I don't want "REALLY COOL" "dude". I'm not 12. I just want information. Google manages to present relevant information from a couple of billion web pages with a simple HTML front end.
I hate to break it to you, but Gmail and Google Maps are totally AJAX, and even a basic web search on Google makes use of JavaScript. Google integrates it all so seamlessly, you don't even realize that they're using fancy "Web 2.0" tricks to give you what looks like a simple HTML page.
Joel on Software has two great entries that relate to this topic: The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing, and Hiring the top 1% (hint: just because you're rejecting 99% of applicants, doesn't mean you're hiring the top 1%, because the top 1% already have great jobs!)
I think that many companies have learned the secret of that last point. The best people have jobs already, for the most part. If you really want exceptional people, don't wait for them to show up at your door with a resume, find out who they are and who they work for, and then hire them away. Offering them more money will not convince them (though obviously you should offer a bit more than they're making now), but the opportunity to have more creative control over their job might.
There was never a period of time when shareware was a particularly good model for anything other than marketing. The original shareware authors generally had a plan of:
1) Write shareware 2) Build up a user base (who pretty much don't pay) 3) Use this base to get a commercial vendor interested enough to finance bring the product out commercially
I could go on but this strikes me as a college freshman economics term paper on applying economic ideas to a recent trend, not as a real insight.
That's only true if you don't include crippleware. But historically a large fraction of shareware has been nagware and crippleware, and those categories are still a huge segment of software: small programs that you download directly from the author's website, which don't offer full functionality until you pay and get a registration code (tied to your computer).
There are people making a living selling shareware apps. Maybe not a huge market compared to the rest of the software industry, but they're real. And many of them have no interest in going commercial.
Linus is making the biggest mistake all geeks make (myself included, but I learn, he might).
People don't want you to give them lots of features that get in their way.
They want you to give them something intuitive that does the basic things they need done first.
As a lead developer of Audacity, I have to disagree. Yes, users want a simplified interface that doesn't get in their way. They want the most basic things to be as easy as possible. But once they've done those basic things, they want to do something else. They want more functionality. For any given user, that added functionality is pretty simple - but every user is different. There's not a single feature in Audacity that we could remove that wouldn't upset thousands of users - and not just power users - ordinary users who really just need that one feature!
Making an interface simple is good. Removing functionality isn't.
The other thing which turned me off to Google was I started a website and wanted to add it to the listings. Google would not add my listings for six months. And mine is NOT spam. Why is spam listed so high, but legitimate websites are not?
I've never had this problem. I create a new website, and Google finds it within a day or two. I don't even bother submitting it to Google - just promote the site; people link to it in their blogs, a few set up permanent links, and voila, it's indexed by Google. Of course, that assumes it's actually a useful site with some content that people find interesting and relevant.
I think it's a neat idea. I also think it would be worth considering almost the opposite extreme, though:
* Imagine a studio where artists are full-time employees who all work together to develop the creative product. (This is not unheard of - think of all of the animators at Pixar, for example). * Everyone gets excellent salaries and benefits. Starting pay is $75K, full medical, dental, vacation, etc. - and raises with seniority. * Everyone in the company shares equally in successes, through profit-sharing. The "star" of this label's most successful band doesn't get millions while everyone else struggles, because everyone realizes that not only is there a lot of luck involved, but that everyone behind the scenes was very important in making that artist a success, too. * Of course there is still motivation to excel: fame, not fortune. Instead of trying to write the hit song to make a million dollars, you write it so that you can be on TV. And of course it might lead to a book, advertising tie-ins, etc. so you could still make a fortune - it's just that your salary from the studio would be the same. * If a formerly successful artist is having a bad year, rather than dumping them and having them starve on the streets, the studio could put them to good use - helping new bands write songs, playing or singing backup, etc. And if they want to let them go, no problem, they just lay them off and give them a severance package like in any other decent business.
Right now the model is set up so that the top 1% of artist make a fortune and everyone else struggles. Your model, while it gives a lot more to the artist and is much more fair, is still a similar risk model. I think that's great for some - but I think a lot of musicians would prefer a label that treated them as employees.
To me, a hard-drive based digital audio player should be able to play music copied to it via Windows Explorer or Konqueror or whatever file manager you prefer to use, on whatever operating system you prefer to use.
