Blogger shouldn't show the Blogger tags when the page is published, especially since the final page is on your server. Methinks there's something wrong with your blog?
The world is Square, like the gaming company? Yeah.
When you publish with Blogger, those special tags disappear. The resulting page looks exactly the same as any other page (that is, regular HTML). Even though I don't believe in this idea at all, one solution to this (since Google owns Blogger) is to just flag all of those Blogger-controlled sites... As for other blogs (Xangas, LiveJournals, Movable Types), that'd be difficult to figure out, or at least figure out properly and well.
This is just one of many steps towards a seamless computing experience... To me, the concept of two partitions one on hard disk is annoying. Things should just be saved on the hard disk, I don't care where. This philosophy sometimes manifests itself into programs that don't require a save feature (see Microsoft new Tablet/Journal thingy or Outlook's notes feature). That's what the new libraries concept is for.
"Note that libraries don't actually contain anything physically; instead, they are a special collection of shortcuts, similar to the Control Panel in XP. The files themselves could be anywhere on your system, though most libraries are limited to searching particular folders for performance reasons. As I understand it, the objective here is to transparently shield the user from having to worry about physical disk locations, and it seems like a good idea."
Users shouldn't ever have to worry about anything, including where stuff is located. The computer should just know. That's why there were early abstractions of the hard drive (My Computer, My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, etc...). Now, in Longhorn, My Music will literally mean all the music on all the local drives of your computer, regardless of where they're physically stored. That's what music managers are for nowadays (iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media, MusicMatch). Microsoft is just trying to do it at the Explorer level, the way it should have been and will eventually be.
I'm thinkin this won't work at all... I mean, isn't a natural property of P2P networks that the most popular files "survive", that is, they're mirrored over and over again... Sure, some few individuals would download these files, but upon listening to them, they'd probably delete them. I mean, that's what I do when I encounter a low quality MP3. This is exactly why duds and such never bothered me. Even though they're there, you can rely on the overriding philosophy of the network that they won't get around much. It's already evident on Kazaa. Top 40s hits are the easiest things to download, usually reporting an unusually high number of mirrors, as opposed to those single hits of supposedly the same song.
Re:Linux more popular than Microsoft
on
Web Zeitgeist
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· Score: 1
Wow, I just guessed. There's a http://www.google.com/mac too... Why? I dunno.
The most interesting part about inconsistent interfaces on Windows is Microsoft's behavior... Somewhere deep inside MSDN, they advocate using their new Luna-compatible controls, as well as recommending more subtle XP-style conventions like cartoony icons, akin to Apple's UI guidelines...
However, with each version of Office to date (I think...?), Microsoft has never used Windows's native control set. A perfect example of this is Office XP. Office XP, although XP branded, supports none of XP's skinning abilities. Office XP definately sports that flat look, rather than the fluffy, colorful look that Windows has. Although Microsoft has always made sure that the Office controls are an accessible super set of whatever Windows can do, this strategy is a waste of time and money.
How can anyone take Microsoft seriously if they aren't even following their own advice? It's as if they want Office to be its own operating system...
The thing you have to realize about computer interfaces is that a computer can do many more things than most physical objects. In addition, they have many more ports of entry. For example, a toaster can (should) only toast bread, with its slots for bread and slider to depress the bread. But, a CD-burning program like Toast (heh) can be accessed via the shell, with a keyboard, a mouse, etc. It can author all different kinds of CDs (mp3, VCD, etc), each possessing their own quirks, much unlike different shades of toast.
Also, standardized interface elements are some of the most powerful tools available to software designers. Real world objects, in their limited context, can afford to have different interfaces because they only do One Thing and One Thing very well. Since some software can run an entire three ring circus (in addition to noting the myriad of software products out there already), the compromise developers have to make is to use standardized software components...
Standardized UI elements are always expected, accessible, and skinnable. By using the same dial, button, checkbox, anything, across different programs, a user will immediately know what is what. Don't forget that most people have grown up learning what a toaster is, while many have yet to learn how to use their PCs properly... Standard UI elements are always accessible, as governed by the OS... For instance, all standard text boxes in OSX have immediate access to a built in spell checker (I think), as well as input from Inkwell (or whatever).
