"...to a cartoony "social interface" to make Windows appear friendlier to the pathologically computer phobic (1995's Microsoft Bob, a much-maligned happy face with geek glasses."
Macromedia seems more and more willing to play proprietary.
Honestly, part of the problem is the browsers. A lot of the magic of Flash involves being able to connect it to the HTML page using JavaScript. Unfortunately, Mozilla (and, I believe, Opera) are either unable or unwilling to support the JS-Flash bridge that Netscape 4 and IE handle seamlessly.
Connecting all your home electronics by FireWire has been anticipated since Apple first introduced the technology on their PowerMacs. But I always thought that it was the MPAA, RIAA, et.al. who were keeping this from becoming a reality -- those business interests who didn't want it to be easy to move perfect digital copies from your DVD player or TiVo to your PC. (Not that this is difficult with PC DVD-ROM drives, but then they could at least try to control the software which could make the copies.)
So is this for real? Or just another pipe dream for us geeks?
I think it's unfair to create a child that may have genetic defects / other problems because of their parent's own selfishness.
A not-uncommon opinion (troll dynamics notwithstanding). But by that same argument, you should consider it equally unfair to treat babies for birth defects or medical conditions acquired by any means. Or older children. Or adults, for that matter. It should also be "unfair" for parents to practice contraception, since it's a manifestation of their selfish desire to have sex without risking pregnancy.
IVF is just a treatment for a medical condition, just like a cast for a broken arm or braces for skewed teeth or chemotherapy for a malignant cancer. Saying it's unfair or immoral is, IMO, the same as saying all medical practice is unfair or immoral.
Well, if you cram 5 viable eggs back in, instead of 2, you *are* more likely to get multiples, but you're also less likely to damage your success record in terms of viable implantations.
It's not really about the doctor's success record. According to our doctor, the likelyhood of any implantation "taking" and becoming a full-term baby is about one in four, even when conception occurs naturally. Normally they'll implant four or five and give the parents the option of aborting any multiple "takes".
When you're paying thousands per IVF treatment and waiting several months in between repeat treatments, you really really want to succeed the first time. They *could* implant only one or two, then one or two the next time, but that gets time-consuming, expensive, and emotionally draining.
Of course, as the male, that's easier to say. I didn't have to go through 100+ injections and get stuck with a foot-long needle to have eggs extracted, only to then get to go through pregnancy!
This is true enough. My wife went through two (failed) IVF procedures, and it's no picnic. Hormone injections mess up a woman's emotions something fierce. Overproduction of eggs can be moderately painful, as can the harvesting of those eggs (anesthetic be darned). Implantation is fairly straightforward, but then she had to remain nearly immobile on her back for several days to help the implantation "take".
Since they almost always implant more than one embryo (four was the usual number, since statistically only about 25% of implantations take), there's the higher-than-usual risk of multiple births, which sometimes means one or more must be sacrified to help the other(s) survive. And there's still no guarantees, which can be another high emotional cost for both the man and the woman.
We live in Illinois, which is almost the only U.S. state to require insurance carriers to cover IVF as a treatment for infertility -- up to either three or four times per couple, I forget which. That's not to say we never spent any money on the procedures, just that it was thousands less than it could have been.
In summary: while IVF is a remarkable medical advancement, it's still far from an exact science, even by medical standards (where they can never guarantee success in anything).
But congratulations on your twins, nevertheless.:-)
Kinko's stores are ridiculously popular in the US, especially near colleges and universities. Photocopies and printing, many are open 24 hours, and they offer computer terminals for rent with graphics and publishing apps already installed. They're so common now that they're practically an entry in the dictionary.
Guess they haven't quite got the hang of the fact that the biggest advantage of the internet is it's worldwide reach yet.
As nice as it would be for them to release the movies to a worldwide audience all at once, there are probably legal reasons (copyright law, international distribution rights, etc.) that they haven't got them in other countries yet. Apple's facing the same problem with their iTunes Music Store, but they're working out those issues as quickly as they can.
While the Internet is worldwide, ownership rights are not. Have patience, grasshopper.
