It doesn't matter if the phone companies won't stock it. With Cingular, you can put your Cingular sim card into any GSM phone and use it right away. (...as long as it can operate on the frequencies used in North America. Usually these phones are called "Quadband", as opposed to Europe-only "Triband" GSM phones.) I think Verizon, Sprint, US Cellular all use a different network and their phones are incompatible.
You pay more because your phone isn't subsidized by your contract, but you get a nicer and more advanced phone without all the extra charges to use the phone's features.
Anyone have any ideas for how to run it on a Mac? I tried doing it how it would be run in Linux, and I tried launching the app with the Java Launcher, but it doesn't seem to want to work.
It's probably way too late to be modded for this, but I just wanted to tell the parent: Exactly.
I have also spent several thousand hours with autistic kids, and now I work for a study trying to find out exactly how often autism occurs. We're a public health authority so we get to go in and look through medical records and other things that are usually off-limits to most people.
You hit the nail on the head, in my opinion. People seem to *want* the label. It's like, if something is wrong with the kid, they want to be told the kid has autism. If the doctor says the kid's a little retarded or just has a language disorder, the parents think the doctor is an asshole.
AND, the more impressive thing about your post, is your accurate assessment of having a "mild form of Aspergers". People will take their kid in to a psychologist or school psychologist/counselor. Everyone watched 20/20 the night before so they say "Hey! He isn't completely normal, maybe he has Mild Aspergers."
Then the parents take that, and say "Right! He has autism!" You would be surprised how often that leap is made. (actually, maybe you wouldn't.) And the problem is, there are lots of places where people think Aspergers fits on the spectrum. Some people see it as "mild autism", where some people barely see it as a pervasive developmental disorder at all.
It is such a huge spectrum, and it is important not to exclude people from that spectrum, but one end of the spectrum (Possible mild aspergers, or PDD-NOS) looks so different from Classic Autism that it really doesn't make sense to call *everyone* autistic. Especially since we can already call the spectrum pervasive developmental disorders.
Anyway, great post. I get so irritated of people saying that everyone has autism, or people saying "I look at my life and I like X so maybe I have autism, too! Tee-hee!"
Thank you. I felt like that was the point someone needed to make. I've spent nearly five years working with autistic kids, and am now working for a study doing public health surveillance for autism and other disabilities.
Autism *Spectrum* Disorders cover such a broad range of levels of functionality, it really isn't fair to use the term "autistic" when someone says "Children with autism do not need to be cured." A lot of doctors have differing views on what actually constitutes a pervasive developmental disorder, and there can be motivations behind getting the diagnosis for your child.
A child I work with has broken bones in his feet and fractured bones in his face due to self-injurious behavior. He could stand to be cured, if it was possible. But if a child has problems with eye contact and perseverates on trains and is called autistic, it is a lot easier to say "There's nothing wrong with autism. YOU people are the ones who are going to need to change!"
I think these things are really cool, but what still stops me is the bulb cost.
They say the bulbs cost $20-$30 and I can afford that, but how long do the bulbs last? When I searched for Overhead Projector replacement bulbs, I got figures from 30-75 hours. Best case, that's ($20/75hours)= $.26 per hour.
The bulbs for the X1 projector are $299 and last for up to 4000 hours (http://members.shaw.ca/technut/x1faq/#8.2). That is like $.07 per hour.
To me, this really doesn't seem any better off in the long run. Am I missing something?
I agree. I almost feel like pitchfork has "ceilings" and "floors" for scores of certain albums. Like Junior Senior couldn't have been higher, because it was "just" a pop album. Even though they went on and on about how fun it was.
If he wanted to compose "original songs" based on a predictable formula, why use pitchfork as a source?
So, look at this scoring system. He says anything over 7.4 is a positive review, and he counts up the words used in it. What happens when they review the latest Radiohead album, give it a 9.3 and whine for 500 words about what wasn't perfect? To me (a daily reader of pfork), they are good at talking about new indie music and getting the word out, but they are pretty arbitrary with whether a 7.9 review was an awesome album (junior senior), or a mild disappointment (modest mouse's latest) in their eyes.
If you want to make a point and say "here's the formula to a good song", why use pitchfork? Why not use Entertainment Weekly or something that is much more mainstream and will follow trends?
Shit, half the time pitchfork doesn't even talk about the album. It could be a guy reminiscing about childhood or how he used to hate/like these guys, and then end with "so that's MY life story. (Album gets a 7.4)".
Metacritic (www.metacritic.com) averages reviews from many sources and weighs the scores as they see fit.
