Honestly, I get to a point where I end up with 20-40 tabs open in each of ten different windows. Then Firefox gets too slow and I bookmark everything and start over...
Suppose the magical cooking machine had a "mashup" feature where you could combine the best elements of various meals that have been created by those who came before you. You could then post your creation for the world at whole to try, where it would then, in turn, be eaten and reviewed.
Creativity would explode!* And the tools to create new dishes, previously accessible only to those with years of dedicated training, would be available to everyone. Sure, you'd get a lot of crap, but you'd also get some truly innovative and wonderful meals. Much like the process of evolution.
As someone said earlier, there are smart people, and there are dumb people, and the Internet won't change that. There are also those who want to create, and those who just want to passively consume. The Internet won't change that, either.
But the Internet is an extremely powerful tool for those who are smart and/or creative. I have the world's biggest library and university at my fingertips, and so does everyone else. For those who want to (or are compelled to) take advantage of it, the possibilities are endless...
----- * The globalization of food has created some homogeneity, true. You can find McDonald's and Starbucks everywhere you look. But it has also led to a huge burst in creativity, especially in terms of fusion. For instance, I doubt you'd find an Indian-Mexican fusion restaurant in 1940. Pumpkin enchiladas, anyone?
It all depends on how you want to traverse the tree. Depth-first or breadth-first. The Internet is not exactly a tree, but many parts are tree-like. Knowledge is the same way.
I tend to traverse depth-first, so visiting a top-level node (which is really more of an entry point) inevitably leads towards a deeper traversal. Often, it doesn't take long till I hit something that's quite informative and thought-provoking, and I'm done drilling down (or over, or up), so I go back a level or two and continue. But I wouldn't call this skimming, exactly.
This approach to learning is much more interactive than reading a book about the same topic, and it's usually more rewarding to me as well. A book provides a framework, and often a hypothesis. But if that's given to you up front, it takes all the fun out of it. And in many areas (particular where rapid change is happening) it's just not possible. You need to be able to synthesize your own frameworks to make sense of what's happening.
I liked the iSlate name. You could have done some pretty cool graphics on the case to go along with it, too. I guess that "iSlate" could be rephrased as "Is Late," but compared to iPad...
The iPod came out in late 2001. The iPad (Fujitsu version) came out in 2002. It was a real product. I don't think you can call Fujitsu a trademark troll here.
20 or 30 years ago, cars needed a lot more maintenance than they do today. And automatic transmissions weren't as common. So people were generally more connected to the road and more skilled under the hood. But most people (then and now) use a car as an appliance, and they want it to be as simple and trouble-free as possible. End of story. They don't have the slightest interest in even shifting gears, let alone changing the oil. They just want to get in, turn the key (or press the power button), shift into "D", and go.
There will always be those who do want a stick shift and will tinker under the hood to tune their car's performance. And this is a good thing. But the vast majority of drivers are not like this. They don't care if they *can* pop the hood because they never will.
Even World War II was largely an information war. Cryptography and code-breaking to find out what the enemy was planning, where their fleets were, etc. Very much a geek war.
I wonder if people without this genetic variant are quicker learners in general. Or if the quick learning is limited to spatial and motor skills.
I'd like to see them study other activities, like playing video games of other types, learning some non-physical skill, rock climbing, playing basketball, riding a bike, etc. It would be interesting to see where correlations pop up.
We do need to get to a point where the ads are realtime. So the same dvr recording fetches new commercials each time it's viewed. There is serious money right there.
Particularly if the ads are targeted to a specific viewer's interests and demographic group. If I could use TiVo's thumbs-up/thumbs-down feature on ads (a la Pandora), and that data went back upstream, coupled with my basic demographic data, that would be valuable information as well.
I live in a suburb of a pretty large U.S. city, and we have no cable in our neighborhood either. The subdivision's infrastructure dates back to the mid-1980s and all the utilities are underground. Cable was not included at the time, and the cable company won't pay to bury the lines. So everyone has a satellite dish. As far as internet goes, 1.5M/768K DSL is as good as we can get.
Seems like cold climates would naturally select for people who maintain a lower body temperature, for various reasons.
I doubt that just moving to a cold climate would help much, but if you come from a long line of cold-climate dwellers, you might well have evolved this adaptation to some degree.
I'm part of the 30-to-40 set you speak of. I started out with the Apple II and went from there.
