Thank you my government for reducing my rights
on
Norway Outlaws iTunes
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· Score: 1
Until recently, I had two (well, actually more, but to keep it simple) choices: I could buy a song at a CD store, or I could buy it cheaper via iTunes, if I were willing to accept a few restrictions.
Suddenly, I no longer have the option of buying it cheaper while accepting some restrictions.
Thank you very much the government of my beloved country.
Raskin had worked with user interface design as a professor for a decade before he started work with Apple. Xerox and Raskin pretty much drew from the same sources while both of them obviously had ideas on their own (Raskin didn't like the mouse, for instance, prefering his own LEAP model). The main idea behind the trip to Xerox was not to be inspired by Xerox, but for Jobs to see in practice what Raskin had been talking about. Read more here: Holes in the histories
As you hint at, the story about Jobs being originally inspred by Xerox is in fact a myth. Jef Raskin, then at Apple, had worked with the ideas both as a professor and as an employee at Apple. The purpose of the legendary visit at Xerox was to see what Raskin had talked about in action. You can read all about it at Raskin's Site
Robert Epstein (last to receive a Ph.D. from B.F. Skinner) lists four strategies for generating creative output. These are
Capturing: The main thing that distinguishes "creative" people from the rest of us is that the creative ones have learned ways to pay attention to and then to preserve some of the new ideas that occur to them. They have capturing skills. In other words, get a PDA and learn how to use it.
Challenging One way to accelerate the flow of new ideas is by challenging yourself--that is, by putting yourself in difficult situations in which you're likely to fail to some extent. A challenging situation is like an "extinction" procedure in the behavioral laboratory. We extinguish behavior when we withdraw the reinforcers that usually maintain that behavior. In challenging situations, a great deal of behavior goes unreinforced; it just doesn't work.
BroadeningIf you want to enhance your own creativity, take courses in subjects you know nothing about. Once a year, at least, take a course at a local college in the last thing you'd ever want to know about. Land's own breakthrough invention came about because of training he had in crystallography, chemistry, and other fields. The invention of Velcro, the modern theory of electron spin, and countless other advances were made possible because their creators had training in diverse fields. Steve Jobs recently made a point of how his training in caligraphy contributed to the intitial success of the Macintosh.
Surrounding Finally, you can enhance your creativity by surrounding yourself with diverse stimuli--and, even more important, by changing those stimuli regularly. Diverse and changing stimuli promote creativity because, like resurgence, they get multiple behaviors competing with each other. If you put a Mickey Mouse hat and pliers on your desk in the morning, your thinking will move in odd directions during the day. Call these items distractions, if you like; they are great reservoirs of creativity
Sometimes, though, I wonder about the opposite--how can I learn to quit being "creatve" and just get the damn job done? It's not that I ever get any original brilliant ideas anyway--all really great ideas I have had, I've found out were conceived by somebody else before me.
As I think I pointed out, it's the article in itself more than the algorithm that makes it such an example. I'm sure he has more brilliant algorithms and more seminal papers.
Donald Knuth has written a lot of interesting papers, but his paper on TeXs line-breaking algoritm
Defines the state of the art in digital typesetting
Is a textbook example of how a scientific paper should be written: it outlines the history of the problem, gives historical and current examples, defines the problem statement and discusses the suggested solution.
and as far as I know, the algoritm is still state of the art and is used only by TeX, InDesign and an addition to QuarkXPress.
that's a good question for which I have no answer right now - I'm sure I've seen it somewhere. I'm sure height correlates with leadership positions, and it's really to bad if there's no correlation between height and IQ. IQ correlates with a lot of good stuff, like GPA, mental health, social skills, socioeconomic success - and height correlates with a lot of good stuff as well. OTOH, it might just be that they don't correlate with each other. I'll lokk it up. Stay tuned.
just do a PsychLIT study, this has been known for ages. tall people get leadership positions more often. not necessarily a bad thing, height correlates with IQ which correlates with good leadership.
there is a reason why I didn't use my Karma Bonus for this post, and that is that it isn't very relevant. nevertheless,
a Scandinavian is someone who's from Scandinavia. Linus is not from Finland. He's not a Scandinavian. no big deal, just a tidbit for those who like to know what's what. he's from one of the Nordic contries. the Nordic countries comprise Scandinavia + Finland and Iceland.
ever since, say, ages ago, Mozilla had the option of using quoted-printable with News and mail. not News or mail, but News and Mail. so to those of us who need Latin 1, Mozilla could be used for News or Mail, but not both.
