There is plenty of mainstream technology that terrorizes just fine, thank you.
I'm not going to hesitate to sell a screwdriver because it might have "terrorism" concerns. Maybe a way of mutating people for cosmetic purposes, I can see the concern. But software?
People like Hitler have a habit of ending up dead, and if my only customer base is megalomaniacal homicidal dictators, I'll run out of customers pretty fast...
Actually the problem is that people like Hitler have a habit of trying to make lots of other people end up dead...
Depends on the which edition. Many translations of the bible are under copyright protection. It is still against the law to unauthorizedly copy certain versions of the bible.
Don't forget there are lots of random games ported to Linux, like Unreal series, Quake series, as well as unix native games such as Wesnoth, BZflag, and who knows what else.
I can't believe nobody has suggested Morse code. Or perhaps someone did, and it's under my moderation level, but even then it needs to be modded up. If there was ever a good reason to learn Morse code, it's so that when you get paralyzed and can only move one digit, you'll still be able to communicate by tapping your little toe.
Nerds! Geeks! Where are you? Why hasn't someone's suggestion of Morse code been at least moderated "Funny" if nothing else?
Maybe it wasn't his choice to buy a lame-duck product, but being the editor of a major PC magazine, he should at least have had enough clout to tell whoever bought a PPC iMac at the end of its product life to WAIT for the Intel iMacs.
There has been a long "conventional wisdom" in computing worlds that you never buy anything than ends in ".0". Wait until SP1 of Vista, for example. In my thoughts, when I heard of the Intel challenge, my first thought was "I'd much rather have the last PPC Mac than the first Intel Mac".
Now we're well past the time where I'd be nervous buying an Intel Mac, but if I was shopping for a Mac at that time, either I'd get one of the last PPC's, or I'd wait about a year before getting a Mac. And if you're going to wait a year for it, then you have other decisions to make (such as buy a PC, and see if OSX works on it, or go with Windows, or keep using hardware that is already the reason you're shopping for a new computer).
Seriously. American tech magazines tend to cost around $5, and Brit tech magazines tend to cost around $15.
I tend only to buy the Brit mags if there is something worth it in the issue. Otherwise... well I generally read the Economist. (Which I guess is a Brit mag too, but is priced more like an American mag.)
Eh, that's not quite true. It says that you may distribute the software, but if you do so, you must include the source code. What this means is you may choose not to distribute the software, but the software writer isn't restricting you to do so.
So I could sell you a box of software, and if you wanted to warez it for all your friends, you can do so provided you include the source (or allow them to get it from an ftp site, or by mail, etc). What you are not allowed to do is warez it for all your friends and refuse to warez the source code with it.
Let me quote you the section labeled "1":
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You might argue that this does not apply to the binary but that is address in "3":
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
Not just looking at the cost of CDs, where is the study on how much CDs suck?
Compare to mp3:
A 200GB hard disk can hold about the same amount of data as 800 CDs. Now think of how many uncompressed CDs that would be. I don't even use CDs for backing up my hard disk any more (and I'm not talking about my mp3 collection, what about my photos?).
Audio CDs take up a huge amount of volume for the music you get from one. Audio CDs are prone to scratching. Audio CDs are not as portable as flash drives, or when compared to larger capacity disks, 2.5" hard disks.
CDs don't suck, in and of themselves, and when they were new flashy technology it was quite nice having that much capacity (I remember backing my hard disk on floppy disks once upon a time, so having CD-Rs was a big step forward). But there is no reason to chain me to what seems like obsolete media.
So while the record industry offers "boxed sets", it's really several CDs, priced as though each CD were worth $10, when I'd be happier with a whole bunch of mp3s on my hard disk, and I don't have to worry about throwing out the packaging.
Interestingly enough, I find on the "Most Read" box right next to that article, is an article of a woman with two wombs giving birth to three babies.... href=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6199363.stm
Actually, this is one of my gripes too. I'm used to setting the computer to shut itself off automatically at night. I leave the mp3 player on, fall asleep, and at midnight or one the computer should shut itself off.
