When I bought the linksys (same model you did) a few weeks ago, I considered an SMC barricade (same model you did;)). There were two things which made me choose the Linksys:
1) Not fair, but when I got to the store (and boy, did I need the box that day, couldn't wait for mail order or I would have saved a bunch), they only had the Linksys in stock. OK, saved me 30 seconds of deliberation I suppose;)
2) When I last looked at the docs that came with a few SMC products (and Yes, it was at least a year ago), they were poorly written and skimpy anyhow. As the world's (or at least Slashdot's) least intuitive user of computers, I like documents that are written with consideration for users.
Despite Linksys (IMO foolish) lack of interest in Mac users' (and I was hooking this up to a friend's Mac), a) their configuration instructions weren't bad anyhow and b) I found a good online tutorial (which I would post the link to if I could find it here, bookmarked about 1000 miles away though) so it was quick work to attach it to the Mac. There were some difficulties, probably all attributable to inexperience, but it didn't take that long to attach.
So how would someone who's seen both compare (current) SMC and Linksys docs?
Cheers,
timothy
p.s. And are claims accurate that while 2 Linksys units can bridge wired networks with a wireless connection, SMC / Airport / others mostly cannot?
Sgifford wrote: "Having both is very cool for portability. I have one of the original Apple Airports, and I use it at home and at work on an Ethernet-based Internet connection, and at my girlfriend's apartment and during presentations with a modem-based Internet connection.
My only complaint is that it's awkward shape makes it hard to fit into my bag."
hear hear! I went with the linksys (the one with the 4-port switch, too) in part because it seemed more stable sitting on the top of a PC case than the Airport does, and in part because I had immediate need of the additional ethernet connections.
If apple would make a nice g4-translucent case but at least vaguely rectangular, with sturdy and stable rubber feet, and all the features of the current (new) AP, I would have bought that instead, and an additional little tiny linksys 10/100 switch in addition.
Oh well -- sometimes Apple makes aesthetically pleasing decisions, and sometimes they make aesthetically pleasing *and* practical decision. The shape of the adapter on my iBook unfortunately falls only under the first of these.
Hmmm. From the sound of what you wrote (and excepting the bit about the NEA), I don't think we're even coming from very different angles, actually;) [At least narrowly...]
Yes, Duchamp's Fountain is exactly the sort of thing I'm thinking about. Whether or not it's to my taste, and however "legitimate" I or anyone else thinks it is, if Duchamp called it art and meant it as art, his call as the work's creator trumps mine as an ill-bred, thick-headed, literalist critic. Sure, I might be the guy scoffing at it as "just a toilet" but I'd still consider myself to be making fun of an artwork, rather than denying an artist the right to define the intent of his work.
I see no reason that video games can't be art in the same sense, and often with about as much appreciation from me;)
Aside: The K-cars sucked, which may be the fault of the engineers, but surely they're not the most representive product of pure "engineering"! Unreliable, unergonomic pieces of junk that seemed to come most often in a shade of brown UPS turned down. (Now, a nice Volvo 240 wagon or a Volkswagen Beetle is a different story. Those I think the engineers can be proud of.)
The Eiffel tower I think is part of a thin overlap... it's definitely artistic, and a good example of how engineering projects can be beautiful -- I wonder (seriously, not something I have any idea about) whether Mr. Eiffel did intend it as art per se, as much as a demonstration of "what a cool thing I can build with steel."
And the NEA? Well, I think I have run out of shame on that count. Only in my darker moments would I concede that America "deserves" certain of the projects that money from that organization has supported. A fully voluntary NEA I'd be fine with (and there are plenty of art-supporting foundations) although I might have an aesthetic objection still, but so long as a penny of tax dollars go into it, I'm all for dismemberment -- immediate, complete and unapologetic. I'm unconvinced that the NEA contributes to the general welfare, and certain that collecting taxes for it does not. (As a pursuit of happiness issue, though, people can freely support even art which I wouldn't purchase for the lavish mansion I do not own.)
