I am not sure if he is suggesting this occurs on slashdot. I have it set to keep me logged in, so I haven't noticed if this is the case.
But - it is certainly the case on many (most?) other websites that the focus goes to the username field when the page is finished loading. The problem, as mpcjans is trying to explain, is that pages take so long to load all their crap - by the time the page has fully loaded, I've already clicked in the username box and typed my username. I then hit tab, and start typing my password. This coincidentally is usually the time that the page finishes loading, which causes the focus to shift back to the username box, causing me to potentially type part or all of my password in the username box (if you do this all quickly, without thinking about it, which I imagine most of us do).
This is the behavior on most sites, as I said, and it is extremely annoying. If you're in the habit of not starting to type your username before the page is finished loading, perhaps it doesn't affect you.
A more useful way to save the life of you and your family is to plan for the earthquake happening at any time. Ensure that your home meets building codes (which should be designed for earthquakes if you live in an earthquake-prone area). Then, "earthquake-proof" your house by strapping heavy stuff (shelves, TVs, computer cases, whatever) down so that it can't fly up and hit you. Then, prepare some emergency supplies, and check/refresh them regularly. Then, drill yourself and your family about what to do when you feel the initial rumbling: immediately drop everything and get under something sturdy like a table or desk. Chances are, your house won't collapse, and your biggest immediate danger is being hit in the head by something flying across the room. Pretty simple stuff, which apparently no one does in Italy according to the GP's quote.
Predictions are not accurate enough yet, no matter what this guy says, to drive vans around town telling everyone to evacuate. It's highly irresponsible on his part to insist that his predictions are accurate enough to be useful in that way - even though he was somewhat close this time. He should tell people about his predictions, but only so people can ensure that they're prepared and emergency services can get ready for the potential load.
Your second point is not off, but you maybe don't understand how science funding works. A lot of stuff doesn't get funded, by the government or anyone else, because it *IS* stupid. Of course you can come up with cases where stupid stuff gets through, but normally only the actually worthwhile stuff is funded. Volcano monitoring (or studying grizzly bears, as McCain derided in one of the presidential candidate debates) is *NOT* stupid, and is quite worthwhile!
The point is that Jindal, McCain, and other republicans *ARE* anti-science. They probably could come up with science projects that even other scientists would consider useless and wasteful, but they don't. They choose to attack projects that ARE useful and interesting, because those cost the most money, and they think that mentioning large figures is all that it takes to get people on their side. I could hardly believe Jindal said what he did about volcano monitoring. He's the friggin' governor of Louisiana - what is his opinion of (undoubtedly expensive) storm and hurricane monitoring/prediction? Did he really believe people would not think that volcano monitoring was useful and necessary? It boggles the mind.
And do you want to know what science funding does for the economy? First, scientists use their salaries to pay for all the things that other people pay for. Second, for expensive equipment and travel costs, the money goes to... wait for it... the equipment and travel providers (who then use it to pay their rent and feed their families). And so on.
Science funding is not a black hole. The money goes right back into the economy, just like infrastructure projects or whatever else (though not necessarily as quickly, but that's beside the point). That's why arguing what specifically the money is spent on is ridiculous!
Italy is on a convergent plate boundary, similar to the Pacific Northwest, where you would expect both volcanoes (due primarily to melting of the subducting plate) and earthquakes (due to the plates slamming into each other).
The first part of your idea would work - you can get word of an earthquake out shortly before it actually hits areas not near the epicenter. However, the problem is that the amount of warning time is - in most realistic cases - not nearly enough for people to be able to get out of unsafe buildings and into safe ones. This would get you literally 10-20 seconds of warning - which is still useful, potentially giving you time to duck under your desk.
Some seismologists at UC Riverside are actually developing a system that uses data from the accelerometer in your Macbook or Thinkpad to map seismic events in real-time - seismometers have a 10-15s delay in reporting, which eliminates the 10-20s warning, but your computer (or purpose-built devices, obviously) can update in real-time. If all the computers in an area start shaking at once, you know it's not just someone bumping their desk, and can signal the warning immediately to give people that time to duck and cover. See http://newsroom.ucr.edu/news_item.html?action=page&id=1806 for a news-type explanation, and http://qcn.stanford.edu/ for the current state of the project, which is developing into a world-wide network of monitoring stations.
The reason 10-20s is still useful is that the best thing you can do to increase your chances of surviving an earthquake while indoors is to stay indoors. Many people are injured or killed because they run outside after feeling the initial p-wave, thinking the building may collapse, only to get hit by bricks that fall off the building's facade (for example) when the bigger s-wave hits and the real shaking happens. Most buildings - especially if you live in an earthquake-prone area - will survive an earthquake (though obviously not in places with a lot of old buildings, like Italy). If you have 10-20s of warning, you can duck under your desk and avoid getting smashed in the head by the bowling ball you keep on your bookshelf (the shelf itself should be attached to the wall) which is the real danger of earthquakes while indoors.
The Lenovo netbooks kept the color-coded headphone and microphone jacks from the Thinkpad design - this was actually mentioned as a feature either on their website or in the documentation that came with mine.
Its design of the Lenovo s10e netbook is actually really disappointing, though, when compared with that of my Thinkpad. The quality is not as good and it doesn't feel as nice/geeky. Not to mention that there's no nub-mouse, or middle mouse button, as Thinkpads have.
That said I do think it's by far the best design of the netbooks I've handled, and that is a part of my decision to choose this one though I probably could have found a better deal on another one.
I got this purse at REI for my 10" Lenovo s10e - http://www.rei.com/product/763408 - it fits it perfectly, with room for the power adapter, bluetooth mouse, and all kinds of great stuff (makes me wish I could get away with a man-purse...)
It doesn't look girly - I guess it's supposed to look like a miniature messenger bag - but it IS a purse. It makes up for the relative manliness of the black s10e over some of the other netbooks out there, especially the white ones. It's not as manly as my T61 thinkpad though. Hmm, maybe I should get a purse for that one too?
I don't think stickers are actually that great of an idea. It's a matter of personal taste, I guess, but stickers to me signal that you're not creative enough to design decorations yourself. On a Dell laptop I got 5-6 years ago, I painted over the Dell logo with a penguin in acrylic; it looks really nice (and yes - cute) and got nice comments occasionally. I did a similar penguin design for the case badge on my tower computer. I'm still working out in my head what, if anything, to put on my newer computers; I may leave the T61 blank so that it looks professional (I really like the basic thinkpad design as it is) but will probably do something with the netbook.
