Actually, the first beta of AOL 8.0 for Windows still includes Internet Explorer. Compuserve 7.0 for Windows and AOL for Mac OS X have included Gecko-based browsers, but I would imagine that the vast majority of AOL users are still on either Mac OS 9 or Windows.
AOL has alluded to a Gecko-based client for a long time. If they finally move their Windows userbase over, I think a lot of web sites will need to rethink their target audience.
I remember a couple of years ago, there was a guy named Aaron Ardiri who created a Game Boy emulator called Liberty for the Palm OS. Since the program was shareware, some unscrupulous people were looking for the crack. Ardiri released a program called "LibertyCrack" into the wild. This program caused all the data on one's device to be erased, and caused Ardiri to get into a lot of hot water.
This program, despite the fact that it did not replicate itself, was quickly branded a "virus." Symantec even released Symantec Anti-Virus for Palm 2001. Essentially, unsuspecting IT managers were duped into buying a program that would... check if LibertyCrack is installed and delete it if so.
Anti-Virus marketers will never stop at a change to make big bucks. Remember the Michelangelo virus scare? People who didn't even have modems were paranoid that they could be infected.
I usually find that mozilla doesn't render sites like that poperly because they are in fact not web sites at all.
Ooh, semantics. Oh great Internet dictionary, what is a web site?
A Web site (we prefer the two words rather than Website) is a collection of Web files on a particular subject that includes a beginning file called a home page.
-- from TechTarget
A set of interconnected webpages, usually including a homepage, generally located on the same server, and prepared and maintained as a collection of information by a person, group, or organization.
-- from the American Heritage Dictionary
I'm sorry, I don't see any preaching about what is and what isn't a "Web file." You say that only "The W3C does" specify what is and isn't an HTML file. That's true: they have a validator which can tell you whether a web page is valid HTML. You and I both know that most of the highly-trafficked sites on the web aren't valid HTML. CNN.com isn't valid HTML. Yahoo! isn't valid HTML 4.01 Transitional. Of course, even Slashdot isn't valid HTML. Should these not be considered web sites? Well, they all render just fine in Mozilla, so by your definition they're fine and dandy.
Mozilla doesn't render all of the web's documents correctly. Neither does IE. However, IE is the de facto standard now, so most usability testing focuses on IE accessibility. Slashdot users such as yourself love to spout sour grapes about how such-and-such site doesn't render with Mozilla, but so what? No amount of whining will change that. If I told my professors that I couldn't research a site because it wouldn't work in Mozilla, they'd tell me, "That's nice. You fail."
The web would be a nicer place if everyone wrote standards-compliant HTML, but everyone doesn't. You can't whine about it. Just deal with it.
This is a small minority. Are those few pages really worth keeping on the Windows upgrade treadmill?
Yes. Or, you could use Internet Explorer for Solaris or HP-UX. The fact remains that Internet Explorer will render all major companies' web sites, whereas Mozilla will not.
Not for professionals, but for many people it's more than enough. So buy a few workstations with Photoshop, and let the GIMP do its thing on the rest of the machines: being "good enough" instead of a full replacement.
The GIMP is installed on all Linux and Solaris machines on campus, but you'd be hard-pressed to see any substantial amount of art majors using it. In the largest fine arts building on campus, the computers are all high-end PCs running Windows and G4 towers running Mac OS 9.1 (and soon, Mac OS X). Photoshop is all around. Remember that college is preparing people for careers, so it's only fair that they learn on professional-grade software. Stating that you know Photoshop is infinitely more valuable than stating that you know the GIMP, when you're applying to professional art firms.
In terms of what? Have you really used the latest StarOffice/OpenOffice.org packages? Yes, MS Office does have larger feature set, but how many of those features that StarOffice doesn't have really get used?
"With simple files, such as lightly formatted Word documents or straightforward Excel spreadsheets, StarOffice usually performs adequately. But Writer had problems paginating a lightly formatted, although very long, Word document. Try to convert a document full of heavy formatting and styles, and StarOffice 6.0 may choke. When we used StarOffice to open Word documents with tables, charts and rigorous formatting for forms, the StarOffice version looked very different from the original. In some cases, Writer stuck blank pages into the document or truncated and displaced lines of text." -- from a ZDNet UK review of StarOffice 6.0. I wouldn't consider tables, charts, and forms to be obscure or rarely-used features. Macros are used regularly in large business's documents, and StarOffice support for converting or even creating macros is still primitive at best.
