well, that's not clear either. even if something was acquired freely, still one could argue that by downloading a torrent with such material, i'm increasing its popularity ("making available", riaa stuff, etc.). increased popularity of the free material also probably means more paying consumers, because more people will be "hooked" on it (or maybe quite the opposite - more free stuff means less people will pay for it). it's a big mess, but then again everything is when it comes to law.
well, there's a problem with that reasoning. someone who paid for that child porn (or visited a website hosting child porn that contained ads, etc.) is actually "funding" similar illegal acts in the future. of course, if this was really the reasoning behind today's law enforcement, then they would first have to prove that someone in possession of child porn did somehow help its "producer" make money...
for god's sake, if you're doing your undergrad at a good place, DON'T get a master's degree! it'll actually decrease your marketability for employers. usually getting an MS is a good idea only if you got your undergraduate degree from an especially crappy place.
True. And I blame the Web 2.0 bubble for that. I don't even want to think about what will happen when that bubble bursts, given all the economic shit hitting the fan these days.
That's not the only problem. As an undergraduate student in the CS department of a somewhat prestigious university, I can say that by the time the students get here most of them have already been conditioned to do the following:
1) not care about anything but the amount of money they make
2) not appreciate the fundamental beauty of what they are learning, instead only thinking about how much more marketable their skills will become once they learn it
3) be terribly obnoxious and arrogant when it comes to the existing curriculum, or the people who came up with it. most of them think that they could come up with 3 courses that could not only completely replace the existing 8 requirements, but also teach them all they need to know to become the next Steve Jobs.
4) to confuse Computer Science with Web 2.0. they tend to think that CS is mainly about JavaScript and PHP, while language and graph theory are just boring things that the "old people" think they should know.
I could go on, but I'd better make my point first: students who are "good" enough to get into top universities are already in the mentality that they'll be sleeping with models everywhere from Milan to Honk Kong by the time they're 25. I highly doubt that the way colleges advertise themselves can have such a profound effect on them in such a short time period. If you ask me, it's a combination of parenting, TV, and [high-] school that does this to them.
well, first of all we have no choice - there will always be people trying to make money by making technology mainstream (*ahem* steve jobs *ahem). but this isn't all that bad, for several reasons. one, the existence of "bumbed down", fun technology arouses interest in both young and old, and essentially serves the dual purpose of recruiting talented young people, and attracting more investments into related fields, a small fraction of which will trickle into real, valuable research. two, it makes peoples' lives more fun and convenient, so why not? and three, it doesn't seem to affect negatively the non-dumbed down aspect of computers.
and the thing is, this process is in no way unique to computing. pretty much any technology starts out as something tricky, cumbersome and generally boring, and at some point spawns more mainstream offspring. so really, the iphone isn't a replacement for, say, windows NT, it's just a bastard child (or nephew/cousin, since there's no direct lineage).
well, yeah, but that's what i'm saying, there's a good reason to use the primary display as an interface - then you only have to concentrate your vision on one display. i know that if i had to look at my keyboard all the time to figure out where each key is, i wouldn't be very efficient at "communicating" with my computer. that's the advantage to having one keyboard that you reprogram in different ways - you already know where each key is, and all you have to learn for each application is what that key does. also, the fact that those keys have physical, "feelable" shapes to them means you can figure out what you want to press by feeling, not looking. this is obviously different for mobile devices - anyway they can't have enough keys to work like this. but the problem of trying to split your vision between 2 different screens still exists.
basically, i guess my only objection to what you're saying is that it seems to me that in pretty much all cases where that would be useful, it would be equivalent to just having a bigger touchscreen (so you can fit more buttons, etc).
