Minds are bad at remembering. Why should I keep lookup tables in my brain if I can have them on paper? Minds are good at synthesizing. Why do we continue to want to do hammer jobs with screwdrivers? Honing my brain into a finely tuned synthesizing engine would be a lot more useful than remembering what happened on August 1, 1926 (or some other arbitrary meaningless date).
Sure we're dependent on technology. Like it or not, we live in a technologically advanced and oriented society. Sure, if I got stuck out in the woods and had to keep from getting eaten by large predators, I'd have to develop another skill set post haste, but it seems to me like our modern lifestyle lends itself to technological information storage and organisation. For instance, I'm within arm's reach of a device connected to The Oracle of Infinite Information about 20 hours out of the day (most of the rest, I'm in my car, and I'm working on that part). Why SHOULDN'T I use the Internet as a swap file for my brain?
I'm confused. Civ CTP is a network game, but Quake 3 isn't? Better get a memo to Carmack, because he sure thinks it is. The reason that I'm yawning about Q3 is because of its singleminded focus on network play. I'm bored with deathmatches. A common source base does, in fact, make version control easier to do, but a well-documented communications system would do the same thing, yes?
How many users are using Word for DOS now? I'd argue that there's no meaningful connection between the two software packages.
Microsoft used their ill-gotten domination of the office market to force a superior product out of a different market space. You're treading very closely to Godwin's Law here, but I'll go ahead and point out that Robert Goddard was the pioneer of modern rocketry, not Dr. Von Braun. This is, however, a canard, as we're talking about Microsoft's dismal failure to innovate ANYTHING.
Thank you for your permission to have my opinion, I'll be glad to check with you in the future any time I have thoughts about any subject. Note that I don't need or want the market to reflect my tastes, but if the market wants my money, it must provide me with things that I want to buy.
Incorrect. The settlement was for a suit that most people agree Apple would have won. Microsoft got caught with their hand in the Quicktime cookie jar. This had nothing whatsoever to do with Apple's "look and feel" lawsuit. Microsoft agreed to ship Office98 for the Mac, buy 150 million dollars of nonvoting stock, and make an undisclosed payment to Apple to avoid getting seriously hurt in the legal proceedings.
Visual Basic: Notion was lifted from Apple's Hypercard and used as a club to prevent Apple from porting Hypercard to Windows. Hypercard was at the time arguably superior, although many people feel it has stagnated since then.
MS Word: Purchased from...somebody whose name I don't remember, written originally for the Mac, ported to x86 to form the core of Windows 1.0. Filched? Probably not. Good product? Arguable. Popular product? Of course...but there's lots of cockroaches too. Doesn't mean I like 'em.
Actimates Barney: Can you say Teddy Ruxpin? I knew you could.
Microsoft's sole decent product is their mouse. Well, I like Excel a whole lot too, mainly because that's what I'm familiar with. It would be nice if some clever person for one of the competing office suites did what Microsoft does so well...make it easy to transition TO their product. My investment in knowing how to make Excel do what I want it to do is hard to walk away from.
You don't know a thing about how other people feel about Gates. The psychologists have a word for what you're trying to do: projection. YOU might be jealous of Gates, but I think he's rather pathetic. I don't care how many dollars he has, he still comes across as the mildly-insecure "PLEASE affirm that I'm the neatest guy in the universe" brat. He's the figurehead of the biggest public nuisance in the latter half of this century, and he's on the cusp of becoming an also-ran in the annals of computer history.
He can, and is, and ever will be, a ninny. Poor guy. I wouldn't trade places with him for, well, all his money.
Would I save his life? Sure. He doesn't deserve to die...just be forgotten. Wonder which he'll like less...
The Catholic Church's primary function (with the exception of the last 300 years, which considering its history can yet be considered anomalous) has been to confuse religion with politics. I would argue that the leaders/spokespeople of religion since its the dawn of time have tried to obfuscate this distinction.
