...go watch a movie. When a technical document tries to entertain, it's just distracting.
People don't resist reading technical manuals because they're boring. They resist because most of them are crap, full of confusing explanations and information that's disorganized, out of date, or just plain wrong. Easier to figure stuff out for yourself.
I can say these things, because I write those damn manuals for a living. I like to think my own work is pretty good, but I'm disgusted by most of what I see. And that's the stuff written by "professionals". The amateur stuff that passes for documentation in the OSS world is even worse.
Excuse me? Why is shooting a guy less aggressive them fighting him with a whip? A non-aggressive solution would have been to run the other way. But of course, that's an unacceptable strategy when you're an Action Hero. In an action flick, all solutions involve aggression.
I'm not sure I follow exactly what point you are trying to make.
"Making a point" is not the same thing as "suggesting a solution". My point was about correctly describing the problem, which is the first step towards solving it.
Do all of Spielberg's great moments happen by blind luck? Critics often praise Jaws for its quirky little human moments and for the way the shark isn't seen until the movie's almost over. But neither was an artistic decision. Most of the scenes with the shark in it were cut because the mechanical shark they used was broken for most of filming. To pad out the movie, the actors improvised lots of little scenes (like that drunken scene on the boat) that worked better than any of the scripted scenes.
Niagara shares a problem with many other energy-saving technologies: the money you save by buying less power is swamped by the extra cost of the hardware.
If a few large datacenters declared their fees as a small $$ value for each unit of space, and additionally a few dollars, per watt of power consumption, you'd see the problem naturally fix itself, through normal economic forces
How on earth do you track individual power consumption? Putting a meter on each system is hardly practical. I suppose you get away with one on each rack, but many customers (the vast majority in the one data center I worked in) don't rent whole racks.
I say we just give any and all female hires shiny new Sig sidearms with a license to shoot anyone (especially upper management) that harasses them.
I've heard many men make that joke, and no women. So you unintentionally makes a nasty point: a lot of office politics is fueled by simple, instinctive aggression — and the fact that women aren't as aggressive as men (by and large) has a lot to do with sexual harassment and other gender issues. A woman who stands up for herself (even without resorting to lethal force) is going against her own lifelong conditioning. She's also going to be rated by different standards than a man who behaves the same way.
Well, it's true that people often distribute word processor or spreadsheet files when they should be taking a moment to export the documents to PDF—or better yet, HTML. But its also true that many documents have to be edited by more than one person. For example, in technical writing (my own job) manuals often get revised by different folks over a long period of time. Business and legal documents also often go through multiple revisions by multiple folk. These people must have the ability to share editable files quickly and easily. That's why a well-established program like Word has such a nasty degree of lock-in.
I create countless documents that people open using Word, Excel, PPT and nobody can tell that they were created using Open Office.
Then I can only assume that consistent formatting is not an issue with you and your co-workers. But it is with me, and my experience sharing files between MS Office and Open Office is uniformly negative.
Word processor and presentation formats are messy , and even the best filters make nasty mistakes. And Open Office filters are hardly the best.
Getting away from the Microsoft monoculture is a worthy goal. But if you seriously want to achieve it, you have to squarely face the practical problems you'll face — and the fact that most WP documents and presentations (spreadsheets are less of a problem) can't be shared between applications is something you can't wish away. Though God knows OSS zealots keep trying!
I don't know if the average citizen would even realize if their downstream bandwidth were boosted significantly. If my mother can download her web page in 3 seconds instead of 5, I am not sure she really cares.
You're assuming she only goes to low-bandwidth web sites. Which she probably does, because most web users aren't aware that anything else is available. But suppose she goes to one of those streaming video sites that the TV networks are setting up. She'll probably wonder why she gets a better picture on her 10-year-old TV set with the rabbit ears than she does with her fancy computer and broadband connection. That's assuming that her ISP has its act together, and she can actually get the stream.
Assuming that better broadband isn't important to most people is like the assumption a century ago that most people would never own cars. After all, cars were expensive, and existing transport systems met most people's needs. That assumption was shattered as soon as affordable cars started being available in 1908. Sometimes technology creates its own demand.
Anyway, the commissioner didn't say that citizens are outraged he said they should be outraged.
You just cited two outfits that created lots of cool technologies, but never benefited from them commercially, due to the ineptitude of their parent organizations. Hopefully Sun can do better than that.
Why 4-bit colour? TVs are analogue when it comes to colour, so the limit is the quality of your DAC. 24-bit colour on a TV is certainly feasible. The interlacing means you don't want to be looking at it for too long though.
OK, you caught me in a faulty assumption, namely that the limits of those old NTSC-compatible video cards were all due to the limitations of the monitor. (As the pixel resolution certainly is.) But now that I think about it, you must be right, and only having 16 colors must have been a limitation of the video card.
The irony is that I can buy a nearly top of the line computer for $199 here in the states.
Well, you won't get a good gaming or media computer for that much. But if all you want is a basic web-surfing/word processing beast, then even $200 is too much, unless you insist on something that's brand new.
But do remember that projects like the OLPC are not just trying to make cheap computers. They're trying to make systems that will be usable in areas with very bad infrastructure: no reliable power, no real network access, no computer repair shop down at the mall (no mall), and harsh conditions that would quickly destroy a standard PC with dust and heat.
But the OLPC is designed in the U.S. and made in the Republic of China (Taiwan). Now, the People's Republic of China does trade with both countries (even though it doesn't recognize the existence of the ROC) but importing a "computer for the people" from them is politically unfeasible.
