- Peter Pan. I'm captain of the Dream Catcher. Grumpy Bear here tells me you're lookin' for passage to the Aslan system?
- Yes indeed, if it's a fast ship.
- Fast ship? You've never heard of the Dream Catcher?
- Should I have?
- It's the ship that made the Emerald City Run in less than twelve cowznofskis. I've outrun Middle Kingdom dragons. Not the local luckdragons mind you, I'm talking about the big Morgoth-bred firedrakes now. She's fast enough for you old wizard.
I'm betting there's many a school administrator that loves the idea of teaching chemistry without using chemicals - "You can just use computer simulations! We got budgets 'n liability insurance 'n terrorism ta think about, ya know." Make sure your students still get their hands dirty, so to speak.
I read Newsday (paper version) and when you compare it to the other local competition - the NY Post and Daily News - it's a far superior paper. Strong investigative reporting (particularly regarding local government), and celebrity and sports "news" almost never make the front cover.
And that goes for talking AND texting. After one-sided converstation, someone going clickety-clickety-clickety is the second-most disturbing sound you can hear coming out of a restroom stall.
Goes to show that the art of monetizing digital information still has a way to go. Would you pay $13.59 to access a web site with the same info? $5.00 even?
Now governments and big corporations can misplace even *more* data!
"The Library of Congress burned down? No worries chief! I got the whole thing backed up on the tape right here in my desk. (opens and closes drawers) Right here.. in.. my... oh shizzle."
Back in the days of DOS, Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller fame) used to write a computer column. Basically back then all airport security would ask you to do is turn your laptop on, just to confirm that it is a working laptop, and not, say, a laptop packed with C4 where the battery and hard drive should be.
He suggested that when traveling you should NOT, DEFINITEY NOT put the following in your laptop's AUTOEXEC.BAT file:
An interesting article from The Atlantic discusses a new view of children with genetic dispositions to "flawed" personality traits, such as ADHD. Much of it is based on a long-term study of a captive colony of rhesus monkeys.
In the barest of nutshells: while many children are like dandelions, and could survive and even prosper in any environment (poor, lousy parents, bad schools, etc.), others are like orchids. Raised in the wrong environment they become screw-ups. Raised in the right environment they thrive, and the traits that are considered flaws become strengths, even allowing them success beyond their dandelion brethren.
A good read even if you think they're wrong. One nice takeaway from the rhesus monkey study: in the long run, bullies never win.
Free digital copy of "Blade Runner" with every Nexus One (director's cut, of course). Google gets to demo the phones' video chops and gets the coolness cred, PKD's heirs get a chunk of the royalties. Win-win.
There was an issue with Apple Computer's name and logo being too similar to that of the Beatles' Apple Corps. There was basically a "we're cool with it" agreement so long as Apple Computer stayed out of the music business and Apple Corps stayed out of the computer business. And then the iPod came out..
I actually used Javascript in Adobe Acrobat a few years back. As part of a workflow process we were regularly bundling sets of PDFs together into one large PDF. This included a title page and a table of contents (talking about a printable one, not bookmarks.) So I futzed around with the Javascript and came up with a way to have the person creating the one big PDF to:
- open a blank Title/TOC PDF
- click a checkbox to unhide the form elements.
- enter a title into a field, which appeared on both the title page and the page headers
- check off which documents were being included in the PDF, which then showed those lines in the TOC. The chapter numbering e.g. 1), 2), 3) etc. also changed to match.
- click the checkbox again to hide the form elements, leaving just the printable title and TOC portions.
- save as a new copy, then bundle it with the other documents.
Pretty slick IMHO. It saved the users from having to waste time opening Word to create a new Title/TOC page every time.
But that being said, what happened in the PDF stayed in the PDF. It didn't have to connect to the web, etc.
This is of course the classic reason for bloatware. The feature that's unbelievably-useful-couldn't-do-my-work-without-it for 2% of the users is completely worthless to the other 98%, and we all belong to at least one group of 2%.
