...
'is there still room in a company for a quirky 'guru', or are projects so large now by necessity team-based development rules.'...
did you mean:
'is there still room in a company for a quirky 'guru?' or, are projects so large now, [that] by necessity, team-based development rules (v.) [the industry]?'
do linux word processors/e-mail programs need grammar checkers? does anyone bother to re-read what they've written when it has the potential to be read by tens of thousands of people (as opposed to making each and every one of them re-read it 3 times before they figure out what the heck you meant)?
this is something i'd been contemplating for a while, then i saw the logitech iFeel mouse. i wanted to try one in an everyday/productivity environment, but all i could find was their cheezy store display that made the mouse 'buzz' when you scrolled over a dot.
my goal is to find an other-than-visual feedback mechanism for everyday UI controls; i.e. being able to locate/confirm buttons, menu items, without relying soley on visual input to do so.
the goal is simple: to get faster. i already use the Finder sounds on my MacOS machine, the audible feedback allows me to already be retraining my visual focus on the next task position even before i click to complete the current one - i know to click when i hear the blip. it allows you to lead with your eyes; you spend less time pondering the next task.
audio, however, is not the most convenient feedback mechanism. in noisy office environments you either have to wear headphones and be in a cocoon, or turn your speakers up, and the constant bleeps will probably annoy your cubicle neighbors enough that they plot some sort of revenge.
so, does anyone own one of the logitechs? pity it's such a simple/flat mouse, i don't think the company has really explored this as a productivity enhancing tool, so it would seem that this one is the litmus test to see if the market embraces it or dismisses it as a novelty.
LCD screens are a fad. They look cool, but they don't work nearly as well as existing CRT technology... and it's much more expensive.
well, i agree, there is an element of fad-ism with flat-panels. but i want to see them succeed/improve. my motivations are: heat production, power consumption, and desk space.
wouldn't you love to be able to mount (several) flat-panel displays on a swingarm and get them the hell off of your desk? to be able to put your desk anywhere near a wall (and not have to leave room for the backend of the CRT to hang over) and to be able to have multiple monitors on and not have the room get so warm you can roast a chicken? (*grin*)
i pledged when i bought my FD Trinitron that it was the last CRT i buy. i don't like conspicuous consumption of electricity- to produce heat instead of display.
so, time will tell. let's just hope they get all this sorted out before my latest monitor decides to bite the dust.;) i'm hoping i have at least 4 or 5 years, at least.
hearing about thin or flat-panel CRT's is great news for us graphic-ey folks. i've been reluctant to consider upgrading to newer, cheaper flat panel LCD's for one simple reason: their color calibration is utterly whacked.
the screen on my thinkpad can't imagine reproducing colors with any remote accuracy, and whatever calibration tools are available to tweak it (i have the savage/IX chipset, i've used both the s3 color and gamma correction, and adobe's gamma correction) have failed to produce an accurate color representation across a full spectrum (i.e. you can tweak it so a certain range is accurate, but then the rest of the spectrum is bunk)
so, a thinner, lighter CRT is great news (especially if it's the same price as conventional high-end CRT's) for us design folks who want to do away with clunky, heavy, power-hungry CRT's but don't want to sacrifice one of the keystones of our industry.
any thoughts? is my testbed too narrow? are there LCD's that can reproduce color as accurately as a Trinitron CRT? (and ultimately, will these thin CRT's be able to represent color as well as their bulging older siblings? if not, they have no strategic advantage over LCD's, except possibly for price and/or brightness in well-lit areas)
Re:more money, less usability. great.
on
Transmeta Webpad
·
· Score: 1
well, i was perhaps overly harsh. i, too, am excited by the promise of these types of devices.
but this product has yet to find it's niche. is it a electronic clipboard that you can surf the web on? is it a home information appliance toy? is it a recipe pad? is it a replacement for the old tried-and-true newspaper to read while you're eating your bowl of Tastey Wheat?
the answer to all is, yes. of course. but, is it worth $2399 to save a dollar for a paper every sunday?