Anyway, my point is that to make your netbook really stand out, try to customize it with your own creativity. For example, if you're good at cartoons, draw some characters on it with a sharpie. If you can paint, paint a landscape or something. Even if you think you're not creative, just try it (practice on scrap first, obviously) - you will be much more satisfied than if you put some lame stickers on it that you will get sick of, and others (especially girls) will be really, really, impressed, even if it's not astoundingly artistic. Just have fun with it!
Agreed - I had my doubts about KDE 4 and thought it was terrible when I tried the 4.0 and 4.1 releases. However, now I've been using 4.2 since it came out, and when I recently set up another computer I tried to go back to 3.5 (it's a netbook and I figured 3.5 would be faster) and I couldn't. I got used to the improvements in 4.x and don't want to go back.
Which is not to say there aren't still features in 3.5 not in 4.x yet that I dearly miss. KDE's not quite there yet and I can see why many still wouldn't want to switch. But despite their gaff with 4.0 - which I think really was a bad move - 4.x is coming along nicely and in time most people will realize this and start using it.
My point is that the "KDE 4 sucks" talk is the natural result of people resisting change, combined with some pretty big mistakes the KDE devs made (the 4.0 release and the many still-missing features from 3.5, for example.) It'll die out within the next couple of major KDE 4 releases, I suspect.
I agree it's stupid, but it's not as bad as you made it out to be. They were not confused by a hot dog wrapper - the hot dogs were apparently wrapped in white packaging and taped up with duct tape, according to your second link. I certainly wouldn't have assumed it was bombs, as someone apparently did, but I wouldn't have thought it was just a bunch of hot dogs either.
Your choice of wording leads one to think that you're saying there was a hot dog wrapper, as in the thing that is wrapped around the hot dog when you buy it at the stadium. I'm sure you did this intentionally to make it seem more ridiculous, and normally that's fine - but you've kind of crossed into being dishonest about it.
On an off-topic side note, the third link you give - geez - so many puns and jokes in there I almost gagged. I really don't like how every news outlet competes for the most bad puns and jokes in their headlines and in the articles. Local papers are the worst, taking AP stories and "adding value" by writing a "funny" headline. I wouldn't think that is something that greatly helped the decline of newspapers, but it sure hasn't hurt it.
I know you're joking with the cables, but there really is a huge difference between Apple's cheap earphones and a good model from Shure or Etymotic - even if you get the $50-80 versions and not the $100-300 ones.
If they sold a short extension cord with the in-line buttons on it so that you could use any headphones you wanted, that might be nice for those who appreciate good quality sound. Those of us that do like good sound get used to and learn to love the sound from whatever components we use. I'm not going to switch from using the $70 Etymotic ER-6 earbuds I have used for years just so I can use the in-line buttons on an Apple product (for the record I've never owned an ipod or iphone, and don't plan to.)
Average consumers obviously don't care, and probably just switch to whatever earbuds came with their yearly ipod/iphone upgrade without noticing if it's any different.
The thing is that those features already exist in the DSLR systems - the exception being dynamic range (how it handles brightness/contrast.) If you're able to articulate the problems with whatever camera you purchased so clearly, I bet you'd have a lot of fun with a DSLR - even a cheap one - and you'd figure out how to use it well pretty quickly. Over time many of those features will be added to the point-and-shoot cameras, but will never quite match them both for marketing and technological reasons (there is a reason DSLRs go up in size as they go up in capability).
The funny thing about dynamic range is that negative film was not that much better, and slide film was actually worse, than the average DSLR sensors. The analog nature of film made over-exposure less ugly, though, and that actually is an important part of the iconic, pleasant look of black and white film. On that front - making the fall-off to over- and under-exposure more smooth and pleasant - there is much room for improvement with digital.
Consider this - silhouettes, an ubiquitous art technique now, became as popular as it did because of photography's limitations.
My point is that photography has never been about capturing exactly what the eye sees - our eyes make so many automatic, instantaneous adjustments - even when looking at a still image - that technology that mimics what we can perceive is quite far off. One has to work around the limitations of the medium, and the best will find ways to use the limitations to their advantage (e.g. silhouettes).
If you're not already familiar with the technique, look up some High Dynamic Range (HDR) images here - http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=hdr&w=all This is a technique designed to mimic what the eye can see. If you browse through some of those photos, what you'll see is mostly hideous - people have really overdone it and the results are neither natural looking or photographically pleasing. You may see a few tastefully done images, and that is something I'm sure camera makers are working on - to use a similar technique in-camera to fake higher dynamic range in a tasteful, natural way.
Most recent Canon DSLRs actually have something like this that's supposed to retain more detail in the highlights - I don't use it on my 40D as it doesn't really do a whole lot. But the idea is there - just needs a lot of improvement.
Photographers have long been altering the capabilities of the medium, be it film or digital. For example, graduated neutral density filters placed in front of the lens that limit light throughput over only part of the image are widely used in landscape photography, where often the sky is much brighter than the subject and thus needs to be darkened with the filter in order for the film or sensor to capture everything.
I am surprised that camera makers haven't figured out the severe limitations of point-and-shoot cameras - such as you've described - are actually noticed by average consumers (which I don't think you are by the way). Cameras with the features you describe should be mostly possible with today's technology, and would sell well if they were appropriately marketed, but no one is making them because it's easier to sell cameras based on the number of megapixels. Sigma and Leica have cameras that almost fit the bill, but they are expensive and lacking in many ways.
There is clearly a lack of motivation to make the cheaper cameras better, though - the cheapest DSLRs sell like hotcakes and many choose them over the best point-and-shoots because the quality difference is very apparent. This means more money for the camera manufacturer, so what's their incentive to make those people want to buy the cheaper point-and-shoots instead, when it probably costs more money to develop features for the smaller cameras?
Unless it's really awful, I find mistakes in the vocals or playing on album tracks to be endearing. It gives you a sense that the musicians were really playing it and putting a lot of emotion into it, as you described. I can think of several songs from the 60's and 70's that have flaws either in the recording or in the performances, but I wouldn't have it any other way because they were excellent takes.
When it's "perfect" you lose some of that. When you say it takes a lot of hard work from the producers and technicians to make it sound dirty and spontaneous - well, that just doesn't seem right. Why not just let it be dirty and spontaneous to begin with and not worry about small mistakes? Keep it a multitrack recording so you can try to do something about it if there are really big problems, sure, but for the most part just let it be.
