browsing with one mouse button in IE was driving me fucking nuts
Okay, Mr. Power-User, then cough up $20 or whatever for a mouse with the number of buttons you need. For the millionth fucking time.
I always thought that it was just an old joke/troll but seriously, why?
The one-button mouse is designed to have a very clear function, so when Grandma tries to use her new iMac, she doesn't get confused. Apple performed usability testing when they were developing the Mac, to find the optimal number of buttons for the uninitiated user. The results of their testing: one. Any more than that confused people.
You might say, "Well, that was twenty years ago, surely people are more clued in now!"
Wrong. If I had a buck for every exchange like this I've been a part of in even the last two years, I could retire to my own private island:
Me: "Sure, I can help you with that. I need you to right-click on [icon] and select 'Properties.'" Client: "I clicked on it, but it just went dark. Where is this 'properties' thing?" Me: "Did you right-click on it, or just click on it?" Client: "What do you mean, 'right-click?'" Me: "Right-click, as in, click the right mouse button." Client (incredulously): "You mean, it does something different???"
My point: Some people STILL find multiple mouse buttons confusing. Since Apple is marketing in large part to people who are confused/frustrated/confounded by Windows, it makes sense to include an unambiguous mouse.
Most people who want a mouse with more functionality either right from the start or after they get up to speed with the Mac will purchse one, and put the Apple one in a drawer somewhere. Those who don't post on/., bitching about how a multi-button mouse still isn't included with Macs.
"People are afraid of new things. You should have just taken an existing product and put a clock on it or something." -- Homer, on the baby translator, "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?"
I'm of the opinion that case mods in general are just plain dumb, in the same way that "Type R" stickers and outrageously large fins are on cars-- but this takes the cake as the stupidest case mod I have ever seen. Dude, buy a fucking wristwatch and save some time and effort.
I don't know what's worse, that someone saw this as a worthwhile project, or that an blurb about it was submitted and accepted on Slashdot.
But being able to use the pretty slick webmail for my own mail domain would be very useful as well, instead of having to forward to my mac.com address.
Well, if you use Entourage or Outlook Express, check this out. It'll give you web-based control of either of those mail apps, as well as iTunes. I haven't given it as thorough a test as i'd like yet, but if it's customizable enough, I'm hoping I can scrap the Entourage web access stuff I've written in AppleScript for my own use.
If you look at the photos closely, you can see a Lisa, a Newton 110-120-130 form factor, an eMate, a PowerCD, and a QuickTake 100- and 200-series cameras. Below and to the right of the Jim Henson poster, it looks like he's even got one of those set-top box prototypes, sitting underneath a laptop.
This is more of an Apple shrine than a Mac shrine, but I suppose it's mostly Mac enough for Wired to be able to call it a Mac shrine.
Well, when you've got an entire section of your site called 'Cult of Mac' (the name of which I mildly object to), you've got to update it rather regularly.
Plus Wired has its share of Mac fans on the staff-- read the colophon sometime, it's like the freakin' Macintosh Product Guide.:-)
Yeah, right now I've got 608K down but only 128K up and it can be a little painful sometimes. I'm trying to hold out until the new year to bump up to the next tier, I think it's 384K up.
Still, the trusty little Qube2 stood up to a reasonably impressive onslaught of horny slashgeeks-- though it wasn't a true slashdotting by any stretch of the imagination.:-)
~Philly
List of my stuff & gratuitous link to bikini p
on
How Looks Your Geekroom?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
My bedroom: Beige Power Mac G3, upgraded to G4/400, with 17" and 14" CRT monitors. iBook 500MHz Home-built Duron 850 tower dual-booting XP Pro.and 98SE (shares keyboard, mouse and 17" monitor with the Mac via KVM). Apple LaserWriter Select 360. MicroTek ScanMaker IISP. Series 1 TiVo with 120GB HDD upgrade.
My server room: Two Power Mac 7600s, both with G3/400 upgrades-- one handles routing/firewall/mail/file/web/DNS/print, and the other runs the house via all those wonderful X10 modules and other things. They're named "Guardian" and "Colossus," respectively. Cobalt Qube2, hosting the site of my friend the aspiring model (you might have seen her on Blind Date the other night). NeXTStation Turbo with 17" black & white display. AirPort Base Station.
