If anything, putting their computers in an environment like a school to show young people that Macs *do indeed actually crash quite a bit, even under OS X* is a bad idea.
I own 4 macs: a 15" Powerbook, a 12" iBook, a dual 2.5 GHz G5, and a 1 GHz G4 (MDD). These 4 machines are up and running 24/7. Two of them are servers exposed to the Internet. One of those servers also runs Final Cut Pro, email, etc.
I can count on one hand how many times these machines have crashed since 2002 (three times). Applications do occasionally lock up but can always be force quit.
If your macs are running OS X and the hardware is not faulty, your Macs are not going to be crashing. Since 50% Mac share at your school suggests more than a few Macs, my intuition is that you're making this up or that the users at your school don't know what a crashing Mac looks like. In other words, I think either you're lying or you have no idea what you are talking about.
Indeed, Jobs says with pride that Pixar has made the tough call to stop production at some point on every one of its movies to fix a problem with a storyline or character. "Quality is more important than quantity, and in the end, it's a better financial decision anyway," Jobs told BusinessWeek last year. "One home run is much better than two doubles," he said, explaining that then there's only one marketing and production budget rather than two.
This is a profound statement of commitment and speaks volumes not only about Pixar's approach to technology, but Apple's as well. Apple's focus on Mac OS X and a high quality experience with all of its hardware--from iMac to Powerbook to Powermac to iPod nano to iPod video--is the product of a singular mind. We've all heard about Jobs' influence on all aspects of product development and what strikes me is how the above quote resembles Apple's notorious commitment to a single-button mouse. It's almost as if a one-button mouse is a metaphor in hardware for the singular attention Jobs, (hence) Apple, and Pixar devote to its products.
I hope we see a new Disney come out of this merger more than we see a new Pixar.
I think the "Where's George" idea is interesting and a clever way of mapping interpersonal, semi-anonymous human transaction pathways. The personal ones are easier to document because we remember them. It's too bad this can't also take into account electronic transactions initiated at points of sale.
The "bad science fiction" of this heading is a reference to Frank Herbert's atrocious novel* The White Plague wherein an well-intentioned but severely misguided scientist releases a plague that kills only (and all) women into the wild. The plague spreads by means of currency, which no one in the novel seems able to figure out until it is too late.
On the other hand, Asimov's Foundation series, where the concept of psychohistory is explored, is fantastic science fiction: thoughtful, subtle, and complex. It also avoids focusing on technology as such choosing to address the effects of technology on human intergalactic society. However, I don't think psychohistory's ability to predict with statistical certainty how humans will behave as an aggregate very closely resembles the "Where's George" mapping project.
*I don't generally despise Frank Herberrt as I loved the Dune series (up until God Emperor Dune after which they started sucking and then started being written posthumously by his son. Readers at Amazon, for whatever reason, appear to like this novel.
nobody would write papers on gender bias in postmodern literature unless they were eyeing the carrot of tenure or some other extrinsic reward. On the other hand, plenty of people would still work on problems in number theory regardless of whether or not they were getting paid.
You're looking at the wrong issue. Plenty of people would write about the social effects of gender bias in media (e.g. literature) even if they weren't getting paid. Secondly, you're promoting the fantasy of a passionate scientist working alone with pencil and paper which, since around 1300, just ain't so. Modern-day contributions (after Galileo) to mathematics require institutional support. Everything is else is just amateurism.
Graham's point seems to be that in the hard sciences there are definite answers for questions, a clear "right" and "wrong", whereas in subjects like literature there are not (except in the trivial sense of a grade-school-style quiz that simply tests whether or not you actually read the book).
The main point of the article is to do what you love. When Graham compares those who write "dreary" papers to naturally curious mathematicians who do math simply for the love of it, he strongly implies no one loves thinking about language, identity, gender, and I would add, media, art, music, etc.
If Graham truly believes the study of literature cannot be loved because it does not yield exact answers (which I don't think he does), then he may as well write off all artists, writers, and musicians (and those who love their works) a people who don't love what they do. My guess is that Graham is prejudiced against the humanities in general and English/Literature folks in particular. I'm further guessing (betting, even) that Graham's prejudice is the effect of bad personal encounters with someone who loves literature.