Make no mistake: Linux and Solaris are rapidly advancing their offerings of general-purpose professional software, but they're not quite caught up yet. Call me back in a year or two.
First you claim that thousands of people use this system at Carnegie Mellon to somehow justify it as a well designed network.
Carnegie Mellon has been named the Most Wired University in America for the last three years in a row by Yahoo! Internet Life, due to the excellent design of both its wired and wireless networks.
First mwm is not the default window manager on linux or solaris and hasn't been for years. Maybe back in the days of blah blah blah blah Num Lock
I didn't say that it's the default window manager on all Linux and Solaris installations. It's the default window manager on the Linux and Solaris setups as configured at Carnegie Mellon.
Please link to sites that can't be drawn by mozilla
Many bank web sites will not render properly in Mozilla, due to a high reliance on JavaScript and IE-specific elements therein.
StarOffice is incredibly slow compared to Microsoft Office on the same hardware. I could cite reams of anecdotal evidence, although you seem to equate URLs with indisputable truth. Furthermore, StarOffice is not 100% compatible with Microsoft Office. That means that everything, including complicated VBA macros, would need to work with StarOffice as it would with Microsoft Office. Many business courses use large spreadsheets with complicated macros that will not work in StarOffice.
Also, StarOffice requires roughly 3MB out of our 50MB disk quotas.
KDE and GNOME
I personally find KDE and GNOME to be fine, but most people don't like them just because they're used to the Windows look and feel. That is inescapable.
and why people, university students, would have trouble using said software.
"University students" does not necessarily imply "computer-savvy students." Only computer science and engineering students are required to use applications which favor Linux and Solaris over other operating systems; most students are happy using Microsoft Office and AIM. If the UI is suitable and the applications are capable (presently, they are not), then a changeover from Windows and Macintosh to Linux is possible.
I challenge you to find equally functional Linux equivalents for all of these Windows programs and these Macintosh programs. You're not allowed to remove programs because you don't like them; professors still want to teach web authoring using a graphical WYSIWYG editor with as much functionality as FrontPage, for example. You'll find that outside of the development area, there are very few applications on UNIX platforms which are feature-rich enough to completely and transparently replace their Windows and Macintosh equivalents.
Oh and in the example of a nightmare user experience in mwm can you tell me why netscape was never displayed?
I saw the screen after the user had already left. In most UNIX shells, when you do not type an ampersand after the command line, the program starts in the foreground. The user had opened netscape, browsed, closed netscape, opened netscape, and repeated the process a few times. Because the command line was visible, no foreground job was running at the present time.
By the way, "logout" won't work in an xterm as Carnegie Mellon's default setup works. To log out using mwm, you have to right-click on the desktop and choose "Exit/Log out."
It sounds to me like either you made all this up
I have not.
or nobody has administrated your unix network in the last 5 years.
Really? Then I guess these folks take very long vacations.
Since your post is about improving the usability of Linux do you have any suggestions?
Yes, I do. When setting up a system intended both for tech-savvy and new users, provide enough information and on-screen options to allow navigation without exclusively relying on the command line.
Carnegie Mellon has a large network for about 5,000 current undergrads, 1,000 current graduate students, and hundreds of staffers (not to mention 'miscellaneous' accounts). Most people use it to log into Windows or Macintosh systems on campus, since that's what they're used to. Furthermore, the default window manager on Linux and Solaris is mwm (Motif Window Manager), which is absolutely horrible. Among other things, it completely ceases to work if NUM LOCK is on. There's been talk about switching over to GNOME as the default, but as of now people have to ask each other how to switch to Windowmaker, FVWM, or the current GNOME environment.
One time early in the academic year, I noticed a user had forgotten to log out. In the xterm that had been opened with mwm, I saw:
% netscape
% netscape
% netscape
% netscape
% aol bash: aol: command not found % aol bash: aol: command not found % aol.com bash: aol.com: command not found % aol.com bash: aol.com: command not found % netscape.com bash: netscape.com: command not found
Make all the jokes you want about LARTing the newbies, but there were absolutely no options on screen. Furthermore, there are no solid equivalents for popular Windows or Macintosh software packages on Linux or Solaris. IE for Solaris is lackluster compared to Windows, Mozilla is still unreliable and doesn't render some sites properly (they were designed for IE; live with it), GIMP is no substitute for Photoshop, and StarOffice is still nowhere close to Microsoft Office.
