in fact, lately, I've started using the Mute during the breaks... which means those advertisers have shot themselves in the foot as I'm not hearing the message.
They haven't shot themselves in the foot... you are probably just too intelligent/discerning to be the market they were going for anyways. Advertisers want to go for people that will be swayed by the advertising.
The thank you cards is more from a guys perspective, so that may mean prioritize. Send to your buddies last. Not to mention they'd find it funny to get one a year later, your wife's friends won't (some sexual prejudice going on here, but...)
I'd also be willing to bet that the vast majority of Microsoft and Apple programmers don't know much about UI. What they do have are UI specialists and graffics and industrial designers working in teams setting up the layout. This UI team then passes the specs onto the programmers, or potentially uses premade tools to design the interface, which the programmers then add functionality to all the buttons and widgets and gizmos. Without some level of top down management, the programmers attempt to do something they are simply not qualified to do. Would you want somebody writing kernel code who's qualifications are all in the graphics design area?
Actually, the thunderbird one isn't that bad, a bird carrying a letter. You can (kind of) find it by the name, and it's pretty easilly recognizable as an e-mail client. The concept of firefox's icon is pretty good: a flaming fox encircling the world (Something going around the world is a pretty decent icon for a web browser (Formerly known as World Wide Web.) The problem with that one is that once it's shrunk down to the size you see on most desktops with decently high resolution, you really can't make either out, so it looks kinda like a red and blue marble or eye or something.
Both of those are far more recognizable for what they are than the rat looking thing that is the Icon for the GIMP. Or a construction cone for VLC player. Open Office's icons on the other hand are very informative, but bland and forgettable.
It's news because they're about to launch the first satellite. Although now that I think about it, that should have been posted instead of what we got.
There would be a large number of reasons for the EU to do this which simply are not mentioned
1)Pure national pride
2)Response to getting shut down over the DNS root server control issue
3)A stepping stone to getting their act together in terms of outer space technology and exploration
4)A backup plan in case some satellites of the US GPS system experiences problems, which could be technologically related or politically motivated: a diverse system is more robust.
5)Profits: A large amount of the investment is to be private, and those companies expect to get their money back. The EU would probably like to see some of the money that is currently going to American companies in terms of liscensing fees, etc stay in the European economy as well as bring in money from other countries which use the Galleon system.
Here in the States, the cellphone is a fashion statement, not a communications device. How it looks matters more than how well it functions or how easy it is to use. Smaller and thinner is what fasion strives for. The RAZR has pretty good sales in the United States. But yeah, I love my Nokia. Anybody who tries to use it is like "Wow, the layout actually makes sense. WTF?" The phone is small enough to carry around, but built sturdy enough to take the general abuse that being in a person's pockets all day will give. Now I just need to find a carrier that has recpetion in my house.
As the article says, having things piled up is not necesarilly bad, if they are things that you truly believe are not important. Does it really cosmically matter if you don't send out those thank you cards? Do you remember getting thank you cards from people who's wedding you attended? Did you actually feel happy that they took the time to send them? You may have Cat5 that isn't run yet, but obviously you've got some sort of internet connection.
And although it probably isn't all that important, I can help you out with the gigs of mp3s problem. I remember manually going through my music days and days on end, retyping file names, then opening them to make sure it's actually the right one, then playing with the id3 tags, etc. Once I got over about 2gigs of mp3s, this was no longer really feasable. A slight rearranging of my naming scheme or whatever was pretty much impossible. Enter musicbrainz tagger. It automates a lot of the tagging and renaming by essentially taking a hash of the file and comparing it to what other people have done. It then names, sorts in directories, and fills in ID3 tags according to paramaters you set. Granted, it's not perfect and there are some falso positives, but it makes the job a whole lot easier. One technique which really helps find the errors is having three directories: Source, Sort and Store (you can call them whatever you want.) Source is where you rip to, download to (legally, or course) or whatever. Sort is where Musicbrainz puts the files after it identifies them. After looking through them and making sure there are no bands that are completely wrong (biggest tip off of a mismatched song is having a band you never heard of or wouldn't dream of listening to), you move them into Store (which is where you play from, etc. Probably wouldn't actually be called Store, but I thought that just made for some nice alliteration for this post.) And setting up Musicbrainz the first time can be kinda wierd as you pretty much have to manailly set most of the settings, IIRC. So give it about ano hour or so just to tinker around and find out how the program works and what it does.
