And still do.... the last two weeks I've been back and forth between my older Win 2K box and my new G4 Mac Powerbook. Reason? A handful of tasks that I needed to do that the Mac can't handle, or at least can't handle without buying an overpriced $50 helper app that would be Open source or shareware on the Windows box.
After nearly a year with OS X I still find the interface annoying, cluttered with useless shiney things, and generally something that slows me down.
You know, as evil as it was, I really liked Gator for one thing - it did a pretty good job of autofilling forms. Like all good software it Just worked without a great deal of hassle.
Am I alone in reading the blurb on Slashdot and not having a clue what it was about? Please folks, a three word description for the unititated would be nice.
Optimus was the Radio Shack speaker line at one time, so I immediately thought audio. Then I saw keyboard, then I saw three button, which sounds like a mouse. Then I saw excessive CPU usage, which doesn't sound like any keybaord OR mouse that I know of...
At which point it seemed that there wasn't whole lot of reasons to RTFA.
... which aims at providing a workflow-sensitive design of the user interface that improves productivity of an average KDE user
My experience with both Windows and OS X is that anytime the OS tries to "help" me it makes life more difficult.
For me the holy grail of desktop design is one that allows me to place what I want, where I want on the desk top and have it remain exactly where I put it.
Even better, when I switch from the 12" laptop to the big flat screen on my desk, allow me two desktop settings that make best use of the different real estate available.
OS X widgets seem like great idea, but I find that the need to pop up or drop into the widget level, and then wait for the actual widgets to load up and begin functioning is a pain in the butt. I'd rather have things like calculators or weather or currency converters right on the desktop and immediately available.
Apple's solution just seems to add more clicks and more time to do routine tasks.
If KDE goes the route of trying to guess what I want, please give me the option of turning that guessing game off.
Ok, shouldn't an article discussing the success (or failure) of a new product mention at least once how many of the darned things have been sold?
"Thousands have sold, but not nearly as many as Segway hoped for." is altogether vague. Is that 1000 a year? Or 400 a year?
After five years I can count on one hand the number of Segways that I've actaully seen. That suggests that they have been much less than smashing sucess.
First, please stop referencing American law - Canada is still a foreign country.
Second, the function of Access Copyright is pretty simple: it licences content on behalf of the creators so that it can be freely used within shcools. The idea, a simple one, is that when some teacher photocopies dozens of copies of your short story instead of buying text books you will still get some payment.
Contary to common belief, especially among teachers, there no law natural or otherwise that allows them unfettered use of other people's work.
CTV reporter David Akin blogs a comment that suggests that the real reason for the sudden battery recall was:
Recalls never happen without a sound business case for them. It's a risk management strategy....
My guess, and this is only a guess, is that this was prompted by the recent ban of laptops in carry-on luggage on aircraft. With a laptop in the cabin, if it's battery caught fire, there would be humans (and fire extinguishers) nearby to put out the fire. With laptops being carried in baggage, the risk of 20... in 6 million batteries catching fire becomes only 1 in 300,000.
Given that there are about 30,000 commercial flights per day in the US (and about 5,000 airborne at any given moment), it's not too far fetched to assume that eventually an unattended battery fire will bring down a commercial airliner. Or two. That's the risk that exceeds $100,000,000 (cost of replacing the batteries) and was what prompted (I think) the recall.
Ten or twenty people having laptops catch fire isn't enough to motivate Apple or Dell or Sony, but the prospect of a 747 going up in flames is.
As I recall the airlines or TSA also strongly discourages you from locking checked baggage unless you use one of their "approved" locks.
What a time to be a baggage handler with an E-bay account!
And how will corporations react to having their sensitive corporate data floating around unknown places out of the hands of their employees, or even lost forever in misdirected luggage?
This story seems to build on a rather sensational UN release from last week which declares that pot is the Biggest Drug Problem in the world.
Among other things, The 2006 World Drug Report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime "explains that 162 million people, or four per cent of the world's adult population, use cannabis annually, and that the number of users worldwide has jumped by 10 per cent since the late 1990s -- a larger increase than for any other drug."