Also in the server room, all functional but not part of the LAN: Macintosh 128K. IBM PCjr. Macintosh Color Classic. TRS-80 Model 102 laptop. Newton Original MessagePad. Newton MessagePad 2000.
Basement: Power Mac G4/733/1.12GB RAM/40GB & 120GB HDD/SuperDrive (being prepped to replace the old G3 in my bedroom in January, when my bonus check buys the two huge LCDs to go with it). Power Mac 6360, being prepped to be the backup server for everything in the server room. Sony external SCSI AIT2 drive, to be hooked up to the backup server. Homebuilt Athlon 750, used to test various equipment. Two whiteboxes in slightly less than operational condition. Two PowerBook 170s (one for my collection, and one to sell as a collectible). PowerBook G3 Lombard, semi-operable, soon to be sold on eBay as a parts machine. PowerBook Duo 270c, for my collection. Two 'platinum' Commodore 64s with 1541 floppy drives & 1 1702 RGB monitor. Two 3Com Audreys destined to become the control panels for the web interface of my home-automation setup. Coleco ADAM. Vectrex + shitload of games. Sega Genesis + shitload of games. Sega Saturn + shitload of games. Atari 5200 + shitload of games. Atari 2600 + shitload of games. ColecoVision + shitload of games. NES + shitload of games. Panasonic 3DO + shitload of games. GE DVD/CD/MP3CD/VCD player with region-selection mod. Arkanoid II: Revenge of Doh coin-op. Zookeeper coin-op.
On loan to aspiring model friend until she can afford a computer: Netpliance i-Opener hacked to run Win98SE with an internal 20GB HD and cooling fan.
Not too bad. BTW, I noticed in your one shot (the big ass Dell box full of laptops on the shelf) that you seem to have a 1xx-series PowerBook. If it boots, you'll probably be able to get a few bucks for that on eBay as a collector's item.
Many others praise Windows, too, including Chief Technology Officer Bill Patterson of Ford Motor Company, "Windows allows us to leverage our most valuable assets, people, into a world-class synergy to delight customers all over the globe."
<sarcasm>It's no surprise that Ford relies on Microsoft products, because Ford sure knows quality.</sarcasm>
I can't help but wonder how delighted their customers must be, when they have to bring their Focus back into the dealership for yet another safety recall every month or so.
Ford ought to be partnering with Microsoft to put a "Critical Update Notification" feature into next year's model: "...Simply plug a phone line into your Focus every night, and the car will dial into Ford's headquarters and download a list of that day's newly-discovered critical safety flaws that you'll need to have repaired immediately..."
Thankfully, I don't own one of the little beasts, but one of my friends does.
Hello, I just figured I'd check in and tell you that, as the apparent only other person on/. who saw 'Spies Like Us,' I got a chuckle out of your comment.
But Apple has been touting the virtues of BlueTooth for nearly a year (January MacWorld) and no machine yet has it built in?
I've been pondering this, and I think it makes sense to not build in BlueTooth just yet. It's not like with 802.11b cards, where most people only have one laptop that they want to connect wirelessly and they won't be swapping the card in and out all the time, and building in the antenna means you won't have a fragile one extending outside of the computer's case. Right now, $40-50 gets you a dinky little USB BlueTooth module, and you only have to buy one to be able to use BlueTooth on all your machines-- not simultaneously, of course, but if you wanted to be able to sync your phone to both your G4 desktop and your iBook, you could do so having bought only one adapter.
If given the choice, I'd rather pay $40 for an adapter I could use on multiple machines just by plugging it in, than pay $40 more for a Mac that had it built in. When BlueTooth adapters get a little cheaper, and more BlueTooth devices get out in the wild, then it'll make sense to put the stuff on the board. And we do know it's coming, so be patient.
