It is not the price, but the claim that a 20K car, for instance, is inherently better than a 10K car. They both get you from A to B, so at the purpose of a car, they could be equivalent. There may be some bells and whistles, but they are both cars. People who spend hours trying to convince me that their car is worth the money and mine isn't are in need of therapy. It is a matter of personal choice. Same thing for bags. Some would never pay $500 for a nylon pack with a pretty label on it. Some would. Same thing for computers. I like my computer, it does what I want, and I don't mind paying for it. Those who have so little time on their hands that they need to judge my needs are also in need of therapy.
So if someone want to $1500 for a pair of headphones, that is their choice. But if they start trying to say it is implicitly superior, therein lies the problem. It is one thing to have stuff, it is quite another to think that stuff inherently makes life better. We spend out money on what we wish, and those of us with more disposable income get to make more choices. That is all there is to it.
It is interesting that people want a video camera when we don't even have a decent camera. It is that people are so obsessed about making movies about themselves that they don' care that the quality sucks.
As far a tethering, I would be much happier if this happened on the Mac side of the equation. Why does the air have cellular connection? Why does not every macbook have this as an option? The antennae can be built in just like the WiFi. Sure, the built in antennae sucks, but it save extra baggage. I would pay ATT $20 a month more on top of the iphone account to have access anywhere for the macbook. The battery life on the iPhone is horrible enough without using it as a tether.
Copy and paste, as the article mentions would be good. The fact that mail can't work in landscape is a crime. MMS is important to those that want to make movies of themselves, but, as mentioned, a decent camera would preferable, and I don't want to pay more so that we can have MMS. Multitasking would be good.
As far as standard USB and mass storage, I would much prefer it if the iPod Touch and iPhone could wireless connect as a mass storage device to a compute. Most computer have wifi now, and Apple uses such technology for the Air and Airport. It does work. It could even be a bluetooth connection. This would be a security risk, but I would prefer it to changing the connector.
At the risk of being quoted out of context, for the size of CCD that most cameras use and the optics available, 8 megapixel is plenty big. For bigger prints using an SLR camera, 10-15 megapixels is useful. This will give reasonable output up to the point where one might want a medium format camera to do better.
The megapixel size, like the battery life, the clock speed on a CPU, the amount of memory, etc, is mostly used in ad copy to make people think they are getting a better product. In most cases what has in fact happened is that designers put in a badly integrated laundry list of features so that even though the components sound good, it end up being a cheaply made crap product. We see this, for instance, in computer with fast processors but slow front side buses.
The point where it is going to make sense to go to a higher megapixel count is when we move to a full size 35X24mm CCD. What is happening right now is that the pixel density is getting so tight, we are not seeing appreciable quality. Additionally, I don't think the current CCDs utilize the full field of the lens. Right now cameras like the D3X is relatively expensive, but as production ramps up we may see cameras that use the full size CCD appear in the 2000 price range. At that point the 25-30 megapixel will actually be useful. The density will drop from 4000 pixels per square mm to 3000 pixels per square mm. I have seen no definitive answer on this, but some have suggested that the CCD goes as high as 4000, the noise can become a big issue.
Which is just to say, the megapixel war for the past couple years has been a gimmick, and what we might be asking for instead is larger CCD and better optics, even if the number of pixels does not change.
Part of the problem is lack of a educated person. For instance, electricity and plugs are nothing new, but many people are still going to buy the 'iphone compatible' headphones rather than a unmarked pair, even though there is no difference. And just listen to the commercials on certain AM talk radio stations. It is like the conservation of mass and energy never existed. One can magically get rid of debt. One can magically get rid of weight. One can magically increase cell phone reception with a piece of plastic. One can magically get infinite energy out of a finite reserve. There is no reason for an normal adult not to understand these things.
And fudging number has been around since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The story goes that James Watt wanted to sell his steam engine based on the number of horses replace, or equivalent. So he measured the amount or work horses could do over a period of time. The story goes he did not make his horses work very hard, and came out with a very low power. I am sure his reasoning was 'sustained work' was what was important. In any case, he was forced to up this number, but is was still considered low. But this is number we have. The horsepower is the amount of a work a unmotivated tired weak horse can do. The battery life is the maximum one can expect when on is not using the device for anything. The rated miles per gallon on a car is valid if one is driving around a parking lot at a constant speed with no accesories on and no one, not even the driver, in the car.
Any number listed in advertising copy is solely for advertising purposes. That is the rule. If everyone uses the same basis, no matter how flawed, such as horsepower, it is a fair relative comparison. Though the exact number might not make any sense, it is useful for ordering. In a educated society, therefore, we would use a scaled number rather than a fixed number that implies some level or precision and accuracy. But, as stated, we are not even educated enough to understand there is nothing magical about an set of headphones. Thank the gods for that, otherwise many companies would be out business and we would be in greater trouble than we are.
I don't think you are so atypical. I think most young adults are looking for a job. The problem, I think are the adults in charge. They want someone who can work without incurring any training costs. they want someone who requires no supervision so they can get their executive pay without doing any work. They want someone who is so greedy that they will work 20 hour days without 20 hours of pay in hopes of possible future reward. So who do these irresponsible adults get, ignorant narcissistic children with no work ethic or social integrity beyond what will get them ahead.
I am not a child and always required a fair wage for my work. I have completed enough projects in my life and have seen enough failures to know the difference between a good manager and bad ones. The good ones hire a balance of staff that will work together to complete a project. The bad ones will hire naive precocious children and greedy managers in hopes of getting a profit before the bottom falls out. So the reason I am saying this is because everyone always wants to blame the young people. It is not their fault. It is up to those of us who are older and have more experience to help those that are just learning their own capabilities and shortcoming.
