The nerds have spoken! We love computers, but you'll have to pry books from our cold, dead fingers. eBooks, we all seem to agree, have nothing to offer over traditional books: not cost, not convenience, not content, not portability or durability, sharability, quality... nothing.
The blindingly obvious thing to do, it seems to me, is for Apple to build an interface into iPods so you can read text on iPods.
you can read them in darkness. great. can you read them in bright sunlight? that would be far more compelling. i actually don't know the answer to that question, but i can't (for instance) see my laptop screen in bright sunlight, so if ebooks can manage that, i'd like to know how.
ha ha. now the computer gamers will know how the marijuana smokers feel.
what you need to understand is that there doesn't need to be a *factual* harm to justify prohibition, there only needs to be a *perceived* harm. sorry, that's democracy.
why you would ever want to is beyond me, too, and why it took apple twenty years to release one is unimaginable to me. nevertheless, two-button mice cost under ten dollars, so anyone who can afford a Mac can afford a two-button mouse if they want one.
thanks for the point of order re: the context key. (do all keyboards have that?) see? why is anyone complaining? both Win and Mac have it both ways -- consumer choice! have it any way you want it!
if you were sitting in a roomfull of random computer components, you might assemble a Windows box but the only mouse available is the USB mouse that came with an old iMac. or, as a Windows user, you might decide you prefer a one-button mouse and purchase one from a third party (there are lots available). it's untenable to claim there are "no" one-button mice for Windows, because that is tantamount to claiming there are no one-button mice at all. a USB mouse can plug into any computer. so if you plug in said one-button mouse to a Windows machine -- say it's your only option -- then why won't Windows provide a way for you to right-click? seems shortsighted to me. that was my point: a Mac can do it both ways.
i've never tried to right click with the mighty mouse, but i did try the scroll ball, and didn't think it was very intuitive, but i only gave it a minute of trying. it was really slow, and it would inevitably scroll horizontally when i only wanted to scroll vertically.
but then safari wouldn't unpack the archive. i still want it to do that, i just don't need to be told that the archive contains an application. many annoying messages in different programs have a little checkbox for "Don't Show This Message Again", and it's unconceivable why this particular message doesn't have that.
There certainly is a lot more oil available in unconvential forms, but the financial and environmental cost of extracting these starts making even hydrogen look cheap.
Great. So then you agree there is no problem? That we have plenty of oil, and that other sources of energy will simply become more financially attractive?
counterpoint: i HATE that dialog box. i wouldn't mind it if it came with a Don't Show This Message Again checkbox, but for some damn reason it doesn't.
yes, thank you Safari, i know i downloaded an application, i do it all the damn time. just shut up and unpack the archive. and while you're at it, tell your friend Mail to stop bouncing the dock and popping up dialog boxes every time it has trouble connecting to a mail server to send a message, just try again in a couple minutes and don't bother me.
your comment is moderated as funny but i don't get the joke. right click on the file in the Finder, choose Get Info, and look at the Kind of the document, which will be an Application for any executable file.
is your joke about two-button mice? there are tons of two-button and more-button mice for Macs, and all Macs have supported those mice for, what, like a decade now. and mac users know that "right-click" is synonomous with "control-click". it's the same thing. in fact, isn't it silly that Windows users don't have the option to do that? (or, i don't know, maybe they do.) they can't even use one-button mice on their machines, those willy Windows people. Mac people can use any mouse they want and have full feature access.
anyway, so yeah, right-click, Get Info, check the file Kind. do that for any file you don't trust. oh, and if you open a JPEG and it asks for your password, don't put it in.
agreed. tell me how an administrator can have full control over his machine, yet still disallow a program from executing arbitrary commands with that administrator's explicit permission, in the form of entering your password. the software is an agent of the administrator, so anything the admin can do directly, the software can also do, with password permission.
this trojan is more like a tool which "allows" the administrator to install the trojan on the computer.
well, now that's a good point. of course, it would be easy to write a fade algorithm to avoid the problem, but certainly it would be a consideration.
how about an algorithm which would insert some minimal number of intermediary audio frames to brridge the two tracks, which would lower or raise the audio signal to quickly move from one track to the next. if the two tracks match up, zero frames would be necessary.
so, still, apple should fix this significant bug. but hey, i'm obviously one of a very small number of people who are waiting for this bugfix before buying an iPod. obviously this bug isn't keeping apple from profiting. so i'll go be indignant on my own.