One interesting thing about running Musicbrainz is that you occasionally find that some files you had for a long time and have grown to know and love were actually mislabeled and are a completely different artist, or the title is just wrong such as when the file is named after the word/phrase used most predominately in the refrain: Bush's "Machinehead" would have been labeled "Breathe in breathe out" or something like that. Another extremely common errot to find is virtually every comedy sketch or parody you find is attributed to Wierd Al.)
Hey... don't knock shoveling turds for a living. I work at an animal control facility, and after you get past the grossnes of it, cleaning up after dogs etc gets a sort of rewarding feeling in its own right. I don't know if I'd personally ever be able to get comfortable with cleaning up human feces, but dog? No problem. But yeah, working with people that can occasionally get goofy prevents the days from dragging on. It can be almost essential during stressful periods. Maybe it's just the camaraderie that you build up, so when you're feeling stress just having people that you feel comfortable around takes a big load off.
On the other hand excessive (or innapropriate) clowning can sometimes have social drawbacks. Or just create a whole mess of extra work.
Yeah... I did a little research after reading the article and found that. Supposedly what got the dodos moreso than people directly were the rats and pigs and other animals left behind (rats accidentally, and starting a wild colony of pigs on a wayside island was pretty common practice.) But eh... I meant it more as a joke anyways. A sorta dark joke, but nonetheless.
The problem here isn't the record companies trying to change the pricepoint (after all, that is what supply and demand is all about) the problem is the alleged collusion to sway prices. The fact that all the major record labels are attempting to bully Apple into changin prices at about the same time is symptomatic of secret talks within the record industry, which is most definately illegal (similar to the way that insider trading is, because it gives the parties in collusion an unfair advantage.) It yet has to be proven that there were secret talks, and that is what this investigation hopes to prove or refute. It is also possible that A)the original contracts the record companies signed onto with Apple are about to expire and this is just a normal part of the negotiation cycle or B)Once one company made public their attempts to raise prices, the others followed suit in a completely legal manner.
On the other hand, if the people who you are going up against piss off enough politicians with their sophistry and geeneral bullying, then the confirmation is a piece of cake.
Large flightless bird with no fear of man... if nothing else they would make the perfect domesticated fowl. And I think history has shown that they are tasty enough.
This comment isn't that far off. The neurological pathways which exist that allow for addictive behaviors to arise are currently thought to exist in order to facilitate pairbonding, or what modern society has come to call "love."
Ringtones can be used to differentiate different callers, and allow the person recieving tha call to decide whether or not to answer the phone without even looking at the screen: potential productivity increase.
Ipods can allow people to relax more fully in their short break, returning to work more refreshed and able to get the job done. They can also be used to block out distracting sounds: potential productivity increase.
Digital cable generally comes with a dvr these days, so people can watch the shows they want at anytime, freeing them from the confines of the network schedule. Commercials and irrelevant parts can also be fast forwarded. Less time spent zoning out in front of the TV to get the amount of entertainment you want -> More time available for productive activities -> potential productivity increase.
To find whether or not people actually use these technologies in a productive manner, that would take a lot of study. But it is feasible that they could be used by people to increase efficiency and therefore productivity. I know that I always used to forget important dates before I had a cellphone with a calendar that reminded me. Having a date marked on a paper calendar does no good if you don't regularilly check said calendar. My cellphone is almost always with me, so I will get the alarm that someone's birthday is coming up, or to remind myself to tell my boss about some great idea I had or...? True, if the phone breaks then I currengtly lose all that info, but backups are just another technological innovation away.
This all comes down to: we are becoming more and more dependant on technology to go about our day to day business. This is a trend that started when manking first made flint arrows (actually, it started even before then when we sharpened a stick to use as a weapon/hunting tool.)
From what I recall, evidence shows that we still work longer than the hunter gatherers. Experimental archaeologists have pretty much shown that neolithic pre-agricultural man worked (being making hunting tools, hunting, preparing food, preparing living spaces, etc) about 2-3 hours a day.
With open source software, the mantra is that businesses can still make money supporting the software, helping streamline the whole experience. Writing a book describing tips and tricks to squeeze more out of it counts as support in my mind.
But google desktop search DOES index web pages you have viewed recently. And when you post a comment on slashdot, that means you have viewed it. Therefore your/. comment is now indexed if you have google desktop.
Those people that do not care about private vs. public tags will probably not be working with documents that contain sensitive information in their metadata.
Slashdot Mirror
in fact, lately, I've started using the Mute during the breaks... which means those advertisers have shot themselves in the foot as I'm not hearing the message. They haven't shot themselves in the foot... you are probably just too intelligent/discerning to be the market they were going for anyways. Advertisers want to go for people that will be swayed by the advertising.