"genetic" does not mean "hard-wired"
on
Genome Surprise
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· Score: 3, Insightful
It's been a popular misconception in the popular media for a long time that traits that are learned are malleable, whereas traits that are innate or genetic are not. This is not the case. The malleability of a trait depends on how it is implemented in the body, not on whether it is inborn or learned.
The simplistic view of the importance of genetic contribution probably stems from the way genetics is taught in school. Your eye color is genetically determined and eye color does not change. However, the reason why eye color does not change is not that it is inherited by genetic inheritance, but because eyes are constructed the way they are.
This is one of the reasons why psychologists worry much less about heritability of traits than they used to. The malleability of any given trait remains an empirical question. Your genes don't know how heritable they are.
For an interesting discussion of heritability and malleability, read Plomin et al's Behavioural Genetics - or the brief version here.
I experienced a lot of trouble with iMovie - in fact as it appeared after software update had done its tricks, it was indeed unuseable.
I then deleted the entire iMove app from the Mac, and downloaded the entire install from Apple's web. today I captured six hours from a DV camera directly to a FireWire harddisk on a 700MHz iBook with no appreciable problems.
in particular, updating from 3.0.0 (which has circulated on the net) to 3.0.1 (which is a very small download) is not a good idea.
I think I'll just point to something I wrote a long time ago, at the time Microsoft first announced XML support but before the US Courts gave Microsoft unlimited license to do as they damn well please.
I use an IT-mandated PC at work - but run the IT-mandated stuff under vmware over Debian, so there:) I've talked our boss into violating all the guidelines we have and purchased a Mac for video editing and, er, stuff (my boss is not of the pointy-haired variety).
At home, we've got a PC because Sierra dropped development of Pharaoh for the Mac. It's actually that simple. However, I don't fancy ever buying a new PC - we'll keep the PC for games and upgrade its interiors every now and then, but the next machine we buy for home use will be a Mac.
Any population that is signified by having done somthing that requires a conscious desicsion comes out with a higher IQ than average. This is mostly a matter of statistics, though the effect may be real it doesn't have to.
Bruce Ediger's The only intuitive user interface is the nipple, after that, it's all learning contains a lot of wisdom. No designed user interface is, in fact, intuitive. The best one can hope for is familiar.
Geeks like the type of interface that usually comes with VCR's and the like because they in fact are familiar. They are used in the same way as dials and keypads and other stuff we already know and love.
Familiar, though, means different things to different people - there is no need, for instance, for a computer program to look like other computer programs. Using computer programs is a small part of most people's lives - programs should borrow metaphors from user's entire lives, not just from the part of it that they dedicate to the computer. The idea that computer programs should look like each other is almost totally bogus.
If a user finds the TiVo difficult to use, it's probably because the user interface borrows metaphors from that part of life - dealing with technical gadgets - that the same user has experienced as intimidating, difficult, embarrassing, etc. And that again means that that particular user should have an entirely different user interface that bears no resemblance to dials, keypads, etc.
The TiVo, then, is not user friendly - it's easy to use, if you're a geek. But just as being a geek is an aquired skill, so is, say, speaking Norwegian. Lisa gikk til skolen is an unfathomably simple sentence - if you speak Norwegian. It's in the past tense and contains one preoposition, but like, the words should be familiar to anyone, and how difficult can it be to learn Norwegian - I mean, my daugher speaks it fluently and she's not even four yet.
