I bought the GQ app for my iPod a few months ago for the novelty of it. I didn't necessarily like it more than I would have the print version, but they had the foresight to include links to videos and extra photographs of the cover model that didn't make it to print. The UI left a lot to be desired, but at least the designers seemed to have the basic idea right.
This is just a guess, but I bet the iPad owning demographic is very desirable for advertisers. These are people who have disposable income and they aren't afraid to dispose of it.
I think you're exactly wrong. Time's non-iPad owning demographic is people who have disposable income (at least an extra $500 worth), aren't high-tech enough to have migrated to the Internet, probably care more than average about ecology issues (as opposed to readers of, say, the Washington Times), and are clueless enough to think that reading Time makes them well-informed.
Windows XP works nicely on a 1GHz Mobile P3 CPU and 512MB of PC133 RAM. Since 7 is a good replacement for XP, it will surely work just as fast as XP works now. Right?
It's odd. On one hand, you like your dad well enough to maintain his computer for him. On the other, you won't give him anything newer than 9 years old. My suggestion: go to Target, pick up an HP Mini with twice the CPU and RAM, a hard drive about 15 times bigger, and vastly better graphics. For $300, you can go back to passive-aggressively neglecting him for another decade.
Most modern flash memories have their controllers check which blocks are dying or dead and re-route write and read requests to good blocks.
That's not visible to clients, though. If you buy a 32GB SSD, it doesn't gradually become a 31GB, then a 30GB, then a 29GB device as blocks wear out. I don't think there's a filesystem around that could handle that gracefully. Instead, it started as a 33GB SSD with 1GB reserved for bad block remapping, then decays to a 32GB drive, then starts pitching errors.
By the way, HDDs work exactly the same way. When the OS tells it to write a sector, only the drive knows where it actually gets stored.
(Actually, I lied about the first part: if you buy a 32GB SSD, you're getting 32,000,000,000 bytes +/- of storage. The spares probably account for the difference between 32GB and 32 billion bytes. (You can't make me say gibibytes. I am not Mushmouth and I'm not going to lip stutter for anyone.))
Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter!
Please send me your name, mailing address, bank routing and account numbers, recent vaccination history, the name of the song stuck in your head (and whether it's the 1983 or 2005 remake), and current GPS coordinates so I can sign up.
I guess I'm still surprised that here on Slashdot that there are people who form their preferences for technologies based on how well "they're doing in the market".
But that's not what he said. He didn't say that iPads are good or that you should buy one or that everyone will want one. He said that the iPad (and from inference, its sales numbers) proves that a lot of people - maybe not you, or me, or even the OP! - want such a thing.
There are a lot of very successful products that I have no desire or use for, but clearly someone does, because they keep making and selling them.
Slashdotter brags about his physical strength, demonstrating his emotional immaturity.
What's immature about that? Maybe the guy geeks out on fitness the way so many of us geek out on other hobbies. Do you think The Governator got to be Mr. Olympia back in the day by accident? No - he busted his butt all day long for years to get to that level. I'd say that's certainly worth bragging rights, and it's just possible that maybe bluefoxlucid has earned that right, too.
Self-confidence is a big part of emotional maturity. Criticizing a trait in someone else because you lack it isn't exactly the zenith of maturity.
A bully used to pick on my son. I got tired of him coming home from school with bruises and scratches, so I taught him how to punch. At random times, I'd hold up my open hand and yell "hit me" and he'd smack my hand as hard as he could. He thought that was pretty fun, but we stopped once he good good enough that it started to hurt.
Then, I told him that if the kid ever touched him again, my son was to punch him as hard as he could in the nose. I told him not to talk, not to negotiate, not to try to come up with some witty comeback, but to smack him in the snout. Next, I told his teacher about the plan, and she hinted that it was about time someone did it.
The boy slapped my son. My son put the boy on the ground. Since that day, the bully never picked on my son or any other kid, and no one else has ever messed with my boy.