There's nothing wrong with the iBook's design as it is now. The first-generation iBooks with the handle were an acquired taste, but there's absolutely nothing to not love about the current design. I'm typing this on a 12" 500MHz one right now. It's a great machine-- very light, tough, and fits in my backpack wonderfully, and does everything I need it to do at all of my clients' sites. I'm thinking a small part of my bonus check in January might go toward the 800MHz 12" one with the combo drive.
~Philly
Re:AOL doing something well for consumers?
on
E-Mail Size Limits?
·
· Score: 2
AOL's maximum attachment size is 16MB. But the vast majority of their users are on dialup, and who the hell is going to let their phone line be tied up for the length of time it'll take for 16MB to upload or download a file at 48-53KBps?
It's kinda like the "free refills" on the 55-gallon-drum-sized bucket of popcorn at the movie theater. It may be a nice selling point and/or sound like a great deal, but it's not very practical and not likely to be taken advantage of very often.
Oh, yeah? Well I've got two questions for you: 1)How many webcams has Logitech offered in about the last year? 2)How many of them support Mac OS X?
I've got two of their cameras that are less than a year old, but will be paperweights once I migrate to OS X. Thanks a lot, assholes. By the way, you've just guaranteed that I'll only buy/recommend a Logitech product again as an absolute last resort.
A one-time charge of $20 for the modem (bought used on eBay) and $10 for MacCallerID, surely beats whatever Verzion would want me to pay monthly for 'telemarketer protection.'
And I've had CallerID since it first became available, just because I like to know who's on the other end before I pick up the phone. My anti-telemarketer application is making better use of a service I already had.
Just Don't Pick Up the Phone If I don't recognize the CallerID info, I don't take the call. Period. If it's an important call, a message will be left by the caller, or they'll try my wireless phone if they are important enough to me for me to have given them the number.
Get on a Do Not Call List If your state has legislated a Do Not Call list, get your name on it. It may not help, but it surely can't hurt.
Turn Off That Ringer I only have one ringer on per floor in my house. The basement phone's ringer is set to low volume. The one on the phone in my bedroom gets shut off entirely when I don't want to be disturbed. I got one of those Fone Flasher things from Radio Shack for my bedroom. It's positioned so whether I'm watching TV or working at the computer, I will see it out of the corner of my eye.
Roll Your Own Technology-Based Solution Since I already had a computer running the house lights and stuff like that, I just bought a modem that supports Caller ID and got a hold of MacCallerID. Now I can leave the ringers off all the time, and the computer lets me know when someone I want to talk to is calling. I have a whitelist of callers, and when someone on that list calls and the house is not in 'sleep' or 'away' mode, the computer verbally announces their name through wireless speakers scattered throughout the house. During the day I can also hit my server from any machine with web access, and see a list of the last 10 people who have called my house.
The bottom line is, no self respecting Slashdot reader should have to pay the phone company to rid themselves of the annoyance of telemarketers.
As part of the demo, the Apple guys showed us a video of upcoming technology, including a computer that folded like a book. The computer used an "avatar" that the user controlled by speaking naturally, as if to a person.
Ah, that would be "Knowledge Navigator," John Sculley's attempt at being a visionary. KN was what he wanted the Newton to eventually become. The video was originally made in the late 80's-- now it's almost 20 years later, and we're still quite a bit away from a device that can do what KN is capable of.
I second that. I got cable from Comcast in '97. Back then, they sent out a hardware team to run the coax and set up the modem, and then a software guy showed up a little later to set up the computer.
The software guy didn't even get one foot in the door. I told him, "Gimme the config sheet and be on your way." I changed my TCP/IP settings in the Control Panels and the server addresses in Claris Emailer, and I was in business. No spyware, no stupid Comcast-branded, older-than-current version of IE to contend with.
I dropped Comcast about a year ago when I became dissatisfied with the increasing restrictions on their service. I replaced them with DSL from Speakeasy, and had just as painless a transition without installing a byte of their software, either (I'm not even sure a CD came in the box with the DSL modem).
Spend 15 or 20 minutes lurking in an AOL chat room, and you'll develop the same despair for the future that I have.
If I had to sum up the country's likely future in one word, it would be "dumb."
