What really bugs me is that big companies, not just crackpots, are using hoo-hah like magnetic healing in their products. Dr. Scholl's sells magnetic insoles, and they bill them as having all these wonderful effects. I wrote a nasty letter to the CEO of the conglomerate, but amazingly enough the products continue to be sold.;)
I think that corporations have an obligation to be good citizens, just like people. Too bad so many of both fail at that. Selling healing magnets is voodoo plain and simple.
I actually tried to get this on/. as a story, under the title "Corporate Witchdoctors," but it was rejected. I still think it merits discussion and I'd love to see all those crappy companies selling magnets and other garbage buried under calls and letters.
Problem is, that doesn't do any good for a normal non-geek. The issue is that Tivo is breaking something that people bought after purchase. What about the technophobes of the world? Their big breakthrough this year was understanding what a digital recorder can do for them -- can't expect them to get right into hacking!
I was sort of on the fence between ReplayTV and Tivo a while ago. I chose Replay eventually, partially because there was no monthly fee. I am even more glad I did now.
Too bad RTV is out of the hardware market now... I think all you can get right now with their tech inside is the Panasonic ShowStopper. It's a poorly designed device... it will block the *display* of any Macrovision-encoded program. Not just the recording -- the display. Forget about viewing your DVDs with the Panasonic as a pass-through device... and apparently some cable TV signals fool the Macrovision circuit, and it will black out normal programming on occasion.
Panasonic has been called to task on this but they won't back down. There are a lot of angry users out there.
The Psi Corp can have my ReplayTV model 3030 when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers! Best $300 I ever spent. My first unit was DOA (classic RTV quality control) but the replacement is flawless. Too bad you can't get them anymore. I wouldn't eBay for one either, the QC is poor any you sadly need that factory warranty.
I have never tried making a pano with a fisheye lens. Isn't that what Panorama Tools is for, and what the IPIX patent is on?
Why is it so great? I make lots of panos with my nikon 990, but I use normal photos to do them. There must be something better about fisheye panos to make the extra expense worthwhile.
I used to be down on the Electoral College until I did some reading after the election. I'm a believer now. It's like this: the EC helps to prevent the "tyranny of the majority." To understand this better, take a look at this imaginary country...
In Hellholia, there are 3 provinces.
Province A, with 60% of the population.
Province B, with 20% of the population.
Province C, with 20% of the population.
The people of Province A hate the people of Province B. They'd like to dump them into shallow graves. They don't get along so well with the people of Province C either.
The people of Provinces B and C get along with each other and they wish the A-holes would leave them alone.
If the Grand Poo-Bah of Hellholia is elected by popular vote, the most rabid, racist violent psychopath would easily be elected by the majority, those being the people of A, and he'd start wiping out the people of B and forcing the people in C to make license plates or something.
If the Hellholia uses a system like the electoral college, the candidate from A would have to win over at least B or C in addition to his own province, and this would ensure that a more moderate candidate won.
Without the electoral college the people in the 4 most populous US states would dominate presidential race, and that's wrong. With the EC in place, the candidates need to appeal to a more broad spectrum of voters. That's a good thing.
Far from destroying democracy, the electoral college is a critical fine-tuning element. It's actually quite elegant.
The problem with campaign finance reform, at least what's proposed by McCain and the others, is that it stifles political speech from non-profit groups, as well as building a big new bureacracy.
Take the NRA for example: if McCain gets his way, the postcards that the NRA sends out that says "we urge you to vote for so-and-so in your local election" will count as a *campaign contribution* and they'll be tightly regulated. That goes for Sierra Club postcards too, and Greenpeace, and the EFF... Break these laws and it's fines and jail time.
Fines or jail time... for a group of people sending out postcards saying "vote for _________." How is that an improvement?
I was in favor of campaign finance reform until I read more about it, and I realized that in the end it would prevent my point of view from being "taken to the Hill" through the non-profit groups I am affiliated with. That's no good.
The best article I have on the matter right now is in a gun magazine, but it should be easy to find more info online... I bet most large political groups (NRA, Sierra Club, etc.) are down on this idea, and rightly so.
Of course, if you don't feel strongly about any political issues you may not care about it anyway.