I can get into an entire holy war about why Mozilla will always remain a second-rate browser for its complete lack of native UI (that's what Chimera is for)... Anyway, standard UI elements are almost always skinnable. Jaguar's UI had a facelift, and all Aqua compliant apps will benefit from that. But the most depressing part about the Windows world is that people don't care about Luna... Luna, however ugly you think it is, is all about the 6th generation of window controls... They are skinnable, visually responsive, and accessible. I hate Windows apps that aren't skinned properly. It isn't as obvious as an OSX app that isn't Aquified, but if you're a fan of Luna, it will stick out like a sore thumb...
And no, I don't think anyone should live with any degree of complexity. Note, I'm not saying devices shouldn't be capable of powerful, complex things, I'm just saying interfaces should be intuitive and obvious.
EditPlus was already recommended, but I'll throw in my personal fave. It's WinVi, an open source Vi clone for Windows. The best part about WinVi is that it accepts keystrokes in both NotePad and Vi styles. That is, if you're feeling lazy and need to just cut and paste via your mouse (or similar Notepad method on the keyboard), WinVi has no problem with that (provided you're in insert mode). Otherwise, WinVi is free to use as a functional Vi clone, with magical search and replace as a prominent feature coming to mind. It also features displaying files in Hex mode, if you dig that.
I've read that one obstacle in the creation of true intelligence (no longer artificial, is it...) is merely the lack of computational power. Does intelligence, human or otherwise, require an immensely complex computer that we've yet to encounter or have we simply not succeeded in discovering the right set of algorithms for the job?
While admittedly, I haven't tried it, the fact that it seems purely dynamic is a litte daunting. Anything that zooms on mouse-over usually doesn't get the highest of usability ratings because the target area becomes less predictable. This is precisely why the Aqua Dock received many a complaint.
This also made me think of that Fish Eye interface for browsing menus (where the text closest to the cursor is the biggest; farthest, smallest)... Anyway, I think that in it's zoomy nature, it leaves little time for people to actually think... And what about unusual character strings, or words not in the normal lexicon (abbreviations, acronyms...)? How easy is it to access the letter X right after Z?
PS - Their description of rarely used letters being/harder/ to access is kinda scary. It should be written in the positive, that more common letters should be/easier/ to access.
What does Markovian mean? Of course I tried searching on Google but I found more of its use than its simple "what is" definition.
Re:Something interesting about Moz on Windows XP
on
Mozilla RC3 Released
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· Score: 5, Insightful
You are only partially correct. Mozilla does not and probably never will (in the near future) use native widgets for any OS because of (I think) XUL. Mozilla has its own rendering engine, controlled by JavaScript and style sheets. This allows for mucho customization, by web developers and users alike. It does not, however, earn any brownie points in usability.
You are, however, correct in that Mozilla on XP inherits the visual style of XP's interface (anything Luna or Classic). But that's all. Mozilla does not inherit the accessibility features in XP. Should XP suddenly support a new input device for navigating sheets (or similar), Mozilla wouldn't have any part of it. The Mozilla team has had many a debate on how to mimic the keyboard shortcuts in Windows since none of the interface is native. For the majority of Windows users, however technical ye are, this is a moot point, because it just looks the same and does its job. This argument is most apparent in Mac OS X, an environment associated with pretty colors and UI guidelines provided by Apple. Many, many OS X users have not used Mozilla because it looks and functions like nothing on OS X. And of course, Linux users either don't care or don't have enough time/energy to choose a standard interface and then care. =)
Mozilla, in all of its open source and standards-compliant glory, will always be a second-rate browser if not native to each platform of operation. Don't get me wrong, I love Mozilla to no end... I'd just like a native version. (See Internet Explorer, OmniWeb, Lynx, etc.)
PS - I don't recall any version of Office using Windows's UI controls... Office always shipped with some new, bleeding edge control of its own, often to be reincarnated into the controls of the next version of Windows. Even Office XP, of all things, has no correlation to native Windows XP controls.
I wanted to get this comment out quickly and then elaborate on it later...
Anyway, wasn't there a project to harness the world's brain power in terms of foreign language? What better way than to ask a French native about French sentences?
It was something along the lines of an agent sitting on the desktop, prepared with the languages the user is proficient in... When there's an incoming question (of the appropriate language, of course), a dialog box notifies the user that someone is in need of translation. Like all distributed networks, for error checking and such, the question goes out to more than one person, to prevent faulty translations or provide a more rich meaning.
Hey, how many slashdotters took Latin in school... =)
Reminiscent of Anime, Roujin Z
on
Hospital Robots
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· Score: 1
This immediately made me think of Roujin Z. Not a very popular anime, but one of my favorites.