An SD TV makes an OK monitor if you can live with 320x480 4-bit graphics -- and there was a time when many Apple ][ and IBM PC folks did. I'm sure many Szechuan villagers would consider such a setup the epitome of high tech. The problem I see is that nowadays people want computers mainly for connectivity — and making an ultra-cheap PC does nothing to create the necessary infrastructure in China's many rural regions.
Yeah, really. His basic problem is that he consistently gets his facts wrong, so of course his predictions are worthless. I'll ask it one more time: why the fuck do the editors keep accepting stories that link him?
I like it better than a trackpad (I like anything better than a trackpad). But if you don't have good fine motor control (I think I'm at the left end of the bell curve) a nipple can frustrating to use.
It's funny about trackballs. When GUIs first came in, I absolutely refused to use a mouse: trackballs seemed infinitely superior. (Can't quite remember why I thought this.) Problem was, early trackballs were complicated and fragile, and I couldn't afford to buy a new one every six months. So I gave in and switched to mice. Now trackballs are more reliable, but it's just never occurred to me to switch back.
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...go watch a movie. When a technical document tries to entertain, it's just distracting.
People don't resist reading technical manuals because they're boring. They resist because most of them are crap, full of confusing explanations and information that's disorganized, out of date, or just plain wrong. Easier to figure stuff out for yourself.
I can say these things, because I write those damn manuals for a living. I like to think my own work is pretty good, but I'm disgusted by most of what I see. And that's the stuff written by "professionals". The amateur stuff that passes for documentation in the OSS world is even worse.
Women do carry guns. But they tend to have fewer illusions about using them actually solving anything.
Excuse me? Why is shooting a guy less aggressive them fighting him with a whip? A non-aggressive solution would have been to run the other way. But of course, that's an unacceptable strategy when you're an Action Hero. In an action flick, all solutions involve aggression.
To tech nerds, irrelevancy has never been a problem.
Do all of Spielberg's great moments happen by blind luck? Critics often praise Jaws for its quirky little human moments and for the way the shark isn't seen until the movie's almost over. But neither was an artistic decision. Most of the scenes with the shark in it were cut because the mechanical shark they used was broken for most of filming. To pad out the movie, the actors improvised lots of little scenes (like that drunken scene on the boat) that worked better than any of the scripted scenes.
Niagara shares a problem with many other energy-saving technologies: the money you save by buying less power is swamped by the extra cost of the hardware.
In other words, mod_rewrite is pretty average software.
Until you learn to use a shift key, your opinions on document management will lack any credibility.
Well, it's true that people often distribute word processor or spreadsheet files when they should be taking a moment to export the documents to PDF—or better yet, HTML. But its also true that many documents have to be edited by more than one person. For example, in technical writing (my own job) manuals often get revised by different folks over a long period of time. Business and legal documents also often go through multiple revisions by multiple folk. These people must have the ability to share editable files quickly and easily. That's why a well-established program like Word has such a nasty degree of lock-in.
Sigh. Fonts ane only a small part of the issue. It's making complicated layouts cone out the same that's hand.
Word processor and presentation formats are messy , and even the best filters make nasty mistakes. And Open Office filters are hardly the best.
Getting away from the Microsoft monoculture is a worthy goal. But if you seriously want to achieve it, you have to squarely face the practical problems you'll face — and the fact that most WP documents and presentations (spreadsheets are less of a problem) can't be shared between applications is something you can't wish away. Though God knows OSS zealots keep trying!
Assuming that better broadband isn't important to most people is like the assumption a century ago that most people would never own cars. After all, cars were expensive, and existing transport systems met most people's needs. That assumption was shattered as soon as affordable cars started being available in 1908. Sometimes technology creates its own demand.
Anyway, the commissioner didn't say that citizens are outraged he said they should be outraged.
You just cited two outfits that created lots of cool technologies, but never benefited from them commercially, due to the ineptitude of their parent organizations. Hopefully Sun can do better than that.
Probably not. Many lamers see lame puns everywhere. Wish they'd keep them to themselves.
So really, it's on-chip Ethernet controllers, not ports.
But do remember that projects like the OLPC are not just trying to make cheap computers. They're trying to make systems that will be usable in areas with very bad infrastructure: no reliable power, no real network access, no computer repair shop down at the mall (no mall), and harsh conditions that would quickly destroy a standard PC with dust and heat.
But the OLPC is designed in the U.S. and made in the Republic of China (Taiwan). Now, the People's Republic of China does trade with both countries (even though it doesn't recognize the existence of the ROC) but importing a "computer for the people" from them is politically unfeasible.
An SD TV makes an OK monitor if you can live with 320x480 4-bit graphics -- and there was a time when many Apple ][ and IBM PC folks did. I'm sure many Szechuan villagers would consider such a setup the epitome of high tech. The problem I see is that nowadays people want computers mainly for connectivity — and making an ultra-cheap PC does nothing to create the necessary infrastructure in China's many rural regions.
Yeah, really. His basic problem is that he consistently gets his facts wrong, so of course his predictions are worthless. I'll ask it one more time: why the fuck do the editors keep accepting stories that link him?
But the guy is a (looks nervously over his shoulder and whispers) liberal. And he's got a PhD in psychology.
I like it better than a trackpad (I like anything better than a trackpad). But if you don't have good fine motor control (I think I'm at the left end of the bell curve) a nipple can frustrating to use.
It's funny about trackballs. When GUIs first came in, I absolutely refused to use a mouse: trackballs seemed infinitely superior. (Can't quite remember why I thought this.) Problem was, early trackballs were complicated and fragile, and I couldn't afford to buy a new one every six months. So I gave in and switched to mice. Now trackballs are more reliable, but it's just never occurred to me to switch back.