So don't blame the kids. The kids were not the ones that told everyone to go out and get a generic amoral MBA so they could get rich and fly around the world. The kids are not the ones that set up criminal loans that nearly pushed the world to the brink of collapse. The kids are not the ones that told everyone to get a CS degree, or they the ones that are hiring based on a specific degree, rather than a general degree and capability. It is the adults that are doing this, and if anyone is to blame for narcissistic kids it is people like the person who posted this question. For some reason hiring managers are upset that they are getting the exact type of employees they claim to want. If one wants a rational employee, then advertise rational expectations, and have rational expectation of what a young person can do and what a young person needs.
As far as the parent, keep being realistic. Find a reasonable person to work for, an adult who will help you grow into the person you want to be. They exist. Ignore people like the poster who want to blame the worlds problem on the children, and whine how bette the world will be if kids were just like they were. I will give you a hint. Madoff grew up to the in the 40's and 50's, the alleged high point of United States civilization. Clearly, not all kids were better back then than they are today, and not all kids are worse now.
Same here. On some says, I might watch several hours as I am doing other work. The player has never worked well, with all too frequent refreshes, but overall it works very well.
I wonder if the key is 'per stream'. Is this user trying to run multiple streams off the same account.
This reminds of two interesting conversations I have recently had with colleagues. In the first, with a very conservative women, she was railing on Obama and the liberals for interfering with the economy and private enterprise, and how businesses are so constrained by regulation that they cannot function. I pointed up that she worked in heavily regulated and unionized industry where her employer was not free to pay her less even if was worth less, and that she was against bonuses because she never got them. She defended this by saying that paying her less was unfair, but really, if business is going to thrive, don't we have to let the owners decide how much each person is worth?
In the second conversation, a new teacher asserted that forcing students to learn advanced topic that they did not want to learn was a waste of time. That students that had no interest in these subjects would do better in trade classes where they would learn only what they needed for the trade and it would save a whole bunch of money.
Both of these miss the point. For the most part, we do not do what we want to do, but in fact do what we need to do in the service of our family, country, faith, world. In the US there is a fallacy that we are all rugged individualist, even though that the most individual states tend to be the first suckling at the public teat, and our general infrastructure has always been a community effort. A second fallacy is that we are all treated the same. This is never the case. In extreme cases we see the Madoff wife and kids are getting off scott free even though they must have known something or Robert Rudolph got of practically scott free for terrorism. In other cases we see our coworkers getting perks we do not get, or failures at their particular trade getting huge bonuses.
If we as a civilized society say that firms should pay a minimum wage because, unlike true conservative thinking, a days work should earn a wage that supports the broader goals of civilization, then that is what we do even if we disagree with it. If we as a civilized society say that we can no longer do things that might harass our co-workers because it creates an uncomfortable environment, even though many conservatives think that it is their god given right to use the n word and talk about all those lazy people who only got a job due to quotas, when they only got into school because of legacies, then that is what we do. And if we decide that work processes which evolved over time under the assumption that mostly men that did not care of the children were going to the primary widgets need to be changed to allow for current norms, then that will be what happens as well.
I know that this will upset men who lose their jobs to women with superior skills, men who know they are inferior choices in general and realize their wives can easily find a superior mate in the workplace, and women who hope that the inequalities will keep their inferior man employed at a level where they do not have to work. But one nice thing about a recession is that it get rid of all the dead weight and creates innovative solutions. The losers are the one who depends on the special treatment that the old order provided.
Point in fact, this already happens with PDF viewers. Most follow the rules. It is true that an individual user can get into the code and change it, but, given the spec, any individual user can always get into any file and do whatever they want with it.
This is where the laws and audits come in. It is just like keeping records in a filing cabinet. There is nothing inherent in the file cabinet that prevents users from copying information, taking the records home, etc. It is simply policy that is enforced with a set of consequences up to national criminal or civil penalties.
Yet for years web sites blocked IE for no apparent reason, other than this was an option the MS pushed on web developers. Even if this were only 5% of the market, I hardly think that any business wakes up in the morning and says I am going alienate 5% of my customers. I don't know, maybe they do and that is why we are in the situation we are in. We are so,a s you say smug, that firms see themselves as a entity customers must pay tribute to, rather than the other way around.
Most of the people I knew used word, so I used MS Word. Many years later I mourne all the time I wasted trying to make word to what I wanted. The ease of getting formulas and pictures to render correctly in latex, the fact that simple graphics require only a few lines to text, makes it very useful for anyone who does scientific writing. Yes there is a learning curve, but anyone trying to more than memos in word is really not being efficient. Even OO.org does a better job with long documents than MS Word.
Most people use MS Office because they are more obsessed with the formatting and often much less concerned with content. The reason for this is obvious. When the content is really important and credible, however, the fact that one does not have 100 fonts, or can tweak line heights into any ugly combination, or any thing else that MS Word lets you do, becomes quite irrelevant. One of the metal shifts I had to make when I moved to Latex was that the content was the important thing, and the formating was best left to the Latex engine, which understood the rules much better than I did. Once I made that leap, everything fell into place.
It takes a certain confidence to submit something formatted in Latex.I mean, there isn't even a cuddly animal to help you as you write. But all kidding aside, there is a reason why people use what they use. Many paralegals still use Wordperfect. Efficiency is really the key reason to choose any professional tool.