It is possible to get an exemption, and get GPS gear that gives you full military precision. Seriously pro surveying operations weren't hampered by SA, it was just us little people.
Re:GIMP on Mac won't be mainstream.
on
GIMP And OS X
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· Score: 2
I'll agree with what you are saying and take it even further: GIMP on OSX is neat but almost useless. A person who has no Unix experience will expect an icon that they can double-click to execute a program. Anything that requires compiling or monkeying around with X servers is going to seriously deter Mac people. Hell, I am a Unix AND Mac person and I have zero interest in futzing around with this. I got a Mac to get some work done on. I have Intel boxes for the Freenixes to goof around with.
I'm sure the small number of unix dudes who are getting Macs to play with OSX will love GIMP on OSX. But ultimately the people that need to be won over are average Mac users, the kind of people/.ers love to hate.
Like you said, it's got to be Aqua. It would be very cool if GIMP evolved to that, but anything less isn't going to matter to anyone but geeks.
I had a Toshiba Portege laptop at work. It needed more RAM. We cracked it open and popped a laptop-format memory module in.
When we turned it on, the display said, "Please remove the non-compatible memory module and replace it with an authentic Toshiba part" or something like that.
It was the ultimate insult.... Tosh forced you to buy their super expensive memory. At least when Apple was doing that crap they'd make weird arbitrary changes to the SHAPE of the memory board, so you wouldn't feel teased!
My mom had a G3 Powerbook. Towards the end of its warranty period, she had to send it in like 4 times for service. The last time, Apple said "enough is enough" and they sent her a new G4 powerbook.
That's not a typo. Apple replaced a G3 powerbook with a new G4 powerbook that was much more expensive. And it didn't take a ridiculous amount of bitching at them -- THEY OFFERED IT. She had it in about 1.5 weeks. (had to ship the dud back first, in a freely-provided shipping box.)
Some aspects of Apple's service are bad, but in my experience they come through when it counts.
Apple has well and truly lost, their market is now people to whom image matters more than performance.
What you are not taking into account is how the apps and the OS work -- the "feel" of the computer is MORE IMPORTANT than the raw speed for many users. Performance isn't measured just in how fast a file opens; it's how fast can you get to that file, and say force it to open with some other app than the default, and how much time is setting up the *%(@_! printer going to take?
I do a lot of pro-level publishing work on a 400MHz PowerBook. You know what? As sick as this sounds, it is fast enough. I experience no delay in any operation long enough to make me think, "Crap, I need a new computer." And this Mac sits on my desk next to an 850MHz PC.
I think it sucks that Apple's clock speed is lagging, but the fact that they are still in business is a testament to a couple of things:
1. Speed isn't the most important thing. We've passed some threshold where even a 1-year old computer is just plain fast ENOUGH for a lot of tasks. And that's not complaining or compromising; it's genuinely good performance.
2. The MacOS continues to remain a lot more useful than Windows to a lot of people... to enough people, anyway, to keep Apple afloat.
It's OK that raw speed matters to you. But don't make it the center of the debate.
But for your accounting prof's needs a mac may still be better.
I have 5 computers: 2 FreeBSD, 2 WinMe, 1 MacOS. Each is good for one thing in particular. The Mac is my system of choice of productivity -- spreadsheets, publishing, webdev, Photoshop, that stuff.
The PCs do have some advantages in some areas, but they have plenty of disadvantages too. In the end they are web browsers and game boxes, to me anyway.
I looked that stuff up online and it seems to be sulfuric, not nitric acid. I'm still surprised that it's an acid product, never seen that kind of drain cleaner in my neck o' the woods. Must be damn hard on the pipes.
I'm still waiting to hear what will fall off of Cassini before it reaches Saturn.
I read somewhere that there is a known problem with the Huygens (sp) probe... not something fatal, but there's definitely something amiss with it.
I still have a fair amount of confidence in Cassini. It was one of the very last Slower, More Expensive missions. It's a billion-dollar probe, the last of the NASA monsters... it will certainly have some problems, but I bet it will come through in the end.
Incidentally, it's freaking HUGE... I saw it a few times from the assembly bay observation deck at JPL. Weird to think that something I saw is now so freaking far away.
