I'm not sure anyone NEEDS a tablet any more than anyone NEEDS a laptop, or PDA, or whatever. However, as the owner of a TabletPC, here are some of the reasons I like my tablet:
Taking notes. I am a student, and I find the tablet PC excellent for taking notes. I have the advantage of digital note taking (easy to manipulate, easy to store, easy to organize) with the advantages of paper notes (drawing diagrams, complex mathematical symbols easy to write). Moreover, MS's new OneNote application automatically records the lecture to.wma, which I can replay on my mp3 player while I run (I suppose one could do the same thing with any other audio recorder, but OneNote is also the best note taking application, so it's nice that the recording feature is built in).
Drawing. There are obvious drawbacks to drawing on the computer as opposed to pencil & paper, but there are a hell of a lot of advantages too. Undo buttons and layers are the most obvious. Unlike tablets that have to be connected to your computer, tablet PCs are mobile, allowing one to draw anywhere. What I'm really looking forward to are tablet PCs with transflective screens, so they'll be usable outside.
Removes need for a PDA. My tablet is only 3 lbs, so while it is clearly bulkier and heavier than a Palm, it is easy enough to bring with me whenever I expect to need my schedule (I'm looking for a nice leather portfolio for it at the moment, that would make things even better). Unlike a PDA (or at least, unlike my old Palm III), it doesn't have to convert everything to text. So if you want to jot down a quick note, rather than painstakingly entering one letter at a time and correcting mistakes, you just use regular handwriting. So long as you can read your own handwriting, there's no need to ever convert it to text (though the recognition for cursive is pretty damn good, so long as you're writing dictionary words).
Reading. I know someone above pooh-poohed the notion of using it as an e-book reader, but there's no doubt it's useful for that function. The fact that the display can be rotated is a tremendous benefit. It's just so much easier to read on a tall, narrow display than a wide, short display (this is why newspapers have columns). I'm not just talking about e-books either. Even reading websites offline is easier (surfing can be laborious, given slowness of text entry with the pen).
A tablet is probably a poor primary computer (one can use docking stations I suppose, but mine is only a 1 Ghz Centrino, not exactly blazing). I think that for students and artists, it's probably a better secondary computer than a laptop. For business folk who do lots of typing on the road, probably not so much (on the other hand, business folk who mainly review documents, check email, and take notes at conferences might be well served by a tablet).
Feh, at that point, who really cares? He can stick it in one of those government bonds that pays inflation + 3%, and have an effective annual income of $600,000 per year for doing nothing ever again (it'd be even more if you want to solve the more complex problem of taking out a certain amount of the principal each year, with the intention of running out at, say, age 90). That seems like adequate compensation to me.
Yes, hahaha, very funny Dr. Jones. That's like saying it's hilarious that Germany and Italy were good friends during WWII, because they were such bitter enemies during Roman times.
The French only aided the American Revolution because they were enemies of the British, so anything that weakened the UK was good news for France. We continued to be friends for a while thereafter because for a period France was essentially the only democracy in Europe (didn't last very long, but democracy occasionally resurfaced). Besides which, they sold us the Midwest for a song because Napoleon needed money to finance his conquest of Europe (and the British had a nasty habit of enslaving American sailors and putting them to work on warships). Today, we are much closer to, surprise surprise, the nations with which we have the most in common. Politically, France is one of the most socialist European powers, and so is furthest removed from America. Moreover, language is the single strongest binding force, and so it should not surprise anyone that our closest allies are the other English speaking nations.
Actually, I think it should be noted that Transformers was a prototype for the TV series as toy advertisement concept. Previously, there had been regulations preventing certain tv show/toy tie ins. After the elimination of those rules, Transformers got started. There's a reason that they killed off most of the existing Transformers and replaced them with new ones in Transformers: the Movie, to sell more toys. GI Joe, of course, was similar in terms of trying to create as large of a cast as possible to sell more toys.
Believe me, Transformers absolutely was the Pokemon of its day. They just hadn't gotten things quite as perfected back then.
This is what always happens. China sends the US messages this way. When China releases dissidents right before a visit it means "we're progressive and want to talk about loosening trade restrictions." When China arrests dissidents right before a visit, it means "we're an independent country and we're not going to take any shit about our human rights abuses. Stop giving aid to Taiwan or suffer the consequences."
Alternatively, what if China becomes a first world country? Their intellectual property system is virtually non-existant. Either China will start cracking down on piracy (more likely; this is what happened in America around 1900), or else the massive economic benefits they will receive from a weaker system of intellectual property will force America to adapt (less likely, but possible).
Their budget? As I recall, their budget was around $300 million for all 3 movies, or $100 million per movie. That's really not that much for a 3 hour long, effects heavy movie.