I think this evolution is similar to what happened with cars. 30 or 40 years ago, people commonly maintained their own cars - partly because the machines were simpler, and partly out of necessity. As a result, people had a much better understanding of what was under the hood than they do today. Nowadays, even independent mechanics can't do much more than minor maintenance without investing tens of thousands of dollars in specialized equipment.
Those who like to tinker with cars still can, usually with older models. The rest of us don't even need to know how to change the oil, although we might still be really good drivers.
And there will always be kids who want to tinker with computers. Fortunately, there are lots of cool things out there to play with. When I was growing up, you couldn't just download Eclipse...
I bought mine because it was the smallest thing out there. It's cheap to the point of being disposable, so if I crash while biking and smash it, it's no big deal. And it still holds 250 songs.
Spring? Swing? Struts? Xerces? Xalan? Hibernate? (forgive my Java-centric examples)
Frameworks for developing applications are indeed developing and maturing, and software architects are leveraging these components instead of building these things from scratch. Why would you rewrite Hibernate if it does all you need?
Lower-level code is getting more modular, but user expectations keep increasing. They want their web applications to be as robust and full-featured as desktop apps. The business logic unique to a customer isn't getting any simpler. No matter how many general components are available, there will still be tons of work in the custom realm.
This is the history of software engineering. More and more layers of abstraction are built on top of the basic AND, OR, and NOT operations that every program ultimately is made of.
I don't see how this is going away anytime soon. It's easy enough for someone to get up in front of a crowd and say "modules are the way to go, and programmer productivity doesn't count anymore" but assembling a complex application is a lot more work than putting together a few Lego blocks.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, I get to a point where I end up with 20-40 tabs open in each of ten different windows. Then Firefox gets too slow and I bookmark everything and start over...
To carry that analogy forward a bit...
Suppose the magical cooking machine had a "mashup" feature where you could combine the best elements of various meals that have been created by those who came before you. You could then post your creation for the world at whole to try, where it would then, in turn, be eaten and reviewed.
Creativity would explode!* And the tools to create new dishes, previously accessible only to those with years of dedicated training, would be available to everyone. Sure, you'd get a lot of crap, but you'd also get some truly innovative and wonderful meals. Much like the process of evolution.
As someone said earlier, there are smart people, and there are dumb people, and the Internet won't change that. There are also those who want to create, and those who just want to passively consume. The Internet won't change that, either.
But the Internet is an extremely powerful tool for those who are smart and/or creative. I have the world's biggest library and university at my fingertips, and so does everyone else. For those who want to (or are compelled to) take advantage of it, the possibilities are endless...
-----
* The globalization of food has created some homogeneity, true. You can find McDonald's and Starbucks everywhere you look. But it has also led to a huge burst in creativity, especially in terms of fusion. For instance, I doubt you'd find an Indian-Mexican fusion restaurant in 1940. Pumpkin enchiladas, anyone?
It all depends on how you want to traverse the tree. Depth-first or breadth-first. The Internet is not exactly a tree, but many parts are tree-like. Knowledge is the same way.
I tend to traverse depth-first, so visiting a top-level node (which is really more of an entry point) inevitably leads towards a deeper traversal. Often, it doesn't take long till I hit something that's quite informative and thought-provoking, and I'm done drilling down (or over, or up), so I go back a level or two and continue. But I wouldn't call this skimming, exactly.
This approach to learning is much more interactive than reading a book about the same topic, and it's usually more rewarding to me as well. A book provides a framework, and often a hypothesis. But if that's given to you up front, it takes all the fun out of it. And in many areas (particular where rapid change is happening) it's just not possible. You need to be able to synthesize your own frameworks to make sense of what's happening.
You sound like my three-year-old. But then again, I'm not doing much better.
Personally, I would go with iPad Maxi. And I do mean personally. If, that is, I didn't have a Y chromosome.
I liked the iSlate name. You could have done some pretty cool graphics on the case to go along with it, too. I guess that "iSlate" could be rephrased as "Is Late," but compared to iPad...
Just wait until Apple makes the iWii emulator available.
iWii on my iPad...
The iPod came out in late 2001. The iPad (Fujitsu version) came out in 2002. It was a real product. I don't think you can call Fujitsu a trademark troll here.
Let's add to the car analogy.
20 or 30 years ago, cars needed a lot more maintenance than they do today. And automatic transmissions weren't as common. So people were generally more connected to the road and more skilled under the hood. But most people (then and now) use a car as an appliance, and they want it to be as simple and trouble-free as possible. End of story. They don't have the slightest interest in even shifting gears, let alone changing the oil. They just want to get in, turn the key (or press the power button), shift into "D", and go.