Most music players create a database of all of the songs stored on the device, allowing you to quickly browse by artist, album, genre, or song name (at a minimum). If you didn't have a database, browsing would be painfully slow, as it would have to scan the entire catalog. And building the database on the portable player itself would cause a huge startup delay, plus a delay anytime you added or removed a file; and keep in mind that the player itself has limited processing power and battery power.
I agree that it would be nice if the format of that database was open, but the fact is that it WAS cracked very easily; it obviously wasn't obfuscated or encrypted. There are several third-party programs that let you copy songs to an iPod and update the database, so you're certainly not forced to use iTunes.
It seems to me that if companies like Google need to hire programmers to work on the "less glamorous" aspects of FOSS applications, that points out a significant weakness in the FOSS development model.
What part of the FOSS development model requires that all FOSS programmers be volunteers? One of the best parts of FOSS is that a small group of users (individuals or companies) can hire a FOSS developer as a consultant to add a particular feature they need. A proprietary software company might never add that particular feature, because they wouldn't see the long-term profit potential, but with FOSS you don't need the permission of some central authority - just find a programmer with the ability and willingness to do it.
Web apps all have the same problem. They use a goddamn BROWSER as the application platform. This sucks.... Whatever happened to the "applet" concept?
Ya know, I used to feel the same way, but then I finally realized that for most applications, the browser as an application platform is actually better and results in a better user experience. With a web-based application, every user can rely on:
* Cross-platform compatibility - aside from a diminising number of Windows-IE-only sites, any web application works on Windows, Mac, and Linux equally. Sadly, this was rarely true of Java applets, though I agree there's no reason this shouldn't have worked in theory. * Resizable fonts and modifiable colors - absolutely critical for the visually impaired. Only a tiny fraction of desktop applications are customizable for the visually impaired, and virtually no Java applets are, but it's trivial to make a website accessible (add ALT tags to any images). * Text is selectable and copyable. * For an application that needs to access a remote server, support for your firewall. Small client apps don't tend to support proxy servers / firewalls. But web browsers handle all of this for you.
I'm not saying we're ready for Office in the web browser with today's technology. But for a lot of apps (online banking, making reservations, accessing a company database) there are many advantages to doing it based on the web, rather than using applets or client-side apps.
Google just hired 300 former NASA Jet Propulsion Lab engineers who used to work next door.
Ummmm, yeah, because Pasadena is right next to Mountain View. (They're both in California, but about 350 miles apart.)
Also, I know it was a joke, but do you honestly think that most of those fired were among the best and the brightest? Most of the people to go will be the bottom 5-10%...I don't know if Google wants them.
The fact is that JPL has already left behind its jet propulsion roots to become a NASA contractor for robotic space exploration, presumably because that is where the money was when the jet propulsion money dried up. So now they are simply following the money again, this time to the DoD.
You're describing JPL as if it were a company that can just do whatever they feel like. You're right, JPL has nothing to do with jet propulsion anymore, but that's just the name. But it's not a private entity, it's a federally funded research and development center, managed by Caltech and under contract with NASA to lead robotic space exploration.
Why did this guy get a 'troll' score?? He's got a point!
Actually NASA's budget has not increased or decreased significantly, and while I'm not a fan of warmongering, I don't think that warmongering is getting in the way of NASA's budget, which is tiny in comparison. NASA is getting the same money but is shifting priorities around in order to retire the shuttle earlier. This is a good thing. People are being laid off at some NASA centers, and others are hiring.
I'm a JPL employee. I'm not a manager or anything, but here's how I understand the situation.
While this is serious and unfortunate for the people being laid off, I don't think that NASA's priorities are necessarily misplaced in this case. Mike Griffin, the new NASA administrator, has made it his top goal to get the replacement for the space shuttle ready as soon as possible - much faster than had been planned previously. This is a very good thing - everyone I know at NASA is applauding this.
NASA's overall budget has not changed significantly. As a result, Griffin had to make the tough decision to cancel a few programs, including one big robotic mission, in order to put more money into retiring the shuttle. Very importantly, he did not cancel any Earth science programs, and didn't cancel any Mars exploration programs.