The problem is that non-HDCP monitors are perfectly capable of handling HD-resolution content. The DRM is artificially restricting what you can do with your equipment. If I buy a blu-ray disc with 1080p resolution, I expect to be able to play it at that resolution. If my computer is capable of playing 1080p content that I download, it would be outrageous to apply arbitrary restrictions on purchased blu-rays based on HDCP compliance.
No, I don't HAVE to watch what I just purchased in the full resolution available on the disc. It's not a matter of life or death (that's a straw-man argument.) But why shouldn't I be able to if my computer can handle it? I paid for the 1080p resolution. Why should I be restricted to 480p? I would have bought the DVD if I wanted that. Actually, I WOULDN'T have bought the DVD, because I enjoy HD movies and have a monitor capable of displaying them.
And maybe you and your grandma can't tell the difference, but on a 21" screen with 1680x1050 native resolution, I can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p (and obviously 480p.)
Why should anyone have to buy a new monitor (around $200 for a decent one) when the one they already have is perfectly capable to play the full resolution they paid for? It's stupid.
Now, I do know that just about every monitor sold now is 'HDCP compliant', and that in a few years there will be very few people using old monitors/TVs so it won't seem like a big deal. But it's still stupid.
It actually takes much more time than that. I keep myself very well groomed but it annoys me every day. It really does take a lot of time - time that I could be reading slashdot!
It *is* a larger personality issue. Most nerds I know prioritize things very differently than non-nerds. I'm much more willing to spend time doing certain things that non-nerds would consider a complete waste of time, than things that non-nerds consider essential (including showering and doing laundry, but non-grooming related stuff also.)
Your other repliers all disagree with you so far, so I thought I would chip in some support (which moderators have as well.)
You're right, and most who disagree with you are lying to themselves if they think they were never like that. Every nerd has some sort of realization like this at some point. Many have it in high school, many more in college. I realized the same thing you did in college a couple of years ago (I'm 22 now and in grad school) and when I did, my total sum interaction with females went way down, but the quality of that interaction when I did have it went way up.
Instead of acting like a creeper and having no female friends despite many creepy (in retrospect) attempts, when I started actively avoiding those things I did that I recognized as being creepy I ended up naturally becoming friends with girls in my classes - even relatively non-nerdy ones (including some that were very attractive.) Of course they weren't my "BFFs" and I only met with a few of them outside of class, and I only kept in contact with a couple of them after graduating, but it was really pleasant to be able to interact with people in a less socially-inept way than usual.
I'm still socially inept, but after moving from New York to California for grad school most of the new friends I've made here are female. It helps of course that I'm in geology, a science that for some reason is suddenly being dominated by female students.
I'm sure I still act creepily towards females sometimes, but I can tell at least that I'm getting better at it.
I don't think that's quite true. There are groups of people that ostracize female nerds/geeks, yes - in the example you're replying to, it's the non-nerd users who are calling for tech support who think a female could never be knowledgeable in such things.
Within most nerdy circles females are revered. An earlier thread discussed how nerdy types typically are more likely to help out a girl with anything simply because they're female - for many nerds the simple act of interacting with a female is enough to drive him to do something, because that female interaction happens relatively rarely. The idea of having a relationship beyond being friends or even just acquaintances in many cases doesn't even play into it. Though most people trip over themselves to help out females because of the thought of sex, that is not necessarily the case with nerds who just long for any interaction with females. It is not easy to have a lot of interaction with females when the only people who will be your good friends are fellow nerds, because there are very few female nerds, and thus fewer possible female friends.
So if a nerd *does* have a nerdy female friend, that may be their only outlet for regular interaction with females, which most guys crave for. And especially because nerds are more likely to not handle social situations well, it's easy for them (by "them" I mean "us", or at least I will include myself) to lay it on too thick and come on too strong, even if nothing beyond friendship is being implied.
That is the real problem - geek girls get *too much* attention from geek guys, because they outnumber them by a huge margin.
Yes, there are many different nerd and geek sub-types. I don't speak for all of them. I do know there certainly are immature ones who regress to playground behavior, as you've described. If you think of people you know like that, chances are they're the ones you take least seriously anyway.
It's been interesting to note that they seem to be going after a younger and younger demographic than they used to. I'm way out of the loop, but I can't think of any newer manufactured stars that weren't around ten years ago. We aren't seeing new people like Britney Spears and all her rip-offs. The ones that get really popular these days among the crowd that goes for the popular stuff and can pay for it themselves - older high school kids and college kids for the most part - are fairly "real", though obviously in many cases their personas are probably embellished. I'm thinking acts like Coldplay and John Meyer. I don't listen to or know anything about either of them, but as far as I know they are fairly genuine - commercialized perhaps, but with genuine roots.
But look where the huge moneymakers are - the ones that are unavoidable, even to someone like me who wouldn't recognize a single name on the top-20 chart. It's the Disney stuff - Hannah Montana, High School Musical, etc. We don't see the boy bands with cute 20 year olds any more - those were great for record companies because girls aged 8-22+ liked them. But now, only the younger ones are dumb enough for it.
Though I don't like any of the popular music these days, I think the industry as a whole is undergoing a positive shift. It is inevitable that there will be huge changes soon because of the RIAA's crap, but in the mean time, the manufactured superstars are having less and less acceptance as it is, and "real" artists are hitting it big. Of course they're still going to be the ones willing to do whatever it takes to be popular, including making their music as easy to like as possible (basically, by dumbing it down.)
One thing that needs to be decreased is the influence of rap. I like the hip-hop from the 80's, back when it was either fun (Rapper's Delight, etc.) or political (Fight The Power, etc.) - today's rap and R&B artists are the 90's boy bands and divas of today. I'm not suggesting they go away entirely - there probably are some decent artists. It will just be more difficult for the bad ones to survive, because as it is they only gain popularity because the record companies pay radio stations to play them.
For the record, I like music because I like it, and don't care how popular it is (I listen to indie bands, but only really the best ones - not obscure ones just so I can say I listen to them.) It so happens that I am just not into the commercial style that gets really popular, unless it's really good (don't laugh, but a lot of Michael Jackson's stuff is actually pretty great - try the Thriller album.) That's going back to the early 70s, when commercialization really took off. I'm 22 and my first music experience (besides Raffi) was with The Beatles. Compared to them, all the stuff I heard on the radio growing up was awful. As a nerd with no friends I never really listened to the radio or heard popular music anyway, so that probably helped too:)
That is the point - proponents of censorship use "child abuse" to get people emotionally attached to their idea. If they didn't trumpet this as being the cure for "child abuse", people would be against censoring the internet.
