The battery should be OK... battery-powered diving computers are used all the time in scuba these days. (Although I'm barely even a casual diver - can't afford to go much! - so I can't speak for the hard-core folk who do 300' dives. Deepest I've ever gone is 80', which is a whole different ballgame.
Come to think of it those computers use LCD's too, so as long as those "scale" to farther underwater, no reason you couldn't have a decent underwater MP3 player. If this bone conducting thing works decently, the tech is all there. And that'd be pretty sweet... can't imagine listening to anything hardcore, but some nice classical would provide a nice backdrop to the purty fish and stuff you see.:-)
Just finished reading "Hitchhiker", Douglas's biography... he was actually an extremely fast writer. He just never actually did it. For most of his books, the deadline would be long past and he would have written a chapter or two, or (in the case of the 2nd Dirk Gently book) precisely one sentence. To get him to actually write books, his editors would literally lock him in a hotel room for a few weeks and not let him out until the book was done. No exaggeration here... most of his books were written this way.
Why? Seems a bit elitist to me. The level of quality of an instructor, in my view, depends entirely on how well they know and can teach the material, combined with (if they do research as well) their capacity to use original thought to advance the state of human knowledge. Although I can see the point of your argument, knowing how to use a certain cryptic document formatting tool seems way down on the list of important stuff.
I'd be very surprised if all the Blu-Ray players *weren't* backward compatible with regular DVD. The laserdisc situation was different... laserdisc never achieved the kind of market penetration and popularity that DVD has right now, so "combo" players were, at best, a novelty.
DVD, on the other hand, is huge right now and will stay that way for at least the next couple of years. Nobody making new BluRay players will be able to ignore that, especially considering that DVD and Blu-Ray discs look the same. The public will expect that the new players be able to play the old stuff, in the same way that everyone expects DVD players to be able to play CD's. And by the point these things are actually for sale, it'll be so cheap to include DVD components in the new players anyway that practically everyone will... again, just like it costs practically nothing to make DVD players play CD's right now. (This will be epecially true considering how much the new players will cost while being introduced; remember when DVD players came out initially? $500 for a player was cheap!)
You're right about the TV situation though. People might buy the new Blu-Ray players, but there's no way people are going to upgrade their video libraries until they have an HDTV and can appreciate the benefits of having hi-def content. (For some people, perhaps not even then... although you can definitely see artifacting, etc. on good HDTV's when viewing regular DVD, that might be enough for some people). And until a lot of people have HDTV, the hi-def Blu-Ray content won't be widely available anyway.
The Disney name still carries a premium, yes... not that they deserve it anymore. But that doesn't necessarily guarantee success these days... Disney's last couple of animated features haven't done all that well.
Finding Nemo, on the other hand, was a monster success... and while that did carry the Disney name, that wasn't the emphasis of the marketing. It's true that the word "Pixar" means doesn't mean nearly as much as the word "Disney" to most people, but Nemo was marketed as a new movie from the same folks that had made Bugs Life, Toy Story, Monsters Inc... and THAT meant something to people. The loss of the Disney label might hurt a little, but probably not much.
As for trying to get new Pixar stuff into video stores... it's not like Pixar is going to go it alone here. If I understand right, they're looking to partner with another distributor that already has access to those channels - Warner Brothers wants 'em, and that would make sense for both parties. Pixar/WB would have NO trouble getting into theaters, video stores, McDonalds... just about everywhere except Disney theme parks and the WB. Disney may be one "label", as per your example, but they're hardly the only one. And when Pixar is gone Disney will be the loser here, assuming Pixar can keep up previous levels of quality in their films.
This is true... but they won't do it. There's too much money to be made! Pixar films are proven moneymakers now (who is NOT going to go see something "from the makers of Toy Story and Monsters, Inc.?") and Disney is not going to bury something that'll make them some serious coin. Animosity runs deep, but not as deep as greed.:-)
To do a bit of math: Finding Nemo took in $340 million in its theatrical run. Disney's cut of that was between 10 and 15 percent, which means that just for distributing Nemo, they took 40+ million to the bank. That's a decent take for any movie, and all they did was distribute it.