i'm a language nazi too so i appreciated your comment. my dictionary defines travesty as "a false, absurd, or distorted representation of something", which is how i was trying to use it. apple, or at least the people who talk about how difficult this feature would be to implement (or, bug to squash), say that the feature is a near impossibility, but i'm suggesting that is an absurd, distorted representation of the difficulty involved.
i own an ipod shuffle. i bought it right when the shuffles first went on sale. i bought the shuffle instead of a big ipod because i wanted to save a little money, i was waiting for one single solitary feature: AUDIO THAT DOESN'T SKIP BETWEEN TRACKS.
name the one thing that a record player, an 8-track player, a tape player, and a CD player can all do, but that an iPod can not. that feature is to not have a half a second of silence between tracks. yes, yes, i know that "the MP3 format isn't easily made to fade one track seamlessly into another track" but i don't care if it's easy, it's obviously *possible*, so that fact that it hasn't been done is a travesty.
look: i listen to albums, not songs; and my favorite album is Tool's "Lateralus"; and until i can go from 'Parabol' to 'Parabola' without a moment of silence inbetween, or (worse) having to fade the last half a second of one track into the first half a second of the next track, i won't buy that damn contraption. so you don't like Tool? maybe you like Queen's "News of the World", where 'We Will Rock You' refuses to match up with 'We Are The Champions'.
bah. is this really a ridiculous thing to request? is it really THAT hard? i mean, i figure there is some kind of input stream for the MP3 data; can't that stream be buffered for two seconds, and when the read-ahead algorithm finds the end of the stream, can't it append the stream for the next MP3? here let me answer my own question: yes, it could.
i'd love to have an ipod that does video, and i'd pay five bills to get one, but if it can't even play music right, what good is it?
I agree with the points you make, but am I the only Shuffle owner who doesn't use the random mode?
I don't listen to songs, I listen to albums, almost exclusively. So I put in my Shuffle, delete the albums at the top of the list which I have listened to, and load some new ones at the bottom of the list, then pop it out and listen to my music in linear mode. I get a fairly random assortment of music because I load albums willy nilly, but not by using the random mode. (Right now it's Weezer, the album.)
Also, I want one of those bigass iPods, but I wish Apple would add a USB port to it so we could put music onto our Shuffles from our big iPods. That would be convenient. I bought the Shuffle because I wanted an MP3 player from Apple, but didn't want to pay all the money for a big one until they fix some of the bugs in the implementation (gapless audio is the one I'm still waiting for), and I also liked that the Shuffle was solid state (this was before the Nano).
PS, brother, the word you are looking for is "exacerbate", which means to intensify, usually in a bad way; not "exasperate", which means to cause someone to run out of patience. In fact my dictionary notes: USAGE The verbs exasperate and exacerbate are sometimes confused. Exasperate, the more common of the two, means 'irritate or annoy to an extreme degree' (: He calls me three times a day asking for money. It's exasperating!). Exacerbate means 'increase the bitterness or severity of' ( | the star shortstop's loud self-congratulations only exacerbated his teammates' resentment).
when authorities go to a court to ask for a warrant, they have to bring along a little bit of evidence, so if there is no evidence, they won't even bother. the police (or FBI/NSA) know the standard of evidence they have to meet, so if they can't satisfy that standard, they will not waste their time.
so it is still useful to make them jump thru a procedural hoop even if not a lot of warrant applications are actually rejected, because the hoop itself is part of what protects our liberty.
that's not funny, it's insightful. it is a tortious act (in America) to run a public corporation in any way that does not maximize profits.
and in fact, if the shareholders are actually poor, as the parent hypothesizes, then you would be taking the pittance a pauper can invest, and throwing it away by not maximizing shareholder value.
another way to say what you said is that the market does not demand truth. customers not only are willing to accept nontruths, they seem to actually prefer them -- certainly, they are not willing to pay more for truth.
Slashdot Mirror
i didn't know what CTF is, so i googled it. why are you guys talking about children's trust funds?
The nerds have spoken! We love computers, but you'll have to pry books from our cold, dead fingers. eBooks, we all seem to agree, have nothing to offer over traditional books: not cost, not convenience, not content, not portability or durability, sharability, quality... nothing.