It's unfortunate that this has affected JPL so much (more than all other NASA centers except Ames), and to be totally honest morale is pretty low at the lab right now because this caught everyone by surprise. But the truth is that JPL's director, Charles Elachi, has been very forthcoming and frank about the whole thing, and really seems to be making a serious effort to be fair about the layoffs. And even though I may not agree with every decision they make, I have enormous respect for both Elachi and Griffin. They're both scientists/engineers, not MBAs or something like that (the first NASA administrator Bush appointed was an accountant - he had no clue what he was doing), and they have extremely impressive credentials. They're smart, honest, and very experienced, and they're both trying to do what's best for NASA in the long run.
This is true - neither Audacity nor Ardour can fully take advantage of VST effects. Sadly, we were basically forced into this position by Steinberg's licensing, which is not compatible with any open source licenses.
The CVS version of Audacity for Mac OS X fully supports Audio Units, the next generation audio plug-in API for the Mac, complete with graphics and all. But on Windows, VST is still king and Steinberg won't let us link our code to theirs.
iTunes downloads with fairplay are playable in any application that supports QuickTime.
That's true.
There's a very simple api for extracting the decompressed audio data from those files. The user must authenticate with the music store before the files can be decrypted, but that's it.
Unfortunately that's not true anymore. The very first Mac-only release of QuickTime with m4p (encrypted AAC) support did let application developers decompress the stream into raw audio. Since then this feature has been disabled. It's still possible to get around it, but not easily. (For example, what Audio Hijack does - but this program is clearly not just using the simple APIs.)
I'm glad Apple is refusing to license FairPlay to be used this way. The consumer experience provided by Sony is pathetic, and Apple wants to have no part of it. Look at their FAQ - the audio you get on their CD has to be played with special software, which uses up too many CPU resources and tends to crash.
When it comes to TV and Movies, Joss Whedon seems to need two tries to get it right. "Buffy", the movie, sucked (no pun intended... okay, maybe it was).
Joss Whedon didn't have enough creative control over the Buffy movie - they didn't end up doing it the way he wanted it. There may be some truth to what you're saying - it's only natural that things would be better the second time around, but it's not fair to blame him for many of the shortcomings of the Buffy movie...
"Firefly", likewise seemed only half thought-out before they started the cameras running. They couldn't decide if the story spanned star systems, and FTL was possible, or it all took place in a single solar system (the different intros on the show implied different things)
Hmmm, when in the show do they ever mention FTL travel? Joss has made it very clear in interviews that it is a non-FTL 'verse.
Also, none of those things, in my opinion, are central to the story. Why does it matter how large their 'verse is, in physical dimensions? They have a consistent notion of how long it takes to get from one world to another, and that's what's important for the story.
In the movie, they make it very clear that the entire Alliance, and the outlying worlds, are all within a single solar system. Of course, that doesn't explain how all these planets seem to have about the same temperature range. But we're not supposed to think about such things.
Ummm, they mention terraforming a lot. I agree that leaves some unanswered questions, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a gaping plot hole.
The biggest change people will notice, is the near-complete abandonment of the western theme. They still strap on their six-shooters, but that's about it. There's not a horse in sight.
Very true. But the Western theme was only prevalent in about half of the TV episodes. So this particular storyline just didn't happen to have room for that.
And finally, there's the Buffyication of the character of River. There's no indication in the series that she had been turned into the ultimate killing machine (no spoiler that, it's all over the trailers). But Riverbuffy goes on a couple of killing sprees that would look right at home at Sunnydale High.
Dude, did you watch the whole series? This was completely foreshadowed in several episodes.
Anyway, sorry to argue on these minor points. We both liked the movie - I just thought the series was pretty darn good, too.
I have no idea if this is why, but I was walking down the street two weeks ago in Cambridge MA and some guy just handed me an Unbuntu cd. Two actually, one live cd and one install. I didn't even realize what it was until I had walked 50 feet past him. That's never happened to me with any other distro...
It won't happen to you in any other city, either...
These screenshots should look very familiar to anyone who has used Apple's iWork (Keynote and Pages) - Microsoft's "radically new interface paradigm" is basically just copying the interface that Apple came up with for all of its new productivity applications in Mac OS X. This paradigm also shows up in OmniGraffle and other Omni tools, and in XCode.