And that's only theatrical revenues, mind you. IIRC Finding Nemo broke some home video records too, and since home video generally makes more than theatrical runs these days, you can bet Disney pocketed at least that much again thanks to all those marvelous DVD sales (although I have no numbers to back that up).
So anyway... for 80 million, Disney isn't gonna skimp on Pixar films, no matter how pissed Eisner might be. Pixar has produced 5 (I think) monster hits in a row... the odds of making a lot of money are too good.
I hate David Spade too, and yet to me, New Groove is one of the best things to come out of Disney in a looooooong time. Give it a shot, you might be surprised. It's not traditional Disney though; the characters don't randomly break into song, there's no romance, and way more slapstick humor. I dig it.:-)
The rest of the stuff they're putting out does seem pretty dumb though. Atlantis was OK. Treasure Planet blew.
Check it out if you have not seen it before... it's very strange. Spock dancing around singing about Bilbo, surrounded by shrugging girls in colored sweatshirts with giant weird buttons on them. Couldn't see what most of them said, but one says "What's a Hobbit?" and another is "Frodo Lives!"... and one on some girl's back was something about Leonard Nimoy in the U.N. Also, at the very end Leonard puts one on that says "What's a Leonard Nimoy?"
That's kinda funny, I thought had become pretty accepted now that the original rocked and the sequels sucked. Although you're right, Revolutions was (aside from a few cool sequences) much more of a let-down than Reloaded was. And Reloaded was... well, it wasn't a bad movie, but it was so vastly far outside the scope of the original movie that I think people were a bit shocked. It's kind of like comparing LOTR to The Hobbit... same world, waaaaaaay larger scope. Although LOTR worked, Revolutions mostly didn't.
Anyway... is anyone else noticing that the newly re-encoded trailers are a bit disappointing in terms of quality? I've watched a couple of the quicktime ones, and the quality is more like decently captured NTSC than anything else. When I saw "bumped up resolution" I was hoping for the 1000x540 pixels that the Reloaded trailer was released in, with the same frickin' amazing quality. Now THAT was a trailer. Anyone got that lying around? (trailer_final_1000_dl.zip) I don't anymore, and I'd love to have a copy!
Don't knock it, man... there are tabloids, and then there is the Weekly World News. You can get a paper copy for under $2 and for entertainment purposes, it's worth every penny. I do it from time to time and always laugh my ass off! There is no way that any of this is meant to be taken seriously, and where else are you going to find a column from America's Sexiest Psychic? (Actual topic grabbed from WWN's site... "Satan Won't Stop Dialing My Cell Phone!")
Ah, sweet entertainment. Pick one up sometime, you'll probably like it in spite of yourself.
Ah, Viewtiful Joe, the game that alternately delights me and pisses me off, time after time. I finally managed to beat Fire Leo, Inferno Lord, and now I'm getting whumped on the last level.
Anyway, yes, give this game a try. I'm kind of sad that nobody I talk to seems to have heard of it, which is a real shame, since VJ is one of the best games I've played in a long time, and a refreshing change from the usual fare. And a great reason to get a gamecube... the reason I did, anyway.
(Incidentally, Microsoft put the video driver in ring 0 shortly after they split from IBM and took their part of the OS/2 code. Microsoft felt that the video performance was too slow, and rather than re-write and optimize like IBM did for OS/2, Microsoft just moved the video driver into the kernel. The rest is history).
Well, sort of, but your timing is off. The IBM/Microsoft split happened in 1989, and NT 3.1 was released shortly thereafter. IIRC the video-in-ring-0 stuff didn't happen until NT4, which was somewhere around 1996. So basically you're right, but I don't think moving the video driver to ring 0 had anything to do with the IBM split... there was too much time in between (and an intermediate release, NT 3.5).
