Contrary to our willingness to follow trends real technological progress is much slower than the hype.
CLI is finally becoming a mature interface. Bash is pretty good. It's taken decades to get to this point.
We still don't really know how to make a good interface that uses a mouse and a touchscreen is 22nd century stuff. Sure, you can get stuff done with those tools but often it is only a specific thing and as software becomes newer the technology and usability of it decreases/changes. Good things that work get forgotten or overlooked. There are plenty of GUI advances in the 90s that we don't have anymore. Evolution takes millions of years. Human progress is faster but it is still generations.
For example: Skype style video is at least as old as the 1960s. It's become usable now by a lot more people but it really took that long. But then the company Skype with their proprietary interface might not last forever. So it might have to be re-invented again.
The first step to genocide in Nazi Germany: ID papers that differentiate mostly heterogeneous people based on "race." The first step in genocide in Rwanda: ID papers that differentiate mostly heterogenous people based on "race." The first step in Arizona...
Of course that is an extreme comparison and there is no indication of genocide in Arizona. However, the question remains: Why follow in such despicable footsteps?
Xenophobia doesn't help us. Shame on those cowards who brought this into law and allowed it to stand. When will they ever learn?
I am so much more happy with my city now that the 2010 Olympics are behind us. It's like a veil of idiocy was lifted. For one thing, there a lot fewer short sighted mega-projects that will cost the taxpayer "nothing" (actually about 25 years of debt)
Get on it you commies.... er, no I mean... Islamofascists lurking in the closet! Why don't you bomb the lineup already!?
Those guys are a serious let down. $1Trillion dollars on the military every year and all we get are IEDs in the countries we are invading. Unreliable. Gotta take 'em out. Same as Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden. Those guys wimped out. How are we supposed to have a war against evil if all you do is hide in an apartment watching TV for 9 years. Getting executed by seal team 6 (judge jury and executioner biatchez!!!) was the most exciting thing to happen to him in a decade. Loser.
Good example. Because sometimes people see those things. Human perception is psychological fundamentally. There is no reductionist science that will make is into something fully rational. Sorry, religious 'scientifical' types, uncertainty is the only certain in this universe.
The conclusion "lossless formats and a decent pair of headphones will do a lot more for your audio enjoyment than 24/192 recordings" does not prove the headline "24-bit/192kHz Downloads Is Pointless"
The article points to the visible light spectrum as analogous to the audio spectrum. This makes more clear the faulty reasoning. Light is not sound. Light is quantum at its source not analog. The best analogy for quantum (to explain that mysterious atomic effect in human perception terms) is.... digital! Analog does not resemble it so much.
What is "Fluorescence"? How do overtones and ultrasonic noises interact with audible noises? The answer is simply: They are. Do we understand it fully? No. Sorry, but that is not what Science means. If you think that Science means we know all these things for certain then you don't understand the word science. For you science has become a religion of certainty and false security
What organ causes hearing and where is "sound" created? The Brain.
To me this argument is like a teenager trying to say that only certain drugs will get you legitimately high. That someone 'couldn't really" have narcotic effects in their brain because they weren't using the "real" stuff. (Near beer vs real beer, or lotsa vodka vs only beer...) But one is conflating the mechanism with the final effect. If the final effect is psychological then ALL TRICKS TO ACHIEVE THAT END ARE VALID. Yes, there a physical limits that are known and are important and it is important to debunk pseudoscience that is glossing over that stuff. However, sometimes that is simply not the important question. Sometimes the important human effect is not in the realm of the known or is in the realm of the psychologically subjective. In that case, don't discredit the whole branch of human knowledge called science by applying it to something for which it is not suited. Like the question of "what kind of art is scientifically best" you are getting into angels on a pinhead territory and then look to the company you keep.
Watch the daily show. Then you can see Fox news credibility laid bare. However, I do agree one shouldn't but much more faith in any of the competitor's options ("Liberal" as you illiterate "Americans" mistakenly call it.)