The features I'd really like to see in Microsoft Office? Besides open, documented file formats, of course? How about looking the same when opened on any other computer, with any other (reasonably recent) version of Office for either PC or Mac? And no matter what locale they're in - right now someone with a German locale can open an (English) Word document and get totally different pagination. Or how about not trying to second-guess me when I want to delete a blank line before a page break? Or how about a way to make changes to a group of Sections all at once (for example, I have a bunch of section breaks through several pages, but I want continuous page numbering through the whole set)?
You just discovered the difference between a mediocre school and a competitive university. If you were at MIT, Caltech, or Stanford, 90% of the entering class would be able to do long division in binary. The difference isn't what they teach you, it's being surrounded by other smart, motivated students. I think you'd have fun in upper-division computer science classes at these schools.
What's funny is that the Mac got this right in 1984, and Windows still hasn't figured it out. Ask any Mac user who speaks a little French or German, and they'll tell you how to make an umlauted character: option-u followed by the character to put the umlaut over. Not hard to remember at all. (It's equally easy for all other major accent characters for European languages.)
Ask a Windows user, and either they have no idea, or they have to open Word and use the character palette, or else an international keyboard.
The only way to sell a song online if you are a musician and want to have DRM is on iTunes....Sorry that people don't realize it, but independent musicians are screwed because they cant sell protected songs for the price they want.
Well, you certainly couldn't mean that they want to sell singles for more than $0.99 - they'd be unreasonably greedy and totally out of touch with reality. So you must mean less. Now, why the heck would an artist want to sell a song for substantially less than $0.99, but still care about DRM?
If the band is so unknown that a low price would help get their music to consumers, they should be giving away free MP3s on their website. Selling songs with DRM is not the way to build a following, if there's no other way people can hear your music for free (I'm assuming lesser-known indie artists probably don't get much radio play). Perhaps they could give away half of each album and sell the other half on iTunes? Alternatively, they could put 15 songs on an album and sell it "album-only" on iTunes (for $9.99).
Slashdot Mirror
I don't want "REALLY COOL" "dude". I'm not 12. I just want
information. Google manages to present relevant information from
a couple of billion web pages with a simple HTML front end.
I hate to break it to you, but Gmail and Google Maps are totally AJAX, and even a basic web search on Google makes use of JavaScript. Google integrates it all so seamlessly, you don't even realize that they're using fancy "Web 2.0" tricks to give you what looks like a simple HTML page.
Joel on Software has two great entries that relate to this topic: The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing, and Hiring the top 1% (hint: just because you're rejecting 99% of applicants, doesn't mean you're hiring the top 1%, because the top 1% already have great jobs!)
I think that many companies have learned the secret of that last point. The best people have jobs already, for the most part. If you really want exceptional people, don't wait for them to show up at your door with a resume, find out who they are and who they work for, and then hire them away. Offering them more money will not convince them (though obviously you should offer a bit more than they're making now), but the opportunity to have more creative control over their job might.
There was never a period of time when shareware was a particularly good model for anything other than marketing. The original shareware authors generally had a plan of:
1) Write shareware
2) Build up a user base (who pretty much don't pay)
3) Use this base to get a commercial vendor interested enough to finance bring the product out commercially
I could go on but this strikes me as a college freshman economics term paper on applying economic ideas to a recent trend, not as a real insight.
That's only true if you don't include crippleware. But historically a large fraction of shareware has been nagware and crippleware, and those categories are still a huge segment of software: small programs that you download directly from the author's website, which don't offer full functionality until you pay and get a registration code (tied to your computer).
There are people making a living selling shareware apps. Maybe not a huge market compared to the rest of the software industry, but they're real. And many of them have no interest in going commercial.
Linus is making the biggest mistake all geeks make (myself included, but I learn, he might).
People don't want you to give them lots of features that get in their way.
They want you to give them something intuitive that does the basic things they need done first.
As a lead developer of Audacity, I have to disagree. Yes, users want a simplified interface that doesn't get in their way. They want the most basic things to be as easy as possible. But once they've done those basic things, they want to do something else. They want more functionality. For any given user, that added functionality is pretty simple - but every user is different. There's not a single feature in Audacity that we could remove that wouldn't upset thousands of users - and not just power users - ordinary users who really just need that one feature!
Making an interface simple is good. Removing functionality isn't.
