My manager got the ball to his trackball replaced with one that looks like a golfball. I don't like him much. (rimshot)
Seriously tho, I'm pretty sure this book wasn't meant to appeal to the techie sector - it's designed to get through to people with enough casual knowledge of computers to fake intelligent conversation and enough of a passion for golf to think a driver-shaped mouse is a nifty idea, (coughcough management coughcough) not the other way around.
Personally, I would've liked to have seen David Lynch win. I also knew that there wasn't a hope in hell that he would - "Mulholland Drive" wasn't...digestable enough for an Oscar.
Doesn't matter really - I gave up on industry awards when "Parade" didn't win the Tony for Best Musical.
My 8th Grade music teacher was an oddball. One day, close to the summer, he decided he'd had enough with the drummers in the orchestra. They didn't do anything but bang as loud as they could on the snares and tympani. They didn't listen to anybody - they were probably all deaf at that point anyway.
Well, J.B. (the music teacher) decided to get even. He took a huge rubberband (about three or four feet long unstretched) and a six foot pole with a hook on the end. You know the kind - they're used to open high windows. He added the band to the hook, held the pole with one end and the free end of the 'band with the other.
Thus equipped, he swaggered out of his office, took aim, and winged the band full force into the side of the bass drum. It was like a thunderclap. He looked at the instigators over the top of his half-moons, said "You're next" and grinned like a maniac.
Seriously, crumbling infrastructure is only part of the reason that I see water getting (comparitively) real expensive in our lifetime.
I hear that. The sewers (rainwater, not sewage) in my hometown in Jersey are easily a hundred years old.
Because they're underground no one notices them. They're taken for granted. But they're clogged, crumbling and performing way beyond their design specifications. The town could spend a few million now to repair it as they go (say, when they repave the roads) but they're not going to. Why? Because if they did it'd look like they were wasting money to repair something that's still working. The term preventative maintenance don't fly in that 'burb.
So 50 years from now when the sewers collapse and the repair bill bankrupts the town someone's going to say "Why didn't we do this earlier?"
Makes me glad I moved into New York City. Oh, wait...
Screw Barnes @ Noble. And Amazon. There are other large, online book retailers you could buy from and get most things cheaper. I do all my book shopping at booksamillion. It's cheaper and it's not one of "those" two.:)
not quite, I think...what it looks like to me is that a single.mp3 file is created with field characteristics matching contact info, etc. So "Track Title" becomes "Contact", "Artist" becomes "Phone #" etc. I think it uses id3 tags instead of individuval files.
That may or may not be "true," it just makes more sense to me that way, knowing how iTunes works.
"In that survey, of about 700 students, Chiang and Assane found the number of students using pirated software dropped to about 40 percent, Chiang said, a 25 percent decline. The dip is all the more significant researchers, pointed out, because it occurred at a time when both the amount of software and students' use of computers increased considerably."
Or it's possible that these students are following the recent copyright/piracy debates closely and are worried about getting caught, so more people are lying about what they're ripping off than in 1996. Hell, if someone came up to me and said "Hey, this is for a 'survey' - do you pirate software?" I'd lie. I mean, have you seen the microsoft piracy scare ads?
It's not a question of "Working." Advertisers gave up on the idea of click-throughs a long time ago. Now what the advertisers are looking to generate are impressions, or number of ads viewed per period of time. Yeah, the company gets money from click throughs, but they also get money for having it on the page in the first place. I don't know how the finances work tho.
If you do the math, that means you'd reload slashdot every 57.6 seconds in a 16 hour concious day to use up 1000 reloads. Maybe you're on the extreme fringe, but I reload every 30 minutes for the 8 1/2 hours I'm at work. That comes to 51 loads per day assuming I load 3 pages per view.
Besides, I don't think there's anything wrong with compensating someone for a provided service. I visit/. more than any other site so I think it's fair - you wouldn't catch me spending money on CNN or NYTimes, but here, I've got no problem with it.
The reason catalogue and internet retail outlets can advertise having no questions asked return policies is that 99% of the time people don't bother to return items tehy're dissatisfied with.
Last christmas, Barnes and Noble tried something interesting in New York City. As a pilot program at two of their stores, people could order books from bn.com at these stores, get the online discounted price, pay no shipping and have the opportuinity to return any product bought online to the stores.
This initiative was canned after the holidays. Why? because people actually DID return products they weren't satisfied with.
It is a rare consumer indeed who actually bothers to repackage and mail a purchase back to the retailer. CDNow and Amazon are perfectly safe in offering that service because no one'll use it.