I haven't seen Reloaded on IMAX yet (going tomorrow, hopefully) but I read somewhere that it has not been edited. IMAX theatres used to only be able to handle 2 hour films or less, but many (most?) of them have gotten upgrades that let them handle 150 minute movies. Reloaded clocks in at 138 minutes so theatres with the upgrade should be able to handle it.
That's a LOT of film though...
Re:Process vs Organized Security
on
Beyond Fear
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Airport security just doesn't work very well anyway, even now, after 9/11, when it's supposedly all beefed up.
My freaky experience: I took a trip to Florida, and in my carryon luggage (a backpack) was a buck knife with a 4-inch serrated-edge blade. I wasn't trying to smuggle it through on purpose... the last time I had used the backpack was on a camping trip (where knives are handy) and I simply hadn't unpacked the front zipper pocket, where the knife was.
Anyway, the knife made it cleanly through airport security. Twice. At two different "high-security" airports... and yes, it went through all the detectors and everything. I didn't even find the damned thing until I was on my last connecting flight. So yes, there are some major issues there.
To tie this back in with your post... I hate to generalize based on one incident, but the extra security just ain't giving us a whole lot of extra security. Which leads me to believe that you're right... one of the main "benefits" of all this was just to allow the authorities to take actions "in the name of security" that only serve to give them more power.
What that experience taught me is that I can't rely on those in authority to protect me, either me physically or my data or anything like that. Which means that citizens are going to have to start safeguarding themselves, and sometimes that may be in opposition to the "best interests" of the state. Which sure as heck don't seem to be our best interests much these days.
OK, I'll bite... I would love to know who this "design rule" is attributed to, because having "two modes of operation" like what you're suggesting is demonstrably not a good thing. (I'd cite sources but it's late, and hey, you didn't.)
It's not at all impossible to have an application that's accessible to both beginners and expert users. It's just that the beginners need a bit more hand-holding: dialog boxes, explicit menu items, etc... while experts, in a well-designed app, should be able to accomplish stuff faster and more efficiently via direct manipulation, shortcut keys, and operations that are a bit more hidden to new users. But you don't *hide* advanced options, and you definitely don't have two modes... keep the advanced options there, and make as much stuff reversible as possible so users will feel more comfortable poking around and trying things to get the hang of it. In most apps today, much more is technically undo-able than apps generally allow.
And keep in mind that beginners and expert users are both in the minority for the kind of complicated, probably often-used application like an e-mail client. The majority of users will be some level of intermediate, since beginners don't stay beginners forever, but most don't ever become experts. It's your basic bell-curve thing. But if you think about it like that it doesn't make sense to design only for one extreme or the other, or as you're suggesting, both.
Anyway, I'm just spouting Alan Cooper here... go get About Face 2.0 and read it. You will learn much. He's usually right on the money, even if he does have a tendency to point out all the stuff Microsoft does right (and yes, they do many things right UI-wise, which makes sense when you remember that they spend way more money on usability testing than anyone else.)
I haven't even been programming (professionally) for a year now, and I'm already burnt out. I used to PLAY with computers... in school, I'd write programs for fun, do neat things, just play with things. But since I started doing this for real, I never do that anymore... I still have ideas of things I'd like to do, programs I'd like to write, but I come home after a day of programming (lately, working with COM... aah! EVIL!) and I'll be just tired, and with no motivation to do anything with computers (other than surf the web or something) and I end up watching TV instead. I can feel my brain rotting.
So the current thinking is, I'm doing this for another year tops, to try and get some more of my student loans paid off, and then I'm outta here. I'm thinking of spending a year volunteering, to do some good for the world, and then finding a job I like. I've moved beyond caring about the fact that I'll be ditching a job that pays pretty well in order to face possible unemployment, even in this economic climate. Screw it. I'm only 23 and life is too short to spend 8 hours a day doing something I don't love anymore.