The Report reaches near Reefer Madness levels with:
...the latest research indicates that the pendulum (of opinion) may have swung too far in the opposite direction. There are serious mental health consequences associated with cannabis, including a significant risk of dependency, precipitation and aggravation of psychosis, and acute dysphoric episodes. These risks appear to be higher for people who start consuming cannabis during adolescence. Each year, thousands of people seek medical attention for problems related to their cannabis use, and this number appears to be growing. Cannabis is not the harmless herb often portrayed, but a psychoactive drug that deserves to be taken seriously.
I'm wondering how the DEA managed to take over writing reports for the UN. Now there's a consiracy theory!
I can't see an automated system doing this better than a human being. Then again it couldn't be much worse. Time and again I've walked out of "fast" food joints when it became obvious that Mr. Junior Part-Time Assistant Manager had scheduled about four less employee drones than were needed.
I wonder how many of these chains that measure "efficiency" only by the number dollars spent on employees also bother to measure customer dissatisfaction and the number of people who look at a line up of fifteen people at the single till and decide that they can live without another Big Mac.
This really makes me wonder about the shiny new Diebold ATMs being istalled by banks all over Canada. Then again, perhaps banks actually give a damn about security.
Over the last two years many of the members of the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) have been exploring options which would allow them to use VOIP for broadcast purposes. Skype is among the packages that some of our members have worked with.
If you are a broadcast journalist, especially with an interest in Public broadcasting, you should consider an AIR membership which will allow you to join our superb member e-mail list and access our mentorship program.
Seriously, if you need broadcast advice, talk to broadcasters, not computer geeks.
I also know that in Canada there are explicit exceptions for education. Thus, if it is for teaching you can make copies of a copyrighted work and distribute these to the class.
That is within an educational setting that is licenced by Access Copyright.
Fubar says "The company I work for provides training 'workshops' to various folks in the finance industry. The folks who give the presentations during the workshops are considering adding short clips from various movies to help illustrate their points."
This is a purely commercial use, and as such permission and probably royalties would need to be paid in either country.
"College athletic programs being what they are, many schools depend on the revenue generated by sports programs as a significant source of funding."
Don't have a cite at hand, but as I recall very few schools actually see net benefit from athletic tied funding. Mostly athletic money goes to funding more athetics, or at least more expensive athletics.
"Kent State officials have also expressed concern over the personal information posted by student athletes. That data has been used by both sports agents and fans to contact students inappropriately."
OK! So more likely there are agents trying to encourge students to cash in before the school has sucked every last dollar out of their star athletes?
Finally... Kent State of all places is worried about an image problem? Somehow I would think that after having several of your students shot that a few drunken jocks would be the least of your problems.
Although describing our esteemed head honcho as a great editor may be pushing things a bit, the comments about Slashdot miss an important point.
The challenge faced by many Internet sites is not to generate reams and reams of content, but to allow users a way to filter out only what they want or need. What with "citizen journalists" and plain old trolls and conspiracy theorists, there needs to be some kind of moderating hand to make information useful.
Peer review, like that created by Slashdot, is one way of doing that, but a firm editorial hand is even more useful. That's why my daily reading includes not just Slashdot, but other sites and blogs which cover specific topics and direct me only to the stories or posts that are of value.
Despite gripes - and I don't even bother trying to post stories any more - Slashdot does a reasonable job of that filtering.
Don't be an employee, be a partner. Should have bought a chunk of the company.
Back in my day.....
on
ASCII World Cup
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
You know it strikes me that probably 90% of the Internet audience these days would have no clue what ASCII is, much less how to telnet into the server.
On one hand, that's slightly sad - I remember being able to type faster on a C-64 than the modem could transmit - on the other it's amazing how far technology has come in only a decade.
My other thought is to ask the likelihood that FIFA will shut them down as an infringing activity.
My God. I can't recall the last time that so many people lined up to actively support sweatshops and exploitation. What does this tell us about Apple fans?
It's a simple equation. In a global economy we can try to raise everyone's wages and standards of living, or we can choose to lower everyone's wages and standards of living.
The Chinese worker being paid $50 a month is dragging your income down. Decently paid unionized workers in Europe or North America drag the wages paid to Chinse workers up
Look at it this way. If you work in North America your real income is probably in decline. What happens if in five or ten years the cheap Chinese labor pool unionizes and strikes for higher wages?
You'll suddenly find that you can't afford even Chinese made products.
