This fable really is just an illustration of the age-old witch hunt. I don't agree with the DMCA but I don't think it would be enforced in such a way. While we're talking about witch hunts, we have something much worse than what's described in this article around already: rape. Look at how those cases are investigated, it's terrible. Anyway, nice story
OK, so some people seem to think adaptive UI is the way to go, and some think it's a bad idea, so let me present this scenario: In one of the newer versions of Microsoft Office they implemented a feature which hides the commands on the drop down menus that you don't use very often. When you click on, say, "Tools" only the first few options are displayed, and the last option is two arrows pointing downward that when selected expand the menu and show everything. What do you all think, is this worthwhile or does it just annoy you? Do you want to see more of it?
I personally hate it. Give me all the options, give me the power to do many, many things. Sure I may end up using only 10 or so on a regular basis, but the point is that when I do need that rare tool I want to be able to get it without a hassle.
I think this article is a little unrealistic. I agree that many games have exciting and interesting features which take time to develop and give you a sense of completion and understanding, but I don't believe this applies to other applications. Specifically it is this statement that I don't agree with:
What a game would do is immediately give you those three features and then as you progressed and became a more powerful character it would give you more features.
That's really cool in games, I love the accomplishment of attaining the highest level, but when I open MS Access I want to be able to jump right in and program modules rather than be greeted with a form creation wizard or what not. I'm the type of computer user (like most people here probably) who wants all the features I can get my hands on. Throw them all out me, and I'll determine what it is I need.
I think it's ridiculous that radio stations should be concerned about the DMCA. If they have the rights to broadcast the songs, they should be able to do it on whatever media. People can record things off of the radio onto tapes, and people can record things off of digital radio into mp3 files, that's not the radio station's responsibility.
Seriously, this article is just ridiculous. How does this get through when articles like the one I posted yesterday (about family advocacy groups claiming teenage mod developers are the equivalent of child pornographers) got rejected within a few minutes of submission.
PS - the claim of this story is obviously BS, just a scam to make money.
If they do set up such a network, they should open up some restricted simulations to the public. I'd pay $5 for 5 minutes in a full scale war simulator fighting against my co-workers...
Clock speed is an overrated metric in the first place. The clock in a processor is used for one thing: to synchronize the flow of information along the logic gates. There is a lot going on in one of those things, and just because the clock is faster doesn't mean that the processing power is greater.
The dumbing down of America continues, Lego's falling popularity is just another sign. This all goes back to the digital divide, which is really just an intellectual divide. It's not about black or white, rich or poor, it's about smart or dumb. I know it sounds bad, but it is bad: Americans are dumb for the most part. I'm American, and Southern (so I should be really dumb according to trends) but I consider myself of above average intelligence. I had an Erector Set, all sorts of legos, a football, baseball, a wide array of toys, including video games. Kids these days don't get toys that make them think, they get politically correct toys that are designed so that even a 1 year old could figure them out. It's either that or mindless video games with such atrocities as "one button mode." It's not our kids' fault though, that lies soely with the parents. Today, parents get toys for kids that "shut them up," or get the kids out of the parents' hair. Not many Dads take the time to teach their kids the fundamentals of throwing a football or kicking a soccer ball, not many Moms take the time to play counting games with a few dollars worth of change to get those math skills going, not many parents challenge their kids to develop in any aspect of life other than sitting down and shutting up. I thank God every day for the parents I had. They took a lot of time out of their schedules to do things with me that helped me develop as a person. They also encouraged me to play with toys that did the same. It's sad for Lego, but that is just rare these days.
I Just wanted to say that I agree with you totally. ADD is really just LBC: Lack of Butt-Cutting. If I slacked off in school I had my ass beaten, and now I'm tough and I graduated with a good degree. The whole problem is parents are too lazy to have kids, they don't want to do the hard parts of raising them, so they blame the kids bad behavior on a disease and give them a prescription rather than giving them discipline.
Seriously, I can't believe they designed a "perfect cube" and didn't include a means in which to have a readily available supply of alcohol within arms reach...
