I click on the menu bar (e.g. File) and the menu won't come up! All I can do is terminate that instance and start a new one. That's really annoying...
I put all my menus on one row, so there isn't enough space for the entire menu bar to appear. So IE displays a >> which pops up the hidden menu options when clicked upon. When the file menu gets stuck, click on >> and everything will be ok.
IE has its problems, but it's still way better than Netscape.
Yes, you're perfectly correct. But we already know Slashdot story submitters and editors don't read the articles they post. They should fix the article, before legions of slashdotters kill themselves.
You don't need a patent in order to 'defend' against patent lawsuits. All you have to do is properly document (date,witness,etc) your invention and you have a very strong claim against anyone who tries to patent the same invention in the future. The fact that he took out a patent shows an intention to license it, or to obtain monopoly rights.
Re:Good as far as it goes, but still useless
on
Itsy Specs Updated
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· Score: 2
Anyway, good for them for sharing, but they are using an LCD and touch screen that is unavailable commercially. What good is that?
It's a research project. It's unreasonable to expect all the parts to be commercially available.
How about if you had to make a sizable (I know, define sizable) deposit that would be forfeited if your application were turned down? That would tend to discourage the opportunists.
There already is a sizable non-refundable deposit, it's called a patent application fee. The application fee and the lawyer's fees can easily go up to tens of thousands of dollars. All this does is make it difficult for small inventors, while having no impact at all on the big companies.
So he invented a couple of cool words: "Neuromacer" in particular. Apart from that... his writing is... average, I'd say. Neal Stephanson's stories are much easier to read, and make a lot more sense.
I'd like to say the same thing about Gibson AND Stephenson. I just picked up Stephenson's "Snow Crash", and after the the intriguing first chapter or so, it degenerates into all the standard cyberpunk cliches, with the standard monotonous plot and cardboard characters.
There already are walking robots. The Honda P3, probably the most advanced robot in the world. It's not exactly agile, but it does walk on 2 legs without exterior support, and it can even walk up and down stairs.
Legos are not cheap toys, Legos cost money to buy. How likely is it that the disadvantaged minorities that they're trying to test wll have had a chance to play with legos when they were younger? So it seems that even as they're trying to give disadvantaged minorities a boost, the better off kids (those whose parents bought them legos) will have an advantage.
HP-UX is designed to print to text-only line printers and PostScript printers. Only. It may be possible to use a non-PostScript printer with a third party program (like ghostscript) but no garuntees.
I came across a Solaris faq on the topic, as well as a faq on a postscript newsgroup where they advised using ghostscript to print to non-postscript printers. I just did a search and it seems that for linux, ghostscript has to be used. I even came across several companies selling products specifically designed to print postscript files to non-postscript printers, so this seems like a general issue. If you've a solution to this, I'd love to hear it.
The same could be said for WinPrinters and MacOS... I haven't seen anyone under MacOS get a Windows Printer to work right out-of-the-box... Does this mean that MacOS has usability problems?
The point is that unix (at least those unix systems I've used) doesn't have an integrated print system. You can't just pick a printer in an app, and have print correctly (if the printer doesn't support postscript). You've to go through the convoluted process of using Ghostscript to print to the printer, or use application specific drivers (Wordperfect, as I understand it, has such), which may be fine if you're a unix guru and have memorized the incantations needed, but this is majorly not ok for ordinary people.
Under Linux, this is easy... ifconfig eth0 mtu 1440 Under Windows, there is a registry setting. Not the right way to do it in my opinion, but at least it can be done. There is NO WAY to do this under MacOS that I could find. The only solution was some guy who hacked up the TCP/IP stack and wrote a little control panel where you could change the settings. That's not the way to do things.
While we're on this topic, I might as well share my fustrating unix story. I've just had the immense displeasure of spending more than an hour trying to coax a non-postscript printer into printing a postscript file, from a Unix (HP-UX to be specific) machine.
I first tried sending the postscript file to the printer using lpr. Garbage out. Ok, the printer doesn't support postscript, what do I do now? Search the web for the solution. Read something about using GS device settings. Try this. Spend the better half of an hour, but get no results.
Call me an idiot if you want to, but this is ridiculous. Printing should be as simple as choosing the printer you want to print with from within your application, then having the system do "The Right Thing(tm)" - none of this lpr, postscript file or not nonsense. Anything else is absurd.
