I find that paper and pen is preferable over anything else by a WIDE margin for me as well.
To the person who noted pencil... a couple of things-- - How often are you erasing? If it's quite often then you're not doing "note taking" you're doing something else... - Pencil fades in a notebook, I will often use pencil when doing engineering work because it IS erasable and I've found that a few months later the writing is very difficult to use because it's fading and smudging
I was given one as an expensive gift... I feel very badly for not using it, but the pen was just too large and bulky.
In addition, I'm much faster finding notes in an old notebook than I am flipping through virtual pages on a screen. Because I work in an office, having access to the old notebooks is not an issue, and frankly if it's not in my current or last notebook, then it's probably something I don't really need to find anyway.
So in the end it just wasn't worth it.
It just so happens that I also attend night school, I did try the Livescribe there too, and while I really liked the audio recording feature, I just didn't find enough value in it combined w/ the note taking for it to be worth it vs. just using my older digital audio recorder and noting the time index in the margin.
MS is clearly betting on consumers using this with touch screens going forward.
I've grown to like it so far. They've added some geeky eye candy (like the copy/extraction dialog details) and they've improved over all how the menus/buttons/on screen fonts all work. It's designed very well to used on large high resolution displays. They've also removed a bunch of the crappy stuff like the "glass" effects on task bar, etc.
If you like tablet/smartphone interfaces, this will become natural very quickly--even when using a mouse. There's maybe a ~week long learning curve, then you can appreciate some of the changes... unless you're stuck on what you already know and use, then you probably will be annoyed at everything added.
BMW has steadfastly refused to include touch screens, exactly because they require you to take your attention off the road to use. BMW uses a rotating joystick controller located near the shifter, and the UI is designed so that you can glance to and from quickly with little need to maintain context. They also insist on placing the screen very high in the dash to minimize the distance your eyes have to travel when glancing at the screen and maximize your peripheral vision while you are looking.
They also have a full cockpit simulator where they do extensive driver attention studies. Say what you will about the iDrive system, but it gets top marks for minimizing driver distraction.
My Honda beats anything BMW has--it has only four controls:
- Volume Knob (left for less noise, right for more noise) - Seek (doesn't matter if you push up or down as long as you always press the same one) - Fan (left for less fan, right for more fan) - Temp (left for less hot, right for more hot)
Done.
No "holding context" in your mind like someone else mentioned about iDrive. No screen in your face. etc. It's very simple and frankly when you are driving a car that's how it should be... I cannot fathom how we've gotten to the point of having two dozen buttons or on-screen controls for "climate control" in a car.
At least a dozen people at my company go around in socks w/ no shoes while at the office... though I had to admit that heading into the restroom (which is shared with other companies on our floor) seems to be a stretch.
I take my shoes off at my desk, and very occasionally will head to a neighboring cube to talk something out w/ putting them back on.
+1 on the collar... that's basically the distinguishing point between "business casual" and "who's that slob?". Think Geek has a small assortment of polo's, and some of those are even reasonably priced once on sale/clearance (~$13).
If you're a lady... well... as little as I know about men's fashion I know even less about lady's fashion, but I'm thinking a polo might not be a good choice.
I can also see this being useful in hospitals as a double-check that the correct medications have been administered orally. The medical aid comes by, takes your vitals and a quick scan of pills taken... it might detect mistakes before you become ill from them.
You know, I kind of like the idea of deciding for myself what medication I take and when. The idea of my doctor trying to make me ingest a sensor like I'm some sort of medical prisoner is more than a little creepy to me. What's next, is he going to give me forced ball-shock treatments if I refuse to eat healthy?
It's ridiculous if it's for high blood pressure or allergies... but not so ridiculous when you're a schizophrenic or someone else with a mental disorder that may put them into a state where they could be a danger to themselves or others.
It could be the difference between forced institutionalization and being able to live with more freedom in a group home. It could also be used for making sure that people who have been convicted of a crime related to their disorder remain compliant with a court ordered drug regime.
Very useful for elderly and border-line Alzheimer patients who may simply forget to take their meds. They may have their own scanner to check to see "did I take that pill today or not?"--right now many rely on 7-day pill containers, but those are hardly fool proof.
Bottom line is that for a mentally healthy individual this would probably come to down a matter of convenience in checking yourself to see if you took a certain pill that day or not.
-That you are an IT expert who knows better than to trust technology.
-That you are aware of the numerous times that Zuckerberg's account has been attacked.
-That you learn from the mistakes of others who ruin their lives by posting something stupid.
-That you value your privacy.
-Don't post anything stupid... done!
-That you do not appreciate being monetized.
-If you obtain some value from the service, and the "montetization" does not negatively effect you... then who cares? I don't understand the obsession with people wanting to avoid this aspect of FB and other similar sites, you'd practically have to avoid the entire internet to avoid it...