It's about an intelligence robot/bed/do-it-all machine for a sickly old man. Doing it all involves monitoring vital signs, playing mah jong, transforming into a movable mecha-type body, etc.
Somewhere in the story, its intelligence manifests itself into his long lost wife, and it becomes this robot's mission to bring him to the beach at any cost, since that's their special place.
(SPOILER?) The robot, secretly augmented with a military-grade AI engine, uses its abilities to assimilate other electronics like speakers (for audio output) or even trucks (for demolition arms) or a helicopter (for flying, actually a move performed by a rival model).
This anime has kept me dreaming since the day I saw it. It represents the neato ideas of artificial intelligence in the hospital as well as the techno-organic style of assimilating objects, however sci-fi-esque it may be.
what is that supposed to mean? Filipino? what is that in reference to? i'm almost taking offense to this even though i don't even know what it's about...
Is this somewhat like Sorcerer Linux? The mention of automagical scripts and optimized installs made me think of it right away... Since I'm no Linux guru, anyone care to shed some light?
Ugh I know this is going to seem like extremely shallow commentary but...
Microsoft Word has better on-screen anti-aliasing than something like Adobe Photoshop. Lemme explain. Photoshop indiscriminately anti-aliases all curves, and it does it pretty well (even with a few variations, smooth, strong, etc). Microsoft Word (as well as all Microsoft products that use that engine) renders anti-aliased text as well but favors vertical and horizontal lines. That is, even if a font mathematically hangs over a vertical and deserves some kind of gray line, Word will keep a solid vertical line only (see Times New Roman, any capital letter at 72pt). What this does is accentuate the fact that the fonts are on screen, where the canvas natively has vertical and horizontal accents built in (a grid of pixels).
And about ClearType... I think it's for LCDs only (like laptops), so I've read. Instead of just treating the field of pixels as blocks of single color, (black text on white, two colors), the ClearType algorithm exploits the fact that pixels are actually three colors, red, blue, and green. So, instead of just using the font-color and background color (and everything in between) to render smooth fonts (that is, black, white, all shades of gray), ClearType uses shades of blue and orange when using white and black, to help apply the smoothing factor to those RGB "pixels" within pixels. I've tried it on my CRT and it doesn't do anything for me, but then again, it wasn't meant to.
If you've ever worked with print or web design, you know jaggies look extremely ugly and unprofessional. If you look at a website like Apple's, you wouldn't give jaggies a second thought because all of their material is well-rendered and well-anti-aliased. All those little pixels make a big difference in the overall presentation of something. If you want to see ugly, try looking at a nice Flash presentation in LOW mode. That will turn off all anti-aliasing. It looks horrible.
But I don't get it, why would you say something is rotten? Microsoft and Freetype look like they're doing a pretty good job.
Since you seem to know what you're talking about... =)
Is it me or does this seem like a game of catchup from sloppy, previous implementation? The CNET article about this says hyperthreading makes use of unused parts of the processor. What I want to know is why wasn't it being used in the first place... Like... Why is this news worthy, as in, what makes hyperthreading so revolutionary? The way you've explained it, it seems very fundamental.
I'm not too sure about the transfer speed of USB but I really like the Rio DJ function. RioDJ basically chooses songs for you (a supplement to personal playlists) by frequency of play, newly added music, songs of a certain decade, at random, etc... I hate wading through 2000 songs, because I end up playing them same 10 or so each time around. I don't think a function like this (of automated playlists) exists on the iPod. So, that's a plus.
How true. Yet, the real test is how long it will take for the automatic update engine to get hold of it. It's amazing that you go to the Windows Update site but I'm sure there are people who don't even know that it exists let alone what to do there. Installing patches, that is, system maintenance, should be automagical, you know, for all the Mom and Pop types that don't read MS security bulletins.
Wow, I totally agree. On a tangent, it irks me when people say that things like genetic engineering and technology aren't natural. I mean, aren't the humans, the genetic engineers, natural beings? It's sorta meant to be, no? Like, define natural. Sooner or later, some organism, if not humans, would develop "technology"... And yes, there will always be some kind of natural equilibrium that the world will reach as a result of any change, be it for the better or worse of society. It's a chemical fact =)
Slashdot Mirror
Blogger shouldn't show the Blogger tags when the page is published, especially since the final page is on your server. Methinks there's something wrong with your blog?
The world is Square, like the gaming company? Yeah.