In a previous posting, I sum up what I think are the main reasons why Linux won't make it to the desktop just yet. Wrapping up my arguments nicely, the article was scored down as a troll.
amazon is so popular because, unlike all other web sites, it's been designed by people who knew what they were doing. that's all there is to it, but it's amazing how difficult it is for people, including computer scientist, to grasp this very simple point.
In fact, I don't think either Mrs. Coulter nor Asriel are evil. They are human and have flaws. It seems that the books' lacking clear-cut distinctions between good and evil is confusing to many Christian readers.
One of the problems in describing Pullmans books is that they're not about anything. I don't have the reference offhand, but he has written at least one place that he wishes a return from all sorts of experimental fiction towards just writing good stories.
However, it is not really true that his books don't have themes. Most of his work is about the process of change and growing up, in particular about the end of adolescence. The protagonists of His Dark Materials are children when the story begins and young adults when it ends - the story, on one level, is about puberty. However, it is the plot that drives his stories forward.
What in my opinion makes his mark as a writer that Slashdot readers should be interested in, is his plot devices - the Alethiometer, the Subtle Knife, and the Amber Spyglass, and above all, Dust, the Dark Material. I see fodder for.signature files, role-playing campaigns, and - yes - two of my computers are named Lyra and Pantalaimon.
But to give a summary of what the books are about - that would be as impossible as to sum up what the Lord of The Rings is about. It's not just about this bad ring that has to be destroyed, and the struggles to destroy it, is it?
His Dark Materials appeals to imagination, first and foremost. It is an immense work, it shows an imagination and a playfulness second to none. The setting of the story is in a parallell universe where (I hope I'm not giving away too much now)
The Calvinist Church won against Luther - Calvinist authorities in Geneva rule the world.
Consequently, there are strict rules against science, which is here called experimental theology
Electricity exists, but there are strict limiations to its applications, so there is electric light and telephones, but no radio
And there is no USA - North America conists of independent countries.
People wear their souls outside their bodies. They're called daemons.
And, oh yes, magic exists. Lyra, the protagonist, visits our world, and other parallell worlds. OK, there is a quest, which I suppose is what makes it fantasy. And there are incredible plot twists.
Just trust me. Give it a try. I'll take that chance that there are slashdot readers who don't like it, because I think that most of you will. These are not children's books - as a 35 years old psychologists I think I should have noticed if they were.
BTW, his Sally Lockhart series, set in Victorian London, and his other books, especially The Butterfly Tattoo and The Broken Bridge are also highly readable, for entirely different reasons.
I am quite impressed by the replies I have received both here and by
mail. I would like to take the opportunity to try to address, as well I
might, the issues that have been raised in the replies.
I see that I have not stressed clearly enough the sort of security I
am most concerned with, although some of you have guessed. Hacker
attacks is probably the least of our troubles, because most ship's
computers do not have a permanent Internet connection. In fact, in some
cases ships regularly have no way of contacting shore and more
frequently does not have any permanent connection, be it ground radio or
by satelite.
So the basic problem is computer systems that go down during
navigation, or need a lot of maintenance. Typically, one would
obviously not want a "classic" Macintosh or Windows 98 on board, because
these are systems that are apt to erratic behavior that only experts can
fix. GPS systems typically run on Windows NT.
Now, if the GPS system goes down, it doesn't have to be a disaster
because the radar will still work, but problems can occur in a
roundabout way. A famous example is this: The GPS goes down because
somebody trips on the antenna base and ruins it and fails to report it.
GPS and the ship's auto-pilot switch to Dead Reckoning, which means that
the ship calculates its position based on speed and initial course. If
there are strong currents or even sidewinds DR becomes wildly inaccurate
quite rapidly. This particular ship drifted for 24 hours before somebdy
noticed that the computer display showed that the autopilot was
navigating by DR. This would not happen if the crew were paying
attention to their job, but this ship had serious morale problems.
There are also computers that monitor the state of the engines and
warning messages from various information centers.
Now, I know of no record that can give a clear picture of the
frequency or gravity of computer problems at sea. Judging from a
typical office, you'd have computers out of order all the time, but the
analogy doesn't hold because the computers typically run only one
program and are usually set to start them automatically at powerup, so
the most typical causes of computer error is eliminated.