And that's the tragedy of it all... a few years ago, I really did love it.
You don't need to use cursive to write checks. I've been doing it using my own handwriting style (mostly print, with some connected letters when convenient) since I started writing checks, with no ill effects.
Yes, of course they will. You read Slashdot, so while you may not necessarily USE competing systems (Java or open source OS's), you're undoubtedly aware of them, and that Microsoft doesn't always make the best software or decisions.
I work for a company that works solely on Windows software, and I can tell you, our system designers don't have the benefit of such knowledge. They are totally buying in to the.NET hype, and not without reason....NET may not be the savior of the software world, but it IS a heckuva lot better than the old method of MFC or Win32 development. By far.
Our designers are not stupid; they just seem incapable of thinking outside the Windows world. You don't know what "mindshare" means until you've seen this in action... Microsoft products have a total lock on their way of thinking. They just won't consider any alternatives, they use Microsoft stuff, and they LIKE it. A friend and I are gradually introducing open source stuff (an internal web app I wrote uses PHP and MySQL as opposed to ASP/SQL Server... and I had to fight for it!) but mostly, Microsoft is ALL THERE IS to them. That's why.NET will succeed, at least partially. You don't notice any problems with performance or security or service if you've never used an alternative (and be honest, many of the alternatives aren't that hot either).
Unrelated rant... after all these years, why do people still think it's cool to refer to Microsoft as M$? I'm not defending Microsoft software or business practices, but come on. That's just childish. It's not like you're going to gain any real karma or respect by doing that, and it's not like you can't find enough to be mad at Microsoft about without resorting to petty name calling. It's not even original anymore.
Then go buy that CD... nobody's forcing you to use this service. The nice thing about this is that it's providing a *legit* way to get music, without being way way too expensive. I'll go for a buck a song, but like you said, if it's cheaper to buy the CD then buy the CD already.
If services like this get anywhere maybe it'll help convince the music industry that there is some future in the digital world. Anything to help stop the "MP3's are evil" mindset they have now.
I'd be surprised if there won't always *be* a premium for Apple stuff, although I'll grant you it could be quite a bit less. Apple has a reputation for providing nice, upscale hardware and a better user experience compared to the shoddier, cheaper PC. That's why people (including myself) are willing to pay quite a price premium for a machine that really can't keep up performance-wise.
I'm not saying this is always the case; there are very nicely engineered PC's and Macs that aren't as nice as they could be. But Apple products are perceived as being premium products and are generally priced accordingly... and lots of people are willing to pay. Keeping that in mind, I doubt if Apple will ever really get into a PC price war. They'll keep doing just fine in the upper price scales, and with a better profit margin to boot.
Wonder what this means for Space Ghost? I have nothing against anime (although I personally can't stand it) but Space Ghost is one of my all time favorite shows and Cartoon Network seems to be itching to cancel it. They used to run it a fair amount, then knocked it down to two episodes twice a week (well, once a week, the Thursday ones were repeats of the Sunday ones) then just once a week, then they dropped it for a while, and now it's just one episode, once a week. That's right, Space Ghost gets 15 lousy minutes of their time once a week. Not fair. How long until it gets canceled entirely?
You'd think that at least they could release them on DVD or something... I'd buy those.
Not to be a troll, but the whole BattleBots concept has gone from new and fun to watch to rather dull within the span of a couple of years. That's why they had to throw Carmen Electra on, right? People weren't watching, and a little sex appeal was required?
Not that I don't think something BattleBots-ish won't survive for a while, but I doubt it'll be for long. Just a prediction.
The best book of this type I've read in the last few years is Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe". It's written in plain, understandable English (AFAIK there aren't any formulas in the entire book) and goes through everything from relativity to quantum physics to superstring theory.
It's definitely an overview book for the layman, written for reading enjoyment rather than as a textbook, but I learned more from this book than anything else I've read in the past couple 'o years. I found it completely fascinating... highly recommended. Sorry, not available (AFAIK) as an e-book, but well worth the $12 or so you can get it for online.