When you publish with Blogger, those special tags disappear. The resulting page looks exactly the same as any other page (that is, regular HTML). Even though I don't believe in this idea at all, one solution to this (since Google owns Blogger) is to just flag all of those Blogger-controlled sites... As for other blogs (Xangas, LiveJournals, Movable Types), that'd be difficult to figure out, or at least figure out properly and well.
This is just one of many steps towards a seamless computing experience... To me, the concept of two partitions one on hard disk is annoying. Things should just be saved on the hard disk, I don't care where. This philosophy sometimes manifests itself into programs that don't require a save feature (see Microsoft new Tablet/Journal thingy or Outlook's notes feature). That's what the new libraries concept is for.
"Note that libraries don't actually contain anything physically; instead, they are a special collection of shortcuts, similar to the Control Panel in XP. The files themselves could be anywhere on your system, though most libraries are limited to searching particular folders for performance reasons. As I understand it, the objective here is to transparently shield the user from having to worry about physical disk locations, and it seems like a good idea."
Users shouldn't ever have to worry about anything, including where stuff is located. The computer should just know. That's why there were early abstractions of the hard drive (My Computer, My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, etc...). Now, in Longhorn, My Music will literally mean all the music on all the local drives of your computer, regardless of where they're physically stored. That's what music managers are for nowadays (iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media, MusicMatch). Microsoft is just trying to do it at the Explorer level, the way it should have been and will eventually be.
...so long as this exists? It's pretty well stocked with languages. Why did someone even come up with this contest?
A neutron walks into a bar; he asks the bartender, "How much for a beer?" The bartender looks at him, and says "For you, no charge."
Why do chemists like working at night?
Nitrates are better than day rates.
What's a chemists favorite ride at the carnival?
The ferrous wheel.
Old chemists never die, they just reach equilibrium.
Why does a white bear melt in water?
Because it's polar.
What is a cation afraid of?
A dogion.
I'm thinkin this won't work at all... I mean, isn't a natural property of P2P networks that the most popular files "survive", that is, they're mirrored over and over again... Sure, some few individuals would download these files, but upon listening to them, they'd probably delete them. I mean, that's what I do when I encounter a low quality MP3. This is exactly why duds and such never bothered me. Even though they're there, you can rely on the overriding philosophy of the network that they won't get around much. It's already evident on Kazaa. Top 40s hits are the easiest things to download, usually reporting an unusually high number of mirrors, as opposed to those single hits of supposedly the same song.
Wow, I just guessed. There's a http://www.google.com/mac too... Why? I dunno.
The most interesting part about inconsistent interfaces on Windows is Microsoft's behavior... Somewhere deep inside MSDN, they advocate using their new Luna-compatible controls, as well as recommending more subtle XP-style conventions like cartoony icons, akin to Apple's UI guidelines...
However, with each version of Office to date (I think...?), Microsoft has never used Windows's native control set. A perfect example of this is Office XP. Office XP, although XP branded, supports none of XP's skinning abilities. Office XP definately sports that flat look, rather than the fluffy, colorful look that Windows has. Although Microsoft has always made sure that the Office controls are an accessible super set of whatever Windows can do, this strategy is a waste of time and money.
How can anyone take Microsoft seriously if they aren't even following their own advice? It's as if they want Office to be its own operating system...
The thing you have to realize about computer interfaces is that a computer can do many more things than most physical objects. In addition, they have many more ports of entry. For example, a toaster can (should) only toast bread, with its slots for bread and slider to depress the bread. But, a CD-burning program like Toast (heh) can be accessed via the shell, with a keyboard, a mouse, etc. It can author all different kinds of CDs (mp3, VCD, etc), each possessing their own quirks, much unlike different shades of toast.
Also, standardized interface elements are some of the most powerful tools available to software designers. Real world objects, in their limited context, can afford to have different interfaces because they only do One Thing and One Thing very well. Since some software can run an entire three ring circus (in addition to noting the myriad of software products out there already), the compromise developers have to make is to use standardized software components...
Standardized UI elements are always expected, accessible, and skinnable. By using the same dial, button, checkbox, anything, across different programs, a user will immediately know what is what. Don't forget that most people have grown up learning what a toaster is, while many have yet to learn how to use their PCs properly... Standard UI elements are always accessible, as governed by the OS... For instance, all standard text boxes in OSX have immediate access to a built in spell checker (I think), as well as input from Inkwell (or whatever).