It takes an appeal to emotion for most people to understand things. That's why that famous poem is so powerful, and it applies perfectly to this situation (and the 'big brother' things the UK has been doing in general.)
So basically - as you say, emotion trumps rationality, and emotion is being used to advance irrational censorship. Rational arguments can't be used to fight emotion. A good emotional argument - the poem - maybe it can.
I made another post to this effect, in which basically I agreed with you.
We could have taken this opportunity to discuss in our own way the technical categories - the stuff most people don't even notice, like sound design, cinematography, and special effects. Unlike most of the bigger categories, they usually do a decent job awarding the technical categories.
And by the way, to others: Slumdog Millionaire really was great, and I recommend that people see it. Nerds are especially in a position to appreciate it, I think. It's vastly different from Hollywood fare, and it isn't a "heart warming rags to riches story" at all, despite what some may have you believe.
Guess what - I see a lot of movies, but I don't watch TV. I love sci-fi as any good nerd does, but not in TV form (besides Quantum Leap and Star Trek TOS.)
Why do you assume that everyone here is interested in television shows, and that no one likes movies? We're all nerds, but we're not all sci-fi TV show nerds. I ignore or "mod down" stories about TV shows - which pop up frequently - because I'm not interested.
I personally was not that interested in the academy awards - I saw 3/5 of the best picture nominees and many of the other nominees, and it was pretty obvious what was going to win most of the biggest categories.
There's more to it than that, though. There's a definite technology-nerdy side. The more "technical" categories are far more interesting than who wins best actress (though there's no reason nerds can't appreciate fine acting, directing, etc. - I certainly do.) The nerdy stuff that most people don't pay attention to, like cinematography, sound/sound editing, and special effects. Unlike the big categories, they usually do a pretty good job awarding the technical categories to films that deserve it.
Why shouldn't slashdot be host to a discussion about sound and special effects techniques? How is that not as nerdy as discussing TV shows (with little of the discussion likely being about technical aspects)?
I think the article is poorly written. It is sort of digg-like. But I think the backlash against it is ridiculous.
I have thought of the same thing, and I don't think it's really sci-fi. It's perfectly plausible, even today with some limitations, and something I think people would pay decent money for.
There are problems preventing such a system from being immediately available (at good quality), but they are all surmountable.
1. Printing technology. It's too expensive to print multiple, high-quality pages, on demand. They can do it at magazines and newspapers because they've paid for multi-million dollar printing presses, and they print out hundreds of thousands of copies per run. Figure out the cost of printing high-quality stuff with lots of pictures in your home ink jet or laser printer - and then consider that good magazine print is still of higher quality than what you can produce. This should be reasonable to remedy, and could kick-start a printer technology revolution that will improve home and office printing quality and costs as well. No downsides here, and as you suggest, recycling technology improvements will be very useful as well. Remember the story about xerox, I think, that has the printer where the ink fades away after a day or two? This could be a great application for something like that. Also, they'd need to be bound well, so it's easy to handle.
2. Kiosk penetration, speed of printing. Eventually, these will need to be everywhere you normally can buy newspapers and magazines today. This means they need to be relatively cheap to produce and to service. I imagine they could be contracted out, so businesses don't have to actually buy the kiosk (I assume digital photo printing kiosks work like this - I have no idea though.) Airports are the obvious place to install these first - I refuse to pay the airport premium normally, but I would do so for this, if it was as good as we imagine it should be. Also, these need to be fast. No more than 2-5 minutes at most for an average size printout, and even that is too much for someone on the run who only has time to grab a newspaper and go (print media will be available for a long time for this reason, until printing speeds get ridiculous.)
3. Content. Everything has to be available, from any kiosk. That means the big names like NYT (especially the crossword), The Economist, syndicated comics, etc., but also small names, including things that are presently online-only. I want to get my favorite web comics and news sites, including potentially blogs. Imagine getting a few pages of highly rated Slashdot stories, including the +5 rated comments, to read while you're traveling. Or on the toilet, where they likely belong;)
4. Portable personalized settings. Easily solved by having to create an account. You can set up pre-sets of what you want on various occasions either at the kiosk itself or online at home, so you don't have to pick through a list of thousands of items each time. You could just swipe an RFID card, select from among your presets on the touch-screen, and grab the printout. Your account is automatically charged. Of course, it would be nice if you could get it without setting up an account, so it should be able to work either way.
5. Cost. To be widely adopted, it would have to be cheap. I imagine it may even have to be cheaper than the cost of the paper and ink. Hopefully this can be off-set by advertising revenue. Buying a magazine at the newsstand today costs upwards of $8-10. That's too much; at that price it's not something most people would pay for every day or even every week. It would obviously scale based on how many pages you print, but it should be closer to around $4-5 for a generous amount of stuff. If you choose your preset with just a few pages of blog posts, slashdot stories, crossword puzzles, and web comics for when you're at the airport and on the plane, it would have to be no more than a couple bucks.
6. Openness. A huge problem is that you can guarantee this would be run by a single company, and they will charge too much and ultimately fail. What needs to happen is that they are open a
I agree with one thing the other replier said - I disregard Ubuntu simply because I used other distros first, and found one that works the way I like (openSUSE), and don't like some of the decisions that the Ubuntu devs have made regarding Ubuntu's use. As you say, it really doesn't seem to be intended for more technically inclined users, so it shouldn't be surprising that those users - who probably do use other distros and aren't really familiar with Ubuntu - dislike Ubuntu and actively deride it for pandering to the masses.
I think part of the problem is that in order to obtain the success it has, Ubuntu has had to change the way some things are done in Linux/Unix. Sometimes these are improvements, but sometimes they aren't, and even if they are the 'hard-core' linux users won't like them if it makes things more like Windows or OS X.
It is the same thing with KDE vs. Gnome. Gnome and Ubuntu follow the same philosophies (and the devs are probably close-knit) and their goal is to please the masses, which means making compromises and limitations not acceptable to the aforementioned technically inclined users who like to have things their own way.
I agree with you completely, it's really not a big deal to sit through the ads on Hulu... except when you get that rare extremely annoying one, and it plays it at every single break.
I absolutely couldn't stand the one they had for a Fox reality show about isolation chambers. I watched The Daily Show and Colbert one day and at every single commercial break during both shows, they played that stupid ad. Considering the audience for those shows, it was a really poor effort at targeting the right market, too.
Thanks; while I live in California currently, I grew up about a mile from the UB north campus and next time I go back I will know where to eat - besides for free at my parents' house of course:)
Slashdot Mirror
I am not sure if he is suggesting this occurs on slashdot. I have it set to keep me logged in, so I haven't noticed if this is the case.