Yeah. I'm sick and tired of the motion picture industry, which PRODUCES AND DISTRIBUTES ALL THE FILMS YOU WANT TO WATCH, getting my hard-earned money. Instead, I want the money to go to the real heroes, OFF-SHORE COMPANIES SELLING PIRATED COPIES OF MPAA MATERIALS.
There. Is that clear enough for you, or is there still too much fog in that head of yours? I bet you still think you have a right to download movies since the MPAA won't cater to your every whim.
Yah, I'm really the bad guy here because I'm willing to pay for content that's not being provided, even though lots of people want it.
You're not a bad guy. You're a hero. I agree with you: if I want copyrighted material delivered in a medium which is not currently controlled by companies, I have the right to:
Take the material from the company without consent. I won't be competing with any other company, so I legally own the content.
Repackage the material and sell it on-line. It's my business, and I own the products.
Keep all of the profits for myself. Downloading movies is a trivial process; all the suckers who pay for DVDs are clueless sheep.
The courts say I'm a criminal, my psychologist says I'm crazy, but the Slashdot says that I'm a hero.
Or you could go to Yahoo! Yellow Pages and search for pizza places sorted by proximity to your house. I do it all the time with all sorts of locations.
In Japan, many fast food establishments don't provide napkins. Instead, you can get napkins handed to you for free by people on the street. The napkins are free, because they contain advertising.
Not quite what you were saying, but they're getting closer. Hell, one time I was on a flight and my peanut bag contained an advertisement for a clothing company.
Although I'm very proud that you have a device which can interpret thoughts, remember that Graffiti was developed as a Newton application. Some people who did not like the Newton's HWR software actually paid money to the people who would go on to found Palm Computing, Inc., to use an alternative unistroke method.
Personally, I find that I write more quickly and recognizably with Graffiti than I do with my regular handwriting.
I saw a number of other people with laptops and I found it incredibly distracting -- even before the movie, when the lights are on. When the lights are out, it's even worse. It's not like a cell phone that runs four times before someone finally shuts it off. If you sit behind it, you can't help but glance at the glowing screen. It doesn't matter whether you're in the row just behind the person, or twenty rows back, it's still annoying.
But when the lights go out, the laptops go off. The only time I've seen laptops in use in McConomy is during presentations where the lights are on: the Shamos/Touretzsky IP-Law debate, the Wozniak presentation, Building Virtual Worlds, etc.
During movies, when the lights go off, some 29-year-old undergrad will inevitably shout "TURN OFF THE DAMN LAPTOP!" That always works.
As far as class goes, it's true that laptops and PDAs are completely counterproductive. Of course, I'm one to talk. I once watched an entire Simpsons episode in 15-211 lecture.;)
I have a laptop. It's the same size as a Newton MessagePad 2000, it has a color screen, it has a faster processor, and it costs about as much as the Newton MessagePad 2000 in current dollars.
Of course, the iPaq also supports wireless, can be outfitted with a PCMCIA card, costs less than the Newton, has a color screen, and is still being produced. I'm sorry that you Newton freaks aren't open to new technology.
MCS. They're used in Introduction to Modern Chemistry II. While they presumably have some practical application, most people tool around with Pocket Outlook and Pocket AIM exclusively.
They're about as useful as laptops in class -- same applications (AIM, e-mail, web browser) -- but with longer battery life.
I have decided to start boycotting the inter-net, due to the proliferation of people who I consider "stupid" and "lusers." Also, it has come to my attention that some inter-net sites use advertising, a tactic which I consider to be morally offensive.
As a result, I have decided to start a tele-phone-based communications portal. If you would like to join, please dial 415-498-1177 with eight data bits, one stop bit, and no parity. After carrier is detected, press ENTER to receive a log-in prompt.
Thank you for continuing to be on the cutting edge of communications.
I installed QuickTime 5 earlier this year, and I was able to remove the associations between it and everything except QuickTime-specific types (MOV, QT). Although the interface is still hideously nonstandard, like all media players since Windows Media 6.4, you don't have to lose your file associations when installing it.
I've been using Internet Explorer 6 for over six months now, since I got a computer that was pre-loaded with Windows XP last year. Whenever I click on a link to an MP3, AVI, or other media file, I always get a dialog box saying "Would you like to play this in Internet Explorer?" I always check "Never ask me again," and click "No." However, for some reason, I keep getting asked this very same question every time!
