I mean, really, if you're going for as real an experience as possible, why not just skip the freaking games and go out in the back with a couple glocks and have at it. This is just silly.
Two words: replay value.
Re:The day I realized Trek sucked
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Voyager Eulogy
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· Score: 3
That episode also ruined Trek for me too - but not for the same reason. It was the first time I realized there's such thing as fanwank. Scotty is cool and seeing him interact with the 1701D crew was cool, and the retooled Old Enterprise bridge on the holodeck was cool, but aside from that, the episode was a particularly low-rent Next Generation dealing with an abandoned Dyson sphere and not a damn thing else. It wasn't a BAD episode per se, it just... by having Scotty there, it should have been a masterpiece, a classic, like "Best of Both Worlds" or "City on the Edge of Forever". Instead it was an ordinary episode disguised as a classic by Scotty's presence. Some fans can't tell the difference. But eventually I noticed the difference - and the episode became "less real" as a result.
Fruit juice isn't bad for you, but something tells me that the stuff in question wasn't fruit juice. To be called fruit juice, it probably has to actually derive from fruit - this stuff was probably derived from FD&C Red 40 and high fructose corn syrup.
Whats stopping him from getting/paying another kid to buy it for him or just switching lunches?
Next year they'll install a few thousand hidden cameras throughout the school and all around the school grounds, to ensure such insidious behavior is no longer possible...
My experience has been that the parents of the bullies already KNOW what their kids are doing - they either don't care, or don't believe it, or worst of all, don't see anything wrong with it.
Now why they use that damn Apple Display Connector, I'll never be able to figure that out. (They tried something similar on the first line of PowerPC macs and it failed miserably.)
Yeah, but it's different this time - STEVE thought of it, therefore it'll work even if the exact same thing didn't work before, because THAT time it WASN'T his idea. </steve_jobs_logic>
Actually the unified connector isn't all that bad an idea - it DOES cut cable clutter. The real reason it didn't take off on the first generation Power Macs is that it was only half-implemented. The cable was supposed to allow the monitor to act as a hub for a whole host of things - a/v ins and outs, ADB, speakers etc. (sound familiar?) but this was never done. They made (iirc) two monitors that used the connector, and some Power Macs whose onboard video (the video actually going to the connector) lacked enough VRAM to make effective use of the monitors. So there wasn't really much point to continuing with it - consumers didn't like it, Apple probably found the connectors were a bit more expensive than the DB15s you can get in bulk at Jameco, and it really offered no advantage over doing it the old way. It would have, if they'd gotten everything implemented before shipping it - instead of half-assed. Once again Apple learned you don't introduce a new standard unless there's a reason to use it instead of the old one.
Funny: most first-generation Power Macs (the 6100AV model and pretty much all 7100s and 8100s) were also shipped with video upgrade cards that used the old-style Mac DB15 monitor connectors. They were thus dual-monitor capable out of the box - but you had one connector of each type.
Re:BeOS in the toilet too -- and it ain't free
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Eazel Come, Eazel Go?
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· Score: 3
Be failed because Jean-Louis Gassee didn't WANT to succeed. Read through the Be Newsletters - you can actually WATCH him backpedaling from every success! Every time BeOS came close to being a big hit on any platform, he throttled back - when the BeBox was selling decently well he canned it, when BeOS on Power Mac was popular he committed to an x86-only strategy (and denied he was on such a strategy for two years while making up brain-dead excuses for not porting to the G3), when BeOS PE was a runaway success he decided to refocus the company on "internet appliances". On one hand he'd offer BeOS x86 FREE to any PC vendor willing to preinstall it, and at the same time turned down PPC system vendor Pios (now Metabox) when they wanted to license it (for money) and even offered do the port details themselves! Hell, just COMPARING what JLG said in a newsletter to what the company actually did six months later should be an eye opener - assuming the newsletters are even still available online (somewhere at be.com I'd guess - frankly, I'm too livid at JLG's handling of it all to even visit the site to check!).
As to BeOS running what people wanted or needed to run, the apps would have come, had Jean-Louis not blown it. I still don't know what he did to piss off Adobe, but one week they were porting Photoshop to it, and the next they weren't.
BeOS wouldn't have needed to run EVERYTHING - just enough to establish a base. As a dual-boot toy it was beginning to catch on. As a dual-boot work environment with a reasonable spread of applications and SOME amount of file-format compatibility, I think it would have started raking in market share. Indeed, if it had been allowed to actually become what JLG originally said he wanted - a content-creation system, with at least one each of paint programs, 3D modelers, video editors, and music programs - it wouldn't have NEEDED to run Microsoft Word, it would have found its own niche replacing Amigas in multimedia shops and TV studios. (Especially back two years ago when there WERE still Amigas in TV studios.) Instead it never became much more than a proof of concept, and once the company goes away, the source code will probably go down with it.
I want to rant about how Apple designs power switches. I love Macs, but admit that Apple has pulled more than its share of stupids over the years. I can't understand why Apple doesn't see the irony in being the company that pushes the envelope of human interface design, yet they can't come up with a single, clean, consistent, intuitive way to TURN THE DAMN COMPUTER ON AND OFF.
Some of their "winners" over the years:
- You can't turn off most recent Apple monitors without also turning off the Mac it's hooked to.
- The Color Classic had NO power button at all.
- Some Macs have "soft power" and can turn themselves off; others say "It is now safe to turn off your Macintosh." There is no rhyme or reason to which Macs do it which way.
- Some Macs that say "it is now safe to turn off your Mac" have fiddly tiny power switches on the back that ROTATE. Some with soft power have big, easily accessible rocker switches.
And the all-time worst Mac power switch:
- The 610/6100 series cases have a power button about half an inch below the floppy drive. PC users instinctively push it to eject disks. Sadder still was that Apple made TWO PC-compatible Macs with this case style - so even if your brain switches easily from "Mac mode" where you drag disks to the trash to eject them and "PC mode" where you hit a button, you'll STILL hit the power button by mistake.