The other thing which turned me off to Google was I started a website and wanted to add it to the listings. Google would not add my listings for six months. And mine is NOT spam. Why is spam listed so high, but legitimate websites are not?
I've never had this problem. I create a new website, and Google finds it within a day or two. I don't even bother submitting it to Google - just promote the site; people link to it in their blogs, a few set up permanent links, and voila, it's indexed by Google. Of course, that assumes it's actually a useful site with some content that people find interesting and relevant.
I think it's a neat idea. I also think it would be worth considering almost the opposite extreme, though:
* Imagine a studio where artists are full-time employees who all work together to develop the creative product. (This is not unheard of - think of all of the animators at Pixar, for example).
* Everyone gets excellent salaries and benefits. Starting pay is $75K, full medical, dental, vacation, etc. - and raises with seniority.
* Everyone in the company shares equally in successes, through profit-sharing. The "star" of this label's most successful band doesn't get millions while everyone else struggles, because everyone realizes that not only is there a lot of luck involved, but that everyone behind the scenes was very important in making that artist a success, too.
* Of course there is still motivation to excel: fame, not fortune. Instead of trying to write the hit song to make a million dollars, you write it so that you can be on TV. And of course it might lead to a book, advertising tie-ins, etc. so you could still make a fortune - it's just that your salary from the studio would be the same.
* If a formerly successful artist is having a bad year, rather than dumping them and having them starve on the streets, the studio could put them to good use - helping new bands write songs, playing or singing backup, etc. And if they want to let them go, no problem, they just lay them off and give them a severance package like in any other decent business.
Right now the model is set up so that the top 1% of artist make a fortune and everyone else struggles. Your model, while it gives a lot more to the artist and is much more fair, is still a similar risk model. I think that's great for some - but I think a lot of musicians would prefer a label that treated them as employees.
To me, a hard-drive based digital audio player should be able to play music copied to it via Windows Explorer or Konqueror or whatever file manager you prefer to use, on whatever operating system you prefer to use.
Most music players create a database of all of the songs stored on the device, allowing you to quickly browse by artist, album, genre, or song name (at a minimum). If you didn't have a database, browsing would be painfully slow, as it would have to scan the entire catalog. And building the database on the portable player itself would cause a huge startup delay, plus a delay anytime you added or removed a file; and keep in mind that the player itself has limited processing power and battery power.
I agree that it would be nice if the format of that database was open, but the fact is that it WAS cracked very easily; it obviously wasn't obfuscated or encrypted. There are several third-party programs that let you copy songs to an iPod and update the database, so you're certainly not forced to use iTunes.
This is the problem with the open source movement. Putting the code before the user.
And this is why you fail.
Linux is growing in popularity in every segment it's in. If you call that failing, I can't wait to see what happens if it starts succeeding!!!
It seems to me that if companies like Google need to hire programmers to work on the "less glamorous" aspects of FOSS applications, that points out a significant weakness in the FOSS development model.
What part of the FOSS development model requires that all FOSS programmers be volunteers? One of the best parts of FOSS is that a small group of users (individuals or companies) can hire a FOSS developer as a consultant to add a particular feature they need. A proprietary software company might never add that particular feature, because they wouldn't see the long-term profit potential, but with FOSS you don't need the permission of some central authority - just find a programmer with the ability and willingness to do it.
Why did you not reveal this person's name? One of my colleagues works in NASA's astrobiology program and she would be glad to know who not to trust...
Web apps all have the same problem. They use a goddamn BROWSER as the application platform. This sucks. ...
Whatever happened to the "applet" concept?
Ya know, I used to feel the same way, but then I finally realized that for most applications, the browser as an application platform is actually better and results in a better user experience. With a web-based application, every user can rely on:
* Cross-platform compatibility - aside from a diminising number of Windows-IE-only sites, any web application works on Windows, Mac, and Linux equally. Sadly, this was rarely true of Java applets, though I agree there's no reason this shouldn't have worked in theory.
* Resizable fonts and modifiable colors - absolutely critical for the visually impaired. Only a tiny fraction of desktop applications are customizable for the visually impaired, and virtually no Java applets are, but it's trivial to make a website accessible (add ALT tags to any images).
* Text is selectable and copyable.
* For an application that needs to access a remote server, support for your firewall. Small client apps don't tend to support proxy servers / firewalls. But web browsers handle all of this for you.