What follows is an email I wrote to Graham about his article on doing what one loves:
You say many insightful and, might I say, wise things about how to identify what one loves and how to rout out the truth of those who claim to love their work but in fact do not. I come into contact with hundreds of (college) students a day and it is all too plain there are many who don't know what a love of work means.
That said, I was very surprised to read
Math would happen without math departments, but it is the
existence of English majors, and therefore jobs teaching
them, that calls into being all those thousands of dreary
papers about gender and identity in the novels of Conrad. No
one does that kind of thing for fun.
That sentence overlooks the obvious fact that there are many people who believe precisely the opposite. Having a strong mathematics background as well as a strong background in literature, I will tell you that you are wrong on this point.
There are people who love writing about literature (not writing literature) so much that they would risk life and limb to do so. One of those people was Mikhail Bakhtin who was persecuted by the Russian government for his ideas regarding literature. Bakhtin did not write novels or poems, but what we today identify as literary and cultural criticism. Bakhtin's example is just one of, I'm sure, dozens of others.
So, again, thank you for [your] insightful article. You might, however, want to rout out any moments of blind prejudice as they do not harmonize well in so well-written an essay.
Statistically speaking more than half of students at four-year colleges -- and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges -- lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers.
These are people who are attending college, not college graduates. It is a distinct possibility that these illiterate college students will never graduate. Without further data, whether they will be conservative or liberal after dropping out is a matter of speculation. In either case, they won't be counted among the number of college-degree holders who are conservative, liberal, or something else.
As a system administrator wearing various hats, I'm with you regarding advisable practices in the context of software installation and precaution in day-to-day usage. Where I think Thompson may be right is in my (our?) "laugh[ing] at all the sneezing, coughing and hospitalized Gatesians" which certainly looks a lot like smugness. Unfortunately, schadenfreude has its pleasures.
For the most part the Jobsians just ignore the ranting and get on with enjoying their carefree life and laugh at all the sneezing, coughing and hospitalized Gatesians.
As a Mac user, I nodded at your extended analogy and laughed at your last sentence.
That's when I realized that Thompson is not entirely mistaken.
I'm an educator and have been provided a license for every version of Office since Office 97. I'm not denying that some people consider Office for Mac OS to be superior to its Windows counterpart. I'm just suggesting that if MS perceives OS X to be a threat that they will do everything they can to hinder its adoption, including sabotaging the "universal standard" of Office.
Remember when Microsoft settled with a company (I believe AOL) back in the 90s and part of the settlement was a cut of all Internet Explorer sales/profit and then Microsoft turned around and reduced the price of Explorer to free? Remember?
Same song, new verse. To wit: commit for the next five years and reluctantly, sluggishly, incrementally release (buggy!) updates to Microsoft Office for Mac OS on Intel. I hope this is not what happens, but if Microsoft gets nervous you can bet this is exactly what will happen.
Many of the islands visited by Captain Cook, described as paradise at the time, are now little more than brothels with an ocean-front view for the rich.
Strictly for purposes of . . . uh . . . anthropological research . . . I would like to know the names of these brot^H^H^H^H islands.
I can't imagine to pay for a DRMmed file that's not very high quality, to boot. I'm a typical headphones listener, and even through crappy A/Ds you hear a serious difference...
I'm enough of an audiophile that the high range tinniness in mp3s bugs me but not enough of one to know what "crappy A/Ds" are. I also agree that it's a bit of lump to pay money for a low-quality AAC/mp3. Sometimes when I get turned on to a new act, I preview on iTunes and then order from half.com. In fact, that's pretty much what I do for eighty to ninety percent of my music.
However, I have purchased maybe forty songs from iTMS and have received from friends maybe several hundred 128 kbps AACs/mp3s, and I notice a gigantic difference when I listen to those files on a pair of regular speakers/headphones and when I listen to those files using a pair of <BRANDNAME> in-ear canal phones.
For example, I have a pair of Sennheisers and listening to low-quality files on them is an awful experience. I also have a pair mid-range floor speakers and listening to low-quality audio files on them practically makes my ears bleed. But the <BRANDNAME> canal-phones provide a very different experience. I'm afraid to say "good," but that's pretty much what listening to AAC and mp3 files using those canal-phones is like. Even tracks with a wide dynamic range (yeah, I'm a child of the 70s) sound really good.