With OS X, it politely asks all the programs to close, and firefox then politely asks if it's okay to close three tabs. Which means I wake up at four in the morning wondering why there is still music coming out of my computer.
My current workaround is set it to sleep rather than turn off, but usually I save everything before going to bed, so it doesn't matter. I don't want to put it in a cron job (as I go to bed at different times each night) and I actually do like the warning "This computer will turn itself off in 1 minute 58 seconds" so if I'm still awake I can hit cancel. But if I'm asleep, I'd rather the computer not ask me about other users still being logged before shutting down.
There's no "immigration debate," at least not in mainstream politics; the debate is over illegal immigration.
This is like saying there is no one against marijuana, the debate is over illegal marijuana.
This is very disingenuous. If this is such a problem, why not legalize all this immigration, and be done with it? Defining it in those terms accomplishes nothing. Rather than complaining about their illegality, you would be much better off determining why these people are a problem, and addressing that.
Unless you are complaining about the lack of enforcement to remove said immigrants from society, in which saying "we are complaining about illegal immigrants, not legal ones" somehow entirely misses the point.
For a typical non-geek, "learning Linux" is a lousy idea. So is "learning Windows". That's because they don't want to use an operating system. They want to send email, work with their digital pictures, write a novel, or whatever. Non-geeks need to learn how to do the tasks that interest them, and that is how geeks should present this information to them.
Let's look at the example of "work with their digital pictures". To take pictures, one must learn to use a camera. Sad but true. Then one must learn to transfer pictures to the computer. Then they need to know how to use the computer ("learning Linux" or "learning Windows") to do such tasks as copying, organizing, or else those pix will not easily worked with. They need to know how to use the operating system at hand, as well as the application that allows them to "work with their digital pictures" (whether that program be Photoshop or ImageMagick).
I guess what I am trying to say is that these poor unfortunate "non-geeks" do need to learn to use an operating system to be able to do these "non-geek" tasks. You could simply type a novel at your computer, but if you do not understand the concept of "files", or saving your files, or why saving once in a while just in case is a good idea, you will have many frustrations, just as if you took a camera out and didn't understand what this dial on it that said "f/#" was. True, many cameras these days are trying to simplify it so you don't need to know what "f/#" is, but many operating systems are trying to simplify it so you don't need to know how to use 'RUN "*" 8, 1' to get a program running.
I guess my gripe is that, to use a computer effectively, you have to learn to use a computer, much like you need to learn to drive a car in order to be able use a car effectively. Trying to say "they need to learn things to let them focus on writing a novel" is understandable, but if they don't understand how to manage their files, they will be frustrated. It's like those who want to study physics but "calculus is too hard". If you don't learn the math of physics you will be limited to saying things like "things heavier than air fall when you drop them".
Computer animation tutorials have sections on how to do motion blur. A great many of them take the time to point out that a human eye does not see motion blur in the real world--no matter how fast the races you are watching go. Rather, it is an artifact of capturing discrete frames. However, in the attempts to make computer graphics more "realistic", it frequently turns into "what people think is realistic", and thus motion blur is added in.
My experience has been that most classes you spend 30-60 minutes a week to get all studying needed for that class. And about one class per semester, you spend every available minute you can spare, steal, or rob, studying and/or homeworking for that class.
I don't know where you went to college, but almost every professor I've ever had expected at least three hours of study for every one hour of class. So 15 hours + 45 hours of study = 60 hours.
This is why 12 hours of class is considered a full load every I've taken classes.
Whether or not people actually did put this much time into their classes is a different question.
When I grew up, everyone listened to either punk and metal, or hippie music and reggae, and not too much overlap between the groups. There were several people who listened to other things, but we all worked at a radio station, listened to each other's shows, but for the most part music was segregated by who you hung out with. Sure there was "fitting in" and such that other comments talk about but for the most part, music was homogeonous.
Napster rocked my world. I got into raver music--something I halfheartedly got into while I was at the radio station, but not like now. Bands like Aqua, Toybox, Captain Jack were fun! Napster rocked my world further! Turkish pop bands! Dutch rap bands! Gabber! Rai! Reggaeton! Klezmer! Gamelan! Worlds of music I had never heard of!