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The battery should be OK... battery-powered diving computers are used all the time in scuba these days. (Although I'm barely even a casual diver - can't afford to go much! - so I can't speak for the hard-core folk who do 300' dives. Deepest I've ever gone is 80', which is a whole different ballgame.
:-)
Come to think of it those computers use LCD's too, so as long as those "scale" to farther underwater, no reason you couldn't have a decent underwater MP3 player. If this bone conducting thing works decently, the tech is all there. And that'd be pretty sweet... can't imagine listening to anything hardcore, but some nice classical would provide a nice backdrop to the purty fish and stuff you see.
Just finished reading "Hitchhiker", Douglas's biography... he was actually an extremely fast writer. He just never actually did it. For most of his books, the deadline would be long past and he would have written a chapter or two, or (in the case of the 2nd Dirk Gently book) precisely one sentence. To get him to actually write books, his editors would literally lock him in a hotel room for a few weeks and not let him out until the book was done. No exaggeration here... most of his books were written this way.
Why? Seems a bit elitist to me. The level of quality of an instructor, in my view, depends entirely on how well they know and can teach the material, combined with (if they do research as well) their capacity to use original thought to advance the state of human knowledge. Although I can see the point of your argument, knowing how to use a certain cryptic document formatting tool seems way down on the list of important stuff.
I'd be very surprised if all the Blu-Ray players *weren't* backward compatible with regular DVD. The laserdisc situation was different... laserdisc never achieved the kind of market penetration and popularity that DVD has right now, so "combo" players were, at best, a novelty.
DVD, on the other hand, is huge right now and will stay that way for at least the next couple of years. Nobody making new BluRay players will be able to ignore that, especially considering that DVD and Blu-Ray discs look the same. The public will expect that the new players be able to play the old stuff, in the same way that everyone expects DVD players to be able to play CD's. And by the point these things are actually for sale, it'll be so cheap to include DVD components in the new players anyway that practically everyone will... again, just like it costs practically nothing to make DVD players play CD's right now. (This will be epecially true considering how much the new players will cost while being introduced; remember when DVD players came out initially? $500 for a player was cheap!)
You're right about the TV situation though. People might buy the new Blu-Ray players, but there's no way people are going to upgrade their video libraries until they have an HDTV and can appreciate the benefits of having hi-def content. (For some people, perhaps not even then... although you can definitely see artifacting, etc. on good HDTV's when viewing regular DVD, that might be enough for some people). And until a lot of people have HDTV, the hi-def Blu-Ray content won't be widely available anyway.
The Disney name still carries a premium, yes... not that they deserve it anymore. But that doesn't necessarily guarantee success these days... Disney's last couple of animated features haven't done all that well.
Finding Nemo, on the other hand, was a monster success... and while that did carry the Disney name, that wasn't the emphasis of the marketing. It's true that the word "Pixar" means doesn't mean nearly as much as the word "Disney" to most people, but Nemo was marketed as a new movie from the same folks that had made Bugs Life, Toy Story, Monsters Inc... and THAT meant something to people. The loss of the Disney label might hurt a little, but probably not much.
As for trying to get new Pixar stuff into video stores... it's not like Pixar is going to go it alone here. If I understand right, they're looking to partner with another distributor that already has access to those channels - Warner Brothers wants 'em, and that would make sense for both parties. Pixar/WB would have NO trouble getting into theaters, video stores, McDonalds... just about everywhere except Disney theme parks and the WB. Disney may be one "label", as per your example, but they're hardly the only one. And when Pixar is gone Disney will be the loser here, assuming Pixar can keep up previous levels of quality in their films.
