Quite frankly I don't understand how it has been allowed for things like genes and sequences and such to be patented, and I think the notion that such things can be patented is ridiculous. But who am I, other some peon somewhere, right?
I have a feeling that the whole patented gene stuff will come crashing down on the patent holders once genetics starts to have a practical reach into the public and consumer spaces.
How on earth are these patent holders going to enforce their patents? Couldn't some student make a patented gene in the college lab and distribute it in vials to thousands of people just to have in their pocket to show how silly that idea is? Couldn't we do this now even? I'd love to see some pharma company try and sue 50,000 students around the country or world for patent infringement. It worked great for the RIAA.
I think that's actually one of the main uses you'll see as the technology rolls out. I've worked on designing a few methods of large scale (as in life-sized) multi-touch alpha-numeric input and the biggest issue I experience at the moment is ergonomics, not haptic feedback. It's really hard to have a screen positioned in a way that makes it easy to view content and easy to type on at the same time. The texture will help but until better form factors are developed we're not going to get any really decent soft QWERTY keyboards (input conventions themselves are a different story.)
The iPad is EXACTLY what the PADD would have been had the Ferengi designed it instead of someone in the Federation.
Yes! Although the Ferengi would have gone the other way on the "Freedom from Porn" thing. They would have banned all apps that feature women in clothing.
PADDs were usually only used exactly the same way paper is
If you watch the episodes carefully you see Data and Georgi also using them as extensions of the ships computer interface and/or as a collaborative task and data sharing devices. I also recall Crusher using them as extensions of sick bay medical devices. Picard and Riker used them as clipboards which was just more noticeable as the information exchange was part of the plot.
The PADD discussion hits on both of my two biggest problems with the iPad. One, it isn't an extension of my home computer. It's an extension of itunes which is far from the same thing as an extension of an entire machine. You can rig a bunch of apps to get close but still no cigar.
The second thing I dislike about the iPad is the weight and by extensions it's ergonomics. PADDs were light (you see people holding them with a thumb and forefinger) and a bit smaller. I have an iPad for testing and pitching at work and I feel like I can never hold it the same way for more than 3 mins before I have to change my hand position (whereas I can hold my iphone steady in front of my face for hours while reading an ebook.)
Once ChromeOS tablets with app sync come out I think they'll get much closer to what PADDs have achieved in fiction.
The only real alternative is for everyone to blog and publish an RSS feed.
How is that any different from Twitter? Last I checked it was a micro-blogging service wrapped up in a bunch of manufactured marketing speak with a data scheme that provides maximum compatibility amongst various device classes. An interesting implementation of IMing and blogging services? Yes. Necessary for keeping up with who's who and what's what? No.
From the fact that you've "tried" Twitter, "repeatedly" and "hated it every time", I'll infer that you tried it for short periods of time and never really gave it much of a chance
Why can people not believe that I gave it a decent shake and just didn't like it? I try new software all the time (just like you) and then I come to a conclusion on my preference (also like you). In this case I didn't like it (different from you) but you insist that it must be my fault that i didn't like it because of prejudice or laziness or some other silly notion that you're applying to a piece of software like it was a pet. If you'd stop anthropomorphizing technology you'd have more than emotional bluster to say about it.
If you must know...I even piloted an internal version of Twitter among my department at work (a use case I thought would work will for it) and all it really did was democratize the choosing of a lunch vendor.
Occasionally I'll follow someone new, and then I might decide to unfollow them, but it's not a lot of work. No more so than adding a new RSS feed to your RSS reader of choice.
If you don't think building, reading and maintaining a decent RSS list is a lot of work yours must not be very good. Mine takes a decent amount of weekly pruning and I don't get enough out of Twitter to justify maintaining a whole other list in parallel.
Hate is a strong word, but it's your post, not mine, so I'll let you be your own editor. It could be that you really do hate it.
I do hate it. It teases me but doesn't deliver on the meat. It's a million quiche appetizers being force-fed intravenously without ever sitting down for a steak. But that's just my opinion. If it helps you out at work and gives you pleasure more power to you.
But the telephone? I'm an Alexander Bell fan as much as the next guy, but if a bunch of people called me up 150 times an hour with news I would freak out.