But - it is certainly the case on many (most?) other websites that the focus goes to the username field when the page is finished loading. The problem, as mpcjans is trying to explain, is that pages take so long to load all their crap - by the time the page has fully loaded, I've already clicked in the username box and typed my username. I then hit tab, and start typing my password. This coincidentally is usually the time that the page finishes loading, which causes the focus to shift back to the username box, causing me to potentially type part or all of my password in the username box (if you do this all quickly, without thinking about it, which I imagine most of us do).
This is the behavior on most sites, as I said, and it is extremely annoying. If you're in the habit of not starting to type your username before the page is finished loading, perhaps it doesn't affect you.
A more useful way to save the life of you and your family is to plan for the earthquake happening at any time. Ensure that your home meets building codes (which should be designed for earthquakes if you live in an earthquake-prone area). Then, "earthquake-proof" your house by strapping heavy stuff (shelves, TVs, computer cases, whatever) down so that it can't fly up and hit you. Then, prepare some emergency supplies, and check/refresh them regularly. Then, drill yourself and your family about what to do when you feel the initial rumbling: immediately drop everything and get under something sturdy like a table or desk. Chances are, your house won't collapse, and your biggest immediate danger is being hit in the head by something flying across the room. Pretty simple stuff, which apparently no one does in Italy according to the GP's quote.
Predictions are not accurate enough yet, no matter what this guy says, to drive vans around town telling everyone to evacuate. It's highly irresponsible on his part to insist that his predictions are accurate enough to be useful in that way - even though he was somewhat close this time. He should tell people about his predictions, but only so people can ensure that they're prepared and emergency services can get ready for the potential load.
Your second point is not off, but you maybe don't understand how science funding works. A lot of stuff doesn't get funded, by the government or anyone else, because it *IS* stupid. Of course you can come up with cases where stupid stuff gets through, but normally only the actually worthwhile stuff is funded. Volcano monitoring (or studying grizzly bears, as McCain derided in one of the presidential candidate debates) is *NOT* stupid, and is quite worthwhile!
The point is that Jindal, McCain, and other republicans *ARE* anti-science. They probably could come up with science projects that even other scientists would consider useless and wasteful, but they don't. They choose to attack projects that ARE useful and interesting, because those cost the most money, and they think that mentioning large figures is all that it takes to get people on their side. I could hardly believe Jindal said what he did about volcano monitoring. He's the friggin' governor of Louisiana - what is his opinion of (undoubtedly expensive) storm and hurricane monitoring/prediction? Did he really believe people would not think that volcano monitoring was useful and necessary? It boggles the mind.
And do you want to know what science funding does for the economy? First, scientists use their salaries to pay for all the things that other people pay for. Second, for expensive equipment and travel costs, the money goes to... wait for it... the equipment and travel providers (who then use it to pay their rent and feed their families). And so on.
Science funding is not a black hole. The money goes right back into the economy, just like infrastructure projects or whatever else (though not necessarily as quickly, but that's beside the point). That's why arguing what specifically the money is spent on is ridiculous!
Italy is on a convergent plate boundary, similar to the Pacific Northwest, where you would expect both volcanoes (due primarily to melting of the subducting plate) and earthquakes (due to the plates slamming into each other).
The first part of your idea would work - you can get word of an earthquake out shortly before it actually hits areas not near the epicenter. However, the problem is that the amount of warning time is - in most realistic cases - not nearly enough for people to be able to get out of unsafe buildings and into safe ones. This would get you literally 10-20 seconds of warning - which is still useful, potentially giving you time to duck under your desk.
Some seismologists at UC Riverside are actually developing a system that uses data from the accelerometer in your Macbook or Thinkpad to map seismic events in real-time - seismometers have a 10-15s delay in reporting, which eliminates the 10-20s warning, but your computer (or purpose-built devices, obviously) can update in real-time. If all the computers in an area start shaking at once, you know it's not just someone bumping their desk, and can signal the warning immediately to give people that time to duck and cover. See http://newsroom.ucr.edu/news_item.html?action=page&id=1806 for a news-type explanation, and http://qcn.stanford.edu/ for the current state of the project, which is developing into a world-wide network of monitoring stations.
The reason 10-20s is still useful is that the best thing you can do to increase your chances of surviving an earthquake while indoors is to stay indoors. Many people are injured or killed because they run outside after feeling the initial p-wave, thinking the building may collapse, only to get hit by bricks that fall off the building's facade (for example) when the bigger s-wave hits and the real shaking happens. Most buildings - especially if you live in an earthquake-prone area - will survive an earthquake (though obviously not in places with a lot of old buildings, like Italy). If you have 10-20s of warning, you can duck under your desk and avoid getting smashed in the head by the bowling ball you keep on your bookshelf (the shelf itself should be attached to the wall) which is the real danger of earthquakes while indoors.
(IAAG - I am a geologist)
Top men.
The Lenovo netbooks kept the color-coded headphone and microphone jacks from the Thinkpad design - this was actually mentioned as a feature either on their website or in the documentation that came with mine.
Its design of the Lenovo s10e netbook is actually really disappointing, though, when compared with that of my Thinkpad. The quality is not as good and it doesn't feel as nice/geeky. Not to mention that there's no nub-mouse, or middle mouse button, as Thinkpads have.
That said I do think it's by far the best design of the netbooks I've handled, and that is a part of my decision to choose this one though I probably could have found a better deal on another one.
I got this purse at REI for my 10" Lenovo s10e - http://www.rei.com/product/763408 - it fits it perfectly, with room for the power adapter, bluetooth mouse, and all kinds of great stuff (makes me wish I could get away with a man-purse...)
It doesn't look girly - I guess it's supposed to look like a miniature messenger bag - but it IS a purse. It makes up for the relative manliness of the black s10e over some of the other netbooks out there, especially the white ones. It's not as manly as my T61 thinkpad though. Hmm, maybe I should get a purse for that one too?
I don't think stickers are actually that great of an idea. It's a matter of personal taste, I guess, but stickers to me signal that you're not creative enough to design decorations yourself. On a Dell laptop I got 5-6 years ago, I painted over the Dell logo with a penguin in acrylic; it looks really nice (and yes - cute) and got nice comments occasionally. I did a similar penguin design for the case badge on my tower computer. I'm still working out in my head what, if anything, to put on my newer computers; I may leave the T61 blank so that it looks professional (I really like the basic thinkpad design as it is) but will probably do something with the netbook.
