Comment Re:We've reached peak Bells & Whistles (Score 1) 224
That's the innovation I want.
Amen. Power. is my killer app. I wouldn't mind the phone being twice as thick if it meant I'd have that much more power.
That's the innovation I want.
Amen. Power. is my killer app. I wouldn't mind the phone being twice as thick if it meant I'd have that much more power.
Spock, is that you?
He's dead, Jim.
That was a really interesting concession, because otherwise the government would've run afoul of U.S. v. Miller, which found that gun control was not a violation of rights if the weapon in question was not militarily useful.
That is a complete misreading of U.S. vs. Miller.
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.
As you can see above, the Supreme Court hadn't been told that sawed off shotguns were regularly used in warfare. (See "trench guns" during WWI). If they had, they would have ruled it was a protected weapon because it would have had a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia"
That's OK though, even people who should know better get that wrong.
Excellent... if only we could get the moderation to go to 6.
Yes! The post could then be modlier!
Woot!
I agree with you. It is a well written, and interesting article. The nerdiness factor is high enough that it's definitely
At a hip Rochester restaurant called Nosh, Viavattine held the menu up to the light to assess its "flocculation" (the degree to which its fibres had clumped infelicitously together).
Flocculation... just kinda rolls right off the tongue. Most excellent!
Is it me or does that company become more and more like some kind of cult?
Have you seen the movie The Circle? My first thought after seeing it was "Facebook". I find it to be extremely interesting that the wikipedia article linked above makes no mention whatsoever of the parallels. It was a really creepy movie.
Had it been a digital library, nothing would have prevented me from downloading it at once except for formality of having programmatically coding "tokens" (at ADDITIONAL cost to a digital library - "normal" way of distributing content is without any token system).
Maybe, maybe not. The library could very well institute a policy that allows them to only lend out however many copies of the book that they've purchased. It would be easy enough to do using 'tokens' as you indicated, or merely releasing the copy to readers after it has been checked in, or the loan time expires whichever comes first.
This isn't rocket science. We understand fairly well how libraries work.
I'd be interested in what some of the SF publishing companies are saying about this lawsuit, if anything. Baen and Tor both publish DRM-free ebooks in multiple formats. Baen comes right out and says on their website that the reason they publish their books sans DRM is because they do not believe their customers are thieves. IMO, there is something to be said for treating your customers like decent human beings. They also have the 'free library' where they make the first book or two in a bunch of their series' available for free download by anyone who wants to read them. Like any good drug dealer, they understand the concept of "the first one is free".
The man command is short for manual. Back in the day, when you bought something it came with a book that explained it, known as a manual. Many young people these days don't remember this era and so the notion of a manual doesn't help them remember the command. Instead, I tell them that 'man' is short for 'mansplain'.
The first unix system I had a lot of experience with was a DEC-8810 running Ultrix. It came with a full hard-copy manual set of the man pages. I can't remember how many volumes it was.
This was both good, and bad. Good, because you could actually use the MANual to help you with syntax as you entered the command. Bad, because you can't grep a printout.
When I first discovered 'apropos' on the command line, I thought I'd gone to heaven.
If using tape, restore using different tape drives.
This. Is. Important. Granted, a lot, if not most stuff is disk-to-disk these days, but if you are using tape for anything, understand that most modern drives are probably going to be a variation of a helical scan, similar to old videotapes. The heads can be out of alignment, and you do not know about it, because the drive that wrote the tape has no problem reading the tape. On the other hand, a different drive with proper head alignment may very well not read it at all, or do so with uncorrectable errors.
Have personally experienced this, though it was many years ago. Thank God for network backups.
As the oral arguments for this case will be heard Wednesday, you'll be able to download the Argument Transcripts on Wednesday afteroon, or Thursday Morning.
While the questions asked don't necessarily indicate how judges are leaning on the case, as they will sometimes act as devil's advocate, it's still worth checking out as a rough guide to what they think are the important elements are to the case.
Another is:
'The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.' -James Nicoll
I've seen this before. It's only funny because it is so true. Hell, we'll make up new words and phrases just for the heck of it. We have no pride whatsoever in the language. If we find a word lying around that fits better, and better describes something, it's promptly dragooned into service.
This is a full set of processors listening to everything your other processes do all the time no matter what OS you run or security you apply. And nobody knew what it was doing. And the governments have been removing it from their purchases for years by making Intel make chips without it.
This. Right here. The fact that governments have demanded hardware without it is reason enough NOT to trust that it is 'safe'.
I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.