here's what i'd like to see: don't eliminate the keyboard (i know, there's a touch-screen keyboard, but try and touch-type on those - where the heck are your fingers?)
instead, make the keyboard optional - i.e. it can fold around backwards out of the way. it's thin, but it's still three-dimensional. hey, maybe it can fold over and protect the screen while in transit.
not a laptop, mind you, where the keyboard IS the base and the screen folds up. i mean, a touchscreen pad with a thin, not designed to be used 100% keyboard that optionally folds out (or can even detach completely.)
different tasks require different levels and types of input. web surfing could get by with pointing/clicking and a bit of text entry (for searches, etc.). composing email might be a lesson in futility unless the handwriting recog. is top-notch.
as for word processing, spreadsheets, etc. i'd have to see what level the OS has integration. if it were like the old apple newtons - scribble over a word and it goes "poof" that takes usability to the ultimate level - using the paradigm they're attempting to create (a digital pen) and making real-world habitual actions perform the same function in the digital world.
more money, less usability. great.
on
Transmeta Webpad
·
· Score: 3
why pay $2299 for a glorified wireless Audrey?
just pick up a TiBook or a superslim laptop, i don't see what the big deal is. are people willing to pay more to eliminate a keyboard?
how exactly do you type on a 'virtual' touchscreen keyboard, anyway? if you're using 2 hands to type.... what are you holding the computer with? and if you lay it flat on a table, can you still even see what's on the screen?
i think they need to fire a couple of gadget-freaks and hire someone with some common sense & UI design, then sell their Lexus IS300's and ride the bus so they can drop the price on this to a shade over 7-800$.
i'm preparing for a drive across country, all my worldly posessions will be travelling by train or truck or something, so i wanted to mix down from my own CD's to make compilations to listen to on the journey (something tells me that across, say... North Dakota, i'll be at a loss for good radio stations.;)
things are going fine, when i come across a CD that i can't rip tracks off of. it's as if the ripper is seeing different track breaks/gaps than a playback device does. i've tried 7 different programs on 2 platforms (mac & windows) and yet to have any luck getting these tracks.
is it illegal for me to make copies (or partial copies) of CD's that i own for my own personal use?
there goes my dream of having an in-house mp3 jukebox stocked ENTIRELY from cd's that i OWN.
Middle Atlantic has good, cheap cabinets. you can get as fancy or plain as you want - add doors and vents and fans or leave it open.
i'm looking at their ERK series, 18U with doors, fans & filters, and caster base. eventually i'd like to move all my machines (except the mac;) in here and run a nice KVM, too.
their distributors list is available here. in the greater Boston area, i'm going to You Do-It Electronics in Needham.
where's your water heater? right there on the desk, eh? next to the furnace? and you have to listen to them run all day, do ya? that's gotta suck.
when you went to buy a television, did you get the phat looking sony WEGA or dig around for a wooden-cabineted victrola-esque unit?
consumer electronics REQUIRES aesthetics and usability. I, for one, would like to hear at LEAST ONE less fan running on/near my desk. the downfall of the cube is that it had zero expandability - so that even people who very much enjoy Macs (like me) wouldn't buy one because i can't slap in another vid card and run dual head, etc.
different is better if it's innovative. try pulling the fans out of your PC and see how long before your PIII melts the solder off your Slot1.
my wish is that they would've made a 9" cube with room for at least one card and another HD. best of both worlds.
finally, we'll see a single-player scenario again. since the demise of bungie and their marathon series, we haven't really seen an engrossing storyline with problem solving. sure, half-life was cinematic enough, but it was quite formulaic - put tab A into slot B, climb ladder, etc.
too much attention on deathmatch and run around blowing people up - has left those of us who like strategy with searching for good mods and user-written scenarios to quench our desires.
is it economics? i know it must cost a heck of a lot less to make deathmatch arenas than to make large, immersive and expansive worlds to explore.
While I agree that I usually get someone at cisco who knows what they're talking about, it is very rare in my experience that it happens in only a minute, although it does occasionally happen. A much more common experience is to wait on hold for 15-20 minutes, but I have waited on hold as long as an hour with them.
well now you know the difference- you have to name-drop Slashdot to the FIRST person you talk to!