-That you are not so insecure in your friendships that you need to seek out validation.
- I guess I can see this one for certain age groups and types of people. But honestly, for people like me it lets me be in regular contact with friends and family who I would otherwise not see or talk to. These aren't people that I choose not to see, they are people that I would like to see, but the practicalities of life prevent it. I'm in the age group of friends with kids... that means that they don't get out much, so to share a joke or a story "over a pint at the pub" just isn't happening, but on FB it's easy and takes about 30 seconds out of each of our lives. Some of these people are also 100+ miles away, so while I might see them 1-2X/year it's certainly not weekly... but on FB it's easy.
-That you do not want to make it any easier for a government to oppress you.
I don't know if it is a religion, but there is an understanding that, like leaving your Mom's basement, humans will have to learn to get off this rock or go extinct. Earth will not be livable forever. Getting off this rock is the only way that those "normal human activities" will continue.
Forget keeping it habitable or not. It's the same reason you don't want your entire team in the same bus or plane... if something happens--an accident, a giant meteor, whatever... you lose all your players.
By leaving this planet we will enable the survival of our species beyond planetary cataclysms. Now I would suggest that a moon colony, although a good start, is not sufficient because it is tied too closely to Earth. Mars isn't sufficient either because we rely on the same star, but again, it's a good start. We need to leave this solar system and eventually this galaxy.
However all that said, I do believe we are rapidly reaching an impasse where the gains from furthering this cause are simply not worth it to average member of this species, and as a result we probably will be lucky to have a Moon/Mars colony within 100 years, let alone near light or faster than light travel speeds.
and if notoriously fickle public preferences shift like they did from Myspace, Facebook will be a has-been a year after that. It's a convenience, nothing more.
That same argument could be used for Coke... Pepsi... Ben & Jerry. Or probably the best comparison, your local television and radio stations.
Facebook is a service provider. What it provides is tangible in the same ways that what netflix, cable, ISPs, tv and radio stations provide...
FB and your local radio/TV stations don't get paid by you, they get paid by advertisers.
FB is real, and saying it isn't real, or wishing it would go away like MySpace will not make it happen, nor will it make the role that companies like FB play today (and will continue to play) any smaller.
you go ahead with that plan. The rest of us understand that depreciation (amortization is for intangible, not tangible assets) is a tax issue, and doesn't mean that the item has no actual value anymore. You'll still be willfully destroying or harming private property, and could still - if the employer chooses - be charged criminally. Harming your employer simply because you did something stupid is a really, really bad idea.
I think jedidiah's point was that the complete a total loss of your PC--for whatever reason--should not affect your employer in a meaningful way... assuming that the IT is being handled correctly.
That's like saying the best way not to die in a car accident is to bike to work.
Well... yes actually that is what it's saying. If you don't own a gun, you are safe as you can reasonably be from gun accidents. If you don't own a car, you're as safe from them as you can be.
You can still get run over or shot when you're outside. So really staying in your basement is the only answer to complete safety, unless there's a flood, or tornado... or radon.
If someone says something vulgar, and someone else is offended... then you handle it. Depending on who you agree with, and the nature of the infraction, you tailor your response which might range from a simple "talking to" all the way to a firing.
Power companies do not sell you average, the voltage is not variable in a meaningful way through-out the day. Brown and black outs are rare enough events these days.
Water is about the same, it doesn't vary in a meaningful way for residential users. Then again I don't live on a street where everyone has lawn sprinklers, let alone all turns them on at the same time as each other...
The code will generally get you to the system involved in the problem, or perhaps one down stream from the source of the problem.
Exactly. You show up for a "PC can't get on internet" call, the ODB-II code would be something like "No IP"... OK that could be a network card failure, mis-configuration of network settings or the hardware itself, missing or damaged cable, broken switch at the end of the wall jack, broken DHCP server, etc...
Pretty much the computer spits out a number which the mechanic looks up in a book and then replaces the part the book says to replace. There really isn't a lot of human analysis going on with automotive repair.
...and how many years have you worked as a professional in the auto-repair industry?
Slashdot Mirror
I find that paper and pen is preferable over anything else by a WIDE margin for me as well.
To the person who noted pencil... a couple of things--
- How often are you erasing? If it's quite often then you're not doing "note taking" you're doing something else...
- Pencil fades in a notebook, I will often use pencil when doing engineering work because it IS erasable and I've found that a few months later the writing is very difficult to use because it's fading and smudging
I was given one as an expensive gift... I feel very badly for not using it, but the pen was just too large and bulky.