So true. Goldin is a fool. (I used to work at JPL and MAN, that guy was detested.) What I am most upset about is our total lack of meaningful progress in creating new systems to get us to orbit. The shuttle is great, but what are we going to do when the fleet is 50 years old? That's how long they expect them to last, but if we started NOW we'd have a hard time building a replacement, with how things get done these days. Sad.
I did not realize that the crew was capped at 3 because of vehicle issues. That really bums me out.
I love space, but following the news on it is just depressing.
NASA is alternately brilliant and incompetent. They can do great stuff, like say a space station... but then their charter is written so that they may not make a profit.
I'd gladly see Pizza Hut ads on all our rockets if it PAID FOR MORE MISSIONS. It's not like the scientific results are tainted by commerical money.
Frankly I think NASA needs to start whoring itself out. I'd love to see a tourist on the station all the time... at $20M a pop it would pay for another Mars trip, or something... Film Coke ads in there, anything. Film an episode of Friends in there. Make money, become visible to the public, become relevant, even if it's in a "silly" commercial way.
I think what the esteemed Mr. Tourist does not understand is that even MUNDANE tasks in space are HARD. It probably takes a lot of effort just to keep the station from leaking, spinning out of control, catching on fire and re-entering the atmosphere. We have to develop a lot of technology just to get people there, and to let them do basic stuff like take a leak. That's OK; it's a learning experience. How much commerce did the very first boats bring in? How useful were the first airplanes?
I'm more than happy to help pay for humanity learning the skills of day-to-day existence in space, as those skills will serve us well down the line. And if any science gets done in the meantime -- bonus!
Typical short-sighted American, that Tito, doesn't like anything without instant gratification. And I can say that, because I'm an American, so save yer flames.
Can you imagine the reaction if there were two guaranteed spots for whites?
We grapple with the same problems in the states. It is interesting for me to read about this in another country. FWIW I am with you, I think those policies taint the accomplishments of the people they are trying to protect.
In much of the US there is also a very weird stigma about white culture. The vocal and organized racist groups we have like the Ku Klux Klan sure don't help matters of course...
Anyway, where I grew up, in Southern California (a place where non-whites are the majority of the population), there was simply no way to express any kind of 'white pride' or interest in the culture of your European ancestors. As a testament to my conditioning, I am actually cringing as I type the words 'white pride' again. In high school there was a club for every ethnicity you could think of, except any white ones. A fascinating double standard. (not like I even care about the culture of my white ancestors personally, but I dislike those kind of double standards.)
I recently moved to Seattle, in Washington State. Unlike LA, nearly everyone here is white -- which is extremely strange for me. Even weirder, there are symbols of European culture all over the place... I see freaking Swedish flags hanging from supermarkets, and I think I even heard Swedish being spoken out in public. This sort of thing did NOT happen in SoCal, and I am in an extreme state of culture shock. The only place I ever saw a Swedish flag in Los Angeles was on a Volvo repair shop, where it still looked exotic.
If saying that this situation is wrong makes me racist, then f%$# it, I'm a racist, and proud of it.
It makes you clear-thinking. And if saying THAT makes ME racist, I'll see you in hell, pal.
Once I read a very insightful comment somewhere online. It was:
To share a common future, we all need to give up a little of our past.
It's the people who aren't willing to give anything up who are spoiling it for the rest of us. I will never understand people who are so savagely protective of their ethnicity. Having an identity is GREAT, sure, but you also have to fit into a SOCIETY FULL OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE. This involved COMPROMISE.
Maybe I just don't get it because I am another white-descended American, an orphan of a bankrupt culture. (as Hans said in Die Hard... doh, I just proved my cultural bankruptcy, I used a Bruce Willis movie reference!)
For any of this to pay off in court, should this crazy convention come to pass, the system will have to find a way to decide what a legitimate culture IS. That's going to be a sticky legal question for sure. Will hackers, goths, ham radio operators, crack heads or Yuppies have any control over the representation of their culture? Probably not.
It's all gonna suck anyway.
Anyone else think this article should have had a more informative/alarming title? I almost didn't click on "who owns your culture," but I have no life.
Slashdot Mirror
can you provide more information on the Norwegian medicine laws you mentioned? sounds like a great idea.
Read the whole post, Chester. I paid $300 for my ReplayTV.