In no way did I imply that anyone use a phone as one would tweet.
There is no comparison.
I compared it to the telephone as a contender in powerful exchange mechanisms per your post and I'm still waiting for a reply for where justify that Twitter is more powerful than the telephone.
Twitter just silently passes interesting messages
Read what you wrote there and tell me that doesn't sound annoying on principal.
If you curate your 'friends' list well, it will be a boon to your life as all the headlines that interest you are aggregated in one place with links to the stories that might mean something to you (more than headlines about another murder in Oakland, to use an example from an older form of news aggregation, the newspaper).
What I'm getting at is that there are lots of people who have no desire to curate their friends or lists of their friends for other than social reasons. Twitter keeps me from working and I have no desire to read streams of bumper-sticker-level thoughts from friends and luminaries in my time off. This is a common attitude that I am explaining so that you can have empathy for those who detract it.
It's not for everyone, but its potential seems to be under-appreciated on the Dot.
I think a lot of people on the Dot understand the lessons learned from the tech boom and can smell the air of forever-startup emanating from Twitter HQ. It's nothing I can put my finger on but there's just something about Twitter that seems fleeting.
I now have the ability to instantly follow, and communicate with, all the experts in my field as if they were my co-workers. I know what they are reading about and what new technologies they are employing, instantly.
Yes but is Twitter the best way of doing this? Twitter is only a single implementation of near-limitless communication possibilities.
No other exchange mechanism has been this easy to use and this powerful.
The telephone's pretty cool too.
It takes a deft hand to chose the right people to follow, true, but even a Slashdotter should be able to pick out those who represent expertise in their chosen field and could learn from the interactions now available, for free.
I think a lot of people's problems with Twitter is that it takes a lot of work to make sure you get no work done. Twitter seems like it's for people who talk about doing things because people who do things don't have time for Twitter. Slashdot appeals to me because it doesn't take a lot of work (compared to building and maintaining a followers list) to figure out how to get it to show you the content you want to see.
I highly doubt their programming decisions have been based on a "this or we close" decision. Their decision is the same as every other major tv entertainment company's decision. Make the cheapest shows possible. Reality TV is incredibly cheap to produce in comparison to shows that actually need more than a VO writer and a small run-around camera crew. I'm sure Discovery must pay higher insurance premiums for their shows (they're dangerous!) but it's still a drop in the bucket. If discovery had created fewer channels and spent more on each show they'd have a higher quality product...but they'd also have less time in which to book advertisers. I do wish Discovery would take more note of Radiolab because a week's worth of discovery shows doesn't carry nearly the level of information or intrigue as a single Radiolab episode. Radiolab is also not about profit but about quality (it's NPR/WNYC.) So, in short, more Radiolab and less Deadliest Catch.
No, I don't quite agree. I think, sadly, that this is what the new American audience demands. They find educational material slow and boring so they have to jazz it up with all kinds of superfluous drama.
If we were only talking about traditional broadcast television I would agree but it's different for Discovery. Niche cable channels have very specific demographics and most people who are tuning into Discovery can handle or even prefer a higher level of subject matter complexity. Discovery doesn't have to do reality TV to survive. The problem is that Reality TV now makes up a large chunk of the pool of show ideas to pick from.
When I say that producing reality TV is cheaper I should also imply that it appeals greatly to television producers. The producers aren't making big programming decisions but they are submitting new shows all the time. If you were a TV producer and you were faced with the choice of hiring and managing 50 people or 20 people for your pilot which would you pick? Hence more reality TV is submitted, it looks cheaper and lower-risk on paper to the execs making the decisions and viola. A never ending stream of the crap because of lazy/beaten-down producers and their ability to spread their garbage from network to Discovery.