I can get into an entire holy war about why Mozilla will always remain a second-rate browser for its complete lack of native UI (that's what Chimera is for)... Anyway, standard UI elements are almost always skinnable. Jaguar's UI had a facelift, and all Aqua compliant apps will benefit from that. But the most depressing part about the Windows world is that people don't care about Luna... Luna, however ugly you think it is, is all about the 6th generation of window controls... They are skinnable, visually responsive, and accessible. I hate Windows apps that aren't skinned properly. It isn't as obvious as an OSX app that isn't Aquified, but if you're a fan of Luna, it will stick out like a sore thumb...
And no, I don't think anyone should live with any degree of complexity. Note, I'm not saying devices shouldn't be capable of powerful, complex things, I'm just saying interfaces should be intuitive and obvious.
EditPlus was already recommended, but I'll throw in my personal fave. It's WinVi, an open source Vi clone for Windows. The best part about WinVi is that it accepts keystrokes in both NotePad and Vi styles. That is, if you're feeling lazy and need to just cut and paste via your mouse (or similar Notepad method on the keyboard), WinVi has no problem with that (provided you're in insert mode). Otherwise, WinVi is free to use as a functional Vi clone, with magical search and replace as a prominent feature coming to mind. It also features displaying files in Hex mode, if you dig that.
I've read that one obstacle in the creation of true intelligence (no longer artificial, is it...) is merely the lack of computational power. Does intelligence, human or otherwise, require an immensely complex computer that we've yet to encounter or have we simply not succeeded in discovering the right set of algorithms for the job?
While admittedly, I haven't tried it, the fact that it seems purely dynamic is a litte daunting. Anything that zooms on mouse-over usually doesn't get the highest of usability ratings because the target area becomes less predictable. This is precisely why the Aqua Dock received many a complaint.
/harder/ to access is kinda scary. It should be written in the positive, that more common letters should be /easier/ to access.
This also made me think of that Fish Eye interface for browsing menus (where the text closest to the cursor is the biggest; farthest, smallest)... Anyway, I think that in it's zoomy nature, it leaves little time for people to actually think... And what about unusual character strings, or words not in the normal lexicon (abbreviations, acronyms...)? How easy is it to access the letter X right after Z?
PS - Their description of rarely used letters being
What does Markovian mean? Of course I tried searching on Google but I found more of its use than its simple "what is" definition.
You are only partially correct. Mozilla does not and probably never will (in the near future) use native widgets for any OS because of (I think) XUL. Mozilla has its own rendering engine, controlled by JavaScript and style sheets. This allows for mucho customization, by web developers and users alike. It does not, however, earn any brownie points in usability.
You are, however, correct in that Mozilla on XP inherits the visual style of XP's interface (anything Luna or Classic). But that's all. Mozilla does not inherit the accessibility features in XP. Should XP suddenly support a new input device for navigating sheets (or similar), Mozilla wouldn't have any part of it. The Mozilla team has had many a debate on how to mimic the keyboard shortcuts in Windows since none of the interface is native. For the majority of Windows users, however technical ye are, this is a moot point, because it just looks the same and does its job. This argument is most apparent in Mac OS X, an environment associated with pretty colors and UI guidelines provided by Apple. Many, many OS X users have not used Mozilla because it looks and functions like nothing on OS X. And of course, Linux users either don't care or don't have enough time/energy to choose a standard interface and then care. =)
Mozilla, in all of its open source and standards-compliant glory, will always be a second-rate browser if not native to each platform of operation. Don't get me wrong, I love Mozilla to no end... I'd just like a native version. (See Internet Explorer, OmniWeb, Lynx, etc.)
PS - I don't recall any version of Office using Windows's UI controls... Office always shipped with some new, bleeding edge control of its own, often to be reincarnated into the controls of the next version of Windows. Even Office XP, of all things, has no correlation to native Windows XP controls.
I wanted to get this comment out quickly and then elaborate on it later...
Anyway, wasn't there a project to harness the world's brain power in terms of foreign language? What better way than to ask a French native about French sentences?
It was something along the lines of an agent sitting on the desktop, prepared with the languages the user is proficient in... When there's an incoming question (of the appropriate language, of course), a dialog box notifies the user that someone is in need of translation. Like all distributed networks, for error checking and such, the question goes out to more than one person, to prevent faulty translations or provide a more rich meaning.
Hey, how many slashdotters took Latin in school... =)
This immediately made me think of Roujin Z. Not a very popular anime, but one of my favorites.