No, I don't ask for a set of regulations that would outlaw Microsoft.
I know that Unix systems are supposed to be more reliable than the
obvious alternatives (hackability not being much of an issue here) but I
lack criteria for reliability that could be used to challenge or clarify
this position. The ship industry would clearly benefit from being made
aware of
The fact, if it is a fact, that reliability is in fact an issue that should be reckoned with
Criteria that clearly show the strengths and weaknesses of the
alternatives that exist
The fact, if it is a fact, that it is possible to create a body
that, based on objective criteria, can act as an authority that sets the
standard for safety of ship's computer systems.
it seems from the report that the data are based on actual sleeping habits. this is to say that the time spent sleeping is, if anything, a symptom, not a cause.
lots of rich people fly to Paris every day. this does not mean that flying to Paris every day will make you any richer.
Slashdot Mirror
Until recently, I had two (well, actually more, but to keep it simple) choices: I could buy a song at a CD store, or I could buy it cheaper via iTunes, if I were willing to accept a few restrictions.
Suddenly, I no longer have the option of buying it cheaper while accepting some restrictions.
Thank you very much the government of my beloved country.
Raskin had worked with user interface design as a professor for a decade before he started work with Apple. Xerox and Raskin pretty much drew from the same sources while both of them obviously had ideas on their own (Raskin didn't like the mouse, for instance, prefering his own LEAP model). The main idea behind the trip to Xerox was not to be inspired by Xerox, but for Jobs to see in practice what Raskin had been talking about. Read more here: Holes in the histories
And when is scholar.google.com going to support exporting to BibTeX-style citations?
Huh? Huh? Huh!?
Thanks for the advice!
As you hint at, the story about Jobs being originally inspred by Xerox is in fact a myth. Jef Raskin, then at Apple, had worked with the ideas both as a professor and as an employee at Apple. The purpose of the legendary visit at Xerox was to see what Raskin had talked about in action. You can read all about it at Raskin's Site
Robert Epstein (last to receive a Ph.D. from B.F. Skinner) lists four strategies for generating creative output. These are
Sometimes, though, I wonder about the opposite--how can I learn to quit being "creatve" and just get the damn job done? It's not that I ever get any original brilliant ideas anyway--all really great ideas I have had, I've found out were conceived by somebody else before me.
Anyway, here goes:
Capturing creativityAs I think I pointed out, it's the article in itself more than the algorithm that makes it such an example. I'm sure he has more brilliant algorithms and more seminal papers.
Donald Knuth has written a lot of interesting papers, but his paper on TeXs line-breaking algoritm
and as far as I know, the algoritm is still state of the art and is used only by TeX, InDesign and an addition to QuarkXPress.
that's a good question for which I have no answer right now - I'm sure I've seen it somewhere. I'm sure height correlates with leadership positions, and it's really to bad if there's no correlation between height and IQ. IQ correlates with a lot of good stuff, like GPA, mental health, social skills, socioeconomic success - and height correlates with a lot of good stuff as well. OTOH, it might just be that they don't correlate with each other. I'll lokk it up. Stay tuned.
just do a PsychLIT study, this has been known for ages. tall people get leadership positions more often. not necessarily a bad thing, height correlates with IQ which correlates with good leadership.
there is a reason why I didn't use my Karma Bonus for this post, and that is that it isn't very relevant. nevertheless, a Scandinavian is someone who's from Scandinavia. Linus is not from Finland. He's not a Scandinavian. no big deal, just a tidbit for those who like to know what's what. he's from one of the Nordic contries. the Nordic countries comprise Scandinavia + Finland and Iceland.
he's from Finland - the Scandinavian countries are Norway, Sweden and Denmark. I'd make him an honorary Scandinavian any day though.
ever since, say, ages ago, Mozilla had the option of using quoted-printable with News and mail. not News or mail, but News and Mail. so to those of us who need Latin 1, Mozilla could be used for News or Mail, but not both.
And that's why we European geeks eschew Mozilla.