In principle this is what I do with my writing. I use this method to not to collaborate, but to back up my files and keep them synchronized between machines.
The find the learning curve of SVN is setting up the repository and then checking out the initial documents. The GUI, on the mac use svnX, helps out with this initial step, and anyone who can muster LaTex should be able to work with something like it. Also, there are context menu options available.
What really made things simple for me, on a day to day basis, was a shell script I wrote to automatically update my local versions from the repository. It is quick and dirty, but keeps my files up to date. For a collaborative effort, this is not what the best solution, I only include it to say that there are some things that can make SVN much more accessible. Although I do program, I never really had anyone teach me SVN, and worked out the mechanics as I needed.
I would also suggest that if the writing were divided into small sections that were then included in the larger document, then the issue of merging might be minimized. This would also maximize the insure that the collaborative writers were not changing the overall formating.
Furthermore, it does not really hurt google. It would be like protesting that fact that one has to sit on the back of the bus by paying to ride on the bus, sitting in the back of the bus, and then acting a fool by defacing the bus or the advertisements. I am sure some would say this was preferable to not taking the bus and walking to work, but history shows otherwise.
People think that we can protest, yet not give up any of our personal comforts. I am concerned about how Google Earth updates on my mac, so I do not have google earth on my computer. I am concerned about Google is going to store and mine personal information, so I do not use those services. It is just like spam. If nobody clicks the ads, then the problem will go away. If the Google near monopoly on ads is broken, then someone might come in with a better model for a search engine and a better way to support the engine, just like google did with alta vista. Google is still my search engine, but I do not accept the services and cookies the way I once did.
I think most of us have at least a personal side, a public side, and a work or professional side. In adolescence we develop the personal side, and in young adult hood we differentiate to a personal/public. For instance, as we become an adult we don't go around telling everyone all the drugs we do. We begin to realize that people are interested in a simpler version of ourselves than we may truly be. For instance, most of the public is not interested in how many people we have beat up, or many people we have dates, or how many beers we can drink. As we leave young adult hood, I think we further develop this public persona into a professional persona, and begin to clean up our other personas to reflect this. For instance, in our mid to late 20's most of us will stop abusing drugs and driving drunk. It is a sign of maturity.
In this case, I think the lack of judgement shows a severe lack of maturity on the officers part, and puts his ability to do anything meaningful into question. This is a big problem with people who want the money to be public servants, but do not want to take on the responsibility. We see these whiners all the time. PEople who think it is unfair that they cannot accept gifts. Well, if you want gifts get a private job. Or complain that they should be able to put whatever they want to on facebook. Again, if one is public servant, then the rules are different. If one do not want to play by those rules, go and get a private job. You can do whatever you want to there.
IMHO, the pop recording are greatly effected by the medium, and the artist will use the medium to the maximum effect. Therefore, saying that one likes a CD over LP is like saying one likes canvass to paper. Perhaps for the time when one was accumulating a taste for the art one was more popular than the other, and therefore perhaps the techniques more refined, but that does not mean there is any a priori preferential media.
Beyond this, the way the art is consumed is half the battle. If a painting is a badly lit room, it doesn't matter what the medium is. Likewise, most music is consumed using very minimal equipment, i.e. how many people don't use the earbuds that came with the iPod, and so all this stuff that people tend to obsess about really does not matter. Is the encoding good enough for the equipment.
I will say that dramatic classical seems to be well suited for the MP3. I will have Der Rings des Nibelungen playing on my computer, a rip of a 60's recording, and it sound pretty damn good.
There is that. An hour of any show that is not set in a couple of apartments is going to cost money, and it will not bring in proportionately greater profit. But life is not that simple.
I also see a place for demographics. For instance, sports cost huge amounts of money, but it still occupies a large chunk of time. Why? Because the only time that many guys are going to watch TV is for sports. Some guys will talk about the game with and it sounds like some women talking about soap operas. As if what happens in the idealized world of the field makes any difference in the real world. It matters to them.
So, we not only have a question of profit, but also a question of the purpose of TV, which is create products that will attract a demographic to advertisers. The product, well show, itself is secondary to the preferably diverse demographic. I never understood what demographic the sci fi shows delivered in superior quantities to other shows. Most younger people are not exclusively dedicated to BSG in the same that some might be exclusively dedicated to Sex and the City. Dollhouse does not likely attract the diverse demographic of the Simpsons. For shows like Firefly, it seems they continuously have to defend their relevence, and the moving around the time slots reflect that constant search for an audience advertisers will pay for.
I have used Alice in an informal setting with about 2 dozen adolescents. It does teach some basic programming concepts like loops and conditionals. It is OO based, so students get into the habit It is very engaging. Average students will use it with minimal prodding. The two books that I use, Learning To Program with Alice and An Introduction to Programming Using Alice are very good. A motivated student can go through the book and learn a great deal about programming concepts.
The Alice tutorials introduce the program to the point where the student can start some initial concepts.
I think Alice has some applicability in the world of visual based programming where the level of abstraction is not as great as in traditional code based programming. For instance, Alice will likely not teach a student to truly abstract a concept into variables or how to swap values. It might teach high level architecture concepts, but probably not actual program design. It is probably the closest we have to programming for everyone, simply because it does not require the abstraction that makes coding so difficult for so many people.
First world country thinking. In fact, while wealth may be an is an unlimited resource, cash is not.
In the US with the regulatory structure the way, it is not to difficult build a modest cash reserve. We have many jobs that are tied to regulation that prevent discrimination. We have much funding that is tied to regulations that prevent the good old boys network from cutting out the bad boys and all the girls. What is much more difficult is to build a large cash reserve that will insure your heirs will have the freedom to be wealthy. And that is a planned part of the structure of this country which has been codified over the past 30 years.
