Comment Under English law... (Score 1) 231
It's an offence, with a `c'.
Comment Pencil and paper first (Score 2) 246
First off, pencil and paper. Teach them how to make and play wirh Turing machines and finite state automata. Enjoy the awe when you tell them about the Universal Turing Machine.
Low-level:
The HP15C User's Manual and an HP15C, or HP's 15C iApp.
High-level:
David Touretzky's Gentle Introduction.
My personal favourite language of all time: Icon.
S.
Comment Re:YES !!!! (Score 1) 118
Julian, is that you ?!??
Comment Re:And why doesnt BASIC still work? (Score 1) 510
You can get Pixie Scheme from the App Store. Sure it's sandboxed, but for playing with LISP logic, it's right there on your iPad.
Comment via USB (Score 2) 108
I guess that makes it a USB pongle ?!
Comment Re: Some valid criticisms (Score 1) 214
Completely agree about the settings being categorised - in fact I'd be happier if they were nicely categorised in the database, but as it is they're all just glommed into a single table listed in alphabetical order, without any sort of hierarchical structure in the key names (such as you do with objects in firefox's about:config for example) - wouldn't it be nice to have a frontend.display.widgets.renderer = opengl for instance?
Agree that it's entirely possible I'm doing very complicated things, but this is why I get so annoyed at the bulk of Myth power users; I say something's needlessly complicated, and I'm told it's because Myth is so powerful. If something powerful doesn't work as I'd like it to, I'm told I'm making things needlessly complicated.
Technically, there is no ordering of settings in the database. They are just inserted as needed. If they showed up in alphabetical order, its because you sorted them that way in your select statement. Manual tinkering with settings outside the GUI has never been recommended or supported in any manner.
Almost everyone will agree that there are far too many settings, and that their layout could be handled better. MythTV was designed for, and used on for several years, low resolution standard definition TVs. What works there doesn't make much sense on a higher resolution display. I have to say 'almost everyone', as there has been concerted effort over the past year to clear out bad and unnecessary settings. Every time something would be removed, people would pop into the mailing list and IRC channels bickering about how they couldn't live without their particular pet setting. Nevermind the fact that the setting was no longer even functional, and when it previously did function, enabling it caused bad things to happen.
Comment Re:Retarded (Score 1) 570
Happens to be default if you middle-click, and always has been. I admit that before I knew about that browsing was more frustrating.
Comment Re:Since when were ISPs the bad guys? (Score 1) 457
The problem isn't with the ISPs, then... It is with the government that granted the monopolies. The government is the problem. I agree with you. I cringe when people yield any power to the government. They (the government) forgot that "We the people" are the government... We will wake up and take it back, hopefully...
Comment Re:Hooray! (Score 2, Insightful) 457
It proved you're a moron. The Jungle demonstrated with clear examples from our own history
the need to prevent companies from running amok. The Gulag Archipelago is about what happens
when governments run amok. You have to be really quite dishonest (or stupid) to connect one
with the other.
It takes a really long slippery slope to turn a somewhat free market economy to a total command economy.
You could equally as well use Gulag as an excuse for anarchy in general rather than just anarchy for Robber Barons.
See how that works... someone will be coming over to harvest your organ momentarily.
Comment Aliens (Score 1) 269
This does explain all the Alien Sightings over the years. They were simply hallucinations!
Comment Ultrasonic? (Score 1) 599
I hope they're not trying to hit a resonance. I figured that, given the length of suspension as a pendulum, mine have a natural frequency somewhat below 1 Hz.
Comment In fiction... (Score 1) 68
Has anyone read Neal Stephenson's novel "Interface"? We're getting oh so close to it.
Comment Re:I am an American living in the U.K. (Score 2, Informative) 568
All I've heard are vague notions of "strong government", but when I ask what that actually means, and why it would be a good thing, I haven't heard an answer at all.
Perhaps you should cast your net wider: there are at least 6,827,938 of us who would agree with you.
S.
Submission + - Mpeg 7 to include content identification (pcauthority.com.au) 1
An anonymous reader writes: NEC has announced that its video content identification technology has been incorporated in the upcoming Mpeg 7 video standard, allowing for each video frame to have its own signature, meaning that even minute changes to the file such as adding subtitles, watermarks or dogtags, and of course cutting out adverts, will alter the overall signature of the video. According to NEC this will allow the owners of the video to automatically "detect illegal copies" and "prevent illegal upload of video content" without their consent. NEC also claims that its technology will do away with the current manual checking by members of the movie industry and ISPs to spot dodgy videos.
Comment Re:The problem both parties have with PR (Score 1) 568
Nail on the head. Mod parent up, please.
However, it's the Labour Party with one of our quaint u-s. (I guess the Labour Party used to be Non-U http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-U... until it became `New' under Blair.)
S.