If computer companies - Apple and everyone else - would just agree to dispense with the symbols, tricky stuff, and I and O, and settle on a big rocker switch on the front that says "on" and "off", we'd be a lot better off. Obviously I have no problem making the master switch "lockable" by key, and I have no problem with making it a soft-switch, so when you press "off" the computer does a soft shutdown. But damn, for companies that pride themselves on easy-to-use computers, "I can't figure out how to turn the damn thing on" is a surprisingly common complaint.
Note that I'm not addressing the question of whether we WANT people too dumb to figure out the power switch to actually use the computer. I'm talking about purity of design: if you intend the computer to be easy for a CEO to use, the power switch should not be the bottleneck. Either design the machine to be easy to turn on, or design it so only a trained technician can turn it on, either way be honest about your design goals.
Re:Money, ideology, conviction, ego ...
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Coder on the Cross
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· Score: 5
What is so difficult about the software industry that it eats up people like this?
Good question. It's not the industry, as such, that's eating people, far as I can tell - it's this sort of universal "corporate disease" that hits technology companies, or at least the tech divisions of companies, hardest. But why THIS sector of the economy? Why THESE companies?
Maybe it's the "gold rush" mentality. I mean, people don't get burned out doing architecture, or doing graphic design (usually), maybe that's because in those industries, you have to BE one before you get put in a position to manage. In high-churn sectors, like the dotcom craze at its peak, you get a lot of nontechies owning companies and putting other nontechies in positions of power. Managers who don't understand what's really involved with a ship date, or who don't understand the mental stresses of keeping huge blobs of code straight in one's head for days on end. Leadership who thinks "if I don't understand it, it must be simple." And for that matter, leadership with dollar sign eyeballs, who simply don't care about anything except profit and don't even notice the burned-out empty husks of programmers sitting around the computer room. On the other side, programming isn't like manual labor, where your body wears out before your brain; most people don't understand mental stress and what it does, and thus will continue to put in 70 and 80 hour weeks, not making the connection between that and the routine fainting spells.
Or maybe, this crap happens in EVERY industry, we just don't hear about it.:-)
Of course we should! The Internet is to blame for EVERYTHING because it's new and scary and because they said so on the news and the news is always right!
Just look at all the billions of sperm dying such horrible, needless deaths in any porno flick! Each one of those is a HUMAN BEING! (or would have been, if they hadn't been left to die in the open air like so many microscopic beached whales)
I really don't mean to be dismissive of your argument or seem harsh, but blanket (and self-contradicting) statements like that invite blanket repudiations.
What you call a blanket statement, I call a fairly good description of the political party currently in charge of the country.
You know what I think? You aren't looking for intellectual Christians- in fact, you've reason to be afraid them. You are looking to find people who call themselves Christians yet live clearly unchristian lives so that you can call Christianity itself a religion for the weak-minded hypocrites of the world and thereby reinforce your own prejudices.
Well, since I can't very well go refer to the Book of Life and see if someone's listed or not, all I really have are their word and their actions.
Racists do the same thing by focusing their attentions not on the accomplishments of the best and brightest African-Americans (who would undermine their own prejudices) but only the most egregious failures the black people have to offer. That way, they can keep telling their friends and peers, "Man, blacks are reprobates. Did you know that 1/3 of the males are in prisons? Hey, don't call me racist man, my boss is black. I know blacks."
Then what would you have me do? For one thing, I'm not complaining about a race or people born of that race - I'm complaining about people who have chosen a particular set of beliefs that seem to make them a) forget how to exercise rational thought, b) take an us vs them attitude and begin to isolate themselves from the world, and c) consider it a GOOD thing to sweep the 1st Amendment under the rug since obviously their religion should be the official one in America. Would you have me pretend I haven't seen what I've seen, that I don't know who I know, and that the Bible doesn't say what it says? That Christianity in America isn't what it is? I'm willing to accept that you, if your beliefs are what you say they are (love for all people, tolerance of people who are different) are the good side of the issue, but I'm afraid I simply can't take your word for what the other 99% of Christians in America are.
OK, so I sound like a racist to you, substituting Christianity for race. I know what I sound like. But lemme put it to you like this: would you defend a racist? Shouldn't we both be more open minded and tolerant of other people's belief systems that differ from our own? Shouldn't we focus on the GOOD things that racists have done, like the works of Wagner, T.S. Eliot, or many of our founding fathers? No? We SHOULDN'T accept racism if we can keep from it? Hmmm.
Maybe that means there's a dividing line between the determinism that says "all belief systems must be respected" and the reality that some belief systems aren't all rosy and we're justified in complaining about them.
You're offended that I might compare Christianity to racism - that's a valid reaction, but put it away for a second. Racism sucks and is an extreme. It's a destructive force in society and it hurts people. It's rather obviously bad to most people reading this - even those who, as you say, go "hey don't call me racist" think racism is a negative thing and will try to distance themselves from it. In short, even some racists think it's bad. Do racists have the right to hold their beliefs? SHOULD they have the right to hold their beliefs? If yes, should a line be drawn between holding their beliefs and trying to exercise their beliefs? Obviously we can't get away with making it legal to go around lynching other ethnic groups, but a vocal and devout Klansman would see it differently. We know he's wrong and we're right (on the subject of racism anyway) because... well, he just is.
Back to Christianity - just HOW far afield have I gone by comparing it to racism? Are there good, intelligent people who are Christians? Yes, Don Knuth and Larry Wall are two names Slashdot readers will recognize. Many cool things have been done in the name of Christianity.