"We're Slashdot, dammit! and we're down! and it's your fault! ah, now that i've got your attention, well... we're not slashdot exactly, we're... um, dot slash... apachectl start... "
you still don't understand that by embedding links in my content and making them indistinguishable from the links i placed there myself, this feature alters the context of my piece of work and therefore violates my copyright. the only way they'll get away with this is that - people have to choose to turn it on, or be duped into turning it on.
let's look at this objectively. a holocaust webpage where ever occurence of "Hitler" turns into a Smart Tag link to purchase Mein Kampf?
a web page about child abuse or molestation where specific words turn into Smart Tag links to adult content?
the problem here is, they're assuming the context of an individual word and acting upon it - in a way that fools the reader into thinking that's what the author meant.
whether you realize it or not, this is diabolical. Smart Tags in office are very very different- my desktop is a controlled environment, and if my company wants every occurence of the word "payroll" and "vacation time" to link to the HR site, _THAT_ is useful.
embedding Smart Tags in outside-the-box content is a severe violation of the rights of writers & publishers.
i wonder how they're going to subtitle this movie - do they translate jarjar's jive into real english or do they make them look like the transcriptionist is typing on a broken keyboard?
this is most clearly a violation of the copyright held by the page owner. modifying how content is displayed to the user without the consent of the author?
what if i owned a bookstore and 'edited' the books on the shelves to promote my own philosophies? i'm sure the authors would get upset - and get every last penny i had in this world.
this differs greatly from services that 'censor' content, because you install/subscribe to them expressly for the purpose to remove words and materials that are offensive to you (because, you had no expectation to see them. people don't install filters then visit pages they _know_ will contain the very material they want to block).
"smart tags" alters the _meaning_ of a piece of work by changing the context of individual words, and making it indistiguishable to the user that the author didn't intend it that way.
or shall i say, that smart tags surreptitiously _wants_ the user to think that you _did_ intend it that way. and your own links get lost in a wash of microsoft's links.
i'm waiting for the day that manufacturers finally release a wide aspect-ratio screen laptop with a full-width, full-size keyboard.
apple is almost there- the Titanium powerbook has a wide aspect-ratio screen, but they punked out and left padding around a smaller keyboard.
i guess we have to wait until people can handle a laptop that's a different proportion - why not a more 'legal' sized laptop instead of a 'letter' sized one?
this is a 1.0 release of OS X. apple didn't intend this for widespread use on mission-critical systems (who would do that anyway?) the major apps used for production work on the mac aren't ported yet. i'll keep using photoshop in os 9.1 until adobe finishes the rewrite for OS X.
so, therefore, why should frequent updates be a problem? this isn't like they're asking company IT departments to go around to every desktop mac and install an update every week. OS X is being installed by people who self-maintain their machines anyway.
when the big consumer push of OS X comes out this fall (and, subsequently, when Apple starts _shipping machines_ with OS X pre-installed) we'll see the update schedule drop off in frequency, lest for any critical issues that hopefully won't arise.
i have a Mac IIci that already solves problems while it's not turned on, or even plugged in. it has no OS installed!
the problem: my door keeps blowing shut when it's windy.
this could also be applied to a variety of other problems: i'm not tall enough to reach something, there's a burglar outside the window, my dog is teething, use your imagination!:)
p.s. - don't slag me for using a IIci for such purposes, i tested it against an old 386 and the Mac performed better. and as an added bonus - it complimented my decor!
swimming in milk - in 3D! watch out for the polymorphic teddy bears. this game will only be successful if it's as much of a psychedelic romp as the movie.
will the economic slowdown overall affect the porn industry positively? _unemployed_ lonely geeks have more time to... amuse themselves. (almost as much as if they were back in college.;)
but seriously, even stretching beyond the technology industry, does higher unemployment lead to more people in need of immediate gratification?
old problem, new measures are no solution.
on
Sean In The Middle
·
· Score: 1
before computers, it was A/V. it's always something, as long as it's different, and involves a set of skills that the bulk of the population doesn't posess nor have the ability to learn. ostracism of the smart has been going on for a long, long time.