Unix still has a long way to go in terms of usability. Sure, you can get everything to work if you know what the magic incantation is ("ifconfig eth0 mtu 1440"), but it is far away from being usable by the anyone who hasn't been accepted into the order of unix priests.
One, to figure out how too play DVDs, you have to discuss it and share info.
Yes, so we should argue that this is about the right to reverse engineer, and the right to play DVDs that we own on any player or any operating system we like.
Whether or not this is speech doesn't carry much weight. If I stole a dozen credit card numbers, and published the numbers on the web, I can't claim a right to do so based on the right to free speech. Yes, we're not stealing anything here, but so this is what our defence should be about; the right to speech doesn't aid our argument -- it sounds too much as though we're saying: we have the right to speech, so we can say anything we damn well like, even if the information is obtained illegally.
Have they switched? They're still using Amazon. Go to the book review section and you'll still see the Amazon slashbox. Perhaps/. is using Fatbrain as well, but Amazon is still there.
I think the EFF should stop using the "source code is speech" argument in their defense. The Bernstein decision on which this was based was controversial in the first place, so I don't think this carries much legal weight. And the fact that something is speech doesn't necessarily give you the right to speak it e.g. when the information was obtained illegally, which is the case the MPAA is trying to make.
In case you haven't noticed, Slashdot has a partnership with Amazon.com. There's even a nice big Slashbox where you can search for books on Amazon, and if you buy something, Slashdot gets a cut. When money is involved, professed principles get thrown out of the window.
"The books here are brought to us in Partnership with Amazon.com. If you follow the links around here, and eventually buy a book, we get a percentage of the cost!
Want books about any of these things? Perl, Linux, Unix, Gardening, CGI, Java?
Still not finding what you're looking for? Visit Amazon.com from this link, and we still get some credit. Or you could even Search Amazon using this convenient form:"
Instead of students serving the Universities, Universities need to serve the needs of the students. Students will continue to be overcharged, underrepresented, bullied, and "processed" through a system which just wants money at every turn.
Students need to take a stand. Demonstrate, make yourselves heard. It's a formative experience. I'm of the opinion that the ability of the students to stand up for themselves and what they believe in is a good measure of the quality of the university.
Excellent suggestion, I'm surprised no one suggested John Wyndham earlier. His "The Chrysalids" is probably the only sci-fi novel used as a textbook in the British exam system. I highly recommend it.
This is not directly related to the current interview, but I've a suggestion for a future interviewee. How about we interview Miss Natalie Portman.
Before you cry "Troll!", think about it: Slashdot is News for Nerds, of which Star Wars is a big topic of interest. And as I recall, one of Rob Malda's interests when he started up Slashdot was Star Wars. So what do you say, let's interview Natalie Portman?
Perhaps some Harvard people reading this can arrange something. There's obviously a lot of interest in her here.
I do think that China will become a freer country. But I think this will be a generational process, as the more liberal minded Chinese youths of today fill in the ranks and the system gradually tends towards a more democratic one.
I think the primary role the internet will play is to expose China's future leaders to more democratic ideals, rather than the Internet inciting some sort of mass revolution.
Trade and the Internet are bad for the PRC government's control
I agree, but on the other hand, I don't think trade and the Internet will inevitably lead to greater political freedom in China. It will make people more aware of their situation (there's a well written post on this topic here), but I don't think this automatically translates to political action.
The irony here is that as China gets more prosperous, the incentive to rebel decreases. And people in China do have a measure of political freedom -- if I'm not mistaken, people do get to vote for their local officials, which is really the extent to which political freedom matters to most people; Central government is merely a distant, abstract concept. The Chinese government just has to make sure the risks greatly outweigh the potential gains (and you have much more to lose when you're wealthier), and the status quo can be preserved.
We've tried to starve out Saddam Hussein for a decade, and all we've accomplished is the deaths of a large number of the poorest Iraqi civilians.
Slashdot Mirror
I click on the menu bar (e.g. File) and the menu won't come up! All I can do is terminate that instance and start a new one. That's really annoying...
I put all my menus on one row, so there isn't enough space for the entire menu bar to appear. So IE displays a >> which pops up the hidden menu options when clicked upon. When the file menu gets stuck, click on >> and everything will be ok.