What really bugs me is that big companies, not just crackpots, are using hoo-hah like magnetic healing in their products. Dr. Scholl's sells magnetic insoles, and they bill them as having all these wonderful effects. I wrote a nasty letter to the CEO of the conglomerate, but amazingly enough the products continue to be sold.
I think that corporations have an obligation to be good citizens, just like people. Too bad so many of both fail at that. Selling healing magnets is voodoo plain and simple.
I actually tried to get this on
Problem is, that doesn't do any good for a normal non-geek. The issue is that Tivo is breaking something that people bought after purchase. What about the technophobes of the world? Their big breakthrough this year was understanding what a digital recorder can do for them -- can't expect them to get right into hacking!
I was sort of on the fence between ReplayTV and Tivo a while ago. I chose Replay eventually, partially because there was no monthly fee. I am even more glad I did now.
Too bad RTV is out of the hardware market now... I think all you can get right now with their tech inside is the Panasonic ShowStopper. It's a poorly designed device... it will block the *display* of any Macrovision-encoded program. Not just the recording -- the display. Forget about viewing your DVDs with the Panasonic as a pass-through device... and apparently some cable TV signals fool the Macrovision circuit, and it will black out normal programming on occasion.
Panasonic has been called to task on this but they won't back down. There are a lot of angry users out there.
The Psi Corp can have my ReplayTV model 3030 when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers! Best $300 I ever spent. My first unit was DOA (classic RTV quality control) but the replacement is flawless. Too bad you can't get them anymore. I wouldn't eBay for one either, the QC is poor any you sadly need that factory warranty.
I have never tried making a pano with a fisheye lens. Isn't that what Panorama Tools is for, and what the IPIX patent is on?
Why is it so great? I make lots of panos with my nikon 990, but I use normal photos to do them. There must be something better about fisheye panos to make the extra expense worthwhile.
I used to be down on the Electoral College until I did some reading after the election. I'm a believer now. It's like this: the EC helps to prevent the "tyranny of the majority." To understand this better, take a look at this imaginary country...
In Hellholia, there are 3 provinces.
Province A, with 60% of the population.
Province B, with 20% of the population.
Province C, with 20% of the population.
The people of Province A hate the people of Province B. They'd like to dump them into shallow graves. They don't get along so well with the people of Province C either.
The people of Provinces B and C get along with each other and they wish the A-holes would leave them alone.
If the Grand Poo-Bah of Hellholia is elected by popular vote, the most rabid, racist violent psychopath would easily be elected by the majority, those being the people of A, and he'd start wiping out the people of B and forcing the people in C to make license plates or something.
If the Hellholia uses a system like the electoral college, the candidate from A would have to win over at least B or C in addition to his own province, and this would ensure that a more moderate candidate won.
Without the electoral college the people in the 4 most populous US states would dominate presidential race, and that's wrong. With the EC in place, the candidates need to appeal to a more broad spectrum of voters. That's a good thing.
Far from destroying democracy, the electoral college is a critical fine-tuning element. It's actually quite elegant.
The problem with campaign finance reform, at least what's proposed by McCain and the others, is that it stifles political speech from non-profit groups, as well as building a big new bureacracy.
Take the NRA for example: if McCain gets his way, the postcards that the NRA sends out that says "we urge you to vote for so-and-so in your local election" will count as a *campaign contribution* and they'll be tightly regulated. That goes for Sierra Club postcards too, and Greenpeace, and the EFF... Break these laws and it's fines and jail time.
Fines or jail time... for a group of people sending out postcards saying "vote for _________." How is that an improvement?
I was in favor of campaign finance reform until I read more about it, and I realized that in the end it would prevent my point of view from being "taken to the Hill" through the non-profit groups I am affiliated with. That's no good.
The best article I have on the matter right now is in a gun magazine, but it should be easy to find more info online... I bet most large political groups (NRA, Sierra Club, etc.) are down on this idea, and rightly so.
Of course, if you don't feel strongly about any political issues you may not care about it anyway.
It is possible to get an exemption, and get GPS gear that gives you full military precision. Seriously pro surveying operations weren't hampered by SA, it was just us little people.