Question: What does this do to Macslash? I've always looked to them for info first (although the conversations were admittedly dead and moderation points were nonexistant) and they're apparently in a bit of a financial scrape. Personally, I'd rather an active discussion here than dead air there, but I'm still curious.
Triv
Now we'll not only hear about cell phones causing brain cancer, now the press will be warning us that we could put our eyes out.
Not until someone actually DOES and sues the manufacturer for millions of dollars. Remember McDonalds and the lawsuit that required them to put "Warning! Coffee is extremely hot! Drink with caution!" on their coffee cups?
On the other hand, movies that do have a consultant taking care of the math references, like Sneakers and Good Will Hunting, are much easier to sit through.
OTOH:
Darren Aronofsky actually learned how to play Go (or Baduk, or Weiqi depending on where you're from)while making Pi - he took a little thing and made the details work. Look at Russel Crowe playing Go in "A Beautiful Mind" - he has absolutely no idea what he's doing. In Pi, the game was a major symbol. Black and White. Good and evil. Sanity and genius. Math and nature. The film's about dichotomy, not math.
In "A Beautiful Mind," Go was a way to proove that Crowe's a genius - a mathmatical game that's obscure enough to look cool. Both movies have bits and pieces of the same themes, but Aronofsky actually utilizes them to make a point WITHOUT hitting you over the head with it (or at least, making it layered enough that there's always something new there.)
Ok, so the pseudomath doesn't work. Well, the point of the film isn't about the math. It's a contrivance to get the point across.
In short: GROW UP. If you spend all your time nitpicking the details you'll frequently miss the big picture.
Sharing may be easier with a device, but a scanner could do the same thing.
Absolutely, but something is lost when you bring in outside tech - this should be, as far as I'm concerned, in the hands of the kids. A scanner is too complicated and would require the intervention of an adult-type to help. Plus, throwing a scanner into the mix destroys the...spontaneity of the thing. Instead of saying "this is what I'm doing/feeling/looking at right now" it turns into "This is what I WAS doing before I had to go through the hassle of sending it to you." The easier it is for someone to use, the more likely the kids'll be to actually use it.
I had a penpal in Montreal when I was in 6th grade. I got the cheeziest letters outta him because his teachers screened everything and were constantly looking over his shoulder (I assume - mine was doing the same thing to me)
I think something creative would be better - I honestly don't think words are the best medium of communication, it's too easy for words to slip into cliche. Conversations of the 'how are you? I am fine. I just got a new bike. It is blue" variety are...empty.
Let the kids draw. Paint. CREATE something - give 'em a webpad with a good freehand program and a simple interface (NO CLIPART - no 'place sun with streaming rays here' button) Let 'em express themselves. It's easier for kids to become involved if words are only minimally involved. Or, do both - couple/link it with a livejournal-type diary interface. Diaries are more about the person than about who they're 'talking' too.
Jsut the perspective of an artist/musician. Take it for what you will.
...with ST:TNG. He's got every episode burned onto 50(ish) cd's. He pops 'em in whenever he's feeling a Wrath of Picard urge comin' on. Pretty sure he pulled 'em off of ICQ.
Sounds like fun, but I'm still going to wait for the box sets.:)
Triv
It looks like if you have a history of drinking, lying and cheating you won't be going into space anytime soon.
Unless you're a celebrity or stinkin' rich, of course. And if you're both you might as well be strapped into that cockpot right now.
If, to pick a name at random, Michael Jackson wanted to go into orbit, can you imagine NASA saying NO to the publicity? I can't.
(although there is something to be said for the possibility of the National Enquirer headline of "NASA Refuses to Launch Well-Known alien Back into Space!" Bad Publicity as a front-page spread is a good thing)
--Triv
Slashdot Mirror
My manager got the ball to his trackball replaced with one that looks like a golfball. I don't like him much. (rimshot)
Seriously tho, I'm pretty sure this book wasn't meant to appeal to the techie sector - it's designed to get through to people with enough casual knowledge of computers to fake intelligent conversation and enough of a passion for golf to think a driver-shaped mouse is a nifty idea, (coughcough management coughcough) not the other way around.
Triv
If they ever get around to the spacequest series I'll be a very happy man. You've gotta respect a company that put Bill "Pug" Gates in a video game.
Scumsoft. heh. Man, they were ahead of their time.
Triv
Personally, I would've liked to have seen David Lynch win. I also knew that there wasn't a hope in hell that he would - "Mulholland Drive" wasn't...digestable enough for an Oscar.
