That said, with proper 3D movies coming into play, I'm quite willing to still go to the cinema, sure I find the price quite high but if you haven't seen a 3D film yet I urge you to go and see one, it's very rare that I'm impressed with technology but this is something else.
Disclaimer: chose your directors carefully. Disney/Pixar has been relatively subdued with the 3D so far, only really pushing it when it adds punch to their animated action scenes. Anything by Zemekis uses 3D to excess in every other scene, and it made my eyes hurt badly to watch "Beowulf" that way.
Unless you're being targetted specifically, basic security procedures are probably enough. Change your financial passwords regularly, maintain a secure wireless connection, and don't let your computer be handled by anybody else. Casual intercepts are going to meet the needs of most internet hackers, and if your data and passwords are going to take any amount of effort, they'll move on to someone else.
That said, I think that in much of South America you're more likely to have your hardware stolen or confiscated by corrupt officials because of its cash value than for the value of the passwords they might hold. Make sure you can access anything you NEED to access using public terminals if your netbook is useless. Make sure you know how to access them by phone, too.
However, if there's someone in your family you can trust to keep half an eye on that financial information back home, I would do so. Redirect all postal communication to them and tell them to open anything from this or that bank just in case there's an alert. Your bank can probably authorize said family member to make certain changes on your behalf, if you tell that bank ahead of time to do so.
I was trying to figure out exactly how the collaboration is supposed to work, or rather how it's intended to be used. Web video isn't so great on my old machine.
Is a Wave document meant to be written collaboratively, or just re-written? Can an author use it to solicit feedback and corrections without implementing them until they're individually approved? Are the documents just formatted text, or multimedia?
Makes sense. Logical, analytical computer people often make the mistake of thinking that other people will be logical and analytical, which is why (apologies, Slashdotter cattle) diehard Linux fans keep thinking their OS is just a couple of years away from becoming mainstream.
It's also why focus groups exist; because almost every corporation recognizes that when you've been developing something for years, you become blind to the flaws that will jump out to someone who's exposed to it for the very first time.
Didn't anyone actually watch the trailer? I don't mean the effects or the monsters, I mean the part where they announce it's from the director of 'Titanic'. Not the director of 'Terminator 2', or 'Aliens', or even 'Abyss'.
In that moment, it became obvious to me they're not targeting it to the sci-fi action crowd. Anyone who thinks they are will doubtless be disappointed.
Britney Spears is the veritable poster-child for why albums are failing: even if you are a die-hard fan, you really only want two songs, at most perhaps five, from any of her full length albums.
You've got that right, except for the way you seem to be placing blame at Britney Spears' feet.
The greatest "rock albums" out there are almost always wholly written and created by the bands themselves, bands with the creativity and experience necessary to be good songwriters as well as good performers.
But BS is a singer, not a musician. She was created by the music labels as a pretty face and voice to sell albums, and they used a handful of good singles written by other people to sell entire albums of songs.
This is and has been the music labels' modus operandi for decades, because it works and it's more reliable -- it's easier to find a good singer who's hot than a good singer who's hot and can write and play good songs.
Moreover, creating a complete album crafted as a whole is a time-consuming endeavor which should not be pursued by the faint of heart. It's difficult and risky. And since it requires an actual attention span to appreciate, its appeal is likewise much more limited.
The labels have been promoting the singles-based emphasis ever since they first came into existence, because that's how songs used to be recorded. The album is a much more recent invention. Small surprise they're having trouble adapting to it.
In my opinion, the labels would be better off spending time finding ways to make more money with singles than diddling around with online albums.
It's like looking at a dyslexic person and saying it's just a matter of self control when it comes to reading.
Dyslexics can and do learn to read. They just need to be taught in a different way, because the written-letter-to-phonetic-sound connection most people make easily has so be learned explicitly. With the right method, they can read as well as anybody.
Similarly, obese people can and do lose weight. They just need to develop a different outlet for their cravings and make a conscious, calculated effort to stop eating at a certain number of calories.