I guess this a long way of saying that the hardware you use to play low-quality music files makes all the difference in the world. Playing cheap tracks on high-quality hardware not optimized for compressed music just plain sucks. On the other hand, paying a bit of a premium for appropriate hardware might surprise your ears. I'm glad I received my canal-phones as a gift since they run about a quarter of the price of a new iPod (the high-end ones cost much more than even the top-of-the-line iPod), but that very unpretentious piece of hardware (black instead of mug-me-white cords) makes all the difference in the world.
Damn you mods. The parent is FUNNY! I'm right now giggling at the "future" suggested by the parent, a ludicrously self-embedded morphology that never arrives because it keeps moving . . . into the future. Get a sense of humor. Oh, I forgot: mods generally only "get" jokes when a laugh track is playing (i.e. "All your base," "In Soviet Russia," "Natalie Portman with HOT GRITS," etc.)
Languages - well , the whole language can be broken down in 1 4hr lesson into a massive 1 foot sized flow chart and rules, the rest are just like learning C++, all the verbs and nouns and functions.
This shows how little you understand the complexity of human languages. Grammar is a more-or-less coherent fiction invented in the eighteenth century to try to freeze language. Fortunately for us, languages are living and break elitist notions of "grammatical usage" every second of every day.
In fact, the complexity of human languages is so great that while child prodigies can master and pioneer mathematics, music, and physics by their twenties, literary masters are rarely so young. Communicating to other sentient beings (basically, a 24/7/365 Turing test) practically guarantees that what you think you know about language in that "1-foot sized flow chart and rules" is next to meaningless.
I doubt I'd load my iPod up with pr0n just for the convenience of stopping for a quick pull in a public restroom
Yeah, I hear what you're saying: public places present a problem if you're mostly sane and flying solo. A better use of the iPod video could be for times when you're with someone in public and both of you are looking to look together. That could be a real turn on and could lead to healthy if somewhat exhibitionistic and/or mildly indiscreet sexy stuff. On the other hand, and you can see what might be putting the chill on the porn industry, imagine a perv who sits next to an outdoor yoga class and queues "Yoga Yolanda Flexes for Felix" for a quick trip to augmented reality. I won't even go to the nightmares of sex-anxious parents who worry that Billy might show Susie "something neat" on his iPod behind the gym.
I think portable video is inevitable, but I also think that there will be sensationalized stories of the uses and abuses of portable video, too. What I'm wondering is what happens when cameras, wireless, and portable display devices combine to produce a users' revolution in video journalism, not porn, but politics.
As I see it, the new iPod has increased battery life, it's a bit thinner and has a little larger display. Beyond that, it's the exact same device it's always been and functions the exact same way it always has -- except that it'll play some video now.
You're right, in theory. The iPod added video capability without increasing the price or changing the basic functionality of the ipod. Some things, of course are changed, small things like no transfer over FW (Apple has glitchy USB 2.0 support on some machines) and the lack of remote functionality on the iPod's specialized headphone connector (now, it's dock-only).
But the real proof is in the tasting of the pudding. What I mean by this is that if people perceive that the video experience of iPod is not very useful and it becomes a vestigial function, then people will irrationally perceive that the iPod has lower value than an earlier iPod that doesn't do video. Part of this will be due to the fact that people will be lured to the new iPod by the video functionality but will find out it's not what they hoped. In particular, people may reject the video on the iPod because there is no easy way for users to produce video content for the iPod. Sure, some people will buy a bunch of $2.00 shows, but that novelty will wear off fast.
However, if I'm wrong and people do buy TV shows and music video like they do hotcakes, then the video iPod will probably be very successful. But without massive video iTMS sales, the fact that the iPod does not allow users to easily create/acquire content outside of commercial distribution channels may scratch the pristine surface of the iPod's reputation.
My guess is that Apple is working on a version of iMovie that will practically beam video content into your new video iPod and so the video iPod will revolutionize video consumption just as the iPod (r)evolutionized music-listening.