Isn't this going to be skewed towards music that people like enough to listen to (or even are just curious about), but not necessarily enough to buy? For example, I might download some Top 20 crap, because I've heard it and sometimes it's amusing (or even catchy). But the stuff I buy has to have a bit more replay value than that.
Also, with these lawsuits going on, isn't that also going to affect the sample pool (by selecting out those computer savvy enough to change their shared folders, and increasing the proportion of people outside the USA)?
Mandrake's not a very strong point, they're somewhat dying as well, but hasn't trolltech had some success selling a stripped, X-less version of Qt for palmtops, cellpones, and other small/embedded systems? That could lend support to KDE over time as well.
Hmm, I'm not sure I agree that girls and boys form different sorts of hierarchies. I thing male hierarchies are more obvious to the casual observer, perhaps. One thing I would add, however, is the role that "romantic" relationships play in social stature. Examples of women (of all ages) using relationships to raise their stature are rampant. The Right Stuff has an interesting passage detailing how the wives of high ranking officers would act as though their husband's rank applied to themselves. The ordering around of "lower ranking" women got so bad that the Navy started demanding that the wives attend seminars in which they were told that they were not in the military, and hence, had no rank. Men obviously do the same thing, although generally it's based more on appearance than social standard. Psychological studies have shown that men who are paired with attractive women will, in turn, seem more attractive than men who are paired with unattractive women (the study was conducted by showing women altered prom photos, where the man's date was altered).
Cheapass games had an amusing game a while back called "Love and Marriage," or something similar, where everyone was given a number, and the goal was to pair up with the person of the opposite sex with the highest number. The game had numerous variations, including whether or not your number was public, "divorce" (if you find out that your partner's number is lower than he'd claimed when you were deciding whether to pair up), and whether you won as a couple, or as an individual.
hopefully by the time the fear of getting caught is no longer present, they will have grown up enough to realize why the rules were there in the first place.
Which is what? I'm 22 years old, and I certainly don't view hatred of pornography as a sign of maturity. I know that some people consider it offensive (demeaning to women, etc.) and while I don't agree with their views, I can understand them. But certainly I don't think their views make them more mature. So growing up is not going to make them want porn any less, and fear of getting caught isn't going to stop them. Boys have been hiding pictures of naked women under the mattress since photography was invented. Hell, I got caught a couple times and it didn't stop me.
I've downloeaded and started watching Farscape, since I missed it on air. I'm about 1/3rd of the way through the first season. Does it get better? I've been kind of underwhelmed so far (lacks the tightly interconnected storyline of B5, and not as interesting as TNG). So does it get better, or is this just not a show to my liking?
I *think* that you and the parent actually agree. The parent was somewhat poorly worded, however I think what he was saying is that "we talk a lot on slashdot about moving to Linux, and that's all well and good, but this is SERIOUS science, and dwarfs our petty squabbles."
Median income in the US of A is about $30,000 per person, or $35,000 per household. Basic rule of thumb is you double hourly wage and multiply by 1,000 to get annual income. So that's $26,000-29,000. Given that Canada has a lower GDP per capita, their median incomes are probably lower (unless you adjust for PPP). The only thing that seems out of line to me is the huge list of software, which was probably just the result of someone copying and pasting from a list somewhere without thinking about it.
Well, actually, one could just as easily argue that the "late 1800s" definition is the corruption. The latin root is "mono" (one), "poleis" (to sell), so monopoly just means "one seller." (the opposite, one buyer, as in the case of a military which is the sole purchaser of military hardware, is called a "monopsony.") As others have pointed out, this is also what most modern day monopoly legislation is meant to deal with.
More likely it's just that Fox is able to capture the vast majority of the right leaning viewers, while the other networks, along with CNN, have to split up the left leaning viewers.
On the other hand, maybe the REAL town will benefit from the certainty. If people don't know which site is the real one, people might just skip it entirely as a tourist destination. Moreover, all the publicity of DNA testing can't help but bring in more people. So you're forcing one town to live below its potential to save the tourist industry in the other three. Also, if there's no non-tourist economy in these towns, it seems to me that people ought to leave, just like people have left all those other old west towns that weren't lucky enough to have anything impportant happen in them.
The basic notion of the Segway is that it increases a human's speed without increasing the footprint, or decreasing manuverability. Admittedly though, a standard skateboard does essentially the same thing (the difference being that Segways haven't been banned on the sidewalks in most areas yet).
