This outcome was inevitable since I began my boycott of Starbucks' usurious T-Mobile wifi service several years ago. And yes, it will be available everywhere for free soon enough. This is as God intended, when he Created wifi. Thanks be to God.
Titled Green Dreams, it discusses biofuels from all different sources: corn in the US, sugarcane in South America, and the possible future miracle of algae.
While each acre of corn produces around 300 gallons (1,135 liters) of ethanol a year and an acre of soybeans around 60 gallons (227 liters) of biodiesel, each acre of algae theoretically can churn out more than 5,000 gallons (19,000 liters) of biofuel each year.
Dear not-retarded uber-geek, first let me point out the definition of spam (per Wikipedia): "Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages." Though commercial in nature, I also posted this link because it's funny. Yes it was unsolicited and bulk, but so is every comment on every Slashdot story. And it was not indiscriminate, it was relevant to the story. A link to buy drugs for male erectile dysfunction would be a different story, for example.
Please silently ignore messages which you think are spam next time, as is the custom.
This looks like a shameless plug, trying to get you to buy this Eclipse Sucks t-shirt, but really it's just anti-Eclipse evangelism (or is it, "Eclipse anti-evangelism"?;-). It will fall on mostly deaf ears hear in Slashdot-land, where I expect most people who give a crap about Eclipse one way or the other will be of the uber-geek type who LOVE it.
But, what the hell. Maybe some will get a chuckle out of it.:-)
Here's a bit of the text from the "back of the box" image:
"The first version was the worst. And the second version, that was the worst too. The third version I didn't enjoy at all. After that it went into sort of a decline." -- Marvin, the paranoid android
"Eclipse is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." -- D. Knuth
I just finished reading Douglas Adams' excellent 1990 book, Last Chance To See, in which he travels the world with zoologist Mark Carwardine, searching for a few extremely endangered species. One of them was the Yangtze river dolphin, or baiji.
In the middle of one of the biggest, longest, noisiest, dirtiest thoroughfares in the world lives the reincarnation of a drowned princess, or rather, two hundred reincarnations of a drowned princess...
If they are all the same drowned princess, then she must have led a life of exquisite sinfulness to have had the conditions of her current lives repeatedly inflicted on her. Her reincarnations are constantly being mangled in ships' propellers, snared in fishermen's nets full of hooks, blinded, poisoned, and deafened.
The thoroughfare in question is the Yangtze River, and the reincarnated princess is the baiji, the Yangtze river dolphin.
It's an excellent, funny, touching and sad book; now with this news, even sadder. Things actually sounded like they might work out for this particular species, back when Adams was there. Guess not. So, maybe there are a few poor individual dolphins out there in the murk, maybe not. If there are, I doubt it's for long.
In the end, due mostly to operator overload, users will end up just watching their 'favorite' channels of video content on the Internet.
Syntax Error: Phrase 'operator overload' not appropriate in written English. Please come more fully out of your geeky programming zone when attempting to communicate with other humans.
I tried that, but it didn't work.
But then again, maybe that's because I've made Windows open text files in a real editor, instead of that braindead piece of crap that hasn't had a new feature added to it since Windows For Workgroups...
Alas, slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis.
Meg, if your subjects don't like the way iTunes and iPods are set up, they don't have to buy them. They have absolute freedom of choice here. The market can vote with its dollars. I realize this is probably a novel concept for someone from, um, Bulgaria. No, seriously. I really do want to get some lessons in morality from a politician whose native country sided with the Nazis in the second World War, then fell in with the Soviets for a few decades. Yep. Please, Meglena Kuneva. Please teach me right from wrong, O heroic defender of human rights. You're all about freedom, aren't you? Thank you, thank you, for saving the world from the curse of DRM on iTunes.
Careful with your adjectives there - it's a hoax about music, so it's a "music hoax". The hoax itself doesn't have a melody or harmony, lyrics or refrains. I.e., it's not "musical".
And if it were, it wouldn't have really been performed by Joyce Hatto.;-)
NEWSWEEK: If one of our readers confronted you in a CompUSA and said, "Bill, why upgrade to Vista?" what would be your elevator pitch?
Bill Gates: The most effective thing would be if I could sit down with them and just take them through the new look for a couple of minutes, show them the Sidebar, show them the way the search lets you go through lots of things, including lots of photos. Set up a parental control. And then I might edit a high-definition movie and make a little DVD that's got photos. As I went through, they'd think, "Wow, is that something I could use, would that make a difference for me?"
I'm a developer, but even I know the sales-jargon phrase elevator pitch. I don't know many 30-second elevator rides that afford a chance to sit down with someone for a couple of minutes. They must have really nicely furnished, though slow, elevators in Redmond. (Wow, is that allegorical to Vista, or what?;-)
Anyway, there is no way on God's green earth that Bill Gates doesn't know what "elevator pitch" means. So the answer really is, no, there is not a quick and compelling explanation for why one should upgrade to Vista. Instead, there is a long, laborious demo that ends in a rhetorical question about whether there's anything useful.
