The difference is that 1/3 kg. easily transforms into the more sensible 333 g. whereas 1/6 lb. is just unwieldly, I don't have any idea how much that would be. Hence the reason (aside from pure marketing to make it look big) American restaraunts tend to refer to burgers as 1/2 lb. or 1/4 lb. rather than by... well... whatever the other measurement is (oz.?) I'm a scientist and despite being an American I never really managed to pick up the Standard measurements. Much easier to tell that if a tsp. is 5g and I need 3 tsp. I really want to just use 1 Tbsp. or 15g than to remember the conversions or use a bunch of smaller measures.
The fact that the PS2 can play PS1 games is a major point to me and one of the reasons I remain more interested in it than any other current console. I never bought a PS1 and missed a bunch of very interesting games that I'd quite like to play. To me it's a much, much, much more valuable feature than being able to play DVDs, something that I would never consider using it for.
Indeed. Softporn even had actual topless women on the cover... semi-tastefully submerged in a hot tub. Then again, if you ever wanted to see Roberta Williams and some other Seirra staffers semi-nude...
Incidentally Sierra released the game. There's a good bit about it in the Sierra section of Steven Levy's Hackers
The iPod mini is crap though. The problem is that by and large people are stupid.
Was the iMac an absolutely wonderful,ground-breaking personal computer? No. It was just pretty and had a big handle on it. It looked non-threatening and barely had any ports or wires to scare people off. Things aren't necessarily a hit because they're any good.
Frankly I find this part to be the most unusual. Some of the others are coming around a bit (as another poster mentioned many recent motherboards have gigabit ethernet built in), but why on Earth does the system use both wired and wireless networking? Especially considering that the specs state 802.11g when a more recent wireless technology could very well show up by then. It also tends to be a bit short-sighted as the massive installed base of 802.11b these days really doesn't seem to give people much incentive to change. Perhaps I'm totally wrong, but I was under the impression that most hotspots are using 802.11b which won't drive consumers out to buy new wireless cards especially since I doubt most are even using the full bandwidth of those.
I can see some benefits to having both wired and wireless in one system, but to expect that to be standard is a bit crazy.
In my experience most soundboard recordings sound much better than hearing the band live. When you hear it live the bass is too high and the vocals are fighting and losing against the instruments. Not to mention a band that uses subtle strings along with louder instruments, if you don't know what you should be hearing already you're going to miss most of it.
I honestly can't fathom this. Ok, I can understand that maybe they might not see the value of having tons of extra space, but actually frightened by it? Are they afraid that the extra space is going to be used by Apple to rip, encode, and store their soul?
As for the 1,000 song figure it seems rather odd to me. I'm a college student who doesn't pirate music, I have what I'd consider an average if maybe smallish cd collection along with about a gig or so of stuff on my computer (I don't keep my rips, they just go onto the iPod) and I still have around 2,000 songs. I realize as well that while I may not be cramming my iPod at the moment I'll be glad I have that extra space when I get more cds and don't quickly run out. I have space to grow on this and hopefully it will be able to last much longer as a result.
People are lazy. As soon as they realize how inconvenient it is to swap songs around they'll be complaining about size and wanting more just like everyone else. At some point those 1,000 songs won't be enough and they'll have a rather strong backlash regardless of how they feel now.
or just told some bullshit from ignorant parent if they happen to have interesting questions.
That, I feel, is at the crux of the problem (though really, it's not simple as many other people have stated many very valid things). When I was young my parents were very committed to my education. They were the type to buy those books on raising smarter children and actually consider them and follow through on the good ideas. When I had questions as a child I was never given some glib, pointless answer instead I was given age-appropriate books on science, history, weather, technology, etc. and would be helped to find the answer. If it couldn't be found easily my parents would take me to the library and help me look it up. Needless to say questions merely beget more questions and I was always encouraged to keep asking more.