It's disappointing the ratio of critique of the question to answer of the question on this page. AFAIK everyone is cynical pessimistic and generally useless on this topic except one person who suggested looking at open source hardware and one baker who is all DIY.
Seriously though I wish that open source programmers set up a general donations website (for their work, not hollywood shlock) Because I would donate more if it was easier. I wanted to donate to rsync but apparently it's not possible. There are so many awesome programs just given away for free and I really value them.
Actually they lose money because they had a very tenacious promoter of their movies working hard for them, even breaking laws, all for free. But now he is in jail. Of course it's important to make the odd symbolic bust to keep the price of the bootlegs high. Same as with the war on drugs there are only two proponents for the war on piracy: cops and robbers - everyone else is a casualty.
I've never seriously looked into it because I've assumed that the receiving side is also going to have to set up some kind of decryption or whathaveyou. I don't mind spending half an hour on wikipedia and google figuring out what to set up. However, teaching/doing-it-for my dozen or so regular important contacts (actually more, but let's be conservative) I don't think so. It won't take only half an hour for them. And they'll probably need me to redo it for them after a week anyway.
I'd do it with a geek friend if we had something to be secret about, but I don't really.
Also, I'm on the gmail like everyone else so there would be the hassle of figuring out a different setup to use. (Damn you Qualcomm and you're ditching of Eudora 10 years ago!)
The change to honesty in advertising would be wonderful and extremely revolutionary. But it isn't going to happen. They don't have the power to enforce or implement this sort of a radical change. Of course I would love it but it's just not likely. Perhaps however this may spark the imagination and spur a popular movement for some kind of real truth in advertising policy happening. It would have to be a profound cultural shift. But if people get excited by this idea I think that the improvement in honesty in public dialogue (which our advertising is, even if we wish it wasn't) would be a godsend.
Personally I think a far more realistic goal (image manipulation is so inherently subjective the grey areas in the law could never have much effect) would be wonderful. I wish that we had a law stating that prices be stated straighforwardly and that certain standards of reporting were required. Like if you want to say: "FREE LUNCH" then you also have to write, in a font at least 25% as big, that the actual deal is 5 for the price of 4. That you must spend $80 to get $20 bonus. That the maximum saving is 25%. To say that the public should have basic math literacy obviously doesn't work. (People buy lottery tickets after all!) But if public dialogue (advertisiing) were forced to be honest mathmatically then that would improve our general math literacy.
This is the sort of thing Adbusters Magazine should be advocating for. Instead they decided to sell cool "unSneakers." Advertising is a really influential part of our culture from politics, to education, sex, poverty, the environment... every topic is part of it. Any move towards a more honest level of mass communication in our culture can only help. We certainly need it in our consumer obsessed, chaotic, environmentally falling apart world. Raise the level of dialogue!
Humour is almost entirely social, not individual, so looking at it on an individual level is severely limited. Human intelligence and thinking is also primarily social. Language.
Plus teflon when heated beyond a certain point (to be sure, above normal cooking temp, but not above cooking accident temp) gives off toxic fumes. And it can build up in the body as it doesn't "stick" to that which would normally clean it out. I generally cringe when people talk about wonder-products. Teflon, carbon fibre, etc. People who advocate this stuff for everything usually have never worked with this stuff in a serious capacity. Or are the kind of engineers that only design physical objects only from a computer.
I'm not saying this stuff isn't useful. But for stuff that normal people interact with like cooking, transport etc - it actually takes a very long time - decades - for us to come up with good applications. Computers are unusually fast as a technology to develop and that tricks a lot of people. But making things gradually smaller isn't the same as a conceptual breakthrough. Look at Apple. Most of what is in an iphone is not a conceptually new technology. Video chat has been around since the 1960s. But it takes a long time to make it practical at all the levels where it matters. Fluff technology advances fast but the real stuff that gets widespread adoption is a lot slower than our media tells us.