Obviously you only play tiny violins - you don't make or try to sell them. It's also obvious that you never have tried to sell anything else, either.
Marketing is a perfectly good, perfectly legitimate use of email, pal. For example, see some of Jakob Nielsen's usability reports on email marketing newsletters (e.g., this one).
Real, non-spam, emails of this sort are optional. Don't sign up for them, and don't bitch about them.
I'm trying to get a small business going, and we offer an email newsletter. If people ask for it, it will be a fantastic way to keep in touch with our customers. If they don't, or if they unsubscribe, then that's fine.
Meanwhile, I do subscribe to marketing emails from companies with products or services I'm interested in staying abreast of. And if I tire of them, I unsubscribe. I also get hundreds of spams a day, for which I, like many others, have bought software to help filter the crap out.
But there's a difference between spam and legit emails. Spam sucks, no argument. But that doesn't mean nobody should use email for any commercial or marketing purposes.
Robert X. Cringely talks about this in his weekly post today. He points out that Apple already conceded the "i"-prefixed name from the iTV to Elgato, makers of the "EyeTV":
So Apple changed its marketing, diluting its whole "iThis" and "iThat" naming strategy in deference to Elgato, a company they could buy with a weekend's earnings from the iTunes Store, but chose to go toe-to-toe with Cisco, a company that's bigger, richer, and just as mean as Apple any day.
He says it all boils down to big publicity stunt, wherein Apple will get a big, free publicity boost when they finally back down and rename it the "Apple Phone". He also goes on to give his explanation for why the iPhone^H^H^H^H^H^HApple Phone won't support Cingular's 3G network.
Boo hoo for anyone whose service is down, or who turns out to have lost "content" on MySpace after the dust settles on this.
With online services, I'm a subscriber (pun intended) to the idea that you get what you pay for. You can't rely on some free hosting/emailing/backup/photo sharing/etc. service, and then cry when it's unreliable, loses data or goes away completely. If a service has value to you - if you'd miss it if it were gone - then pay for it, or use a paid, supported alternative. (Yes, I subscribe to Slashdot under exactly this reasoning, thanks for asking.)
On sort of a side note, the thing I'm shocked to see (just *shocked*, I tell you!) is all the bands who rely so heavily on MySpace, allowing it to be their primary web presence. Getting a simple website - as simple as MySpace allows you - at your very own URL, which you have full control over, is just not that hard or expensive. Okay, host some free songs there and save some bandwidth, I guess, but get away from the crummy, cookie-cutter layout and the big obnoxious banner ads.
Slashdot Mirror
Pro-Creationist Republican thinks choosing Palin's "awesome", Obama is toast.
Film at 11.
No hobbits. Fewer pages than the Lord of the Rings. Lame.
This outcome was inevitable since I began my boycott of Starbucks' usurious T-Mobile wifi service several years ago. And yes, it will be available everywhere for free soon enough. This is as God intended, when he Created wifi. Thanks be to God.
Dear not-retarded uber-geek, first let me point out the definition of spam (per Wikipedia): "Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages." Though commercial in nature, I also posted this link because it's funny. Yes it was unsolicited and bulk, but so is every comment on every Slashdot story. And it was not indiscriminate, it was relevant to the story. A link to buy drugs for male erectile dysfunction would be a different story, for example.
Please silently ignore messages which you think are spam next time, as is the custom.
This looks like a shameless plug, trying to get you to buy this Eclipse Sucks t-shirt, but really it's just anti-Eclipse evangelism (or is it, "Eclipse anti-evangelism"? ;-). It will fall on mostly deaf ears hear in Slashdot-land, where I expect most people who give a crap about Eclipse one way or the other will be of the uber-geek type who LOVE it.
But, what the hell. Maybe some will get a chuckle out of it. :-)
Here's a bit of the text from the "back of the box" image:
Like the old Dilbert cartoon: "The network is down! ...But I'm feeling better."
It's just too bad the guy didn't just take out his own Windows box.
I just finished reading Douglas Adams' excellent 1990 book, Last Chance To See, in which he travels the world with zoologist Mark Carwardine, searching for a few extremely endangered species. One of them was the Yangtze river dolphin, or baiji.
It's an excellent, funny, touching and sad book; now with this news, even sadder. Things actually sounded like they might work out for this particular species, back when Adams was there. Guess not. So, maybe there are a few poor individual dolphins out there in the murk, maybe not. If there are, I doubt it's for long.That sounds like a good idea to me! Btw, you accidentally capitalized "hummer".
I was afraid this would happen.
If NASA would have bought it in my hometown, they could've gotten a $100 (or $150!) rebate from the city. Suckers.