It would be great if everyone could just play nicely, but since some people won't do it voluntarily, we have to be prepared to make them if need be.
The plain simple fact is software in general is bad for animals.
My company does a lot of invoicing for our customers. The old way was for those customers to mail us their paperwork (using gas, materials for the UPS trucks, road capacity, everything needed to keep the UPS employees and their families alive, etc.). The new way is for our customers to scan their paperwork and email it to us (using a few hundred watts of electricity for our servers).
Some software is bad for animals. Other software is a whole lot better for animals than if we didn't have it.
There might be areas where "not hunting" leads to over-population and harm, but usually that is just an excuse of hunters.
I used to live in a city with a nice nature park in one corner, with lots of pleasant, tree-filled neighborhoods around it. Bowhunting used to be legal in that area because of the high deer population, but local do-gooders felt sad for Bambi and had it illegalized. Within two years, the area was so jam-packed with sick, starving deer that car wrecks were common and quite a few animals had broken through picture windows into houses. They re-legalized bowhunting soon afterward.
Over-population due to non-hunting isn't just some goofy idea that a bunch of gun nuts cooked up. It's a very real, observable phenomenon in many parts of the world.
I really don't think we disagree on any of that. My original post was in response to someone saying that it's OK if Hammy married a 10 year old because Joe married a 13 year old, and I disagreed with that logic. I honestly don't know and don't care about what someone did in the context of their local culture 1500 years ago.
I did mean every bit of the rest, regarding Islam being designed to appeal to those who feel powerless.
One thing to note about that: the average age of the onset of puberty has become younger over the years, probably due to sufficient nutrition. I do understand your point, but I think that puberty seems like a pretty reasonable divider between "definitely a child" and "might possibly be an adult, depending on local culture". That's an arbitrary line, sure, but one that seems to be pretty well accepted globally.
It's not often I'd be this direct, but I think the situation calls for it:
Fuck you and your cowardice. I have the right to offend (and be offended by) anyone, and that right trumps their (or my) right to violently react to it. Maybe in your terrified little universe, it's OK to appease everyone scary in the hopes that they'll just go away. In the real world, people who value freedom have to push back and declare, loudly and proudly, that they won't be silenced.
It wouldn't be OK for Republicans to tell you that you can't criticize Bush. It wouldn't be OK for Democrats to tell you that you can't criticize Obama. It's sure as hell not OK for religious extremists half a world away to tell you that you can't even make a line drawing of their dear, dead prophet. Push back or shut up. There is no room for your chickenshit acquiescence in a free society.
Well, most uses aren't life-and-death, or nearly so unobvious. 100mg of an unfamiliar medicine doesn't look like an unreasonable amount, even if 100ug is the correct dose. If the correct volume is 1g, though, you'd probably do a double-take if the bottle was mislabeled that each dose was 1kg.
And how about if a group of Muslims in Afghanistan started posting cartoons on Facebook of injured American or British soldiers? Are you going to sit back and laugh about it because "It's their right" to do so?
No. Actually, I'd dislike it intensely and find it revolting - but still fight for their right to post them. What does a cartoon tangibly hurt? Do those soldier cartoons wreck my car or give my kids club feet? Nope. They might offend me, sure, but my sun will still rise tomorrow.
To paraphrase South Park, tolerance doesn't mean you like something, but that you put up with it even if you can't stand it.
If you brought Catholics from a few centuries ago back to the future they would have lots of fun with car bombs too.
First, ever heard of Ireland? Second, with that notable exception (which wasn't motivated by religion anyway), Catholics have moved past that. I have no love for the Catholic church but they're not relevant to this conversation.
It was common at the time for girls to marry around 13.
By your standard, then, we can all agree that he was a pedophile because
Muhammad is said to have asked her to arrange for him to marry both. Traditional sources dictate that Aisha was six or seven years old when betrothed to Muhammad but the marriage was not consummated until she was nine or ten years old.