it's too bad that there are literally no rewards for bright students and there is such a reward - socially - for athletic achievement. schools are structured to dole out praise and recognition to those who do well in sports, yet supreme academic achievers earn their reputations through public opinion with no guidance faculty-sponsored guidance. so other students' fear and intimidation create the negative aspects of an academic achiever and thereby condemn them to be a 'geek' or a 'nerd,' lest the average student be left with a sense of deprecated self-worth.
this is directly related to poor academic performance in schools as well. being a nerd is not an enviable position for the average student; there is no incentive for greater academic achievement since they know it comes at the price of social condemnation. (i.e. "should i study more and become a pariah, or watch Mtv all night and 'fit in?'")
perhaps the only answer then, (and who knows if it's even possible) is to somehow establish a reward system for academic achievement that is not limited to a grade or a plaque, one that would garner esteem from a students' peers, not their superiors. is it possible to make being smart enviable?
i greatly prefer battlebots to robotwars for a myriad of reasons.
first being, watching a robot go thru an obstacle course is very, very boring.
second, the 'house robots' on robotwars have an unreasonable advantage, and don't present the same degree of opposition to all contestants. (i.e. it seems that some people get a much harder wallop than others.) and they do actual serious destruction to competitors robots, which stifles innovation (why would i want to invest a great deal of money/time into a robot if their much-too-favored 'house robot' snips and blowtorches and spikes the hell out of it?)
i think the head to head competition as seen in battlebots is the best combination of testing the builders' mechanical prowess AND driving abilities, with just enough arena obstacle to keep them on their toes. it's challenging a driver (or team) to be on both offense and defense simultaneously, while needing to be keenly aware of their environment (to avoid the arena hazards).
the robotwars 'courses' leave hardly enough room to maneuver, and by the time one gets themselves pointed in the right direction, there's already one or several hulking 'house robots' there waiting to take your creation to bits.
that's just my $0.02. oh, and the announcer on robotwars is so annoying i sometimes consider avoiding the program because of him alone. (too bad TLC seems to have found someone even MORE annoying for robotica:\ ).
notice how there are no tv commercials, there will be no 8' tall store displays. this initial release of macOS X is targetted at 'early adopters' as in, those people who want to use cutting-edge stuff but understand that it's going to take a little while for applications to catch up.
nobody expects the bulk of the Mac community to move to OS X until all their favorite applications become native on it (like photoshop). we're expecting those apps this fall. the Carbon API's have allowed developers to prepare for this even before getting their hands on the first development releases.
One might also note, that recently Apple made changes in their hardware from stock CD and DVD drives to a new CD/DVD/DVD-R drive. this probably required altering a good amount of code, and they had to tradeoff the development time to do that with finishing up other (more critical) pieces.
In the end, i'd rather get this release of OS X, and in a month or two install a updater package, than wait another few months.
admirers of the current Half-Life plotline should read in history books (he-he) about the old Bungie game, Marathon, and it's successors Marathon II and Marathon Infinity.
True, the opening of Half-Life is spooky and engaging (the literal 'descent' into dante's inferno, cinematic and refreshing) and is admirable above any current game, but Half-Life's gameplay is still mostly "go here, push this, go there, pull that" it's still very linear.
The Plotline of Marathon spanned multiple games, information about your objectives provided piecemeal in terminals (which served as savegame portals... couldn't just save it anywhere). Throughout the course of the greater battle (of which you were only a small part) you in turn serve various masters, some of them directly opposing each other!
An absolutely amazing and enthralling plotline, plus the type of gameplay that lent itself to sneaking and sniping.
Perhaps above all else, the ebb and flow of intensity is what keeps you coming back to Marathon. there are frenzied levels where you have to burn your way thru a freaky alien spaceship before the whole thing crashes into a moon, and there are sparsely populated planets where you have to run for miles before you encounter any enemies. the one thing you could count on was, you were always dropped into the middle of a situation given a finite amount of time to figure out why you were there, what you had to do and where you could get out.
the rise of deathmatch-style games seems to have all-but-eliminated engaging, deep first-person adventurous games (after all, it costs a lot less to design/model one 'arena' than to lay out entire _worlds_ to explore) but perhaps there's still some hope with the forthcoming Halo... i just hope i don't have to buy an X-box to be able to play it.