Note that the poster was alleging that the notion of "science" was inherently more dangerous than the notion of "religion". Demonstrably, this is not the case. I am not saying that any given adherent of science (of which I am one) is any more or less prone to doing Bad Things than any given adherent of religion (of which I am one).
When was the last time a cadre of scientists spent 500 years fighting wars (like, ones where people died and stuff) with other scientists who disagreed with them? Let me forestall the Manhattan Project argument by saying I'd much rather die in a nuclear exchange than die on the rack because some Inquisitor thought I was a heretic.
"science" and "religion" don't have "dark sides". Humans who practice science and humans who practice religion have dark sides.
I'd be interested in hearing you argue your "dwarfs religion's by a long shot" position.
Of course twins are different. However, you do have to admit that identical twins are LESS different physically than any other pair of humans you might mention. Are you _surprised_ that from time to time people who don't know you well mistake you for your twin? It's INEVITABLE that it will happen...
Let's all click on the banner, so they think we care. Then maybe they'll sink a ton of money in it, and then we won't buy it in droves. Be cool if it'd work...
The OSS. Office of...Secure Service? I don't remmeber what the acronym stands for. They operated closely during World War II to capture the German Enigma machine, which makes a prominent appearance in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.
Compressing an audio signal with MP3 (mpeg level 3 compression) is like compressing a video stream with MPEG 2 or 3 as growing some sea monkeys is to becoming the Pacific Ocean. Compressing video is quite processor intensive.
Complete waste of money IFF your intention is to play Quake 3. NOT a complete waste of money if you want to do many other tasks that computers are good at.
I didn't get that impression. It was between Luke and Vader...we didn't really see anything else transpire. Luke desperately wanted the good to come out in Vader, and it finally did. I don't think Luke forgave him for all the evil he'd done, but was glad that he'd finally "seen the light".
or maybe I'm just a Lucas apologist. You make the call. : )
Seems to me like that fellow does in fact have a right to say whatever idiocy he wants to. However, I'd approach the people maintaining the forum, demonstrate how this person is being abusive, and see if they would be willing to remove his posts or take other appropriate action.
Unfortunately, I think that weathering the slings and arrows of blithering idiots is something we're going to have to learn how to route around. I feel like denying them the right to express their (ignorant, abusive, and inaccurate) opinions would be worse than ignoring them. Peer review (like her on Slashdot) is, I think, ideal. The community moderates itself, and people can opt out of that moderation (by surfing at -1 like I do) if they want to. Nobody is denied the right to speak, but they are also not entitled to be heard.
Actually, Jobs was not the decision maker at the time. Gilbert Amelio (late of National Semiconductor) was the man who chose NeXT over Be, bringing on Mr. Jobs as an "advisor", who then engineered an ouster to get Amelio out of the drivers seat, so that Mr. Jobs could become the interim CEO for large values of interim. (Gosh, I so plagiarized that joke, but I liked it so much!)
You're not an extra...unless you wear a red shirt.
Vader died before he could be tried. His son chose to honor him for what good remained in him, but I don't think anybody would have tried to let Vader off the hook for his crimes.
"Who the heck nominated George Lucas to preach sick, popcorn morality at our children? If it's "only a movie," why is he working so hard to fill his films with this crap?"
Who nominated him? Well, duh! The people who went and bought tickets for the freakin' movie. If you don't like Lucas's politics, don't subsidize them. Me, I don't give a damn about his politics, I like his movies, and I (and, I believe, most other humans) am smart enough to differentiate between the two.
That's one interpretation of what Carbon's for, but I think it's an inaccurate one.
When Apple undertook the Herculean task of switching architectures from 68k to PPC, they HAD to provide the facility for running legacy applications reliably. If they hadn't, the company would have been deader than Elvis. It's exactly the same thing now. If Apple does not allow legacy code to work on the new OS, then all the naysayers will win, and that'd be a Bad Thing.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your argument. The Carbon Dater application does precisely what you are describing...it checks a given app and tells the coders what (minor) changes will be necessary to get it to work on MacOS X. This has nothing to do with the Java/ObjC development environments for clean-slate projects.