And there are plenty of cases where old, reliable technologies are under utilised and incompletely understood. For instance wax lubricants, graphite. Both of those are under used IMO.
You must work for Fox news. Pointing to the public statistics is the problem, not that 1.6 million kids have to do without. I'm surprised you aren't calling it "class warfare."
I use to use those but now it seems I need OO for compatability and the features are just too lacking. Also, I don't know if its just me, but those seem a lot less stable (on Ubuntu) than they use to be and OO a lot more. It use to be OO would take a full minute to load the java BS on linux but no longer.
I still miss it! The format catagories actually made sense and you could quickly switch with the function keys. No other word processor has ever been as easy to use as what I had in 1993 (And while I'm at it I miss Eudora 5)
I've been using Openoffice a lot lately. Gnumeric and Abiword just break too many things. Also the slowness of F***ing java is starting to be less relevent, even though I still wish they used python or something less likely to eat my memory and more open.
I want to switch to Libreoffice but reading up on it it seems there are technical hurdles which I just don't have time for cause I use OO for work. Also I like the acronym OO better than LO. Really I never was a hug fan of Sun though I'm told they were better than Oracle is. So I didn't like the owner since it was Sun (also for virtualbox) but I stuck with it due to the lack of alternative.
I'm really glad there is a fork though. In the long term I definately would want to switch. I'll probably do it when I upgrade Ubuntu and I know its already mature and integrated because I just don't have time right now to hack anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Contrary to our willingness to follow trends real technological progress is much slower than the hype.
CLI is finally becoming a mature interface. Bash is pretty good. It's taken decades to get to this point.
We still don't really know how to make a good interface that uses a mouse and a touchscreen is 22nd century stuff. Sure, you can get stuff done with those tools but often it is only a specific thing and as software becomes newer the technology and usability of it decreases/changes. Good things that work get forgotten or overlooked. There are plenty of GUI advances in the 90s that we don't have anymore. Evolution takes millions of years. Human progress is faster but it is still generations.
For example:
Skype style video is at least as old as the 1960s. It's become usable now by a lot more people but it really took that long. But then the company Skype with their proprietary interface might not last forever. So it might have to be re-invented again.
The first step to genocide in Nazi Germany: ID papers that differentiate mostly heterogeneous people based on "race." The first step in genocide in Rwanda: ID papers that differentiate mostly heterogenous people based on "race." The first step in Arizona...
Of course that is an extreme comparison and there is no indication of genocide in Arizona. However, the question remains: Why follow in such despicable footsteps?
Xenophobia doesn't help us. Shame on those cowards who brought this into law and allowed it to stand. When will they ever learn?
Thank you for your ambitious start. Please do us all a favour and shrink the rest of the Olympics down to that size too!
Sincerely,
The citizens of the host contries paying the massive public debt for the private advertising spectacle every 2 years.
I am so much more happy with my city now that the 2010 Olympics are behind us. It's like a veil of idiocy was lifted. For one thing, there a lot fewer short sighted mega-projects that will cost the taxpayer "nothing" (actually about 25 years of debt)
What? Common sense like that makes you sound like a terrorist!
Get on it you commies.... er, no I mean... Islamofascists lurking in the closet! Why don't you bomb the lineup already!?
Those guys are a serious let down. $1Trillion dollars on the military every year and all we get are IEDs in the countries we are invading. Unreliable. Gotta take 'em out. Same as Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden. Those guys wimped out. How are we supposed to have a war against evil if all you do is hide in an apartment watching TV for 9 years. Getting executed by seal team 6 (judge jury and executioner biatchez!!!) was the most exciting thing to happen to him in a decade. Loser.
Good example. Because sometimes people see those things. Human perception is psychological fundamentally. There is no reductionist science that will make is into something fully rational. Sorry, religious 'scientifical' types, uncertainty is the only certain in this universe.