The thank you cards is more from a guys perspective, so that may mean prioritize. Send to your buddies last. Not to mention they'd find it funny to get one a year later, your wife's friends won't (some sexual prejudice going on here, but...)
I'd also be willing to bet that the vast majority of Microsoft and Apple programmers don't know much about UI. What they do have are UI specialists and graffics and industrial designers working in teams setting up the layout. This UI team then passes the specs onto the programmers, or potentially uses premade tools to design the interface, which the programmers then add functionality to all the buttons and widgets and gizmos. Without some level of top down management, the programmers attempt to do something they are simply not qualified to do. Would you want somebody writing kernel code who's qualifications are all in the graphics design area?
Actually, the thunderbird one isn't that bad, a bird carrying a letter. You can (kind of) find it by the name, and it's pretty easilly recognizable as an e-mail client. The concept of firefox's icon is pretty good: a flaming fox encircling the world (Something going around the world is a pretty decent icon for a web browser (Formerly known as World Wide Web.) The problem with that one is that once it's shrunk down to the size you see on most desktops with decently high resolution, you really can't make either out, so it looks kinda like a red and blue marble or eye or something.
Both of those are far more recognizable for what they are than the rat looking thing that is the Icon for the GIMP. Or a construction cone for VLC player. Open Office's icons on the other hand are very informative, but bland and forgettable.
Besides, for actually running commonly used programs, most people use the quicklaunch bar or the desktop. Assuming the installer puts the icons there.
It's news because they're about to launch the first satellite. Although now that I think about it, that should have been posted instead of what we got.
There would be a large number of reasons for the EU to do this which simply are not mentioned
1)Pure national pride
2)Response to getting shut down over the DNS root server control issue
3)A stepping stone to getting their act together in terms of outer space technology and exploration
4)A backup plan in case some satellites of the US GPS system experiences problems, which could be technologically related or politically motivated: a diverse system is more robust.
5)Profits: A large amount of the investment is to be private, and those companies expect to get their money back. The EU would probably like to see some of the money that is currently going to American companies in terms of liscensing fees, etc stay in the European economy as well as bring in money from other countries which use the Galleon system.
Here in the States, the cellphone is a fashion statement, not a communications device. How it looks matters more than how well it functions or how easy it is to use. Smaller and thinner is what fasion strives for. The RAZR has pretty good sales in the United States. But yeah, I love my Nokia. Anybody who tries to use it is like "Wow, the layout actually makes sense. WTF?" The phone is small enough to carry around, but built sturdy enough to take the general abuse that being in a person's pockets all day will give. Now I just need to find a carrier that has recpetion in my house.
As the article says, having things piled up is not necesarilly bad, if they are things that you truly believe are not important. Does it really cosmically matter if you don't send out those thank you cards? Do you remember getting thank you cards from people who's wedding you attended? Did you actually feel happy that they took the time to send them? You may have Cat5 that isn't run yet, but obviously you've got some sort of internet connection.
And although it probably isn't all that important, I can help you out with the gigs of mp3s problem. I remember manually going through my music days and days on end, retyping file names, then opening them to make sure it's actually the right one, then playing with the id3 tags, etc. Once I got over about 2gigs of mp3s, this was no longer really feasable. A slight rearranging of my naming scheme or whatever was pretty much impossible. Enter musicbrainz tagger. It automates a lot of the tagging and renaming by essentially taking a hash of the file and comparing it to what other people have done. It then names, sorts in directories, and fills in ID3 tags according to paramaters you set. Granted, it's not perfect and there are some falso positives, but it makes the job a whole lot easier. One technique which really helps find the errors is having three directories: Source, Sort and Store (you can call them whatever you want.) Source is where you rip to, download to (legally, or course) or whatever. Sort is where Musicbrainz puts the files after it identifies them. After looking through them and making sure there are no bands that are completely wrong (biggest tip off of a mismatched song is having a band you never heard of or wouldn't dream of listening to), you move them into Store (which is where you play from, etc. Probably wouldn't actually be called Store, but I thought that just made for some nice alliteration for this post.) And setting up Musicbrainz the first time can be kinda wierd as you pretty much have to manailly set most of the settings, IIRC. So give it about ano hour or so just to tinker around and find out how the program works and what it does.
One interesting thing about running Musicbrainz is that you occasionally find that some files you had for a long time and have grown to know and love were actually mislabeled and are a completely different artist, or the title is just wrong such as when the file is named after the word/phrase used most predominately in the refrain: Bush's "Machinehead" would have been labeled "Breathe in breathe out" or something like that. Another extremely common errot to find is virtually every comedy sketch or parody you find is attributed to Wierd Al.)
