I actually mostly use my home comp for games, the internet, watching movies and listening to music. Maybe it was optimistic of me to think that I was going to find a Mac that would fit my needs, but with all the hype about the G5, I thought I would finally have some reason to be interested in Macs.
Nice troll, but you can do all those things quite happily on today's 800MHz iMac. In fact, just over a year ago I was downloading from the Internet while watching a DVD in a window and running PhotoShop to touch up some photos... on a 350MHz G4 tower running OS X 10.1.
Just make sure you get 512MB of RAM and you'll be fine with any current Mac for what you want to do.
It's bit like people calling 9/11 terrorists cowards; I mean, they were scumsucking evildoing asswipes and all, but still; doing a kamikaze attack like that isn't your every day coward would really do.
I disagree. Carrying out military attacks on unarmed and unwarned civilian populations is the very definition of cowardice. If they had attacked military bases, on the other hand, that might have required some bravery.
The fact that the terrorists died in the attacks doesn't stop them being cowards either. If intel is to be believed, only the guy flying the plane knew what the whole plan was. Besides, even if they had all known, suicide is not inherently brave.
Let's say I have a drive that has a 99% chance of failing after 1 year, and only a 1% chance of lasting for 10 years. There's a 99% chance I bought it from Micropolis.
I work for IBM. Right now I'm wearing jeans, a Paul Frank T-shirt saying "I'm not a beaver, I'm an otter", and I have black titanium circular barbell earrings with pointy "devil horn" ends. I've seen worse around here, too.
Head down to IBM in Austin and you'll see people wearing shorts, sandals and hawaiian shirts.
Now, on the other hand, if you work for IBM on Madison Avenue, or even go there to visit, you're expected to wear something at the smarter end of business casual. If you're going to give a presentation to customers, you'd better expect to dress up a little.
But in general, IBM is not full of grey corporate drones wearing suits. Maybe you encountered lots of suits because finance guys were overseeing the acquisition.
I guess I don't have a fetish for non-technological solutions.
I make movies, but I use a computer to edit them and master the DVDs.
I'm interested in photography, but even when I use film for initial capture, I scan the negatives after processing and do everything else (including the prints) digitally. I imagine I'll skip the first step once full-frame 35mm digital SLRs drop to under $1000.
My bike has a digital speedometer/odometer. When we go out exploring the wilds, we take the GPS in case we feel like some geocaching. My LEGO is a Mindstorms set.
It's not that I demand technology per se, it's just that often technology allows me to do stuff I couldn't do without it, or lets me do things more easily and hence more enjoyably.
OK, I play some paper RPGs and board games. Though I'd like the rules on laptop if I could get 'em, as then I'd be able to search them...
Jeezus H. Keerist, I got pirst fost on a slashdot story without even trying. I guess the very thought of co-operative games sends the lamer kiddies recoiling in horror.
Two cutesy Japanese-style bunnies must race up the screen before the timer gets to zero. Various obstacles and puzzles get in their way. The clever bit is that each player needs the help of the other--for example, one player might have to push some logs through the wall to the other side, where the other player can then jump across a river using the logs.
Clearly, this Treo 600 has been designed to woe consumers looking for a phone/PDA/MP3 convergence device that isn't any bigger than a traditional mobile phone.
They've got a long way to go, then. If 4.4" x 2.3" x 0.87" isn't much bigger than your mobile phone, perhaps the 80s will call you and ask for their phone back.
Unless there's been some radical change in the state of the art that I've missed hearing about in the last few years, there's a big problem with Z notation and other methods of forming provably correct programs.
Said killer problem is that all the popular programming languages have features which make it impossible to model them using denotational semantics--that is, to produce mathematical functions which represent the program behavior. For instance, no C-based language can be modeled.
That's not to say that denotational semantics is completely useless. It's used in certain narrow domains, such as hardware--there are numerous chip designs where the circuitry and microcode is proven correct.
However, there's no way you're going to see --check-correctness flags on gcc or javac any time soon.
Of course, the bigger problem with mathematical techniques for proving correctness is that there's no measurable market demand for bug-free software (outside of the few narrow fields alluded to above), and hence no money available to spend on paying highly skilled computer scientists to spend a long time developing provably correct software using obscure programming languages. Instead, everyone just hacks together some alpha-quality code using C++ and calls it version 1.0.
A wristwatch with a 4-day battery life?
on
Palm OS Wristwatch
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Maybe I'm a freak, but I have some fairly simple requirements for a wristwatch, which come down to wanting it to tell the time without needing me to go through unnecessary dicking around:
1. It needs to work for years on end, without my needing to wind it or change batteries at all.
2. It needs to be accurate to a few seconds a week or better, so I don't need to adjust it more often than travel and time zones dictate anyway.
3. It needs to be waterproof to any depth I'm likely to swim to without serious diving gear.
4. It needs to be shockproof enough to withstand (for example) my accidentally slamming it into doors.
5. It needs to be light enough that I don't feel like I have a brick tied to my wrist.
6. It needs to be easy to read in daylight and in the dark.
On top of that, it's a bonus if it isn't horribly ugly or repulsively ostentatious (hello, Rolex owners).