Every human being is predisposed to want to eat and pile on weight. It's a survival tactic that all animals have to prepare them for lean times, which, despite what some people think, still exist for humans in abundance. The trick is to use your human intelligence to keep it under control.
For some people, this is easy--they feel more pressure from friends to be thin than they feel from their own bodies to get fat. Or they've learned to get their dopamine rush from work or sports rather than from sugary and fatty foods. Or they've developed a drug habit which satisfies them without calories, although that's only a solution from a cosmetic point-of-view.
Remember, rich fatty sugary foods are good for you, as far as your body is concerned, because your body assumes they are in limited supply and wants you to be at an advantage when winter comes around. Your body is a simple chemically-driven animal. Your brain knows better.
It's not a matter of self-control, but of lateral thinking. Figure out what your body is really craving and figure out another way to get it. So what if it's harder for you than for other people? Take it from me, nobody cares about that part except you.
College textbooks have limited re-use because the publishers make new editions strictly of the purpose of obsoleting them so people don't buy used books and are forced (or at least encouraged) to buy new ones instead.
As a former teacher, I'd like to nip this notion in the bud.
Successive editions of, say, mathematics textbooks often have minor changes in them. Nevertheless, the changes are useful ones -- homework problems that were obscure, misleading and/or just plain incorrect; lessons rearranged or cross-referenced to be easier to learn; new examples that didn't occur to the authors at first; additions to bring the book more in-line with new state standards; more up-to-date real-world statistics for the word problems.
It's rare that these changes justify dumping all the old editions and replacing them at once. Nevertheless, there's little incentive for the publisher to keep reprinting old editions just to replace lost or stolen textbooks, so I can't blame them for that. My school didn't bother replacing an entire batch of books until it was at least two editions out of date -- about five years. Schools that require students to buy whichever book the teacher wants students to read are more vulnerable to abuse of this system.
IMO, renting books isn't the solution to this strategy. Electronic or open-source textbooks (which any publisher can print) are a better tactic, although realistically I know they're more of a dream than a solution.
That blog post is in error -- "The Bear and the Bow" will be all-Disney, not Pixar. Pixar's next flicks are Toy Story 2, NEWT, and Cars 2.
In my opinion, there was probably some pressure from Disney's merchandising arm to make sequels to Toy Story and Cars, since each of those two have much more to sell in the toy aisle than any other Pixar film to date.
AFAIK, all of the major network's shows are available as free ad-supported Flash video on their respective websites or Hulu. (My computer is too old to run said video, sadly, so I still use downloads.)
For years radios had been
operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the
technology became more sophisticated the controls were made
touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your
fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general
direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular
expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly
still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme.
X-ray lasers sing this song doo-dah, doo-dah Blasting holes 'bout nine miles long oh, de-do-dah-day Gonna recharge all night Gonna align all day You're standing right in the beam line now You better get out of the way
(And if anyone can tell me who that's attributable to, you'll be my new Internet Best Friend.)
or a man who was bound to a wheelchair most of his life, can't speak without the help of a computer and despite being told he only had a couple of years to live, managed to do more in a few years than 99.99% of other human beings on the planet have ever accomplished in their entire lives?
Bah, I've managed to pick up more silverware in the last few months than he has in the last few decades. Can I have my "Service to Mankind" award too?
(I know, I know, I'm an Internet dickwad with karma to burn...)
You mean, like, TV with a DVR attached? You know, using one of the cable or dish providers that support on-demand programming for almost every major new release the first month it's out?
Oh, yeah, they don't have an extensive catalog of older movies and TV shows. Well, it's a good thing the author of TFA already has a Netflix account for that.
Even better, the current crop of TiVos let you connect them to your home network and watch recordings on your PC or laptop, offering the author all the convenience of BitTorrent without the piracy.
Yeah, it's not a cheap arrangement, but TFA did specify a willingness to pay a "hefty" monthly fee. He just doesn't want to do it.