Hey... don't knock shoveling turds for a living. I work at an animal control facility, and after you get past the grossnes of it, cleaning up after dogs etc gets a sort of rewarding feeling in its own right. I don't know if I'd personally ever be able to get comfortable with cleaning up human feces, but dog? No problem. But yeah, working with people that can occasionally get goofy prevents the days from dragging on. It can be almost essential during stressful periods. Maybe it's just the camaraderie that you build up, so when you're feeling stress just having people that you feel comfortable around takes a big load off.
On the other hand excessive (or innapropriate) clowning can sometimes have social drawbacks. Or just create a whole mess of extra work.
Yeah... I did a little research after reading the article and found that. Supposedly what got the dodos moreso than people directly were the rats and pigs and other animals left behind (rats accidentally, and starting a wild colony of pigs on a wayside island was pretty common practice.) But eh... I meant it more as a joke anyways. A sorta dark joke, but nonetheless.
Well, we all know that it isn't really the viruses and bacteria from that region that we have to worry about, but miniaturized Chinese People.
If only we hadn't killed off the dodos we wouldn't be in this situation. Well, assuming that this flu isn't deadly to dodos.
The problem here isn't the record companies trying to change the pricepoint (after all, that is what supply and demand is all about) the problem is the alleged collusion to sway prices. The fact that all the major record labels are attempting to bully Apple into changin prices at about the same time is symptomatic of secret talks within the record industry, which is most definately illegal (similar to the way that insider trading is, because it gives the parties in collusion an unfair advantage.) It yet has to be proven that there were secret talks, and that is what this investigation hopes to prove or refute. It is also possible that A)the original contracts the record companies signed onto with Apple are about to expire and this is just a normal part of the negotiation cycle or B)Once one company made public their attempts to raise prices, the others followed suit in a completely legal manner.
On the other hand, if the people who you are going up against piss off enough politicians with their sophistry and geeneral bullying, then the confirmation is a piece of cake.
More information on this here
Large flightless bird with no fear of man... if nothing else they would make the perfect domesticated fowl. And I think history has shown that they are tasty enough.
This comment isn't that far off. The neurological pathways which exist that allow for addictive behaviors to arise are currently thought to exist in order to facilitate pairbonding, or what modern society has come to call "love."
Ringtones can be used to differentiate different callers, and allow the person recieving tha call to decide whether or not to answer the phone without even looking at the screen: potential productivity increase.
Ipods can allow people to relax more fully in their short break, returning to work more refreshed and able to get the job done. They can also be used to block out distracting sounds: potential productivity increase.
Digital cable generally comes with a dvr these days, so people can watch the shows they want at anytime, freeing them from the confines of the network schedule. Commercials and irrelevant parts can also be fast forwarded. Less time spent zoning out in front of the TV to get the amount of entertainment you want -> More time available for productive activities -> potential productivity increase.
To find whether or not people actually use these technologies in a productive manner, that would take a lot of study. But it is feasible that they could be used by people to increase efficiency and therefore productivity. I know that I always used to forget important dates before I had a cellphone with a calendar that reminded me. Having a date marked on a paper calendar does no good if you don't regularilly check said calendar. My cellphone is almost always with me, so I will get the alarm that someone's birthday is coming up, or to remind myself to tell my boss about some great idea I had or...? True, if the phone breaks then I currengtly lose all that info, but backups are just another technological innovation away.
This all comes down to: we are becoming more and more dependant on technology to go about our day to day business. This is a trend that started when manking first made flint arrows (actually, it started even before then when we sharpened a stick to use as a weapon/hunting tool.)
From what I recall, evidence shows that we still work longer than the hunter gatherers. Experimental archaeologists have pretty much shown that neolithic pre-agricultural man worked (being making hunting tools, hunting, preparing food, preparing living spaces, etc) about 2-3 hours a day.
With open source software, the mantra is that businesses can still make money supporting the software, helping streamline the whole experience. Writing a book describing tips and tricks to squeeze more out of it counts as support in my mind.
Maybe I should have said "should not" be working on sensitive documents. I forgot how the business world actually works.
But google desktop search DOES index web pages you have viewed recently. And when you post a comment on slashdot, that means you have viewed it. Therefore your /. comment is now indexed if you have google desktop.
Those people that do not care about private vs. public tags will probably not be working with documents that contain sensitive information in their metadata.
All I have to say is "Follow the money" on the article
according to a compilation by Workshare, a maker of software that strips metadata out of files.
You wouldn't think that they have some invested financial interest in getting the the public overreacted about the dangers of metadata
Am I being reverse paranoid?