I'm not saying we're ready for Office in the web browser with today's technology. But for a lot of apps (online banking, making reservations, accessing a company database) there are many advantages to doing it based on the web, rather than using applets or client-side apps.
Google just hired 300 former NASA Jet Propulsion Lab engineers who used to work next door.
Ummmm, yeah, because Pasadena is right next to Mountain View. (They're both in California, but about 350 miles apart.)
Also, I know it was a joke, but do you honestly think that most of those fired were among the best and the brightest? Most of the people to go will be the bottom 5-10%...I don't know if Google wants them.
The fact is that JPL has already left behind its jet propulsion roots to become a NASA contractor for robotic space exploration, presumably because that is where the money was when the jet propulsion money dried up. So now they are simply following the money again, this time to the DoD.
You're describing JPL as if it were a company that can just do whatever they feel like. You're right, JPL has nothing to do with jet propulsion anymore, but that's just the name. But it's not a private entity, it's a federally funded research and development center, managed by Caltech and under contract with NASA to lead robotic space exploration.
Why did this guy get a 'troll' score?? He's got a point!
Actually NASA's budget has not increased or decreased significantly, and while I'm not a fan of warmongering, I don't think that warmongering is getting in the way of NASA's budget, which is tiny in comparison. NASA is getting the same money but is shifting priorities around in order to retire the shuttle earlier. This is a good thing. People are being laid off at some NASA centers, and others are hiring.
This is serious and incredibly stupid.
I'm a JPL employee. I'm not a manager or anything, but here's how I understand the situation.
While this is serious and unfortunate for the people being laid off, I don't think that NASA's priorities are necessarily misplaced in this case. Mike Griffin, the new NASA administrator, has made it his top goal to get the replacement for the space shuttle ready as soon as possible - much faster than had been planned previously. This is a very good thing - everyone I know at NASA is applauding this.
NASA's overall budget has not changed significantly. As a result, Griffin had to make the tough decision to cancel a few programs, including one big robotic mission, in order to put more money into retiring the shuttle. Very importantly, he did not cancel any Earth science programs, and didn't cancel any Mars exploration programs.
It's unfortunate that this has affected JPL so much (more than all other NASA centers except Ames), and to be totally honest morale is pretty low at the lab right now because this caught everyone by surprise. But the truth is that JPL's director, Charles Elachi, has been very forthcoming and frank about the whole thing, and really seems to be making a serious effort to be fair about the layoffs. And even though I may not agree with every decision they make, I have enormous respect for both Elachi and Griffin. They're both scientists/engineers, not MBAs or something like that (the first NASA administrator Bush appointed was an accountant - he had no clue what he was doing), and they have extremely impressive credentials. They're smart, honest, and very experienced, and they're both trying to do what's best for NASA in the long run.
This is true - neither Audacity nor Ardour can fully take advantage of VST effects. Sadly, we were basically forced into this position by Steinberg's licensing, which is not compatible with any open source licenses.
The CVS version of Audacity for Mac OS X fully supports Audio Units, the next generation audio plug-in API for the Mac, complete with graphics and all. But on Windows, VST is still king and Steinberg won't let us link our code to theirs.
iTunes downloads with fairplay are playable in any application that supports QuickTime.
That's true.
There's a very simple api for extracting the decompressed audio data from those files. The user must authenticate with the music store before the files can be decrypted, but that's it.
Unfortunately that's not true anymore. The very first Mac-only release of QuickTime with m4p (encrypted AAC) support did let application developers decompress the stream into raw audio. Since then this feature has been disabled. It's still possible to get around it, but not easily. (For example, what Audio Hijack does - but this program is clearly not just using the simple APIs.)
I'm glad Apple is refusing to license FairPlay to be used this way. The consumer experience provided by Sony is pathetic, and Apple wants to have no part of it. Look at their FAQ - the audio you get on their CD has to be played with special software, which uses up too many CPU resources and tends to crash.
When it comes to TV and Movies, Joss Whedon seems to need two tries to get it right. "Buffy", the movie, sucked (no pun intended... okay, maybe it was).
Joss Whedon didn't have enough creative control over the Buffy movie - they didn't end up doing it the way he wanted it. There may be some truth to what you're saying - it's only natural that things would be better the second time around, but it's not fair to blame him for many of the shortcomings of the Buffy movie...