OK, so there are several countries out there that have the ability to destroy the world with a few nuclear bombs... well, that's just bad publicity these days, no government would want to wipe a country like Iraq off the map for good, what about all the innocent people that live there? Even though we have the "biggest guns" here in America, we continue to try and make newer, bigger, better ones, but now instead of blowing up an entire land mass we are making weapons that will be able to hit precise targets and travel at unimaginable speeds.
So here's the problem: just like every other new military technology, other countries will eventually get it. Hypothetically, let's say Russia makes a cannon that can fire an explosive projectile from Moscow to hit the World Trade Center in NY; they probably wouldn't do that (at least I hope not) but they would sell some of those to a bunch of small rogue countries out there who don't have "political correctness" or care about the welfare of a nation's innocent people. It all seems pretty scary to me. I mean missile defense sort of loses it's significance when the missile is travelling at mach 5.
What do we do? Well I guess we'd better make sure we have the biggest, best cannons and we have a whole bunch of them so all of those other countries will be too scared to use theirs.
Now how long until someone sets up a Nike-style (or kathy-lee-style) sweatshop where hundreds of chinese kids sweat it out over Apple IIe's pumping out lines and lines of turbo pascal...
It looks like IBM may be using Linux as a weapon against Microsoft. That's fine with me, hopefully when the powers that be see the power of Linux they will put in motion an effort to get more resources involved in Linux development. IBM could be sparking a pretty serious fire that M$ may have a hard time putting out.
I think that's a great illustration of how silly ISP's can be about their service. If they sell you the bandwidth then damnit you can do what the hell you want to with it!
I can understand being interested in technology and "geeky" things... but if you read more than the first few sentences of this thing you need to go to some therapy. Whoever wrote this needs to find a more stimulating job because they obviously have too much time on their hands. Do you all think it would be possible for us to get some USEFUL news today?
OK, this post is really screwed up. Someone needs to fix the broken link and rethink the organization of the paragraph there. I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't appreciate the "stream of conciousness" style writing in this one...
It's kind of like this: Playstation makes cool movies you watch during load times between playing sessions, where Nintendo makes cool movies you can play.
If it's public, put it on the web. The means of distribution should not be confused with the security level of the document. If it's public, put it on the web, otherwise, don't. I think it's pretty underhanded to call something public and then not provide a reasonable and convenient means for public viewing.
I graduated from Clemson University with a Computer Engineering degree and it always amazed me that I never heard an elementary education student complaining about course work...
I beleive that Math is a cornerstone of education, it teaches logic, reasoning, and problem solving, and those things are the basis to intelligence. Given that belief, I think the problem with education is that the teachers are DUMB when it comes to math. At Clemson, I had to take so many math courses in Comp E that I took one extra (statistics for Business majors, easy A) and I got a math minor. On the other hand, the elementary education majors had to take two courses, laughable courses at that. I don't remember the specifics, but from talking to people in that major the courses were something like remedial algebra and "teaching math." The teaching math course was really scary because it basically taught simple addition and things like that to people who were supposed to teach kids... I hate to sound so much like a stickler, but education is important and having good educators is imperative to our country. We will continue to fall back in education until we raise salaries for teachers so that they will come out of school with strong majors that have a background in math and science so that they can convey the logic, reasoning, and problem solving skills to young Americans.
OK, first let me say that banning a PDA is just stupid. Don't punish the many students who use them in a good way just because a few misuse them. On the other hand, I don't think schools should require laptops or PDA's for studies. Realistically, we don't need that much technology for each student in a high school. We need to focus money on getting teachers who don't say things like "ewww, math is hard, I hate math." The problem with education is the educators and the problem with the educators is that smart people don't want to go to college and come out with a job that pays less than a garbage man's salary. Anyway, my point is that PDA's can be good but instead of mounting an initiative to get every kid a PDA, why don't we focus on getting better, higher paid teachers.