Anyway, I love pitchfork, but I don't see them as the basis of anything even remotely systematic.
Aside from the differing sonic qualities of the wood, I wonder how it will hold up to temperature and humidity. Even if the speakers sound great, they have to be able to be used for more than a few months.
I wouldn't be surprised to see this be chic in audiophile circles. The irony of expensive wood sounding great but cheap paper being crap would be could be very appealing to members of the Golden Ear Club.
It wasn't even a 'link to some legal documents'. It was an article containing HardOCP's response to a poorly formed legal threat. You might be giving these Infinium letters the most weight and validity out of anyone involved.
It was intended to be an entertaining read, and not out of line with anything else that ends up on this site.
I go to those sites and they are great for saving money, and they totally hooked me up for last year's Black Friday Sale.
I went in and bought the items a few days before. Then, I went back to the store during the Big Sale, and said "Gee, it looks like all my stuff is now on sale, can I get a price adjustment?" Either way, I'm in the store (I actually make an extra trip).
Is getting up at 4:00 in the morning to wait in line that much better than buying it a day before? A lot of times the sale items are in limited quantities, so they are gone after a handful of people enter the store.
Between school and work, I know a handful of people who use PDA's (myself included). I don't know if anyone would see any benefit from using a PocketPC or Linux platform on their machine.
Even if a Linux machine came out with all those features, wouldn't that make it equivalent to a PocketPC?
It's like when you go to a restaurant, and you say "I'll have a Coke." "I'm sorry, all we have is Pepsi." "That's fine, whatever."
Maybe I've got my head up my ass, but wouldn't a Linux machine have to go above and beyond what is currently available to make some inroads? Cross platform compatability would be nice, but what could it do to make people say "I'm sorry, I have to have a Coke"?
Comparing the subject pool for the surveys is vital to making sense of this. Others have made the point that people are more digitally aware now, and I agree with that. It seems every year more PC stuff becomes Common Knowledge. Nearly everyone is aware that you can download music and burn it to CD, and that's easy enough to do.
HOWEVER, owning a computer and using AOL does not make you an expert on what is going on with your coomputer. I am a student, and a TON of people I know had their computers 'set up' by someone else. A few of my guy friends think this is a good way to impress the ladies.
Anyway, those people probably couldn't much other than they run windows, and AOL is really fast at college. Combined with people who would lie about piracy, the number is just based on the luck of the draw unless the procedures and samples are standardized.
If anything, it sounds like the man has a gambling problem and needed some quick cash.
Everyone immediately starts talking about building up fake accounts, or plotting this years in advance. Neither idea seems likely to me.
First of all, building up fake accounts to that level would seem to be a pretty big pain. All those transactions over three or four years would seem like a lot, especially when you have a staff, a store, and a wife involved to an extent. They said he was respected in the figurine community.
Also, if this was some brilliant slow moving plan in action, I think he set the bar too low. That isn't enough money to make it worth chancing your reputation, career and wife over, is it? I'm asking, as I don't have any of the three.:)
So, I say gambling addiction. He NEEDED money fast, or was going to be in some trouble. The only time it seemed worth it to disappear forever with that little money was in Shawshank.
I agree that you should be able to do whatever you want to it. If I'm allowed to drop it out of my second story window, I should be allowed to do other things.
HOWEVER, I could do things with it that are illegal. For example, if I used it to play pirated games, that would be breaking the law--I'm not supposed to have pirated games. Just like if I dropped it out my window onto the passersby, that would be illegal because you are not supposed to hurt other people.
Maybe this has already been said (and if it has, I apologize), but it's like having a law to keep you from breaking the law. I think that is the big problem. Due to copyright laws that are unrealistic to enforce (but not necessarily bad laws), they need to pass a second law to help enforce the first one. I'm glad Australia stopped this. Unfortunately no one can think of a better way to enforce this than being overly preventative.
I don't think anyone is really surprised by any of this. Everyone is just starting to realize that in order to dominate in the communications/entertainment industry, it is going to have to happen through the television. The internet aspires to be tv, and in the future, whatever we make pop up on a screen in our house will be more like tv today than the internet today. Of course companies want to try to take control of that. Think of how poorly e-commerce is doing on the whole, and then look at the Home shopping network on tv, or those guys who yell as loud as they can about basketball cards. Tv is what works, and that is the route that all these companies have to start with.