It's not just that the internet allows anonymity in what you are checking out at three in the morning. It lets you privately check out new ideas, and not deal with someone looking at you funny because you are merely curious. A Metallica fan can download the NKOTB albums and it's not the same investment as it would have been to explore before the world of downloadable music. If you don't like it, delete it, if you change your mind, it'll be out there on the internet somewhere again.
I guess what I'm saying is that it is not just "guilty pleasures" to listen to music that other people around you don't listen to. It is also the accessibility of music. I had pretty much stopped listening to music before Napster came around--it didn't mean anything to me.
Yes, yes, I know Napster is no longer that Napster and it has been replaced by Kazaa, Gnutella, eMule, etc, and it opens up people to lawsuits from the RIAA now, but kids still swap mp3 collections like they used to make cassette tapes for each other, and there is a wealth of freely-downloadable music (see irate.sf.net) for people to listen to in all genres. And when it only takes a click to listen to a new song, why not? It's not the $15 CD or $10 tape that it used to be! Why (and for many people, where) would I buy a fado tape or CD by some artist I've never heard of, and how do I know I will like it? But now with a little googling I can listen to fado and decide if it's awesome or not with little investment.
And I only feel guilty when depriving poor starving artists of some income.
What or where is warchild? I've never heard such a thing.
I think this is the one
warchildmusic.com as http://www.warchild.org doesn't seem to mention anything about music.
It seems UK only? I'd investigate more but I'm at work and I'll do this at home. Also I get a "Problem loading page" when clicking on the buy music button.
So what if someone thinks it's cool to shake thier umbrella to control an ipod? If they aren't bothering you, let them! There are wars, there are assholes, there are a million things out there that bother me, why does the concept of someone shaking an umbrella bother you all? You don't have to buy one! It's not for sale if you wanted to! Let the crazies play with thier umbrellas and bad mouth something that's actually bad!
Sheesh. It's like when an article is posted about running linux on an alarm clock and everyone says "that's stupid, what's the point?" Don't you guys have better things to do than to bad mouth other people's wierd projects?
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There is plenty of mainstream technology that terrorizes just fine, thank you.
I'm not going to hesitate to sell a screwdriver because it might have "terrorism" concerns. Maybe a way of mutating people for cosmetic purposes, I can see the concern. But software?
Actually the problem is that people like Hitler have a habit of trying to make lots of other people end up dead...
Depends on the which edition. Many translations of the bible are under copyright protection. It is still against the law to unauthorizedly copy certain versions of the bible.
Go to http://happypenguin.org and look around.
Yeah, get with the times! You can download all the TV now!
3. It's five minutes in XP, which feels like 30 seconds whenever I'm trying to get something done. Or waiting for a download to finish.
There are days when it seems my incomplete knowledge of advanced group theory is making my life incomplete and not quite rich enough.
It's good to know that I'm not the only person to read "Allen Telescope Array" as "Alien Telescope Array".
Huh? I believe murder is bad. I believe copyright infringement is not $222000 worth of badness. Why should these beliefs conflict?
This one?
I can't believe nobody has suggested Morse code. Or perhaps someone did, and it's under my moderation level, but even then it needs to be modded up. If there was ever a good reason to learn Morse code, it's so that when you get paralyzed and can only move one digit, you'll still be able to communicate by tapping your little toe.
Nerds! Geeks! Where are you? Why hasn't someone's suggestion of Morse code been at least moderated "Funny" if nothing else?
There has been a long "conventional wisdom" in computing worlds that you never buy anything than ends in ".0". Wait until SP1 of Vista, for example. In my thoughts, when I heard of the Intel challenge, my first thought was "I'd much rather have the last PPC Mac than the first Intel Mac".
