I do think that there's a chasm between food factories and food poisoning. I do believe we've had a few centuries, if not millennia, of canning practice. It's not hard. But like anything, be careful and don't screw up.
Actually, try the university's good sciences department. McGill I believe.
and, if I remember correctly, orange juice would also accomplish the same thing in this dish.
So, remind me again, how much nothing have you read?
Your bullshit seems to be that there is no anti-toxin to food preparation toxins. Interesting concept. A toxin with no anti toxin. I guess that's a conceivable possibility. Where did you read that?
and that's why I moved thirty minutes out of the big city, and shop directly from, wait for it, farms. Taste, texture, cost, ease, all far better than any grocery store.
Umm, the cool thing about old cooking techniques is that they tend to come with antidotes.
Yes, absolutely, awesome montreal smoked meat is toxic. It's wonderful and incredibly nutritious, and toxic.
It's also served with coleslaw, always, in every deli, everywhere, which just accidentally happens to be the antidote to that particular type of toxin.
Eat complete meals, consistent with the culture in which that meal was originally eaten. There's a reason most long-lived cultures originally ate virtually nothing but a short list of foods -- those were the ones that didn't kill everyone, and that grew together.
I'm all for SETI. I've supported them in the past, I've contributed dollars and cycles and time and effort.
But there's absolutely zero chance that SETI can produce any return to anyone alive today.
Even if tomorrow, SETI discovers a guaranteed civilization, identical to ours, it would change absolutely nothing in our lives. How many decades will it take to say "hi" back? Let alone get any real response of value.
Between language barriers, distance barriers, culture barriers, and who knows what other barriers, I'd wager it'll take twenty years just to get a mutually confirmed "we both exist". Make that fifty years before we get anything fun, like digital artwork. Make that at least two hundred years before we get anything physical. Call it 150 years with technological improvements over time. Call it 125 years if we meet them half-way.
In any event, I'm long dead, you're long dead, and it didn't matter to begin with.
SETI's a great goal, and a wonderful effort, and it isn't worth supplanting literally ANYTHING else, no matter how trivial.
You can deliver out of a kitchen. Restaurants are set up for a whole host of environmental (and regulatory) costs. Servers, cutlery, decoration, doors, salting the winter walkway, tables, front cash, and all of the square footage to house patrons, including bathrooms and hvac.
No surprise that delivery services cut restaurant profits. There's no up-selling, no tips, and I'll bet no liquor.
I'm going to argue that these systems aren't notification systems. They are specifically systems for NOT notifying people erroneously. Otherwise, we don't need to run any tests ever. When someone says "push the button", you push the button. Training over.
Second, you can unplug that network port in the other building. That would actually cover the second human also.
You can't say that testing is required, and that testing shouldn't notify the real world, and that testing shouldn't be any different than non-testing. As usual, you get to pick any two.
Quite frankly, I'm really happy with step two as the single solution. Don't have any testing systems at all. Just say: "tomorrow, we're going to push the button for fun", and let everyone get the test -- cradle-to-grave testing, as it were.
But if tests aren't going to test the complete system (right down to the public receiving the message), then your test system needs to be different than your real system, probably in many ways.
Now, if you don't know how to program a javascript validation in my "type this phrase" in a way that's both testable and reliable, then you need to hire better programmers. I can certainly screw up a good javascript function on the first pass, but we're not launching rockets here. We're comparing strings. I'll get it right within an hour, if not a minute.
Step one: disconnect the outside from the inside. Big toggle switch on the wall, itty bitty network jack gets torn out. We call this: network isolation. You can easily build this into your testing software. If google.com is reachable, don't send tests.
Step two: announce it in-advance. Tomorrow, at noon, precisely sixteen hours from now, we'll be running a test. It'll say "missile carried by tsunami". There will only be one test. It will specifically not say "seriously really". We call this: planning ahead. Again, you can easily build this into your testing software. If there's no record of an announcement, don't send tests.
Step three: non-accidental confirmation. Tests can be sent with the push of a button. Real-world warnings require a human being to type the words "send real warning to EVERYONE". It's not case-sensitive, and three type-o's are permitted. Again again, you can easily build this into your testing software. "Click OK" is replaced by "type this phrase" -- and specifically not for tests.