Ever since I was a little kid I've wanted to be a scientist. I'll talk to friends who are uncertain of what they want to do after college or what to major in and I simply cannot understand because science has always been a part of my life and the only thing I've ever wanted to do. In May I'll be graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and another in Microbiology with plans to continue on to graduate school for my PhD.
You want to know how to get kids interested in science? Encourage them when they're young. Make science something that actually exists, not the comparatively dry facts of higher education, but the simple processs of using the scientific method to explore and find answers. With the internet this is even easier than ever and teaches children valuable research skills. Be certain kids have books on scientific subjects appropriate to their age and understanding that will help them to learn these things and that interest them (what little kid doesn't like reading about dinosaurs?), get them a bunch of those home science experiment books to help make science a living thing that they can actually do, not just abstract stuff in a book.
Not every kid is going to grow up interested in science, but if you don't keep them interested or encouraged then they'll probably never want to.
I was obviously mistaken. I mean, for one thing it's not like there's a wealth of documentation on the iPod, just the terrible minimalist shit that Apple seemingly threw in to suggest how easy to use it is.
In my experience I have not been made aware at all that smart playlists could be created or that the iPod would recognize them in any way. For once thing I have no capability to rate songs and this seemed like something the 3g iPod did.
Perhaps it requires the use of iTunes, I personally detest it and use ephPod.
Maybe not short attention span or brain damaged, but merely good old fashioned lazy. I can't decide exactly what I want most of the time so I just toss the iPod on random and skip until I find something I want to listen to at the moment, then I skip until the next thing that suits the mood comes on. If something really kicks me in for a particular band/album then I'll usually just put that album on and turn the shuffle over to "album" rather than "song".
I still have a great deal of respect for the album as a form of artistic expression and am by no means the sort of person who just likes singles and bemoans the vast amount of filler on albums (if it's all filler it's probably not a good album... or a good band for that matter) shuffle is merely a randomized decision making tool.
Only the 3g iPods do this. While I doubt it would be hard to implement as a firmware update (along with the on the fly playlists) Apple and most 3rd party vendors don't want to acknowledge that they made iPods more than a year ago.
I find that I'm much more social when watching tv than I ever am when using the internet. I mean, sure I might occasionally shout across the hall to my girlfriend about something I see or IM a friend or such, but by and large it's just me and the computer most of the time.
Watching tv I talk to the people I'm with about what we're watching, things it makes me think of, just random stuff. All while actively watching.
The petition was about hmm... I think it was two years ago, could have been last year though. In Marlatt at least usage was a solid rectangle almost all the time.
Coverage though, well... I guess it depends on where you are. I personally almost never leave Ackert (being a Bio major) and we're not on the list. Regardless, CNS doesn't seem to have done any ongoing work since they set things up. Most of the buildings listed as covered on the website (which is what I'm going from here) seem a little less than major.
I got to Kansas State (#47 on the list incidentally) and the only reason I looked at the site was to see if my school even made it and if so, question the integrity of the list.
K-State technically has wireless in some buildings, but not many. Yes, the library and union have wireless as do a few others, but that's where it ends. The biology and physics buildings both lack it entirely, as does the main building for the college of arts and sciences and only a large lecture hall in one of the main engineering buildings is listed as having it. Since it was installed I might have taken one or two courses that would have made it available to me. I don't have a wireless laptop myself (although my girlfriend does and I've been interested in how good the coverage is), but I doubt you'd be able to get online from anywhere outside on campus at all.
Essentially this is something they did about 2 years ago and then more or less have ignored ever since. The website for it lists that more locations will be coming, but in that time none ever have. IT out here is a joke though. Bandwidth in the dorms was so bad (i.e. >2k/sec) a few years back that almost every single student living in them had to sign a petition about it before we barely got some degree of improvement (up to maybe 10-20k/sec). The IT staff is frequently unreachable having locked themselves off in the library basement and rarely if ever respond to e-mail.
The presence of K-State on that list seems to indicate that the list compilers merely looked over webpages and cataloged the number of areas listed without any regard for the actual coverage provided.