But my own take is that there's a MUCH longer list of horrible things done in the name of Christianity - many of them IN the Bible (before there was a Christianity whose name to do them in) - all of them the perpetrators apparently found justifiable biblically in spite of the Commandments they violate. (And a fine point this brings up: the holy book may say one thing, but the religion as practiced by a couple billion people worldwide tends to say something slightly different. What IS Christianity if not what people make of it?) Christianity has become the antithesis of moral and intellectual progress - whether it's being used to dismantle 150 years of science, or being used as justification to undermine the civil rights of any number of social groups (other religions, homosexuals, women), or being used to justify racism, or even becoming an excuse to declare war (the Crusades, anyone?) it's obvious that mainstream Christianity - the Christianity of record, the Christianity that America seems to want in charge, the Christianity that calls itself Christianity and from which your open-mindedness is apparently an isolated sprout - is a giant step BACKWARDS for the progress of humankind away from primitivism! I add to this what I've personally seen and experienced and I find that I am rather compelled to think Christianity is on racism's end of the spectrum. Not as bad as racism, but then, considering how often it gets used to justify racism and things far worse, how do I measure? When Christians do really cool things, it seems to be DESPITE the doctrine, direction, and momentum of the religion - it's always the radicals, the ones on the fringe of the religion, be it classical painters using religion as a sneaky way to get away with painting nudes, or Luther with paper and nail, or Mother Teresa with an interpretation of "missionary" that didn't involve destroying the native culture. Rather a strong indication that individuality plays a greater role in the ability of humans to transcend their condition, actually - and mainstream Christianity (in its various flavors) seems not to value individuality. Which sorta brings us circuitously back to the Slashdot story that started it all, the way America and its almost-theocracy treats anyone who's different.
What you think is a hidden theocracy is instead a mostly powerless small minority of devout and vocal Christians who are pilloried by that even more vocal part of the citizenry (which I regret to say seems to include you) and media that feigns open-mindedness while simultaneously justifying their bigotry against people who believe in God, sin and the resurrection of Christ.
I don't think I said the theocracy was hidden, merely that it hasn't taken over America's government yet.
And from where I sit, the most vocal part of the citizenry seems to be the part that says we SHOULD merge Christianity into the government. I don't see Christianity as a minority - nor is the mainstream Christian mindset, the one I'm railing against, a rarity.
It's been said that the true test of tolerance is its reaction to intolerance. I'm reacting to the institutionalized intolerance that is mainstream Christianity and I'm not doing such a hot job of it - but what IS the right answer? And for that matter, how do I separate those who call themselves Christians and embody everything I condemned earlier, from those like you who also call themselves Christians and seem to embody something else? If your Christianity is TRULY different from theirs, why do you take the name of their religion? You know people do shitty things and call themselves Christians, I condemn the mainstream that seems to be comprised entirely of such people and you a) think I'm talking about you, and b) defend THEM. What do you expect me to make of all this?
I don't agree that long summer breaks are useful for anything. Especially given the trends towards double-earner homes where children are increasingly less supervised or simply shuttled to care centers which deprive them of any of the real benefits of a summer vacation. I certainly don't think much of ultraregimented schooling to begin with, I thought my bias was pretty obvious (any and all lecture classes should be eligible for some sort of testing out). And I think a proper school environment would be nothing like being "locked in" anywhere.
Then WORK ON THE PARENTS. Seriously. School is not supposed to substitute for parenting, and what you're proposing IS that school should serve more or less as the child's home year round! If the problem is that the parents aren't home enough to raise their kids, deal with THAT problem, and don't just turn the teachers into parents instead.
One of my major complaints with most schools is age segregation. It's not useful. It stigmatizes brilliant students (or at least bores them) and it stresses the less apt. Given that most kids are average this isn't a huge problem, but it remains. Even worse is the notion that your friends have to be your own age. The segregation that occurs due to the notion that children should only socialize with other kids their age is a major handicap. Society has people of all ages in it and children seem to be increasingly losing interaction with that (maybe it's not the case, this is just my perception).
This I'll agree with. Age does NOT equal level of development. Classifying someone as a freshman may be useful only if the nature of school differs radically between one year and the next (i.e. middle school to high school may be a big shift) - but even that shouldn't be based on age! No two kids develop at the same rate, so let them advance through at their own pace. Dispense with years as a grouping mechanism, put kids in the classes they can handle, even if that means a gifted 12-yr-old is taking advanced calculus while also taking an entry-level language skills course. Allow graduation once a student has reached a certain level in all their subjects, so at least colleges know what they're getting.
I never got along with people my own age. I got along best with people a couple years older or younger. Dispensing with the years classification (itself apparently just a way for older kids to feel superior and smug) would have vastly increased my opportunities to make friends.
Can you name ONE "fundamentalist Christian theocracy" on the planet at this time? No, because there are no significant Christian theocracies in this era.
America isn't a theocracy now, but has one hiding under the surface that pokes its nasty head up repeatedly. Lots of people in power in America - and presumably the people who voted them there - WANT America to become a Christian state, and seem perfectly happy to propose (and vote for!) laws that are rather blatant violations of the First Amendment. Thus I don't think it's at all out of line to use America as an example when talking about theocracies or how they go wrong - America has enough theocratic influence in the way it's currently run to serve as an illustration.
Do you really believe this, or are you just saying it because it seems like it must be true because the alternative is to imagine a large body of people sharing an absolute religious worldview- a concept that, in our post-Christian agnostic consumerist society is too alien to fathom?
Put it like this: there are a LOT of different ways to interpret a book as complex and symbolic the Bible or the Koran. When whole countries follow the same interpretation, something else must be going on.
As a Christian, I disagree stongly with their religious worldview. But try to have a little more respect for people with differing beliefs, and allow for the possibility that the fact of someone else's differing opinion may not be indication of their inferiority as individuals or thinkers.
I was a Christian. I probably understand your beliefs better than you understand mine. And my girlfriend thinks I'm TOO tolerant of Christianity - she considers it a mental illness, and after what she's seen, I can't say I blame her. Me, I got out because although there are some VERY smart people out there who are Christians, the norm seemed to be people who used the religion as an excuse not to think. I personally WATCHED people drop in IQ after they joined a church - I had to quit a job once because the boss got religion and became an asshole, and I don't mean he became an asshole on issues of morality, I mean he began insulting me verbally on a daily basis and started blaming me for everything that was wrong with the company. I have my reasons for saying the things I do.