Slashdot Mirror
This fable really is just an illustration of the age-old witch hunt. I don't agree with the DMCA but I don't think it would be enforced in such a way. While we're talking about witch hunts, we have something much worse than what's described in this article around already: rape. Look at how those cases are investigated, it's terrible. Anyway, nice story
"should" - as in: they can't right now by the way laws are written, but they should be able to use whatever media
OK, so some people seem to think adaptive UI is the way to go, and some think it's a bad idea, so let me present this scenario: In one of the newer versions of Microsoft Office they implemented a feature which hides the commands on the drop down menus that you don't use very often. When you click on, say, "Tools" only the first few options are displayed, and the last option is two arrows pointing downward that when selected expand the menu and show everything. What do you all think, is this worthwhile or does it just annoy you? Do you want to see more of it?
I personally hate it. Give me all the options, give me the power to do many, many things. Sure I may end up using only 10 or so on a regular basis, but the point is that when I do need that rare tool I want to be able to get it without a hassle.
I think this article is a little unrealistic. I agree that many games have exciting and interesting features which take time to develop and give you a sense of completion and understanding, but I don't believe this applies to other applications. Specifically it is this statement that I don't agree with:
What a game would do is immediately give you those three features and then as you progressed and became a more powerful character it would give you more features.
That's really cool in games, I love the accomplishment of attaining the highest level, but when I open MS Access I want to be able to jump right in and program modules rather than be greeted with a form creation wizard or what not. I'm the type of computer user (like most people here probably) who wants all the features I can get my hands on. Throw them all out me, and I'll determine what it is I need.
Actually, it's a play on words. There is a rapper named Ludacris, who I have quoted in my sig. It's called humor, you should look into it some time.
I think it's ridiculous that radio stations should be concerned about the DMCA. If they have the rights to broadcast the songs, they should be able to do it on whatever media. People can record things off of the radio onto tapes, and people can record things off of digital radio into mp3 files, that's not the radio station's responsibility.
Seriously, this article is just ridiculous. How does this get through when articles like the one I posted yesterday (about family advocacy groups claiming teenage mod developers are the equivalent of child pornographers) got rejected within a few minutes of submission.
PS - the claim of this story is obviously BS, just a scam to make money.
If they do set up such a network, they should open up some restricted simulations to the public. I'd pay $5 for 5 minutes in a full scale war simulator fighting against my co-workers...
Clock speed is an overrated metric in the first place. The clock in a processor is used for one thing: to synchronize the flow of information along the logic gates. There is a lot going on in one of those things, and just because the clock is faster doesn't mean that the processing power is greater.
The dumbing down of America continues, Lego's falling popularity is just another sign. This all goes back to the digital divide, which is really just an intellectual divide. It's not about black or white, rich or poor, it's about smart or dumb. I know it sounds bad, but it is bad: Americans are dumb for the most part. I'm American, and Southern (so I should be really dumb according to trends) but I consider myself of above average intelligence. I had an Erector Set, all sorts of legos, a football, baseball, a wide array of toys, including video games. Kids these days don't get toys that make them think, they get politically correct toys that are designed so that even a 1 year old could figure them out. It's either that or mindless video games with such atrocities as "one button mode." It's not our kids' fault though, that lies soely with the parents. Today, parents get toys for kids that "shut them up," or get the kids out of the parents' hair. Not many Dads take the time to teach their kids the fundamentals of throwing a football or kicking a soccer ball, not many Moms take the time to play counting games with a few dollars worth of change to get those math skills going, not many parents challenge their kids to develop in any aspect of life other than sitting down and shutting up. I thank God every day for the parents I had. They took a lot of time out of their schedules to do things with me that helped me develop as a person. They also encouraged me to play with toys that did the same. It's sad for Lego, but that is just rare these days.
I Just wanted to say that I agree with you totally. ADD is really just LBC: Lack of Butt-Cutting. If I slacked off in school I had my ass beaten, and now I'm tough and I graduated with a good degree. The whole problem is parents are too lazy to have kids, they don't want to do the hard parts of raising them, so they blame the kids bad behavior on a disease and give them a prescription rather than giving them discipline.
Seriously, I can't believe they designed a "perfect cube" and didn't include a means in which to have a readily available supply of alcohol within arms reach...