Re:windowsCE on the clio
on
Digital VCRs
·
· Score: 1
Pardon the response to your blatant troll, but where are your dictionary, style manual, and caps lock key at?
The hardware? First of all, keep in mind that the worldwide community of coders that make up the Linux community don't have the financial scratch to put together a consumer-focused piece of special purpose hardware. Yet. There's no reason Vadem's lovely Clio couldn't be un-hamstrung by getting Linux ported to it. They've done it with the Palm. (They=the Linux kernel Jedis who have forgotten more about programming than I could ever hope to know.)
It's funny to me that Microsoft has to strap a booster rocket of developers and marketing to their extraordinarily shitty WinCE operating system to keep it almost within shouting distance, usability wise, of an etch-a-sketch. Linux might not be there yet (there=the handheld computer market) but I'll eat your Vadem Clio if it's not there in three years.
I will go on record and say that some of the new WinCE hardware is MIGHTY tasty. It's only a good operating system away from ruling the universe.
Gosh, I wish I hadn't wasted this hopefully not totally uninteresting post replying to this unlettered idiot...
Re:appropriate name for the device?
on
Digital VCRs
·
· Score: 1
Let's get 'em to stop calling cable modems cable modems, then we'll take a crack at this misnomer. : )
Now before I look like a complete ignoramus (maybe too late), cable modems do not in fact modulate and demodulate an analog signal, do they? I'm 95% certain that they're all digital, but I sure would like it if somebody would loan me a shoehorn for the foot in me mouth if I'm wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
The only thing that annoys me more than bigotry is people who assume other people are being bigots.
Minds are bad at remembering. Why should I keep lookup tables in my brain if I can have them on paper? Minds are good at synthesizing. Why do we continue to want to do hammer jobs with screwdrivers? Honing my brain into a finely tuned synthesizing engine would be a lot more useful than remembering what happened on August 1, 1926 (or some other arbitrary meaningless date).
Sure we're dependent on technology. Like it or not, we live in a technologically advanced and oriented society. Sure, if I got stuck out in the woods and had to keep from getting eaten by large predators, I'd have to develop another skill set post haste, but it seems to me like our modern lifestyle lends itself to technological information storage and organisation. For instance, I'm within arm's reach of a device connected to The Oracle of Infinite Information about 20 hours out of the day (most of the rest, I'm in my car, and I'm working on that part). Why SHOULDN'T I use the Internet as a swap file for my brain?
I'm confused. Civ CTP is a network game, but Quake 3 isn't? Better get a memo to Carmack, because he sure thinks it is. The reason that I'm yawning about Q3 is because of its singleminded focus on network play. I'm bored with deathmatches. A common source base does, in fact, make version control easier to do, but a well-documented communications system would do the same thing, yes?
Or, um, maybe they like their computers to boot quickly. Occam's Razor, anyone?
How many users are using Word for DOS now? I'd argue that there's no meaningful connection between the two software packages.
Microsoft used their ill-gotten domination of the office market to force a superior product out of a different market space. You're treading very closely to Godwin's Law here, but I'll go ahead and point out that Robert Goddard was the pioneer of modern rocketry, not Dr. Von Braun. This is, however, a canard, as we're talking about Microsoft's dismal failure to innovate ANYTHING.
Thank you for your permission to have my opinion, I'll be glad to check with you in the future any time I have thoughts about any subject. Note that I don't need or want the market to reflect my tastes, but if the market wants my money, it must provide me with things that I want to buy.
