order to get back to its original principle. This overhaul doesn't include abolishing it entirely.
First of all, it'd be nice to be able to search only expired patents. But of course the whole "patent fence" nonsense going on makes even that risky. Back to the overhaul...
If it's sqlite, perhaps you can fiddle with the database directly -- replace it with a view that does the kind of query you want. Just make sure you put triggers on the view so that it can write history back to the real table. Heck, that might let you keep certain naughty sites out of the history database too.
That's actually why I think patents aren't very useful.
If someone is really innovative even 30 years of monopoly isn't enough to help them - since most people won't get it.
The stated purpose of patents is to put innovative works into the public domain -- after a limited exclusivity period as a reward for doing so. The alternative to patents is going back to trade secrets and exclusive guilds, and that's really throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I don't think any system can be fully prevented from being gamed, but it would be nice if there were at least some sensible refereeing.
In other words, this kind of thing will eventually, inevitably, be used for nefarious purposes.
You mean, like by the government or the corporations? This is not potential abuse, it is abuse on its face. Stop with the "criminals might get access", it's criminals that have the access right now!
By writing themselves into the law as "above the law", I no longer feel particularly feel any moral obligation to obey the law. The only principle that guides my behavior now when it comes to dealing with the RIAA/MPAA is "don't get caught".
Congratulations, you people just created another pirate.
No, your post read like the standard haughty scoffing rant at how inherently INFERIOR a lesser thing like rasterization was compared to the true REALITY of raytracing. And raytracing is just as much a simulation, and the only thing that matters in the end is how good it looks.
The lack of any shaders running on that raytraced example made it actually look worse. Nice reflection effects on the cockpit glass though. Maybe we'll see raytracing done as a shader.
> and is at least partially responsible for the term "bug" in software
No she is not. The term goes all the way back to Shakespeare, and was in common use in Edison's time. The fact that she even made such lasting mention of the real bug stuck in the relay was because everyone was already likely to get the joke.
Psst. It's all tricks. That's not a real helicopter, and it'll never fly out of your screen. Value judgments on what's more "real" are just plain silly.
Not necessarily -- most ISP's pay a big chunk of change to one of those services to get their feed in the first place. Giganews supplies Comcast for example. I think a vast majority of ISP subscribers won't notice, and most of the remaining ones will simply get their fix on the web.
What's really funny is that if a real judge were constantly mouthing off like this, he'd end up automatically recused from nearly every case regarding the matters he was pontificating about.
The supreme court serves a vital function, but I'm no longer sure I can call it really judicial. It's whatever ideology the justice serves, justified later by frankly whatever they want, constitution or not. Has a Supreme Court justice ever been impeached or even threatened with it?
Oh I fully believe that one day we'll create a machine smarter than us. And that eventually it will be able to create a machine smarter than it. I do disagree with the automatic assumption that it'll necessarily take a shorter cycle each iteration.
Usually the "singularity" is illustrated by some graph going vertical, where I can only assume that X=Time and Y="Awesomeness". The fact that I didn't commute to work on a flying car makes me a bit skeptical.
Is it just me or does the Singularity smack of dumb extrapolation to me? "Progress is accelerating by X, ergo it will always accelerate by X".
I mean, if I ordered a burrito yesterday, and my neighbor ordered one today, and his two friends ordered one the next day, does that mean in 40 more days, all one trillion people on earth will have had one?
The bulk of opera's revenue is from licensing it to device makers who preload it. They could open the source, but they could never make it freely redistributable and still keep that revenue stream. So they don't bother going halfway and keep the source closed. It also allows them to incorporate proprietary third-party technology if they choose to.
> I wonder how they came up with the name Firefox?
It used to be called Phoenix, which was to evoke the whole "rising from the ashes" imagery WRT the (at the time) moribund Mozilla project. The BIOS people didn't like that and asked them to change it, so they renamed it Firebird, which the database people weren't keen on. So finally they came up with Firefox, and it stuck. Better name anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
They're pretty well stocked in my local store, last time I browsed through them. I guess it depends on who runs the store.
The staff has always been clueless. I used to just ask for the big Archer book, which apparently doesn't exist anymore. I could bemoan its loss, but as I said, they've never really been a good place to get components.
Electronics kits follow the times: it's a digital age, and just as transistors displaced tubes, IC's stand in place of discrete components. And as microcontrollers go, it's a freakin golden age for hobbyists. You have more choices than ever before. Hell, you can even mock up full-blown CPU's with FPGAs if that turns you on, and you can do that on a hobby budget.
I guess that's it's a lot cheaper to buy the product assembled and tested from China than it is to build your own.
It's been that way since the 70's, gramps, you just replaced Japan with China.
Every radio shack I've seen that wasn't in a mall has the Archer components in a modular shelf with nicely labeled color-coded drawers. Lo and behold they're full of resistors, caps, transistors, and so forth -- more selection than I remember from before. Radio Shack was never a very good place for getting components, they were always more like the 7-11 of electronics: a good place to pick up a can of Chef Boyardee, but you still need to head to A.G. Ferrari to get your fresh proscuitto-stuffed tortelloni.
Now I'm hungry, dammit.
Here's a free one: DARPA gives grants. Unless you want to be a grant administrator, chances are you don't really want to work for DARPA.