OK, so there are several countries out there that have the ability to destroy the world with a few nuclear bombs... well, that's just bad publicity these days, no government would want to wipe a country like Iraq off the map for good, what about all the innocent people that live there? Even though we have the "biggest guns" here in America, we continue to try and make newer, bigger, better ones, but now instead of blowing up an entire land mass we are making weapons that will be able to hit precise targets and travel at unimaginable speeds.
So here's the problem: just like every other new military technology, other countries will eventually get it. Hypothetically, let's say Russia makes a cannon that can fire an explosive projectile from Moscow to hit the World Trade Center in NY; they probably wouldn't do that (at least I hope not) but they would sell some of those to a bunch of small rogue countries out there who don't have "political correctness" or care about the welfare of a nation's innocent people. It all seems pretty scary to me. I mean missile defense sort of loses it's significance when the missile is travelling at mach 5.
What do we do? Well I guess we'd better make sure we have the biggest, best cannons and we have a whole bunch of them so all of those other countries will be too scared to use theirs.
Now how long until someone sets up a Nike-style (or kathy-lee-style) sweatshop where hundreds of chinese kids sweat it out over Apple IIe's pumping out lines and lines of turbo pascal...
What the fuck are you talking about?
Managers everywhere have a new toy... they can drive around on top of cubicle walls and spy on unsuspecting employees...
It looks like IBM may be using Linux as a weapon against Microsoft. That's fine with me, hopefully when the powers that be see the power of Linux they will put in motion an effort to get more resources involved in Linux development. IBM could be sparking a pretty serious fire that M$ may have a hard time putting out.
I think that's a great illustration of how silly ISP's can be about their service. If they sell you the bandwidth then damnit you can do what the hell you want to with it!
I can understand being interested in technology and "geeky" things... but if you read more than the first few sentences of this thing you need to go to some therapy. Whoever wrote this needs to find a more stimulating job because they obviously have too much time on their hands. Do you all think it would be possible for us to get some USEFUL news today?
I would consider buying one instead of waiting for GameCube... but I'd probably still go with GameCube.
OK, this post is really screwed up. Someone needs to fix the broken link and rethink the organization of the paragraph there. I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't appreciate the "stream of conciousness" style writing in this one...
Nintendo is cool, mmmm kay
It's kind of like this: Playstation makes cool movies you watch during load times between playing sessions, where Nintendo makes cool movies you can play.
If it's public, put it on the web. The means of distribution should not be confused with the security level of the document. If it's public, put it on the web, otherwise, don't. I think it's pretty underhanded to call something public and then not provide a reasonable and convenient means for public viewing.
I graduated from Clemson University with a Computer Engineering degree and it always amazed me that I never heard an elementary education student complaining about course work...
I beleive that Math is a cornerstone of education, it teaches logic, reasoning, and problem solving, and those things are the basis to intelligence. Given that belief, I think the problem with education is that the teachers are DUMB when it comes to math. At Clemson, I had to take so many math courses in Comp E that I took one extra (statistics for Business majors, easy A) and I got a math minor. On the other hand, the elementary education majors had to take two courses, laughable courses at that. I don't remember the specifics, but from talking to people in that major the courses were something like remedial algebra and "teaching math." The teaching math course was really scary because it basically taught simple addition and things like that to people who were supposed to teach kids... I hate to sound so much like a stickler, but education is important and having good educators is imperative to our country. We will continue to fall back in education until we raise salaries for teachers so that they will come out of school with strong majors that have a background in math and science so that they can convey the logic, reasoning, and problem solving skills to young Americans.
OK, first let me say that banning a PDA is just stupid. Don't punish the many students who use them in a good way just because a few misuse them. On the other hand, I don't think schools should require laptops or PDA's for studies. Realistically, we don't need that much technology for each student in a high school. We need to focus money on getting teachers who don't say things like "ewww, math is hard, I hate math." The problem with education is the educators and the problem with the educators is that smart people don't want to go to college and come out with a job that pays less than a garbage man's salary. Anyway, my point is that PDA's can be good but instead of mounting an initiative to get every kid a PDA, why don't we focus on getting better, higher paid teachers.