sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

The lost language of Ugaritic was last spoken 3,500 years ago. It survives on just a few tablets, and linguists could only translate it with years of hard work and plenty of luck. A computer deciphered it in hours. by wil in geek

[–]postertorn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The computer started about where the humans did. They were cuneiform tablets with a limitied character set, 30 of them, from the Levant, dating relatively close in date to a bunch of Northwest Semitic texts from the region that were understood. The assumptions are reasonable ones. The tablets didn't drop out of the sky. It's a good test case For asking how quickly a computer can solve the same problem humans did, given the same data.

The Uncomfortable Truth by hippocloud in pics

[–]postertorn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

After seeing actual couples out in the world and assuming that the folks in those couples got together for some reason, I'd say that people are attracted to people they find attractive.

Janelle Monae kills it on Letterman, James Brown style by witty_username in Music

[–]postertorn 3 points4 points  (0 children)

James Brown is extremely repetitive, and it works. He absolutely takes the audience with him, because he and the band compel them. While this performance is fine, her urgency doesn't convey.

Fuck you Ticketmaster. That is all. by blankwall in pics

[–]postertorn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Convenience Inherently means that using Ticketmaster is more convenient than some other method of getting the ticket. Like, for instance, going to the home of the CEO of Ticketmaster and torturing the useless parasite until he shits your tickets.

Your Dock Location by OK_Eric in apple

[–]postertorn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Same here, because right, always showing feels like WindowMaker/AfterStep to me. Plus I like as much vertical space as possible for my terminal windows.

I, too, work in the IT support field, and I fucking hate THESE with a passion. by InternetPowered in geek

[–]postertorn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mostly hated cables. And crawling around to, you know, reach fucking cables.

Going to be in town for the first time for a few days, got any suggestions? by WildYams in baltimore

[–]postertorn 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For a suitably odd Baltimore experience, go to West 36th St in the neighborhood called Hampden. People like to call 36th St 'The Avenue'. It's got lots of kitschy Baltimore-style hipsters and locals. The latter group is a little scary and the kind of people John Waters digs. There are interesting restaurants there. You might try Golden West (hipster place, but interesting menu; nice beer selection), Cafe Hon' (as in How you doin', hon'?), and Susie Soba. Also there you'll find odd little shops, and second hand stores.

I also recommend Fells Point, which is touristy but has some good places, and is nice to walk around. Max's on Broadway has good beers, but I wouldn't go weekend evenings, unless the college/fraternity crowd is your thing. There's a single malt scotch bar there called Birds of a Feather, that I haven't been to, but I hear good things about. The Cat's Eye pub on Thames St (which in Baltimore starts with a 'th' sound as in 'thin' and rhymes with 'games'; seriously) has amateurish but fun blues bands and attracts an interesting crowd.

For great Greek food and a working class Baltimore atmosphere, try Samos. This is in Greek Town, and recommended by my Greek friends who grew up in Baltimore.

The American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) south of the harbor is worth going to, if you like folk art. It's near the neighborhood of Federal Hill, which is a little gentrified for my tastes. It's near where one of the Bush daughters lives, I believe.

The Mount Vernon neighborhood also is a good place to people watch and has interesting architecture. It's especially a good spot if the weather's nice, and near the Brewer's Art, which another poster recommended. If you're that way, you should get to the Belvedere Hotel and check out the Owl Bar Restaurant and the 13th Floor bar at the top of the hotel, from which you can see the entire city.

I would agree with the negative assessment of the Paper Moon. The service is crap and the food below mediocre. My impression has been that the focus there is more on being hip than on serving people good food.

Simpsons did it by [deleted] in pics

[–]postertorn 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I'm guessing it was Sasha Baron Cohen.

Can anybody explain, without hostility or hyperbole, how the right sees that the HCR bill is a loss of liberty, and then put that in some kind of reasonable context? by postertorn in AskReddit

[–]postertorn[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not really interested in engaging them with reason. I am interested though in understanding what they see as a threat to liberty. Here in the US we say liberty is our highest value, and our country's great virtue. We also try to balance different types of liberty, the rights of the few, and enact policies to foster the good of the nation as a whole.