Step four: two heads are better than one. Tests can be sent by one human. Real-world warnings require a second human to do the same things as the first human, within the same few minutes. Again, easily built into your software. A single command is ignored, two commands are executed.
Two in four weeks is not only intolerable, but it's actually more painful than the actual events would have been. I don't know how many death-bed confessions occurred in hawaii, and I can't imagine the health results of that kind of stress on an entire population. But I do know one thing very well: notification fatigue completely destroys the future. How many Hawaiians will simply ignore it next time, and die as a result?
To be fair, most people recognize brad pitt in movies with big posters that say brad pitt right at the top, after having chosen to spend their hard-earned money and time to see it.
I don't think that counts as recognizing anything.
I'm pretty sure I'm not covered herein, but I've always needed a face and a voice to be sure of anyone. Make-up, hair, eye-colour, glasses, there are far too many elements of a person's face that change quite drastically.
You're telling me that Brad Pitt, an actor whose face is changed on a daily basis in a make-up chair, and who works, daily, with an entire industry doing the same, has a brain that specifically dis-associates faces from people? This really doesn't sound like a defect. It sounds very much like a valuable adaptation.
Imagine a world of masks and disguises. Would you want to trust your enemy the same way that you trust your friend? I grew up in the '80s, "my voice is my password". My face was never a credential.
Maybe we'll need to wait until the iPhone twenty before the phone can be unlocked with your voice as your credentials.
I think the OP didn't highlight and bold and triple-underline the most important part of the design -- the not showing anything more. He's looking for a solution that turns off after use.
I'm weary of media servers and the like, only because they are designed for unfettered access. Similarly, while the easiest solution is the usb stick in the modern tvision, there's no way to stop them from watching repeatedly.
What about something much much simpler.
Any old computer. No keyboard. Run a script at startup (batch, scripting host, local html file, whatever). Given a directory of hand-picked videos, play-a-video, delete-the-video (or rename or move or whatever), play-a-video, delete-a-video. A simple raspberry pi works just as well as a ten-thousand-dollar desktop.
That way, there's a limited number of your hand-picked files. They can only watch each once. No keyboard necessary. They can turn it off, walk away, turn it on again and continue from the last/next video (depending on when you rename the video, before or after starting to play it).
You'll have full control, and you can plug in a keyboard whenever you want. You can deposit another day of vids remotely -- FTP would seem to be the correctly named protocol, or the device can play the videos remotely from any network source.
So that's my recommendation. startup script, play, delete, play, delete, play, delete. Hell, you could just hard-code that script file with a time index into a local html file every day, and be done in five minutes.
Okay, new plan.
The device has nothing more than a web browser running on startup, with a home page of a local or local-ish html file. It plays the \\kidvid\video.mp4 in a simple tag. When the video ends (simple javascript event), it reloads the page.
Elsewhere, (or on the same device if you like), you script a javascript file that looks like this: if time = 5am, copy \\allvid\mrrogers6.mp4 \\kidvid\video.mp4 if time = 5:22am, copy \\allvid\sesame283.mp4 \\kidvid\video.mp4 etc, etc, etc
You can easily add randomness, or schedule multiple days in-advance. They'll simply be able to watch video.mp4, and you'll simply be able to change what that is over time.
I think you can figure out the indian head interstitial on your own -- background-image comes to mind!
"ultimately" "eventually" "in the long run" "some day"
No one should ever dispute that advanced technology improves lives. We have countless examples. Compare now to 100 years ago, and life is longer, healthier, easier in every way across the board.
But I don't care about 100 years from now. I don't care that AI will make life better for your grandchildren. I care about my life today and while I'm still alive.
That's another constant: advanced technology doesn't start advanced. Perhaps "mature technology" is the better term here.
The first car sucked. It wasn't anywhere near as good as the last horse. But today, cars are far better than horses.
It'll take decades before today concept of AI is at all worthwhile. If you already have a few billion dollars in your mattress, then I can see looking forward to it. If you hate your life and just work for your grandchildren's retirement, then I can see supporting it.
But if you don't want to funnel all of your time money and effort into a future that you'll never see, then killing your perfect horse for the first car is just the worst thing that you can do for your family today.