Doesn't matter really - I gave up on industry awards when "Parade" didn't win the Tony for Best Musical.
Triv
developed a sectional-torpedo-looking-thing as a means to transform the raw fury of the sea into electricity!
:)
Or, if you build one in Coney Island, the raw sewage of the sea, hypodermics and all.
I used to live there. I know what I'm talking about. I used to live on the Jersey coast too, but that'd be too easy.
Triv
My 8th Grade music teacher was an oddball. One day, close to the summer, he decided he'd had enough with the drummers in the orchestra. They didn't do anything but bang as loud as they could on the snares and tympani. They didn't listen to anybody - they were probably all deaf at that point anyway.
:)
Well, J.B. (the music teacher) decided to get even. He took a huge rubberband (about three or four feet long unstretched) and a six foot pole with a hook on the end. You know the kind - they're used to open high windows. He added the band to the hook, held the pole with one end and the free end of the 'band with the other.
Thus equipped, he swaggered out of his office, took aim, and winged the band full force into the side of the bass drum. It was like a thunderclap. He looked at the instigators over the top of his half-moons, said "You're next" and grinned like a maniac.
It shut 'em up for a whole day.
Triv
Seriously, crumbling infrastructure is only part of the reason that I see water getting (comparitively) real expensive in our lifetime.
I hear that. The sewers (rainwater, not sewage) in my hometown in Jersey are easily a hundred years old.
Because they're underground no one notices them. They're taken for granted. But they're clogged, crumbling and performing way beyond their design specifications. The town could spend a few million now to repair it as they go (say, when they repave the roads) but they're not going to. Why? Because if they did it'd look like they were wasting money to repair something that's still working. The term preventative maintenance don't fly in that 'burb.
So 50 years from now when the sewers collapse and the repair bill bankrupts the town someone's going to say "Why didn't we do this earlier?"
Makes me glad I moved into New York City. Oh, wait...
Triv
Don't forget - Lucas doesn't get paid for his movies, he retains the merchandising rights instead.
I think someone might be getting a wee bit greedy...:)
Triv
Check this out: FAIR Special Report: The Most Biased Name in News. Fox has a history of misrepresenting the facts.
Triv
Screw Barnes @ Noble. And Amazon. There are other large, online book retailers you could buy from and get most things cheaper. I do all my book shopping at booksamillion. It's cheaper and it's not one of "those" two. :)
Triv
not quite, I think...what it looks like to me is that a single .mp3 file is created with field characteristics matching contact info, etc. So "Track Title" becomes "Contact", "Artist" becomes "Phone #" etc. I think it uses id3 tags instead of individuval files.
That may or may not be "true," it just makes more sense to me that way, knowing how iTunes works.
"In that survey, of about 700 students, Chiang and Assane found the number of students using pirated software dropped to about 40 percent, Chiang said, a 25 percent decline. The dip is all the more significant researchers, pointed out, because it occurred at a time when both the amount of software and students' use of computers increased considerably." Or it's possible that these students are following the recent copyright/piracy debates closely and are worried about getting caught, so more people are lying about what they're ripping off than in 1996. Hell, if someone came up to me and said "Hey, this is for a 'survey' - do you pirate software?" I'd lie. I mean, have you seen the microsoft piracy scare ads?
Triv
It's not a question of "Working." Advertisers gave up on the idea of click-throughs a long time ago. Now what the advertisers are looking to generate are impressions, or number of ads viewed per period of time. Yeah, the company gets money from click throughs, but they also get money for having it on the page in the first place. I don't know how the finances work tho.
triv
"a secret diary of his experiences installing and using Mac oh ess ex."
;)
It's been said a hundred times, though probably not here. It's spelled "Mac OS X"; it's pronounced "Mac O.S. TEN."
Geez...
Triv
I think you're exaggerating a bit.
/. more than any other site so I think it's fair - you wouldn't catch me spending money on CNN or NYTimes, but here, I've got no problem with it.
If you do the math, that means you'd reload slashdot every 57.6 seconds in a 16 hour concious day to use up 1000 reloads. Maybe you're on the extreme fringe, but I reload every 30 minutes for the 8 1/2 hours I'm at work. That comes to 51 loads per day assuming I load 3 pages per view.
Besides, I don't think there's anything wrong with compensating someone for a provided service. I visit
Triv
Till I see how annoying these new ads are. As it is, I'll probably fork over the cash, but if I don't notice the change...
:)
Ok, I'll STILL fork over the cash. When I get paid in two weeks.
Triv
The reason catalogue and internet retail outlets can advertise having no questions asked return policies is that 99% of the time people don't bother to return items tehy're dissatisfied with.