The requirements all seem fairly obvious to me, but you'd be surprised how hard it is to find a watch that fits the bill. I tried a Seiko Kinetic, but the mechanisms need servicing every few years.
So now I have a Casio G-Shock with a titanium case and solar panels on the face. At the time I bought it there was only one model of G-Shock with solar power and titanium casing, and it ended up being pretty expensive considering its borderline ugliness.
So anyway, a watch which has a battery life measured in days is about as much use to me as an Athlon heatsink made of chocolate. I wouldn't buy it if it was $5.
I would have thought the American consumer would have wanted larger melons. That's the impression I get from The Man Show, anyway.
Actually, I remember a story on BBC news that some researchers had discovered that women prefer buying smaller melons because it makes them feel less nervous about their chest size.
Curiously, this psychological phenomenon doesn't seem to stop men buying foot-long hot dogs or subs.
As I said, sometimes the "first version is meant to be thrown away", so it doesn't matter how many bugs.
Yes, but it never is, so on the contrary it does.
We've established that management and the clients are unreasonable. They're not going to let you do a ground-up reimplementation for version 2.0 just because they made you build version 1.0 in an unmaintainable fashion.
I can thoroughly recommend Circus Ponies Notebook. It's what I use for all my programming notes and other research notes.
It looks like a notebook. It works like an outliner. You can organize work page by page, or use long scrolling pages. It has dividers with tabs for different sections, and customizable page styles. It has highlighters and stickies for annotation. It sets up system-wide clipping services to let you pull snippets of information in from any application. And the best bit is that it automatically indexes everything you put in it at the back, builds a dynamic table of contents at the front, date-stamps every outline entry, and has super-fast search including search by highlighter color and search of stickies. It imports and exports XML and RTF.
But unfortunately for you, it's one of the many great reasons to get a Mac.
Ah, but at least you know your code to add two numbers and print the result will be reuseable and extensible. Imagine if you had to reinvent that piece of code every time you needed it? *cough*
Interesting, I'm also a self-taught typist, and my hands are at a slight angle when I'm typing too. My "home rows" are about the same as yours. I used to wonder if I'd do better if I learnt to type "properly", but now I'm not so sure.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice troll, but you can do all those things quite happily on today's 800MHz iMac. In fact, just over a year ago I was downloading from the Internet while watching a DVD in a window and running PhotoShop to touch up some photos... on a 350MHz G4 tower running OS X 10.1.
Just make sure you get 512MB of RAM and you'll be fine with any current Mac for what you want to do.
Keep calling your girlfriend "dumbass" and the problem will likely solve itself.
I disagree. Carrying out military attacks on unarmed and unwarned civilian populations is the very definition of cowardice. If they had attacked military bases, on the other hand, that might have required some bravery.
The fact that the terrorists died in the attacks doesn't stop them being cowards either. If intel is to be believed, only the guy flying the plane knew what the whole plan was. Besides, even if they had all known, suicide is not inherently brave.
Well, the question then is whether you consider music to be art, or a marketing exercise.
Apparently Radiohead consider it to be art, rather than marketing--which should be no surprise to anyone who's a fan of their work.
Let's say I have a drive that has a 99% chance of failing after 1 year, and only a 1% chance of lasting for 10 years. There's a 99% chance I bought it from Micropolis.
IBM varies a lot from office to office.
I work for IBM. Right now I'm wearing jeans, a Paul Frank T-shirt saying "I'm not a beaver, I'm an otter", and I have black titanium circular barbell earrings with pointy "devil horn" ends. I've seen worse around here, too.
Head down to IBM in Austin and you'll see people wearing shorts, sandals and hawaiian shirts.
Now, on the other hand, if you work for IBM on Madison Avenue, or even go there to visit, you're expected to wear something at the smarter end of business casual. If you're going to give a presentation to customers, you'd better expect to dress up a little.
But in general, IBM is not full of grey corporate drones wearing suits. Maybe you encountered lots of suits because finance guys were overseeing the acquisition.
I guess I don't have a fetish for non-technological solutions.
I make movies, but I use a computer to edit them and master the DVDs.
I'm interested in photography, but even when I use film for initial capture, I scan the negatives after processing and do everything else (including the prints) digitally. I imagine I'll skip the first step once full-frame 35mm digital SLRs drop to under $1000.
My bike has a digital speedometer/odometer. When we go out exploring the wilds, we take the GPS in case we feel like some geocaching. My LEGO is a Mindstorms set.
It's not that I demand technology per se, it's just that often technology allows me to do stuff I couldn't do without it, or lets me do things more easily and hence more enjoyably.
OK, I play some paper RPGs and board games. Though I'd like the rules on laptop if I could get 'em, as then I'd be able to search them...
Jeezus H. Keerist, I got pirst fost on a slashdot story without even trying. I guess the very thought of co-operative games sends the lamer kiddies recoiling in horror.
Cookie and Cream on PlayStation 2.