You read my words backwards. I didn't say that an ipad was useless. I said that a desk is useful. Hence, a desktop can't be replaced by an ipad, because the desk has function.
(I think your final word should have been "fittings", for the compressor tools. fun.)
Let's take some of those individually.
bigger and lower resolution is better for multiple humans. Think of a movie screen.
Higher contrast is WORSE for reading. Welcome to human eyes. Better for marketing punch, worse for reading. Zooming is useless for reading -- eyes move faster than fingers. Reading a newspaper is never about reading every word. It's about scanning large pages to find what interests you. Layout counts.
To that end, all web-sites on small screens are just useless in terms of layout. Nice long column of five words by ten lines at a time. That's just terrible for actual reading. Might as well be looking for a rat in the dark with a laser-pointer as a flashlight.
But here's where, as you say, my point is very different. It's a perspective difference that's apparent with your sound quality comment. The ipad produces terrible sound. That tiny speaker is just plain awful. Aside from the actual audio definition, turn on the kitchen sink, and that little bit of water will literally drown out the ipad's speaker from across the room. The ipad needs some real speaker accessories to produce worthwhile sound in a decent-sized room.
That's the perspective. the ipad is useless for anything actually worthwhile. Fantastic for useless shit. It's a great distraction. It'll entertain one child. It's distract one bus commuter. It'll let a grown adult just while away a day on facebook. But none of those tasks are a) worthwhile, b) not doable with all sorts of things like sudoku puzzles, or c) actually VALUABLE to one's life.
I work at a desk, with a very large desktop computer system, and an even larger desk. One window is useless to me. Whatever I'm doing requires a source document, and inspiration document, an instruction document, my input document, and at least one output document. Typically, that might be, respectively, the client's content word document, the graphic designer's artistic mockup, the client's e-mail instructions, my programming window, and then the web browser output and error consoles. All visible simultaneously is effortless. The same job from a tiny laptop takes ten times as long, all spend switching and moving and remembering and copying and confirming.
So I'll just say this. I use computers to make money. The work I do, I sell. Either my time, or my effort, or my results. If I'm sitting at this desk, and working at this keyboard, then I'm making money purely by doing so -- the computer isn't a part of the value, it is the whole value.
I'll say that there is absolutely nothing that I can do on an ipad to make money. Sure I can present work on an ipad, and sure I can discuss work on an ipad, but the ipad alone can't do all of the tasks necessary to actually earn money -- it can't do any of them at speed.
It's not a productivity tool. It's not profitable for anyone to use. It's very profitable for everyone to sell.
If I want to make money with an ipad, it's really easy. I build software on my desktop computer, and sell it bundled with an ipad. It's that simple.
I'm not much of a whittler myself; perhaps a swiss army knife would excel at whittling, though I have my doubts one would stand up to professional whittling tools.
And now that I've used whittling five times, I've reached my whittling quota for 2018. Woohoo!
A hundred years ago, authors wrote books/manuscripts with pen/pencil and paper. Neither pen, nor pencil, nor paper requires a desk. An author can easily operate a pen, and write a book from a park bench, or lying on the floor. Police detectives can write in their paper notebook while walking the streets of any city on-foot.
And yet, with the mobility of pens and paper, authors still had writing desks, and police still did written reports from a desk.
The keyword in "desktop computer" isn't "computer", it's "desk".
A desk is a marvelous thing. It's an organizational structure. It's a focus. It's big. It's dedicated. It's productive.
If you can do anything from an ipad, then you can do six anythings concurrently on a desktop with one large screen. You can do 18 anythings concurrently on a desktop with three large screens. And if one of your "anythings" involves another something -- like an object, or another person, or a product sample, then your desk supports that kind of additional item.
And if one of your "anythings" involves real collaboration with three other humans, in one place, as most creative tasks do, then a big desk in a big room with a big screen allow three humans to function in parallel (as opposed to series).
If you can accomplish your task in a 12" screen, then enjoy your flattened 1980s original imac. 12" doesn't get much accomplished these days. It does, however, do the same thing that it always did.
Your ipad is harder to read than an old newspaper, more awkward than an old book, bigger than a walkman, has worse sound than a record player, and is more delicate anything that's ever been handheld before. It's wonderful and amazing for all sorts of other reasons, especially for varied functions, but it is absolutely worse at each individual effort.