You know, I have to give the old goat props in that he invented a much more viral religion than Ronnie Hubbard. You get to marry kids (if you're into that sort of thing), if anyone disagrees with you then it's probably because they're infidels and you may kill them and take their stuff, and you can beat your wife to keep her in line as long as you do it right. Ron aimed for the idle wealthy. Hammy snared the disenfranchised, uneducated masses. They don't make nearly as much on average, but there's an awful lot more of them.
I understand that html5 offers a lot of new functionality but the video part of it seems unnecessary beyond removing a plug-in unless I'm not seeing something.
Outside every context but a Windows desktop, that's an enormous improvement. Flash playback is horridly inefficient on every other platform, if it's even available at all. That's very important, especially on portable, battery-driven devices where simply throwing more CPU at the problem isn't an option.
If HTML5 video had nothing to offer beyond platform native playback, that'd still be enough for me to cheer it on.
I actually like "Theora". "Vorbis" is... well, it's not my favorite, but I can pronounce it. I always visualize "Ogg" as carved in stone. It seems to go downhill quickly after those, though.
Yeah and names like "IEEE 802.3" are so much better? We can go back over time to things like PCMCIA and SCSI.
Yes, those names are better. They're awkward abbreviations that derive from standards documents or technical names that make sense. They're not pretty, but they have an excuse for being weird. The Ogg names, though, are just odd and/or unpronounceable for the sake of being odd and/or unpronounceable.
OK, I get that Ogg and Theora and Vorbis, etc., are interesting geek in-jokes. They are also horribly crappy product names. You and I might have no problem with them, but I guarantee that 95% of non-geeks will dismiss "Ptalarbvorm" as stupid and confusing without ever evaluating it. Pro-tip: if you need a pronunciation guide, then you desperately need to pick a better name. Yes, better, as in "the current one sucks and should be taken out back and shot".
Slashdot Mirror
I bought the GQ app for my iPod a few months ago for the novelty of it. I didn't necessarily like it more than I would have the print version, but they had the foresight to include links to videos and extra photographs of the cover model that didn't make it to print. The UI left a lot to be desired, but at least the designers seemed to have the basic idea right.
This is just a guess, but I bet the iPad owning demographic is very desirable for advertisers. These are people who have disposable income and they aren't afraid to dispose of it.
I think you're exactly wrong. Time's non-iPad owning demographic is people who have disposable income (at least an extra $500 worth), aren't high-tech enough to have migrated to the Internet, probably care more than average about ecology issues (as opposed to readers of, say, the Washington Times), and are clueless enough to think that reading Time makes them well-informed.
Dude, you're getting a Prius.
Sounds like he already did.
Windows XP works nicely on a 1GHz Mobile P3 CPU and 512MB of PC133 RAM. Since 7 is a good replacement for XP, it will surely work just as fast as XP works now. Right?
It's odd. On one hand, you like your dad well enough to maintain his computer for him. On the other, you won't give him anything newer than 9 years old. My suggestion: go to Target, pick up an HP Mini with twice the CPU and RAM, a hard drive about 15 times bigger, and vastly better graphics. For $300, you can go back to passive-aggressively neglecting him for another decade.
Most modern flash memories have their controllers check which blocks are dying or dead and re-route write and read requests to good blocks.
That's not visible to clients, though. If you buy a 32GB SSD, it doesn't gradually become a 31GB, then a 30GB, then a 29GB device as blocks wear out. I don't think there's a filesystem around that could handle that gracefully. Instead, it started as a 33GB SSD with 1GB reserved for bad block remapping, then decays to a 32GB drive, then starts pitching errors.
By the way, HDDs work exactly the same way. When the OS tells it to write a sector, only the drive knows where it actually gets stored.
(Actually, I lied about the first part: if you buy a 32GB SSD, you're getting 32,000,000,000 bytes +/- of storage. The spares probably account for the difference between 32GB and 32 billion bytes. (You can't make me say gibibytes. I am not Mushmouth and I'm not going to lip stutter for anyone.))
It'll make it interesting when Slashdot has to start putting up stories from niche websites instead of mainstream if they all go behind paywalls.