Slashdot Mirror
did you mean:
'is there still room in a company for a quirky 'guru?' or, are projects so large now, [that] by necessity, team-based development rules (v.) [the industry]?'
do linux word processors/e-mail programs need grammar checkers? does anyone bother to re-read what they've written when it has the potential to be read by tens of thousands of people (as opposed to making each and every one of them re-read it 3 times before they figure out what the heck you meant)?
</flamebait> -mthis is something i'd been contemplating for a while, then i saw the logitech iFeel mouse. i wanted to try one in an everyday/productivity environment, but all i could find was their cheezy store display that made the mouse 'buzz' when you scrolled over a dot.
my goal is to find an other-than-visual feedback mechanism for everyday UI controls; i.e. being able to locate/confirm buttons, menu items, without relying soley on visual input to do so.
the goal is simple: to get faster. i already use the Finder sounds on my MacOS machine, the audible feedback allows me to already be retraining my visual focus on the next task position even before i click to complete the current one - i know to click when i hear the blip. it allows you to lead with your eyes; you spend less time pondering the next task.
audio, however, is not the most convenient feedback mechanism. in noisy office environments you either have to wear headphones and be in a cocoon, or turn your speakers up, and the constant bleeps will probably annoy your cubicle neighbors enough that they plot some sort of revenge.
so, does anyone own one of the logitechs? pity it's such a simple/flat mouse, i don't think the company has really explored this as a productivity enhancing tool, so it would seem that this one is the litmus test to see if the market embraces it or dismisses it as a novelty.
well, i agree, there is an element of fad-ism with flat-panels. but i want to see them succeed/improve. my motivations are: heat production, power consumption, and desk space.
wouldn't you love to be able to mount (several) flat-panel displays on a swingarm and get them the hell off of your desk? to be able to put your desk anywhere near a wall (and not have to leave room for the backend of the CRT to hang over) and to be able to have multiple monitors on and not have the room get so warm you can roast a chicken? (*grin*)
i pledged when i bought my FD Trinitron that it was the last CRT i buy. i don't like conspicuous consumption of electricity- to produce heat instead of display.
so, time will tell. let's just hope they get all this sorted out before my latest monitor decides to bite the dust. ;) i'm hoping i have at least 4 or 5 years, at least.
hearing about thin or flat-panel CRT's is great news for us graphic-ey folks. i've been reluctant to consider upgrading to newer, cheaper flat panel LCD's for one simple reason: their color calibration is utterly whacked.
the screen on my thinkpad can't imagine reproducing colors with any remote accuracy, and whatever calibration tools are available to tweak it (i have the savage/IX chipset, i've used both the s3 color and gamma correction, and adobe's gamma correction) have failed to produce an accurate color representation across a full spectrum (i.e. you can tweak it so a certain range is accurate, but then the rest of the spectrum is bunk)
so, a thinner, lighter CRT is great news (especially if it's the same price as conventional high-end CRT's) for us design folks who want to do away with clunky, heavy, power-hungry CRT's but don't want to sacrifice one of the keystones of our industry.
any thoughts? is my testbed too narrow? are there LCD's that can reproduce color as accurately as a Trinitron CRT? (and ultimately, will these thin CRT's be able to represent color as well as their bulging older siblings? if not, they have no strategic advantage over LCD's, except possibly for price and/or brightness in well-lit areas)
well, i was perhaps overly harsh. i, too, am excited by the promise of these types of devices.
but this product has yet to find it's niche. is it a electronic clipboard that you can surf the web on? is it a home information appliance toy? is it a recipe pad? is it a replacement for the old tried-and-true newspaper to read while you're eating your bowl of Tastey Wheat?
the answer to all is, yes. of course. but, is it worth $2399 to save a dollar for a paper every sunday?