Yes, but it only takes one of them with a high-speed webcam to start opening up legal issues. This may not be a major-league park, but I believe many sports organizations still reserve the exclusive right to broadcast the games. A single PowerBook with a FireWire iSight camera could be enough to raise issues with the owner, and by association, the Wi-Fi ISP he's using.
You can't tell me that there aren't millions of people all over the world who could make effective use of...the number of Pentium I & II's that are being abandoned left and right by the upper middle class in America.
Why go overseas? Try donating them to your local school, church, or other non-profit organization, who would much rather have your five-year-old machine for free than a new Dell at any price.
Kremen could recall only one case where a plaintiff brought a copyright infringement action against Microsoft's customers rather than the multi-billion dollar company. (In that case, IBM and Microsoft actually picked up the defense anyway and obtained a verdict in favor of their customers).
Neither Kremen nor Mark Bolender, senior attorney at Microsoft, could recall any cases where customer sued a Microsoft customer for software security breaches or personal injury relating to a Microsoft product.
In other words, plaintiffs and lawyers already prefer to sue Microsoft instead when Microsoft products are at fault. And since Microsoft has already paid (off) SCO for using "their" code, that's not an issue for them either.
Apple restricts their service to 5%~ of all computerdom, and it's a 'cool service'.
The iPod, likewise, was Mac-only for the better part of a year before a Windows version came out. Initially it required FireWire as well, not a common interface on Windows machines, but now that the third generation iPod is out it supports Windows *and* USB 2.0 with nothing more than an extra connector. This was all done gradually, and only after Apple knew that (a) the iPod worked as well as they wanted it to, and (b) there was enough demand for PC compatability for Apple to even spend the time on it.
iTMS is the same way. Apple's got legal issues preventing it from offering songs for sale outside of the USA, but that's being resolved already. Meanwhile, a Windows version of iTunes/iTMS was promised by the end of the year the very same day it was available for the Mac.
Apple's not being snooty and refusing to make iTMS available to non-Macheads. Some things take more time than others, that's all.
The bias isn't Google's, it's the Internet's. Searches for "flowers" match a lot of online florists and searches for "Apple" turn up hits on Mac computers before Fiona Apple or the common fruit.
Well, so what? Google works by ranking URLs based on how often they're linked to, and a lot more people are going to link to 1-800 FLOWERS than Bob's History of Romantic Flowers in Renaissance Europe.
The only problem, if you can call it that, is that the novice searcher needs to enter more specific words. If I'm looking for lyrics to Liz Phair's song "Supernova", I don't search for "supernova" or even "liz phair" -- I search for "liz phair supernova lyrics" and get at least half a dozen matches that are exactly what I wanted.
There's no such thing as a Googlehole, in the sense the article describes it. Much like Dr. Know in the movie "A.I.", you need to ask for exactly what you want in order to get exactly the answer you need.
...even in major newspapers. There are many interesting things about this watch/PDA I always wanted to know, but the fact that "The watches...come with a tiny stylus" is a little more personal than what I wanted to know.
Sounds like something worth fixing in the next release. Perhaps Freenet should be designed so that new nodes don't do anything useful for seven days or so?
I'm more worried about the opposite effect -- someone out there is going to start IMing random users, telling them to visit a Microsoft-looking web page and enter their login and passwords (along with some other identifying information) to receive their prize. Odds are they'll hit just enough suckers who've actually entered the contest (and a few who haven't) to get a $@!%load of stolen accounts.
Of course, people have been doing this anyways without Microsoft's help -- or AOL's, or Yahoo's. So maybe I'm making something out of nothing here.
That, combined with your uncanny ability to cite "The Mythical Man Month" in every single post as well as to consistently get modded down to "0, Troll" or lower makes me wonder if you even know what log(n) means, or if you just have a BS generator on your computer producing these painfully self-promoting posts.
Slashdot Mirror
"...to a cartoony "social interface" to make Windows appear friendlier to the pathologically computer phobic (1995's Microsoft Bob, a much-maligned happy face with geek glasses."
Why push macromedia into opening flash when we already have a better, more capable, fully open, w3c recommended substitute?
One word: ActionScript. SVG interactivity has a long way to go before it can touch the kind of interactions Flash can have.