Adobe also has the problem of full Adobe Acrobat Pro vs. Acrobat Reader. Any changes made to a PDF in Acrobat Pro have to be compatible within Acrobat Reader e.g. if I highlight text in Pro and save the PDF I expect everyone who opens the PDF later on to see it too. Otherwise they could simply make all the additional features (including Javascript support) plug-ins and be done with it.
It was a few years later when the REAL crackdown came. The Listener’s License. What a fantastic concept. I can’t believe it. See it happened like this. There was this - There is all this piracy, see everybody was - Piracy was - Uh, Piracy is now what they now consider a theft. See in order to combat piracy which was getting really rampant, all this information was flowing around nobody really liked that so they wanted it gone. And they wanted to get rid of piracy. But they couldn’t stop it.
The Internet was growing everyday. No one could stem the flow so they created the Listener’s License. Started real easy. See music, legitimate music to purchase, was, you know, say 20 bucks. And then what they did was, if you signed up to get this card, you know like a loyalty program card of the day. You’d get 75% percent off. So a 20 dollar CD became a 5 dollar CD. And you could buy it legitimately. For 20 bucks you would walk out of there with 4 CD’s. Amazing.
Of course people were signing up for it in droves, I mean why wouldn’t ya? You could go buy a pirate CD for 6 bucks or you could buy the reall thing for 5. Consumers are such mercenaries. So they signed up en masse.
2 years went by, 2 years. Then it became mandatory. See if you didn’t have your listener’s license, if you couldn’t present your card, well you weren’t able to buy music. Part of the licensing agreement came when you got the card. And all of sudden people were out in the cold.
But it wasn’t just the music you know. The Listener’s License was created by the conglomerates. They all got together. If you wanted to see a movie, hey if you had your listener’s License you could get in for 2 dollars. (chuckle) 2 bucks. Oh you don’t have a Listener’s License, well you can’t get in. See they couldn’t control the piracy so they stopped it at its source.
If ever you were found to be a pirate or if your computer was ever found to have MP3’s that weren’t appropriate on it you were eliminated, your listener’s License was revoked and you were out of the loop. It's all private enterprise, you don’t have a right to music, you never had a right to it. It's all private.
No more movies no more shows. Can’t even buy art. Cause you can scan it. What if you scanned that picture? So, regulation of course is always the first step to total domination. But we didn’t see that either. We weren’t ready for the horror.
At that time the Listener’s License had huge power. Not the power it has today, I mean now. If you do not have a valid Listener’s License. I mean - well in our time you can’t do anything, I mean, you’re a pirate. If you can’t present, that is part of your paperwork. It’s part of your identification. See the listener’s License, after they came out with that. That was a huge step one.
But everyone was so focused on the Listener’s License they didn’t see where the REAL power play was made. See everyone was so whipped up, and the media again, you know the corporately controlled media. Got everyone focusing on the benefits and the drawbacks, a big debate over the listener’s license. But then what they didn’t see was, was the regulations that went into play on the recording equipment. See that was the one that really came back. They started putting these standards on microphones and any kind of recording media. You wanted to record, well you gotta adhere to this standard. Because this is the future. Got to make sure the quality is there.
I don't know what's worse:
- mission specialists trying to be whimsical (Oooo you brought a Buzz Lightyear action figure up with you to the ISS - that's so funny! That only costs, what, $500 in rocket fuel?)
- fifth-rate commentator/comedian/tv personality types interviewing NASA personnel and defense/space contractors and trying to make relevant jokes ("Boy, I bet you'd have no trouble putting the star on the Christmas tree with that robotic arm, huh?")
- computer-animated "music videos" showing the magic of space.
Etc. etc. etc.
Stick with the science folks. Remember - If you don't have a sense of humor, don't try to be funny!
In the great documentary on the United States' MPAA film review board, This Film is Not Yet Rated, one of the talking heads makes the argument that - in a fully functional democracy at least - government review boards may actually be preferable to private industry review boards (which are usually created to preempt the creation of government review boards in the first place.) The argument is that although government review boards have the law on their side, they are at least accountable, either to the will of the people (legislative) or the country's constitution (judicial). You could in theory force the review board to make or alter their decisions or decision-making process through legislation or judicial review. Government review boards can be required to have a certain level of openess on the review process, who does the reviews, and so on.