Anyway, my point is that to make your netbook really stand out, try to customize it with your own creativity. For example, if you're good at cartoons, draw some characters on it with a sharpie. If you can paint, paint a landscape or something. Even if you think you're not creative, just try it (practice on scrap first, obviously) - you will be much more satisfied than if you put some lame stickers on it that you will get sick of, and others (especially girls) will be really, really, impressed, even if it's not astoundingly artistic. Just have fun with it!
Agreed - I had my doubts about KDE 4 and thought it was terrible when I tried the 4.0 and 4.1 releases. However, now I've been using 4.2 since it came out, and when I recently set up another computer I tried to go back to 3.5 (it's a netbook and I figured 3.5 would be faster) and I couldn't. I got used to the improvements in 4.x and don't want to go back.
Which is not to say there aren't still features in 3.5 not in 4.x yet that I dearly miss. KDE's not quite there yet and I can see why many still wouldn't want to switch. But despite their gaff with 4.0 - which I think really was a bad move - 4.x is coming along nicely and in time most people will realize this and start using it.
My point is that the "KDE 4 sucks" talk is the natural result of people resisting change, combined with some pretty big mistakes the KDE devs made (the 4.0 release and the many still-missing features from 3.5, for example.) It'll die out within the next couple of major KDE 4 releases, I suspect.
I agree it's stupid, but it's not as bad as you made it out to be. They were not confused by a hot dog wrapper - the hot dogs were apparently wrapped in white packaging and taped up with duct tape, according to your second link. I certainly wouldn't have assumed it was bombs, as someone apparently did, but I wouldn't have thought it was just a bunch of hot dogs either.
Your choice of wording leads one to think that you're saying there was a hot dog wrapper, as in the thing that is wrapped around the hot dog when you buy it at the stadium. I'm sure you did this intentionally to make it seem more ridiculous, and normally that's fine - but you've kind of crossed into being dishonest about it.
On an off-topic side note, the third link you give - geez - so many puns and jokes in there I almost gagged. I really don't like how every news outlet competes for the most bad puns and jokes in their headlines and in the articles. Local papers are the worst, taking AP stories and "adding value" by writing a "funny" headline. I wouldn't think that is something that greatly helped the decline of newspapers, but it sure hasn't hurt it.
I know you're joking with the cables, but there really is a huge difference between Apple's cheap earphones and a good model from Shure or Etymotic - even if you get the $50-80 versions and not the $100-300 ones.
If they sold a short extension cord with the in-line buttons on it so that you could use any headphones you wanted, that might be nice for those who appreciate good quality sound. Those of us that do like good sound get used to and learn to love the sound from whatever components we use. I'm not going to switch from using the $70 Etymotic ER-6 earbuds I have used for years just so I can use the in-line buttons on an Apple product (for the record I've never owned an ipod or iphone, and don't plan to.)
Average consumers obviously don't care, and probably just switch to whatever earbuds came with their yearly ipod/iphone upgrade without noticing if it's any different.
The thing is that those features already exist in the DSLR systems - the exception being dynamic range (how it handles brightness/contrast.) If you're able to articulate the problems with whatever camera you purchased so clearly, I bet you'd have a lot of fun with a DSLR - even a cheap one - and you'd figure out how to use it well pretty quickly. Over time many of those features will be added to the point-and-shoot cameras, but will never quite match them both for marketing and technological reasons (there is a reason DSLRs go up in size as they go up in capability).
The funny thing about dynamic range is that negative film was not that much better, and slide film was actually worse, than the average DSLR sensors. The analog nature of film made over-exposure less ugly, though, and that actually is an important part of the iconic, pleasant look of black and white film. On that front - making the fall-off to over- and under-exposure more smooth and pleasant - there is much room for improvement with digital.
Consider this - silhouettes, an ubiquitous art technique now, became as popular as it did because of photography's limitations.
My point is that photography has never been about capturing exactly what the eye sees - our eyes make so many automatic, instantaneous adjustments - even when looking at a still image - that technology that mimics what we can perceive is quite far off. One has to work around the limitations of the medium, and the best will find ways to use the limitations to their advantage (e.g. silhouettes).
If you're not already familiar with the technique, look up some High Dynamic Range (HDR) images here - http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=hdr&w=all This is a technique designed to mimic what the eye can see. If you browse through some of those photos, what you'll see is mostly hideous - people have really overdone it and the results are neither natural looking or photographically pleasing. You may see a few tastefully done images, and that is something I'm sure camera makers are working on - to use a similar technique in-camera to fake higher dynamic range in a tasteful, natural way.
Most recent Canon DSLRs actually have something like this that's supposed to retain more detail in the highlights - I don't use it on my 40D as it doesn't really do a whole lot. But the idea is there - just needs a lot of improvement.
Photographers have long been altering the capabilities of the medium, be it film or digital. For example, graduated neutral density filters placed in front of the lens that limit light throughput over only part of the image are widely used in landscape photography, where often the sky is much brighter than the subject and thus needs to be darkened with the filter in order for the film or sensor to capture everything.
I am surprised that camera makers haven't figured out the severe limitations of point-and-shoot cameras - such as you've described - are actually noticed by average consumers (which I don't think you are by the way). Cameras with the features you describe should be mostly possible with today's technology, and would sell well if they were appropriately marketed, but no one is making them because it's easier to sell cameras based on the number of megapixels. Sigma and Leica have cameras that almost fit the bill, but they are expensive and lacking in many ways.
There is clearly a lack of motivation to make the cheaper cameras better, though - the cheapest DSLRs sell like hotcakes and many choose them over the best point-and-shoots because the quality difference is very apparent. This means more money for the camera manufacturer, so what's their incentive to make those people want to buy the cheaper point-and-shoots instead, when it probably costs more money to develop features for the smaller cameras?
Unless it's really awful, I find mistakes in the vocals or playing on album tracks to be endearing. It gives you a sense that the musicians were really playing it and putting a lot of emotion into it, as you described. I can think of several songs from the 60's and 70's that have flaws either in the recording or in the performances, but I wouldn't have it any other way because they were excellent takes.
When it's "perfect" you lose some of that. When you say it takes a lot of hard work from the producers and technicians to make it sound dirty and spontaneous - well, that just doesn't seem right. Why not just let it be dirty and spontaneous to begin with and not worry about small mistakes? Keep it a multitrack recording so you can try to do something about it if there are really big problems, sure, but for the most part just let it be.