as you said, this is happening because of those looking for their 15 minutes of fame, but that's not all. you see, in the beginning there was the computer. it was very much like a bulldozer, or nuclear power plant: a tool designed to be used by (and thus interact with) a small group of people to achieve some tasks. as the computers became more powerful, and our ability to program them grew, that group of people kept expanding, as did the list of tasks they could use computers for. this process continues until today. while pretty much any computer program ever written made computers more universal tools, what made them more mainstream (i.e. usable by a larger number of people) are companies that seek profit in the "masses", like Apple. you see, Apple doesn't give a fuck whether or not you can accurately model high-energy collisions between elementary particles on your laptop. they only care whether or not the brain-dead jackass in his $40,000 SUV with $80,000 leather seats can/wants to use their product. now, think about it: do you really think that brain-dead jackass wants to move mice, click on buttons, deal with the file-system, code BASH scripts, etc? i think not. i think that if the brain-dead jackass would prefer to send an email by throwing a rock at a passing car. i think he'd prefer to play bejeweled by punching kittens instead of pressing buttons (i know, the analogies are getting out of hand). the point is, the whole idea of bringing data and its manipulation "into our world" comes from those brain-dead morons (or more likely the people trying to take some of their money).
so you're proposing dynamically changing the layout of controls on that second screen? i think that's asking for trouble. IMO people don't have the ability, nor the desire, to concentrate on 2 displays at once. I don't want to be playing a game and have to keep looking away from the screen to find where the "fuck you" button is. although, in some kinds of applications what you're proposing might be usable/useful, i'm not sure...
Oh, I see, so you think your idea of reality is somehow absolute? Of course by that same argument I could just pretend that in reality they did "make woopie"...
Well, actually, it does care. My soul has a very strong sense of reality. It's like Neo - it will eventually free itself from anything that isn't real.
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god... *hyperventilates*
Futurama is one of the funniest and wittiest shows ever, and the movies definitely proved they still have a lot of material for at least another season or two. Besides, I think my soul will refuse to move on to the afterlife unless I see Fry score with Leela.
... don't call it being a geek godess. I don't call myself a geek god - just a geek. Or nerd. If that title in itself is not sufficient for someone, they should just give up and move on to another kind of identity.
Re:My first web page 1998
on
Jurassic Web
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
*another joke about how chick also refers to women, usually young and attractive*
well, that's not clear either. even if something was acquired freely, still one could argue that by downloading a torrent with such material, i'm increasing its popularity ("making available", riaa stuff, etc.). increased popularity of the free material also probably means more paying consumers, because more people will be "hooked" on it (or maybe quite the opposite - more free stuff means less people will pay for it). it's a big mess, but then again everything is when it comes to law.
well, there's a problem with that reasoning. someone who paid for that child porn (or visited a website hosting child porn that contained ads, etc.) is actually "funding" similar illegal acts in the future. of course, if this was really the reasoning behind today's law enforcement, then they would first have to prove that someone in possession of child porn did somehow help its "producer" make money...
(this only applies to CS & related fields)
for god's sake, if you're doing your undergrad at a good place, DON'T get a master's degree! it'll actually decrease your marketability for employers. usually getting an MS is a good idea only if you got your undergraduate degree from an especially crappy place.
well, DUH.
the Colbert nation reminds me of a botnet. one of these days he's going to ask his viewers to overwhelm the NSA's servers.
which is why when you buy apple, you're not buying software or hardware - you're buying both.
True. And I blame the Web 2.0 bubble for that. I don't even want to think about what will happen when that bubble bursts, given all the economic shit hitting the fan these days.
That's not the only problem. As an undergraduate student in the CS department of a somewhat prestigious university, I can say that by the time the students get here most of them have already been conditioned to do the following:
1) not care about anything but the amount of money they make
2) not appreciate the fundamental beauty of what they are learning, instead only thinking about how much more marketable their skills will become once they learn it
3) be terribly obnoxious and arrogant when it comes to the existing curriculum, or the people who came up with it. most of them think that they could come up with 3 courses that could not only completely replace the existing 8 requirements, but also teach them all they need to know to become the next Steve Jobs.
4) to confuse Computer Science with Web 2.0. they tend to think that CS is mainly about JavaScript and PHP, while language and graph theory are just boring things that the "old people" think they should know.