You're right, that video is amazing, giving as it does some insight into the cultural logic that informs 419 scams. It is probably not the case that all 419 scammers see this in terms of a ludic (playful) dialectic in which 419 scams are a game that place historically powerful white Westerners in the same arena as poor but savvy Nigerian tricksters.
Another thing that struck me was the racial (not quite racist) ideology that informs lines such as
White men, I will eat your dollars
I will take your money and disappear.
As someone who has ancestors of African descent (I am mixed race) and firmly in the middle class, I find this racial ideology profound and puzzling. No doubt, artists like Nkem Owoh, who serve as cultural commentators on 419 scamming, would consider me a half-black cousin to the "White men" whose dollars 419 scammers eat and so fair play, so to speak. I'm not personally threatened, but am grateful for one perspective on the cultural rationale (rationalization) behind 419 scams.
You (the subscribers) knew, or should have known, what Slashdot was when you subscribed, and have no grounds for complaint.
But this is a problem for potential subscribers, too. I am one of those types that when I use shareware for maybe a year or more, I pony up. If it's donationware, I try to send along a little something. For over 2 years, I have been contemplating subscribing, but it seems my moderation bit has been permanently turned off. It doesn't seem right or fair to me that I would pay to have a crippled account.
This is not just my whining about the crippled state of my account. It is also an observation that the/. editors occasionally exercise editorial bias both on the level of code and (less frequently) on the level of content. When this editorialization takes place behind-the-scenes with no accountability or acknowledgement, it reminds me that/. is, ultimately, a profitable private sandbox whose owners/editors are unaccountable to their public.
As long as this is the case, I'll use/. as a free resource. Once there is greater accountability, I will subscribe. For me it's not even a question of professionalism in terms of content. I don't mind duplicate posts, Roland Piquepaille, or AC trolls. However, secret editorialization and crippled user accounts are things that keep me from paying with my hard-earned cash.
I am a professor but I have never used Blackboard. I have made PDF files of copyrighted material available to students. However, the agreement was usually that students buy the books when they became available. (My university does not have its own bookstore, if you can imagine such a thing, and ordering books can often be tricky). In other words, my bad both for ordering early enough and for breaking copyright (though in the end I considered such distribution backup/timeshifting before the fact of ownership).
Having said that, I do not know of any professor who does not plan a course in advance of its start. Piecemeal distribution of materials over the course of the term may indicate many things, but a lack of advance planning is unlikely to be one of them. It's possible, but very unlikely. There are too many dependencies in a course to leave it up to just-in-time planning.
Second, some materials while under copyright are out of print. You can't buy a class set for even top dollar because the demand is perceived to be too low by the major publishing houses and the other stuff for which there is a consistent but small demand and which would be published by smaller houses just, well, costs too much to reprint. In this case, I break copyright because I am fulfilling my mission as an educator, bringing to light material that is important but that is restricted by commercial interests.
As a side note to you, consider purchasing a second-hand laser printer off eBay instead of printing with an inkjet. For about $120 you'd be amazed how much money you save in that first year.
Otherwise, people will gladly give up their freedom just to see some lame company with an incredible data center suck away all of their freedom and privacy. Google is completely evil.
Get a grip. People really concerned about privacy are going to do one of at least two things I can think of.
First, if privacy is a serious issue (e.g. Health Care industry) then private, proprietary, custom apps will be hosted locally. End of story. Second, if a less-privacy conscious company or institution needs privacy and wants to use Google's office suite (e.g. SOHO printing service bureau), Google will build (for $) a custom interface and backend more secure than its for-free web-based office suite.
To flash back to the 1990s, yeah, only the paranoid will survive. But this is 2005. MS can't survive for all its IBM anxiety of influence and schizophrenia is the new paranoia. Google is not evil, not yet anyway.
Googles main business is searching.. and that's what they make their profit.
Exactly. Think about an office suite that has the capabilities of Google searching. With the exception of enterprise class and custom applications, such a thing would serve the needs of many people, businesses, and institutions in the same way some databases do. This isn't going kill Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or even MS Access, but give it a year or two.
Schwartz could not be more right when he says "the world is about to change this week." MS Office is about to take some serious lumps in the next five years.