"Firefly", likewise seemed only half thought-out before they started the cameras running. They couldn't decide if the story spanned star systems, and FTL was possible, or it all took place in a single solar system (the different intros on the show implied different things)
Hmmm, when in the show do they ever mention FTL travel? Joss has made it very clear in interviews that it is a non-FTL 'verse.
Also, none of those things, in my opinion, are central to the story. Why does it matter how large their 'verse is, in physical dimensions? They have a consistent notion of how long it takes to get from one world to another, and that's what's important for the story.
In the movie, they make it very clear that the entire Alliance, and the outlying worlds, are all within a single solar system. Of course, that doesn't explain how all these planets seem to have about the same temperature range. But we're not supposed to think about such things.
Ummm, they mention terraforming a lot. I agree that leaves some unanswered questions, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a gaping plot hole.
The biggest change people will notice, is the near-complete abandonment of the western theme. They still strap on their six-shooters, but that's about it. There's not a horse in sight.
Very true. But the Western theme was only prevalent in about half of the TV episodes. So this particular storyline just didn't happen to have room for that.
And finally, there's the Buffyication of the character of River. There's no indication in the series that she had been turned into the ultimate killing machine (no spoiler that, it's all over the trailers). But Riverbuffy goes on a couple of killing sprees that would look right at home at Sunnydale High.
Dude, did you watch the whole series? This was completely foreshadowed in several episodes.
Anyway, sorry to argue on these minor points. We both liked the movie - I just thought the series was pretty darn good, too.
I have no idea if this is why, but I was walking down the street two weeks ago in Cambridge MA and some guy just handed me an Unbuntu cd. Two actually, one live cd and one install. I didn't even realize what it was until I had walked 50 feet past him. That's never happened to me with any other distro...
It won't happen to you in any other city, either...
These screenshots should look very familiar to anyone who has used Apple's iWork (Keynote and Pages) - Microsoft's "radically new interface paradigm" is basically just copying the interface that Apple came up with for all of its new productivity applications in Mac OS X. This paradigm also shows up in OmniGraffle and other Omni tools, and in XCode.
The features I'd really like to see in Microsoft Office? Besides open, documented file formats, of course? How about looking the same when opened on any other computer, with any other (reasonably recent) version of Office for either PC or Mac? And no matter what locale they're in - right now someone with a German locale can open an (English) Word document and get totally different pagination. Or how about not trying to second-guess me when I want to delete a blank line before a page break? Or how about a way to make changes to a group of Sections all at once (for example, I have a bunch of section breaks through several pages, but I want continuous page numbering through the whole set)?
You just discovered the difference between a mediocre school and a competitive university. If you were at MIT, Caltech, or Stanford, 90% of the entering class would be able to do long division in binary. The difference isn't what they teach you, it's being surrounded by other smart, motivated students. I think you'd have fun in upper-division computer science classes at these schools.
What's funny is that the Mac got this right in 1984, and Windows still hasn't figured it out. Ask any Mac user who speaks a little French or German, and they'll tell you how to make an umlauted character: option-u followed by the character to put the umlaut over. Not hard to remember at all. (It's equally easy for all other major accent characters for European languages.)
Ask a Windows user, and either they have no idea, or they have to open Word and use the character palette, or else an international keyboard.
The only way to sell a song online if you are a musician and want to have DRM is on iTunes....Sorry that people don't realize it, but independent musicians are screwed because they cant sell protected songs for the price they want.
Well, you certainly couldn't mean that they want to sell singles for more than $0.99 - they'd be unreasonably greedy and totally out of touch with reality. So you must mean less. Now, why the heck would an artist want to sell a song for substantially less than $0.99, but still care about DRM?
If the band is so unknown that a low price would help get their music to consumers, they should be giving away free MP3s on their website. Selling songs with DRM is not the way to build a following, if there's no other way people can hear your music for free (I'm assuming lesser-known indie artists probably don't get much radio play). Perhaps they could give away half of each album and sell the other half on iTunes? Alternatively, they could put 15 songs on an album and sell it "album-only" on iTunes (for $9.99).
You may want to read, How do I present a new encryption scheme in sci.crypt? from The Cryptography FAQ, page 2.