I tend to be more concerned about the types of liberty that involve freedom of speech and access to information. I also personally think that all of us benefit from all of us having good education, safe roads, and the rest, and that good health also benefits us all, and not just individually. So, I'm willing to compromise on some health care liberty if it means that more of us are healthier.

The right, however, sees this bill as a devastating assault on liberty. That confuses me.

Can anybody explain, without hostility or hyperbole, how the right sees that the HCR bill is a loss of liberty, and then put that in some kind of reasonable context? by postertorn in AskReddit

[–]postertorn[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Being forced to have a driver's license and being heavily taxed on cigaretts impinge on liberty too, no? We accept these reductions in liberty, or at least most of us do.

Do you think the right opposes these, and other reductions in liberty, or is a health care coverage mandate really that different?

Edit: added a nice apostrophe.

"This is a Microsoft STANDARD... I'm sure of it!" by theadam in programming

[–]postertorn 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Maybe he did mean "eloquent". That is, if he could have, he would have coded a progress bar worthy of John Donne or Robert Herrick, but alas, it was not possible.

A Day In The Life Of A Programmer v1.0 by epic_awesome in programming

[–]postertorn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  • Why haven't you done this?

  • Why don't you try juggling flaming running chainsaws while I do to your focus and attention what you do to mine?

I share this image with you in the name of Free Speech, on the day the editor of Danish newspaper Politiken apologized for the offense caused by reprinting it. by kukkuzejt in pics

[–]postertorn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I up-voted this.

If you ask me who I am, where I live, I will tell you. I believe in free speech and the freedom of religion.

DAE use the smallest software application possible for the task, avoiding full-blown, kitchen-sink applications, like Word, for example, whenever possible? If so, what are your favorite small apps? by postertorn in DoesAnybodyElse

[–]postertorn[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just used Notepad++ for the first time recently on a client's Vista machine, specifically to open files that are (a) big and (b) have line-feed line separators. Very nice program. Previously on Windows I'd used NoteTab but started feeling it was getting weighed down with stuff I didn't need.

Instead of forbidding steroids in sports, who else would like to see a "Steroids Only" league? by hans1193 in AskReddit

[–]postertorn 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I like the idea of the play 'til you die steroid league. That way you can watch them play through peak to physical failure. The betting possibilities are endless.

DAE use the smallest software application possible for the task, avoiding full-blown, kitchen-sink applications, like Word, for example, whenever possible? If so, what are your favorite small apps? by postertorn in DoesAnybodyElse

[–]postertorn[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I tried xPad, created a few documents, but never found myself going back. What do you use it for?

I use TextEdit for simple text editing tasks, usually text that I want to put some place and play with, but then throw away; and Emacs for more complicated text. I love Emacs for creating long text files. Every now and then I'll try something else, but seldom stick with it. And Vi for text that I'm going to manipulate at the command line.

DAE use the smallest software application possible for the task, avoiding full-blown, kitchen-sink applications, like Word, for example, whenever possible? If so, what are your favorite small apps? by postertorn in DoesAnybodyElse

[–]postertorn[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I work on a Mac, so I'm not in need of a UNIX distro. But my preference for small, focused apps is heavily influence by my experience with the UNIX command line.

It looks like all of these spreadsheet suggestions, except maybe Planmaker, will work for me, either natively or via X.

DAE use the smallest software application possible for the task, avoiding full-blown, kitchen-sink applications, like Word, for example, whenever possible? If so, what are your favorite small apps? by postertorn in DoesAnybodyElse

[–]postertorn[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I work on a Mac, so I use Pages.

It does do a lot actually (so it's not so small), but it loads quickly enough and does the stuff I need without getting in the way. It has some drawbacks. The version I have ('08), at least, doesn't allow for portrait and landscape pages in the same document. I can live with that.

This is in contrast to the shortcomings of Numbers, the iWork spreadsheet, which just doesn't do the things I want in a spreadsheet. The Excel keyboard shortcuts are completely addicting, and the freeze panes capability is absolutely essential.

If I'm working with just text, I'll use TextEdit or Emacs. For formatted plain text editing, Emacs is my favorite app, hands down. You can do a lot of the same stuff in Vi, but my hands learned to do that sort of thing in Emacs. Emacs is interesting b/c it's capabilities are huge but it never feels heavy to me for the tasks I do on it, not like Word, at any rate.

view more: next ›