Posts like this that make me remember why I feel in love with Slashdot way back in 1998 (I lurked before getting a UID). Too few of these posts around today, but maybe some of you higher UID users will bring us back to our roots.
A fuel shortage-induced recession, flood-exacerbated inflation, and no Firewire-syncing means that this user will wait for rev 2.0 which (better) include FW-syncing.
Slashdot Mirror
If anything, putting their computers in an environment like a school to show young people that Macs *do indeed actually crash quite a bit, even under OS X* is a bad idea.
I own 4 macs: a 15" Powerbook, a 12" iBook, a dual 2.5 GHz G5, and a 1 GHz G4 (MDD). These 4 machines are up and running 24/7. Two of them are servers exposed to the Internet. One of those servers also runs Final Cut Pro, email, etc.
I can count on one hand how many times these machines have crashed since 2002 (three times). Applications do occasionally lock up but can always be force quit.
If your macs are running OS X and the hardware is not faulty, your Macs are not going to be crashing. Since 50% Mac share at your school suggests more than a few Macs, my intuition is that you're making this up or that the users at your school don't know what a crashing Mac looks like. In other words, I think either you're lying or you have no idea what you are talking about.
Do you have any details about these crashes?
Indeed, Jobs says with pride that Pixar has made the tough call to stop production at some point on every one of its movies to fix a problem with a storyline or character. "Quality is more important than quantity, and in the end, it's a better financial decision anyway," Jobs told BusinessWeek last year. "One home run is much better than two doubles," he said, explaining that then there's only one marketing and production budget rather than two.
This is a profound statement of commitment and speaks volumes not only about Pixar's approach to technology, but Apple's as well. Apple's focus on Mac OS X and a high quality experience with all of its hardware--from iMac to Powerbook to Powermac to iPod nano to iPod video--is the product of a singular mind. We've all heard about Jobs' influence on all aspects of product development and what strikes me is how the above quote resembles Apple's notorious commitment to a single-button mouse. It's almost as if a one-button mouse is a metaphor in hardware for the singular attention Jobs, (hence) Apple, and Pixar devote to its products.
I hope we see a new Disney come out of this merger more than we see a new Pixar.
I think the "Where's George" idea is interesting and a clever way of mapping interpersonal, semi-anonymous human transaction pathways. The personal ones are easier to document because we remember them. It's too bad this can't also take into account electronic transactions initiated at points of sale.
The "bad science fiction" of this heading is a reference to Frank Herbert's atrocious novel* The White Plague wherein an well-intentioned but severely misguided scientist releases a plague that kills only (and all) women into the wild. The plague spreads by means of currency, which no one in the novel seems able to figure out until it is too late.
On the other hand, Asimov's Foundation series, where the concept of psychohistory is explored, is fantastic science fiction: thoughtful, subtle, and complex. It also avoids focusing on technology as such choosing to address the effects of technology on human intergalactic society. However, I don't think psychohistory's ability to predict with statistical certainty how humans will behave as an aggregate very closely resembles the "Where's George" mapping project.
*I don't generally despise Frank Herberrt as I loved the Dune series (up until God Emperor Dune after which they started sucking and then started being written posthumously by his son. Readers at Amazon, for whatever reason, appear to like this novel.
nobody would write papers on gender bias in postmodern literature unless they were eyeing the carrot of tenure or some other extrinsic reward. On the other hand, plenty of people would still work on problems in number theory regardless of whether or not they were getting paid.
You're looking at the wrong issue. Plenty of people would write about the social effects of gender bias in media (e.g. literature) even if they weren't getting paid. Secondly, you're promoting the fantasy of a passionate scientist working alone with pencil and paper which, since around 1300, just ain't so. Modern-day contributions (after Galileo) to mathematics require institutional support. Everything is else is just amateurism.
Graham's point seems to be that in the hard sciences there are definite answers for questions, a clear "right" and "wrong", whereas in subjects like literature there are not (except in the trivial sense of a grade-school-style quiz that simply tests whether or not you actually read the book).
The main point of the article is to do what you love. When Graham compares those who write "dreary" papers to naturally curious mathematicians who do math simply for the love of it, he strongly implies no one loves thinking about language, identity, gender, and I would add, media, art, music, etc.