I highly doubt their programming decisions have been based on a "this or we close" decision. Their decision is the same as every other major tv entertainment company's decision. Make the cheapest shows possible. Reality TV is incredibly cheap to produce in comparison to shows that actually need more than a VO writer and a small run-around camera crew. I'm sure Discovery must pay higher insurance premiums for their shows (they're dangerous!) but it's still a drop in the bucket. If discovery had created fewer channels and spent more on each show they'd have a higher quality product...but they'd also have less time in which to book advertisers. I do wish Discovery would take more note of Radiolab because a week's worth of discovery shows doesn't carry nearly the level of information or intrigue as a single Radiolab episode. Radiolab is also not about profit but about quality (it's NPR/WNYC.) So, in short, more Radiolab and less Deadliest Catch.
You probably think every show is the same because EVERY SHOW IS EXACTLY THE SAME!
It's the same people, the same story, the same shot list, the same challenge, the same plot, and the same everything else EVERY SINGLE SHOW. This is not an exaggeration. I would love to talk to the editors of the show to see how long it takes them to edit an episode at this point. I bet it's less time then the total of the tapes they have to work with (i.e. they don't even need to log the tapes anymore, they use a checklist).
I know it's off topic but it kills me every time someone says they like that show. It's not a show! It's a single episode of a show that happens to look a little different each time (and not very different at that.)
If you knew any "leftists" you'd know that they wouldn't be interested in taking commands from some comment maven dictator. They'd start a group sure, but they'd never act in unison and it would quickly fall apart.
Take a look at the DailyKos for instance. If you look at it without your partisan glasses on you'll notice that half the stuff up there is about how the other half of stuff up there is wrong (and that's on a site FOR leftists.)
If I were making unsubstantiated generalizations I would go for something more like "Liberals design and program these sites then the right wing abuses them then Democrats profit from the ad revenue and then the wingers win the election."
Or something like that...
It's not that he didn't want her to hear the word. He didn't want her pledging to a god neither he nor she believed in.
Apparently the religious are extremely ignorant in legal matters (see it sounds stupid the other way around too.)
Slashdot Mirror
Now all we need is for this to become the norm.
Quite frankly I don't understand how it has been allowed for things like genes and sequences and such to be patented, and I think the notion that such things can be patented is ridiculous. But who am I, other some peon somewhere, right?
I have a feeling that the whole patented gene stuff will come crashing down on the patent holders once genetics starts to have a practical reach into the public and consumer spaces.
How on earth are these patent holders going to enforce their patents? Couldn't some student make a patented gene in the college lab and distribute it in vials to thousands of people just to have in their pocket to show how silly that idea is? Couldn't we do this now even? I'd love to see some pharma company try and sue 50,000 students around the country or world for patent infringement. It worked great for the RIAA.
Now say it in the original Klingon.
I was kind of hoping the great leader could bless us all with a translation.
Not one of the stock ones, but it works for me.
Shall I write my own? How about: "A great warrior uses flame not for threads, but for his enemies house."
I think this one is appropriate: If you cannot fail, you cannot succeed. (56)
Damnit. I googled it and still got it wrong. No Sto-Vo-Kor for me (googled that too and it's probably wrong).
I think that's actually one of the main uses you'll see as the technology rolls out. I've worked on designing a few methods of large scale (as in life-sized) multi-touch alpha-numeric input and the biggest issue I experience at the moment is ergonomics, not haptic feedback. It's really hard to have a screen positioned in a way that makes it easy to view content and easy to type on at the same time. The texture will help but until better form factors are developed we're not going to get any really decent soft QWERTY keyboards (input conventions themselves are a different story.)
aka What Would Kayles Do?
The iPad is EXACTLY what the PADD would have been had the Ferengi designed it instead of someone in the Federation.
Yes! Although the Ferengi would have gone the other way on the "Freedom from Porn" thing. They would have banned all apps that feature women in clothing.
The limitations of the iPad are ones of the physical limitations of human being holding them.
Yep. That's the only limitation. Can't think of any more. Nothing comes to mind.
PADDs were usually only used exactly the same way paper is
If you watch the episodes carefully you see Data and Georgi also using them as extensions of the ships computer interface and/or as a collaborative task and data sharing devices. I also recall Crusher using them as extensions of sick bay medical devices. Picard and Riker used them as clipboards which was just more noticeable as the information exchange was part of the plot.
The PADD discussion hits on both of my two biggest problems with the iPad. One, it isn't an extension of my home computer. It's an extension of itunes which is far from the same thing as an extension of an entire machine. You can rig a bunch of apps to get close but still no cigar.