(And the/. headline's all wrong -- iTunes DOES offer recent TV and movie releases a la carte, but since when did it offer any music at all for a monthly fee?)
Although, it would be nice if a subscription to a newspaper meant that they would give me their proprietary e-paper and update it once a day with the new issue, keeping all previous issues on file and searchable on the same piece of hardware.
They already do, if you consider an iPhone "e-paper" and their Web site a "subscription."
High end everything else and then crap for video card makes a nice workstation, but it's an insanely underpowered gaming rig.
Everyone knows that, despite Apple's best efforts, Macs are a year behind PCs when it comes to major games anyway. I doubt anybody who's shopping for a gaming rig even gives Apple a second thought.
The Mac Pro is just that -- a professional machine. People who buy them usually load them up them with expansions before or just after the purchase: PCI cards for powerful audio or video editing, lots of RAM and internal storage, stuff like that. The price is what I'd expect for a high-quality business machine which will be expensed to the company anyway.
Few consumers want or need to buy expandable PCs or Macs for home use. Those who do are enthusiasts who probably know enough to build their own Intel OS X-compatible PC anyway. The rest of Apple's target audience want something that Just Works and doesn't take up a lot of space or power.
On one hand it must keep evolving and changing to attempt to be better than Linux and Apple
That's not the Microsoft I know. The Microsoft I've come to know focuses on (a) maintaining its dominance in the office environment and (b) imitating other technologies' success stories as quickly as possible. That's not evolving, that's mimicry.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, with proper 3D movies coming into play, I'm quite willing to still go to the cinema, sure I find the price quite high but if you haven't seen a 3D film yet I urge you to go and see one, it's very rare that I'm impressed with technology but this is something else.
Disclaimer: chose your directors carefully. Disney/Pixar has been relatively subdued with the 3D so far, only really pushing it when it adds punch to their animated action scenes. Anything by Zemekis uses 3D to excess in every other scene, and it made my eyes hurt badly to watch "Beowulf" that way.
Unless you're being targetted specifically, basic security procedures are probably enough. Change your financial passwords regularly, maintain a secure wireless connection, and don't let your computer be handled by anybody else. Casual intercepts are going to meet the needs of most internet hackers, and if your data and passwords are going to take any amount of effort, they'll move on to someone else.
That said, I think that in much of South America you're more likely to have your hardware stolen or confiscated by corrupt officials because of its cash value than for the value of the passwords they might hold. Make sure you can access anything you NEED to access using public terminals if your netbook is useless. Make sure you know how to access them by phone, too.
However, if there's someone in your family you can trust to keep half an eye on that financial information back home, I would do so. Redirect all postal communication to them and tell them to open anything from this or that bank just in case there's an alert. Your bank can probably authorize said family member to make certain changes on your behalf, if you tell that bank ahead of time to do so.
I was trying to figure out exactly how the collaboration is supposed to work, or rather how it's intended to be used. Web video isn't so great on my old machine.
Is a Wave document meant to be written collaboratively, or just re-written? Can an author use it to solicit feedback and corrections without implementing them until they're individually approved? Are the documents just formatted text, or multimedia?
...thinking that other people are creative too.
Makes sense. Logical, analytical computer people often make the mistake of thinking that other people will be logical and analytical, which is why (apologies, Slashdotter cattle) diehard Linux fans keep thinking their OS is just a couple of years away from becoming mainstream.
It's also why focus groups exist; because almost every corporation recognizes that when you've been developing something for years, you become blind to the flaws that will jump out to someone who's exposed to it for the very first time.
Didn't anyone actually watch the trailer? I don't mean the effects or the monsters, I mean the part where they announce it's from the director of 'Titanic'. Not the director of 'Terminator 2', or 'Aliens', or even 'Abyss'.
In that moment, it became obvious to me they're not targeting it to the sci-fi action crowd. Anyone who thinks they are will doubtless be disappointed.
Britney Spears is the veritable poster-child for why albums are failing: even if you are a die-hard fan, you really only want two songs, at most perhaps five, from any of her full length albums.