When I was a kid, taxes were kept high enough on the very rich so that persons of modest means could do many things very inexpensively. Taxes on people with modest means were kept modest so that the family could build capital. For instance, a family of four might be charged for a museum of zoo trip. When I was kid there was no such charge so we able to keep and invest that money in an education or stock or college. Taxes were low enough so enough income was left over so that we could spend and save. Sure the people with money were taxed, but no so much that they did not have plenty expendable income, and the tax did not seem to hinder their desire to become rich. My city has only been growing in the number of houses valued for people who several times the median income.
Now, however, it is quite different. Expendable income for many families is zero. Taxes kill the median income family, forcing them to borrow. This is the classic strategy of the third world country. Kill the middle class, Take their money,and then claim it is because they are lazy.
Wealth can only be built when their is a differential between sustenance living and value produced. This has been the basics of economics since we became agrarian. The landlord became rich by keeping the surfs poor. We are in a time where the same thing is true. Median income of the middle class has barely kept up with inflation, and with taxes it has fallen. Upper income has shot up faster than inflation, and with the lack of taxes, there is no longer the hope for the middle class because the lords are consuming all the resources.
A refub 1st gen iPod touch might be a good bet. As long as there is a wifi connection, it will be able to browse. Under $200.
On another note, I think this is where Amazon really missed the market for the Kindle. If it had wifi, and had a web browser, then the kindle would be one of the greatest pieces of hardware on the market, and perfect for this type of application. Of course if it had wifi, then Amazon would certainly lose revenue on book sales and would not be able to pay the cell phone bill that currently allows wireless delivery.
In any case, there are a number of option out there, but wifi without cell phone there is no choice, and most other options are twice the price fo the touch.
Almost any standard operating practice for business supports terrorism. For instance, UPS sends revenue for it's package insurance branch offshore. This procedure is commonly called money laundering, which is commonly used for all sorts of illicit activity. By allowing legitimate business to launder money, we make it harder to stop not so legitimate businesses from doing so, as the legitimate infrastructure already exists. Furthermore, UPS does not pay taxes on that laundered money, which means that for every soldiers, for instance, are funded at lower level than they would be if UPS did pay it taxes.
We see the same thing in government. For years your tax records were given to private contractors who sorted through unpaid taxes and the like. There was no real reason for this other than to redirect tax money from security and defense to private corporations. The corporations are then free to use that money to covertly fund terrorists, and sell those records to terrorists who then use them for whatever they wish.
The issue is not what funds terrorism, almost anything has a credible link, but what we care enough to stop. Bin Laden is a terrorists, but we fund the destruction of Hussein. Drugs probably do fund terrorism, yet we had no problem with a leader that spent his entire youth funding terrorism through drug use. Honestly, anyone focusing on the 'terrorism' link is just not seeing the big picutre.
This is an example, not a counter example. My impression is that the kindle is better for certain content because you do not have to purchase the item or having it lying around your house. For the same reason all physical media for this kind of movies failed long before HD formats came into existence. om the ads that regularly pop up in various places, it seems it has long been possible to download paid content, and likely it of "dvd quality". Furthermore, given the fights that having been going on, it seems that quite a few people are putting this stuff up for free. I suspect the physical industry has been dead for a while. Even something as tame as Playboy appears to be on it's last legs.
Even if the industry was not dead, what would the benefit to the consumer or the producers. Does anyone need to see penetration in more detailed? How much more makeup will it take to make the 30 years old mother or 5 look like a 20 year old virgin on HD media? Does anyone really need a two erotic movie? Are we know going to be able to see alternative versions, in that same way that so many produces put alternative angles on the DVD?
I don't think that education in the US is expensive, it is just that we have an entitlement culture. Just look at what happened when gas prices were high. People felt entitled to cheap gas and started attacking the free market. At some point, that sense of entitlement went away, and they started understanding supply and demand, and prices fell.
Education is the same thing. Students feel entitled to an education. Many just expect to get accepted to college because they are some sort of aristocracy, and given a grade because they make an appearance. It is like they are not just aristocracy, but royalty, and people should be required to compensate them just for existing.
Well, that is not the case. Grades are not given, and it is not even about grades. It is about attaining a state where one is in some significant way better on the way out than on the way in. This concept seems to be lost on many in the US, which is why so many colleges have to fill out the ranks with people outside the US. It is not a matter or who can afford to pay, but who is willing to sacrifice to attain an education. Enough education has been wasted on the entitled.
I have to get a bit, well, organic here. I see people spend $2 for a loaf of bread and I go ballistic. Flour is 50 cents a pound, sourdough is free once you get it started. Water is all but free. With the investment of a food processor you don't even have the effort to knead your bread. For a very slow rise, prep in the evening, rise over night, deflate, rise during the day, bake when you get home. Fresh loaf every other day. Bread for a fraction of what the thieves in the store charge.
Soy milk has also become common for the lactose intolerant and others. They want $3 for quart. You know what you need to make soy milk? Soy beans. Even if you buy the most expensive stuff, it is $2 for the beans, which would easily make a gallon. All you need is a food processor and cheese cloth. If you want flavor and sweetened, leave a vanilla bean in the sugar for a flavoring that costs almost nothing. The left over part of the soy bean is basically free base for sandwich patties. Just add a few seasoning and fry.