here's what i'd like to see: don't eliminate the keyboard (i know, there's a touch-screen keyboard, but try and touch-type on those - where the heck are your fingers?)
instead, make the keyboard optional - i.e. it can fold around backwards out of the way. it's thin, but it's still three-dimensional. hey, maybe it can fold over and protect the screen while in transit.
not a laptop, mind you, where the keyboard IS the base and the screen folds up. i mean, a touchscreen pad with a thin, not designed to be used 100% keyboard that optionally folds out (or can even detach completely.)
different tasks require different levels and types of input. web surfing could get by with pointing/clicking and a bit of text entry (for searches, etc.). composing email might be a lesson in futility unless the handwriting recog. is top-notch.
as for word processing, spreadsheets, etc. i'd have to see what level the OS has integration. if it were like the old apple newtons - scribble over a word and it goes "poof" that takes usability to the ultimate level - using the paradigm they're attempting to create (a digital pen) and making real-world habitual actions perform the same function in the digital world.
why pay $2299 for a glorified wireless Audrey?
just pick up a TiBook or a superslim laptop, i don't see what the big deal is. are people willing to pay more to eliminate a keyboard?
how exactly do you type on a 'virtual' touchscreen keyboard, anyway? if you're using 2 hands to type.... what are you holding the computer with? and if you lay it flat on a table, can you still even see what's on the screen?
i think they need to fire a couple of gadget-freaks and hire someone with some common sense & UI design, then sell their Lexus IS300's and ride the bus so they can drop the price on this to a shade over 7-800$.
weird this would be posted now...
;)
i'm preparing for a drive across country, all my worldly posessions will be travelling by train or truck or something, so i wanted to mix down from my own CD's to make compilations to listen to on the journey (something tells me that across, say... North Dakota, i'll be at a loss for good radio stations.
things are going fine, when i come across a CD that i can't rip tracks off of. it's as if the ripper is seeing different track breaks/gaps than a playback device does. i've tried 7 different programs on 2 platforms (mac & windows) and yet to have any luck getting these tracks.
is it illegal for me to make copies (or partial copies) of CD's that i own for my own personal use?
there goes my dream of having an in-house mp3 jukebox stocked ENTIRELY from cd's that i OWN.
Middle Atlantic has good, cheap cabinets. you can get as fancy or plain as you want - add doors and vents and fans or leave it open.
i'm looking at their ERK series, 18U with doors, fans & filters, and caster base. eventually i'd like to move all my machines (except the mac ;) in here and run a nice KVM, too.
their distributors list is available here. in the greater Boston area, i'm going to You Do-It Electronics in Needham.
where's your water heater? right there on the desk, eh? next to the furnace? and you have to listen to them run all day, do ya? that's gotta suck.
when you went to buy a television, did you get the phat looking sony WEGA or dig around for a wooden-cabineted victrola-esque unit?
consumer electronics REQUIRES aesthetics and usability. I, for one, would like to hear at LEAST ONE less fan running on/near my desk. the downfall of the cube is that it had zero expandability - so that even people who very much enjoy Macs (like me) wouldn't buy one because i can't slap in another vid card and run dual head, etc.
different is better if it's innovative. try pulling the fans out of your PC and see how long before your PIII melts the solder off your Slot1.
my wish is that they would've made a 9" cube with room for at least one card and another HD. best of both worlds.
finally, we'll see a single-player scenario again. since the demise of bungie and their marathon series, we haven't really seen an engrossing storyline with problem solving. sure, half-life was cinematic enough, but it was quite formulaic - put tab A into slot B, climb ladder, etc.
too much attention on deathmatch and run around blowing people up - has left those of us who like strategy with searching for good mods and user-written scenarios to quench our desires.
is it economics? i know it must cost a heck of a lot less to make deathmatch arenas than to make large, immersive and expansive worlds to explore.
well now you know the difference- you have to name-drop Slashdot to the FIRST person you talk to!