I'm working with team in another country right now. We've been emailing Excel sheets back and forth to track a variety of issues. This is a tool that is perfect for our needs.
We don't need super encrypted security, but we do need an easy way to keep our work in sync. We really don't want to start installing new tools for just one project.
Google has winner on their hands with this one. It's good enough for many jobs, simpler than Excel, and makes sharing a spreadsheet simple and fast.
Slashdot Mirror
And still do.... the last two weeks I've been back and forth between my older Win 2K box and my new G4 Mac Powerbook. Reason? A handful of tasks that I needed to do that the Mac can't handle, or at least can't handle without buying an overpriced $50 helper app that would be Open source or shareware on the Windows box.
After nearly a year with OS X I still find the interface annoying, cluttered with useless shiney things, and generally something that slows me down.
You know, as evil as it was, I really liked Gator for one thing - it did a pretty good job of autofilling forms. Like all good software it Just worked without a great deal of hassle.
Am I alone in reading the blurb on Slashdot and not having a clue what it was about? Please folks, a three word description for the unititated would be nice.
Optimus was the Radio Shack speaker line at one time, so I immediately thought audio. Then I saw keyboard, then I saw three button, which sounds like a mouse. Then I saw excessive CPU usage, which doesn't sound like any keybaord OR mouse that I know of...
At which point it seemed that there wasn't whole lot of reasons to RTFA.
... which aims at providing a workflow-sensitive design of the user interface that improves productivity of an average KDE user
My experience with both Windows and OS X is that anytime the OS tries to "help" me it makes life more difficult.
For me the holy grail of desktop design is one that allows me to place what I want, where I want on the desk top and have it remain exactly where I put it.
Even better, when I switch from the 12" laptop to the big flat screen on my desk, allow me two desktop settings that make best use of the different real estate available.
OS X widgets seem like great idea, but I find that the need to pop up or drop into the widget level, and then wait for the actual widgets to load up and begin functioning is a pain in the butt. I'd rather have things like calculators or weather or currency converters right on the desktop and immediately available.
Apple's solution just seems to add more clicks and more time to do routine tasks.
If KDE goes the route of trying to guess what I want, please give me the option of turning that guessing game off.
The majority of bankruptcies are caused by medical bills, and 74% of those HAD insurance.
Not that I doubt it, Tom, but do you have cite for that stat?
Ok, shouldn't an article discussing the success (or failure) of a new product mention at least once how many of the darned things have been sold?
"Thousands have sold, but not nearly as many as Segway hoped for." is altogether vague. Is that 1000 a year? Or 400 a year?
After five years I can count on one hand the number of Segways that I've actaully seen. That suggests that they have been much less than smashing sucess.
First, please stop referencing American law - Canada is still a foreign country.
Second, the function of Access Copyright is pretty simple: it licences content on behalf of the creators so that it can be freely used within shcools. The idea, a simple one, is that when some teacher photocopies dozens of copies of your short story instead of buying text books you will still get some payment.
Contary to common belief, especially among teachers, there no law natural or otherwise that allows them unfettered use of other people's work.
Hah - I won't buy one of these HD DVD players until it will interface with my HD Radio!
"CTV reporter David Akin blogs a comment that suggests that the real reason for the sudden battery recall was:"
/ 8/25/2265154.html
Hmm, missed this somehow...
http://davidakin.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006
Ten or twenty people having laptops catch fire isn't enough to motivate Apple or Dell or Sony, but the prospect of a 747 going up in flames is.
As I recall the airlines or TSA also strongly discourages you from locking checked baggage unless you use one of their "approved" locks.
What a time to be a baggage handler with an E-bay account!
And how will corporations react to having their sensitive corporate data floating around unknown places out of the hands of their employees, or even lost forever in misdirected luggage?
Among other things, The 2006 World Drug Report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime "explains that 162 million people, or four per cent of the world's adult population, use cannabis annually, and that the number of users worldwide has jumped by 10 per cent since the late 1990s -- a larger increase than for any other drug."
The Report reaches near Reefer Madness levels with:
I'm wondering how the DEA managed to take over writing reports for the UN. Now there's a consiracy theory!
I can't see an automated system doing this better than a human being. Then again it couldn't be much worse. Time and again I've walked out of "fast" food joints when it became obvious that Mr. Junior Part-Time Assistant Manager had scheduled about four less employee drones than were needed.