Private review boards, on the other hand, are accountable to no one, aside from the industry that sponsors them. They can have byzantine rules, secretive and subjective review processes, anonymous review boards, and no one can say boo about it. You can go unrated of course, but your product can effectively be stonewalled by the industry or the third parties that support it. In the case of films, unrated or NC-17 films have trouble getting into theaters, getting newspaper or TV ads, and may not get the full backing of the studio that produced it.
Regarding video games, can you even legitimately release a game in the US for any of the the big consoles without an ESRB rating?
A treehugger gave to me
14 plants oxygenating 5 sea slugs
65 creeping arthropods
8 swimming fishes
One coral reef
And a fossilized raccoon dog from an ancient lake bed.
Slashdot Mirror
- Peter Pan. I'm captain of the Dream Catcher. Grumpy Bear here tells me you're lookin' for passage to the Aslan system?
- Yes indeed, if it's a fast ship.
- Fast ship? You've never heard of the Dream Catcher?
- Should I have?
- It's the ship that made the Emerald City Run in less than twelve cowznofskis. I've outrun Middle Kingdom dragons. Not the local luckdragons mind you, I'm talking about the big Morgoth-bred firedrakes now. She's fast enough for you old wizard.
I'm betting there's many a school administrator that loves the idea of teaching chemistry without using chemicals - "You can just use computer simulations! We got budgets 'n liability insurance 'n terrorism ta think about, ya know." Make sure your students still get their hands dirty, so to speak.
I read Newsday (paper version) and when you compare it to the other local competition - the NY Post and Daily News - it's a far superior paper. Strong investigative reporting (particularly regarding local government), and celebrity and sports "news" almost never make the front cover.
Gladys Knight & The Pips - I've Got To Use My Imagination
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kPFrQPdKPM
I've really got to use my imagination
To think of good reasons
To keep on keepin' on
Got to make the best of a bad situation
Ever since that day
I woke up and found
That you were gone
Darkness all around me
Blocking out the sun
Old friends call me
But I just don't feel like talkin' to anyone
Emptiness has found me
And it just won't let me go
I go right on livin'
But why I just don't know
You're too strong not to keep on keepin' on
Yes, I am!
You're too strong not to keep on keepin' on
Staring down reality
Don't do me no good
'Cause our misunderstanding
Is too well understood
Such a sad, sad season
When a good love dies.
Not a day goes by
When I don't realize
I've really got to use my imagination
To think of good reasons
To keep on keepin' on
I got to make the best of a bad situation
Ever since that day
I woke up and found
That you were gone
You're too strong not to keep on keepin' on
I've really got to use a good imagination
To think of good reasons
To keep on pushin' on
I got to make the best of a bad situation
Ever since that day
I woke up and found
That you were gone
You're too strong not to keep on keepin' on...
...but the ground is weak.
'nuff said, I should hope.
And that goes for talking AND texting. After one-sided converstation, someone going clickety-clickety-clickety is the second-most disturbing sound you can hear coming out of a restroom stall.
Actually, make that the third.
During the fall, how far could he drift from the balloon's overhead position? A few miles? Tens of miles?
Goes to show that the art of monetizing digital information still has a way to go. Would you pay $13.59 to access a web site with the same info? $5.00 even?
*Nope, not available on Kindle either.
Now governments and big corporations can misplace even *more* data!
"The Library of Congress burned down? No worries chief! I got the whole thing backed up on the tape right here in my desk. (opens and closes drawers) Right here.. in.. my... oh shizzle."
Apple and Microsoft working together - mass hysteria!
"Experiment IV" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6hvNe11r9U
Warning - pretentious as hell, even for Kate Bush fans. YMMV. Starring Hugh "the guy from House" Laurie and Dawn "magnificent bosom" French.
Not to give this POS film any credit, but they used CGI (and some makeup) to make Bruce Willis look young in his "surrogate" form. Details here: http://io9.com/5366325/how-to-get-your-future-robot-self-high
Yeah, I'm 99% sure this was just done with cutting and pasting in old footage, not a server farm.