I haven't tried it, but IE must only stop asking if you finally say "Yes."
So is the comparison invalid because Jordan is a pro, and they are unskilled workers?
Yes, it is.
Or because he's an athlete, and they won't be doing sports anytime soon?
That also invalidates the comparison. You can compare unskilled workers in Indonesia to unskilled workers in the United States, making adjustments for different costs of living.
Or because he's an American and they're, well, gooks?
I did not bring race into this argument, and I am disappointed in you for doing so.
Or is it because Jordan, the average American he is, needs to pay his chauffeur and his bodyguards and the Indonesians only need some chow?
Michael Jordan is not an average American. If you wanted to help the Indonesians, you'd stop whining about Nike, fly to Indonesia, and give them some food.
In fact, I'm sure you have more money than most Indonesian people.
Shame on you.
Re:Extrodinary claims require extrodinary proof...
on
The Magic Box Hoax
·
· Score: 1
We used to have them in the dorms at CMU (I hope they have removed 'em all by now and replaced then with a jack that doesn't look like it belongs in an evil scientist's lab).
Nope. We still use them, and they still cost something like $25 brand new. Fortunately, since baluns are worthless outside CMU, there's a very healthy secondhand market for them.
In 1993, Michael Jordan alone was paid more money than the 30,000 Indonesian women combined to make his Nike shoes.
So? You're comparing an American professional athlete to a worker in a third-world country. The average American pays 20 times more than the average Indonesian for everything.
You're kidding, right? Mark Cuban has always been a diehard basketball fan, and his actions while running the Dallas Mavericks have led to over $500,000 in fines from the NBA. Recently, he said that he wouldn't hire a certain referee "to run a Dairy Queen", much less officiate basketball; to save face, Cuban managed a Dairy Queen to appreciate how difficult the job is.
Bill Gates simply wouldn't go the Mark Cuban route if he ever ended up owning a sports team.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the first beta of AOL 8.0 for Windows still includes Internet Explorer. Compuserve 7.0 for Windows and AOL for Mac OS X have included Gecko-based browsers, but I would imagine that the vast majority of AOL users are still on either Mac OS 9 or Windows.
AOL has alluded to a Gecko-based client for a long time. If they finally move their Windows userbase over, I think a lot of web sites will need to rethink their target audience.
I remember a couple of years ago, there was a guy named Aaron Ardiri who created a Game Boy emulator called Liberty for the Palm OS. Since the program was shareware, some unscrupulous people were looking for the crack. Ardiri released a program called "LibertyCrack" into the wild. This program caused all the data on one's device to be erased, and caused Ardiri to get into a lot of hot water.
This program, despite the fact that it did not replicate itself, was quickly branded a "virus." Symantec even released Symantec Anti-Virus for Palm 2001. Essentially, unsuspecting IT managers were duped into buying a program that would... check if LibertyCrack is installed and delete it if so.
Anti-Virus marketers will never stop at a change to make big bucks. Remember the Michelangelo virus scare? People who didn't even have modems were paranoid that they could be infected.
By the time they are done they will need 200 megs of RAM just to boot it! HA!
In the immortal words of open source project mailing lists,
If you don't like it, rewrite it yourself.
or,
RAM is cheap. Buy more.
or,
It works for me. You must not be doing it right.
I usually find that mozilla doesn't render sites like that poperly because they are in fact not web sites at all.
Ooh, semantics. Oh great Internet dictionary, what is a web site?
I'm sorry, I don't see any preaching about what is and what isn't a "Web file." You say that only "The W3C does" specify what is and isn't an HTML file. That's true: they have a validator which can tell you whether a web page is valid HTML. You and I both know that most of the highly-trafficked sites on the web aren't valid HTML. CNN.com isn't valid HTML. Yahoo! isn't valid HTML 4.01 Transitional. Of course, even Slashdot isn't valid HTML. Should these not be considered web sites? Well, they all render just fine in Mozilla, so by your definition they're fine and dandy.
Mozilla doesn't render all of the web's documents correctly. Neither does IE. However, IE is the de facto standard now, so most usability testing focuses on IE accessibility. Slashdot users such as yourself love to spout sour grapes about how such-and-such site doesn't render with Mozilla, but so what? No amount of whining will change that. If I told my professors that I couldn't research a site because it wouldn't work in Mozilla, they'd tell me, "That's nice. You fail."