I'm hoping that within about 15 years, they will have colonized the Moon and you'll have to pass a reasonably rigorous intelligence test to be able to move there. If not, I'll just have to kill myself, because I don't want to grow old in a world run by morons like the ones who attend (or I should say, should be attending but play hooky at every opportunity) the high school located near my house.
How much longer before they stop teaching kids history about things like World War II because (gasp!) people DIED, and GUNS were used! Oh, the horror! Won't someone PLEASE think of the children!?!?!?
If anything, we need MORE violence in schools. Let kids settle differences with a nice, healthy fistfight after school! Let them play dodgeball and cowboys and indians! When I was growing up, the weak, stupid kids died doing stupid things. Today, Darwinism has been taken out of the playground. These kids who grew up with 6" of soft rubber padding under the swings and monkeybars are living longer when they shouldn't have, and snapping violently later in life and taking other people with them when they do it.
But maybe that's another one of those pesky laws that only apply to citizens. Because when we have examples like: Dear CEO: That's a pretty nice corporate LAN you've got there. Be a shame if we had to come in and audit your Microsoft licenses because you didn't send us a few more wheelbarrows full of money to make sure you're 100% compliant-- at least, until the next time we need to bolster our balance sheet. Sincerely, Microsoft
and now, the latest: Dear CEO: Those are some pretty nice profits you've got there. Be a shame if we had to send in the copyright attorneys to take some of it because you didn't do enough to stop copyrighted filesharing on your network to satisfy us. Sincerely, Hilary and Jack
...it sure seems difficult to convince most rational people that these aren't instances of blackmail.
Slashdot Mirror
Hopefully it will work out better than this one, the story of which still makes me laugh heartily every time I reread it.
~Philly
browsing with one mouse button in IE was driving me fucking nuts
/., bitching about how a multi-button mouse still isn't included with Macs.
Okay, Mr. Power-User, then cough up $20 or whatever for a mouse with the number of buttons you need. For the millionth fucking time.
I always thought that it was just an old joke/troll but seriously, why?
The one-button mouse is designed to have a very clear function, so when Grandma tries to use her new iMac, she doesn't get confused. Apple performed usability testing when they were developing the Mac, to find the optimal number of buttons for the uninitiated user. The results of their testing: one. Any more than that confused people.
You might say, "Well, that was twenty years ago, surely people are more clued in now!"
Wrong. If I had a buck for every exchange like this I've been a part of in even the last two years, I could retire to my own private island:
Me: "Sure, I can help you with that. I need you to right-click on [icon] and select 'Properties.'"
Client: "I clicked on it, but it just went dark. Where is this 'properties' thing?"
Me: "Did you right-click on it, or just click on it?"
Client: "What do you mean, 'right-click?'"
Me: "Right-click, as in, click the right mouse button."
Client (incredulously): "You mean, it does something different???"
My point: Some people STILL find multiple mouse buttons confusing. Since Apple is marketing in large part to people who are confused/frustrated/confounded by Windows, it makes sense to include an unambiguous mouse.
Most people who want a mouse with more functionality either right from the start or after they get up to speed with the Mac will purchse one, and put the Apple one in a drawer somewhere. Those who don't post on
~Philly
"People are afraid of new things. You should have just taken an existing product and put a clock on it or something."
-- Homer, on the baby translator, "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?"
I'm of the opinion that case mods in general are just plain dumb, in the same way that "Type R" stickers and outrageously large fins are on cars-- but this takes the cake as the stupidest case mod I have ever seen. Dude, buy a fucking wristwatch and save some time and effort.
I don't know what's worse, that someone saw this as a worthwhile project, or that an blurb about it was submitted and accepted on Slashdot.
~Philly
But being able to use the pretty slick webmail for my own mail domain would be very useful as well, instead of having to forward to my mac.com address.
Well, if you use Entourage or Outlook Express, check this out. It'll give you web-based control of either of those mail apps, as well as iTunes. I haven't given it as thorough a test as i'd like yet, but if it's customizable enough, I'm hoping I can scrap the Entourage web access stuff I've written in AppleScript for my own use.