Jack of all trades, master of none. If you don't plan on excelling at anything, the ipad is the perfect device for you.
Some advice: when you hire a contractor to build your house, don't hire one who comes with a swiss army knife. You want the guy with the big rusty hammer, and the big box of screw drivers.
You're telling me that I can do this for myself and my beloved? Sounds like a great valentine's day gift. It'd be fun, and exciting (underlined and italicized) to see ourselves with professional endurance, athletic bodies, and decent lighting. And I wouldn't mind envisioning my beloved doing things that she'd never ever be able (or willing) to do!
Maybe locks themselves, hopefully safes and vaults, but virtually no other industry could afford to be as security focused as we're requiring of software here.
My car door is easily opened without the key. The wipers are easily removed. A jeep can be dismantled with an Allen key.
My front door has a deadbolt, with a big glass window next to it -- no bars.
My Telecom services are connected in a box on the front line. Right next to the water shutoff.
Virtually everything in our lives is completely insecure.
We encrypt and certify packets of data, but I eat food from a cart on the street, or carried past a dozen strangers in a restaurant.
I like my computer working well. But it doesn't *matter* compared to the food I eat.
First, drugs are really cheap here. Second, drugs are free for children and young adults. Third, any drug-making device would be so very illegal to own. Fourth, it would be at the local drug store instead, so we'd never notice the difference. Fifth, I'm not going to setup and and control and wait and follow a recipe when I'm ill. Sixth, drug delivery is also cheap/free in my city -- for anyone who knows that it always has been.
I think it's a fair thing to say that nothing can interact with another thing without "touching" it. I think that's the very point -- just because you don't see it, nor feel it, doesn't mean that there isn't some mechanism of contact.
"How things are connected" is easy when it's strings and cups -- indeed, the traditional string-and-cups telephone is easily experienced, understood, and built by a five-year old.
But "how things are connected" when the cups are you and a planet, and the string is invisible and you can walk through it, now that's a mighty different game. That said, the players are the same. Bigger cups, thinner strings.
So that's the space where I'd describe most famous physicists living. Things interact because they are connected. That's the easy part. But it's about how those things are connected. That's often the very spooky part!
The thing is that it's not just a physics thing. Every problem-solving professional lives in a solution space that's all about how things are connected. Plumbing is all about interactive connections. So is network programming. So is telecom, and social conversation.
You and I are connected right now, through a highly latent, very long distance, overly abstracted connection. And yet, as far apart as we are, my finger touches a plastic key, that ultimately touches a contact which in turn touches (and diverts) an electron that ultimately produces a relay-race of electrons that reach the lightbulb in your monitor, that propels a photon directly into your eye.
It's really cool that my fingertip is capable of shoving a photon into your eyeball. It's certainly the result of a great many connections -- but each one of them is definitely direct contact.
(you're going to give me the poetic licence to say that waves (radio, compression, sound, et cetera) are the result of contact at the particle or molecular level)
And so, I'm going to further say that electromagnetism, and quantum entanglement, and other spooky actions at distances are also the result of contact, simply contact that we've not yet discerned. Perhaps we're back to strings? Maybe they're looped?
You're funny. You think that maple trees can't grow north of Michigan. I think you need to learn to read. Start with flags. Last I checked, stars & stripes don't say maple to me. Neither do eagles, elk, moose and a gun. And I don't know about you, but a pine tree ain't no maple tree.
You find a flag that says "maple" to me, and I'll agree that maple trees grow there quite happily.
Like I said. If you ask a maple tree where it wants to live, it tells you with each and every leaf. And for a few months of the year, it tries extra-hard to make a glorious show of its choice.
It doesn't want to be in Michigan, let it leave in peace. Be happy you get a contingent in Vermont -- they don't really want to be there either.
Slashdot Mirror
I do think that there's a chasm between food factories and food poisoning. I do believe we've had a few centuries, if not millennia, of canning practice. It's not hard. But like anything, be careful and don't screw up.
Actually, try the university's good sciences department. McGill I believe.
and, if I remember correctly, orange juice would also accomplish the same thing in this dish.