And I do like conversing with people whose beliefs differ from mine - I know I'm fallible, I know I'm probably wrong about certain things, and if I know I'm dealing with someone who isn't an idiot, I try to entertain the possibility I may learn something from them. The problem is, it's kinda hard to find a Christian whose religion hasn't dulled their intellect. (Note about that last statement: if I'm not talking about you, you shouldn't be offended by it.)
Today I figure there are already enough guns, in working condition, in private hands in America for every American to have one. Restrictions on gun sales mean NOTHING because if you can't buy one, you probably know where the parents or neighbors keep one hid. If nothing else call Chuck Heston, he'll lend you one.:-)
If anything, the violent trend today is because kids HAD guns in the 1950s. Not that I'm saying this is a good thing, but perhaps 50 years ago anyone with a violent streak and aggression to take out, could take it out on helpless woodland creatures.
Of course the real problem is that today kids have no handle on their emotions.
Actually it's always been a problem, but only became a MEDIA problem when it started being upper-crust white kids getting killed.
Guns don't kill people, gun culture kills people.
Knives don't kill people either. America probably has more KNIFE killings per capita than Canada - which hints at the real problem: American culture is just plain violent. It's like we're expected to go for the most violent solution first (and I consider lawsuits a form of violence, if that helps) any time we meet resistance. Actually two problems - we want EVERYTHING (American corporate culture is driven by the belief that you can't just make money, you have to make ALL the money, and you go to Hell if you leave one cent unmade in your chosen market - doesn't this explain the RIAA's behavior?) and we don't see anything wrong with using violent means (guns, fists, lies, lawyers) to get it all. Canada doesn't seem afflicted with either disease, except perhaps within the bounds of hockey.:-)
If guns are the problem, why hasn't this always been a problem throughout history?
It HAS - and long before guns were invented. Thing is, in the past, angry kids waited until they were adults before snapping - though when they snapped, it was usually in the form of building an army and destroying whole nations, cultures, and races.
What's different today is that we've raised a generation of kids so emotionally stunted they couldn't pass Deckard's test in Blade Runner. With a spinning top instead of a moral compass, and emotions in monochrome (no color, just intensity), is it any wonder kids have started to select violent options as the simplest ones available?
Another thing that bothers me is the lack of traditional Christian morals that are being instilled in today's youth. You never hear about a Reverand's son or a child of a devoutly religious family shooting up a school.
My experience is that the preachers' kids were half the time the ones doing the bulling. If I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to say the Christian ethic is one of intolerance towards anyone or anything different.
Children need to be taught the difference between fantasy and reality.
Then we agree on something. The first fantasy I'd eliminate is the one that says all morality must derive from Christianity. Even Wicca (witchcraft) has a moral code - you can interpret "do as you wilt an no harm done" in ways far stricter than the Ten Commandments, indeed the Commandments FIT neatly inside the concept of "no harm done" once you notice that lying, stealing, killing, coveting, cheating, disrespecting are all harmful things.
Morality is a natural outgrowth of people living in groups - if you're greedy, the group may suffer because you're hoarding resources, if you're violent, the group may suffer because you're breaking everybody's belongings or limbs. If you're unfaithful, the group may suffer because the next generation may be entirely your offspring (not a problem for far-ranging animals in the wild, but in closed social groups this is a problem) - in two generations the whole group is inbred. If you fail to acknowledge the group's authority (in the Ten Commandments' case, the authority was God) the group may be unable to achieve its goals. (Of course, this assumes the group is to be preserved - sometimes revolution is necessary, but anyway these are the means by which a group protects itself.) There is nothing supernatural in the origins of these laws. Which is why atheists, more often than not, DON'T go around killing people. (And why there are so many people who DO go around killing people for religious reasons.)
In other words, God's signature on your moral doctrine means NOTHING unless you're trying to get into your specific religion's afterlife. Ever notice how people who DON'T believe in an afterlife still do nice things for other people?
The REAL problem, the one you miss in your high-speed race to make sure God gets in your message, isn't that people have the WRONG moral code - it's that people haven't bothered to find a moral code at all, perhaps because they've lived isolated, temptation-free lives where they've simply never needed one. Even many Christians I've known have a nasty tendency not to know what they REALLY consider right and wrong until after they've done something (even if they can justify it with the Bible!) and can't sleep on it afterwards. We now have a world full of adults who don't know what they believe (even if they have the words memorized), and kids who haven't even had a chance to figure out what's important. Bullies by definition have an incomplete moral code because so far they haven't needed one (I think it's because their emotional development is stunted, so they can't perceive when others are in pain - they apparently don't think funny-looking kids are really human!). Kids who go postal on their school have probably been too busy getting the shit pounded out of them to develop a moral code, or else have inherited one from their parents (in words only) and never bothered to figure out what it actually means or how it should apply to them (Harris and Klebold fall in this category - they "knew" better but didn't KNOW better).
I think the most important thing anyone needs to know is oneself. Know one's own limits. Know how one would feel if one caused pain to another person. Know why one feels pain in the first place. Know the range of one's emotions (or at least the general flavor of them) so one's not so easily confused. That way, when the depression hits and you feel like the only thing you can do is eat a grenade, when you hear the voice saying "there must be another way" (and we all hear that voice) you'll recognize it as your own and you'll trust it.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, really, if you're going for as real an experience as possible, why not just skip the freaking games and go out in the back with a couple glocks and have at it. This is just silly.
Two words: replay value.