Slashdot has stories now?
Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter!
Please send me your name, mailing address, bank routing and account numbers, recent vaccination history, the name of the song stuck in your head (and whether it's the 1983 or 2005 remake), and current GPS coordinates so I can sign up.
I guess I'm still surprised that here on Slashdot that there are people who form their preferences for technologies based on how well "they're doing in the market".
But that's not what he said. He didn't say that iPads are good or that you should buy one or that everyone will want one. He said that the iPad (and from inference, its sales numbers) proves that a lot of people - maybe not you, or me, or even the OP! - want such a thing.
There are a lot of very successful products that I have no desire or use for, but clearly someone does, because they keep making and selling them.
Slashdotter brags about his physical strength, demonstrating his emotional immaturity.
What's immature about that? Maybe the guy geeks out on fitness the way so many of us geek out on other hobbies. Do you think The Governator got to be Mr. Olympia back in the day by accident? No - he busted his butt all day long for years to get to that level. I'd say that's certainly worth bragging rights, and it's just possible that maybe bluefoxlucid has earned that right, too.
Self-confidence is a big part of emotional maturity. Criticizing a trait in someone else because you lack it isn't exactly the zenith of maturity.
A bully used to pick on my son. I got tired of him coming home from school with bruises and scratches, so I taught him how to punch. At random times, I'd hold up my open hand and yell "hit me" and he'd smack my hand as hard as he could. He thought that was pretty fun, but we stopped once he good good enough that it started to hurt.
Then, I told him that if the kid ever touched him again, my son was to punch him as hard as he could in the nose. I told him not to talk, not to negotiate, not to try to come up with some witty comeback, but to smack him in the snout. Next, I told his teacher about the plan, and she hinted that it was about time someone did it.
The boy slapped my son. My son put the boy on the ground. Since that day, the bully never picked on my son or any other kid, and no one else has ever messed with my boy.
It would be great if everyone could just play nicely, but since some people won't do it voluntarily, we have to be prepared to make them if need be.
WGN is good with there local news
"Local" markets with greater population than some European countries don't really qualify as "local". I live near Sioux City, IA; that is local.
The plain simple fact is software in general is bad for animals.
My company does a lot of invoicing for our customers. The old way was for those customers to mail us their paperwork (using gas, materials for the UPS trucks, road capacity, everything needed to keep the UPS employees and their families alive, etc.). The new way is for our customers to scan their paperwork and email it to us (using a few hundred watts of electricity for our servers).
Some software is bad for animals. Other software is a whole lot better for animals than if we didn't have it.
There might be areas where "not hunting" leads to over-population and harm, but usually that is just an excuse of hunters.
I used to live in a city with a nice nature park in one corner, with lots of pleasant, tree-filled neighborhoods around it. Bowhunting used to be legal in that area because of the high deer population, but local do-gooders felt sad for Bambi and had it illegalized. Within two years, the area was so jam-packed with sick, starving deer that car wrecks were common and quite a few animals had broken through picture windows into houses. They re-legalized bowhunting soon afterward.
Over-population due to non-hunting isn't just some goofy idea that a bunch of gun nuts cooked up. It's a very real, observable phenomenon in many parts of the world.
Apple can confirm the identity of any iPad user, so long as they have not purchased the device used.
A $3 pre-paid Visa says you're wrong.
I really don't think we disagree on any of that. My original post was in response to someone saying that it's OK if Hammy married a 10 year old because Joe married a 13 year old, and I disagreed with that logic. I honestly don't know and don't care about what someone did in the context of their local culture 1500 years ago.
I did mean every bit of the rest, regarding Islam being designed to appeal to those who feel powerless.
One thing to note about that: the average age of the onset of puberty has become younger over the years, probably due to sufficient nutrition. I do understand your point, but I think that puberty seems like a pretty reasonable divider between "definitely a child" and "might possibly be an adult, depending on local culture". That's an arbitrary line, sure, but one that seems to be pretty well accepted globally.