Now we're well past the time where I'd be nervous buying an Intel Mac, but if I was shopping for a Mac at that time, either I'd get one of the last PPC's, or I'd wait about a year before getting a Mac. And if you're going to wait a year for it, then you have other decisions to make (such as buy a PC, and see if OSX works on it, or go with Windows, or keep using hardware that is already the reason you're shopping for a new computer).
And they cost twice as much, if not more.
Seriously. American tech magazines tend to cost around $5, and Brit tech magazines tend to cost around $15.
I tend only to buy the Brit mags if there is something worth it in the issue. Otherwise... well I generally read the Economist. (Which I guess is a Brit mag too, but is priced more like an American mag.)
So I could sell you a box of software, and if you wanted to warez it for all your friends, you can do so provided you include the source (or allow them to get it from an ftp site, or by mail, etc). What you are not allowed to do is warez it for all your friends and refuse to warez the source code with it.
Let me quote you the section labeled "1":
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You might argue that this does not apply to the binary but that is address in "3": 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:Not just looking at the cost of CDs, where is the study on how much CDs suck?
Compare to mp3:
A 200GB hard disk can hold about the same amount of data as 800 CDs. Now think of how many uncompressed CDs that would be. I don't even use CDs for backing up my hard disk any more (and I'm not talking about my mp3 collection, what about my photos?).
Audio CDs take up a huge amount of volume for the music you get from one. Audio CDs are prone to scratching. Audio CDs are not as portable as flash drives, or when compared to larger capacity disks, 2.5" hard disks.
CDs don't suck, in and of themselves, and when they were new flashy technology it was quite nice having that much capacity (I remember backing my hard disk on floppy disks once upon a time, so having CD-Rs was a big step forward). But there is no reason to chain me to what seems like obsolete media.
So while the record industry offers "boxed sets", it's really several CDs, priced as though each CD were worth $10, when I'd be happier with a whole bunch of mp3s on my hard disk, and I don't have to worry about throwing out the packaging.
Just some thoughts.
Interestingly enough, I find on the "Most Read" box right next to that article, is an article of a woman with two wombs giving birth to three babies....m
href=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6199363.st
Actually, this is one of my gripes too. I'm used to setting the computer to shut itself off automatically at night. I leave the mp3 player on, fall asleep, and at midnight or one the computer should shut itself off.
With OS X, it politely asks all the programs to close, and firefox then politely asks if it's okay to close three tabs. Which means I wake up at four in the morning wondering why there is still music coming out of my computer.
My current workaround is set it to sleep rather than turn off, but usually I save everything before going to bed, so it doesn't matter. I don't want to put it in a cron job (as I go to bed at different times each night) and I actually do like the warning "This computer will turn itself off in 1 minute 58 seconds" so if I'm still awake I can hit cancel. But if I'm asleep, I'd rather the computer not ask me about other users still being logged before shutting down.
This is like saying there is no one against marijuana, the debate is over illegal marijuana.
This is very disingenuous. If this is such a problem, why not legalize all this immigration, and be done with it? Defining it in those terms accomplishes nothing. Rather than complaining about their illegality, you would be much better off determining why these people are a problem, and addressing that.
Unless you are complaining about the lack of enforcement to remove said immigrants from society, in which saying "we are complaining about illegal immigrants, not legal ones" somehow entirely misses the point.
Let's look at the example of "work with their digital pictures". To take pictures, one must learn to use a camera. Sad but true. Then one must learn to transfer pictures to the computer. Then they need to know how to use the computer ("learning Linux" or "learning Windows") to do such tasks as copying, organizing, or else those pix will not easily worked with. They need to know how to use the operating system at hand, as well as the application that allows them to "work with their digital pictures" (whether that program be Photoshop or ImageMagick).
I guess what I am trying to say is that these poor unfortunate "non-geeks" do need to learn to use an operating system to be able to do these "non-geek" tasks. You could simply type a novel at your computer, but if you do not understand the concept of "files", or saving your files, or why saving once in a while just in case is a good idea, you will have many frustrations, just as if you took a camera out and didn't understand what this dial on it that said "f/#" was. True, many cameras these days are trying to simplify it so you don't need to know what "f/#" is, but many operating systems are trying to simplify it so you don't need to know how to use 'RUN "*" 8, 1' to get a program running.