"We're Slashdot, dammit! and we're down! and it's your fault! ah, now that i've got your attention, well... we're not slashdot exactly, we're ... um, dot slash ... apachectl start... "
you still don't understand that by embedding links in my content and making them indistinguishable from the links i placed there myself, this feature alters the context of my piece of work and therefore violates my copyright. the only way they'll get away with this is that - people have to choose to turn it on, or be duped into turning it on.
let's look at this objectively. a holocaust webpage where ever occurence of "Hitler" turns into a Smart Tag link to purchase Mein Kampf?
a web page about child abuse or molestation where specific words turn into Smart Tag links to adult content?
the problem here is, they're assuming the context of an individual word and acting upon it - in a way that fools the reader into thinking that's what the author meant.
whether you realize it or not, this is diabolical. Smart Tags in office are very very different- my desktop is a controlled environment, and if my company wants every occurence of the word "payroll" and "vacation time" to link to the HR site, _THAT_ is useful.
embedding Smart Tags in outside-the-box content is a severe violation of the rights of writers & publishers.
i wonder how they're going to subtitle this movie - do they translate jarjar's jive into real english or do they make them look like the transcriptionist is typing on a broken keyboard?
this is most clearly a violation of the copyright held by the page owner. modifying how content is displayed to the user without the consent of the author?
what if i owned a bookstore and 'edited' the books on the shelves to promote my own philosophies? i'm sure the authors would get upset - and get every last penny i had in this world.
this differs greatly from services that 'censor' content, because you install/subscribe to them expressly for the purpose to remove words and materials that are offensive to you (because, you had no expectation to see them. people don't install filters then visit pages they _know_ will contain the very material they want to block).
"smart tags" alters the _meaning_ of a piece of work by changing the context of individual words, and making it indistiguishable to the user that the author didn't intend it that way.
or shall i say, that smart tags surreptitiously _wants_ the user to think that you _did_ intend it that way. and your own links get lost in a wash of microsoft's links.
i'm waiting for the day that manufacturers finally release a wide aspect-ratio screen laptop with a full-width, full-size keyboard.
apple is almost there- the Titanium powerbook has a wide aspect-ratio screen, but they punked out and left padding around a smaller keyboard.
i guess we have to wait until people can handle a laptop that's a different proportion - why not a more 'legal' sized laptop instead of a 'letter' sized one?
this is a 1.0 release of OS X. apple didn't intend this for widespread use on mission-critical systems (who would do that anyway?) the major apps used for production work on the mac aren't ported yet. i'll keep using photoshop in os 9.1 until adobe finishes the rewrite for OS X.
so, therefore, why should frequent updates be a problem? this isn't like they're asking company IT departments to go around to every desktop mac and install an update every week. OS X is being installed by people who self-maintain their machines anyway.
when the big consumer push of OS X comes out this fall (and, subsequently, when Apple starts _shipping machines_ with OS X pre-installed) we'll see the update schedule drop off in frequency, lest for any critical issues that hopefully won't arise.
i have a Mac IIci that already solves problems while it's not turned on, or even plugged in. it has no OS installed!
:)
the problem: my door keeps blowing shut when it's windy.
this could also be applied to a variety of other problems: i'm not tall enough to reach something, there's a burglar outside the window, my dog is teething, use your imagination!
p.s. - don't slag me for using a IIci for such purposes, i tested it against an old 386 and the Mac performed better. and as an added bonus - it complimented my decor!
swimming in milk - in 3D! watch out for the polymorphic teddy bears. this game will only be successful if it's as much of a psychedelic romp as the movie.
will the economic slowdown overall affect the porn industry positively? _unemployed_ lonely geeks have more time to ... amuse themselves. (almost as much as if they were back in college. ;)
but seriously, even stretching beyond the technology industry, does higher unemployment lead to more people in need of immediate gratification?
before computers, it was A/V. it's always something, as long as it's different, and involves a set of skills that the bulk of the population doesn't posess nor have the ability to learn. ostracism of the smart has been going on for a long, long time.