Back in the days of DOS, Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller fame) used to write a computer column. Basically back then all airport security would ask you to do is turn your laptop on, just to confirm that it is a working laptop, and not, say, a laptop packed with C4 where the battery and hard drive should be.
/C:x /T:x,30 > NUL
He suggested that when traveling you should NOT, DEFINITEY NOT put the following in your laptop's AUTOEXEC.BAT file:
ECHO READY
ECHO ARMING....
ECHO ARMED
ECHO *** DETONATION IN 00:30 ***
ECHO Press 'x' to abort.
CHOICE
ECHO GOODBYE
"Nexus One is still in beta. You gotta expect the odd hiccup or two. (pause) What?"
An interesting article from The Atlantic discusses a new view of children with genetic dispositions to "flawed" personality traits, such as ADHD. Much of it is based on a long-term study of a captive colony of rhesus monkeys.
In the barest of nutshells: while many children are like dandelions, and could survive and even prosper in any environment (poor, lousy parents, bad schools, etc.), others are like orchids. Raised in the wrong environment they become screw-ups. Raised in the right environment they thrive, and the traits that are considered flaws become strengths, even allowing them success beyond their dandelion brethren.
A good read even if you think they're wrong. One nice takeaway from the rhesus monkey study: in the long run, bullies never win.
Free digital copy of "Blade Runner" with every Nexus One (director's cut, of course). Google gets to demo the phones' video chops and gets the coolness cred, PKD's heirs get a chunk of the royalties. Win-win.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v._Apple_Computer
Nexus One vs Droid:
Free Slipcase?
Nexus One - Yes
Droid - No
WINNER - NEXUS ONE
I actually used Javascript in Adobe Acrobat a few years back. As part of a workflow process we were regularly bundling sets of PDFs together into one large PDF. This included a title page and a table of contents (talking about a printable one, not bookmarks.) So I futzed around with the Javascript and came up with a way to have the person creating the one big PDF to:
- open a blank Title/TOC PDF
- click a checkbox to unhide the form elements.
- enter a title into a field, which appeared on both the title page and the page headers
- check off which documents were being included in the PDF, which then showed those lines in the TOC. The chapter numbering e.g. 1), 2), 3) etc. also changed to match.
- click the checkbox again to hide the form elements, leaving just the printable title and TOC portions.
- save as a new copy, then bundle it with the other documents.
Pretty slick IMHO. It saved the users from having to waste time opening Word to create a new Title/TOC page every time.
But that being said, what happened in the PDF stayed in the PDF. It didn't have to connect to the web, etc.
This is of course the classic reason for bloatware. The feature that's unbelievably-useful-couldn't-do-my-work-without-it for 2% of the users is completely worthless to the other 98%, and we all belong to at least one group of 2%.
Adobe also has the problem of full Adobe Acrobat Pro vs. Acrobat Reader. Any changes made to a PDF in Acrobat Pro have to be compatible within Acrobat Reader e.g. if I highlight text in Pro and save the PDF I expect everyone who opens the PDF later on to see it too. Otherwise they could simply make all the additional features (including Javascript support) plug-ins and be done with it.
(from transcript http://thinkforyourself.vaillife.net/assets/afternow/01tota.streamjack.doc ) -
It was a few years later when the REAL crackdown came. The Listener’s License. What a fantastic concept. I can’t believe it. See it happened like this. There was this - There is all this piracy, see everybody was - Piracy was - Uh, Piracy is now what they now consider a theft. See in order to combat piracy which was getting really rampant, all this information was flowing around nobody really liked that so they wanted it gone. And they wanted to get rid of piracy. But they couldn’t stop it.
The Internet was growing everyday. No one could stem the flow so they created the Listener’s License. Started real easy. See music, legitimate music to purchase, was, you know, say 20 bucks. And then what they did was, if you signed up to get this card, you know like a loyalty program card of the day. You’d get 75% percent off. So a 20 dollar CD became a 5 dollar CD. And you could buy it legitimately. For 20 bucks you would walk out of there with 4 CD’s. Amazing.