Incorrect. The settlement was for a suit that most people agree Apple would have won. Microsoft got caught with their hand in the Quicktime cookie jar. This had nothing whatsoever to do with Apple's "look and feel" lawsuit. Microsoft agreed to ship Office98 for the Mac, buy 150 million dollars of nonvoting stock, and make an undisclosed payment to Apple to avoid getting seriously hurt in the legal proceedings.
Visual Basic: Notion was lifted from Apple's Hypercard and used as a club to prevent Apple from porting Hypercard to Windows. Hypercard was at the time arguably superior, although many people feel it has stagnated since then.
MS Word: Purchased from...somebody whose name I don't remember, written originally for the Mac, ported to x86 to form the core of Windows 1.0. Filched? Probably not. Good product? Arguable. Popular product? Of course...but there's lots of cockroaches too. Doesn't mean I like 'em.
Actimates Barney: Can you say Teddy Ruxpin? I knew you could.
Microsoft's sole decent product is their mouse. Well, I like Excel a whole lot too, mainly because that's what I'm familiar with. It would be nice if some clever person for one of the competing office suites did what Microsoft does so well...make it easy to transition TO their product. My investment in knowing how to make Excel do what I want it to do is hard to walk away from.
You don't know a thing about how other people feel about Gates. The psychologists have a word for what you're trying to do: projection. YOU might be jealous of Gates, but I think he's rather pathetic. I don't care how many dollars he has, he still comes across as the mildly-insecure "PLEASE affirm that I'm the neatest guy in the universe" brat. He's the figurehead of the biggest public nuisance in the latter half of this century, and he's on the cusp of becoming an also-ran in the annals of computer history.
He can, and is, and ever will be, a ninny. Poor guy. I wouldn't trade places with him for, well, all his money.
Would I save his life? Sure. He doesn't deserve to die...just be forgotten. Wonder which he'll like less...
I've heard employees pronounce it "TIH-vo-lee" (long O).
The Catholic Church's primary function (with the exception of the last 300 years, which considering its history can yet be considered anomalous) has been to confuse religion with politics. I would argue that the leaders/spokespeople of religion since its the dawn of time have tried to obfuscate this distinction.
Note that the poster was alleging that the notion of "science" was inherently more dangerous than the notion of "religion". Demonstrably, this is not the case. I am not saying that any given adherent of science (of which I am one) is any more or less prone to doing Bad Things than any given adherent of religion (of which I am one).
When was the last time a cadre of scientists spent 500 years fighting wars (like, ones where people died and stuff) with other scientists who disagreed with them? Let me forestall the Manhattan Project argument by saying I'd much rather die in a nuclear exchange than die on the rack because some Inquisitor thought I was a heretic.
"science" and "religion" don't have "dark sides". Humans who practice science and humans who practice religion have dark sides.
I'd be interested in hearing you argue your "dwarfs religion's by a long shot" position.
Of course twins are different. However, you do have to admit that identical twins are LESS different physically than any other pair of humans you might mention. Are you _surprised_ that from time to time people who don't know you well mistake you for your twin? It's INEVITABLE that it will happen...
Let's all click on the banner, so they think we care. Then maybe they'll sink a ton of money in it, and then we won't buy it in droves. Be cool if it'd work...
Acknowledging your correction, and completing my sentence. Darn no-preview-usin' people like me...
OSS operated closely with British Intelligence to obtain and crack Enigma, along with many other Axis cryptosystems.
The OSS. Office of...Secure Service? I don't remmeber what the acronym stands for. They operated closely during World War II to capture the German Enigma machine, which makes a prominent appearance in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.
Compressing an audio signal with MP3 (mpeg level 3 compression) is like compressing a video stream with MPEG 2 or 3 as growing some sea monkeys is to becoming the Pacific Ocean. Compressing video is quite processor intensive.
Complete waste of money IFF your intention is to play Quake 3. NOT a complete waste of money if you want to do many other tasks that computers are good at.