So, remind me again, how much nothing have you read?
Your bullshit seems to be that there is no anti-toxin to food preparation toxins. Interesting concept. A toxin with no anti toxin. I guess that's a conceivable possibility. Where did you read that?
and that's why I moved thirty minutes out of the big city, and shop directly from, wait for it, farms. Taste, texture, cost, ease, all far better than any grocery store.
Umm, the cool thing about old cooking techniques is that they tend to come with antidotes.
Yes, absolutely, awesome montreal smoked meat is toxic. It's wonderful and incredibly nutritious, and toxic.
It's also served with coleslaw, always, in every deli, everywhere, which just accidentally happens to be the antidote to that particular type of toxin.
Eat complete meals, consistent with the culture in which that meal was originally eaten. There's a reason most long-lived cultures originally ate virtually nothing but a short list of foods -- those were the ones that didn't kill everyone, and that grew together.
I'm all for SETI. I've supported them in the past, I've contributed dollars and cycles and time and effort.
But there's absolutely zero chance that SETI can produce any return to anyone alive today.
Even if tomorrow, SETI discovers a guaranteed civilization, identical to ours, it would change absolutely nothing in our lives.
How many decades will it take to say "hi" back? Let alone get any real response of value.
Between language barriers, distance barriers, culture barriers, and who knows what other barriers, I'd wager it'll take twenty years just to get a mutually confirmed "we both exist". Make that fifty years before we get anything fun, like digital artwork. Make that at least two hundred years before we get anything physical. Call it 150 years with technological improvements over time. Call it 125 years if we meet them half-way.
In any event, I'm long dead, you're long dead, and it didn't matter to begin with.
SETI's a great goal, and a wonderful effort, and it isn't worth supplanting literally ANYTHING else, no matter how trivial.
You can deliver out of a kitchen. Restaurants are set up for a whole host of environmental (and regulatory) costs. Servers, cutlery, decoration, doors, salting the winter walkway, tables, front cash, and all of the square footage to house patrons, including bathrooms and hvac.
No surprise that delivery services cut restaurant profits. There's no up-selling, no tips, and I'll bet no liquor.
Sure, but...
I'm going to argue that these systems aren't notification systems. They are specifically systems for NOT notifying people erroneously. Otherwise, we don't need to run any tests ever. When someone says "push the button", you push the button. Training over.
Second, you can unplug that network port in the other building. That would actually cover the second human also.
You can't say that testing is required, and that testing shouldn't notify the real world, and that testing shouldn't be any different than non-testing. As usual, you get to pick any two.
Quite frankly, I'm really happy with step two as the single solution. Don't have any testing systems at all. Just say: "tomorrow, we're going to push the button for fun", and let everyone get the test -- cradle-to-grave testing, as it were.
But if tests aren't going to test the complete system (right down to the public receiving the message), then your test system needs to be different than your real system, probably in many ways.
Now, if you don't know how to program a javascript validation in my "type this phrase" in a way that's both testable and reliable, then you need to hire better programmers. I can certainly screw up a good javascript function on the first pass, but we're not launching rockets here. We're comparing strings. I'll get it right within an hour, if not a minute.
Step one: disconnect the outside from the inside. Big toggle switch on the wall, itty bitty network jack gets torn out. We call this: network isolation. You can easily build this into your testing software. If google.com is reachable, don't send tests.
Step two: announce it in-advance. Tomorrow, at noon, precisely sixteen hours from now, we'll be running a test. It'll say "missile carried by tsunami". There will only be one test. It will specifically not say "seriously really". We call this: planning ahead. Again, you can easily build this into your testing software. If there's no record of an announcement, don't send tests.
Step three: non-accidental confirmation. Tests can be sent with the push of a button. Real-world warnings require a human being to type the words "send real warning to EVERYONE". It's not case-sensitive, and three type-o's are permitted. Again again, you can easily build this into your testing software. "Click OK" is replaced by "type this phrase" -- and specifically not for tests.
Step four: two heads are better than one. Tests can be sent by one human. Real-world warnings require a second human to do the same things as the first human, within the same few minutes. Again, easily built into your software. A single command is ignored, two commands are executed.