The web would be a nicer place if everyone wrote standards-compliant HTML, but everyone doesn't. You can't whine about it. Just deal with it.
This is a small minority. Are those few pages really worth keeping on the Windows upgrade treadmill?
Yes. Or, you could use Internet Explorer for Solaris or HP-UX. The fact remains that Internet Explorer will render all major companies' web sites, whereas Mozilla will not.
Not for professionals, but for many people it's more than enough. So buy a few workstations with Photoshop, and let the GIMP do its thing on the rest of the machines: being "good enough" instead of a full replacement.
The GIMP is installed on all Linux and Solaris machines on campus, but you'd be hard-pressed to see any substantial amount of art majors using it. In the largest fine arts building on campus, the computers are all high-end PCs running Windows and G4 towers running Mac OS 9.1 (and soon, Mac OS X). Photoshop is all around. Remember that college is preparing people for careers, so it's only fair that they learn on professional-grade software. Stating that you know Photoshop is infinitely more valuable than stating that you know the GIMP, when you're applying to professional art firms.
In terms of what? Have you really used the latest StarOffice/OpenOffice.org packages? Yes, MS Office does have larger feature set, but how many of those features that StarOffice doesn't have really get used?
"With simple files, such as lightly formatted Word documents or straightforward Excel spreadsheets, StarOffice usually performs adequately. But Writer had problems paginating a lightly formatted, although very long, Word document. Try to convert a document full of heavy formatting and styles, and StarOffice 6.0 may choke. When we used StarOffice to open Word documents with tables, charts and rigorous formatting for forms, the StarOffice version looked very different from the original. In some cases, Writer stuck blank pages into the document or truncated and displaced lines of text." -- from a ZDNet UK review of StarOffice 6.0. I wouldn't consider tables, charts, and forms to be obscure or rarely-used features. Macros are used regularly in large business's documents, and StarOffice support for converting or even creating macros is still primitive at best.
Make no mistake: Linux and Solaris are rapidly advancing their offerings of general-purpose professional software, but they're not quite caught up yet. Call me back in a year or two.
First you claim that thousands of people use this system at Carnegie Mellon to somehow justify it as a well designed network.
Carnegie Mellon has been named the Most Wired University in America for the last three years in a row by Yahoo! Internet Life, due to the excellent design of both its wired and wireless networks.
First mwm is not the default window manager on linux or solaris and hasn't been for years. Maybe back in the days of blah blah blah blah Num Lock
I didn't say that it's the default window manager on all Linux and Solaris installations. It's the default window manager on the Linux and Solaris setups as configured at Carnegie Mellon.
Please link to sites that can't be drawn by mozilla
Many bank web sites will not render properly in Mozilla, due to a high reliance on JavaScript and IE-specific elements therein.
and give reasons for the problems with the Gimp,
GIMP is not Superior to Photoshop.
StarOffice,
StarOffice is incredibly slow compared to Microsoft Office on the same hardware. I could cite reams of anecdotal evidence, although you seem to equate URLs with indisputable truth. Furthermore, StarOffice is not 100% compatible with Microsoft Office. That means that everything, including complicated VBA macros, would need to work with StarOffice as it would with Microsoft Office. Many business courses use large spreadsheets with complicated macros that will not work in StarOffice.
Also, StarOffice requires roughly 3MB out of our 50MB disk quotas.
KDE and GNOME
I personally find KDE and GNOME to be fine, but most people don't like them just because they're used to the Windows look and feel. That is inescapable.
and why people, university students, would have trouble using said software.
"University students" does not necessarily imply "computer-savvy students." Only computer science and engineering students are required to use applications which favor Linux and Solaris over other operating systems; most students are happy using Microsoft Office and AIM. If the UI is suitable and the applications are capable (presently, they are not), then a changeover from Windows and Macintosh to Linux is possible.
I challenge you to find equally functional Linux equivalents for all of these Windows programs and these Macintosh programs. You're not allowed to remove programs because you don't like them; professors still want to teach web authoring using a graphical WYSIWYG editor with as much functionality as FrontPage, for example. You'll find that outside of the development area, there are very few applications on UNIX platforms which are feature-rich enough to completely and transparently replace their Windows and Macintosh equivalents.