~Philly
I was thinking that he should add one more column so it's 6 x 3, then he can keep all but one or two of them occupied with displaying the letters of
C A E S A R
L I M A
S T U D I O
or
C A E S A R
P H O T O
D E S I G N
in an interesting manner... well, maybe not *that* interesting, but the images should be changing enough to prevent burn-in.
~Philly
but you don't see people build shrines to the Porsche do you?
Umm.... yeah.
~Philly
If you look at the photos closely, you can see a Lisa, a Newton 110-120-130 form factor, an eMate, a PowerCD, and a QuickTake 100- and 200-series cameras. Below and to the right of the Jim Henson poster, it looks like he's even got one of those set-top box prototypes, sitting underneath a laptop.
This is more of an Apple shrine than a Mac shrine, but I suppose it's mostly Mac enough for Wired to be able to call it a Mac shrine.
~Philly
Well, when you've got an entire section of your site called 'Cult of Mac' (the name of which I mildly object to), you've got to update it rather regularly.
:-)
Plus Wired has its share of Mac fans on the staff-- read the colophon sometime, it's like the freakin' Macintosh Product Guide.
~Philly
Yeah, right now I've got 608K down but only 128K up and it can be a little painful sometimes. I'm trying to hold out until the new year to bump up to the next tier, I think it's 384K up.
:-)
Still, the trusty little Qube2 stood up to a reasonably impressive onslaught of horny slashgeeks-- though it wasn't a true slashdotting by any stretch of the imagination.
~Philly
My bedroom: .and 98SE (shares keyboard, mouse and 17" monitor with the Mac via KVM).
Beige Power Mac G3, upgraded to G4/400, with 17" and 14" CRT monitors.
iBook 500MHz
Home-built Duron 850 tower dual-booting XP Pro
Apple LaserWriter Select 360.
MicroTek ScanMaker IISP.
Series 1 TiVo with 120GB HDD upgrade.
My server room:
Two Power Mac 7600s, both with G3/400 upgrades-- one handles routing/firewall/mail/file/web/DNS/print, and the other runs the house via all those wonderful X10 modules and other things. They're named "Guardian" and "Colossus," respectively.
Cobalt Qube2, hosting the site of my friend the aspiring model (you might have seen her on Blind Date the other night).
NeXTStation Turbo with 17" black & white display.
AirPort Base Station.
Also in the server room, all functional but not part of the LAN:
Macintosh 128K.
IBM PCjr.
Macintosh Color Classic.
TRS-80 Model 102 laptop.
Newton Original MessagePad.
Newton MessagePad 2000.
Basement:
Power Mac G4/733/1.12GB RAM/40GB & 120GB HDD/SuperDrive (being prepped to replace the old G3 in my bedroom in January, when my bonus check buys the two huge LCDs to go with it).
Power Mac 6360, being prepped to be the backup server for everything in the server room.
Sony external SCSI AIT2 drive, to be hooked up to the backup server.
Homebuilt Athlon 750, used to test various equipment.
Two whiteboxes in slightly less than operational condition.
Two PowerBook 170s (one for my collection, and one to sell as a collectible).
PowerBook G3 Lombard, semi-operable, soon to be sold on eBay as a parts machine.
PowerBook Duo 270c, for my collection.
Two 'platinum' Commodore 64s with 1541 floppy drives & 1 1702 RGB monitor.
Two 3Com Audreys destined to become the control panels for the web interface of my home-automation setup.
Coleco ADAM.
Vectrex + shitload of games.
Sega Genesis + shitload of games.
Sega Saturn + shitload of games.
Atari 5200 + shitload of games.
Atari 2600 + shitload of games.
ColecoVision + shitload of games.
NES + shitload of games.
Panasonic 3DO + shitload of games.
GE DVD/CD/MP3CD/VCD player with region-selection mod.
Arkanoid II: Revenge of Doh coin-op.
Zookeeper coin-op.
On loan to aspiring model friend until she can afford a computer:
Netpliance i-Opener hacked to run Win98SE with an internal 20GB HD and cooling fan.