I feel about the same, that Johnny 5 and Data were both well crafted characters who created interesting situations. But the validity of the character is somewhat different I think from how well it typefies the notion of "robot." Both of their stories were about how they didn't have a real place in their world, or about how they were trying to become more human. A canidate for "best fictional robot" shouldn't be trying to move beyond what it was created for, it should be comfortable with being a robot. R2D2 is a good choice I think, for a number of reasons: R2 challenges the common assumption that robots ought to have humanoid form factors, it operates entirely within design parameters (no bolt of lightening like 5, for example), it has a utilitarian purpose ("astromech droid"), and so forth. I'm not putting down Data, I just think that CMU's choice was appropriate given the focus of the hall of fame.
I'm not sure I agree with the choice of HAL9000, however. HAL is really more of a computer than a robot. The robot, in that case, would really be the whole spaceship. The fact that I can't even remember the name of the ship suggests that HAL would really be a better canidate for the Artificial Intelligence hall of fame, rather than the Robot hall of fame.
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- Taking notes. I am a student, and I find the tablet PC excellent for taking notes. I have the advantage of digital note taking (easy to manipulate, easy to store, easy to organize) with the advantages of paper notes (drawing diagrams, complex mathematical symbols easy to write). Moreover, MS's new OneNote application automatically records the lecture to
.wma, which I can replay on my mp3 player while I run (I suppose one could do the same thing with any other audio recorder, but OneNote is also the best note taking application, so it's nice that the recording feature is built in).
- Drawing. There are obvious drawbacks to drawing on the computer as opposed to pencil & paper, but there are a hell of a lot of advantages too. Undo buttons and layers are the most obvious. Unlike tablets that have to be connected to your computer, tablet PCs are mobile, allowing one to draw anywhere. What I'm really looking forward to are tablet PCs with transflective screens, so they'll be usable outside.
- Removes need for a PDA. My tablet is only 3 lbs, so while it is clearly bulkier and heavier than a Palm, it is easy enough to bring with me whenever I expect to need my schedule (I'm looking for a nice leather portfolio for it at the moment, that would make things even better). Unlike a PDA (or at least, unlike my old Palm III), it doesn't have to convert everything to text. So if you want to jot down a quick note, rather than painstakingly entering one letter at a time and correcting mistakes, you just use regular handwriting. So long as you can read your own handwriting, there's no need to ever convert it to text (though the recognition for cursive is pretty damn good, so long as you're writing dictionary words).
- Reading. I know someone above pooh-poohed the notion of using it as an e-book reader, but there's no doubt it's useful for that function. The fact that the display can be rotated is a tremendous benefit. It's just so much easier to read on a tall, narrow display than a wide, short display (this is why newspapers have columns). I'm not just talking about e-books either. Even reading websites offline is easier (surfing can be laborious, given slowness of text entry with the pen).
A tablet is probably a poor primary computer (one can use docking stations I suppose, but mine is only a 1 Ghz Centrino, not exactly blazing). I think that for students and artists, it's probably a better secondary computer than a laptop. For business folk who do lots of typing on the road, probably not so much (on the other hand, business folk who mainly review documents, check email, and take notes at conferences might be well served by a tablet).Feh, at that point, who really cares? He can stick it in one of those government bonds that pays inflation + 3%, and have an effective annual income of $600,000 per year for doing nothing ever again (it'd be even more if you want to solve the more complex problem of taking out a certain amount of the principal each year, with the intention of running out at, say, age 90). That seems like adequate compensation to me.
The French only aided the American Revolution because they were enemies of the British, so anything that weakened the UK was good news for France. We continued to be friends for a while thereafter because for a period France was essentially the only democracy in Europe (didn't last very long, but democracy occasionally resurfaced). Besides which, they sold us the Midwest for a song because Napoleon needed money to finance his conquest of Europe (and the British had a nasty habit of enslaving American sailors and putting them to work on warships). Today, we are much closer to, surprise surprise, the nations with which we have the most in common. Politically, France is one of the most socialist European powers, and so is furthest removed from America. Moreover, language is the single strongest binding force, and so it should not surprise anyone that our closest allies are the other English speaking nations.
Believe me, Transformers absolutely was the Pokemon of its day. They just hadn't gotten things quite as perfected back then.
This is what always happens. China sends the US messages this way. When China releases dissidents right before a visit it means "we're progressive and want to talk about loosening trade restrictions." When China arrests dissidents right before a visit, it means "we're an independent country and we're not going to take any shit about our human rights abuses. Stop giving aid to Taiwan or suffer the consequences."
Alternatively, what if China becomes a first world country? Their intellectual property system is virtually non-existant. Either China will start cracking down on piracy (more likely; this is what happened in America around 1900), or else the massive economic benefits they will receive from a weaker system of intellectual property will force America to adapt (less likely, but possible).
Their budget? As I recall, their budget was around $300 million for all 3 movies, or $100 million per movie. That's really not that much for a 3 hour long, effects heavy movie.
But then they wouldn't be unladen, now would they?