Syntax Error: Phrase 'operator overload' not appropriate in written English. Please come more fully out of your geeky programming zone when attempting to communicate with other humans.
I tried that, but it didn't work. But then again, maybe that's because I've made Windows open text files in a real editor, instead of that braindead piece of crap that hasn't had a new feature added to it since Windows For Workgroups...
See, er, listen to this hilarious Onion Radio News story from Feb. 8: Brilliant Scientist Trying To Get Word Out About Penis-Enlargement Breakthrough (warning: page may auto-play audio).
No wireless. Less space than 100 million nomads. Lame.
See also: information presentation expert Edward Tufte's essay The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.
"Snapple"? No, too fruity...
Is The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs obligatory around here yet? If not, it should be.
I'll start.
See this post: O, Bulgaria, defender of freedom:
Careful with your adjectives there - it's a hoax about music, so it's a "music hoax". The hoax itself doesn't have a melody or harmony, lyrics or refrains. I.e., it's not "musical".
;-)
And if it were, it wouldn't have really been performed by Joyce Hatto.
NEWSWEEK: If one of our readers confronted you in a CompUSA and said, "Bill, why upgrade to Vista?" what would be your elevator pitch?
Bill Gates: The most effective thing would be if I could sit down with them and just take them through the new look for a couple of minutes, show them the Sidebar, show them the way the search lets you go through lots of things, including lots of photos. Set up a parental control. And then I might edit a high-definition movie and make a little DVD that's got photos. As I went through, they'd think, "Wow, is that something I could use, would that make a difference for me?"
I'm a developer, but even I know the sales-jargon phrase elevator pitch. I don't know many 30-second elevator rides that afford a chance to sit down with someone for a couple of minutes. They must have really nicely furnished, though slow, elevators in Redmond. (Wow, is that allegorical to Vista, or what? ;-)
Anyway, there is no way on God's green earth that Bill Gates doesn't know what "elevator pitch" means. So the answer really is, no, there is not a quick and compelling explanation for why one should upgrade to Vista. Instead, there is a long, laborious demo that ends in a rhetorical question about whether there's anything useful.
To which the answer is probably, "No."
I agree with John Gruber, author of Daring Fireball:
My advice: Sell the company's assets and give the money to the shareholders.
[referring to the Michael Dell's own advice to Apple, years ago.]
Obviously you only play tiny violins - you don't make or try to sell them. It's also obvious that you never have tried to sell anything else, either.
Marketing is a perfectly good, perfectly legitimate use of email, pal. For example, see some of Jakob Nielsen's usability reports on email marketing newsletters (e.g., this one).
Real, non-spam, emails of this sort are optional. Don't sign up for them, and don't bitch about them.
I'm trying to get a small business going, and we offer an email newsletter. If people ask for it, it will be a fantastic way to keep in touch with our customers. If they don't, or if they unsubscribe, then that's fine.
Meanwhile, I do subscribe to marketing emails from companies with products or services I'm interested in staying abreast of. And if I tire of them, I unsubscribe. I also get hundreds of spams a day, for which I, like many others, have bought software to help filter the crap out.
But there's a difference between spam and legit emails. Spam sucks, no argument. But that doesn't mean nobody should use email for any commercial or marketing purposes.
Robert X. Cringely talks about this in his weekly post today. He points out that Apple already conceded the "i"-prefixed name from the iTV to Elgato, makers of the "EyeTV":
So Apple changed its marketing, diluting its whole "iThis" and "iThat" naming strategy in deference to Elgato, a company they could buy with a weekend's earnings from the iTunes Store, but chose to go toe-to-toe with Cisco, a company that's bigger, richer, and just as mean as Apple any day.
He says it all boils down to big publicity stunt, wherein Apple will get a big, free publicity boost when they finally back down and rename it the "Apple Phone". He also goes on to give his explanation for why the iPhone^H^H^H^H^H^HApple Phone won't support Cingular's 3G network.
Good point. I won't vote for Clinton next time. Or Bush, either. Thank you, Sherlock.
Boo hoo for anyone whose service is down, or who turns out to have lost "content" on MySpace after the dust settles on this.
With online services, I'm a subscriber (pun intended) to the idea that you get what you pay for. You can't rely on some free hosting/emailing/backup/photo sharing/etc. service, and then cry when it's unreliable, loses data or goes away completely. If a service has value to you - if you'd miss it if it were gone - then pay for it, or use a paid, supported alternative. (Yes, I subscribe to Slashdot under exactly this reasoning, thanks for asking.)
On sort of a side note, the thing I'm shocked to see (just *shocked*, I tell you!) is all the bands who rely so heavily on MySpace, allowing it to be their primary web presence. Getting a simple website - as simple as MySpace allows you - at your very own URL, which you have full control over, is just not that hard or expensive. Okay, host some free songs there and save some bandwidth, I guess, but get away from the crummy, cookie-cutter layout and the big obnoxious banner ads.