And have you priced bay leaves? With a 10 investment years ago and I have all the bay leaves i want, basically for free. The rain waters the tree, and the sun provides the energy. The criminals that would charge for such things. Same for rosemary with grows like a weed.
Or maybe it is that even though we have the skill and intelligence to do such things, we prefer someone else to do the hard work for us so we can just enjoy life. Why else would anyone settle for the crap that has been masquerading as food.
I think it has to do with respect for the individual and customer service. The company does not respect the individuals it serves because the sole job is to keep profits rising no matter what, and one customer can be replaced with another. The company does not respect the employees as individuals because they are just cost centers that reduce profits. The customers do not respect the employees hey are just dumbasses that do have to work at some lame job because they can't get any better. The employees do not respect the customer because they know that one mistake will get them fired, and the customer does not care that they are trying to feed a family. The customer does not respect the company, willing to go to wherever is the cheapest.
So in this light, we cannot have a civilized discourse. A rumor get around that a place is tainted, and all the customers go elsewhere. The employees are not going to go to the defense. The company has not put enough into training and paying employees to make customer feel particularly welcome and valuable. The customer has been trained to go where ever the food is cheap.
The only recourse is to make the individual so weak and unimportant that one no longer has the right to speak ones own mind, even if the statements are false. I mean, it like Limbaugh, who has probably never spoken an honest word in his entire life. But he has the right to speak it, and if people are so fucked up to pay for it, he has the right to speak in on the public air waves(although he would have more a defense for being so beligerant if he were using private bandwidth like Stern). If we were a civil society, it would not matter. The only problem is that we are so wrapped up in our own problems that we cannot have compassion for any one else.
As has already been extensively described, top executives can't take a cut in pay and can't make as low as 500K a year. For instance, many have charity balls to attend at least once a quarter, and the dresses and suits for these balls run at least 10K per ball. That is 40K for the year. This is basically what the median family earns in a year. These people are required to spend on four fancy dances what most family are required to live on in a year.
Then there is the cars. Most of us can get around in a 20K car, but what executive can be seen driving these cheap cars. It is simply not good for business. They must least a top of line car. This means that while most of us could average $250 a month in payments and repairs over the life time of our car, executives have to burden payments of at least twice that much, all for the good of the country.
And not even talk about housing. While in more fiscally conservative countries entertainment is often does outside the personally owed home, the US has so much excess capability we entertain in the home, which means that the home much be as lavish as the corporate headquarters. This not only means huge house payments, but high end furniture, decorations, and, don't forget, servants, which are not getting cheaper. Butlers in particular have been very expensive lately. It it said that the top butlers earn almost six figures, making them the top 3% of the wage earners.
So in then end, we must pay these people. And if it means that we have to pay a couple hundred more dollars in taxes, then so be it. It is just funny that no one wanted to pay a couple more hundred in taxes so that we could actually pay for supplies for the soldiers in Iraq.
Clearly the right owners are not going to let user stream high quality video for $10 a month. The price for somewhat high video has been set to about $1.99 per episode, and $2.99 for higher quality for TV, and about twice that for movies. Given the choice of paying even a dollar per episode for higher quality, or my current $10 blanket charge, I would of course choose the later. Sure, we can complain that we are being robbed, but honestly people, is it significantly worse than broadcast TV? This is the standard I set. You know, when we didn't want to pay for movies, we just waited until they came out on tv
And aren't we just acting a little bit like spoiled brats? It almost sounds like the people who are complaining are those with free high speed internet access who do not understand the costs involved. Me, with my average 200kbits/sec rate kind of think it is cool that I can stream video. The only thing I wish is that there was more. Still, the savings to consumers is real and is validated by the fact that Blockbuster is struggling to stay alive.
The option for higher quality is there for people who want it.If one wants really high quality, there are many other options available. The red box things let you get a movie for a dollar. The 5 at a time plan on netflix can get you a new movie every day, at an average cost of maybe $1. It steaming perfect. Absolutely not. But when it works it beats waiting for a disc in the mail or paying for 4 at a time options.
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So if someone want to $1500 for a pair of headphones, that is their choice. But if they start trying to say it is implicitly superior, therein lies the problem. It is one thing to have stuff, it is quite another to think that stuff inherently makes life better. We spend out money on what we wish, and those of us with more disposable income get to make more choices. That is all there is to it.
As far a tethering, I would be much happier if this happened on the Mac side of the equation. Why does the air have cellular connection? Why does not every macbook have this as an option? The antennae can be built in just like the WiFi. Sure, the built in antennae sucks, but it save extra baggage. I would pay ATT $20 a month more on top of the iphone account to have access anywhere for the macbook. The battery life on the iPhone is horrible enough without using it as a tether.
Copy and paste, as the article mentions would be good. The fact that mail can't work in landscape is a crime. MMS is important to those that want to make movies of themselves, but, as mentioned, a decent camera would preferable, and I don't want to pay more so that we can have MMS. Multitasking would be good.
As far as standard USB and mass storage, I would much prefer it if the iPod Touch and iPhone could wireless connect as a mass storage device to a compute. Most computer have wifi now, and Apple uses such technology for the Air and Airport. It does work. It could even be a bluetooth connection. This would be a security risk, but I would prefer it to changing the connector.
The megapixel size, like the battery life, the clock speed on a CPU, the amount of memory, etc, is mostly used in ad copy to make people think they are getting a better product. In most cases what has in fact happened is that designers put in a badly integrated laundry list of features so that even though the components sound good, it end up being a cheaply made crap product. We see this, for instance, in computer with fast processors but slow front side buses.