Oh and in the example of a nightmare user experience in mwm can you tell me why netscape was never displayed?
I saw the screen after the user had already left. In most UNIX shells, when you do not type an ampersand after the command line, the program starts in the foreground. The user had opened netscape, browsed, closed netscape, opened netscape, and repeated the process a few times. Because the command line was visible, no foreground job was running at the present time.
By the way, "logout" won't work in an xterm as Carnegie Mellon's default setup works. To log out using mwm, you have to right-click on the desktop and choose "Exit/Log out."
It sounds to me like either you made all this up
I have not.
or nobody has administrated your unix network in the last 5 years.
Really? Then I guess these folks take very long vacations.
Since your post is about improving the usability of Linux do you have any suggestions?
Yes, I do. When setting up a system intended both for tech-savvy and new users, provide enough information and on-screen options to allow navigation without exclusively relying on the command line.
Carnegie Mellon has a large network for about 5,000 current undergrads, 1,000 current graduate students, and hundreds of staffers (not to mention 'miscellaneous' accounts). Most people use it to log into Windows or Macintosh systems on campus, since that's what they're used to. Furthermore, the default window manager on Linux and Solaris is mwm (Motif Window Manager), which is absolutely horrible. Among other things, it completely ceases to work if NUM LOCK is on. There's been talk about switching over to GNOME as the default, but as of now people have to ask each other how to switch to Windowmaker, FVWM, or the current GNOME environment.
One time early in the academic year, I noticed a user had forgotten to log out. In the xterm that had been opened with mwm, I saw:
% netscape
% netscape
% netscape
% netscape
% aol
bash: aol: command not found
% aol
bash: aol: command not found
% aol.com
bash: aol.com: command not found
% aol.com
bash: aol.com: command not found
% netscape.com
bash: netscape.com: command not found
Make all the jokes you want about LARTing the newbies, but there were absolutely no options on screen. Furthermore, there are no solid equivalents for popular Windows or Macintosh software packages on Linux or Solaris. IE for Solaris is lackluster compared to Windows, Mozilla is still unreliable and doesn't render some sites properly (they were designed for IE; live with it), GIMP is no substitute for Photoshop, and StarOffice is still nowhere close to Microsoft Office.
Yeah. I'm sick and tired of the motion picture industry, which PRODUCES AND DISTRIBUTES ALL THE FILMS YOU WANT TO WATCH, getting my hard-earned money. Instead, I want the money to go to the real heroes, OFF-SHORE COMPANIES SELLING PIRATED COPIES OF MPAA MATERIALS.
There. Is that clear enough for you, or is there still too much fog in that head of yours? I bet you still think you have a right to download movies since the MPAA won't cater to your every whim.
Yah, I'm really the bad guy here because I'm willing to pay for content that's not being provided, even though lots of people want it.
You're not a bad guy. You're a hero. I agree with you: if I want copyrighted material delivered in a medium which is not currently controlled by companies, I have the right to:
The courts say I'm a criminal, my psychologist says I'm crazy, but the Slashdot says that I'm a hero.
It can do 1152x768 and 1280x960. The back has a video out port for a second monitor, but it does not support dual monitors (only mirroring).
Or you could go to Yahoo! Yellow Pages and search for pizza places sorted by proximity to your house. I do it all the time with all sorts of locations.
In Japan, many fast food establishments don't provide napkins. Instead, you can get napkins handed to you for free by people on the street. The napkins are free, because they contain advertising.
Not quite what you were saying, but they're getting closer. Hell, one time I was on a flight and my peanut bag contained an advertisement for a clothing company.
Although I'm very proud that you have a device which can interpret thoughts, remember that Graffiti was developed as a Newton application. Some people who did not like the Newton's HWR software actually paid money to the people who would go on to found Palm Computing, Inc., to use an alternative unistroke method.
Personally, I find that I write more quickly and recognizably with Graffiti than I do with my regular handwriting.
I saw a number of other people with laptops and I found it incredibly distracting -- even before the movie, when the lights are on. When the lights are out, it's even worse. It's not like a cell phone that runs four times before someone finally shuts it off. If you sit behind it, you can't help but glance at the glowing screen. It doesn't matter whether you're in the row just behind the person, or twenty rows back, it's still annoying.