The second thing I dislike about the iPad is the weight and by extensions it's ergonomics. PADDs were light (you see people holding them with a thumb and forefinger) and a bit smaller. I have an iPad for testing and pitching at work and I feel like I can never hold it the same way for more than 3 mins before I have to change my hand position (whereas I can hold my iphone steady in front of my face for hours while reading an ebook.)
Once ChromeOS tablets with app sync come out I think they'll get much closer to what PADDs have achieved in fiction.
The only real alternative is for everyone to blog and publish an RSS feed.
How is that any different from Twitter? Last I checked it was a micro-blogging service wrapped up in a bunch of manufactured marketing speak with a data scheme that provides maximum compatibility amongst various device classes. An interesting implementation of IMing and blogging services? Yes. Necessary for keeping up with who's who and what's what? No.
From the fact that you've "tried" Twitter, "repeatedly" and "hated it every time", I'll infer that you tried it for short periods of time and never really gave it much of a chance
Why can people not believe that I gave it a decent shake and just didn't like it? I try new software all the time (just like you) and then I come to a conclusion on my preference (also like you). In this case I didn't like it (different from you) but you insist that it must be my fault that i didn't like it because of prejudice or laziness or some other silly notion that you're applying to a piece of software like it was a pet. If you'd stop anthropomorphizing technology you'd have more than emotional bluster to say about it.
If you must know...I even piloted an internal version of Twitter among my department at work (a use case I thought would work will for it) and all it really did was democratize the choosing of a lunch vendor.
Occasionally I'll follow someone new, and then I might decide to unfollow them, but it's not a lot of work. No more so than adding a new RSS feed to your RSS reader of choice.
If you don't think building, reading and maintaining a decent RSS list is a lot of work yours must not be very good. Mine takes a decent amount of weekly pruning and I don't get enough out of Twitter to justify maintaining a whole other list in parallel.
Hate is a strong word, but it's your post, not mine, so I'll let you be your own editor. It could be that you really do hate it.
I do hate it. It teases me but doesn't deliver on the meat. It's a million quiche appetizers being force-fed intravenously without ever sitting down for a steak. But that's just my opinion. If it helps you out at work and gives you pleasure more power to you.
But the telephone? I'm an Alexander Bell fan as much as the next guy, but if a bunch of people called me up 150 times an hour with news I would freak out.
In no way did I imply that anyone use a phone as one would tweet.
There is no comparison.
I compared it to the telephone as a contender in powerful exchange mechanisms per your post and I'm still waiting for a reply for where justify that Twitter is more powerful than the telephone.
Twitter just silently passes interesting messages
Read what you wrote there and tell me that doesn't sound annoying on principal.
If you curate your 'friends' list well, it will be a boon to your life as all the headlines that interest you are aggregated in one place with links to the stories that might mean something to you (more than headlines about another murder in Oakland, to use an example from an older form of news aggregation, the newspaper).
What I'm getting at is that there are lots of people who have no desire to curate their friends or lists of their friends for other than social reasons. Twitter keeps me from working and I have no desire to read streams of bumper-sticker-level thoughts from friends and luminaries in my time off. This is a common attitude that I am explaining so that you can have empathy for those who detract it.
It's not for everyone, but its potential seems to be under-appreciated on the Dot.
I think a lot of people on the Dot understand the lessons learned from the tech boom and can smell the air of forever-startup emanating from Twitter HQ. It's nothing I can put my finger on but there's just something about Twitter that seems fleeting.
You've never used it have you?
I've tried it repeatedly and hate it every time.
I now have the ability to instantly follow, and communicate with, all the experts in my field as if they were my co-workers. I know what they are reading about and what new technologies they are employing, instantly.
Yes but is Twitter the best way of doing this? Twitter is only a single implementation of near-limitless communication possibilities.
No other exchange mechanism has been this easy to use and this powerful.
The telephone's pretty cool too.
It takes a deft hand to chose the right people to follow, true, but even a Slashdotter should be able to pick out those who represent expertise in their chosen field and could learn from the interactions now available, for free.