And as far as being worried about Microsoft or Sony having a monopoly, it'll only last if they don't get TOO greedy or stupid. If the PS3 combines too many Sony-exclusive technologies, then it will fail. Sony is one of the biggest electronics manufacturers in the world, yet not one of my friends owns any of their mp3 players because they use a dumbass format (even though the other ones are supported). Just because a company is trying to have the biggest market share (and what company doesn't?) doesn't mean that they'll get it. It'll have to be worthwhile for the people.
I took the AP ComSci course twice. I took it the course the last year when it was Pascal, and took the AP test that year and got a '5'. Then, the next year when it was C++ I was allowed to take the course over and still got credit becase it was different, and I thought that it would be helpful to me to learn C++. Because no one knew anything about it, and my teacher was also the baseball coach (He spent most days in the back of the room watching tapes of games or calculating stats. Sometimes he would yell short phrases of encouragement to us like "No GOTO's (in the QBasic course) or "Shhh! Fellas!" when we were too noisy.) We were on our own, and my friends and I began thinking of that class as "a dirty, dirty bitch."
But I do have a few ideas for how to handle the projects...
1) "No GOTO's!"
2) If the point of the class is to get you college credit, the projects should be related to what is going to be on the test. Which means no games, graphics or sound. Not that these things couldn't be incorporated in as part of a project, but it takes time to learn the commands and uses of graphics, which will be not used on the AP test. Time was really important for us, because none of us had ever used C++ before.
3) We had to do a lot of stupid programs about billing people at fake pet stores, and selling tickets at a fictional theater. Those were boring. If my CS teacher would have thought about it, he could have had us make a program to track his players' stats. We never did, though because explaining that would have taken more words than he spoke to us in the entire semester. I think anything with a real world application is better than the stuff they give you for exercises in the CS books.
4)The AP tests always came a couple weeks before the end of the semester. You could have the students do the fun things post-test. I think an Instant Messenger or games or AI are great ideas, they just won't be all that valuable on the test, assuming the test is pretty much the same as it was a few years ago. But it would be a very worthwhile and fun way to end the semester.
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It doesn't matter if the phone companies won't stock it. With Cingular, you can put your Cingular sim card into any GSM phone and use it right away. (...as long as it can operate on the frequencies used in North America. Usually these phones are called "Quadband", as opposed to Europe-only "Triband" GSM phones.) I think Verizon, Sprint, US Cellular all use a different network and their phones are incompatible.
You pay more because your phone isn't subsidized by your contract, but you get a nicer and more advanced phone without all the extra charges to use the phone's features.
Anyone have any ideas for how to run it on a Mac? I tried doing it how it would be run in Linux, and I tried launching the app with the Java Launcher, but it doesn't seem to want to work.
Any thoughts?
It's probably way too late to be modded for this, but I just wanted to tell the parent: Exactly.
I have also spent several thousand hours with autistic kids, and now I work for a study trying to find out exactly how often autism occurs. We're a public health authority so we get to go in and look through medical records and other things that are usually off-limits to most people.
You hit the nail on the head, in my opinion. People seem to *want* the label. It's like, if something is wrong with the kid, they want to be told the kid has autism. If the doctor says the kid's a little retarded or just has a language disorder, the parents think the doctor is an asshole.
AND, the more impressive thing about your post, is your accurate assessment of having a "mild form of Aspergers". People will take their kid in to a psychologist or school psychologist/counselor. Everyone watched 20/20 the night before so they say "Hey! He isn't completely normal, maybe he has Mild Aspergers."
Then the parents take that, and say "Right! He has autism!" You would be surprised how often that leap is made. (actually, maybe you wouldn't.) And the problem is, there are lots of places where people think Aspergers fits on the spectrum. Some people see it as "mild autism", where some people barely see it as a pervasive developmental disorder at all.
It is such a huge spectrum, and it is important not to exclude people from that spectrum, but one end of the spectrum (Possible mild aspergers, or PDD-NOS) looks so different from Classic Autism that it really doesn't make sense to call *everyone* autistic. Especially since we can already call the spectrum pervasive developmental disorders.
Anyway, great post. I get so irritated of people saying that everyone has autism, or people saying "I look at my life and I like X so maybe I have autism, too! Tee-hee!"
Thank you. I felt like that was the point someone needed to make. I've spent nearly five years working with autistic kids, and am now working for a study doing public health surveillance for autism and other disabilities.
Autism *Spectrum* Disorders cover such a broad range of levels of functionality, it really isn't fair to use the term "autistic" when someone says "Children with autism do not need to be cured." A lot of doctors have differing views on what actually constitutes a pervasive developmental disorder, and there can be motivations behind getting the diagnosis for your child.