If Graham truly believes the study of literature cannot be loved because it does not yield exact answers (which I don't think he does), then he may as well write off all artists, writers, and musicians (and those who love their works) a people who don't love what they do. My guess is that Graham is prejudiced against the humanities in general and English/Literature folks in particular. I'm further guessing (betting, even) that Graham's prejudice is the effect of bad personal encounters with someone who loves literature.
What follows is an email I wrote to Graham about his article on doing what one loves:
Statistically speaking more than half of students at four-year colleges -- and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges -- lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers.
These are people who are attending college, not college graduates. It is a distinct possibility that these illiterate college students will never graduate. Without further data, whether they will be conservative or liberal after dropping out is a matter of speculation. In either case, they won't be counted among the number of college-degree holders who are conservative, liberal, or something else.
As a system administrator wearing various hats, I'm with you regarding advisable practices in the context of software installation and precaution in day-to-day usage. Where I think Thompson may be right is in my (our?) "laugh[ing] at all the sneezing, coughing and hospitalized Gatesians" which certainly looks a lot like smugness. Unfortunately, schadenfreude has its pleasures.
For the most part the Jobsians just ignore the ranting and get on with enjoying their carefree life and laugh at all the sneezing, coughing and hospitalized Gatesians.
As a Mac user, I nodded at your extended analogy and laughed at your last sentence.
That's when I realized that Thompson is not entirely mistaken.
Have you actually tried Office for OSX
I'm an educator and have been provided a license for every version of Office since Office 97. I'm not denying that some people consider Office for Mac OS to be superior to its Windows counterpart. I'm just suggesting that if MS perceives OS X to be a threat that they will do everything they can to hinder its adoption, including sabotaging the "universal standard" of Office.
Remember when Microsoft settled with a company (I believe AOL) back in the 90s and part of the settlement was a cut of all Internet Explorer sales/profit and then Microsoft turned around and reduced the price of Explorer to free? Remember?
Same song, new verse. To wit: commit for the next five years and reluctantly, sluggishly, incrementally release (buggy!) updates to Microsoft Office for Mac OS on Intel. I hope this is not what happens, but if Microsoft gets nervous you can bet this is exactly what will happen.
Many of the islands visited by Captain Cook, described as paradise at the time, are now little more than brothels with an ocean-front view for the rich.
Strictly for purposes of . . . uh . . . anthropological research . . . I would like to know the names of these brot^H^H^H^H islands.
ahem
I can't imagine to pay for a DRMmed file that's not very high quality, to boot. I'm a typical headphones listener, and even through crappy A/Ds you hear a serious difference...
I'm enough of an audiophile that the high range tinniness in mp3s bugs me but not enough of one to know what "crappy A/Ds" are. I also agree that it's a bit of lump to pay money for a low-quality AAC/mp3. Sometimes when I get turned on to a new act, I preview on iTunes and then order from half.com. In fact, that's pretty much what I do for eighty to ninety percent of my music.
However, I have purchased maybe forty songs from iTMS and have received from friends maybe several hundred 128 kbps AACs/mp3s, and I notice a gigantic difference when I listen to those files on a pair of regular speakers/headphones and when I listen to those files using a pair of <BRANDNAME> in-ear canal phones.
For example, I have a pair of Sennheisers and listening to low-quality files on them is an awful experience. I also have a pair mid-range floor speakers and listening to low-quality audio files on them practically makes my ears bleed. But the <BRANDNAME> canal-phones provide a very different experience. I'm afraid to say "good," but that's pretty much what listening to AAC and mp3 files using those canal-phones is like. Even tracks with a wide dynamic range (yeah, I'm a child of the 70s) sound really good.
I guess this a long way of saying that the hardware you use to play low-quality music files makes all the difference in the world. Playing cheap tracks on high-quality hardware not optimized for compressed music just plain sucks. On the other hand, paying a bit of a premium for appropriate hardware might surprise your ears. I'm glad I received my canal-phones as a gift since they run about a quarter of the price of a new iPod (the high-end ones cost much more than even the top-of-the-line iPod), but that very unpretentious piece of hardware (black instead of mug-me-white cords) makes all the difference in the world.