Two in four weeks is not only intolerable, but it's actually more painful than the actual events would have been. I don't know how many death-bed confessions occurred in hawaii, and I can't imagine the health results of that kind of stress on an entire population. But I do know one thing very well: notification fatigue completely destroys the future. How many Hawaiians will simply ignore it next time, and die as a result?
To be fair, most people recognize brad pitt in movies with big posters that say brad pitt right at the top, after having chosen to spend their hard-earned money and time to see it.
I don't think that counts as recognizing anything.
I'm pretty sure I'm not covered herein, but I've always needed a face and a voice to be sure of anyone. Make-up, hair, eye-colour, glasses, there are far too many elements of a person's face that change quite drastically.
You're telling me that Brad Pitt, an actor whose face is changed on a daily basis in a make-up chair, and who works, daily, with an entire industry doing the same, has a brain that specifically dis-associates faces from people? This really doesn't sound like a defect. It sounds very much like a valuable adaptation.
Imagine a world of masks and disguises. Would you want to trust your enemy the same way that you trust your friend? I grew up in the '80s, "my voice is my password". My face was never a credential.
Maybe we'll need to wait until the iPhone twenty before the phone can be unlocked with your voice as your credentials.
I think the OP didn't highlight and bold and triple-underline the most important part of the design -- the not showing anything more. He's looking for a solution that turns off after use.
I'm weary of media servers and the like, only because they are designed for unfettered access. Similarly, while the easiest solution is the usb stick in the modern tvision, there's no way to stop them from watching repeatedly.
What about something much much simpler.
Any old computer. No keyboard. Run a script at startup (batch, scripting host, local html file, whatever). Given a directory of hand-picked videos, play-a-video, delete-the-video (or rename or move or whatever), play-a-video, delete-a-video. A simple raspberry pi works just as well as a ten-thousand-dollar desktop.
That way, there's a limited number of your hand-picked files. They can only watch each once. No keyboard necessary. They can turn it off, walk away, turn it on again and continue from the last/next video (depending on when you rename the video, before or after starting to play it).
You'll have full control, and you can plug in a keyboard whenever you want. You can deposit another day of vids remotely -- FTP would seem to be the correctly named protocol, or the device can play the videos remotely from any network source.
So that's my recommendation. startup script, play, delete, play, delete, play, delete. Hell, you could just hard-code that script file with a time index into a local html file every day, and be done in five minutes.
Okay, new plan.
The device has nothing more than a web browser running on startup, with a home page of a local or local-ish html file. It plays the \\kidvid\video.mp4 in a simple tag. When the video ends (simple javascript event), it reloads the page.
Elsewhere, (or on the same device if you like), you script a javascript file that looks like this:
if time = 5am, copy \\allvid\mrrogers6.mp4 \\kidvid\video.mp4
if time = 5:22am, copy \\allvid\sesame283.mp4 \\kidvid\video.mp4
etc, etc, etc
You can easily add randomness, or schedule multiple days in-advance. They'll simply be able to watch video.mp4, and you'll simply be able to change what that is over time.
I think you can figure out the indian head interstitial on your own -- background-image comes to mind!
imaginary, and a great example of '80s science fiction.
"ultimately" "eventually" "in the long run" "some day"
No one should ever dispute that advanced technology improves lives. We have countless examples. Compare now to 100 years ago, and life is longer, healthier, easier in every way across the board.
But I don't care about 100 years from now. I don't care that AI will make life better for your grandchildren. I care about my life today and while I'm still alive.
That's another constant: advanced technology doesn't start advanced. Perhaps "mature technology" is the better term here.
The first car sucked. It wasn't anywhere near as good as the last horse. But today, cars are far better than horses.
It'll take decades before today concept of AI is at all worthwhile. If you already have a few billion dollars in your mattress, then I can see looking forward to it. If you hate your life and just work for your grandchildren's retirement, then I can see supporting it.
But if you don't want to funnel all of your time money and effort into a future that you'll never see, then killing your perfect horse for the first car is just the worst thing that you can do for your family today.
You read my words backwards. I didn't say that an ipad was useless. I said that a desk is useful. Hence, a desktop can't be replaced by an ipad, because the desk has function.
(I think your final word should have been "fittings", for the compressor tools. fun.)