Macromedia seems more and more willing to play proprietary.
Honestly, part of the problem is the browsers. A lot of the magic of Flash involves being able to connect it to the HTML page using JavaScript. Unfortunately, Mozilla (and, I believe, Opera) are either unable or unwilling to support the JS-Flash bridge that Netscape 4 and IE handle seamlessly.
So when will we see /. Hacks ???
I just quoted one.
I'm holding out* for the day when we can go to the corner 7-11 and order up a beautiful woman, right through the nanobot replicator.
* Dear God, no, not in that sense.
Connecting all your home electronics by FireWire has been anticipated since Apple first introduced the technology on their PowerMacs. But I always thought that it was the MPAA, RIAA, et.al. who were keeping this from becoming a reality -- those business interests who didn't want it to be easy to move perfect digital copies from your DVD player or TiVo to your PC. (Not that this is difficult with PC DVD-ROM drives, but then they could at least try to control the software which could make the copies.)
So is this for real? Or just another pipe dream for us geeks?
I think it's unfair to create a child that may have genetic defects / other problems because of their parent's own selfishness.
A not-uncommon opinion (troll dynamics notwithstanding). But by that same argument, you should consider it equally unfair to treat babies for birth defects or medical conditions acquired by any means. Or older children. Or adults, for that matter. It should also be "unfair" for parents to practice contraception, since it's a manifestation of their selfish desire to have sex without risking pregnancy.
IVF is just a treatment for a medical condition, just like a cast for a broken arm or braces for skewed teeth or chemotherapy for a malignant cancer. Saying it's unfair or immoral is, IMO, the same as saying all medical practice is unfair or immoral.
Well, if you cram 5 viable eggs back in, instead of 2, you *are* more likely to get multiples, but you're also less likely to damage your success record in terms of viable implantations.
It's not really about the doctor's success record. According to our doctor, the likelyhood of any implantation "taking" and becoming a full-term baby is about one in four, even when conception occurs naturally. Normally they'll implant four or five and give the parents the option of aborting any multiple "takes".
When you're paying thousands per IVF treatment and waiting several months in between repeat treatments, you really really want to succeed the first time. They *could* implant only one or two, then one or two the next time, but that gets time-consuming, expensive, and emotionally draining.
Of course, as the male, that's easier to say. I didn't have to go through 100+ injections and get stuck with a foot-long needle to have eggs extracted, only to then get to go through pregnancy!
:-)
This is true enough. My wife went through two (failed) IVF procedures, and it's no picnic. Hormone injections mess up a woman's emotions something fierce. Overproduction of eggs can be moderately painful, as can the harvesting of those eggs (anesthetic be darned). Implantation is fairly straightforward, but then she had to remain nearly immobile on her back for several days to help the implantation "take".
Since they almost always implant more than one embryo (four was the usual number, since statistically only about 25% of implantations take), there's the higher-than-usual risk of multiple births, which sometimes means one or more must be sacrified to help the other(s) survive. And there's still no guarantees, which can be another high emotional cost for both the man and the woman.
We live in Illinois, which is almost the only U.S. state to require insurance carriers to cover IVF as a treatment for infertility -- up to either three or four times per couple, I forget which. That's not to say we never spent any money on the procedures, just that it was thousands less than it could have been.
In summary: while IVF is a remarkable medical advancement, it's still far from an exact science, even by medical standards (where they can never guarantee success in anything).
But congratulations on your twins, nevertheless.
Well anyway, how much does an idiot charge me for some help tweaking some shell scripts, or a little bit of perl programming?
They don't charge you anything, you charge them, ideally by the hour.
In other industries, this is known as not having a good business plan.
Actually, in other industries, this is known as falling victim to a monopoly. That's why it's illegal.
Kinko's stores are ridiculously popular in the US, especially near colleges and universities. Photocopies and printing, many are open 24 hours, and they offer computer terminals for rent with graphics and publishing apps already installed. They're so common now that they're practically an entry in the dictionary.
I don't watch movies on my computer screen. I watch them on my TV.
Then don't get them via internet download, get them at your local video rental store. Disney's gotten that distribution medium for a few decades now.