It is possible to treat ADHD without medication. The people at The Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studiescan help.
It's been a popular misconception in the popular media for a long time that traits that are learned are malleable, whereas traits that are innate or genetic are not. This is not the case. The malleability of a trait depends on how it is implemented in the body, not on whether it is inborn or learned.
The simplistic view of the importance of genetic contribution probably stems from the way genetics is taught in school. Your eye color is genetically determined and eye color does not change. However, the reason why eye color does not change is not that it is inherited by genetic inheritance, but because eyes are constructed the way they are.
This is one of the reasons why psychologists worry much less about heritability of traits than they used to. The malleability of any given trait remains an empirical question. Your genes don't know how heritable they are.
For an interesting discussion of heritability and malleability, read Plomin et al's Behavioural Genetics - or the brief version here.
I experienced a lot of trouble with iMovie - in fact as it appeared after software update had done its tricks, it was indeed unuseable.
I then deleted the entire iMove app from the Mac, and downloaded the entire install from Apple's web. today I captured six hours from a DV camera directly to a FireWire harddisk on a 700MHz iBook with no appreciable problems.
in particular, updating from 3.0.0 (which has circulated on the net) to 3.0.1 (which is a very small download) is not a good idea.
I think I'll just point to something I wrote a long time ago, at the time Microsoft first announced XML support but before the US Courts gave Microsoft unlimited license to do as they damn well please.
I use an IT-mandated PC at work - but run the IT-mandated stuff under vmware over Debian, so there :) I've talked our boss into violating all the guidelines we have and purchased a Mac for video editing and, er, stuff (my boss is not of the pointy-haired variety).
At home, we've got a PC because Sierra dropped development of Pharaoh for the Mac. It's actually that simple. However, I don't fancy ever buying a new PC - we'll keep the PC for games and upgrade its interiors every now and then, but the next machine we buy for home use will be a Mac.
Any population that is signified by having done somthing that requires a conscious desicsion comes out with a higher IQ than average. This is mostly a matter of statistics, though the effect may be real it doesn't have to.
As a Mac-user of course I hope it does.
Bruce Ediger's The only intuitive user interface is the nipple, after that, it's all learning contains a lot of wisdom. No designed user interface is, in fact, intuitive. The best one can hope for is familiar.
Geeks like the type of interface that usually comes with VCR's and the like because they in fact are familiar. They are used in the same way as dials and keypads and other stuff we already know and love.
Familiar, though, means different things to different people - there is no need, for instance, for a computer program to look like other computer programs. Using computer programs is a small part of most people's lives - programs should borrow metaphors from user's entire lives, not just from the part of it that they dedicate to the computer. The idea that computer programs should look like each other is almost totally bogus.
If a user finds the TiVo difficult to use, it's probably because the user interface borrows metaphors from that part of life - dealing with technical gadgets - that the same user has experienced as intimidating, difficult, embarrassing, etc. And that again means that that particular user should have an entirely different user interface that bears no resemblance to dials, keypads, etc.
The TiVo, then, is not user friendly - it's easy to use, if you're a geek. But just as being a geek is an aquired skill, so is, say, speaking Norwegian. Lisa gikk til skolen is an unfathomably simple sentence - if you speak Norwegian. It's in the past tense and contains one preoposition, but like, the words should be familiar to anyone, and how difficult can it be to learn Norwegian - I mean, my daugher speaks it fluently and she's not even four yet.
In a previous posting, I sum up what I think are the main reasons why Linux won't make it to the desktop just yet. Wrapping up my arguments nicely, the article was scored down as a troll.
amazon is so popular because, unlike all other web sites, it's been designed by people who knew what they were doing. that's all there is to it, but it's amazing how difficult it is for people, including computer scientist, to grasp this very simple point.
In fact, I don't think either Mrs. Coulter nor Asriel are evil. They are human and have flaws. It seems that the books' lacking clear-cut distinctions between good and evil is confusing to many Christian readers.
One of the problems in describing Pullmans books is that they're not about anything. I don't have the reference offhand, but he has written at least one place that he wishes a return from all sorts of experimental fiction towards just writing good stories.