In addition, I'm much faster finding notes in an old notebook than I am flipping through virtual pages on a screen. Because I work in an office, having access to the old notebooks is not an issue, and frankly if it's not in my current or last notebook, then it's probably something I don't really need to find anyway.
So in the end it just wasn't worth it.
It just so happens that I also attend night school, I did try the Livescribe there too, and while I really liked the audio recording feature, I just didn't find enough value in it combined w/ the note taking for it to be worth it vs. just using my older digital audio recorder and noting the time index in the margin.
My wife, a staff physicist at FermiLab in their computing division
Much like the HB itself, up until recently I assumed these were only theoretical...
MS is clearly betting on consumers using this with touch screens going forward.
I've grown to like it so far. They've added some geeky eye candy (like the copy/extraction dialog details) and they've improved over all how the menus/buttons/on screen fonts all work. It's designed very well to used on large high resolution displays. They've also removed a bunch of the crappy stuff like the "glass" effects on task bar, etc.
If you like tablet/smartphone interfaces, this will become natural very quickly--even when using a mouse. There's maybe a ~week long learning curve, then you can appreciate some of the changes... unless you're stuck on what you already know and use, then you probably will be annoyed at everything added.
BMW has steadfastly refused to include touch screens, exactly because they require you to take your attention off the road to use. BMW uses a rotating joystick controller located near the shifter, and the UI is designed so that you can glance to and from quickly with little need to maintain context. They also insist on placing the screen very high in the dash to minimize the distance your eyes have to travel when glancing at the screen and maximize your peripheral vision while you are looking.
They also have a full cockpit simulator where they do extensive driver attention studies. Say what you will about the iDrive system, but it gets top marks for minimizing driver distraction.
My Honda beats anything BMW has--it has only four controls:
- Volume Knob (left for less noise, right for more noise)
- Seek (doesn't matter if you push up or down as long as you always press the same one)
- Fan (left for less fan, right for more fan)
- Temp (left for less hot, right for more hot)
Done.
No "holding context" in your mind like someone else mentioned about iDrive. No screen in your face. etc. It's very simple and frankly when you are driving a car that's how it should be... I cannot fathom how we've gotten to the point of having two dozen buttons or on-screen controls for "climate control" in a car.
Does the driver stop for pedestrians in unmarked crosswalks?
What's an "unmarked crosswalk"?
Wouldn't a crosswalk, by definition, be "marked"? So do you really mean "pedestrians crossing without a crosswalk?" or "jaywalkers"?
At least a dozen people at my company go around in socks w/ no shoes while at the office... though I had to admit that heading into the restroom (which is shared with other companies on our floor) seems to be a stretch.
I take my shoes off at my desk, and very occasionally will head to a neighboring cube to talk something out w/ putting them back on.
+1 on the collar... that's basically the distinguishing point between "business casual" and "who's that slob?". Think Geek has a small assortment of polo's, and some of those are even reasonably priced once on sale/clearance (~$13).
If you're a lady... well... as little as I know about men's fashion I know even less about lady's fashion, but I'm thinking a polo might not be a good choice.
At that point, the effort to fool it exceeds the effort to take the pills.
Some of us don't want to take the pills....... wwweeeee!!! the colors!
Some pills yes, other pills no.
I took Singulair for a time due to cat allergies, those were given to me at my local pharmacy in a sealed Merk container.
I can also see this being useful in hospitals as a double-check that the correct medications have been administered orally. The medical aid comes by, takes your vitals and a quick scan of pills taken... it might detect mistakes before you become ill from them.
You know, I kind of like the idea of deciding for myself what medication I take and when. The idea of my doctor trying to make me ingest a sensor like I'm some sort of medical prisoner is more than a little creepy to me. What's next, is he going to give me forced ball-shock treatments if I refuse to eat healthy?
It's ridiculous if it's for high blood pressure or allergies... but not so ridiculous when you're a schizophrenic or someone else with a mental disorder that may put them into a state where they could be a danger to themselves or others.
It could be the difference between forced institutionalization and being able to live with more freedom in a group home. It could also be used for making sure that people who have been convicted of a crime related to their disorder remain compliant with a court ordered drug regime.
Very useful for elderly and border-line Alzheimer patients who may simply forget to take their meds. They may have their own scanner to check to see "did I take that pill today or not?"--right now many rely on 7-day pill containers, but those are hardly fool proof.
Bottom line is that for a mentally healthy individual this would probably come to down a matter of convenience in checking yourself to see if you took a certain pill that day or not.
Speaking of Geek and Sundry... it's Felicia Day's channel. 3 Felicia Day
+1 :)
Nice clean UI, easy to use and fairly fast. I think this could be a good one. Though I don't like the idea of an @outlook.com domain for email...
-That you are an IT expert who knows better than to trust technology.