The problem is that non-HDCP monitors are perfectly capable of handling HD-resolution content. The DRM is artificially restricting what you can do with your equipment. If I buy a blu-ray disc with 1080p resolution, I expect to be able to play it at that resolution. If my computer is capable of playing 1080p content that I download, it would be outrageous to apply arbitrary restrictions on purchased blu-rays based on HDCP compliance.
No, I don't HAVE to watch what I just purchased in the full resolution available on the disc. It's not a matter of life or death (that's a straw-man argument.) But why shouldn't I be able to if my computer can handle it? I paid for the 1080p resolution. Why should I be restricted to 480p? I would have bought the DVD if I wanted that. Actually, I WOULDN'T have bought the DVD, because I enjoy HD movies and have a monitor capable of displaying them.
And maybe you and your grandma can't tell the difference, but on a 21" screen with 1680x1050 native resolution, I can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p (and obviously 480p.)
Why should anyone have to buy a new monitor (around $200 for a decent one) when the one they already have is perfectly capable to play the full resolution they paid for? It's stupid.
Now, I do know that just about every monitor sold now is 'HDCP compliant', and that in a few years there will be very few people using old monitors/TVs so it won't seem like a big deal. But it's still stupid.
It actually takes much more time than that. I keep myself very well groomed but it annoys me every day. It really does take a lot of time - time that I could be reading slashdot!
It *is* a larger personality issue. Most nerds I know prioritize things very differently than non-nerds. I'm much more willing to spend time doing certain things that non-nerds would consider a complete waste of time, than things that non-nerds consider essential (including showering and doing laundry, but non-grooming related stuff also.)
Your other repliers all disagree with you so far, so I thought I would chip in some support (which moderators have as well.)
You're right, and most who disagree with you are lying to themselves if they think they were never like that. Every nerd has some sort of realization like this at some point. Many have it in high school, many more in college. I realized the same thing you did in college a couple of years ago (I'm 22 now and in grad school) and when I did, my total sum interaction with females went way down, but the quality of that interaction when I did have it went way up.
Instead of acting like a creeper and having no female friends despite many creepy (in retrospect) attempts, when I started actively avoiding those things I did that I recognized as being creepy I ended up naturally becoming friends with girls in my classes - even relatively non-nerdy ones (including some that were very attractive.) Of course they weren't my "BFFs" and I only met with a few of them outside of class, and I only kept in contact with a couple of them after graduating, but it was really pleasant to be able to interact with people in a less socially-inept way than usual.
I'm still socially inept, but after moving from New York to California for grad school most of the new friends I've made here are female. It helps of course that I'm in geology, a science that for some reason is suddenly being dominated by female students.
I'm sure I still act creepily towards females sometimes, but I can tell at least that I'm getting better at it.
I don't think that's quite true. There are groups of people that ostracize female nerds/geeks, yes - in the example you're replying to, it's the non-nerd users who are calling for tech support who think a female could never be knowledgeable in such things.
Within most nerdy circles females are revered. An earlier thread discussed how nerdy types typically are more likely to help out a girl with anything simply because they're female - for many nerds the simple act of interacting with a female is enough to drive him to do something, because that female interaction happens relatively rarely. The idea of having a relationship beyond being friends or even just acquaintances in many cases doesn't even play into it. Though most people trip over themselves to help out females because of the thought of sex, that is not necessarily the case with nerds who just long for any interaction with females. It is not easy to have a lot of interaction with females when the only people who will be your good friends are fellow nerds, because there are very few female nerds, and thus fewer possible female friends.
So if a nerd *does* have a nerdy female friend, that may be their only outlet for regular interaction with females, which most guys crave for. And especially because nerds are more likely to not handle social situations well, it's easy for them (by "them" I mean "us", or at least I will include myself) to lay it on too thick and come on too strong, even if nothing beyond friendship is being implied.
That is the real problem - geek girls get *too much* attention from geek guys, because they outnumber them by a huge margin.
Yes, there are many different nerd and geek sub-types. I don't speak for all of them. I do know there certainly are immature ones who regress to playground behavior, as you've described. If you think of people you know like that, chances are they're the ones you take least seriously anyway.
It's been interesting to note that they seem to be going after a younger and younger demographic than they used to. I'm way out of the loop, but I can't think of any newer manufactured stars that weren't around ten years ago. We aren't seeing new people like Britney Spears and all her rip-offs. The ones that get really popular these days among the crowd that goes for the popular stuff and can pay for it themselves - older high school kids and college kids for the most part - are fairly "real", though obviously in many cases their personas are probably embellished. I'm thinking acts like Coldplay and John Meyer. I don't listen to or know anything about either of them, but as far as I know they are fairly genuine - commercialized perhaps, but with genuine roots.
But look where the huge moneymakers are - the ones that are unavoidable, even to someone like me who wouldn't recognize a single name on the top-20 chart. It's the Disney stuff - Hannah Montana, High School Musical, etc. We don't see the boy bands with cute 20 year olds any more - those were great for record companies because girls aged 8-22+ liked them. But now, only the younger ones are dumb enough for it.
Though I don't like any of the popular music these days, I think the industry as a whole is undergoing a positive shift. It is inevitable that there will be huge changes soon because of the RIAA's crap, but in the mean time, the manufactured superstars are having less and less acceptance as it is, and "real" artists are hitting it big. Of course they're still going to be the ones willing to do whatever it takes to be popular, including making their music as easy to like as possible (basically, by dumbing it down.)
One thing that needs to be decreased is the influence of rap. I like the hip-hop from the 80's, back when it was either fun (Rapper's Delight, etc.) or political (Fight The Power, etc.) - today's rap and R&B artists are the 90's boy bands and divas of today. I'm not suggesting they go away entirely - there probably are some decent artists. It will just be more difficult for the bad ones to survive, because as it is they only gain popularity because the record companies pay radio stations to play them.
For the record, I like music because I like it, and don't care how popular it is (I listen to indie bands, but only really the best ones - not obscure ones just so I can say I listen to them.) It so happens that I am just not into the commercial style that gets really popular, unless it's really good (don't laugh, but a lot of Michael Jackson's stuff is actually pretty great - try the Thriller album.) That's going back to the early 70s, when commercialization really took off. I'm 22 and my first music experience (besides Raffi) was with The Beatles. Compared to them, all the stuff I heard on the radio growing up was awful. As a nerd with no friends I never really listened to the radio or heard popular music anyway, so that probably helped too :)
That is the point - proponents of censorship use "child abuse" to get people emotionally attached to their idea. If they didn't trumpet this as being the cure for "child abuse", people would be against censoring the internet.