There will always be those who do want a stick shift and will tinker under the hood to tune their car's performance. And this is a good thing. But the vast majority of drivers are not like this. They don't care if they *can* pop the hood because they never will.
Sometimes things do manage to work out for the best.
But then, you discover that your child's toys are full of lead (or worse, cadmium), that practically all canned foods contain BPA, and that building codes are sometimes ignored, especially in countries like Haiti.
You definitely want to make sure that the multi-ton metal box you ride around in is not provided by the lowest bidder.
And maybe those mass-produced foodstuffs are truly scary, and really shouldn't be called foodstuffs.
I, for one, am worried.
That wouldn't work since the data file comes in on stdin, right? But this line should be equivalent:
./lug UA129086 - - - < luggage.dat
Even World War II was largely an information war. Cryptography and code-breaking to find out what the enemy was planning, where their fleets were, etc. Very much a geek war.
I wonder if people without this genetic variant are quicker learners in general. Or if the quick learning is limited to spatial and motor skills. I'd like to see them study other activities, like playing video games of other types, learning some non-physical skill, rock climbing, playing basketball, riding a bike, etc. It would be interesting to see where correlations pop up.
We do need to get to a point where the ads are realtime. So the same dvr recording fetches new commercials each time it's viewed.
There is serious money right there.
Particularly if the ads are targeted to a specific viewer's interests and demographic group. If I could use TiVo's thumbs-up/thumbs-down feature on ads (a la Pandora), and that data went back upstream, coupled with my basic demographic data, that would be valuable information as well.
How many beads does my abacus need before it becomes sentient?
42...?
I live in a suburb of a pretty large U.S. city, and we have no cable in our neighborhood either. The subdivision's infrastructure dates back to the mid-1980s and all the utilities are underground. Cable was not included at the time, and the cable company won't pay to bury the lines. So everyone has a satellite dish. As far as internet goes, 1.5M/768K DSL is as good as we can get.
And when you unplug from the wall it's called... wait, never mind.
Here's a couple (the second covers from 400,000 years ago to today)
http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/02.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/etc/graphs.html
Your Google must be broken...
Seems like cold climates would naturally select for people who maintain a lower body temperature, for various reasons.
I doubt that just moving to a cold climate would help much, but if you come from a long line of cold-climate dwellers, you might well have evolved this adaptation to some degree.
Google's slogan, ~2020.
Specialization in an occupation is a trend that has been increasing in recent years.
Eventually you'll have politicians who have absolutely *no* grasp of anything, except how to hold on to power.
Wait a minute...
I'm part of the 30-to-40 set you speak of. I started out with the Apple II and went from there.
I think this evolution is similar to what happened with cars. 30 or 40 years ago, people commonly maintained their own cars - partly because the machines were simpler, and partly out of necessity. As a result, people had a much better understanding of what was under the hood than they do today. Nowadays, even independent mechanics can't do much more than minor maintenance without investing tens of thousands of dollars in specialized equipment.
Those who like to tinker with cars still can, usually with older models. The rest of us don't even need to know how to change the oil, although we might still be really good drivers.
And there will always be kids who want to tinker with computers. Fortunately, there are lots of cool things out there to play with. When I was growing up, you couldn't just download Eclipse...
I bought mine because it was the smallest thing out there. It's cheap to the point of being disposable, so if I crash while biking and smash it, it's no big deal. And it still holds 250 songs.
I'd kill to work on a project with scope creep of only 1% per month. Hell, I'd take 1% per day...
Spring? Swing? Struts? Xerces? Xalan? Hibernate? (forgive my Java-centric examples)
Frameworks for developing applications are indeed developing and maturing, and software architects are leveraging these components instead of building these things from scratch. Why would you rewrite Hibernate if it does all you need?
Lower-level code is getting more modular, but user expectations keep increasing. They want their web applications to be as robust and full-featured as desktop apps. The business logic unique to a customer isn't getting any simpler. No matter how many general components are available, there will still be tons of work in the custom realm.
This is the history of software engineering. More and more layers of abstraction are built on top of the basic AND, OR, and NOT operations that every program ultimately is made of.
I don't see how this is going away anytime soon. It's easy enough for someone to get up in front of a crowd and say "modules are the way to go, and programmer productivity doesn't count anymore" but assembling a complex application is a lot more work than putting together a few Lego blocks.