You've got that right, except for the way you seem to be placing blame at Britney Spears' feet.
The greatest "rock albums" out there are almost always wholly written and created by the bands themselves, bands with the creativity and experience necessary to be good songwriters as well as good performers.
But BS is a singer, not a musician. She was created by the music labels as a pretty face and voice to sell albums, and they used a handful of good singles written by other people to sell entire albums of songs.
This is and has been the music labels' modus operandi for decades, because it works and it's more reliable -- it's easier to find a good singer who's hot than a good singer who's hot and can write and play good songs.
Moreover, creating a complete album crafted as a whole is a time-consuming endeavor which should not be pursued by the faint of heart. It's difficult and risky. And since it requires an actual attention span to appreciate, its appeal is likewise much more limited.
The labels have been promoting the singles-based emphasis ever since they first came into existence, because that's how songs used to be recorded. The album is a much more recent invention. Small surprise they're having trouble adapting to it.
In my opinion, the labels would be better off spending time finding ways to make more money with singles than diddling around with online albums.
...not to be confused with "9", "Nine", and "9.99", all of which will also be released in '09.
I swear, it's worse than all the "Blankety Blank 2000" films we had at the start of the decade.
It's like looking at a dyslexic person and saying it's just a matter of self control when it comes to reading.
Dyslexics can and do learn to read. They just need to be taught in a different way, because the written-letter-to-phonetic-sound connection most people make easily has so be learned explicitly. With the right method, they can read as well as anybody.
Similarly, obese people can and do lose weight. They just need to develop a different outlet for their cravings and make a conscious, calculated effort to stop eating at a certain number of calories.
Every human being is predisposed to want to eat and pile on weight. It's a survival tactic that all animals have to prepare them for lean times, which, despite what some people think, still exist for humans in abundance. The trick is to use your human intelligence to keep it under control.
For some people, this is easy--they feel more pressure from friends to be thin than they feel from their own bodies to get fat. Or they've learned to get their dopamine rush from work or sports rather than from sugary and fatty foods. Or they've developed a drug habit which satisfies them without calories, although that's only a solution from a cosmetic point-of-view.
Remember, rich fatty sugary foods are good for you, as far as your body is concerned, because your body assumes they are in limited supply and wants you to be at an advantage when winter comes around. Your body is a simple chemically-driven animal. Your brain knows better.
It's not a matter of self-control, but of lateral thinking. Figure out what your body is really craving and figure out another way to get it. So what if it's harder for you than for other people? Take it from me, nobody cares about that part except you.
College textbooks have limited re-use because the publishers make new editions strictly of the purpose of obsoleting them so people don't buy used books and are forced (or at least encouraged) to buy new ones instead.
As a former teacher, I'd like to nip this notion in the bud.
Successive editions of, say, mathematics textbooks often have minor changes in them. Nevertheless, the changes are useful ones -- homework problems that were obscure, misleading and/or just plain incorrect; lessons rearranged or cross-referenced to be easier to learn; new examples that didn't occur to the authors at first; additions to bring the book more in-line with new state standards; more up-to-date real-world statistics for the word problems.
It's rare that these changes justify dumping all the old editions and replacing them at once. Nevertheless, there's little incentive for the publisher to keep reprinting old editions just to replace lost or stolen textbooks, so I can't blame them for that. My school didn't bother replacing an entire batch of books until it was at least two editions out of date -- about five years. Schools that require students to buy whichever book the teacher wants students to read are more vulnerable to abuse of this system.
IMO, renting books isn't the solution to this strategy. Electronic or open-source textbooks (which any publisher can print) are a better tactic, although realistically I know they're more of a dream than a solution.
That blog post is in error -- "The Bear and the Bow" will be all-Disney, not Pixar. Pixar's next flicks are Toy Story 2, NEWT, and Cars 2.
In my opinion, there was probably some pressure from Disney's merchandising arm to make sequels to Toy Story and Cars, since each of those two have much more to sell in the toy aisle than any other Pixar film to date.