A little, um, research into DARPA would have uncovered that insight.
I fully agree with you. I think the patent system needs a huge overhaul in order to get back to its original principle. This overhaul doesn't include abolishing it entirely.
First of all, it'd be nice to be able to search only expired patents. But of course the whole "patent fence" nonsense going on makes even that risky. Back to the overhaul...
If it's sqlite, perhaps you can fiddle with the database directly -- replace it with a view that does the kind of query you want. Just make sure you put triggers on the view so that it can write history back to the real table. Heck, that might let you keep certain naughty sites out of the history database too.
That's actually why I think patents aren't very useful.
If someone is really innovative even 30 years of monopoly isn't enough to help them - since most people won't get it.
The stated purpose of patents is to put innovative works into the public domain -- after a limited exclusivity period as a reward for doing so. The alternative to patents is going back to trade secrets and exclusive guilds, and that's really throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I don't think any system can be fully prevented from being gamed, but it would be nice if there were at least some sensible refereeing.
In other words, this kind of thing will eventually, inevitably, be used for nefarious purposes.
You mean, like by the government or the corporations? This is not potential abuse, it is abuse on its face. Stop with the "criminals might get access", it's criminals that have the access right now!
By writing themselves into the law as "above the law", I no longer feel particularly feel any moral obligation to obey the law. The only principle that guides my behavior now when it comes to dealing with the RIAA/MPAA is "don't get caught".
Congratulations, you people just created another pirate.
Heh, speaking of bugs. Thanks. Fixed.
No, your post read like the standard haughty scoffing rant at how inherently INFERIOR a lesser thing like rasterization was compared to the true REALITY of raytracing. And raytracing is just as much a simulation, and the only thing that matters in the end is how good it looks.
The lack of any shaders running on that raytraced example made it actually look worse. Nice reflection effects on the cockpit glass though. Maybe we'll see raytracing done as a shader.
> and is at least partially responsible for the term "bug" in software
No she is not. The term goes all the way back to Shakespeare, and was in common use in Edison's time. The fact that she even made such lasting mention of the real bug stuck in the relay was because everyone was already likely to get the joke.
> First, I think you chose a poor example, because I think a vast majority of Slashdotters can't name a single "famous flautist", male OR female.
Ian Anderson. And that about wraps up the field as far as my knowledge goes.
Psst. It's all tricks. That's not a real helicopter, and it'll never fly out of your screen. Value judgments on what's more "real" are just plain silly.
Makes me think of The Mathematician from Ratchet&Clank actually.
Mathematician: Nobody- I MEAN NOBODY- can solve The Mathematician!
Ratchet: I guess all the good names were taken?
Mathematician: Watch yer mouth, zero... before The Mathematician SUBTRACTS YOUR HEAD FROM YOUR SHOULDERS!
No underscores in group names, not the last time I looked. That'd be rec.verizon.ate.my.balls.nom.nom.nom
Not necessarily -- most ISP's pay a big chunk of change to one of those services to get their feed in the first place. Giganews supplies Comcast for example. I think a vast majority of ISP subscribers won't notice, and most of the remaining ones will simply get their fix on the web.
"Hard" real time is industrial robotics and missile guidance systems. This is very much "soft" realtime.
I'm impessed!
> I don't know. What's the difference between a universe full of other races that we've never heard from and a universe inhabited solely by us.
As far as our daily affairs go, none. My guess is the greys don't care if gay people marry. The aliens are at least theoretically falsifiable.
You want to believe in a Spinozan God, fine. Just keep him/her/it/them out of my bedroom, schools, courts, and governments.
What's really funny is that if a real judge were constantly mouthing off like this, he'd end up automatically recused from nearly every case regarding the matters he was pontificating about.
The supreme court serves a vital function, but I'm no longer sure I can call it really judicial. It's whatever ideology the justice serves, justified later by frankly whatever they want, constitution or not. Has a Supreme Court justice ever been impeached or even threatened with it?
Oh I fully believe that one day we'll create a machine smarter than us. And that eventually it will be able to create a machine smarter than it. I do disagree with the automatic assumption that it'll necessarily take a shorter cycle each iteration.
Usually the "singularity" is illustrated by some graph going vertical, where I can only assume that X=Time and Y="Awesomeness". The fact that I didn't commute to work on a flying car makes me a bit skeptical.
Is it just me or does the Singularity smack of dumb extrapolation to me? "Progress is accelerating by X, ergo it will always accelerate by X".
I mean, if I ordered a burrito yesterday, and my neighbor ordered one today, and his two friends ordered one the next day, does that mean in 40 more days, all one trillion people on earth will have had one?
The bulk of opera's revenue is from licensing it to device makers who preload it. They could open the source, but they could never make it freely redistributable and still keep that revenue stream. So they don't bother going halfway and keep the source closed. It also allows them to incorporate proprietary third-party technology if they choose to.
> I wonder how they came up with the name Firefox?
It used to be called Phoenix, which was to evoke the whole "rising from the ashes" imagery WRT the (at the time) moribund Mozilla project. The BIOS people didn't like that and asked them to change it, so they renamed it Firebird, which the database people weren't keen on. So finally they came up with Firefox, and it stuck. Better name anyway.