I could go on, but I'd better make my point first: students who are "good" enough to get into top universities are already in the mentality that they'll be sleeping with models everywhere from Milan to Honk Kong by the time they're 25. I highly doubt that the way colleges advertise themselves can have such a profound effect on them in such a short time period. If you ask me, it's a combination of parenting, TV, and [high-] school that does this to them.
well, first of all we have no choice - there will always be people trying to make money by making technology mainstream (*ahem* steve jobs *ahem). but this isn't all that bad, for several reasons. one, the existence of "bumbed down", fun technology arouses interest in both young and old, and essentially serves the dual purpose of recruiting talented young people, and attracting more investments into related fields, a small fraction of which will trickle into real, valuable research. two, it makes peoples' lives more fun and convenient, so why not? and three, it doesn't seem to affect negatively the non-dumbed down aspect of computers.
and the thing is, this process is in no way unique to computing. pretty much any technology starts out as something tricky, cumbersome and generally boring, and at some point spawns more mainstream offspring. so really, the iphone isn't a replacement for, say, windows NT, it's just a bastard child (or nephew/cousin, since there's no direct lineage).
hell, if someone makes a device like that that actually works well, i'd sell my own kidney to support them.
well, yeah, but that's what i'm saying, there's a good reason to use the primary display as an interface - then you only have to concentrate your vision on one display. i know that if i had to look at my keyboard all the time to figure out where each key is, i wouldn't be very efficient at "communicating" with my computer. that's the advantage to having one keyboard that you reprogram in different ways - you already know where each key is, and all you have to learn for each application is what that key does. also, the fact that those keys have physical, "feelable" shapes to them means you can figure out what you want to press by feeling, not looking. this is obviously different for mobile devices - anyway they can't have enough keys to work like this. but the problem of trying to split your vision between 2 different screens still exists.
basically, i guess my only objection to what you're saying is that it seems to me that in pretty much all cases where that would be useful, it would be equivalent to just having a bigger touchscreen (so you can fit more buttons, etc).
as you said, this is happening because of those looking for their 15 minutes of fame, but that's not all. you see, in the beginning there was the computer. it was very much like a bulldozer, or nuclear power plant: a tool designed to be used by (and thus interact with) a small group of people to achieve some tasks. as the computers became more powerful, and our ability to program them grew, that group of people kept expanding, as did the list of tasks they could use computers for. this process continues until today. while pretty much any computer program ever written made computers more universal tools, what made them more mainstream (i.e. usable by a larger number of people) are companies that seek profit in the "masses", like Apple. you see, Apple doesn't give a fuck whether or not you can accurately model high-energy collisions between elementary particles on your laptop. they only care whether or not the brain-dead jackass in his $40,000 SUV with $80,000 leather seats can/wants to use their product. now, think about it: do you really think that brain-dead jackass wants to move mice, click on buttons, deal with the file-system, code BASH scripts, etc? i think not. i think that if the brain-dead jackass would prefer to send an email by throwing a rock at a passing car. i think he'd prefer to play bejeweled by punching kittens instead of pressing buttons (i know, the analogies are getting out of hand). the point is, the whole idea of bringing data and its manipulation "into our world" comes from those brain-dead morons (or more likely the people trying to take some of their money).
in other words, idiocracy.
so you're proposing dynamically changing the layout of controls on that second screen? i think that's asking for trouble. IMO people don't have the ability, nor the desire, to concentrate on 2 displays at once. I don't want to be playing a game and have to keep looking away from the screen to find where the "fuck you" button is. although, in some kinds of applications what you're proposing might be usable/useful, i'm not sure...
'We want this to be like the Internet. Nobody owns it.' I think he means 'We want this to be like the Internet, where people sell DRM'd information.'
Wikipedia, perhaps, would've been a better comparison.
of a misleading title.
I thought they almost added twitter as an app in facebook.
... and the EU will say, "The King has spoken. So be it, Microsoft!"
Oh, I see, so you think your idea of reality is somehow absolute? Of course by that same argument I could just pretend that in reality they did "make woopie"...
Huh?
Well, actually, it does care. My soul has a very strong sense of reality. It's like Neo - it will eventually free itself from anything that isn't real.
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god... *hyperventilates*
Futurama is one of the funniest and wittiest shows ever, and the movies definitely proved they still have a lot of material for at least another season or two. Besides, I think my soul will refuse to move on to the afterlife unless I see Fry score with Leela.
The author of the book isn't a man, so ... how is that relevant?
... don't call it being a geek godess. I don't call myself a geek god - just a geek. Or nerd. If that title in itself is not sufficient for someone, they should just give up and move on to another kind of identity.
The N-word, NOOOO!!!!