A child I work with has broken bones in his feet and fractured bones in his face due to self-injurious behavior. He could stand to be cured, if it was possible. But if a child has problems with eye contact and perseverates on trains and is called autistic, it is a lot easier to say "There's nothing wrong with autism. YOU people are the ones who are going to need to change!"
I think these things are really cool, but what still stops me is the bulb cost.
They say the bulbs cost $20-$30 and I can afford that, but how long do the bulbs last? When I searched for Overhead Projector replacement bulbs, I got figures from 30-75 hours. Best case, that's ($20/75hours)= $.26 per hour.
The bulbs for the X1 projector are $299 and last for up to 4000 hours (http://members.shaw.ca/technut/x1faq/#8.2). That is like $.07 per hour.
To me, this really doesn't seem any better off in the long run. Am I missing something?
My favorite Snoop Dog Joke:
Q: Why does Snoop use an umbrella?
A: Fo' drizzle.
I agree with you, but having the cutting edge equipment never scales in "bang-for-the-buck."
I agree. I almost feel like pitchfork has "ceilings" and "floors" for scores of certain albums. Like Junior Senior couldn't have been higher, because it was "just" a pop album. Even though they went on and on about how fun it was.
God, I loved the music video for Move Your Feet.
My apologies, Junior Senior was a 7.6
I think the point is still there, though.
If he wanted to compose "original songs" based on a predictable formula, why use pitchfork as a source?
So, look at this scoring system. He says anything over 7.4 is a positive review, and he counts up the words used in it. What happens when they review the latest Radiohead album, give it a 9.3 and whine for 500 words about what wasn't perfect? To me (a daily reader of pfork), they are good at talking about new indie music and getting the word out, but they are pretty arbitrary with whether a 7.9 review was an awesome album (junior senior), or a mild disappointment (modest mouse's latest) in their eyes.
If you want to make a point and say "here's the formula to a good song", why use pitchfork? Why not use Entertainment Weekly or something that is much more mainstream and will follow trends?
Shit, half the time pitchfork doesn't even talk about the album. It could be a guy reminiscing about childhood or how he used to hate/like these guys, and then end with "so that's MY life story. (Album gets a 7.4)".
Metacritic (www.metacritic.com) averages reviews from many sources and weighs the scores as they see fit.
Anyway, I love pitchfork, but I don't see them as the basis of anything even remotely systematic.
Aside from the differing sonic qualities of the wood, I wonder how it will hold up to temperature and humidity. Even if the speakers sound great, they have to be able to be used for more than a few months.
I wouldn't be surprised to see this be chic in audiophile circles. The irony of expensive wood sounding great but cheap paper being crap would be could be very appealing to members of the Golden Ear Club.
It wasn't even a 'link to some legal documents'. It was an article containing HardOCP's response to a poorly formed legal threat. You might be giving these Infinium letters the most weight and validity out of anyone involved.
It was intended to be an entertaining read, and not out of line with anything else that ends up on this site.
Maybe a little off-topic...
I go to those sites and they are great for saving money, and they totally hooked me up for last year's Black Friday Sale.
I went in and bought the items a few days before. Then, I went back to the store during the Big Sale, and said "Gee, it looks like all my stuff is now on sale, can I get a price adjustment?" Either way, I'm in the store (I actually make an extra trip).
Is getting up at 4:00 in the morning to wait in line that much better than buying it a day before? A lot of times the sale items are in limited quantities, so they are gone after a handful of people enter the store.
Between school and work, I know a handful of people who use PDA's (myself included). I don't know if anyone would see any benefit from using a PocketPC or Linux platform on their machine.
Even if a Linux machine came out with all those features, wouldn't that make it equivalent to a PocketPC?
It's like when you go to a restaurant, and you say "I'll have a Coke."
"I'm sorry, all we have is Pepsi."
"That's fine, whatever."
Maybe I've got my head up my ass, but wouldn't a Linux machine have to go above and beyond what is currently available to make some inroads? Cross platform compatability would be nice, but what could it do to make people say "I'm sorry, I have to have a Coke"?
Comparing the subject pool for the surveys is vital to making sense of this. Others have made the point that people are more digitally aware now, and I agree with that. It seems every year more PC stuff becomes Common Knowledge. Nearly everyone is aware that you can download music and burn it to CD, and that's easy enough to do.
HOWEVER, owning a computer and using AOL does not make you an expert on what is going on with your coomputer. I am a student, and a TON of people I know had their computers 'set up' by someone else. A few of my guy friends think this is a good way to impress the ladies.