Let's take some of those individually.
bigger and lower resolution is better for multiple humans. Think of a movie screen.
Higher contrast is WORSE for reading. Welcome to human eyes. Better for marketing punch, worse for reading. Zooming is useless for reading -- eyes move faster than fingers. Reading a newspaper is never about reading every word. It's about scanning large pages to find what interests you. Layout counts.
To that end, all web-sites on small screens are just useless in terms of layout. Nice long column of five words by ten lines at a time. That's just terrible for actual reading. Might as well be looking for a rat in the dark with a laser-pointer as a flashlight.
But here's where, as you say, my point is very different. It's a perspective difference that's apparent with your sound quality comment. The ipad produces terrible sound. That tiny speaker is just plain awful. Aside from the actual audio definition, turn on the kitchen sink, and that little bit of water will literally drown out the ipad's speaker from across the room. The ipad needs some real speaker accessories to produce worthwhile sound in a decent-sized room.
That's the perspective. the ipad is useless for anything actually worthwhile. Fantastic for useless shit. It's a great distraction. It'll entertain one child. It's distract one bus commuter. It'll let a grown adult just while away a day on facebook. But none of those tasks are a) worthwhile, b) not doable with all sorts of things like sudoku puzzles, or c) actually VALUABLE to one's life.
I work at a desk, with a very large desktop computer system, and an even larger desk. One window is useless to me. Whatever I'm doing requires a source document, and inspiration document, an instruction document, my input document, and at least one output document. Typically, that might be, respectively, the client's content word document, the graphic designer's artistic mockup, the client's e-mail instructions, my programming window, and then the web browser output and error consoles. All visible simultaneously is effortless. The same job from a tiny laptop takes ten times as long, all spend switching and moving and remembering and copying and confirming.
So I'll just say this. I use computers to make money. The work I do, I sell. Either my time, or my effort, or my results. If I'm sitting at this desk, and working at this keyboard, then I'm making money purely by doing so -- the computer isn't a part of the value, it is the whole value.
I'll say that there is absolutely nothing that I can do on an ipad to make money. Sure I can present work on an ipad, and sure I can discuss work on an ipad, but the ipad alone can't do all of the tasks necessary to actually earn money -- it can't do any of them at speed.
It's not a productivity tool. It's not profitable for anyone to use. It's very profitable for everyone to sell.
If I want to make money with an ipad, it's really easy. I build software on my desktop computer, and sell it bundled with an ipad. It's that simple.
I'm not much of a whittler myself; perhaps a swiss army knife would excel at whittling, though I have my doubts one would stand up to professional whittling tools.
And now that I've used whittling five times, I've reached my whittling quota for 2018. Woohoo!
A hundred years ago, authors wrote books/manuscripts with pen/pencil and paper. Neither pen, nor pencil, nor paper requires a desk. An author can easily operate a pen, and write a book from a park bench, or lying on the floor. Police detectives can write in their paper notebook while walking the streets of any city on-foot.
And yet, with the mobility of pens and paper, authors still had writing desks, and police still did written reports from a desk.
The keyword in "desktop computer" isn't "computer", it's "desk".
A desk is a marvelous thing. It's an organizational structure. It's a focus. It's big. It's dedicated. It's productive.
If you can do anything from an ipad, then you can do six anythings concurrently on a desktop with one large screen. You can do 18 anythings concurrently on a desktop with three large screens. And if one of your "anythings" involves another something -- like an object, or another person, or a product sample, then your desk supports that kind of additional item.
And if one of your "anythings" involves real collaboration with three other humans, in one place, as most creative tasks do, then a big desk in a big room with a big screen allow three humans to function in parallel (as opposed to series).
If you can accomplish your task in a 12" screen, then enjoy your flattened 1980s original imac. 12" doesn't get much accomplished these days. It does, however, do the same thing that it always did.
Your ipad is harder to read than an old newspaper, more awkward than an old book, bigger than a walkman, has worse sound than a record player, and is more delicate anything that's ever been handheld before. It's wonderful and amazing for all sorts of other reasons, especially for varied functions, but it is absolutely worse at each individual effort.
Jack of all trades, master of none. If you don't plan on excelling at anything, the ipad is the perfect device for you.