;)
But when the lights go out, the laptops go off. The only time I've seen laptops in use in McConomy is during presentations where the lights are on: the Shamos/Touretzsky IP-Law debate, the Wozniak presentation, Building Virtual Worlds, etc.
During movies, when the lights go off, some 29-year-old undergrad will inevitably shout "TURN OFF THE DAMN LAPTOP!" That always works.
As far as class goes, it's true that laptops and PDAs are completely counterproductive. Of course, I'm one to talk. I once watched an entire Simpsons episode in 15-211 lecture.
I have a laptop. It's the same size as a Newton MessagePad 2000, it has a color screen, it has a faster processor, and it costs about as much as the Newton MessagePad 2000 in current dollars.
Of course, the iPaq also supports wireless, can be outfitted with a PCMCIA card, costs less than the Newton, has a color screen, and is still being produced. I'm sorry that you Newton freaks aren't open to new technology.
MCS. They're used in Introduction to Modern Chemistry II. While they presumably have some practical application, most people tool around with Pocket Outlook and Pocket AIM exclusively.
They're about as useful as laptops in class -- same applications (AIM, e-mail, web browser) -- but with longer battery life.
The logos for Channel 7 in New York (WABC) and Channel 7 in Los Angeles (KABC) are *exactly* the same. I'm not sure about channel 5, though.
I have decided to start boycotting the inter-net, due to the proliferation of people who I consider "stupid" and "lusers." Also, it has come to my attention that some inter-net sites use advertising, a tactic which I consider to be morally offensive.
As a result, I have decided to start a tele-phone-based communications portal. If you would like to join, please dial 415-498-1177 with eight data bits, one stop bit, and no parity. After carrier is detected, press ENTER to receive a log-in prompt.
Thank you for continuing to be on the cutting edge of communications.
I installed QuickTime 5 earlier this year, and I was able to remove the associations between it and everything except QuickTime-specific types (MOV, QT). Although the interface is still hideously nonstandard, like all media players since Windows Media 6.4, you don't have to lose your file associations when installing it.
I've been using Internet Explorer 6 for over six months now, since I got a computer that was pre-loaded with Windows XP last year. Whenever I click on a link to an MP3, AVI, or other media file, I always get a dialog box saying "Would you like to play this in Internet Explorer?" I always check "Never ask me again," and click "No." However, for some reason, I keep getting asked this very same question every time!
I haven't tried it, but IE must only stop asking if you finally say "Yes."
So is the comparison invalid because Jordan is a pro, and they are unskilled workers?
Yes, it is.
Or because he's an athlete, and they won't be doing sports anytime soon?
That also invalidates the comparison. You can compare unskilled workers in Indonesia to unskilled workers in the United States, making adjustments for different costs of living.
Or because he's an American and they're, well, gooks?
I did not bring race into this argument, and I am disappointed in you for doing so.
Or is it because Jordan, the average American he is, needs to pay his chauffeur and his bodyguards and the Indonesians only need some chow?
Michael Jordan is not an average American. If you wanted to help the Indonesians, you'd stop whining about Nike, fly to Indonesia, and give them some food.
In fact, I'm sure you have more money than most Indonesian people.
Shame on you.
We used to have them in the dorms at CMU (I hope they have removed 'em all by now and replaced then with a jack that doesn't look like it belongs in an evil scientist's lab).
Nope. We still use them, and they still cost something like $25 brand new. Fortunately, since baluns are worthless outside CMU, there's a very healthy secondhand market for them.
In 1993, Michael Jordan alone was paid more money than the 30,000 Indonesian women combined to make his Nike shoes.
So? You're comparing an American professional athlete to a worker in a third-world country. The average American pays 20 times more than the average Indonesian for everything.
Stop complaining about people making too much money.
My laptop has a 1GHz Pentium III-M, which steps down to 727 MHz sometimes. It's much faster than any G4 processor in a laptop.
Oh, by the way, Apple laptops step down in speed too. A 600 MHz iBook runs at 500 MHz to save battery life.
You're kidding, right? Mark Cuban has always been a diehard basketball fan, and his actions while running the Dallas Mavericks have led to over $500,000 in fines from the NBA. Recently, he said that he wouldn't hire a certain referee "to run a Dairy Queen", much less officiate basketball; to save face, Cuban managed a Dairy Queen to appreciate how difficult the job is.
Bill Gates simply wouldn't go the Mark Cuban route if he ever ended up owning a sports team.