I think a lot of people's problems with Twitter is that it takes a lot of work to make sure you get no work done. Twitter seems like it's for people who talk about doing things because people who do things don't have time for Twitter. Slashdot appeals to me because it doesn't take a lot of work (compared to building and maintaining a followers list) to figure out how to get it to show you the content you want to see.
I highly doubt their programming decisions have been based on a "this or we close" decision. Their decision is the same as every other major tv entertainment company's decision. Make the cheapest shows possible. Reality TV is incredibly cheap to produce in comparison to shows that actually need more than a VO writer and a small run-around camera crew. I'm sure Discovery must pay higher insurance premiums for their shows (they're dangerous!) but it's still a drop in the bucket. If discovery had created fewer channels and spent more on each show they'd have a higher quality product...but they'd also have less time in which to book advertisers. I do wish Discovery would take more note of Radiolab because a week's worth of discovery shows doesn't carry nearly the level of information or intrigue as a single Radiolab episode. Radiolab is also not about profit but about quality (it's NPR/WNYC.) So, in short, more Radiolab and less Deadliest Catch.
No, I don't quite agree. I think, sadly, that this is what the new American audience demands. They find educational material slow and boring so they have to jazz it up with all kinds of superfluous drama.
If we were only talking about traditional broadcast television I would agree but it's different for Discovery. Niche cable channels have very specific demographics and most people who are tuning into Discovery can handle or even prefer a higher level of subject matter complexity. Discovery doesn't have to do reality TV to survive. The problem is that Reality TV now makes up a large chunk of the pool of show ideas to pick from.
When I say that producing reality TV is cheaper I should also imply that it appeals greatly to television producers. The producers aren't making big programming decisions but they are submitting new shows all the time. If you were a TV producer and you were faced with the choice of hiring and managing 50 people or 20 people for your pilot which would you pick? Hence more reality TV is submitted, it looks cheaper and lower-risk on paper to the execs making the decisions and viola. A never ending stream of the crap because of lazy/beaten-down producers and their ability to spread their garbage from network to Discovery.
I highly doubt their programming decisions have been based on a "this or we close" decision. Their decision is the same as every other major tv entertainment company's decision. Make the cheapest shows possible. Reality TV is incredibly cheap to produce in comparison to shows that actually need more than a VO writer and a small run-around camera crew. I'm sure Discovery must pay higher insurance premiums for their shows (they're dangerous!) but it's still a drop in the bucket. If discovery had created fewer channels and spent more on each show they'd have a higher quality product...but they'd also have less time in which to book advertisers. I do wish Discovery would take more note of Radiolab because a week's worth of discovery shows doesn't carry nearly the level of information or intrigue as a single Radiolab episode. Radiolab is also not about profit but about quality (it's NPR/WNYC.) So, in short, more Radiolab and less Deadliest Catch.
You probably think every show is the same because EVERY SHOW IS EXACTLY THE SAME! It's the same people, the same story, the same shot list, the same challenge, the same plot, and the same everything else EVERY SINGLE SHOW. This is not an exaggeration. I would love to talk to the editors of the show to see how long it takes them to edit an episode at this point. I bet it's less time then the total of the tapes they have to work with (i.e. they don't even need to log the tapes anymore, they use a checklist). I know it's off topic but it kills me every time someone says they like that show. It's not a show! It's a single episode of a show that happens to look a little different each time (and not very different at that.)
If you knew any "leftists" you'd know that they wouldn't be interested in taking commands from some comment maven dictator. They'd start a group sure, but they'd never act in unison and it would quickly fall apart. Take a look at the DailyKos for instance. If you look at it without your partisan glasses on you'll notice that half the stuff up there is about how the other half of stuff up there is wrong (and that's on a site FOR leftists.) If I were making unsubstantiated generalizations I would go for something more like "Liberals design and program these sites then the right wing abuses them then Democrats profit from the ad revenue and then the wingers win the election." Or something like that...
It's not that he didn't want her to hear the word. He didn't want her pledging to a god neither he nor she believed in. Apparently the religious are extremely ignorant in legal matters (see it sounds stupid the other way around too.)