The conclusion "lossless formats and a decent pair of headphones will do a lot more for your audio enjoyment than 24/192 recordings" does not prove the headline "24-bit/192kHz Downloads Is Pointless"
The article points to the visible light spectrum as analogous to the audio spectrum. This makes more clear the faulty reasoning. Light is not sound. Light is quantum at its source not analog. The best analogy for quantum (to explain that mysterious atomic effect in human perception terms) is.... digital! Analog does not resemble it so much.
What is "Fluorescence"? How do overtones and ultrasonic noises interact with audible noises? The answer is simply: They are. Do we understand it fully? No. Sorry, but that is not what Science means. If you think that Science means we know all these things for certain then you don't understand the word science. For you science has become a religion of certainty and false security
What organ causes hearing and where is "sound" created? The Brain.
To me this argument is like a teenager trying to say that only certain drugs will get you legitimately high. That someone 'couldn't really" have narcotic effects in their brain because they weren't using the "real" stuff. (Near beer vs real beer, or lotsa vodka vs only beer...) But one is conflating the mechanism with the final effect. If the final effect is psychological then ALL TRICKS TO ACHIEVE THAT END ARE VALID. Yes, there a physical limits that are known and are important and it is important to debunk pseudoscience that is glossing over that stuff. However, sometimes that is simply not the important question. Sometimes the important human effect is not in the realm of the known or is in the realm of the psychologically subjective. In that case, don't discredit the whole branch of human knowledge called science by applying it to something for which it is not suited. Like the question of "what kind of art is scientifically best" you are getting into angels on a pinhead territory and then look to the company you keep.
Watch the daily show. Then you can see Fox news credibility laid bare. However, I do agree one shouldn't but much more faith in any of the competitor's options ("Liberal" as you illiterate "Americans" mistakenly call it.)
As long as we leave out the militarism, paedophilia and everything else lord baden powell.
It's disappointing the ratio of critique of the question to answer of the question on this page. AFAIK everyone is cynical pessimistic and generally useless on this topic except one person who suggested looking at open source hardware and one baker who is all DIY.
When did we just decide to give up?
Seriously though I wish that open source programmers set up a general donations website (for their work, not hollywood shlock) Because I would donate more if it was easier. I wanted to donate to rsync but apparently it's not possible. There are so many awesome programs just given away for free and I really value them.
Actually they lose money because they had a very tenacious promoter of their movies working hard for them, even breaking laws, all for free. But now he is in jail. Of course it's important to make the odd symbolic bust to keep the price of the bootlegs high. Same as with the war on drugs there are only two proponents for the war on piracy: cops and robbers - everyone else is a casualty.
So his crime was giving instead of taking. The MPAA hates Christmas. They want to change it to "It is better to receive than to give."
Thanks for sharing this. That looks like something I might actually try.
I've never seriously looked into it because I've assumed that the receiving side is also going to have to set up some kind of decryption or whathaveyou. I don't mind spending half an hour on wikipedia and google figuring out what to set up. However, teaching/doing-it-for my dozen or so regular important contacts (actually more, but let's be conservative) I don't think so. It won't take only half an hour for them. And they'll probably need me to redo it for them after a week anyway.
I'd do it with a geek friend if we had something to be secret about, but I don't really.
Also, I'm on the gmail like everyone else so there would be the hassle of figuring out a different setup to use. (Damn you Qualcomm and you're ditching of Eudora 10 years ago!)
The change to honesty in advertising would be wonderful and extremely revolutionary. But it isn't going to happen. They don't have the power to enforce or implement this sort of a radical change. Of course I would love it but it's just not likely. Perhaps however this may spark the imagination and spur a popular movement for some kind of real truth in advertising policy happening. It would have to be a profound cultural shift. But if people get excited by this idea I think that the improvement in honesty in public dialogue (which our advertising is, even if we wish it wasn't) would be a godsend.