It's about an intelligence robot/bed/do-it-all machine for a sickly old man. Doing it all involves monitoring vital signs, playing mah jong, transforming into a movable mecha-type body, etc.
Somewhere in the story, its intelligence manifests itself into his long lost wife, and it becomes this robot's mission to bring him to the beach at any cost, since that's their special place.
(SPOILER?) The robot, secretly augmented with a military-grade AI engine, uses its abilities to assimilate other electronics like speakers (for audio output) or even trucks (for demolition arms) or a helicopter (for flying, actually a move performed by a rival model).
This anime has kept me dreaming since the day I saw it. It represents the neato ideas of artificial intelligence in the hospital as well as the techno-organic style of assimilating objects, however sci-fi-esque it may be.
philipino-connection-#2 dept.
what is that supposed to mean? Filipino? what is that in reference to? i'm almost taking offense to this even though i don't even know what it's about...
Is this somewhat like Sorcerer Linux? The mention of automagical scripts and optimized installs made me think of it right away... Since I'm no Linux guru, anyone care to shed some light?
Try Amazon.com.
I can't find the post on /. that already explained this, but since I'm not a programmer...
What, again, is the point of a program that can compile itself? (see Best Abuse of the Rules winner)
Ugh I know this is going to seem like extremely shallow commentary but...
Microsoft Word has better on-screen anti-aliasing than something like Adobe Photoshop. Lemme explain. Photoshop indiscriminately anti-aliases all curves, and it does it pretty well (even with a few variations, smooth, strong, etc). Microsoft Word (as well as all Microsoft products that use that engine) renders anti-aliased text as well but favors vertical and horizontal lines. That is, even if a font mathematically hangs over a vertical and deserves some kind of gray line, Word will keep a solid vertical line only (see Times New Roman, any capital letter at 72pt). What this does is accentuate the fact that the fonts are on screen, where the canvas natively has vertical and horizontal accents built in (a grid of pixels).
And about ClearType... I think it's for LCDs only (like laptops), so I've read. Instead of just treating the field of pixels as blocks of single color, (black text on white, two colors), the ClearType algorithm exploits the fact that pixels are actually three colors, red, blue, and green. So, instead of just using the font-color and background color (and everything in between) to render smooth fonts (that is, black, white, all shades of gray), ClearType uses shades of blue and orange when using white and black, to help apply the smoothing factor to those RGB "pixels" within pixels. I've tried it on my CRT and it doesn't do anything for me, but then again, it wasn't meant to.
If you've ever worked with print or web design, you know jaggies look extremely ugly and unprofessional. If you look at a website like Apple's, you wouldn't give jaggies a second thought because all of their material is well-rendered and well-anti-aliased. All those little pixels make a big difference in the overall presentation of something. If you want to see ugly, try looking at a nice Flash presentation in LOW mode. That will turn off all anti-aliasing. It looks horrible.
But I don't get it, why would you say something is rotten? Microsoft and Freetype look like they're doing a pretty good job.
Since you seem to know what you're talking about... =)
Is it me or does this seem like a game of catchup from sloppy, previous implementation? The CNET article about this says hyperthreading makes use of unused parts of the processor. What I want to know is why wasn't it being used in the first place... Like... Why is this news worthy, as in, what makes hyperthreading so revolutionary? The way you've explained it, it seems very fundamental.
I'm not too sure about the transfer speed of USB but I really like the Rio DJ function. RioDJ basically chooses songs for you (a supplement to personal playlists) by frequency of play, newly added music, songs of a certain decade, at random, etc... I hate wading through 2000 songs, because I end up playing them same 10 or so each time around. I don't think a function like this (of automated playlists) exists on the iPod. So, that's a plus.
How true. Yet, the real test is how long it will take for the automatic update engine to get hold of it. It's amazing that you go to the Windows Update site but I'm sure there are people who don't even know that it exists let alone what to do there. Installing patches, that is, system maintenance, should be automagical, you know, for all the Mom and Pop types that don't read MS security bulletins.
Wow, I totally agree. On a tangent, it irks me when people say that things like genetic engineering and technology aren't natural. I mean, aren't the humans, the genetic engineers, natural beings? It's sorta meant to be, no? Like, define natural. Sooner or later, some organism, if not humans, would develop "technology"... And yes, there will always be some kind of natural equilibrium that the world will reach as a result of any change, be it for the better or worse of society. It's a chemical fact =)