it's too bad that there are literally no rewards for bright students and there is such a reward - socially - for athletic achievement. schools are structured to dole out praise and recognition to those who do well in sports, yet supreme academic achievers earn their reputations through public opinion with no guidance faculty-sponsored guidance. so other students' fear and intimidation create the negative aspects of an academic achiever and thereby condemn them to be a 'geek' or a 'nerd,' lest the average student be left with a sense of deprecated self-worth.
this is directly related to poor academic performance in schools as well. being a nerd is not an enviable position for the average student; there is no incentive for greater academic achievement since they know it comes at the price of social condemnation. (i.e. "should i study more and become a pariah, or watch Mtv all night and 'fit in?'")
perhaps the only answer then, (and who knows if it's even possible) is to somehow establish a reward system for academic achievement that is not limited to a grade or a plaque, one that would garner esteem from a students' peers, not their superiors. is it possible to make being smart enviable?
i greatly prefer battlebots to robotwars for a myriad of reasons.
:\ ).
first being, watching a robot go thru an obstacle course is very, very boring.
second, the 'house robots' on robotwars have an unreasonable advantage, and don't present the same degree of opposition to all contestants. (i.e. it seems that some people get a much harder wallop than others.) and they do actual serious destruction to competitors robots, which stifles innovation (why would i want to invest a great deal of money/time into a robot if their much-too-favored 'house robot' snips and blowtorches and spikes the hell out of it?)
i think the head to head competition as seen in battlebots is the best combination of testing the builders' mechanical prowess AND driving abilities, with just enough arena obstacle to keep them on their toes. it's challenging a driver (or team) to be on both offense and defense simultaneously, while needing to be keenly aware of their environment (to avoid the arena hazards).
the robotwars 'courses' leave hardly enough room to maneuver, and by the time one gets themselves pointed in the right direction, there's already one or several hulking 'house robots' there waiting to take your creation to bits.
that's just my $0.02. oh, and the announcer on robotwars is so annoying i sometimes consider avoiding the program because of him alone. (too bad TLC seems to have found someone even MORE annoying for robotica
notice how there are no tv commercials, there will be no 8' tall store displays. this initial release of macOS X is targetted at 'early adopters' as in, those people who want to use cutting-edge stuff but understand that it's going to take a little while for applications to catch up.
nobody expects the bulk of the Mac community to move to OS X until all their favorite applications become native on it (like photoshop). we're expecting those apps this fall. the Carbon API's have allowed developers to prepare for this even before getting their hands on the first development releases.
One might also note, that recently Apple made changes in their hardware from stock CD and DVD drives to a new CD/DVD/DVD-R drive. this probably required altering a good amount of code, and they had to tradeoff the development time to do that with finishing up other (more critical) pieces.
In the end, i'd rather get this release of OS X, and in a month or two install a updater package, than wait another few months.
admirers of the current Half-Life plotline should read in history books (he-he) about the old Bungie game, Marathon, and it's successors Marathon II and Marathon Infinity.
True, the opening of Half-Life is spooky and engaging (the literal 'descent' into dante's inferno, cinematic and refreshing) and is admirable above any current game, but Half-Life's gameplay is still mostly "go here, push this, go there, pull that" it's still very linear.
The Plotline of Marathon spanned multiple games, information about your objectives provided piecemeal in terminals (which served as savegame portals... couldn't just save it anywhere). Throughout the course of the greater battle (of which you were only a small part) you in turn serve various masters, some of them directly opposing each other!
An absolutely amazing and enthralling plotline, plus the type of gameplay that lent itself to sneaking and sniping.
Perhaps above all else, the ebb and flow of intensity is what keeps you coming back to Marathon. there are frenzied levels where you have to burn your way thru a freaky alien spaceship before the whole thing crashes into a moon, and there are sparsely populated planets where you have to run for miles before you encounter any enemies. the one thing you could count on was, you were always dropped into the middle of a situation given a finite amount of time to figure out why you were there, what you had to do and where you could get out.
the rise of deathmatch-style games seems to have all-but-eliminated engaging, deep first-person adventurous games (after all, it costs a lot less to design/model one 'arena' than to lay out entire _worlds_ to explore) but perhaps there's still some hope with the forthcoming Halo... i just hope i don't have to buy an X-box to be able to play it.