Odd. I totally disagree for one. I've found that no matter where I am on campus trying to quietly read or get some studying done there will eventually come a largish group of people who insist on talking loudly and more irritatingly laughing VERY LOUDLY. Now, I have nothing wrong with them enjoying themselves, but they have no concept of how to speak softly and politely, especially when in a public place where everyone else around them is doing something quiet. No, it's not the library, but perhaps more of us should fucking act like it is.
I keep my phone in a cargo pocket and frequently have trouble noticing it on vibrate. For vibrate to really work effectively you need to have the phone pressed relatively tightly up against your body.
Want to hear something scary? I go to college currently and our station is technically classed as "alternative rock" or somesuch. I can rarely tell the difference between it and ClearChannel. Education is no longer about being original, creative, different, or ideologically pure. It's about conforming to what is making money. Thus the reason that our campus paper is much more like USA Today than The Economist and routinely wins awards despite the hideously low quality of the publication.
Epitonic.com has free, full-length, totally legal downloads by non-mainstream bands with internal links to similar artists and short (a few paragraphs at most) write-ups about the band. It's a wonderful source for finding out about new music.
I really like Epitonic.com, I can only think of maybe one or two albums I've bought as a result of listening to tracks there, but I can definitely think of tons of bands that I've come to like, good tracks to listen to, and stuff I'd buy if only I actually had money. Considering that I can download 100 MB of free, legal mp3s in an hour or two and have all of that be stuff I've never heard of before that's a great service right there.
Eh, to each their own. I have almost every single cd in my collection ripped on my iPod. About the only case that I haven't ripped something it's either something I never bought for myself, but got as a gift or something that's more of less covered elsewhere (i.e. Aerosmith's Greatest Hits more than covers what I'll want to listen to, no need to rip each album I bought in the more questionable taste of my youth).
I listen to it on random much of the time, but when I want to listen to an album I don't want to have big gaps because I cut out songs that weren't my absolute most favorites. When you get down to it, I skip a lot of stuff because it just doesn't appeal to me at the moment. That's the very point in having 20 Gig devoted to music, I can listen to whatever I might happen to feel like right then.
This is where we differ in our opinion of bands. In my case I would probably say "FooBar? Yeah, I like some of their stuff". If the majority of an album is stuff I merely "don't mind" that's a pretty crappy album in my mind.
I don't listen to much in the way of radio that plays new music nor do I watch MTV or similar. I hear free samples online, I buy stuff by bands I like, I listen to reviews, I listen to friends, attend concerts, etc. Now, I'll agree that I haven't heard every single song on an album before buying it, my point is that I'm not buying an album merely because I like a song on it. Did I like every single previous album by the FooBars? Well, I'm willing to bet that I'll probably like their next album as well and if it's a total and complete change of form to something that I don't like I'll probably check out reviews and listen to some samples on Amazon or the band or label's site first.
Singles can get me interested in a band (The New Pornographers' "The Laws Have Changed" and "The New Face of Zero and One" are both excellent and coupled with excellent critical response have me interested in purchasing the album), but I'd never buy an album just because I heard the single on the radio and happened to like it.
You're buying an album where you only like a few of the tracks?!? Maybe it's just me, but whenever I hear this common complaint I have to wonder just exactly what terrible albums people are buying. Is this just the hit of the month Top 40 pop crap or what? I buy an album because I like the album and in turn that's because I like the band that made it. I can think of a few albums where there are less favorite tracks or even a few that I tend to dislike and skip most of the time, but unless you're buying a pop album on the basis of the single you heard on the radio I can't imagine this being an issue.
$16 for an album though... well, I'm right there with you.
He's already changed once before. His earliest work was in terrible low-budget comedies and well, just plain low-budget crap. It wasn't until A Better Tommorrow that he really adopted the style that he's known for today.
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1/6 lb. and 1/3 (0.333 if you'd like) kg. ... duh!