Guess they haven't quite got the hang of the fact that the biggest advantage of the internet is it's worldwide reach yet.
As nice as it would be for them to release the movies to a worldwide audience all at once, there are probably legal reasons (copyright law, international distribution rights, etc.) that they haven't got them in other countries yet. Apple's facing the same problem with their iTunes Music Store, but they're working out those issues as quickly as they can.
While the Internet is worldwide, ownership rights are not. Have patience, grasshopper.
Yes, but it only takes one of them with a high-speed webcam to start opening up legal issues. This may not be a major-league park, but I believe many sports organizations still reserve the exclusive right to broadcast the games. A single PowerBook with a FireWire iSight camera could be enough to raise issues with the owner, and by association, the Wi-Fi ISP he's using.
You can't tell me that there aren't millions of people all over the world who could make effective use of...the number of Pentium I & II's that are being abandoned left and right by the upper middle class in America.
Why go overseas? Try donating them to your local school, church, or other non-profit organization, who would much rather have your five-year-old machine for free than a new Dell at any price.
I have since unfortunately found the corollary, "Sufficient Stupidity combined with enough Power is effectively indistinguishable from Evil."
Or, more familiarly: "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from pure evil."
Apple restricts their service to 5%~ of all computerdom, and it's a 'cool service'.
The iPod, likewise, was Mac-only for the better part of a year before a Windows version came out. Initially it required FireWire as well, not a common interface on Windows machines, but now that the third generation iPod is out it supports Windows *and* USB 2.0 with nothing more than an extra connector. This was all done gradually, and only after Apple knew that (a) the iPod worked as well as they wanted it to, and (b) there was enough demand for PC compatability for Apple to even spend the time on it.
iTMS is the same way. Apple's got legal issues preventing it from offering songs for sale outside of the USA, but that's being resolved already. Meanwhile, a Windows version of iTunes/iTMS was promised by the end of the year the very same day it was available for the Mac.
Apple's not being snooty and refusing to make iTMS available to non-Macheads. Some things take more time than others, that's all.
The bias isn't Google's, it's the Internet's. Searches for "flowers" match a lot of online florists and searches for "Apple" turn up hits on Mac computers before Fiona Apple or the common fruit.
Well, so what? Google works by ranking URLs based on how often they're linked to, and a lot more people are going to link to 1-800 FLOWERS than Bob's History of Romantic Flowers in Renaissance Europe.
The only problem, if you can call it that, is that the novice searcher needs to enter more specific words. If I'm looking for lyrics to Liz Phair's song "Supernova", I don't search for "supernova" or even "liz phair" -- I search for "liz phair supernova lyrics" and get at least half a dozen matches that are exactly what I wanted.
There's no such thing as a Googlehole, in the sense the article describes it. Much like Dr. Know in the movie "A.I.", you need to ask for exactly what you want in order to get exactly the answer you need.
Fossil PDA:
Looks very
high-tech,
but it's
Super hard
to use.
...even in major newspapers. There are many interesting things about this watch/PDA I always wanted to know, but the fact that "The watches...come with a tiny stylus" is a little more personal than what I wanted to know.
Tourists hurt the network.
Sounds like something worth fixing in the next release. Perhaps Freenet should be designed so that new nodes don't do anything useful for seven days or so?
I'm more worried about the opposite effect -- someone out there is going to start IMing random users, telling them to visit a Microsoft-looking web page and enter their login and passwords (along with some other identifying information) to receive their prize. Odds are they'll hit just enough suckers who've actually entered the contest (and a few who haven't) to get a $@!%load of stolen accounts.
Of course, people have been doing this anyways without Microsoft's help -- or AOL's, or Yahoo's. So maybe I'm making something out of nothing here.
Truly, I'm amazed at the number of things you can identify Olog(n) speed increases in: FreeBSD, custom algorithms, cache hits, Unicode, RISC chips, Extreme Documentation, modern compilers....
That, combined with your uncanny ability to cite "The Mythical Man Month" in every single post as well as to consistently get modded down to "0, Troll" or lower makes me wonder if you even know what log(n) means, or if you just have a BS generator on your computer producing these painfully self-promoting posts.