AFAIK, all of the major network's shows are available as free ad-supported Flash video on their respective websites or Hulu. (My computer is too old to run said video, sadly, so I still use downloads.)
For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme.
X-ray lasers sing this song
doo-dah, doo-dah
Blasting holes 'bout nine miles long
oh, de-do-dah-day
Gonna recharge all night
Gonna align all day
You're standing right in the beam line now
You better get out of the way
(And if anyone can tell me who that's attributable to, you'll be my new Internet Best Friend.)
or a man who was bound to a wheelchair most of his life, can't speak without the help of a computer and despite being told he only had a couple of years to live, managed to do more in a few years than 99.99% of other human beings on the planet have ever accomplished in their entire lives?
Bah, I've managed to pick up more silverware in the last few months than he has in the last few decades. Can I have my "Service to Mankind" award too?
(I know, I know, I'm an Internet dickwad with karma to burn...)
You mean, like, TV with a DVR attached? You know, using one of the cable or dish providers that support on-demand programming for almost every major new release the first month it's out?
Oh, yeah, they don't have an extensive catalog of older movies and TV shows. Well, it's a good thing the author of TFA already has a Netflix account for that.
Even better, the current crop of TiVos let you connect them to your home network and watch recordings on your PC or laptop, offering the author all the convenience of BitTorrent without the piracy.
Yeah, it's not a cheap arrangement, but TFA did specify a willingness to pay a "hefty" monthly fee. He just doesn't want to do it.
(And the /. headline's all wrong -- iTunes DOES offer recent TV and movie releases a la carte, but since when did it offer any music at all for a monthly fee?)
Faster-than-light travel always causes causality paradoxes,
But that's why we have the Eschaton's Third Commandment: Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.
Linux has plenty of critics.
...who will be acknowledged, so long as they RTFM first.
Conficker won't actually kill 4chan users so it will only scatter them, spreading the corruption across the internet.
...each one containing a "pearl of consciousness" from 4chan itself, thereby guaranteeing its immortality.
If you notice after tomorrow that the trolls on your other message boards seem just a bit more sentient than usual, this is why.
Because the surface ship is expected to not see the boat.
Rosencranz: "I've frequently not seen the boat."
Guildenstern: "No, no. What you've seen is not the boat."
I think you're neglecting to consider that many gamers are using (want to use) Bootcamp to dual-boot their Apple boxes into Windows.
No, I'm not. Why would they want a Mac at all if they're just going to install Windows on it and ignore the Mac applications?
Although, it would be nice if a subscription to a newspaper meant that they would give me their proprietary e-paper and update it once a day with the new issue, keeping all previous issues on file and searchable on the same piece of hardware.
They already do, if you consider an iPhone "e-paper" and their Web site a "subscription."
High end everything else and then crap for video card makes a nice workstation, but it's an insanely underpowered gaming rig.
Everyone knows that, despite Apple's best efforts, Macs are a year behind PCs when it comes to major games anyway. I doubt anybody who's shopping for a gaming rig even gives Apple a second thought.
The Mac Pro is just that -- a professional machine. People who buy them usually load them up them with expansions before or just after the purchase: PCI cards for powerful audio or video editing, lots of RAM and internal storage, stuff like that. The price is what I'd expect for a high-quality business machine which will be expensed to the company anyway.
Few consumers want or need to buy expandable PCs or Macs for home use. Those who do are enthusiasts who probably know enough to build their own Intel OS X-compatible PC anyway. The rest of Apple's target audience want something that Just Works and doesn't take up a lot of space or power.
On one hand it must keep evolving and changing to attempt to be better than Linux and Apple
That's not the Microsoft I know. The Microsoft I've come to know focuses on (a) maintaining its dominance in the office environment and (b) imitating other technologies' success stories as quickly as possible. That's not evolving, that's mimicry.
If OSS wants to break further into education
You can stop right there, actually.
In my experience, the only education most OSS developers are interested in providing begins and ends with the acronym "RTFM."