Yea, except the general public can actually do something with PDFs, where as film negatives are really a pain in the ass to deal with for this purpose.

True, old idea, new implementation, but its definitely an improvement over the last one.

I don't know why some knee-jerks tagged this article as "Java". It's not running on Java. It uses JavaScript. It doesn't use Flash either. It's pure browser code.

Also read this part of the developers' blog post:

What this means for the Web

For years, people have assumed the browser was a poor platform for this kind of thing, and that you'd need something like Flash, Silverlight, JavaFX, or native code. While it is true that you should not expect the browser to rival triple-A titles like Far Cry or Call of Duty in the browser, there is no reason why lots of casual games that used to be implemented in Flash, or are now implemented in Objective-C on the iPhone/iPad can't be done using similar techniques we've used.

In other words, goodbye Flash and Java applets. And die already.

Stealing?... Careful...

Although it didn't seem like anything great from the summary, I went ahead and went to the article and watched the videos.

I found it very creepy. The way it handled the towels and turned them while 'looking' for the next step. It was reminiscent of what I felt was a child learning to fold towels (although, I'm fairly certain the robot wasn't doing any learning). For whatever reason, and despite it's appearance, this robot seems more human than any other robot I've seen previously.

Yeah... the iPad is designed exactly for the puposes you listed. That's exactly what everyone needs to do on their book reader / internet tablet.

Grumbel is right, I had been putting off the firmware upgrade for awhile since I don't usually use the online features of the PS3 all that much. However, I picked up a BluRay copy the other day of some new release (I think it was Zombieland..) and the PS3 wouldn't let me watch the damn movie - it said I had to upgrade the firmware in order to watch the movie. So an hour later my PS3 now has the new firmware with some sparkly glitter like default theme and I can watch my movie. I have Ubuntu installed with the otherOS feature, and while I don't use it too often it does come in handy sometimes. However if I want to keep using my PS3 as a BluRay player does that mean I'll lose my other OS? *sigh...*

For convenience I had wanted to test XP Mode in Windows 7 on a quick install running on top of VMWare's ESX.. but I couldn't because it required the hardware virtualization. I just installed the patch and it worked, I can now test XP mode on my virtual Win7, nice.

I got the udpate from here:
For 32-bit host operating systems: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=837f12aa-1d37-464e-ae59-20c9ecbebaf6
For 64-bit host operating systems: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e70dd043-e262-43c0-a002-446567f1e2b4

(Via: http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2010/03/18/windows-virtual-pc-no-hardware-virtualization-update-now-available-for-download.aspx)

At least if you're "lazy". It is a lot better than having to bounce in and out of the advanced options

I'd moderate this retarded if I could, but it's not an option. Probably Palin had it removed. Anyway, allow me to explain.

Not sure if I'm being clear here, but a "standard change" is not an estimate - it's something we've done before and know exactly how long it takes. If you are doing any actual estimating, the more "estimating" you do vs. using historical data, the more range of error you'll have. I'll babble on this subject for a while, but that's the gist of this post.

There are different types of changes. If you're estimating something you've done a hundred times, you know exactly how long it will take. Something like custom configuration for a client, routine maintenance, things like that. You'll be correct on how long it takes.

If a customer wants a new web service, and you've never done a web service, you're going to be wrong no matter how much you quantify. You can determine how many objects you need to create/update, but you can't tell how long it will take.

In other words, estimating has to take into account many different things:

How many objects will be updated/added
How many of those will be trivial vs. complex changes
Level of familiarity of the person/people implementing it
Assumption that the number of objects is correct, and nothing was missed
Necessary documentation available *and correct*
Historical accuracy of estimating (are you getting better at estimating overall?)
Historical accuracy of estimating the kind of change requested (are you getting better at estimating *this*?)
Overhead of gates/reviews and change control or other process
Testing resource availability, familiarity with the new items, correct documentation supplied to whomever is testing

If MSDN or man page isn't correct, you're going to do a lot of debugging. If the client's web service you're connecting to doesn't match what you were given, you're doing rewrites once you hit testing. If your change is ready to go but a company-wide routing change is scheduled for the same date so you can't test your implementation, you're stuck. If the CSS works until someone enters a long comment, and you need to find a workaround to the layout, you're better off just saying won't fix.