~Philly
/me bows before my new God
Not too bad. BTW, I noticed in your one shot (the big ass Dell box full of laptops on the shelf) that you seem to have a 1xx-series PowerBook. If it boots, you'll probably be able to get a few bucks for that on eBay as a collector's item.
~Philly
Many others praise Windows, too, including Chief Technology Officer Bill Patterson of Ford Motor Company, "Windows allows us to leverage our most valuable assets, people, into a world-class synergy to delight customers all over the globe."
<sarcasm>It's no surprise that Ford relies on Microsoft products, because Ford sure knows quality.</sarcasm>
I can't help but wonder how delighted their customers must be, when they have to bring their Focus back into the dealership for yet another safety recall every month or so.
Ford ought to be partnering with Microsoft to put a "Critical Update Notification" feature into next year's model: "...Simply plug a phone line into your Focus every night, and the car will dial into Ford's headquarters and download a list of that day's newly-discovered critical safety flaws that you'll need to have repaired immediately..."
Thankfully, I don't own one of the little beasts, but one of my friends does.
~Philly
Hello, I just figured I'd check in and tell you that, as the apparent only other person on /. who saw 'Spies Like Us,' I got a chuckle out of your comment.
~Philly
Go here.
SHUT THE FUCK UP!
But Apple has been touting the virtues of BlueTooth for nearly a year (January MacWorld) and no machine yet has it built in?
I've been pondering this, and I think it makes sense to not build in BlueTooth just yet. It's not like with 802.11b cards, where most people only have one laptop that they want to connect wirelessly and they won't be swapping the card in and out all the time, and building in the antenna means you won't have a fragile one extending outside of the computer's case. Right now, $40-50 gets you a dinky little USB BlueTooth module, and you only have to buy one to be able to use BlueTooth on all your machines-- not simultaneously, of course, but if you wanted to be able to sync your phone to both your G4 desktop and your iBook, you could do so having bought only one adapter.
If given the choice, I'd rather pay $40 for an adapter I could use on multiple machines just by plugging it in, than pay $40 more for a Mac that had it built in. When BlueTooth adapters get a little cheaper, and more BlueTooth devices get out in the wild, then it'll make sense to put the stuff on the board.
And we do know it's coming, so be patient.
~Philly
There's nothing wrong with the iBook's design as it is now. The first-generation iBooks with the handle were an acquired taste, but there's absolutely nothing to not love about the current design. I'm typing this on a 12" 500MHz one right now. It's a great machine-- very light, tough, and fits in my backpack wonderfully, and does everything I need it to do at all of my clients' sites. I'm thinking a small part of my bonus check in January might go toward the 800MHz 12" one with the combo drive.
~Philly
AOL's maximum attachment size is 16MB. But the vast majority of their users are on dialup, and who the hell is going to let their phone line be tied up for the length of time it'll take for 16MB to upload or download a file at 48-53KBps?
It's kinda like the "free refills" on the 55-gallon-drum-sized bucket of popcorn at the movie theater. It may be a nice selling point and/or sound like a great deal, but it's not very practical and not likely to be taken advantage of very often.
~Philly
Actually, they have pretty good Mac support, too.
Oh, yeah? Well I've got two questions for you:
1)How many webcams has Logitech offered in about the last year?
2)How many of them support Mac OS X?
I've got two of their cameras that are less than a year old, but will be paperweights once I migrate to OS X. Thanks a lot, assholes. By the way, you've just guaranteed that I'll only buy/recommend a Logitech product again as an absolute last resort.
~Philly
A one-time charge of $20 for the modem (bought used on eBay) and $10 for MacCallerID, surely beats whatever Verzion would want me to pay monthly for 'telemarketer protection.'
And I've had CallerID since it first became available, just because I like to know who's on the other end before I pick up the phone. My anti-telemarketer application is making better use of a service I already had.
~Philly
Just Don't Pick Up the Phone
If I don't recognize the CallerID info, I don't take the call. Period. If it's an important call, a message will be left by the caller, or they'll try my wireless phone if they are important enough to me for me to have given them the number.
Get on a Do Not Call List
If your state has legislated a Do Not Call list, get your name on it. It may not help, but it surely can't hurt.