I didn't get that impression. It was between Luke and Vader...we didn't really see anything else transpire. Luke desperately wanted the good to come out in Vader, and it finally did. I don't think Luke forgave him for all the evil he'd done, but was glad that he'd finally "seen the light".
or maybe I'm just a Lucas apologist. You make the call. : )
Seems to me like that fellow does in fact have a right to say whatever idiocy he wants to. However, I'd approach the people maintaining the forum, demonstrate how this person is being abusive, and see if they would be willing to remove his posts or take other appropriate action.
Unfortunately, I think that weathering the slings and arrows of blithering idiots is something we're going to have to learn how to route around. I feel like denying them the right to express their (ignorant, abusive, and inaccurate) opinions would be worse than ignoring them. Peer review (like her on Slashdot) is, I think, ideal. The community moderates itself, and people can opt out of that moderation (by surfing at -1 like I do) if they want to. Nobody is denied the right to speak, but they are also not entitled to be heard.
True, but you DO have the right to criticize anonymously.
Actually, Jobs was not the decision maker at the time. Gilbert Amelio (late of National Semiconductor) was the man who chose NeXT over Be, bringing on Mr. Jobs as an "advisor", who then engineered an ouster to get Amelio out of the drivers seat, so that Mr. Jobs could become the interim CEO for large values of interim. (Gosh, I so plagiarized that joke, but I liked it so much!)
You're not an extra...unless you wear a red shirt.
Vader died before he could be tried. His son chose to honor him for what good remained in him, but I don't think anybody would have tried to let Vader off the hook for his crimes.
My favorite bit was this one:
"Who the heck nominated George Lucas to preach sick, popcorn morality at our children? If it's "only a movie," why is he working so hard to fill his films with this crap?"
Who nominated him? Well, duh! The people who went and bought tickets for the freakin' movie. If you don't like Lucas's politics, don't subsidize them. Me, I don't give a damn about his politics, I like his movies, and I (and, I believe, most other humans) am smart enough to differentiate between the two.
That's one interpretation of what Carbon's for, but I think it's an inaccurate one.
When Apple undertook the Herculean task of switching architectures from 68k to PPC, they HAD to provide the facility for running legacy applications reliably. If they hadn't, the company would have been deader than Elvis. It's exactly the same thing now. If Apple does not allow legacy code to work on the new OS, then all the naysayers will win, and that'd be a Bad Thing.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your argument. The Carbon Dater application does precisely what you are describing...it checks a given app and tells the coders what (minor) changes will be necessary to get it to work on MacOS X. This has nothing to do with the Java/ObjC development environments for clean-slate projects.
Pardon the response to your blatant troll, but where are your dictionary, style manual, and caps lock key at?
The hardware? First of all, keep in mind that the worldwide community of coders that make up the Linux community don't have the financial scratch to put together a consumer-focused piece of special purpose hardware. Yet. There's no reason Vadem's lovely Clio couldn't be un-hamstrung by getting Linux ported to it. They've done it with the Palm. (They=the Linux kernel Jedis who have forgotten more about programming than I could ever hope to know.)
It's funny to me that Microsoft has to strap a booster rocket of developers and marketing to their extraordinarily shitty WinCE operating system to keep it almost within shouting distance, usability wise, of an etch-a-sketch. Linux might not be there yet (there=the handheld computer market) but I'll eat your Vadem Clio if it's not there in three years.
I will go on record and say that some of the new WinCE hardware is MIGHTY tasty. It's only a good operating system away from ruling the universe.
Gosh, I wish I hadn't wasted this hopefully not totally uninteresting post replying to this unlettered idiot...
Let's get 'em to stop calling cable modems cable modems, then we'll take a crack at this misnomer. : )
Now before I look like a complete ignoramus (maybe too late), cable modems do not in fact modulate and demodulate an analog signal, do they? I'm 95% certain that they're all digital, but I sure would like it if somebody would loan me a shoehorn for the foot in me mouth if I'm wrong.