IE has its problems, but it's still way better than Netscape.
Yes, you're perfectly correct. But we already know Slashdot story submitters and editors don't read the articles they post. They should fix the article, before legions of slashdotters kill themselves.
You don't need a patent in order to 'defend' against patent lawsuits. All you have to do is properly document (date,witness,etc) your invention and you have a very strong claim against anyone who tries to patent the same invention in the future. The fact that he took out a patent shows an intention to license it, or to obtain monopoly rights.
Anyway, good for them for sharing, but they are using an LCD and touch screen that is unavailable commercially. What good is that?
It's a research project. It's unreasonable to expect all the parts to be commercially available.
Using the 'quantum mirage' process, previously posted Slashdot stories magically reappear at another time and place.
How about if you had to make a sizable (I know, define sizable) deposit that would be forfeited if your application were turned down? That would tend to discourage the opportunists.
There already is a sizable non-refundable deposit, it's called a patent application fee. The application fee and the lawyer's fees can easily go up to tens of thousands of dollars. All this does is make it difficult for small inventors, while having no impact at all on the big companies.
So he invented a couple of cool words: "Neuromacer" in particular. Apart from that... his writing is... average, I'd say. Neal Stephanson's stories are much easier to read, and make a lot more sense.
I'd like to say the same thing about Gibson AND Stephenson. I just picked up Stephenson's "Snow Crash", and after the the intriguing first chapter or so, it degenerates into all the standard cyberpunk cliches, with the standard monotonous plot and cardboard characters.
There already are walking robots. The Honda P3, probably the most advanced robot in the world. It's not exactly agile, but it does walk on 2 legs without exterior support, and it can even walk up and down stairs.
BBC was prepared for nit-pickers like you.
At the end of the page, they say: And yes we do know that gibbons are apes and not monkeys.
We could try to change our licenses to avoid it. But since we don't use shrink-wrap licenses, we cannot override the UCITA default.
What is the GPL but a very restrictive license then?
Someone who understands economics.
Legos are not cheap toys, Legos cost money to buy. How likely is it that the disadvantaged minorities that they're trying to test wll have had a chance to play with legos when they were younger? So it seems that even as they're trying to give disadvantaged minorities a boost, the better off kids (those whose parents bought them legos) will have an advantage.
HP-UX is designed to print to text-only line printers and PostScript printers. Only. It may be possible to use a non-PostScript printer with a third party program (like ghostscript) but no garuntees.
I came across a Solaris faq on the topic, as well as a faq on a postscript newsgroup where they advised using ghostscript to print to non-postscript printers. I just did a search and it seems that for linux, ghostscript has to be used. I even came across several companies selling products specifically designed to print postscript files to non-postscript printers, so this seems like a general issue. If you've a solution to this, I'd love to hear it.
The same could be said for WinPrinters and MacOS... I haven't seen anyone under MacOS get a Windows Printer to work right out-of-the-box... Does this mean that MacOS has usability problems?
The point is that unix (at least those unix systems I've used) doesn't have an integrated print system. You can't just pick a printer in an app, and have print correctly (if the printer doesn't support postscript). You've to go through the convoluted process of using Ghostscript to print to the printer, or use application specific drivers (Wordperfect, as I understand it, has such), which may be fine if you're a unix guru and have memorized the incantations needed, but this is majorly not ok for ordinary people.
Under Linux, this is easy... ifconfig eth0 mtu 1440
Under Windows, there is a registry setting. Not the right way to do it in my opinion, but at least it can be done.
There is NO WAY to do this under MacOS that I could find. The only solution was some guy who hacked up the TCP/IP stack and wrote a little control panel where you could change the settings. That's not the way to do things.
While we're on this topic, I might as well share my fustrating unix story. I've just had the immense displeasure of spending more than an hour trying to coax a non-postscript printer into printing a postscript file, from a Unix (HP-UX to be specific) machine.
I first tried sending the postscript file to the printer using lpr. Garbage out. Ok, the printer doesn't support postscript, what do I do now? Search the web for the solution. Read something about using GS device settings. Try this. Spend the better half of an hour, but get no results.
Call me an idiot if you want to, but this is ridiculous. Printing should be as simple as choosing the printer you want to print with from within your application, then having the system do "The Right Thing(tm)" - none of this lpr, postscript file or not nonsense. Anything else is absurd.