The blindingly obvious thing to do, it seems to me, is for Apple to build an interface into iPods so you can read text on iPods.
you can read them in darkness. great. can you read them in bright sunlight? that would be far more compelling. i actually don't know the answer to that question, but i can't (for instance) see my laptop screen in bright sunlight, so if ebooks can manage that, i'd like to know how.
ha ha. now the computer gamers will know how the marijuana smokers feel.
what you need to understand is that there doesn't need to be a *factual* harm to justify prohibition, there only needs to be a *perceived* harm. sorry, that's democracy.
i don't understand. i see him driving on the left. he's driving on the right side of the road, coming toward us, which is the left by his direction.
what the hell is a flue tab? the little thing that opens and closes the passage of air thru the tube?
i like how you think. i figured Verizon would sue him for hacking their network, and he'd get life in prison, or something like that.
that's AWT
why you would ever want to is beyond me, too, and why it took apple twenty years to release one is unimaginable to me. nevertheless, two-button mice cost under ten dollars, so anyone who can afford a Mac can afford a two-button mouse if they want one.
thanks for the point of order re: the context key. (do all keyboards have that?) see? why is anyone complaining? both Win and Mac have it both ways -- consumer choice! have it any way you want it!
if you were sitting in a roomfull of random computer components, you might assemble a Windows box but the only mouse available is the USB mouse that came with an old iMac. or, as a Windows user, you might decide you prefer a one-button mouse and purchase one from a third party (there are lots available). it's untenable to claim there are "no" one-button mice for Windows, because that is tantamount to claiming there are no one-button mice at all. a USB mouse can plug into any computer. so if you plug in said one-button mouse to a Windows machine -- say it's your only option -- then why won't Windows provide a way for you to right-click? seems shortsighted to me. that was my point: a Mac can do it both ways.
i've never tried to right click with the mighty mouse, but i did try the scroll ball, and didn't think it was very intuitive, but i only gave it a minute of trying. it was really slow, and it would inevitably scroll horizontally when i only wanted to scroll vertically.
but then safari wouldn't unpack the archive. i still want it to do that, i just don't need to be told that the archive contains an application. many annoying messages in different programs have a little checkbox for "Don't Show This Message Again", and it's unconceivable why this particular message doesn't have that.
There certainly is a lot more oil available in unconvential forms, but the financial and environmental cost of extracting these starts making even hydrogen look cheap.
Great. So then you agree there is no problem? That we have plenty of oil, and that other sources of energy will simply become more financially attractive?
counterpoint: i HATE that dialog box. i wouldn't mind it if it came with a Don't Show This Message Again checkbox, but for some damn reason it doesn't.
yes, thank you Safari, i know i downloaded an application, i do it all the damn time. just shut up and unpack the archive. and while you're at it, tell your friend Mail to stop bouncing the dock and popping up dialog boxes every time it has trouble connecting to a mail server to send a message, just try again in a couple minutes and don't bother me.
your comment is moderated as funny but i don't get the joke. right click on the file in the Finder, choose Get Info, and look at the Kind of the document, which will be an Application for any executable file.
is your joke about two-button mice? there are tons of two-button and more-button mice for Macs, and all Macs have supported those mice for, what, like a decade now. and mac users know that "right-click" is synonomous with "control-click". it's the same thing. in fact, isn't it silly that Windows users don't have the option to do that? (or, i don't know, maybe they do.) they can't even use one-button mice on their machines, those willy Windows people. Mac people can use any mouse they want and have full feature access.
anyway, so yeah, right-click, Get Info, check the file Kind. do that for any file you don't trust. oh, and if you open a JPEG and it asks for your password, don't put it in.
agreed. tell me how an administrator can have full control over his machine, yet still disallow a program from executing arbitrary commands with that administrator's explicit permission, in the form of entering your password. the software is an agent of the administrator, so anything the admin can do directly, the software can also do, with password permission.
this trojan is more like a tool which "allows" the administrator to install the trojan on the computer.
well, now that's a good point. of course, it would be easy to write a fade algorithm to avoid the problem, but certainly it would be a consideration.
how about an algorithm which would insert some minimal number of intermediary audio frames to brridge the two tracks, which would lower or raise the audio signal to quickly move from one track to the next. if the two tracks match up, zero frames would be necessary.