That episode also ruined Trek for me too - but not for the same reason. It was the first time I realized there's such thing as fanwank. Scotty is cool and seeing him interact with the 1701D crew was cool, and the retooled Old Enterprise bridge on the holodeck was cool, but aside from that, the episode was a particularly low-rent Next Generation dealing with an abandoned Dyson sphere and not a damn thing else. It wasn't a BAD episode per se, it just... by having Scotty there, it should have been a masterpiece, a classic, like "Best of Both Worlds" or "City on the Edge of Forever". Instead it was an ordinary episode disguised as a classic by Scotty's presence. Some fans can't tell the difference. But eventually I noticed the difference - and the episode became "less real" as a result.
Fruit juice isn't bad for you, but something tells me that the stuff in question wasn't fruit juice. To be called fruit juice, it probably has to actually derive from fruit - this stuff was probably derived from FD&C Red 40 and high fructose corn syrup.
Would it be too paranoid of me to suggest that "reality TV" shows are a tool to get people accustomed to the idea of constant surveillance?
Or is voyeurism just a consequence of the fact that privacy is such a relatively new cultural phenomenon?
Whats stopping him from getting/paying another kid to buy it for him or just switching lunches?
Next year they'll install a few thousand hidden cameras throughout the school and all around the school grounds, to ensure such insidious behavior is no longer possible...
Better idea still, try actually helping them become adults you don't HAVE to control.
What? Kids are supposed to become independent, responsible adults eventually? You mean they're NOT just adorable little pets?
My experience has been that the parents of the bullies already KNOW what their kids are doing - they either don't care, or don't believe it, or worst of all, don't see anything wrong with it.
Now why they use that damn Apple Display Connector, I'll never be able to figure that out. (They tried something similar on the first line of PowerPC macs and it failed miserably.)
Yeah, but it's different this time - STEVE thought of it, therefore it'll work even if the exact same thing didn't work before, because THAT time it WASN'T his idea. </steve_jobs_logic>
Actually the unified connector isn't all that bad an idea - it DOES cut cable clutter. The real reason it didn't take off on the first generation Power Macs is that it was only half-implemented. The cable was supposed to allow the monitor to act as a hub for a whole host of things - a/v ins and outs, ADB, speakers etc. (sound familiar?) but this was never done. They made (iirc) two monitors that used the connector, and some Power Macs whose onboard video (the video actually going to the connector) lacked enough VRAM to make effective use of the monitors. So there wasn't really much point to continuing with it - consumers didn't like it, Apple probably found the connectors were a bit more expensive than the DB15s you can get in bulk at Jameco, and it really offered no advantage over doing it the old way. It would have, if they'd gotten everything implemented before shipping it - instead of half-assed. Once again Apple learned you don't introduce a new standard unless there's a reason to use it instead of the old one.
Funny: most first-generation Power Macs (the 6100AV model and pretty much all 7100s and 8100s) were also shipped with video upgrade cards that used the old-style Mac DB15 monitor connectors. They were thus dual-monitor capable out of the box - but you had one connector of each type.
Be failed because Jean-Louis Gassee didn't WANT to succeed. Read through the Be Newsletters - you can actually WATCH him backpedaling from every success! Every time BeOS came close to being a big hit on any platform, he throttled back - when the BeBox was selling decently well he canned it, when BeOS on Power Mac was popular he committed to an x86-only strategy (and denied he was on such a strategy for two years while making up brain-dead excuses for not porting to the G3), when BeOS PE was a runaway success he decided to refocus the company on "internet appliances". On one hand he'd offer BeOS x86 FREE to any PC vendor willing to preinstall it, and at the same time turned down PPC system vendor Pios (now Metabox) when they wanted to license it (for money) and even offered do the port details themselves! Hell, just COMPARING what JLG said in a newsletter to what the company actually did six months later should be an eye opener - assuming the newsletters are even still available online (somewhere at be.com I'd guess - frankly, I'm too livid at JLG's handling of it all to even visit the site to check!).
As to BeOS running what people wanted or needed to run, the apps would have come, had Jean-Louis not blown it. I still don't know what he did to piss off Adobe, but one week they were porting Photoshop to it, and the next they weren't.
BeOS wouldn't have needed to run EVERYTHING - just enough to establish a base. As a dual-boot toy it was beginning to catch on. As a dual-boot work environment with a reasonable spread of applications and SOME amount of file-format compatibility, I think it would have started raking in market share. Indeed, if it had been allowed to actually become what JLG originally said he wanted - a content-creation system, with at least one each of paint programs, 3D modelers, video editors, and music programs - it wouldn't have NEEDED to run Microsoft Word, it would have found its own niche replacing Amigas in multimedia shops and TV studios. (Especially back two years ago when there WERE still Amigas in TV studios.) Instead it never became much more than a proof of concept, and once the company goes away, the source code will probably go down with it.
Well, for one thing, I'm an artist and lossless high-DPI scan files take up a LOT of room...
</shameless_plug>...
I want to rant about how Apple designs power switches. I love Macs, but admit that Apple has pulled more than its share of stupids over the years. I can't understand why Apple doesn't see the irony in being the company that pushes the envelope of human interface design, yet they can't come up with a single, clean, consistent, intuitive way to TURN THE DAMN COMPUTER ON AND OFF.
Some of their "winners" over the years:
- You can't turn off most recent Apple monitors without also turning off the Mac it's hooked to.
- The Color Classic had NO power button at all.
- Some Macs have "soft power" and can turn themselves off; others say "It is now safe to turn off your Macintosh." There is no rhyme or reason to which Macs do it which way.
- Some Macs that say "it is now safe to turn off your Mac" have fiddly tiny power switches on the back that ROTATE. Some with soft power have big, easily accessible rocker switches.
And the all-time worst Mac power switch:
- The 610/6100 series cases have a power button about half an inch below the floppy drive. PC users instinctively push it to eject disks. Sadder still was that Apple made TWO PC-compatible Macs with this case style - so even if your brain switches easily from "Mac mode" where you drag disks to the trash to eject them and "PC mode" where you hit a button, you'll STILL hit the power button by mistake.