Damn you mods. The parent is FUNNY! I'm right now giggling at the "future" suggested by the parent, a ludicrously self-embedded morphology that never arrives because it keeps moving . . . into the future. Get a sense of humor. Oh, I forgot: mods generally only "get" jokes when a laugh track is playing (i.e. "All your base," "In Soviet Russia," "Natalie Portman with HOT GRITS," etc.)
Languages - well , the whole language can be broken down in 1 4hr lesson into a massive 1 foot sized flow chart and rules, the rest are just like learning C++, all the verbs and nouns and functions.
This shows how little you understand the complexity of human languages. Grammar is a more-or-less coherent fiction invented in the eighteenth century to try to freeze language. Fortunately for us, languages are living and break elitist notions of "grammatical usage" every second of every day.
In fact, the complexity of human languages is so great that while child prodigies can master and pioneer mathematics, music, and physics by their twenties, literary masters are rarely so young. Communicating to other sentient beings (basically, a 24/7/365 Turing test) practically guarantees that what you think you know about language in that "1-foot sized flow chart and rules" is next to meaningless.
I doubt I'd load my iPod up with pr0n just for the convenience of stopping for a quick pull in a public restroom
Yeah, I hear what you're saying: public places present a problem if you're mostly sane and flying solo. A better use of the iPod video could be for times when you're with someone in public and both of you are looking to look together. That could be a real turn on and could lead to healthy if somewhat exhibitionistic and/or mildly indiscreet sexy stuff. On the other hand, and you can see what might be putting the chill on the porn industry, imagine a perv who sits next to an outdoor yoga class and queues "Yoga Yolanda Flexes for Felix" for a quick trip to augmented reality. I won't even go to the nightmares of sex-anxious parents who worry that Billy might show Susie "something neat" on his iPod behind the gym.
I think portable video is inevitable, but I also think that there will be sensationalized stories of the uses and abuses of portable video, too. What I'm wondering is what happens when cameras, wireless, and portable display devices combine to produce a users' revolution in video journalism, not porn, but politics.
As I see it, the new iPod has increased battery life, it's a bit thinner and has a little larger display. Beyond that, it's the exact same device it's always been and functions the exact same way it always has -- except that it'll play some video now.
You're right, in theory. The iPod added video capability without increasing the price or changing the basic functionality of the ipod. Some things, of course are changed, small things like no transfer over FW (Apple has glitchy USB 2.0 support on some machines) and the lack of remote functionality on the iPod's specialized headphone connector (now, it's dock-only).
But the real proof is in the tasting of the pudding. What I mean by this is that if people perceive that the video experience of iPod is not very useful and it becomes a vestigial function, then people will irrationally perceive that the iPod has lower value than an earlier iPod that doesn't do video. Part of this will be due to the fact that people will be lured to the new iPod by the video functionality but will find out it's not what they hoped. In particular, people may reject the video on the iPod because there is no easy way for users to produce video content for the iPod. Sure, some people will buy a bunch of $2.00 shows, but that novelty will wear off fast.
However, if I'm wrong and people do buy TV shows and music video like they do hotcakes, then the video iPod will probably be very successful. But without massive video iTMS sales, the fact that the iPod does not allow users to easily create/acquire content outside of commercial distribution channels may scratch the pristine surface of the iPod's reputation.
My guess is that Apple is working on a version of iMovie that will practically beam video content into your new video iPod and so the video iPod will revolutionize video consumption just as the iPod (r)evolutionized music-listening.
You're right, that video is amazing, giving as it does some insight into the cultural logic that informs 419 scams. It is probably not the case that all 419 scammers see this in terms of a ludic (playful) dialectic in which 419 scams are a game that place historically powerful white Westerners in the same arena as poor but savvy Nigerian tricksters.
Another thing that struck me was the racial (not quite racist) ideology that informs lines such as
As someone who has ancestors of African descent (I am mixed race) and firmly in the middle class, I find this racial ideology profound and puzzling. No doubt, artists like Nkem Owoh, who serve as cultural commentators on 419 scamming, would consider me a half-black cousin to the "White men" whose dollars 419 scammers eat and so fair play, so to speak. I'm not personally threatened, but am grateful for one perspective on the cultural rationale (rationalization) behind 419 scams.