This is true... but they won't do it. There's too much money to be made! Pixar films are proven moneymakers now (who is NOT going to go see something "from the makers of Toy Story and Monsters, Inc.?") and Disney is not going to bury something that'll make them some serious coin. Animosity runs deep, but not as deep as greed. :-)
To do a bit of math: Finding Nemo took in $340 million in its theatrical run. Disney's cut of that was between 10 and 15 percent, which means that just for distributing Nemo, they took 40+ million to the bank. That's a decent take for any movie, and all they did was distribute it.
And that's only theatrical revenues, mind you. IIRC Finding Nemo broke some home video records too, and since home video generally makes more than theatrical runs these days, you can bet Disney pocketed at least that much again thanks to all those marvelous DVD sales (although I have no numbers to back that up).
So anyway... for 80 million, Disney isn't gonna skimp on Pixar films, no matter how pissed Eisner might be. Pixar has produced 5 (I think) monster hits in a row... the odds of making a lot of money are too good.
I hate David Spade too, and yet to me, New Groove is one of the best things to come out of Disney in a looooooong time. Give it a shot, you might be surprised. It's not traditional Disney though; the characters don't randomly break into song, there's no romance, and way more slapstick humor. I dig it. :-)
The rest of the stuff they're putting out does seem pretty dumb though. Atlantis was OK. Treasure Planet blew.
I saw the video for that a few months ago, and your comment made me want to see it again, so... here it is, for posterity:
Leonard Nimoy's "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins"
Check it out if you have not seen it before... it's very strange. Spock dancing around singing about Bilbo, surrounded by shrugging girls in colored sweatshirts with giant weird buttons on them. Couldn't see what most of them said, but one says "What's a Hobbit?" and another is "Frodo Lives!"... and one on some girl's back was something about Leonard Nimoy in the U.N. Also, at the very end Leonard puts one on that says "What's a Leonard Nimoy?"
Trippy.
That's kinda funny, I thought had become pretty accepted now that the original rocked and the sequels sucked. Although you're right, Revolutions was (aside from a few cool sequences) much more of a let-down than Reloaded was. And Reloaded was... well, it wasn't a bad movie, but it was so vastly far outside the scope of the original movie that I think people were a bit shocked. It's kind of like comparing LOTR to The Hobbit... same world, waaaaaaay larger scope. Although LOTR worked, Revolutions mostly didn't.
Anyway... is anyone else noticing that the newly re-encoded trailers are a bit disappointing in terms of quality? I've watched a couple of the quicktime ones, and the quality is more like decently captured NTSC than anything else. When I saw "bumped up resolution" I was hoping for the 1000x540 pixels that the Reloaded trailer was released in, with the same frickin' amazing quality. Now THAT was a trailer. Anyone got that lying around? (trailer_final_1000_dl.zip) I don't anymore, and I'd love to have a copy!
Don't knock it, man... there are tabloids, and then there is the Weekly World News. You can get a paper copy for under $2 and for entertainment purposes, it's worth every penny. I do it from time to time and always laugh my ass off! There is no way that any of this is meant to be taken seriously, and where else are you going to find a column from America's Sexiest Psychic? (Actual topic grabbed from WWN's site... "Satan Won't Stop Dialing My Cell Phone!")
Ah, sweet entertainment. Pick one up sometime, you'll probably like it in spite of yourself.
Ah, Viewtiful Joe, the game that alternately delights me and pisses me off, time after time. I finally managed to beat Fire Leo, Inferno Lord, and now I'm getting whumped on the last level.
Anyway, yes, give this game a try. I'm kind of sad that nobody I talk to seems to have heard of it, which is a real shame, since VJ is one of the best games I've played in a long time, and a refreshing change from the usual fare. And a great reason to get a gamecube... the reason I did, anyway.
I haven't seen Reloaded on IMAX yet (going tomorrow, hopefully) but I read somewhere that it has not been edited. IMAX theatres used to only be able to handle 2 hour films or less, but many (most?) of them have gotten upgrades that let them handle 150 minute movies. Reloaded clocks in at 138 minutes so theatres with the upgrade should be able to handle it.