If computer companies - Apple and everyone else - would just agree to dispense with the symbols, tricky stuff, and I and O, and settle on a big rocker switch on the front that says "on" and "off", we'd be a lot better off. Obviously I have no problem making the master switch "lockable" by key, and I have no problem with making it a soft-switch, so when you press "off" the computer does a soft shutdown. But damn, for companies that pride themselves on easy-to-use computers, "I can't figure out how to turn the damn thing on" is a surprisingly common complaint.
Note that I'm not addressing the question of whether we WANT people too dumb to figure out the power switch to actually use the computer. I'm talking about purity of design: if you intend the computer to be easy for a CEO to use, the power switch should not be the bottleneck. Either design the machine to be easy to turn on, or design it so only a trained technician can turn it on, either way be honest about your design goals.
What is so difficult about the software industry that it eats up people like this?
:-)
Good question. It's not the industry, as such, that's eating people, far as I can tell - it's this sort of universal "corporate disease" that hits technology companies, or at least the tech divisions of companies, hardest. But why THIS sector of the economy? Why THESE companies?
Maybe it's the "gold rush" mentality. I mean, people don't get burned out doing architecture, or doing graphic design (usually), maybe that's because in those industries, you have to BE one before you get put in a position to manage. In high-churn sectors, like the dotcom craze at its peak, you get a lot of nontechies owning companies and putting other nontechies in positions of power. Managers who don't understand what's really involved with a ship date, or who don't understand the mental stresses of keeping huge blobs of code straight in one's head for days on end. Leadership who thinks "if I don't understand it, it must be simple." And for that matter, leadership with dollar sign eyeballs, who simply don't care about anything except profit and don't even notice the burned-out empty husks of programmers sitting around the computer room. On the other side, programming isn't like manual labor, where your body wears out before your brain; most people don't understand mental stress and what it does, and thus will continue to put in 70 and 80 hour weeks, not making the connection between that and the routine fainting spells.
Or maybe, this crap happens in EVERY industry, we just don't hear about it.
"...and it has been revealed that Tito was at the controls when the International Space Station collided with a Martian fishing vessel..."
You say "ethics" when you mean guilt.
Of course we should! The Internet is to blame for EVERYTHING because it's new and scary and because they said so on the news and the news is always right!
Bzzzzt. Time to go back to school and learn about sexual reproduction.
It was a joke, just like you're a joke.
Just look at all the billions of sperm dying such horrible, needless deaths in any porno flick! Each one of those is a HUMAN BEING! (or would have been, if they hadn't been left to die in the open air like so many microscopic beached whales)
"every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great..."
(yes I know what day it is)
I really don't mean to be dismissive of your argument or seem harsh, but blanket (and self-contradicting) statements like that invite blanket repudiations.
What you call a blanket statement, I call a fairly good description of the political party currently in charge of the country.
You know what I think? You aren't looking for intellectual Christians- in fact, you've reason to be afraid them. You are looking to find people who call themselves Christians yet live clearly unchristian lives so that you can call Christianity itself a religion for the weak-minded hypocrites of the world and thereby reinforce your own prejudices.
Well, since I can't very well go refer to the Book of Life and see if someone's listed or not, all I really have are their word and their actions.
Racists do the same thing by focusing their attentions not on the accomplishments of the best and brightest African-Americans (who would undermine their own prejudices) but only the most egregious failures the black people have to offer. That way, they can keep telling their friends and peers, "Man, blacks are reprobates. Did you know that 1/3 of the males are in prisons? Hey, don't call me racist man, my boss is black. I know blacks."
Then what would you have me do? For one thing, I'm not complaining about a race or people born of that race - I'm complaining about people who have chosen a particular set of beliefs that seem to make them a) forget how to exercise rational thought, b) take an us vs them attitude and begin to isolate themselves from the world, and c) consider it a GOOD thing to sweep the 1st Amendment under the rug since obviously their religion should be the official one in America. Would you have me pretend I haven't seen what I've seen, that I don't know who I know, and that the Bible doesn't say what it says? That Christianity in America isn't what it is? I'm willing to accept that you, if your beliefs are what you say they are (love for all people, tolerance of people who are different) are the good side of the issue, but I'm afraid I simply can't take your word for what the other 99% of Christians in America are.
OK, so I sound like a racist to you, substituting Christianity for race. I know what I sound like. But lemme put it to you like this: would you defend a racist? Shouldn't we both be more open minded and tolerant of other people's belief systems that differ from our own? Shouldn't we focus on the GOOD things that racists have done, like the works of Wagner, T.S. Eliot, or many of our founding fathers? No? We SHOULDN'T accept racism if we can keep from it? Hmmm.
Maybe that means there's a dividing line between the determinism that says "all belief systems must be respected" and the reality that some belief systems aren't all rosy and we're justified in complaining about them.
You're offended that I might compare Christianity to racism - that's a valid reaction, but put it away for a second. Racism sucks and is an extreme. It's a destructive force in society and it hurts people. It's rather obviously bad to most people reading this - even those who, as you say, go "hey don't call me racist" think racism is a negative thing and will try to distance themselves from it. In short, even some racists think it's bad. Do racists have the right to hold their beliefs? SHOULD they have the right to hold their beliefs? If yes, should a line be drawn between holding their beliefs and trying to exercise their beliefs? Obviously we can't get away with making it legal to go around lynching other ethnic groups, but a vocal and devout Klansman would see it differently. We know he's wrong and we're right (on the subject of racism anyway) because... well, he just is.
Back to Christianity - just HOW far afield have I gone by comparing it to racism? Are there good, intelligent people who are Christians? Yes, Don Knuth and Larry Wall are two names Slashdot readers will recognize. Many cool things have been done in the name of Christianity.