The point where it is going to make sense to go to a higher megapixel count is when we move to a full size 35X24mm CCD. What is happening right now is that the pixel density is getting so tight, we are not seeing appreciable quality. Additionally, I don't think the current CCDs utilize the full field of the lens. Right now cameras like the D3X is relatively expensive, but as production ramps up we may see cameras that use the full size CCD appear in the 2000 price range. At that point the 25-30 megapixel will actually be useful. The density will drop from 4000 pixels per square mm to 3000 pixels per square mm. I have seen no definitive answer on this, but some have suggested that the CCD goes as high as 4000, the noise can become a big issue.
Which is just to say, the megapixel war for the past couple years has been a gimmick, and what we might be asking for instead is larger CCD and better optics, even if the number of pixels does not change.
And fudging number has been around since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The story goes that James Watt wanted to sell his steam engine based on the number of horses replace, or equivalent. So he measured the amount or work horses could do over a period of time. The story goes he did not make his horses work very hard, and came out with a very low power. I am sure his reasoning was 'sustained work' was what was important. In any case, he was forced to up this number, but is was still considered low. But this is number we have. The horsepower is the amount of a work a unmotivated tired weak horse can do. The battery life is the maximum one can expect when on is not using the device for anything. The rated miles per gallon on a car is valid if one is driving around a parking lot at a constant speed with no accesories on and no one, not even the driver, in the car.
Any number listed in advertising copy is solely for advertising purposes. That is the rule. If everyone uses the same basis, no matter how flawed, such as horsepower, it is a fair relative comparison. Though the exact number might not make any sense, it is useful for ordering. In a educated society, therefore, we would use a scaled number rather than a fixed number that implies some level or precision and accuracy. But, as stated, we are not even educated enough to understand there is nothing magical about an set of headphones. Thank the gods for that, otherwise many companies would be out business and we would be in greater trouble than we are.
I am not a child and always required a fair wage for my work. I have completed enough projects in my life and have seen enough failures to know the difference between a good manager and bad ones. The good ones hire a balance of staff that will work together to complete a project. The bad ones will hire naive precocious children and greedy managers in hopes of getting a profit before the bottom falls out. So the reason I am saying this is because everyone always wants to blame the young people. It is not their fault. It is up to those of us who are older and have more experience to help those that are just learning their own capabilities and shortcoming.
So don't blame the kids. The kids were not the ones that told everyone to go out and get a generic amoral MBA so they could get rich and fly around the world. The kids are not the ones that set up criminal loans that nearly pushed the world to the brink of collapse. The kids are not the ones that told everyone to get a CS degree, or they the ones that are hiring based on a specific degree, rather than a general degree and capability. It is the adults that are doing this, and if anyone is to blame for narcissistic kids it is people like the person who posted this question. For some reason hiring managers are upset that they are getting the exact type of employees they claim to want. If one wants a rational employee, then advertise rational expectations, and have rational expectation of what a young person can do and what a young person needs.
As far as the parent, keep being realistic. Find a reasonable person to work for, an adult who will help you grow into the person you want to be. They exist. Ignore people like the poster who want to blame the worlds problem on the children, and whine how bette the world will be if kids were just like they were. I will give you a hint. Madoff grew up to the in the 40's and 50's, the alleged high point of United States civilization. Clearly, not all kids were better back then than they are today, and not all kids are worse now.
I wonder if the key is 'per stream'. Is this user trying to run multiple streams off the same account.
In the second conversation, a new teacher asserted that forcing students to learn advanced topic that they did not want to learn was a waste of time. That students that had no interest in these subjects would do better in trade classes where they would learn only what they needed for the trade and it would save a whole bunch of money.
Both of these miss the point. For the most part, we do not do what we want to do, but in fact do what we need to do in the service of our family, country, faith, world. In the US there is a fallacy that we are all rugged individualist, even though that the most individual states tend to be the first suckling at the public teat, and our general infrastructure has always been a community effort. A second fallacy is that we are all treated the same. This is never the case. In extreme cases we see the Madoff wife and kids are getting off scott free even though they must have known something or Robert Rudolph got of practically scott free for terrorism. In other cases we see our coworkers getting perks we do not get, or failures at their particular trade getting huge bonuses.
If we as a civilized society say that firms should pay a minimum wage because, unlike true conservative thinking, a days work should earn a wage that supports the broader goals of civilization, then that is what we do even if we disagree with it. If we as a civilized society say that we can no longer do things that might harass our co-workers because it creates an uncomfortable environment, even though many conservatives think that it is their god given right to use the n word and talk about all those lazy people who only got a job due to quotas, when they only got into school because of legacies, then that is what we do. And if we decide that work processes which evolved over time under the assumption that mostly men that did not care of the children were going to the primary widgets need to be changed to allow for current norms, then that will be what happens as well.
I know that this will upset men who lose their jobs to women with superior skills, men who know they are inferior choices in general and realize their wives can easily find a superior mate in the workplace, and women who hope that the inequalities will keep their inferior man employed at a level where they do not have to work. But one nice thing about a recession is that it get rid of all the dead weight and creates innovative solutions. The losers are the one who depends on the special treatment that the old order provided.
This is where the laws and audits come in. It is just like keeping records in a filing cabinet. There is nothing inherent in the file cabinet that prevents users from copying information, taking the records home, etc. It is simply policy that is enforced with a set of consequences up to national criminal or civil penalties.