Thanks for the video link.
You (the subscribers) knew, or should have known, what Slashdot was when you subscribed, and have no grounds for complaint.
But this is a problem for potential subscribers, too. I am one of those types that when I use shareware for maybe a year or more, I pony up. If it's donationware, I try to send along a little something. For over 2 years, I have been contemplating subscribing, but it seems my moderation bit has been permanently turned off. It doesn't seem right or fair to me that I would pay to have a crippled account.
This is not just my whining about the crippled state of my account. It is also an observation that the /. editors occasionally exercise editorial bias both on the level of code and (less frequently) on the level of content. When this editorialization takes place behind-the-scenes with no accountability or acknowledgement, it reminds me that /. is, ultimately, a profitable private sandbox whose owners/editors are unaccountable to their public.
As long as this is the case, I'll use /. as a free resource. Once there is greater accountability, I will subscribe. For me it's not even a question of professionalism in terms of content. I don't mind duplicate posts, Roland Piquepaille, or AC trolls. However, secret editorialization and crippled user accounts are things that keep me from paying with my hard-earned cash.
Then again, talk is cheap.
I am a professor but I have never used Blackboard. I have made PDF files of copyrighted material available to students. However, the agreement was usually that students buy the books when they became available. (My university does not have its own bookstore, if you can imagine such a thing, and ordering books can often be tricky). In other words, my bad both for ordering early enough and for breaking copyright (though in the end I considered such distribution backup/timeshifting before the fact of ownership).
Having said that, I do not know of any professor who does not plan a course in advance of its start. Piecemeal distribution of materials over the course of the term may indicate many things, but a lack of advance planning is unlikely to be one of them. It's possible, but very unlikely. There are too many dependencies in a course to leave it up to just-in-time planning.
Second, some materials while under copyright are out of print. You can't buy a class set for even top dollar because the demand is perceived to be too low by the major publishing houses and the other stuff for which there is a consistent but small demand and which would be published by smaller houses just, well, costs too much to reprint. In this case, I break copyright because I am fulfilling my mission as an educator, bringing to light material that is important but that is restricted by commercial interests.
As a side note to you, consider purchasing a second-hand laser printer off eBay instead of printing with an inkjet. For about $120 you'd be amazed how much money you save in that first year.
Otherwise, people will gladly give up their freedom just to see some lame company with an incredible data center suck away all of their freedom and privacy. Google is completely evil.
Get a grip. People really concerned about privacy are going to do one of at least two things I can think of.
First, if privacy is a serious issue (e.g. Health Care industry) then private, proprietary, custom apps will be hosted locally. End of story. Second, if a less-privacy conscious company or institution needs privacy and wants to use Google's office suite (e.g. SOHO printing service bureau), Google will build (for $) a custom interface and backend more secure than its for-free web-based office suite.
To flash back to the 1990s, yeah, only the paranoid will survive. But this is 2005. MS can't survive for all its IBM anxiety of influence and schizophrenia is the new paranoia. Google is not evil, not yet anyway.
Googles main business is searching.. and that's what they make their profit.
Exactly. Think about an office suite that has the capabilities of Google searching. With the exception of enterprise class and custom applications, such a thing would serve the needs of many people, businesses, and institutions in the same way some databases do. This isn't going kill Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or even MS Access, but give it a year or two.
Schwartz could not be more right when he says "the world is about to change this week." MS Office is about to take some serious lumps in the next five years.
Posts like this that make me remember why I feel in love with Slashdot way back in 1998 (I lurked before getting a UID). Too few of these posts around today, but maybe some of you higher UID users will bring us back to our roots.
Thanks.
so they just hop to contain us - and so far they are winning.
Tell that to China, Brazil, Germany, and Massachusetts.
Also, NEVER try upgrading your Windows Vista Kiddie Edition with Windows Vista Porn Edition. To say there are conflicts is an understatement.
My understanding was that the Vista Porn Edition has as its direct consequence the Vista Kiddie Edition.
Slow start as prices are at least $50 too high
A fuel shortage-induced recession, flood-exacerbated inflation, and no Firewire-syncing means that this user will wait for rev 2.0 which (better) include FW-syncing.
Know what I mean?