I'll agree with what you are saying and take it even further: GIMP on OSX is neat but almost useless. A person who has no Unix experience will expect an icon that they can double-click to execute a program. Anything that requires compiling or monkeying around with X servers is going to seriously deter Mac people. Hell, I am a Unix AND Mac person and I have zero interest in futzing around with this. I got a Mac to get some work done on. I have Intel boxes for the Freenixes to goof around with.
I'm sure the small number of unix dudes who are getting Macs to play with OSX will love GIMP on OSX. But ultimately the people that need to be won over are average Mac users, the kind of people
Like you said, it's got to be Aqua. It would be very cool if GIMP evolved to that, but anything less isn't going to matter to anyone but geeks.
I had a Toshiba Portege laptop at work. It needed more RAM. We cracked it open and popped a laptop-format memory module in.
When we turned it on, the display said, "Please remove the non-compatible memory module and replace it with an authentic Toshiba part" or something like that.
It was the ultimate insult.... Tosh forced you to buy their super expensive memory. At least when Apple was doing that crap they'd make weird arbitrary changes to the SHAPE of the memory board, so you wouldn't feel teased!
My mom had a G3 Powerbook. Towards the end of its warranty period, she had to send it in like 4 times for service. The last time, Apple said "enough is enough" and they sent her a new G4 powerbook.
That's not a typo. Apple replaced a G3 powerbook with a new G4 powerbook that was much more expensive. And it didn't take a ridiculous amount of bitching at them -- THEY OFFERED IT. She had it in about 1.5 weeks. (had to ship the dud back first, in a freely-provided shipping box.)
Some aspects of Apple's service are bad, but in my experience they come through when it counts.
Apple has well and truly lost, their market is now people to whom image matters more than performance.
What you are not taking into account is how the apps and the OS work -- the "feel" of the computer is MORE IMPORTANT than the raw speed for many users. Performance isn't measured just in how fast a file opens; it's how fast can you get to that file, and say force it to open with some other app than the default, and how much time is setting up the *%(@_! printer going to take?
I do a lot of pro-level publishing work on a 400MHz PowerBook. You know what? As sick as this sounds, it is fast enough. I experience no delay in any operation long enough to make me think, "Crap, I need a new computer." And this Mac sits on my desk next to an 850MHz PC.
I think it sucks that Apple's clock speed is lagging, but the fact that they are still in business is a testament to a couple of things:
1. Speed isn't the most important thing. We've passed some threshold where even a 1-year old computer is just plain fast ENOUGH for a lot of tasks. And that's not complaining or compromising; it's genuinely good performance.
2. The MacOS continues to remain a lot more useful than Windows to a lot of people... to enough people, anyway, to keep Apple afloat.
It's OK that raw speed matters to you. But don't make it the center of the debate.
But for your accounting prof's needs a mac may still be better.
I have 5 computers: 2 FreeBSD, 2 WinMe, 1 MacOS. Each is good for one thing in particular. The Mac is my system of choice of productivity -- spreadsheets, publishing, webdev, Photoshop, that stuff.
The PCs do have some advantages in some areas, but they have plenty of disadvantages too. In the end they are web browsers and game boxes, to me anyway.
Let that poor guy enjoy his powerbook in peace!
I'll say it out loud: It's OK to use a Mac!
I looked that stuff up online and it seems to be sulfuric, not nitric acid. I'm still surprised that it's an acid product, never seen that kind of drain cleaner in my neck o' the woods. Must be damn hard on the pipes.
Drain cleaner is a strong base, not an acid.
Nitric acid is nasty stuff and not suitable for cleaning pipes.
...and could eliminate fossil fuel needs by 2010...
If we wanted to land a rock on the moon at 4000 MPH we couldn't get the PAPERWORK done by 2010.
I'm still waiting to hear what will fall off of Cassini before it reaches Saturn.
I read somewhere that there is a known problem with the Huygens (sp) probe... not something fatal, but there's definitely something amiss with it.
I still have a fair amount of confidence in Cassini. It was one of the very last Slower, More Expensive missions. It's a billion-dollar probe, the last of the NASA monsters... it will certainly have some problems, but I bet it will come through in the end.
Incidentally, it's freaking HUGE... I saw it a few times from the assembly bay observation deck at JPL. Weird to think that something I saw is now so freaking far away.
It's called "hyperbole," pinhead -- exaggeration for the sake of making a point.
