If you just want to save money (as opposed to helping stop Osama) and you want a more interesting piece, try an estate jeweller or a jeweller who sells pieces on consignment. Sure, it's "used", but it's pretty easy to find really, really cool rings with a satisfyingly chunky diamond. The ring I picked up was a very thin white gold band with a few very tiny diamonds along the band, and a sort of twisted-rope pattern in the setting. Unique without being gaudy or plain. Nice big rock. Very affordable.
Bottom line, pre-owned jewelry is the easiest way to afford something you can't get at a mall store, and you won't get fleeced.:)
I find it amazingly interesting that most of your points, while valid to most people, are biased towards paper always being the ultimate product of what happens on a monitor. I guess that's largely because you're an editor.:)
I do strongly disagree with your last paragraph, especially the strengths of the computer interfere with the production of that high-quality input. I find that I write much better on a computer than on paper. (By better I mean it's more coherent, less involuted, easier to read, more concise, more informative...) I would attribute a lot of that betterness to simply being more acclimatized to a computer than most people. However, the greater convenience, ease, and speed of writing that a computer allows make the computer a better writing "platform" than paper, even disregarding possible shortcomings. IMHO.
I spend about 3 minutes writing this comment and about 10 previewing it and editing it.:)
I used to agree that pencil and paper are better for scratch work. But now that I have a really nice laptop that's small enough to take everywhere, I find that I don't use paper at all now. That's what finally convinced me that paper vs. computer is a habit/environment/mindset/culture issue rather than a pragmatism issue.
A year ago I took a course in web design - mostly Shockwave and Flash development, but it started with a basic HTML primer. One of the first things the prof said was that we needed to learn to read text online. My initial reaction was, "God, what is he talking about?" But then during the course labs and while helping classmates, I noticed that when people looked up anything online, be it a taglist or Koch's syllabus, they printed it out. When people were working with their HTML docs they'd print a copy, edit it with a pen, type the changes, print it again, edit it with a pen again...
Just yesterday I had a similar experience. Once again I'm in a Java course for newbies. When we got together to work on an assignment in groups, everybody but me printed out our example code, edited it with a pen...
My hypothesis is that people who are not geeks print things because they learned to read on paper, and paper is the only environment within which they are used to reading - not checking to see if their friend emailed them that mp3 site, but in-depth, immersively reading.
I think this is one of the cultural differences between geeks and nongeeks that causes confusion about UI frequently. People who have the nongeek only-reads-on-paper mindset and have only seen computers with "illiterate" - graphic, metaphoric - interfaces do not grok CLIs like *NIX in the sense that they can't even understand why you would want a computer that you have to read to use.
Teach reading with a hypertext of Dick and Jane and see what happens.
8-Ball Staying Out Of It...
on
Quickie Fu
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
Boy, I bet they love being Slashdotted, now that they're out of operating budget...
Bottom line, pre-owned jewelry is the easiest way to afford something you can't get at a mall store, and you won't get fleeced. :)
I do strongly disagree with your last paragraph, especially the strengths of the computer interfere with the production of that high-quality input. I find that I write much better on a computer than on paper. (By better I mean it's more coherent, less involuted, easier to read, more concise, more informative...) I would attribute a lot of that betterness to simply being more acclimatized to a computer than most people. However, the greater convenience, ease, and speed of writing that a computer allows make the computer a better writing "platform" than paper, even disregarding possible shortcomings. IMHO.
I spend about 3 minutes writing this comment and about 10 previewing it and editing it. :)
Just yesterday I had a similar experience. Once again I'm in a Java course for newbies. When we got together to work on an assignment in groups, everybody but me printed out our example code, edited it with a pen...
My hypothesis is that people who are not geeks print things because they learned to read on paper, and paper is the only environment within which they are used to reading - not checking to see if their friend emailed them that mp3 site, but in-depth, immersively reading.
I think this is one of the cultural differences between geeks and nongeeks that causes confusion about UI frequently. People who have the nongeek only-reads-on-paper mindset and have only seen computers with "illiterate" - graphic, metaphoric - interfaces do not grok CLIs like *NIX in the sense that they can't even understand why you would want a computer that you have to read to use.
Teach reading with a hypertext of Dick and Jane and see what happens.
You'd think they'd be able to find night work too, at huge companies like that...