But my own take is that there's a MUCH longer list of horrible things done in the name of Christianity - many of them IN the Bible (before there was a Christianity whose name to do them in) - all of them the perpetrators apparently found justifiable biblically in spite of the Commandments they violate. (And a fine point this brings up: the holy book may say one thing, but the religion as practiced by a couple billion people worldwide tends to say something slightly different. What IS Christianity if not what people make of it?) Christianity has become the antithesis of moral and intellectual progress - whether it's being used to dismantle 150 years of science, or being used as justification to undermine the civil rights of any number of social groups (other religions, homosexuals, women), or being used to justify racism, or even becoming an excuse to declare war (the Crusades, anyone?) it's obvious that mainstream Christianity - the Christianity of record, the Christianity that America seems to want in charge, the Christianity that calls itself Christianity and from which your open-mindedness is apparently an isolated sprout - is a giant step BACKWARDS for the progress of humankind away from primitivism! I add to this what I've personally seen and experienced and I find that I am rather compelled to think Christianity is on racism's end of the spectrum. Not as bad as racism, but then, considering how often it gets used to justify racism and things far worse, how do I measure? When Christians do really cool things, it seems to be DESPITE the doctrine, direction, and momentum of the religion - it's always the radicals, the ones on the fringe of the religion, be it classical painters using religion as a sneaky way to get away with painting nudes, or Luther with paper and nail, or Mother Teresa with an interpretation of "missionary" that didn't involve destroying the native culture. Rather a strong indication that individuality plays a greater role in the ability of humans to transcend their condition, actually - and mainstream Christianity (in its various flavors) seems not to value individuality. Which sorta brings us circuitously back to the Slashdot story that started it all, the way America and its almost-theocracy treats anyone who's different.
What you think is a hidden theocracy is instead a mostly powerless small minority of devout and vocal Christians who are pilloried by that even more vocal part of the citizenry (which I regret to say seems to include you) and media that feigns open-mindedness while simultaneously justifying their bigotry against people who believe in God, sin and the resurrection of Christ.
I don't think I said the theocracy was hidden, merely that it hasn't taken over America's government yet.
And from where I sit, the most vocal part of the citizenry seems to be the part that says we SHOULD merge Christianity into the government. I don't see Christianity as a minority - nor is the mainstream Christian mindset, the one I'm railing against, a rarity.
It's been said that the true test of tolerance is its reaction to intolerance. I'm reacting to the institutionalized intolerance that is mainstream Christianity and I'm not doing such a hot job of it - but what IS the right answer? And for that matter, how do I separate those who call themselves Christians and embody everything I condemned earlier, from those like you who also call themselves Christians and seem to embody something else? If your Christianity is TRULY different from theirs, why do you take the name of their religion? You know people do shitty things and call themselves Christians, I condemn the mainstream that seems to be comprised entirely of such people and you a) think I'm talking about you, and b) defend THEM. What do you expect me to make of all this?
I don't agree that long summer breaks are useful for anything. Especially given the trends towards double-earner homes where children are increasingly less supervised or simply shuttled to care centers which deprive them of any of the real benefits of a summer vacation. I certainly don't think much of ultraregimented schooling to begin with, I thought my bias was pretty obvious (any and all lecture classes should be eligible for some sort of testing out). And I think a proper school environment would be nothing like being "locked in" anywhere.
Then WORK ON THE PARENTS. Seriously. School is not supposed to substitute for parenting, and what you're proposing IS that school should serve more or less as the child's home year round! If the problem is that the parents aren't home enough to raise their kids, deal with THAT problem, and don't just turn the teachers into parents instead.
One of my major complaints with most schools is age segregation. It's not useful. It stigmatizes brilliant students (or at least bores them) and it stresses the less apt. Given that most kids are average this isn't a huge problem, but it remains. Even worse is the notion that your friends have to be your own age. The segregation that occurs due to the notion that children should only socialize with other kids their age is a major handicap. Society has people of all ages in it and children seem to be increasingly losing interaction with that (maybe it's not the case, this is just my perception).
This I'll agree with. Age does NOT equal level of development. Classifying someone as a freshman may be useful only if the nature of school differs radically between one year and the next (i.e. middle school to high school may be a big shift) - but even that shouldn't be based on age! No two kids develop at the same rate, so let them advance through at their own pace. Dispense with years as a grouping mechanism, put kids in the classes they can handle, even if that means a gifted 12-yr-old is taking advanced calculus while also taking an entry-level language skills course. Allow graduation once a student has reached a certain level in all their subjects, so at least colleges know what they're getting.
I never got along with people my own age. I got along best with people a couple years older or younger. Dispensing with the years classification (itself apparently just a way for older kids to feel superior and smug) would have vastly increased my opportunities to make friends.
Can you name ONE "fundamentalist Christian theocracy" on the planet at this time? No, because there are no significant Christian theocracies in this era.
America isn't a theocracy now, but has one hiding under the surface that pokes its nasty head up repeatedly. Lots of people in power in America - and presumably the people who voted them there - WANT America to become a Christian state, and seem perfectly happy to propose (and vote for!) laws that are rather blatant violations of the First Amendment. Thus I don't think it's at all out of line to use America as an example when talking about theocracies or how they go wrong - America has enough theocratic influence in the way it's currently run to serve as an illustration.
Do you really believe this, or are you just saying it because it seems like it must be true because the alternative is to imagine a large body of people sharing an absolute religious worldview- a concept that, in our post-Christian agnostic consumerist society is too alien to fathom?
Put it like this: there are a LOT of different ways to interpret a book as complex and symbolic the Bible or the Koran. When whole countries follow the same interpretation, something else must be going on.
As a Christian, I disagree stongly with their religious worldview. But try to have a little more respect for people with differing beliefs, and allow for the possibility that the fact of someone else's differing opinion may not be indication of their inferiority as individuals or thinkers.