I wonder how many of these chains that measure "efficiency" only by the number dollars spent on employees also bother to measure customer dissatisfaction and the number of people who look at a line up of fifteen people at the single till and decide that they can live without another Big Mac.
This really makes me wonder about the shiny new Diebold ATMs being istalled by banks all over Canada. Then again, perhaps banks actually give a damn about security.
Jennifer,
Over the last two years many of the members of the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) have been exploring options which would allow them to use VOIP for broadcast purposes. Skype is among the packages that some of our members have worked with.
If you are a broadcast journalist, especially with an interest in Public broadcasting, you should consider an AIR membership which will allow you to join our superb member e-mail list and access our mentorship program.
Seriously, if you need broadcast advice, talk to broadcasters, not computer geeks.
I also know that in Canada there are explicit exceptions for education. Thus, if it is for teaching you can make copies of a copyrighted work and distribute these to the class.
That is within an educational setting that is licenced by Access Copyright.
Fubar says "The company I work for provides training 'workshops' to various folks in the finance industry. The folks who give the presentations during the workshops are considering adding short clips from various movies to help illustrate their points."
This is a purely commercial use, and as such permission and probably royalties would need to be paid in either country.
The final words of many a young gun owner "Hey, watch this!"
Selected grafs from one of TFA...
"College athletic programs being what they are, many schools depend on the revenue generated by sports programs as a significant source of funding."
Don't have a cite at hand, but as I recall very few schools actually see net benefit from athletic tied funding. Mostly athletic money goes to funding more athetics, or at least more expensive athletics.
"Kent State officials have also expressed concern over the personal information posted by student athletes. That data has been used by both sports agents and fans to contact students inappropriately."
OK! So more likely there are agents trying to encourge students to cash in before the school has sucked every last dollar out of their star athletes?
Finally... Kent State of all places is worried about an image problem? Somehow I would think that after having several of your students shot that a few drunken jocks would be the least of your problems.
Although describing our esteemed head honcho as a great editor may be pushing things a bit, the comments about Slashdot miss an important point.
The challenge faced by many Internet sites is not to generate reams and reams of content, but to allow users a way to filter out only what they want or need. What with "citizen journalists" and plain old trolls and conspiracy theorists, there needs to be some kind of moderating hand to make information useful.
Peer review, like that created by Slashdot, is one way of doing that, but a firm editorial hand is even more useful. That's why my daily reading includes not just Slashdot, but other sites and blogs which cover specific topics and direct me only to the stories or posts that are of value.
Despite gripes - and I don't even bother trying to post stories any more - Slashdot does a reasonable job of that filtering.
Damn them!!
Dood! Rip the tunz to MP3 and like toss the cases. Physical media is so lame!
Seriously, hundred of community radios tations know that there is no good replacemnt for jewel cases.
Don't be an employee, be a partner. Should have bought a chunk of the company.
You know it strikes me that probably 90% of the Internet audience these days would have no clue what ASCII is, much less how to telnet into the server.
On one hand, that's slightly sad - I remember being able to type faster on a C-64 than the modem could transmit - on the other it's amazing how far technology has come in only a decade.
My other thought is to ask the likelihood that FIFA will shut them down as an infringing activity.
My God. I can't recall the last time that so many people lined up to actively support sweatshops and exploitation. What does this tell us about Apple fans?
It's a simple equation. In a global economy we can try to raise everyone's wages and standards of living, or we can choose to lower everyone's wages and standards of living.
The Chinese worker being paid $50 a month is dragging your income down. Decently paid unionized workers in Europe or North America drag the wages paid to Chinse workers up
Look at it this way. If you work in North America your real income is probably in decline. What happens if in five or ten years the cheap Chinese labor pool unionizes and strikes for higher wages?
You'll suddenly find that you can't afford even Chinese made products.
I'm working with team in another country right now. We've been emailing Excel sheets back and forth to track a variety of issues. This is a tool that is perfect for our needs.
We don't need super encrypted security, but we do need an easy way to keep our work in sync. We really don't want to start installing new tools for just one project.
Google has winner on their hands with this one. It's good enough for many jobs, simpler than Excel, and makes sharing a spreadsheet simple and fast.