-That you are aware of the numerous times that Zuckerberg's account has been attacked.
-That you learn from the mistakes of others who ruin their lives by posting something stupid.
-That you value your privacy.
-Don't post anything stupid... done!
-That you do not appreciate being monetized.
-If you obtain some value from the service, and the "montetization" does not negatively effect you... then who cares? I don't understand the obsession with people wanting to avoid this aspect of FB and other similar sites, you'd practically have to avoid the entire internet to avoid it...
-That you are not so insecure in your friendships that you need to seek out validation.
- I guess I can see this one for certain age groups and types of people. But honestly, for people like me it lets me be in regular contact with friends and family who I would otherwise not see or talk to. These aren't people that I choose not to see, they are people that I would like to see, but the practicalities of life prevent it. I'm in the age group of friends with kids... that means that they don't get out much, so to share a joke or a story "over a pint at the pub" just isn't happening, but on FB it's easy and takes about 30 seconds out of each of our lives. Some of these people are also 100+ miles away, so while I might see them 1-2X/year it's certainly not weekly... but on FB it's easy.
-That you do not want to make it any easier for a government to oppress you.
Seriously?
I don't know if it is a religion, but there is an understanding that, like leaving your Mom's basement, humans will have to learn to get off this rock or go extinct. Earth will not be livable forever. Getting off this rock is the only way that those "normal human activities" will continue.
Forget keeping it habitable or not. It's the same reason you don't want your entire team in the same bus or plane... if something happens--an accident, a giant meteor, whatever... you lose all your players.
By leaving this planet we will enable the survival of our species beyond planetary cataclysms. Now I would suggest that a moon colony, although a good start, is not sufficient because it is tied too closely to Earth. Mars isn't sufficient either because we rely on the same star, but again, it's a good start. We need to leave this solar system and eventually this galaxy.
However all that said, I do believe we are rapidly reaching an impasse where the gains from furthering this cause are simply not worth it to average member of this species, and as a result we probably will be lucky to have a Moon/Mars colony within 100 years, let alone near light or faster than light travel speeds.
and if notoriously fickle public preferences shift like they did from Myspace, Facebook will be a has-been a year after that. It's a convenience, nothing more.
That same argument could be used for Coke... Pepsi... Ben & Jerry. Or probably the best comparison, your local television and radio stations.
Facebook is a service provider. What it provides is tangible in the same ways that what netflix, cable, ISPs, tv and radio stations provide...
FB and your local radio/TV stations don't get paid by you, they get paid by advertisers.
FB is real, and saying it isn't real, or wishing it would go away like MySpace will not make it happen, nor will it make the role that companies like FB play today (and will continue to play) any smaller.
"discipline" is a concept, by itself we have no idea of the amount... in this case I would imagine they must me the complete absence of it.
you go ahead with that plan. The rest of us understand that depreciation (amortization is for intangible, not tangible assets) is a tax issue, and doesn't mean that the item has no actual value anymore. You'll still be willfully destroying or harming private property, and could still - if the employer chooses - be charged criminally. Harming your employer simply because you did something stupid is a really, really bad idea.
I think jedidiah's point was that the complete a total loss of your PC--for whatever reason--should not affect your employer in a meaningful way... assuming that the IT is being handled correctly.
That's like saying the best way not to die in a car accident is to bike to work.
Well... yes actually that is what it's saying. If you don't own a gun, you are safe as you can reasonably be from gun accidents. If you don't own a car, you're as safe from them as you can be.
You can still get run over or shot when you're outside. So really staying in your basement is the only answer to complete safety, unless there's a flood, or tornado... or radon.
If someone says something vulgar, and someone else is offended... then you handle it. Depending on who you agree with, and the nature of the infraction, you tailor your response which might range from a simple "talking to" all the way to a firing.
That's it.
What if... C-A-T really spelled dog?
Power companies do not sell you average, the voltage is not variable in a meaningful way through-out the day. Brown and black outs are rare enough events these days.
Water is about the same, it doesn't vary in a meaningful way for residential users. Then again I don't live on a street where everyone has lawn sprinklers, let alone all turns them on at the same time as each other...
The code will generally get you to the system involved in the problem, or perhaps one down stream from the source of the problem.
Exactly. You show up for a "PC can't get on internet" call, the ODB-II code would be something like "No IP" ... OK that could be a network card failure, mis-configuration of network settings or the hardware itself, missing or damaged cable, broken switch at the end of the wall jack, broken DHCP server, etc...
Pretty much the computer spits out a number which the mechanic looks up in a book and then replaces the part the book says to replace. There really isn't a lot of human analysis going on with automotive repair.
...and how many years have you worked as a professional in the auto-repair industry?
BTW, your summer at "Auto Zone" doesn't count.