Last christmas, Barnes and Noble tried something interesting in New York City. As a pilot program at two of their stores, people could order books from bn.com at these stores, get the online discounted price, pay no shipping and have the opportuinity to return any product bought online to the stores.
This initiative was canned after the holidays. Why? because people actually DID return products they weren't satisfied with.
It is a rare consumer indeed who actually bothers to repackage and mail a purchase back to the retailer. CDNow and Amazon are perfectly safe in offering that service because no one'll use it.
Triv
Question: What does this do to Macslash? I've always looked to them for info first (although the conversations were admittedly dead and moderation points were nonexistant) and they're apparently in a bit of a financial scrape. Personally, I'd rather an active discussion here than dead air there, but I'm still curious. Triv
Ouch.
(bows humbly)
You're right. It's amazing how, in the long run especially, the media impression drowns out the facts, contorts the whole thing into a sound-byte.
That was the most direct response to a post I've ever recieved that wasn't a flame. I appreciate it.
Triv
Now we'll not only hear about cell phones causing brain cancer, now the press will be warning us that we could put our eyes out.
Not until someone actually DOES and sues the manufacturer for millions of dollars. Remember McDonalds and the lawsuit that required them to put "Warning! Coffee is extremely hot! Drink with caution!" on their coffee cups?
Triv
On the other hand, movies that do have a consultant taking care of the math references, like Sneakers and Good Will Hunting, are much easier to sit through. OTOH: Darren Aronofsky actually learned how to play Go (or Baduk, or Weiqi depending on where you're from)while making Pi - he took a little thing and made the details work. Look at Russel Crowe playing Go in "A Beautiful Mind" - he has absolutely no idea what he's doing. In Pi, the game was a major symbol. Black and White. Good and evil. Sanity and genius. Math and nature. The film's about dichotomy, not math.
In "A Beautiful Mind," Go was a way to proove that Crowe's a genius - a mathmatical game that's obscure enough to look cool. Both movies have bits and pieces of the same themes, but Aronofsky actually utilizes them to make a point WITHOUT hitting you over the head with it (or at least, making it layered enough that there's always something new there.)
Ok, so the pseudomath doesn't work. Well, the point of the film isn't about the math. It's a contrivance to get the point across.
In short: GROW UP. If you spend all your time nitpicking the details you'll frequently miss the big picture.
Triv
Sharing may be easier with a device, but a scanner could do the same thing.
Absolutely, but something is lost when you bring in outside tech - this should be, as far as I'm concerned, in the hands of the kids. A scanner is too complicated and would require the intervention of an adult-type to help. Plus, throwing a scanner into the mix destroys the...spontaneity of the thing. Instead of saying "this is what I'm doing/feeling/looking at right now" it turns into "This is what I WAS doing before I had to go through the hassle of sending it to you." The easier it is for someone to use, the more likely the kids'll be to actually use it.
Triv
I had a penpal in Montreal when I was in 6th grade. I got the cheeziest letters outta him because his teachers screened everything and were constantly looking over his shoulder (I assume - mine was doing the same thing to me)
I think something creative would be better - I honestly don't think words are the best medium of communication, it's too easy for words to slip into cliche. Conversations of the 'how are you? I am fine. I just got a new bike. It is blue" variety are...empty.
Let the kids draw. Paint. CREATE something - give 'em a webpad with a good freehand program and a simple interface (NO CLIPART - no 'place sun with streaming rays here' button) Let 'em express themselves. It's easier for kids to become involved if words are only minimally involved. Or, do both - couple/link it with a livejournal-type diary interface. Diaries are more about the person than about who they're 'talking' too.
Jsut the perspective of an artist/musician. Take it for what you will.
Triv
...with ST:TNG. He's got every episode burned onto 50(ish) cd's. He pops 'em in whenever he's feeling a Wrath of Picard urge comin' on. Pretty sure he pulled 'em off of ICQ. Sounds like fun, but I'm still going to wait for the box sets. :)
Triv
here
It looks like if you have a history of drinking, lying and cheating you won't be going into space anytime soon. Unless you're a celebrity or stinkin' rich, of course. And if you're both you might as well be strapped into that cockpot right now. If, to pick a name at random, Michael Jackson wanted to go into orbit, can you imagine NASA saying NO to the publicity? I can't. (although there is something to be said for the possibility of the National Enquirer headline of "NASA Refuses to Launch Well-Known alien Back into Space!" Bad Publicity as a front-page spread is a good thing) --Triv