So true. Goldin is a fool. (I used to work at JPL and MAN, that guy was detested.) What I am most upset about is our total lack of meaningful progress in creating new systems to get us to orbit. The shuttle is great, but what are we going to do when the fleet is 50 years old? That's how long they expect them to last, but if we started NOW we'd have a hard time building a replacement, with how things get done these days. Sad.
I did not realize that the crew was capped at 3 because of vehicle issues. That really bums me out.
I love space, but following the news on it is just depressing.
NASA is alternately brilliant and incompetent. They can do great stuff, like say a space station... but then their charter is written so that they may not make a profit.
I'd gladly see Pizza Hut ads on all our rockets if it PAID FOR MORE MISSIONS. It's not like the scientific results are tainted by commerical money.
Frankly I think NASA needs to start whoring itself out. I'd love to see a tourist on the station all the time... at $20M a pop it would pay for another Mars trip, or something... Film Coke ads in there, anything. Film an episode of Friends in there. Make money, become visible to the public, become relevant, even if it's in a "silly" commercial way.
I think what the esteemed Mr. Tourist does not understand is that even MUNDANE tasks in space are HARD. It probably takes a lot of effort just to keep the station from leaking, spinning out of control, catching on fire and re-entering the atmosphere. We have to develop a lot of technology just to get people there, and to let them do basic stuff like take a leak. That's OK; it's a learning experience. How much commerce did the very first boats bring in? How useful were the first airplanes?
I'm more than happy to help pay for humanity learning the skills of day-to-day existence in space, as those skills will serve us well down the line. And if any science gets done in the meantime -- bonus!
Typical short-sighted American, that Tito, doesn't like anything without instant gratification. And I can say that, because I'm an American, so save yer flames.
(on a posting frenzy tonight)
Can you imagine the reaction if there were two guaranteed spots for whites?
We grapple with the same problems in the states. It is interesting for me to read about this in another country. FWIW I am with you, I think those policies taint the accomplishments of the people they are trying to protect.
In much of the US there is also a very weird stigma about white culture. The vocal and organized racist groups we have like the Ku Klux Klan sure don't help matters of course...
Anyway, where I grew up, in Southern California (a place where non-whites are the majority of the population), there was simply no way to express any kind of 'white pride' or interest in the culture of your European ancestors. As a testament to my conditioning, I am actually cringing as I type the words 'white pride' again. In high school there was a club for every ethnicity you could think of, except any white ones. A fascinating double standard. (not like I even care about the culture of my white ancestors personally, but I dislike those kind of double standards.)
I recently moved to Seattle, in Washington State. Unlike LA, nearly everyone here is white -- which is extremely strange for me. Even weirder, there are symbols of European culture all over the place... I see freaking Swedish flags hanging from supermarkets, and I think I even heard Swedish being spoken out in public. This sort of thing did NOT happen in SoCal, and I am in an extreme state of culture shock. The only place I ever saw a Swedish flag in Los Angeles was on a Volvo repair shop, where it still looked exotic.
If saying that this situation is wrong makes me racist, then f%$# it, I'm a racist, and proud of it.
It makes you clear-thinking. And if saying THAT makes ME racist, I'll see you in hell, pal.
Once I read a very insightful comment somewhere online. It was:
To share a common future, we all need to give up a little of our past.
It's the people who aren't willing to give anything up who are spoiling it for the rest of us. I will never understand people who are so savagely protective of their ethnicity. Having an identity is GREAT, sure, but you also have to fit into a SOCIETY FULL OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE. This involved COMPROMISE.
Maybe I just don't get it because I am another white-descended American, an orphan of a bankrupt culture. (as Hans said in Die Hard... doh, I just proved my cultural bankruptcy, I used a Bruce Willis movie reference!)
For any of this to pay off in court, should this crazy convention come to pass, the system will have to find a way to decide what a legitimate culture IS. That's going to be a sticky legal question for sure. Will hackers, goths, ham radio operators, crack heads or Yuppies have any control over the representation of their culture? Probably not.
It's all gonna suck anyway.
Anyone else think this article should have had a more informative/alarming title? I almost didn't click on "who owns your culture," but I have no life.
Are you saying that this is the process Sony said they require?