That's a LOT of film though...
Airport security just doesn't work very well anyway, even now, after 9/11, when it's supposedly all beefed up.
My freaky experience: I took a trip to Florida, and in my carryon luggage (a backpack) was a buck knife with a 4-inch serrated-edge blade. I wasn't trying to smuggle it through on purpose... the last time I had used the backpack was on a camping trip (where knives are handy) and I simply hadn't unpacked the front zipper pocket, where the knife was.
Anyway, the knife made it cleanly through airport security. Twice. At two different "high-security" airports... and yes, it went through all the detectors and everything. I didn't even find the damned thing until I was on my last connecting flight. So yes, there are some major issues there.
To tie this back in with your post... I hate to generalize based on one incident, but the extra security just ain't giving us a whole lot of extra security. Which leads me to believe that you're right... one of the main "benefits" of all this was just to allow the authorities to take actions "in the name of security" that only serve to give them more power.
What that experience taught me is that I can't rely on those in authority to protect me, either me physically or my data or anything like that. Which means that citizens are going to have to start safeguarding themselves, and sometimes that may be in opposition to the "best interests" of the state. Which sure as heck don't seem to be our best interests much these days.
OK, I'll bite... I would love to know who this "design rule" is attributed to, because having "two modes of operation" like what you're suggesting is demonstrably not a good thing. (I'd cite sources but it's late, and hey, you didn't.)
It's not at all impossible to have an application that's accessible to both beginners and expert users. It's just that the beginners need a bit more hand-holding: dialog boxes, explicit menu items, etc... while experts, in a well-designed app, should be able to accomplish stuff faster and more efficiently via direct manipulation, shortcut keys, and operations that are a bit more hidden to new users. But you don't *hide* advanced options, and you definitely don't have two modes... keep the advanced options there, and make as much stuff reversible as possible so users will feel more comfortable poking around and trying things to get the hang of it. In most apps today, much more is technically undo-able than apps generally allow.
And keep in mind that beginners and expert users are both in the minority for the kind of complicated, probably often-used application like an e-mail client. The majority of users will be some level of intermediate, since beginners don't stay beginners forever, but most don't ever become experts. It's your basic bell-curve thing. But if you think about it like that it doesn't make sense to design only for one extreme or the other, or as you're suggesting, both.
Anyway, I'm just spouting Alan Cooper here... go get About Face 2.0 and read it. You will learn much. He's usually right on the money, even if he does have a tendency to point out all the stuff Microsoft does right (and yes, they do many things right UI-wise, which makes sense when you remember that they spend way more money on usability testing than anyone else.)
Anyway, bedtime for me.
I haven't even been programming (professionally) for a year now, and I'm already burnt out. I used to PLAY with computers... in school, I'd write programs for fun, do neat things, just play with things. But since I started doing this for real, I never do that anymore... I still have ideas of things I'd like to do, programs I'd like to write, but I come home after a day of programming (lately, working with COM... aah! EVIL!) and I'll be just tired, and with no motivation to do anything with computers (other than surf the web or something) and I end up watching TV instead. I can feel my brain rotting.
So the current thinking is, I'm doing this for another year tops, to try and get some more of my student loans paid off, and then I'm outta here. I'm thinking of spending a year volunteering, to do some good for the world, and then finding a job I like. I've moved beyond caring about the fact that I'll be ditching a job that pays pretty well in order to face possible unemployment, even in this economic climate. Screw it. I'm only 23 and life is too short to spend 8 hours a day doing something I don't love anymore.
And that's the tragedy of it all... a few years ago, I really did love it.
You don't need to use cursive to write checks. I've been doing it using my own handwriting style (mostly print, with some connected letters when convenient) since I started writing checks, with no ill effects.
Which reminds me, gotta pay some bills...
Microsoft is not the only one who views the GPL as viral. There are plenty of us who are not big Microsoft fans that still aren't fond of the GPL.