However, it is not really true that his books don't have themes. Most of his work is about the process of change and growing up, in particular about the end of adolescence. The protagonists of His Dark Materials are children when the story begins and young adults when it ends - the story, on one level, is about puberty. However, it is the plot that drives his stories forward.
What in my opinion makes his mark as a writer that Slashdot readers should be interested in, is his plot devices - the Alethiometer, the Subtle Knife, and the Amber Spyglass, and above all, Dust, the Dark Material. I see fodder for .signature files, role-playing campaigns, and - yes - two of my computers are named Lyra and Pantalaimon.
But to give a summary of what the books are about - that would be as impossible as to sum up what the Lord of The Rings is about. It's not just about this bad ring that has to be destroyed, and the struggles to destroy it, is it?
His Dark Materials appeals to imagination, first and foremost. It is an immense work, it shows an imagination and a playfulness second to none. The setting of the story is in a parallell universe where (I hope I'm not giving away too much now)
- The Calvinist Church won against Luther - Calvinist authorities in Geneva rule the world.
- Consequently, there are strict rules against science, which is here called experimental theology
- Electricity exists, but there are strict limiations to its applications, so there is electric light and telephones, but no radio
- And there is no USA - North America conists of independent countries.
- People wear their souls outside their bodies. They're called daemons.
And, oh yes, magic exists. Lyra, the protagonist, visits our world, and other parallell worlds. OK, there is a quest, which I suppose is what makes it fantasy. And there are incredible plot twists.Just trust me. Give it a try. I'll take that chance that there are slashdot readers who don't like it, because I think that most of you will. These are not children's books - as a 35 years old psychologists I think I should have noticed if they were.
BTW, his Sally Lockhart series, set in Victorian London, and his other books, especially The Butterfly Tattoo and The Broken Bridge are also highly readable, for entirely different reasons.
I am quite impressed by the replies I have received both here and by mail. I would like to take the opportunity to try to address, as well I might, the issues that have been raised in the replies.
I see that I have not stressed clearly enough the sort of security I am most concerned with, although some of you have guessed. Hacker attacks is probably the least of our troubles, because most ship's computers do not have a permanent Internet connection. In fact, in some cases ships regularly have no way of contacting shore and more frequently does not have any permanent connection, be it ground radio or by satelite.
So the basic problem is computer systems that go down during navigation, or need a lot of maintenance. Typically, one would obviously not want a "classic" Macintosh or Windows 98 on board, because these are systems that are apt to erratic behavior that only experts can fix. GPS systems typically run on Windows NT.
Now, if the GPS system goes down, it doesn't have to be a disaster because the radar will still work, but problems can occur in a roundabout way. A famous example is this: The GPS goes down because somebody trips on the antenna base and ruins it and fails to report it. GPS and the ship's auto-pilot switch to Dead Reckoning, which means that the ship calculates its position based on speed and initial course. If there are strong currents or even sidewinds DR becomes wildly inaccurate quite rapidly. This particular ship drifted for 24 hours before somebdy noticed that the computer display showed that the autopilot was navigating by DR. This would not happen if the crew were paying attention to their job, but this ship had serious morale problems.
There are also computers that monitor the state of the engines and warning messages from various information centers.
Now, I know of no record that can give a clear picture of the frequency or gravity of computer problems at sea. Judging from a typical office, you'd have computers out of order all the time, but the analogy doesn't hold because the computers typically run only one program and are usually set to start them automatically at powerup, so the most typical causes of computer error is eliminated.
No, I don't ask for a set of regulations that would outlaw Microsoft. I know that Unix systems are supposed to be more reliable than the obvious alternatives (hackability not being much of an issue here) but I lack criteria for reliability that could be used to challenge or clarify this position. The ship industry would clearly benefit from being made aware of
it seems from the report that the data are based on actual sleeping habits. this is to say that the time spent sleeping is, if anything, a symptom, not a cause. lots of rich people fly to Paris every day. this does not mean that flying to Paris every day will make you any richer.