Two cutesy Japanese-style bunnies must race up the screen before the timer gets to zero. Various obstacles and puzzles get in their way. The clever bit is that each player needs the help of the other--for example, one player might have to push some logs through the wall to the other side, where the other player can then jump across a river using the logs.
They've got a long way to go, then. If 4.4" x 2.3" x 0.87" isn't much bigger than your mobile phone, perhaps the 80s will call you and ask for their phone back.
Unless there's been some radical change in the state of the art that I've missed hearing about in the last few years, there's a big problem with Z notation and other methods of forming provably correct programs.
Said killer problem is that all the popular programming languages have features which make it impossible to model them using denotational semantics--that is, to produce mathematical functions which represent the program behavior. For instance, no C-based language can be modeled.
That's not to say that denotational semantics is completely useless. It's used in certain narrow domains, such as hardware--there are numerous chip designs where the circuitry and microcode is proven correct.
However, there's no way you're going to see --check-correctness flags on gcc or javac any time soon.
Of course, the bigger problem with mathematical techniques for proving correctness is that there's no measurable market demand for bug-free software (outside of the few narrow fields alluded to above), and hence no money available to spend on paying highly skilled computer scientists to spend a long time developing provably correct software using obscure programming languages. Instead, everyone just hacks together some alpha-quality code using C++ and calls it version 1.0.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Maybe I'm a freak, but I have some fairly simple requirements for a wristwatch, which come down to wanting it to tell the time without needing me to go through unnecessary dicking around:
1. It needs to work for years on end, without my needing to wind it or change batteries at all.
2. It needs to be accurate to a few seconds a week or better, so I don't need to adjust it more often than travel and time zones dictate anyway.
3. It needs to be waterproof to any depth I'm likely to swim to without serious diving gear.
4. It needs to be shockproof enough to withstand (for example) my accidentally slamming it into doors.
5. It needs to be light enough that I don't feel like I have a brick tied to my wrist.
6. It needs to be easy to read in daylight and in the dark.
On top of that, it's a bonus if it isn't horribly ugly or repulsively ostentatious (hello, Rolex owners).
The requirements all seem fairly obvious to me, but you'd be surprised how hard it is to find a watch that fits the bill. I tried a Seiko Kinetic, but the mechanisms need servicing every few years.
So now I have a Casio G-Shock with a titanium case and solar panels on the face. At the time I bought it there was only one model of G-Shock with solar power and titanium casing, and it ended up being pretty expensive considering its borderline ugliness.
So anyway, a watch which has a battery life measured in days is about as much use to me as an Athlon heatsink made of chocolate. I wouldn't buy it if it was $5.
I bought Hail To The Thief and it was a perfectly normal CD.
Oh yeah, like America is going to adopt a standard just because every other country in the world does.
...
Metric, PAL, GSM,
Drop the keyboard too, and put Bluetooth in.
Must have big screen, must have Bluetooth, but I really don't want a fiddly keyboard or a crappy camera.
...as "Write Your Own OS/2".
That particular dead horse is still having a shallow pool of its putrid entrails beaten though.
I would have thought the American consumer would have wanted larger melons. That's the impression I get from The Man Show, anyway.
Actually, I remember a story on BBC news that some researchers had discovered that women prefer buying smaller melons because it makes them feel less nervous about their chest size.
Curiously, this psychological phenomenon doesn't seem to stop men buying foot-long hot dogs or subs.
You missed
"Grand Theft Election" (USA)
Please, will someone make an up-to-date version of Elite for PS2 or Mac?
(Or anything not Microsoft, in fact. I'd buy a GameCube to play a state-of-the-art remake of Elite.)
Yes, but it never is, so on the contrary it does.
We've established that management and the clients are unreasonable. They're not going to let you do a ground-up reimplementation for version 2.0 just because they made you build version 1.0 in an unmaintainable fashion.
I can thoroughly recommend Circus Ponies Notebook. It's what I use for all my programming notes and other research notes.
It looks like a notebook. It works like an outliner. You can organize work page by page, or use long scrolling pages. It has dividers with tabs for different sections, and customizable page styles. It has highlighters and stickies for annotation. It sets up system-wide clipping services to let you pull snippets of information in from any application. And the best bit is that it automatically indexes everything you put in it at the back, builds a dynamic table of contents at the front, date-stamps every outline entry, and has super-fast search including search by highlighter color and search of stickies. It imports and exports XML and RTF.
But unfortunately for you, it's one of the many great reasons to get a Mac.
Ah, but at least you know your code to add two numbers and print the result will be reuseable and extensible. Imagine if you had to reinvent that piece of code every time you needed it? *cough*
Interesting, I'm also a self-taught typist, and my hands are at a slight angle when I'm typing too. My "home rows" are about the same as yours. I used to wonder if I'd do better if I learnt to type "properly", but now I'm not so sure.
Not Nintendo Thumb, but doctors in the UK have refered to Nintendonitis.
Grand Theft Auto 3 nearly gave me tendonitis... That and Wipeout Fusion.
Well, for IBM that's only about 55 IP addresses per employee, worldwide... Not entirely unreasonable.