It takes an appeal to emotion for most people to understand things. That's why that famous poem is so powerful, and it applies perfectly to this situation (and the 'big brother' things the UK has been doing in general.)
So basically - as you say, emotion trumps rationality, and emotion is being used to advance irrational censorship. Rational arguments can't be used to fight emotion. A good emotional argument - the poem - maybe it can.
I made another post to this effect, in which basically I agreed with you.
We could have taken this opportunity to discuss in our own way the technical categories - the stuff most people don't even notice, like sound design, cinematography, and special effects. Unlike most of the bigger categories, they usually do a decent job awarding the technical categories.
And by the way, to others: Slumdog Millionaire really was great, and I recommend that people see it. Nerds are especially in a position to appreciate it, I think. It's vastly different from Hollywood fare, and it isn't a "heart warming rags to riches story" at all, despite what some may have you believe.
Guess what - I see a lot of movies, but I don't watch TV. I love sci-fi as any good nerd does, but not in TV form (besides Quantum Leap and Star Trek TOS.)
Why do you assume that everyone here is interested in television shows, and that no one likes movies? We're all nerds, but we're not all sci-fi TV show nerds. I ignore or "mod down" stories about TV shows - which pop up frequently - because I'm not interested.
I personally was not that interested in the academy awards - I saw 3/5 of the best picture nominees and many of the other nominees, and it was pretty obvious what was going to win most of the biggest categories.
There's more to it than that, though. There's a definite technology-nerdy side. The more "technical" categories are far more interesting than who wins best actress (though there's no reason nerds can't appreciate fine acting, directing, etc. - I certainly do.) The nerdy stuff that most people don't pay attention to, like cinematography, sound/sound editing, and special effects. Unlike the big categories, they usually do a pretty good job awarding the technical categories to films that deserve it.
Why shouldn't slashdot be host to a discussion about sound and special effects techniques? How is that not as nerdy as discussing TV shows (with little of the discussion likely being about technical aspects)?
I think the article is poorly written. It is sort of digg-like. But I think the backlash against it is ridiculous.
I have thought of the same thing, and I don't think it's really sci-fi. It's perfectly plausible, even today with some limitations, and something I think people would pay decent money for.
There are problems preventing such a system from being immediately available (at good quality), but they are all surmountable.
1. Printing technology. It's too expensive to print multiple, high-quality pages, on demand. They can do it at magazines and newspapers because they've paid for multi-million dollar printing presses, and they print out hundreds of thousands of copies per run. Figure out the cost of printing high-quality stuff with lots of pictures in your home ink jet or laser printer - and then consider that good magazine print is still of higher quality than what you can produce. This should be reasonable to remedy, and could kick-start a printer technology revolution that will improve home and office printing quality and costs as well. No downsides here, and as you suggest, recycling technology improvements will be very useful as well. Remember the story about xerox, I think, that has the printer where the ink fades away after a day or two? This could be a great application for something like that. Also, they'd need to be bound well, so it's easy to handle.
2. Kiosk penetration, speed of printing. Eventually, these will need to be everywhere you normally can buy newspapers and magazines today. This means they need to be relatively cheap to produce and to service. I imagine they could be contracted out, so businesses don't have to actually buy the kiosk (I assume digital photo printing kiosks work like this - I have no idea though.) Airports are the obvious place to install these first - I refuse to pay the airport premium normally, but I would do so for this, if it was as good as we imagine it should be. Also, these need to be fast. No more than 2-5 minutes at most for an average size printout, and even that is too much for someone on the run who only has time to grab a newspaper and go (print media will be available for a long time for this reason, until printing speeds get ridiculous.)
3. Content. Everything has to be available, from any kiosk. That means the big names like NYT (especially the crossword), The Economist, syndicated comics, etc., but also small names, including things that are presently online-only. I want to get my favorite web comics and news sites, including potentially blogs. Imagine getting a few pages of highly rated Slashdot stories, including the +5 rated comments, to read while you're traveling. Or on the toilet, where they likely belong ;)
4. Portable personalized settings. Easily solved by having to create an account. You can set up pre-sets of what you want on various occasions either at the kiosk itself or online at home, so you don't have to pick through a list of thousands of items each time. You could just swipe an RFID card, select from among your presets on the touch-screen, and grab the printout. Your account is automatically charged. Of course, it would be nice if you could get it without setting up an account, so it should be able to work either way.
5. Cost. To be widely adopted, it would have to be cheap. I imagine it may even have to be cheaper than the cost of the paper and ink. Hopefully this can be off-set by advertising revenue. Buying a magazine at the newsstand today costs upwards of $8-10. That's too much; at that price it's not something most people would pay for every day or even every week. It would obviously scale based on how many pages you print, but it should be closer to around $4-5 for a generous amount of stuff. If you choose your preset with just a few pages of blog posts, slashdot stories, crossword puzzles, and web comics for when you're at the airport and on the plane, it would have to be no more than a couple bucks.
6. Openness. A huge problem is that you can guarantee this would be run by a single company, and they will charge too much and ultimately fail. What needs to happen is that they are open a
I agree with one thing the other replier said - I disregard Ubuntu simply because I used other distros first, and found one that works the way I like (openSUSE), and don't like some of the decisions that the Ubuntu devs have made regarding Ubuntu's use. As you say, it really doesn't seem to be intended for more technically inclined users, so it shouldn't be surprising that those users - who probably do use other distros and aren't really familiar with Ubuntu - dislike Ubuntu and actively deride it for pandering to the masses.
I think part of the problem is that in order to obtain the success it has, Ubuntu has had to change the way some things are done in Linux/Unix. Sometimes these are improvements, but sometimes they aren't, and even if they are the 'hard-core' linux users won't like them if it makes things more like Windows or OS X.
It is the same thing with KDE vs. Gnome. Gnome and Ubuntu follow the same philosophies (and the devs are probably close-knit) and their goal is to please the masses, which means making compromises and limitations not acceptable to the aforementioned technically inclined users who like to have things their own way.
I agree with you completely, it's really not a big deal to sit through the ads on Hulu... except when you get that rare extremely annoying one, and it plays it at every single break.
I absolutely couldn't stand the one they had for a Fox reality show about isolation chambers. I watched The Daily Show and Colbert one day and at every single commercial break during both shows, they played that stupid ad. Considering the audience for those shows, it was a really poor effort at targeting the right market, too.
Thanks; while I live in California currently, I grew up about a mile from the UB north campus and next time I go back I will know where to eat - besides for free at my parents' house of course :)