Yet for years web sites blocked IE for no apparent reason, other than this was an option the MS pushed on web developers. Even if this were only 5% of the market, I hardly think that any business wakes up in the morning and says I am going alienate 5% of my customers. I don't know, maybe they do and that is why we are in the situation we are in. We are so,a s you say smug, that firms see themselves as a entity customers must pay tribute to, rather than the other way around.
Most people use MS Office because they are more obsessed with the formatting and often much less concerned with content. The reason for this is obvious. When the content is really important and credible, however, the fact that one does not have 100 fonts, or can tweak line heights into any ugly combination, or any thing else that MS Word lets you do, becomes quite irrelevant. One of the metal shifts I had to make when I moved to Latex was that the content was the important thing, and the formating was best left to the Latex engine, which understood the rules much better than I did. Once I made that leap, everything fell into place.
It takes a certain confidence to submit something formatted in Latex.I mean, there isn't even a cuddly animal to help you as you write. But all kidding aside, there is a reason why people use what they use. Many paralegals still use Wordperfect. Efficiency is really the key reason to choose any professional tool.
The find the learning curve of SVN is setting up the repository and then checking out the initial documents. The GUI, on the mac use svnX, helps out with this initial step, and anyone who can muster LaTex should be able to work with something like it. Also, there are context menu options available.
What really made things simple for me, on a day to day basis, was a shell script I wrote to automatically update my local versions from the repository. It is quick and dirty, but keeps my files up to date. For a collaborative effort, this is not what the best solution, I only include it to say that there are some things that can make SVN much more accessible. Although I do program, I never really had anyone teach me SVN, and worked out the mechanics as I needed.
I would also suggest that if the writing were divided into small sections that were then included in the larger document, then the issue of merging might be minimized. This would also maximize the insure that the collaborative writers were not changing the overall formating.
People think that we can protest, yet not give up any of our personal comforts. I am concerned about how Google Earth updates on my mac, so I do not have google earth on my computer. I am concerned about Google is going to store and mine personal information, so I do not use those services. It is just like spam. If nobody clicks the ads, then the problem will go away. If the Google near monopoly on ads is broken, then someone might come in with a better model for a search engine and a better way to support the engine, just like google did with alta vista. Google is still my search engine, but I do not accept the services and cookies the way I once did.
In this case, I think the lack of judgement shows a severe lack of maturity on the officers part, and puts his ability to do anything meaningful into question. This is a big problem with people who want the money to be public servants, but do not want to take on the responsibility. We see these whiners all the time. PEople who think it is unfair that they cannot accept gifts. Well, if you want gifts get a private job. Or complain that they should be able to put whatever they want to on facebook. Again, if one is public servant, then the rules are different. If one do not want to play by those rules, go and get a private job. You can do whatever you want to there.
Beyond this, the way the art is consumed is half the battle. If a painting is a badly lit room, it doesn't matter what the medium is. Likewise, most music is consumed using very minimal equipment, i.e. how many people don't use the earbuds that came with the iPod, and so all this stuff that people tend to obsess about really does not matter. Is the encoding good enough for the equipment.
I will say that dramatic classical seems to be well suited for the MP3. I will have Der Rings des Nibelungen playing on my computer, a rip of a 60's recording, and it sound pretty damn good.
I also see a place for demographics. For instance, sports cost huge amounts of money, but it still occupies a large chunk of time. Why? Because the only time that many guys are going to watch TV is for sports. Some guys will talk about the game with and it sounds like some women talking about soap operas. As if what happens in the idealized world of the field makes any difference in the real world. It matters to them.
So, we not only have a question of profit, but also a question of the purpose of TV, which is create products that will attract a demographic to advertisers. The product, well show, itself is secondary to the preferably diverse demographic. I never understood what demographic the sci fi shows delivered in superior quantities to other shows. Most younger people are not exclusively dedicated to BSG in the same that some might be exclusively dedicated to Sex and the City. Dollhouse does not likely attract the diverse demographic of the Simpsons. For shows like Firefly, it seems they continuously have to defend their relevence, and the moving around the time slots reflect that constant search for an audience advertisers will pay for.
The Alice tutorials introduce the program to the point where the student can start some initial concepts.
I think Alice has some applicability in the world of visual based programming where the level of abstraction is not as great as in traditional code based programming. For instance, Alice will likely not teach a student to truly abstract a concept into variables or how to swap values. It might teach high level architecture concepts, but probably not actual program design. It is probably the closest we have to programming for everyone, simply because it does not require the abstraction that makes coding so difficult for so many people.
In the US with the regulatory structure the way, it is not to difficult build a modest cash reserve. We have many jobs that are tied to regulation that prevent discrimination. We have much funding that is tied to regulations that prevent the good old boys network from cutting out the bad boys and all the girls. What is much more difficult is to build a large cash reserve that will insure your heirs will have the freedom to be wealthy. And that is a planned part of the structure of this country which has been codified over the past 30 years.
When I was a kid, taxes were kept high enough on the very rich so that persons of modest means could do many things very inexpensively. Taxes on people with modest means were kept modest so that the family could build capital. For instance, a family of four might be charged for a museum of zoo trip. When I was kid there was no such charge so we able to keep and invest that money in an education or stock or college. Taxes were low enough so enough income was left over so that we could spend and save. Sure the people with money were taxed, but no so much that they did not have plenty expendable income, and the tax did not seem to hinder their desire to become rich. My city has only been growing in the number of houses valued for people who several times the median income.
Now, however, it is quite different. Expendable income for many families is zero. Taxes kill the median income family, forcing them to borrow. This is the classic strategy of the third world country. Kill the middle class, Take their money,and then claim it is because they are lazy.