Unix still has a long way to go in terms of usability. Sure, you can get everything to work if you know what the magic incantation is ("ifconfig eth0 mtu 1440"), but it is far away from being usable by the anyone who hasn't been accepted into the order of unix priests.
One, to figure out how too play DVDs, you have to discuss it and share info.
Yes, so we should argue that this is about the right to reverse engineer, and the right to play DVDs that we own on any player or any operating system we like.
Whether or not this is speech doesn't carry much weight. If I stole a dozen credit card numbers, and published the numbers on the web, I can't claim a right to do so based on the right to free speech. Yes, we're not stealing anything here, but so this is what our defence should be about; the right to speech doesn't aid our argument -- it sounds too much as though we're saying: we have the right to speech, so we can say anything we damn well like, even if the information is obtained illegally.
Have they switched? They're still using Amazon. Go to the book review section and you'll still see the Amazon slashbox. Perhaps /. is using Fatbrain as well, but Amazon is still there.
I think the EFF should stop using the "source code is speech" argument in their defense. The Bernstein decision on which this was based was controversial in the first place, so I don't think this carries much legal weight. And the fact that something is speech doesn't necessarily give you the right to speak it e.g. when the information was obtained illegally, which is the case the MPAA is trying to make.
In case you haven't noticed, Slashdot has a partnership with Amazon.com. There's even a nice big Slashbox where you can search for books on Amazon, and if you buy something, Slashdot gets a cut. When money is involved, professed principles get thrown out of the window.
"The books here are brought to us in Partnership with Amazon.com.
If you follow the links around here, and eventually buy a book, we get a percentage of the cost!
Want books about any of these things? Perl, Linux, Unix, Gardening, CGI, Java?
Still not finding what you're looking for? Visit Amazon.com from this link, and we still get some credit. Or you could even Search Amazon using this convenient form:"
As long as you're blocking sites, you might as well eliminate bigwords.com
Mr. Duckenfield,
Don't bother eliminating bigwords. They'll make your campus bookstore look good in comparison, which is just what you want.
(I've had a bad experience with them personally, and take a look at this list of complaints.)
Instead of students serving the Universities, Universities need to serve the needs of the students. Students will continue to be overcharged, underrepresented, bullied, and "processed" through a system which just wants money at every turn.
Students need to take a stand. Demonstrate, make yourselves heard. It's a formative experience. I'm of the opinion that the ability of the students to stand up for themselves and what they believe in is a good measure of the quality of the university.
Excellent suggestion, I'm surprised no one suggested John Wyndham earlier. His "The Chrysalids" is probably the only sci-fi novel used as a textbook in the British exam system. I highly recommend it.
Maybed distributed.net can do something useful for once and try decrypting Kevin Mitnick's data.
This is not directly related to the current interview, but I've a suggestion for a future interviewee. How about we interview Miss Natalie Portman.
Before you cry "Troll!", think about it: Slashdot is News for Nerds, of which Star Wars is a big topic of interest. And as I recall, one of Rob Malda's interests when he started up Slashdot was Star Wars. So what do you say, let's interview Natalie Portman?
Perhaps some Harvard people reading this can arrange something. There's obviously a lot of interest in her here.
I do think that China will become a freer country. But I think this will be a generational process, as the more liberal minded Chinese youths of today fill in the ranks and the system gradually tends towards a more democratic one.
I think the primary role the internet will play is to expose China's future leaders to more democratic ideals, rather than the Internet inciting some sort of mass revolution.
Trade and the Internet are bad for the PRC government's control
I agree, but on the other hand, I don't think trade and the Internet will inevitably lead to greater political freedom in China. It will make people more aware of their situation (there's a well written post on this topic here), but I don't think this automatically translates to political action.
The irony here is that as China gets more prosperous, the incentive to rebel decreases. And people in China do have a measure of political freedom -- if I'm not mistaken, people do get to vote for their local officials, which is really the extent to which political freedom matters to most people; Central government is merely a distant, abstract concept. The Chinese government just has to make sure the risks greatly outweigh the potential gains (and you have much more to lose when you're wealthier), and the status quo can be preserved.
We've tried to starve out Saddam Hussein for a decade, and all we've accomplished is the deaths of a large number of the poorest Iraqi civilians.
Yes, I agree. Sanctions haven't worked.