I guess my gripe is that, to use a computer effectively, you have to learn to use a computer, much like you need to learn to drive a car in order to be able use a car effectively. Trying to say "they need to learn things to let them focus on writing a novel" is understandable, but if they don't understand how to manage their files, they will be frustrated. It's like those who want to study physics but "calculus is too hard". If you don't learn the math of physics you will be limited to saying things like "things heavier than air fall when you drop them".
Not just movies, either.
Computer animation tutorials have sections on how to do motion blur. A great many of them take the time to point out that a human eye does not see motion blur in the real world--no matter how fast the races you are watching go. Rather, it is an artifact of capturing discrete frames. However, in the attempts to make computer graphics more "realistic", it frequently turns into "what people think is realistic", and thus motion blur is added in.
Oh, please.
I'm just saying.
My experience has been that most classes you spend 30-60 minutes a week to get all studying needed for that class. And about one class per semester, you spend every available minute you can spare, steal, or rob, studying and/or homeworking for that class.
15 hours of class is a full load?
I don't know where you went to college, but almost every professor I've ever had expected at least three hours of study for every one hour of class. So 15 hours + 45 hours of study = 60 hours.
This is why 12 hours of class is considered a full load every I've taken classes.
Whether or not people actually did put this much time into their classes is a different question.
When I grew up, everyone listened to either punk and metal, or hippie music and reggae, and not too much overlap between the groups. There were several people who listened to other things, but we all worked at a radio station, listened to each other's shows, but for the most part music was segregated by who you hung out with. Sure there was "fitting in" and such that other comments talk about but for the most part, music was homogeonous.
Napster rocked my world. I got into raver music--something I halfheartedly got into while I was at the radio station, but not like now. Bands like Aqua, Toybox, Captain Jack were fun! Napster rocked my world further! Turkish pop bands! Dutch rap bands! Gabber! Rai! Reggaeton! Klezmer! Gamelan! Worlds of music I had never heard of!
It's not just that the internet allows anonymity in what you are checking out at three in the morning. It lets you privately check out new ideas, and not deal with someone looking at you funny because you are merely curious. A Metallica fan can download the NKOTB albums and it's not the same investment as it would have been to explore before the world of downloadable music. If you don't like it, delete it, if you change your mind, it'll be out there on the internet somewhere again.
I guess what I'm saying is that it is not just "guilty pleasures" to listen to music that other people around you don't listen to. It is also the accessibility of music. I had pretty much stopped listening to music before Napster came around--it didn't mean anything to me.
Yes, yes, I know Napster is no longer that Napster and it has been replaced by Kazaa, Gnutella, eMule, etc, and it opens up people to lawsuits from the RIAA now, but kids still swap mp3 collections like they used to make cassette tapes for each other, and there is a wealth of freely-downloadable music (see irate.sf.net) for people to listen to in all genres. And when it only takes a click to listen to a new song, why not? It's not the $15 CD or $10 tape that it used to be! Why (and for many people, where) would I buy a fado tape or CD by some artist I've never heard of, and how do I know I will like it? But now with a little googling I can listen to fado and decide if it's awesome or not with little investment.
And I only feel guilty when depriving poor starving artists of some income.
I think this is the one warchildmusic.com as http://www.warchild.org doesn't seem to mention anything about music.
It seems UK only? I'd investigate more but I'm at work and I'll do this at home. Also I get a "Problem loading page" when clicking on the buy music button.
I want to rant too.
So what if someone thinks it's cool to shake thier umbrella to control an ipod? If they aren't bothering you, let them! There are wars, there are assholes, there are a million things out there that bother me, why does the concept of someone shaking an umbrella bother you all? You don't have to buy one! It's not for sale if you wanted to! Let the crazies play with thier umbrellas and bad mouth something that's actually bad!
Sheesh. It's like when an article is posted about running linux on an alarm clock and everyone says "that's stupid, what's the point?" Don't you guys have better things to do than to bad mouth other people's wierd projects?