Some advice: when you hire a contractor to build your house, don't hire one who comes with a swiss army knife. You want the guy with the big rusty hammer, and the big box of screw drivers.
You're telling me that I can do this for myself and my beloved? Sounds like a great valentine's day gift. It'd be fun, and exciting (underlined and italicized) to see ourselves with professional endurance, athletic bodies, and decent lighting. And I wouldn't mind envisioning my beloved doing things that she'd never ever be able (or willing) to do!
Maybe locks themselves, hopefully safes and vaults, but virtually no other industry could afford to be as security focused as we're requiring of software here.
My car door is easily opened without the key. The wipers are easily removed. A jeep can be dismantled with an Allen key.
My front door has a deadbolt, with a big glass window next to it -- no bars.
My Telecom services are connected in a box on the front line. Right next to the water shutoff.
Virtually everything in our lives is completely insecure.
We encrypt and certify packets of data, but I eat food from a cart on the street, or carried past a dozen strangers in a restaurant.
I like my computer working well. But it doesn't *matter* compared to the food I eat.
You might want to work on elevating your mean, before my dog is the best fit for your president. You're not far-off today.
Wow, that came out a lot more flame-baity than I had expected. Must be my IQ -- my mother had me tested. Let me try again.
That explains your current president, a perfect fit for a dumb population.
That doesn't seem any better. Still flame-baity.
Maybe there is no way to talk about leaders needing to be dumb and current american presidents without sounding, ehem, "mean"?
Irony.
First, drugs are really cheap here.
Second, drugs are free for children and young adults.
Third, any drug-making device would be so very illegal to own.
Fourth, it would be at the local drug store instead, so we'd never notice the difference.
Fifth, I'm not going to setup and and control and wait and follow a recipe when I'm ill.
Sixth, drug delivery is also cheap/free in my city -- for anyone who knows that it always has been.
So, one, two, or three plane crashes before someone blames another miscommunication on fog? Just another airport for me to avoid. Love it.
I think it's a fair thing to say that nothing can interact with another thing without "touching" it. I think that's the very point -- just because you don't see it, nor feel it, doesn't mean that there isn't some mechanism of contact.
"How things are connected" is easy when it's strings and cups -- indeed, the traditional string-and-cups telephone is easily experienced, understood, and built by a five-year old.
But "how things are connected" when the cups are you and a planet, and the string is invisible and you can walk through it, now that's a mighty different game. That said, the players are the same. Bigger cups, thinner strings.
So that's the space where I'd describe most famous physicists living. Things interact because they are connected. That's the easy part. But it's about how those things are connected. That's often the very spooky part!
The thing is that it's not just a physics thing. Every problem-solving professional lives in a solution space that's all about how things are connected. Plumbing is all about interactive connections. So is network programming. So is telecom, and social conversation.
You and I are connected right now, through a highly latent, very long distance, overly abstracted connection. And yet, as far apart as we are, my finger touches a plastic key, that ultimately touches a contact which in turn touches (and diverts) an electron that ultimately produces a relay-race of electrons that reach the lightbulb in your monitor, that propels a photon directly into your eye.
It's really cool that my fingertip is capable of shoving a photon into your eyeball. It's certainly the result of a great many connections -- but each one of them is definitely direct contact.
(you're going to give me the poetic licence to say that waves (radio, compression, sound, et cetera) are the result of contact at the particle or molecular level)
And so, I'm going to further say that electromagnetism, and quantum entanglement, and other spooky actions at distances are also the result of contact, simply contact that we've not yet discerned. Perhaps we're back to strings? Maybe they're looped?
You're funny. You think that maple trees can't grow north of Michigan. I think you need to learn to read. Start with flags. Last I checked, stars & stripes don't say maple to me. Neither do eagles, elk, moose and a gun. And I don't know about you, but a pine tree ain't no maple tree.
You find a flag that says "maple" to me, and I'll agree that maple trees grow there quite happily.
Like I said. If you ask a maple tree where it wants to live, it tells you with each and every leaf. And for a few months of the year, it tries extra-hard to make a glorious show of its choice.
It doesn't want to be in Michigan, let it leave in peace. Be happy you get a contingent in Vermont -- they don't really want to be there either.