Personally I think a far more realistic goal (image manipulation is so inherently subjective the grey areas in the law could never have much effect) would be wonderful. I wish that we had a law stating that prices be stated straighforwardly and that certain standards of reporting were required. Like if you want to say: "FREE LUNCH" then you also have to write, in a font at least 25% as big, that the actual deal is 5 for the price of 4. That you must spend $80 to get $20 bonus. That the maximum saving is 25%. To say that the public should have basic math literacy obviously doesn't work. (People buy lottery tickets after all!) But if public dialogue (advertisiing) were forced to be honest mathmatically then that would improve our general math literacy.
This is the sort of thing Adbusters Magazine should be advocating for. Instead they decided to sell cool "unSneakers." Advertising is a really influential part of our culture from politics, to education, sex, poverty, the environment... every topic is part of it. Any move towards a more honest level of mass communication in our culture can only help. We certainly need it in our consumer obsessed, chaotic, environmentally falling apart world. Raise the level of dialogue!
So you are saying he made the choice to inhale lead due to bad judgement from his previous lead poisoning one year earlier (in 1923)
?
Humour is almost entirely social, not individual, so looking at it on an individual level is severely limited. Human intelligence and thinking is also primarily social. Language.
No, you'll get off the oil when you stop wasting so much of it. There's plenty already being extracted. But per person it is a ridiculous amount.
Hint: stop trying to greenwash cars and instead stop using them. We have feet for a reason.
You are so right about the egg!
Plus teflon when heated beyond a certain point (to be sure, above normal cooking temp, but not above cooking accident temp) gives off toxic fumes. And it can build up in the body as it doesn't "stick" to that which would normally clean it out. I generally cringe when people talk about wonder-products. Teflon, carbon fibre, etc. People who advocate this stuff for everything usually have never worked with this stuff in a serious capacity. Or are the kind of engineers that only design physical objects only from a computer.
I'm not saying this stuff isn't useful. But for stuff that normal people interact with like cooking, transport etc - it actually takes a very long time - decades - for us to come up with good applications. Computers are unusually fast as a technology to develop and that tricks a lot of people. But making things gradually smaller isn't the same as a conceptual breakthrough. Look at Apple. Most of what is in an iphone is not a conceptually new technology. Video chat has been around since the 1960s. But it takes a long time to make it practical at all the levels where it matters. Fluff technology advances fast but the real stuff that gets widespread adoption is a lot slower than our media tells us.
And there are plenty of cases where old, reliable technologies are under utilised and incompletely understood. For instance wax lubricants, graphite. Both of those are under used IMO.
You must work for Fox news. Pointing to the public statistics is the problem, not that 1.6 million kids have to do without. I'm surprised you aren't calling it "class warfare."
genius
I use to use those but now it seems I need OO for compatability and the features are just too lacking. Also, I don't know if its just me, but those seem a lot less stable (on Ubuntu) than they use to be and OO a lot more. It use to be OO would take a full minute to load the java BS on linux but no longer.
I still miss it! The format catagories actually made sense and you could quickly switch with the function keys. No other word processor has ever been as easy to use as what I had in 1993 (And while I'm at it I miss Eudora 5)
I've been using Openoffice a lot lately. Gnumeric and Abiword just break too many things. Also the slowness of F***ing java is starting to be less relevent, even though I still wish they used python or something less likely to eat my memory and more open.
I want to switch to Libreoffice but reading up on it it seems there are technical hurdles which I just don't have time for cause I use OO for work. Also I like the acronym OO better than LO. Really I never was a hug fan of Sun though I'm told they were better than Oracle is. So I didn't like the owner since it was Sun (also for virtualbox) but I stuck with it due to the lack of alternative.
I'm really glad there is a fork though. In the long term I definately would want to switch. I'll probably do it when I upgrade Ubuntu and I know its already mature and integrated because I just don't have time right now to hack anything.