The difference is that 1/3 kg. easily transforms into the more sensible 333 g. whereas 1/6 lb. is just unwieldly, I don't have any idea how much that would be. Hence the reason (aside from pure marketing to make it look big) American restaraunts tend to refer to burgers as 1/2 lb. or 1/4 lb. rather than by... well... whatever the other measurement is (oz.?) I'm a scientist and despite being an American I never really managed to pick up the Standard measurements. Much easier to tell that if a tsp. is 5g and I need 3 tsp. I really want to just use 1 Tbsp. or 15g than to remember the conversions or use a bunch of smaller measures.
The fact that the PS2 can play PS1 games is a major point to me and one of the reasons I remain more interested in it than any other current console. I never bought a PS1 and missed a bunch of very interesting games that I'd quite like to play. To me it's a much, much, much more valuable feature than being able to play DVDs, something that I would never consider using it for.
Indeed. Softporn even had actual topless women on the cover... semi-tastefully submerged in a hot tub. Then again, if you ever wanted to see Roberta Williams and some other Seirra staffers semi-nude...
Incidentally Sierra released the game. There's a good bit about it in the Sierra section of Steven Levy's Hackers
The iPod mini is crap though. The problem is that by and large people are stupid.
Was the iMac an absolutely wonderful,ground-breaking personal computer? No. It was just pretty and had a big handle on it. It looked non-threatening and barely had any ports or wires to scare people off. Things aren't necessarily a hit because they're any good.
As for notebooks I'll agree, but for desktop systems it seems a lot less likely that wireless will be considered an "average" component.
Frankly I find this part to be the most unusual. Some of the others are coming around a bit (as another poster mentioned many recent motherboards have gigabit ethernet built in), but why on Earth does the system use both wired and wireless networking? Especially considering that the specs state 802.11g when a more recent wireless technology could very well show up by then. It also tends to be a bit short-sighted as the massive installed base of 802.11b these days really doesn't seem to give people much incentive to change. Perhaps I'm totally wrong, but I was under the impression that most hotspots are using 802.11b which won't drive consumers out to buy new wireless cards especially since I doubt most are even using the full bandwidth of those.
I can see some benefits to having both wired and wireless in one system, but to expect that to be standard is a bit crazy.
In my experience most soundboard recordings sound much better than hearing the band live. When you hear it live the bass is too high and the vocals are fighting and losing against the instruments. Not to mention a band that uses subtle strings along with louder instruments, if you don't know what you should be hearing already you're going to miss most of it.
I honestly can't fathom this. Ok, I can understand that maybe they might not see the value of having tons of extra space, but actually frightened by it? Are they afraid that the extra space is going to be used by Apple to rip, encode, and store their soul?
As for the 1,000 song figure it seems rather odd to me. I'm a college student who doesn't pirate music, I have what I'd consider an average if maybe smallish cd collection along with about a gig or so of stuff on my computer (I don't keep my rips, they just go onto the iPod) and I still have around 2,000 songs. I realize as well that while I may not be cramming my iPod at the moment I'll be glad I have that extra space when I get more cds and don't quickly run out. I have space to grow on this and hopefully it will be able to last much longer as a result.
People are lazy. As soon as they realize how inconvenient it is to swap songs around they'll be complaining about size and wanting more just like everyone else. At some point those 1,000 songs won't be enough and they'll have a rather strong backlash regardless of how they feel now.
or just told some bullshit from ignorant parent if they happen to have interesting questions.
That, I feel, is at the crux of the problem (though really, it's not simple as many other people have stated many very valid things). When I was young my parents were very committed to my education. They were the type to buy those books on raising smarter children and actually consider them and follow through on the good ideas. When I had questions as a child I was never given some glib, pointless answer instead I was given age-appropriate books on science, history, weather, technology, etc. and would be helped to find the answer. If it couldn't be found easily my parents would take me to the library and help me look it up. Needless to say questions merely beget more questions and I was always encouraged to keep asking more.