Bottom line, the more foreign something is, the more incorrect you will be. If you are estimating something you've already done, there's not need to estimate - it's already done! So by definition, we are either dealing with something simple like search/replace and run, or something foreign where you're going to be wrong no matter what.

I'll close with - in a modern company, all code should be reusable. So you only do things once. So you can't learn to estimate more accurately, since you're always estimating something different. The only way to have accurate estimating is to have a solid team working together for a while, and doing similar work. Just limit yourself to things you know, and you'll be right.

When you "buy" Windows, you don't purchase the software. You purchase a license to run the software, on a particular number of machines (1 for the typical home user). Included is the installation media for your convenience.

If you have a license for a product, and are running it, I don't see how Microsoft could have a problem with this. They could have an opinion, but no legal basis and certainly no way to enforce their opinion.

They would have to say the "license" is simply a suggestion, and that they are selling you a specific product like a chair, such that when it becomes broken it is no longer functional, or up to you to repair. They will never do this, for many reasons. Selling a physical product means you can disassemble or alter in any way you see fit, like evening up a table's legs, which they don't want you to do to Windows. Re-selling your license (validly, e.g. by wiping your drive and switching to linux first) means they have to activate the OS on a different machine, which adds support costs, so they'd prefer you not be able to re-sell, or at least think you can't. So many reasons, but they will never sell you a physical product.

As long as you have a license, and are following it by not installing on more machines than is allowed, I don't see any loophole. It has to be legal. Of course, this depends on what you did to pirate it, so you have to be within the bounds of DMCA laws if applicable, or if your locality recognizes EULAs you might have to follow an "original media" clause, but if that's the case you just call Microsoft and say you can't use your product because the disc went bad, and they refuse while trying to get you to buy a reduced-cost license to ensure you're legit, and you have a good old-fashioned lawsuit.

Since a lawsuit involves court costs at a minimum and lawyer's time most likely, it seems biased against the average user that they would have to go through the legal system to properly obtain what they paid for. That is the key to this whole WGA mess in the first place, when WGA called you a thief even when you aren't. And you are denied usage of something you purchased. It's cheaper to buy the compliance license than fighting in court individually, so I don't get why this wasn't certified class action instantly. Probably just a poorly thought out argument, which the judge shot holes though.

If you are the true owner of your website, you would be allowed to put whatever you wanted on it. The government is in effect saying that no person fully owns any website. This is similar to how the government owns the mainstream media by fining organizations for the use of certain words that the government finds offensive. People choose to visit websites just as they choose to view certain networks. The government clearly doesn't believe that the individual has the capacity to judge which websites contain "appropriate material" as they define it.

Maybe because, as an autistic, my morality is rather pragmatic- John Paul II's Theology of the Body makes sense to me precisely *because* it fits in with evolution and survival of the species. Respect for human life between conception and natural death also fits in strongly with the liberal neurodiversity side of things; a mutation that might be seen as negative in one light (like sickle cell anemia and the lessened ability to process and use oxygen) can be positive in another light (immunity to malaria); and at first glance we human beings just don't have the intelligence to know the difference.

If, as theistic Intelligent Designers claim, God created evolution and it's his method of engineering, then reducing the genetic diversity of the species is indeed taking the power of life and death, the central power of evolution, out of the hands of God and giving it to man. And based on our inability to know long term good from evil with mutations that are normal to the human species, yes, that becomes a moral argument.

There. Fixed that for you.

Also, they're fucked because Slashdot has put it on apple.slashdot.org and not the yro.slashdot.org domain.

Go at it, fanbois. This is yer turf.

The slippery slope is your attitude that "if it's in the open, they can record it." Because for the last ten thousand years of human civilization THIS HAS NOT BEEN TRUE. So to say there is no effect from this radical change in human circumstances is either naive or disingenuous.