utexaspunk

eQuery? xlsql? I dunno, but I agree that the name makes it a little bit harder to take seriously.

IM's good if you're at your desk shooting the shit with your friends/coworkers. Unlike the phone, it's asynchronous, so you can reply when it's convenient. You also don't have to worry about eavesdroppers. It's better than SMS because a longer SMS ends up getting split over multiple messages and they can sometimes get stuck in the ether for a while, and you can use your keyboard instead of holding your phone and making it obvious that you're not working. It's better than e-mail because you don't want a gazillion one-sentence emails of BS going back and forth.

I generally keep email for "official" business or more thought-out messages to friends, Hangouts for more banal chit-chat, and I can always go back and search that if it turns into a more important conversation. SMS for the few weirdos who don't do Hangouts, and then voice is an absolute last resort. Real-time telecommunication just demands too much immediate attention- whomever I'm speaking to will say something that leads my mind to wander off and I'll miss a sentence or two, and then I can't go back and re-read what was said. Hate, hate, HATE calls!

Obviously any driverless car is not going to rely on street markings and signage alone. It's going to have sensors in all directions and see that a vehicle is headed toward the intersection at a speed which suggests it will not be able to stop in time to avoid a collision. That doesn't require some magical machine learning algorithm, and it will probably watch for this better than humans do. We tend to assume everyone else is following the rules and often don't notice when someone is about to run the stop sign and hit us.

"If you need a GUI you're not comfortable playing with wget from the command line and/or spending time reading the wget documentation. But you're advanced enough to know it is possible to download whole websites (!)"

I disagree. Sure, I could run wGet from the command line, but then I have to either know what various switches/options are available and what kind of input it's expecting or consult the help parameter/man page. Maybe it's a tool I only use every once in a while.

The GUI puts all those options in front of me at once, with the ability to select them right next to the description of what they are, and the "ugly" GUI doesn't require me to navigate to sub-forms to discover/change other options available to me.

...but then, I'm a programmer, so what do I know?

>I felt like I got some insight into how consciousness works by messing with it.

That's what I got out of it. When people ask me what it's like, I say it's like those stickers people put on large windows so that birds will realize there's a window there and not fly into them. By introducing this aberration, you become aware of the lens through which you perceive everything and get a sense of how the lens may distort reality.

You might also enjoy Hookpad (https://www.hooktheory.com/hookpad/new) and Theorytab (https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/daft-punk/get-luck...) for examples. Hooktheory taught me a lot.

SQL Server has got to be a few lines...

Oh yes, I probably got a third of my ~70GB of MP3's via Audiogalaxy back in the day. I loved that you could see what was available even if there weren't any users who had it that were online. You could queue them up and they would download whenever someone who had them signed on. You could find the most obscure stuff and you would eventually get it. Sometimes I'd even do random things like queuing up all the (non-religious) songs with Jesus in the title. Got some really bizarre songs that way...

Sweet! I'm gonna keep my gmail backup on my google drive!

It's more like a Devo hat...

It would also be interesting to see figures for the number of machines in use by OS, instead of just sales by year. People replace their phones much more frequently than they do their PCs, but that doesn't mean they don't want their PCs or think that they can replace them with Android/iOS devices...

Do you mean with a trackpoint? The Unicomp EnduraPro has buckling spring keys and trackpoint nub between the G, H, and B:

http://pckeyboard.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Store_Code=PCK&Sc...

But what if you have to enter a bunch of numbers?

Really cool idea, and nice site design except for one glaring thing- the size of everything! What the hell!? Is this designed for the legally blind? There isn't even an option in the settings to make things normal-sized... Fix it!

Thanks for the info- The Ornilux glass shown on that birdsandbuildings site is a really great idea:

http://www.ornilux.com

What's wrong with the work the FBI did?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/FBIZodiac...

Look at pages 105-114. Seems pretty believable to me...

Oh man- this could be bad for my productivity... Does this have the blessing of the creators/copyright owners of Set?

Doesn't seem to be taken...

I don't see any reason why one couldn't put a ratcheting hub in the crankset, allowing backward pedaling...

It would benefit Apple greatly if they were to distribute classroom apps for free- at least the basic stuff needed for student/teacher interaction. Second, they should promote wiki-style development of textbooks and associated materials. The textbook market is a huge sham and a leech upon our education system. Apple could make tons while simultaneously saving schools tons if they could free them from the textbook companies.

Looks like the City of San Francisco and I employ similar strategies for fighting crime:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...

Sorta like Starship Troopers, no?

Sure enough, Isle Royale is a bright spot on that map... :)

Yes- I'm getting SD analog channels + HD Local Channels (which the FCC mandates they carry in the clear), although there are CableCard PC tuners out there, and from what I've heard, CableCards are available from Comcast (I just refuse to pay $50/mo, or whatever it is, to get the digital package). I also use my Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender to watch stuff I've DVR'd in the bedroom. I don't see how this is really doing anything different than what ReplayTV was doing. Maybe it's just that there aren't enough people doing it to have drawn the ire of the media companies...

Sure, but that's not how 99% of people get their phones, especially here in the US. From the perspective of a typical US phone buyer, who purchases a phone along with a 2-year contract, the prices are about the same.

I'm guessing Microsoft has gotten a licensing deal with Tribune to get and share the EPG data for Windows Media Center. As far as the video stream, I wonder then how Microsoft/Hauppauge get away with it?

Correct, the price of the phone is about the same and I'd say my Droid Incredible is quite comparable to the iPhone in terms of quality and experience (I had a G1 before, which I loved, but could not quite say was on par with an iPhone). But there's another price- being locked in to AT&T, being locked in to phones made by Apple, being locked out of web sites that use Flash or apps that Lord Jobs has not blessed. The original point still stands, IMHO.

I have a Hauppauge WinTV HVR-2250 and Windows 7, which I use with the cheapest basic cable package Comcast has -no STB, basically just analog and HD Clear QAM of the local channels. Upon installation, Windows scans your signal and asks your ZIP code and service provider, and that's it- the EPG is set up and works great. Hardly what I'd call 'hacky'. If Microsoft can maintain a database and have it work flawlessly, I don't see why Google couldn't...

I have been using my Android phones as my remote for my Windows 7 media center for quite some time. I don't see why this wouldn't be possible with Google TV...

True, but what else can you do? Modern aircraft are too complex to fly without automation... I'm not a CS-educated programmer- are there systems for programming in a way that can somehow be proven to work for all situations? What paradigm do they use for programming at NASA?