Of course people were signing up for it in droves, I mean why wouldn’t ya? You could go buy a pirate CD for 6 bucks or you could buy the reall thing for 5. Consumers are such mercenaries. So they signed up en masse.
2 years went by, 2 years. Then it became mandatory. See if you didn’t have your listener’s license, if you couldn’t present your card, well you weren’t able to buy music. Part of the licensing agreement came when you got the card. And all of sudden people were out in the cold.
But it wasn’t just the music you know. The Listener’s License was created by the conglomerates. They all got together. If you wanted to see a movie, hey if you had your listener’s License you could get in for 2 dollars. (chuckle) 2 bucks. Oh you don’t have a Listener’s License, well you can’t get in. See they couldn’t control the piracy so they stopped it at its source.
If ever you were found to be a pirate or if your computer was ever found to have MP3’s that weren’t appropriate on it you were eliminated, your listener’s License was revoked and you were out of the loop. It's all private enterprise, you don’t have a right to music, you never had a right to it. It's all private.
No more movies no more shows. Can’t even buy art. Cause you can scan it. What if you scanned that picture? So, regulation of course is always the first step to total domination. But we didn’t see that either. We weren’t ready for the horror.
At that time the Listener’s License had huge power. Not the power it has today, I mean now. If you do not have a valid Listener’s License. I mean - well in our time you can’t do anything, I mean, you’re a pirate. If you can’t present, that is part of your paperwork. It’s part of your identification. See the listener’s License, after they came out with that. That was a huge step one.
But everyone was so focused on the Listener’s License they didn’t see where the REAL power play was made. See everyone was so whipped up, and the media again, you know the corporately controlled media. Got everyone focusing on the benefits and the drawbacks, a big debate over the listener’s license. But then what they didn’t see was, was the regulations that went into play on the recording equipment. See that was the one that really came back. They started putting these standards on microphones and any kind of recording media. You wanted to record, well you gotta adhere to this standard. Because this is the future. Got to make sure the quality is there.
Chips were put into place. All re
I don't know what's worse:
- mission specialists trying to be whimsical (Oooo you brought a Buzz Lightyear action figure up with you to the ISS - that's so funny! That only costs, what, $500 in rocket fuel?)
- fifth-rate commentator/comedian/tv personality types interviewing NASA personnel and defense/space contractors and trying to make relevant jokes ("Boy, I bet you'd have no trouble putting the star on the Christmas tree with that robotic arm, huh?")
- computer-animated "music videos" showing the magic of space.
Etc. etc. etc.
Stick with the science folks. Remember - If you don't have a sense of humor, don't try to be funny!
Taxis in New York usually have this much radio gear in the front. All operated hands free, of course.
In the great documentary on the United States' MPAA film review board, This Film is Not Yet Rated , one of the talking heads makes the argument that - in a fully functional democracy at least - government review boards may actually be preferable to private industry review boards (which are usually created to preempt the creation of government review boards in the first place.)
The argument is that although government review boards have the law on their side, they are at least accountable, either to the will of the people (legislative) or the country's constitution (judicial). You could in theory force the review board to make or alter their decisions or decision-making process through legislation or judicial review. Government review boards can be required to have a certain level of openess on the review process, who does the reviews, and so on.
Private review boards, on the other hand, are accountable to no one, aside from the industry that sponsors them. They can have byzantine rules, secretive and subjective review processes, anonymous review boards, and no one can say boo about it. You can go unrated of course, but your product can effectively be stonewalled by the industry or the third parties that support it. In the case of films, unrated or NC-17 films have trouble getting into theaters, getting newspaper or TV ads, and may not get the full backing of the studio that produced it.
Regarding video games, can you even legitimately release a game in the US for any of the the big consoles without an ESRB rating?
A treehugger gave to me
14 plants oxygenating
5 sea slugs
65 creeping arthropods
8 swimming fishes
One coral reef
And a fossilized raccoon dog from an ancient lake bed.