Yes, of course they will. You read Slashdot, so while you may not necessarily USE competing systems (Java or open source OS's), you're undoubtedly aware of them, and that Microsoft doesn't always make the best software or decisions.
.NET hype, and not without reason... .NET may not be the savior of the software world, but it IS a heckuva lot better than the old method of MFC or Win32 development. By far.
.NET will succeed, at least partially. You don't notice any problems with performance or security or service if you've never used an alternative (and be honest, many of the alternatives aren't that hot either).
I work for a company that works solely on Windows software, and I can tell you, our system designers don't have the benefit of such knowledge. They are totally buying in to the
Our designers are not stupid; they just seem incapable of thinking outside the Windows world. You don't know what "mindshare" means until you've seen this in action... Microsoft products have a total lock on their way of thinking. They just won't consider any alternatives, they use Microsoft stuff, and they LIKE it. A friend and I are gradually introducing open source stuff (an internal web app I wrote uses PHP and MySQL as opposed to ASP/SQL Server... and I had to fight for it!) but mostly, Microsoft is ALL THERE IS to them. That's why
Unrelated rant... after all these years, why do people still think it's cool to refer to Microsoft as M$? I'm not defending Microsoft software or business practices, but come on. That's just childish. It's not like you're going to gain any real karma or respect by doing that, and it's not like you can't find enough to be mad at Microsoft about without resorting to petty name calling. It's not even original anymore.
Then go buy that CD... nobody's forcing you to use this service. The nice thing about this is that it's providing a *legit* way to get music, without being way way too expensive. I'll go for a buck a song, but like you said, if it's cheaper to buy the CD then buy the CD already.
If services like this get anywhere maybe it'll help convince the music industry that there is some future in the digital world. Anything to help stop the "MP3's are evil" mindset they have now.
I'd be surprised if there won't always *be* a premium for Apple stuff, although I'll grant you it could be quite a bit less. Apple has a reputation for providing nice, upscale hardware and a better user experience compared to the shoddier, cheaper PC. That's why people (including myself) are willing to pay quite a price premium for a machine that really can't keep up performance-wise.
I'm not saying this is always the case; there are very nicely engineered PC's and Macs that aren't as nice as they could be. But Apple products are perceived as being premium products and are generally priced accordingly... and lots of people are willing to pay. Keeping that in mind, I doubt if Apple will ever really get into a PC price war. They'll keep doing just fine in the upper price scales, and with a better profit margin to boot.
That's nutty. Soon anyone who cares about privacy is going to have to EMP themselves before they can go anywhere...
*sigh*
Wonder what this means for Space Ghost? I have nothing against anime (although I personally can't stand it) but Space Ghost is one of my all time favorite shows and Cartoon Network seems to be itching to cancel it. They used to run it a fair amount, then knocked it down to two episodes twice a week (well, once a week, the Thursday ones were repeats of the Sunday ones) then just once a week, then they dropped it for a while, and now it's just one episode, once a week. That's right, Space Ghost gets 15 lousy minutes of their time once a week. Not fair. How long until it gets canceled entirely?
You'd think that at least they could release them on DVD or something... I'd buy those.
Not to be a troll, but the whole BattleBots concept has gone from new and fun to watch to rather dull within the span of a couple of years. That's why they had to throw Carmen Electra on, right? People weren't watching, and a little sex appeal was required?
Not that I don't think something BattleBots-ish won't survive for a while, but I doubt it'll be for long. Just a prediction.
The best book of this type I've read in the last few years is Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe". It's written in plain, understandable English (AFAIK there aren't any formulas in the entire book) and goes through everything from relativity to quantum physics to superstring theory.
It's definitely an overview book for the layman, written for reading enjoyment rather than as a textbook, but I learned more from this book than anything else I've read in the past couple 'o years. I found it completely fascinating... highly recommended. Sorry, not available (AFAIK) as an e-book, but well worth the $12 or so you can get it for online.