so, still, apple should fix this significant bug. but hey, i'm obviously one of a very small number of people who are waiting for this bugfix before buying an iPod. obviously this bug isn't keeping apple from profiting. so i'll go be indignant on my own.
i'm a language nazi too so i appreciated your comment. my dictionary defines travesty as "a false, absurd, or distorted representation of something", which is how i was trying to use it. apple, or at least the people who talk about how difficult this feature would be to implement (or, bug to squash), say that the feature is a near impossibility, but i'm suggesting that is an absurd, distorted representation of the difficulty involved.
peace
i own an ipod shuffle. i bought it right when the shuffles first went on sale. i bought the shuffle instead of a big ipod because i wanted to save a little money, i was waiting for one single solitary feature: AUDIO THAT DOESN'T SKIP BETWEEN TRACKS.
name the one thing that a record player, an 8-track player, a tape player, and a CD player can all do, but that an iPod can not. that feature is to not have a half a second of silence between tracks. yes, yes, i know that "the MP3 format isn't easily made to fade one track seamlessly into another track" but i don't care if it's easy, it's obviously *possible*, so that fact that it hasn't been done is a travesty.
look: i listen to albums, not songs; and my favorite album is Tool's "Lateralus"; and until i can go from 'Parabol' to 'Parabola' without a moment of silence inbetween, or (worse) having to fade the last half a second of one track into the first half a second of the next track, i won't buy that damn contraption. so you don't like Tool? maybe you like Queen's "News of the World", where 'We Will Rock You' refuses to match up with 'We Are The Champions'.
bah. is this really a ridiculous thing to request? is it really THAT hard? i mean, i figure there is some kind of input stream for the MP3 data; can't that stream be buffered for two seconds, and when the read-ahead algorithm finds the end of the stream, can't it append the stream for the next MP3? here let me answer my own question: yes, it could.
i'd love to have an ipod that does video, and i'd pay five bills to get one, but if it can't even play music right, what good is it?
end rant.
damn that's a good price. let's see, twelve fifty Canadian... what is that in real money, like, free?
I agree with the points you make, but am I the only Shuffle owner who doesn't use the random mode?
I don't listen to songs, I listen to albums, almost exclusively. So I put in my Shuffle, delete the albums at the top of the list which I have listened to, and load some new ones at the bottom of the list, then pop it out and listen to my music in linear mode. I get a fairly random assortment of music because I load albums willy nilly, but not by using the random mode. (Right now it's Weezer, the album.)
Also, I want one of those bigass iPods, but I wish Apple would add a USB port to it so we could put music onto our Shuffles from our big iPods. That would be convenient. I bought the Shuffle because I wanted an MP3 player from Apple, but didn't want to pay all the money for a big one until they fix some of the bugs in the implementation (gapless audio is the one I'm still waiting for), and I also liked that the Shuffle was solid state (this was before the Nano).
PS, brother, the word you are looking for is "exacerbate", which means to intensify, usually in a bad way; not "exasperate", which means to cause someone to run out of patience. In fact my dictionary notes: USAGE The verbs exasperate and exacerbate are sometimes confused. Exasperate, the more common of the two, means 'irritate or annoy to an extreme degree' (: He calls me three times a day asking for money. It's exasperating!). Exacerbate means 'increase the bitterness or severity of' ( | the star shortstop's loud self-congratulations only exacerbated his teammates' resentment).
i'm interested in hearing more about that, if you care to elaborate
when authorities go to a court to ask for a warrant, they have to bring along a little bit of evidence, so if there is no evidence, they won't even bother. the police (or FBI/NSA) know the standard of evidence they have to meet, so if they can't satisfy that standard, they will not waste their time.
so it is still useful to make them jump thru a procedural hoop even if not a lot of warrant applications are actually rejected, because the hoop itself is part of what protects our liberty.
the parent post was modded funny, which is how i read it, so i think you might have missed the tongue planted in the poster's cheek.
that's not funny, it's insightful. it is a tortious act (in America) to run a public corporation in any way that does not maximize profits.
and in fact, if the shareholders are actually poor, as the parent hypothesizes, then you would be taking the pittance a pauper can invest, and throwing it away by not maximizing shareholder value.
another way to say what you said is that the market does not demand truth. customers not only are willing to accept nontruths, they seem to actually prefer them -- certainly, they are not willing to pay more for truth.