Turn Off That Ringer
I only have one ringer on per floor in my house. The basement phone's ringer is set to low volume. The one on the phone in my bedroom gets shut off entirely when I don't want to be disturbed. I got one of those Fone Flasher things from Radio Shack for my bedroom. It's positioned so whether I'm watching TV or working at the computer, I will see it out of the corner of my eye.
Roll Your Own Technology-Based Solution
Since I already had a computer running the house lights and stuff like that, I just bought a modem that supports Caller ID and got a hold of MacCallerID. Now I can leave the ringers off all the time, and the computer lets me know when someone I want to talk to is calling. I have a whitelist of callers, and when someone on that list calls and the house is not in 'sleep' or 'away' mode, the computer verbally announces their name through wireless speakers scattered throughout the house. During the day I can also hit my server from any machine with web access, and see a list of the last 10 people who have called my house.
The bottom line is, no self respecting Slashdot reader should have to pay the phone company to rid themselves of the annoyance of telemarketers.
~Philly
As part of the demo, the Apple guys showed us a video of upcoming technology, including a computer that folded like a book. The computer used an "avatar" that the user controlled by speaking naturally, as if to a person.
Ah, that would be "Knowledge Navigator," John Sculley's attempt at being a visionary. KN was what he wanted the Newton to eventually become. The video was originally made in the late 80's-- now it's almost 20 years later, and we're still quite a bit away from a device that can do what KN is capable of.
~Philly
I second that. I got cable from Comcast in '97. Back then, they sent out a hardware team to run the coax and set up the modem, and then a software guy showed up a little later to set up the computer.
The software guy didn't even get one foot in the door. I told him, "Gimme the config sheet and be on your way." I changed my TCP/IP settings in the Control Panels and the server addresses in Claris Emailer, and I was in business. No spyware, no stupid Comcast-branded, older-than-current version of IE to contend with.
I dropped Comcast about a year ago when I became dissatisfied with the increasing restrictions on their service. I replaced them with DSL from Speakeasy, and had just as painless a transition without installing a byte of their software, either (I'm not even sure a CD came in the box with the DSL modem).
~Philly
Spend 15 or 20 minutes lurking in an AOL chat room, and you'll develop the same despair for the future that I have.
If I had to sum up the country's likely future in one word, it would be "dumb."
I'm hoping that within about 15 years, they will have colonized the Moon and you'll have to pass a reasonably rigorous intelligence test to be able to move there. If not, I'll just have to kill myself, because I don't want to grow old in a world run by morons like the ones who attend (or I should say, should be attending but play hooky at every opportunity) the high school located near my house.
~Philly
Kids have played violently since the begining but no one is trying to ban "cowboys and indians".
Bzzzt!
With every new school shooting, the knee-jerk overreactions get more ridiculous.
How much longer before they stop teaching kids history about things like World War II because (gasp!) people DIED, and GUNS were used! Oh, the horror! Won't someone PLEASE think of the children!?!?!?
If anything, we need MORE violence in schools. Let kids settle differences with a nice, healthy fistfight after school! Let them play dodgeball and cowboys and indians! When I was growing up, the weak, stupid kids died doing stupid things. Today, Darwinism has been taken out of the playground. These kids who grew up with 6" of soft rubber padding under the swings and monkeybars are living longer when they shouldn't have, and snapping violently later in life and taking other people with them when they do it.
~Philly
But maybe that's another one of those pesky laws that only apply to citizens. Because when we have examples like:
...it sure seems difficult to convince most rational people that these aren't instances of blackmail.
Dear CEO:
That's a pretty nice corporate LAN you've got there. Be a shame if we had to come in and audit your Microsoft licenses because you didn't send us a few more wheelbarrows full of money to make sure you're 100% compliant-- at least, until the next time we need to bolster our balance sheet.
Sincerely,
Microsoft
and now, the latest:
Dear CEO:
Those are some pretty nice profits you've got there. Be a shame if we had to send in the copyright attorneys to take some of it because you didn't do enough to stop copyrighted filesharing on your network to satisfy us.
Sincerely,
Hilary and Jack
~Philly