Also, with these lawsuits going on, isn't that also going to affect the sample pool (by selecting out those computer savvy enough to change their shared folders, and increasing the proportion of people outside the USA)?
I have no idea how Lindows is doing. They always seemed a little shady to me but I honestly have no clue if they're making money or not.
I know, I'm just saying that "Mandrake uses KDE" is not a good argument against the statement that "KDE is effectively dead for business."
Mandrake's not a very strong point, they're somewhat dying as well, but hasn't trolltech had some success selling a stripped, X-less version of Qt for palmtops, cellpones, and other small/embedded systems? That could lend support to KDE over time as well.
Not only are they transportation related, they're all air or space related. Note the title of the article: FLIGHTS of Fancy. Moving on...
Cheapass games had an amusing game a while back called "Love and Marriage," or something similar, where everyone was given a number, and the goal was to pair up with the person of the opposite sex with the highest number. The game had numerous variations, including whether or not your number was public, "divorce" (if you find out that your partner's number is lower than he'd claimed when you were deciding whether to pair up), and whether you won as a couple, or as an individual.
Which is what? I'm 22 years old, and I certainly don't view hatred of pornography as a sign of maturity. I know that some people consider it offensive (demeaning to women, etc.) and while I don't agree with their views, I can understand them. But certainly I don't think their views make them more mature. So growing up is not going to make them want porn any less, and fear of getting caught isn't going to stop them. Boys have been hiding pictures of naked women under the mattress since photography was invented. Hell, I got caught a couple times and it didn't stop me.
I've downloeaded and started watching Farscape, since I missed it on air. I'm about 1/3rd of the way through the first season. Does it get better? I've been kind of underwhelmed so far (lacks the tightly interconnected storyline of B5, and not as interesting as TNG). So does it get better, or is this just not a show to my liking?
I *think* that you and the parent actually agree. The parent was somewhat poorly worded, however I think what he was saying is that "we talk a lot on slashdot about moving to Linux, and that's all well and good, but this is SERIOUS science, and dwarfs our petty squabbles."
Median income in the US of A is about $30,000 per person, or $35,000 per household. Basic rule of thumb is you double hourly wage and multiply by 1,000 to get annual income. So that's $26,000-29,000. Given that Canada has a lower GDP per capita, their median incomes are probably lower (unless you adjust for PPP). The only thing that seems out of line to me is the huge list of software, which was probably just the result of someone copying and pasting from a list somewhere without thinking about it.
I think we're talking compared to New York, Chicago, or San Francisco (given that this thread started with a conversion to $US).
Well, actually, one could just as easily argue that the "late 1800s" definition is the corruption. The latin root is "mono" (one), "poleis" (to sell), so monopoly just means "one seller." (the opposite, one buyer, as in the case of a military which is the sole purchaser of military hardware, is called a "monopsony.") As others have pointed out, this is also what most modern day monopoly legislation is meant to deal with.
More likely it's just that Fox is able to capture the vast majority of the right leaning viewers, while the other networks, along with CNN, have to split up the left leaning viewers.
On the other hand, maybe the REAL town will benefit from the certainty. If people don't know which site is the real one, people might just skip it entirely as a tourist destination. Moreover, all the publicity of DNA testing can't help but bring in more people. So you're forcing one town to live below its potential to save the tourist industry in the other three. Also, if there's no non-tourist economy in these towns, it seems to me that people ought to leave, just like people have left all those other old west towns that weren't lucky enough to have anything impportant happen in them.
...then gang A hits you again, only they claim to be gang D. Yeah, the whole thing is just stupid.
The basic notion of the Segway is that it increases a human's speed without increasing the footprint, or decreasing manuverability. Admittedly though, a standard skateboard does essentially the same thing (the difference being that Segways haven't been banned on the sidewalks in most areas yet).
I feel about the same, that Johnny 5 and Data were both well crafted characters who created interesting situations. But the validity of the character is somewhat different I think from how well it typefies the notion of "robot." Both of their stories were about how they didn't have a real place in their world, or about how they were trying to become more human. A canidate for "best fictional robot" shouldn't be trying to move beyond what it was created for, it should be comfortable with being a robot. R2D2 is a good choice I think, for a number of reasons: R2 challenges the common assumption that robots ought to have humanoid form factors, it operates entirely within design parameters (no bolt of lightening like 5, for example), it has a utilitarian purpose ("astromech droid"), and so forth. I'm not putting down Data, I just think that CMU's choice was appropriate given the focus of the hall of fame.
I'm not sure I agree with the choice of HAL9000, however. HAL is really more of a computer than a robot. The robot, in that case, would really be the whole spaceship. The fact that I can't even remember the name of the ship suggests that HAL would really be a better canidate for the Artificial Intelligence hall of fame, rather than the Robot hall of fame.