Anyway, those people probably couldn't much other than they run windows, and AOL is really fast at college. Combined with people who would lie about piracy, the number is just based on the luck of the draw unless the procedures and samples are standardized.
It was an obvious point, but at least it was said.
And, the law is being interpreted unambiguously.
I think that IF videogames convince some people to behave unacceptably, the problem lies in those people's minds, not the videogame.
If anything, it sounds like the man has a gambling problem and needed some quick cash.
:)
Everyone immediately starts talking about building up fake accounts, or plotting this years in advance. Neither idea seems likely to me.
First of all, building up fake accounts to that level would seem to be a pretty big pain. All those transactions over three or four years would seem like a lot, especially when you have a staff, a store, and a wife involved to an extent. They said he was respected in the figurine community.
Also, if this was some brilliant slow moving plan in action, I think he set the bar too low. That isn't enough money to make it worth chancing your reputation, career and wife over, is it? I'm asking, as I don't have any of the three.
So, I say gambling addiction. He NEEDED money fast, or was going to be in some trouble. The only time it seemed worth it to disappear forever with that little money was in Shawshank.
I agree that you should be able to do whatever you want to it. If I'm allowed to drop it out of my second story window, I should be allowed to do other things.
HOWEVER, I could do things with it that are illegal. For example, if I used it to play pirated games, that would be breaking the law--I'm not supposed to have pirated games. Just like if I dropped it out my window onto the passersby, that would be illegal because you are not supposed to hurt other people.
Maybe this has already been said (and if it has, I apologize), but it's like having a law to keep you from breaking the law. I think that is the big problem. Due to copyright laws that are unrealistic to enforce (but not necessarily bad laws), they need to pass a second law to help enforce the first one. I'm glad Australia stopped this. Unfortunately no one can think of a better way to enforce this than being overly preventative.
I don't think anyone is really surprised by any of this. Everyone is just starting to realize that in order to dominate in the communications/entertainment industry, it is going to have to happen through the television. The internet aspires to be tv, and in the future, whatever we make pop up on a screen in our house will be more like tv today than the internet today. Of course companies want to try to take control of that. Think of how poorly e-commerce is doing on the whole, and then look at the Home shopping network on tv, or those guys who yell as loud as they can about basketball cards. Tv is what works, and that is the route that all these companies have to start with. And as far as being worried about Microsoft or Sony having a monopoly, it'll only last if they don't get TOO greedy or stupid. If the PS3 combines too many Sony-exclusive technologies, then it will fail. Sony is one of the biggest electronics manufacturers in the world, yet not one of my friends owns any of their mp3 players because they use a dumbass format (even though the other ones are supported). Just because a company is trying to have the biggest market share (and what company doesn't?) doesn't mean that they'll get it. It'll have to be worthwhile for the people.
I took the AP ComSci course twice. I took it the course the last year when it was Pascal, and took the AP test that year and got a '5'. Then, the next year when it was C++ I was allowed to take the course over and still got credit becase it was different, and I thought that it would be helpful to me to learn C++. Because no one knew anything about it, and my teacher was also the baseball coach (He spent most days in the back of the room watching tapes of games or calculating stats. Sometimes he would yell short phrases of encouragement to us like "No GOTO's (in the QBasic course) or "Shhh! Fellas!" when we were too noisy.) We were on our own, and my friends and I began thinking of that class as "a dirty, dirty bitch."
But I do have a few ideas for how to handle the projects...
1) "No GOTO's!"
2) If the point of the class is to get you college credit, the projects should be related to what is going to be on the test. Which means no games, graphics or sound. Not that these things couldn't be incorporated in as part of a project, but it takes time to learn the commands and uses of graphics, which will be not used on the AP test. Time was really important for us, because none of us had ever used C++ before.
3) We had to do a lot of stupid programs about billing people at fake pet stores, and selling tickets at a fictional theater. Those were boring. If my CS teacher would have thought about it, he could have had us make a program to track his players' stats. We never did, though because explaining that would have taken more words than he spoke to us in the entire semester. I think anything with a real world application is better than the stuff they give you for exercises in the CS books.
4)The AP tests always came a couple weeks before the end of the semester. You could have the students do the fun things post-test. I think an Instant Messenger or games or AI are great ideas, they just won't be all that valuable on the test, assuming the test is pretty much the same as it was a few years ago. But it would be a very worthwhile and fun way to end the semester.
No GOTO's!
DumbRedGuy