Wealth can only be built when their is a differential between sustenance living and value produced. This has been the basics of economics since we became agrarian. The landlord became rich by keeping the surfs poor. We are in a time where the same thing is true. Median income of the middle class has barely kept up with inflation, and with taxes it has fallen. Upper income has shot up faster than inflation, and with the lack of taxes, there is no longer the hope for the middle class because the lords are consuming all the resources.
On another note, I think this is where Amazon really missed the market for the Kindle. If it had wifi, and had a web browser, then the kindle would be one of the greatest pieces of hardware on the market, and perfect for this type of application. Of course if it had wifi, then Amazon would certainly lose revenue on book sales and would not be able to pay the cell phone bill that currently allows wireless delivery.
In any case, there are a number of option out there, but wifi without cell phone there is no choice, and most other options are twice the price fo the touch.
We see the same thing in government. For years your tax records were given to private contractors who sorted through unpaid taxes and the like. There was no real reason for this other than to redirect tax money from security and defense to private corporations. The corporations are then free to use that money to covertly fund terrorists, and sell those records to terrorists who then use them for whatever they wish.
The issue is not what funds terrorism, almost anything has a credible link, but what we care enough to stop. Bin Laden is a terrorists, but we fund the destruction of Hussein. Drugs probably do fund terrorism, yet we had no problem with a leader that spent his entire youth funding terrorism through drug use. Honestly, anyone focusing on the 'terrorism' link is just not seeing the big picutre.
Even if the industry was not dead, what would the benefit to the consumer or the producers. Does anyone need to see penetration in more detailed? How much more makeup will it take to make the 30 years old mother or 5 look like a 20 year old virgin on HD media? Does anyone really need a two erotic movie? Are we know going to be able to see alternative versions, in that same way that so many produces put alternative angles on the DVD?
Education is the same thing. Students feel entitled to an education. Many just expect to get accepted to college because they are some sort of aristocracy, and given a grade because they make an appearance. It is like they are not just aristocracy, but royalty, and people should be required to compensate them just for existing.
Well, that is not the case. Grades are not given, and it is not even about grades. It is about attaining a state where one is in some significant way better on the way out than on the way in. This concept seems to be lost on many in the US, which is why so many colleges have to fill out the ranks with people outside the US. It is not a matter or who can afford to pay, but who is willing to sacrifice to attain an education. Enough education has been wasted on the entitled.
Soy milk has also become common for the lactose intolerant and others. They want $3 for quart. You know what you need to make soy milk? Soy beans. Even if you buy the most expensive stuff, it is $2 for the beans, which would easily make a gallon. All you need is a food processor and cheese cloth. If you want flavor and sweetened, leave a vanilla bean in the sugar for a flavoring that costs almost nothing. The left over part of the soy bean is basically free base for sandwich patties. Just add a few seasoning and fry.
And have you priced bay leaves? With a 10 investment years ago and I have all the bay leaves i want, basically for free. The rain waters the tree, and the sun provides the energy. The criminals that would charge for such things. Same for rosemary with grows like a weed.
Or maybe it is that even though we have the skill and intelligence to do such things, we prefer someone else to do the hard work for us so we can just enjoy life. Why else would anyone settle for the crap that has been masquerading as food.
So in this light, we cannot have a civilized discourse. A rumor get around that a place is tainted, and all the customers go elsewhere. The employees are not going to go to the defense. The company has not put enough into training and paying employees to make customer feel particularly welcome and valuable. The customer has been trained to go where ever the food is cheap.
The only recourse is to make the individual so weak and unimportant that one no longer has the right to speak ones own mind, even if the statements are false. I mean, it like Limbaugh, who has probably never spoken an honest word in his entire life. But he has the right to speak it, and if people are so fucked up to pay for it, he has the right to speak in on the public air waves(although he would have more a defense for being so beligerant if he were using private bandwidth like Stern). If we were a civil society, it would not matter. The only problem is that we are so wrapped up in our own problems that we cannot have compassion for any one else.
Then there is the cars. Most of us can get around in a 20K car, but what executive can be seen driving these cheap cars. It is simply not good for business. They must least a top of line car. This means that while most of us could average $250 a month in payments and repairs over the life time of our car, executives have to burden payments of at least twice that much, all for the good of the country.
And not even talk about housing. While in more fiscally conservative countries entertainment is often does outside the personally owed home, the US has so much excess capability we entertain in the home, which means that the home much be as lavish as the corporate headquarters. This not only means huge house payments, but high end furniture, decorations, and, don't forget, servants, which are not getting cheaper. Butlers in particular have been very expensive lately. It it said that the top butlers earn almost six figures, making them the top 3% of the wage earners.
So in then end, we must pay these people. And if it means that we have to pay a couple hundred more dollars in taxes, then so be it. It is just funny that no one wanted to pay a couple more hundred in taxes so that we could actually pay for supplies for the soldiers in Iraq.
And aren't we just acting a little bit like spoiled brats? It almost sounds like the people who are complaining are those with free high speed internet access who do not understand the costs involved. Me, with my average 200kbits/sec rate kind of think it is cool that I can stream video. The only thing I wish is that there was more. Still, the savings to consumers is real and is validated by the fact that Blockbuster is struggling to stay alive.
The option for higher quality is there for people who want it.If one wants really high quality, there are many other options available. The red box things let you get a movie for a dollar. The 5 at a time plan on netflix can get you a new movie every day, at an average cost of maybe $1. It steaming perfect. Absolutely not. But when it works it beats waiting for a disc in the mail or paying for 4 at a time options.