Ever since I was a little kid I've wanted to be a scientist. I'll talk to friends who are uncertain of what they want to do after college or what to major in and I simply cannot understand because science has always been a part of my life and the only thing I've ever wanted to do. In May I'll be graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and another in Microbiology with plans to continue on to graduate school for my PhD.
You want to know how to get kids interested in science? Encourage them when they're young. Make science something that actually exists, not the comparatively dry facts of higher education, but the simple processs of using the scientific method to explore and find answers. With the internet this is even easier than ever and teaches children valuable research skills. Be certain kids have books on scientific subjects appropriate to their age and understanding that will help them to learn these things and that interest them (what little kid doesn't like reading about dinosaurs?), get them a bunch of those home science experiment books to help make science a living thing that they can actually do, not just abstract stuff in a book.
Not every kid is going to grow up interested in science, but if you don't keep them interested or encouraged then they'll probably never want to.
I was obviously mistaken. I mean, for one thing it's not like there's a wealth of documentation on the iPod, just the terrible minimalist shit that Apple seemingly threw in to suggest how easy to use it is.
In my experience I have not been made aware at all that smart playlists could be created or that the iPod would recognize them in any way. For once thing I have no capability to rate songs and this seemed like something the 3g iPod did.
Perhaps it requires the use of iTunes, I personally detest it and use ephPod.
Maybe not short attention span or brain damaged, but merely good old fashioned lazy. I can't decide exactly what I want most of the time so I just toss the iPod on random and skip until I find something I want to listen to at the moment, then I skip until the next thing that suits the mood comes on. If something really kicks me in for a particular band/album then I'll usually just put that album on and turn the shuffle over to "album" rather than "song".
I still have a great deal of respect for the album as a form of artistic expression and am by no means the sort of person who just likes singles and bemoans the vast amount of filler on albums (if it's all filler it's probably not a good album... or a good band for that matter) shuffle is merely a randomized decision making tool.
Only the 3g iPods do this. While I doubt it would be hard to implement as a firmware update (along with the on the fly playlists) Apple and most 3rd party vendors don't want to acknowledge that they made iPods more than a year ago.
I find that I'm much more social when watching tv than I ever am when using the internet. I mean, sure I might occasionally shout across the hall to my girlfriend about something I see or IM a friend or such, but by and large it's just me and the computer most of the time.
Watching tv I talk to the people I'm with about what we're watching, things it makes me think of, just random stuff. All while actively watching.
The petition was about hmm... I think it was two years ago, could have been last year though. In Marlatt at least usage was a solid rectangle almost all the time.
Coverage though, well... I guess it depends on where you are. I personally almost never leave Ackert (being a Bio major) and we're not on the list. Regardless, CNS doesn't seem to have done any ongoing work since they set things up. Most of the buildings listed as covered on the website (which is what I'm going from here) seem a little less than major.
I got to Kansas State (#47 on the list incidentally) and the only reason I looked at the site was to see if my school even made it and if so, question the integrity of the list.
K-State technically has wireless in some buildings, but not many. Yes, the library and union have wireless as do a few others, but that's where it ends. The biology and physics buildings both lack it entirely, as does the main building for the college of arts and sciences and only a large lecture hall in one of the main engineering buildings is listed as having it. Since it was installed I might have taken one or two courses that would have made it available to me. I don't have a wireless laptop myself (although my girlfriend does and I've been interested in how good the coverage is), but I doubt you'd be able to get online from anywhere outside on campus at all.
Essentially this is something they did about 2 years ago and then more or less have ignored ever since. The website for it lists that more locations will be coming, but in that time none ever have. IT out here is a joke though. Bandwidth in the dorms was so bad (i.e. >2k/sec) a few years back that almost every single student living in them had to sign a petition about it before we barely got some degree of improvement (up to maybe 10-20k/sec). The IT staff is frequently unreachable having locked themselves off in the library basement and rarely if ever respond to e-mail.