It's not often I'd be this direct, but I think the situation calls for it:
Fuck you and your cowardice. I have the right to offend (and be offended by) anyone, and that right trumps their (or my) right to violently react to it. Maybe in your terrified little universe, it's OK to appease everyone scary in the hopes that they'll just go away. In the real world, people who value freedom have to push back and declare, loudly and proudly, that they won't be silenced.
It wouldn't be OK for Republicans to tell you that you can't criticize Bush. It wouldn't be OK for Democrats to tell you that you can't criticize Obama. It's sure as hell not OK for religious extremists half a world away to tell you that you can't even make a line drawing of their dear, dead prophet. Push back or shut up. There is no room for your chickenshit acquiescence in a free society.
Well, most uses aren't life-and-death, or nearly so unobvious. 100mg of an unfamiliar medicine doesn't look like an unreasonable amount, even if 100ug is the correct dose. If the correct volume is 1g, though, you'd probably do a double-take if the bottle was mislabeled that each dose was 1kg.
And how about if a group of Muslims in Afghanistan started posting cartoons on Facebook of injured American or British soldiers? Are you going to sit back and laugh about it because "It's their right" to do so?
No. Actually, I'd dislike it intensely and find it revolting - but still fight for their right to post them. What does a cartoon tangibly hurt? Do those soldier cartoons wreck my car or give my kids club feet? Nope. They might offend me, sure, but my sun will still rise tomorrow.
To paraphrase South Park, tolerance doesn't mean you like something, but that you put up with it even if you can't stand it.
If you brought Catholics from a few centuries ago back to the future they would have lots of fun with car bombs too.
First, ever heard of Ireland? Second, with that notable exception (which wasn't motivated by religion anyway), Catholics have moved past that. I have no love for the Catholic church but they're not relevant to this conversation.
It was common at the time for girls to marry around 13.
By your standard, then, we can all agree that he was a pedophile because
Muhammad is said to have asked her to arrange for him to marry both. Traditional sources dictate that Aisha was six or seven years old when betrothed to Muhammad but the marriage was not consummated until she was nine or ten years old.
You know, I have to give the old goat props in that he invented a much more viral religion than Ronnie Hubbard. You get to marry kids (if you're into that sort of thing), if anyone disagrees with you then it's probably because they're infidels and you may kill them and take their stuff, and you can beat your wife to keep her in line as long as you do it right. Ron aimed for the idle wealthy. Hammy snared the disenfranchised, uneducated masses. They don't make nearly as much on average, but there's an awful lot more of them.
I understand that html5 offers a lot of new functionality but the video part of it seems unnecessary beyond removing a plug-in unless I'm not seeing something.
Outside every context but a Windows desktop, that's an enormous improvement. Flash playback is horridly inefficient on every other platform, if it's even available at all. That's very important, especially on portable, battery-driven devices where simply throwing more CPU at the problem isn't an option.
If HTML5 video had nothing to offer beyond platform native playback, that'd still be enough for me to cheer it on.
I actually like "Theora". "Vorbis" is... well, it's not my favorite, but I can pronounce it. I always visualize "Ogg" as carved in stone. It seems to go downhill quickly after those, though.
Yeah and names like "IEEE 802.3" are so much better? We can go back over time to things like PCMCIA and SCSI.
Yes, those names are better. They're awkward abbreviations that derive from standards documents or technical names that make sense. They're not pretty, but they have an excuse for being weird. The Ogg names, though, are just odd and/or unpronounceable for the sake of being odd and/or unpronounceable.
OK, I get that Ogg and Theora and Vorbis, etc., are interesting geek in-jokes. They are also horribly crappy product names. You and I might have no problem with them, but I guarantee that 95% of non-geeks will dismiss "Ptalarbvorm" as stupid and confusing without ever evaluating it. Pro-tip: if you need a pronunciation guide, then you desperately need to pick a better name. Yes, better, as in "the current one sucks and should be taken out back and shot".