I was a Christian. I probably understand your beliefs better than you understand mine. And my girlfriend thinks I'm TOO tolerant of Christianity - she considers it a mental illness, and after what she's seen, I can't say I blame her. Me, I got out because although there are some VERY smart people out there who are Christians, the norm seemed to be people who used the religion as an excuse not to think. I personally WATCHED people drop in IQ after they joined a church - I had to quit a job once because the boss got religion and became an asshole, and I don't mean he became an asshole on issues of morality, I mean he began insulting me verbally on a daily basis and started blaming me for everything that was wrong with the company. I have my reasons for saying the things I do.
And I do like conversing with people whose beliefs differ from mine - I know I'm fallible, I know I'm probably wrong about certain things, and if I know I'm dealing with someone who isn't an idiot, I try to entertain the possibility I may learn something from them. The problem is, it's kinda hard to find a Christian whose religion hasn't dulled their intellect. (Note about that last statement: if I'm not talking about you, you shouldn't be offended by it.)
Today I figure there are already enough guns, in working condition, in private hands in America for every American to have one. Restrictions on gun sales mean NOTHING because if you can't buy one, you probably know where the parents or neighbors keep one hid. If nothing else call Chuck Heston, he'll lend you one. :-)
If anything, the violent trend today is because kids HAD guns in the 1950s. Not that I'm saying this is a good thing, but perhaps 50 years ago anyone with a violent streak and aggression to take out, could take it out on helpless woodland creatures.
Of course the real problem is that today kids have no handle on their emotions.
Density?
:-)
Actually it's always been a problem, but only became a MEDIA problem when it started being upper-crust white kids getting killed.
Guns don't kill people, gun culture kills people.
Knives don't kill people either. America probably has more KNIFE killings per capita than Canada - which hints at the real problem: American culture is just plain violent. It's like we're expected to go for the most violent solution first (and I consider lawsuits a form of violence, if that helps) any time we meet resistance. Actually two problems - we want EVERYTHING (American corporate culture is driven by the belief that you can't just make money, you have to make ALL the money, and you go to Hell if you leave one cent unmade in your chosen market - doesn't this explain the RIAA's behavior?) and we don't see anything wrong with using violent means (guns, fists, lies, lawyers) to get it all. Canada doesn't seem afflicted with either disease, except perhaps within the bounds of hockey.
If guns are the problem, why hasn't this always been a problem throughout history?
It HAS - and long before guns were invented. Thing is, in the past, angry kids waited until they were adults before snapping - though when they snapped, it was usually in the form of building an army and destroying whole nations, cultures, and races.
What's different today is that we've raised a generation of kids so emotionally stunted they couldn't pass Deckard's test in Blade Runner. With a spinning top instead of a moral compass, and emotions in monochrome (no color, just intensity), is it any wonder kids have started to select violent options as the simplest ones available?
Christianity is a teaching of love for all people.
Then you REALLY need to get busy on the dominant religion in the United States that's using your religion's name without permission.
Another thing that bothers me is the lack of traditional Christian morals that are being instilled in today's youth. You never hear about a Reverand's son or a child of a devoutly religious family shooting up a school.
My experience is that the preachers' kids were half the time the ones doing the bulling. If I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to say the Christian ethic is one of intolerance towards anyone or anything different.
Children need to be taught the difference between fantasy and reality.
Then we agree on something. The first fantasy I'd eliminate is the one that says all morality must derive from Christianity. Even Wicca (witchcraft) has a moral code - you can interpret "do as you wilt an no harm done" in ways far stricter than the Ten Commandments, indeed the Commandments FIT neatly inside the concept of "no harm done" once you notice that lying, stealing, killing, coveting, cheating, disrespecting are all harmful things.
Morality is a natural outgrowth of people living in groups - if you're greedy, the group may suffer because you're hoarding resources, if you're violent, the group may suffer because you're breaking everybody's belongings or limbs. If you're unfaithful, the group may suffer because the next generation may be entirely your offspring (not a problem for far-ranging animals in the wild, but in closed social groups this is a problem) - in two generations the whole group is inbred. If you fail to acknowledge the group's authority (in the Ten Commandments' case, the authority was God) the group may be unable to achieve its goals. (Of course, this assumes the group is to be preserved - sometimes revolution is necessary, but anyway these are the means by which a group protects itself.) There is nothing supernatural in the origins of these laws. Which is why atheists, more often than not, DON'T go around killing people. (And why there are so many people who DO go around killing people for religious reasons.)
In other words, God's signature on your moral doctrine means NOTHING unless you're trying to get into your specific religion's afterlife. Ever notice how people who DON'T believe in an afterlife still do nice things for other people?
The REAL problem, the one you miss in your high-speed race to make sure God gets in your message, isn't that people have the WRONG moral code - it's that people haven't bothered to find a moral code at all, perhaps because they've lived isolated, temptation-free lives where they've simply never needed one. Even many Christians I've known have a nasty tendency not to know what they REALLY consider right and wrong until after they've done something (even if they can justify it with the Bible!) and can't sleep on it afterwards. We now have a world full of adults who don't know what they believe (even if they have the words memorized), and kids who haven't even had a chance to figure out what's important. Bullies by definition have an incomplete moral code because so far they haven't needed one (I think it's because their emotional development is stunted, so they can't perceive when others are in pain - they apparently don't think funny-looking kids are really human!). Kids who go postal on their school have probably been too busy getting the shit pounded out of them to develop a moral code, or else have inherited one from their parents (in words only) and never bothered to figure out what it actually means or how it should apply to them (Harris and Klebold fall in this category - they "knew" better but didn't KNOW better).
I think the most important thing anyone needs to know is oneself. Know one's own limits. Know how one would feel if one caused pain to another person. Know why one feels pain in the first place. Know the range of one's emotions (or at least the general flavor of them) so one's not so easily confused. That way, when the depression hits and you feel like the only thing you can do is eat a grenade, when you hear the voice saying "there must be another way" (and we all hear that voice) you'll recognize it as your own and you'll trust it.