The presence of K-State on that list seems to indicate that the list compilers merely looked over webpages and cataloged the number of areas listed without any regard for the actual coverage provided.
Odd. I totally disagree for one. I've found that no matter where I am on campus trying to quietly read or get some studying done there will eventually come a largish group of people who insist on talking loudly and more irritatingly laughing VERY LOUDLY. Now, I have nothing wrong with them enjoying themselves, but they have no concept of how to speak softly and politely, especially when in a public place where everyone else around them is doing something quiet. No, it's not the library, but perhaps more of us should fucking act like it is.
I keep my phone in a cargo pocket and frequently have trouble noticing it on vibrate. For vibrate to really work effectively you need to have the phone pressed relatively tightly up against your body.
Want to hear something scary? I go to college currently and our station is technically classed as "alternative rock" or somesuch. I can rarely tell the difference between it and ClearChannel. Education is no longer about being original, creative, different, or ideologically pure. It's about conforming to what is making money. Thus the reason that our campus paper is much more like USA Today than The Economist and routinely wins awards despite the hideously low quality of the publication.
Epitonic.com has free, full-length, totally legal downloads by non-mainstream bands with internal links to similar artists and short (a few paragraphs at most) write-ups about the band. It's a wonderful source for finding out about new music.
I really like Epitonic.com, I can only think of maybe one or two albums I've bought as a result of listening to tracks there, but I can definitely think of tons of bands that I've come to like, good tracks to listen to, and stuff I'd buy if only I actually had money. Considering that I can download 100 MB of free, legal mp3s in an hour or two and have all of that be stuff I've never heard of before that's a great service right there.
Eh, to each their own. I have almost every single cd in my collection ripped on my iPod. About the only case that I haven't ripped something it's either something I never bought for myself, but got as a gift or something that's more of less covered elsewhere (i.e. Aerosmith's Greatest Hits more than covers what I'll want to listen to, no need to rip each album I bought in the more questionable taste of my youth).
I listen to it on random much of the time, but when I want to listen to an album I don't want to have big gaps because I cut out songs that weren't my absolute most favorites. When you get down to it, I skip a lot of stuff because it just doesn't appeal to me at the moment. That's the very point in having 20 Gig devoted to music, I can listen to whatever I might happen to feel like right then.
This is where we differ in our opinion of bands. In my case I would probably say "FooBar? Yeah, I like some of their stuff". If the majority of an album is stuff I merely "don't mind" that's a pretty crappy album in my mind.
I don't listen to much in the way of radio that plays new music nor do I watch MTV or similar. I hear free samples online, I buy stuff by bands I like, I listen to reviews, I listen to friends, attend concerts, etc. Now, I'll agree that I haven't heard every single song on an album before buying it, my point is that I'm not buying an album merely because I like a song on it. Did I like every single previous album by the FooBars? Well, I'm willing to bet that I'll probably like their next album as well and if it's a total and complete change of form to something that I don't like I'll probably check out reviews and listen to some samples on Amazon or the band or label's site first.
Singles can get me interested in a band (The New Pornographers' "The Laws Have Changed" and "The New Face of Zero and One" are both excellent and coupled with excellent critical response have me interested in purchasing the album), but I'd never buy an album just because I heard the single on the radio and happened to like it.
You're buying an album where you only like a few of the tracks?!? Maybe it's just me, but whenever I hear this common complaint I have to wonder just exactly what terrible albums people are buying. Is this just the hit of the month Top 40 pop crap or what? I buy an album because I like the album and in turn that's because I like the band that made it. I can think of a few albums where there are less favorite tracks or even a few that I tend to dislike and skip most of the time, but unless you're buying a pop album on the basis of the single you heard on the radio I can't imagine this being an issue.
$16 for an album though... well, I'm right there with you.
He's already changed once before. His earliest work was in terrible low-budget comedies and well, just plain low-budget crap. It wasn't until A Better Tommorrow that he really adopted the style that he's known for today.