Why do people agonize about whether particular things can be "considered" art?
If you consider something to be art, who the heck is going to stop you? Other people might disagree (hey, my thoughts on art may vary from yours -- so what?) but that's about the extent of it.
Now given that, I don't particularly agree that video games are art, *unless that's what the creator intended*, in which case I have no objection -- then it's art. IMO (which one one else has to buy), Art is *intentional* - accidental doodles, sunsets, plants, shadows, streams or functional objects might be artful, or beautiful, or even artistic, but things get too floppy for me if anything that happens to look nice, or that makes you think, is automatically "art." Not everything sculptural (Zhang Ziyi, for instance, or a Nagra tape recorder) is actually sculpture.
Having groused that practical objects which happen to be pretty aren't, I would say that the other direction is not quite the same, though. An artwork could have a hands-on function which rendered it a useful object... again, a matter of intention. If I make an object with a long metal prong flattened into a small, blunted, flat-edge blade that happens to fit into the slot at the end of a woodscrew, and declare that the primary purpose and my artistic intent is for it to be manipulated by human hands to express the beauty of simple machines by inserting or removing screws from objects, Fine -- it's art that happens to serve as a screwdriver. That doesn't make every screwdriver art.
Maybe this helps to explain why I think the money given to the NEA would be much better given to model rocket clubs around the country, or never taken from taxpayers in the first place.
Bird in hand, two in bush;) Similar service from Verizon is slightly cheaper, but it's also not available (at least in the flat-rate plan) all that far... this is cheaper, for more speed, but of course, does mean living in places that most people don't want to live. (They don't look bad to me, necessarily -- I like cold, but not sure if I like it *quite* that much.)
It would be a shame for all that infrastructure to go to waste -- 128Kbps, flat rate, is really all I need for the most part. Sure, I like cable modems, DSL, and faster things when I have them to use, but on a day-t'-day basis, 128 wireless and flat-rate would be not bad. However, this stuff is so far still too localized for me to buy a Honda Goldwing and roam the country with an always-connected laptop. Low-Earth-Orbit Satellites are what I'm looking for.
Vivid is known for putting to use some of the interesting features of the DVD format (like multiple angles / "story" jumping akin to Choose Your Own Adventure, but... with naked people) while mainstream filmmakers mostly haven't.
One of the features they have apparenly added is a 3-D walkthrough as a menu-choosing function (navigate choices by browsing, first-person-like through a hallway in their simulated House O' Skin). Perhaps someone with a functioning DVD player can better comment on this.
Added to which, they have a big online / computer interest if not presence (the vivid studio head, whose name I forget, gets shown / interviewed on TV sometimes talking about such), so this seems like a natural fit for them.
1) provided a low-priced foil to the high-priced (and , IMO, consistently superior) Mac OS. I call the Mac OS high-priced because of the bundled hardware, compared to the combo of a low-end Windows machine and some variety of Windows. An iBook vs. a capability-comparable and similarly sized Windows notebook I wouldn't call high-priced, though. But in the mid-80s, it was a lot cheaper to get a funtional computer running DOS (and then primitive Windows) than a Macintosh. The existence of Windows probably improved the Mac OS just by being a competitor, and likewise the existence of Mac and MS OSes makes Linux and other Free software better.
2) DOS -- see #3
3) Marketing computers as tools and playthings for everyone's desk / home / whatever. Marketing, as in "Sara has a degree in Marketing, too bad she didn't get into Med school," can be a dirty word. But if you squint your eyes a bit and think happy thoughts about the wonders of the free market, and think of marketing as in "exploring and opening markets, raising awareness of the availability and capabilities of your chosen object," then marketing can go straight into the Good Things About Capitalism checklist. MS has done plenty of both kinds of marketing -- scammy and misleading, and logically persuasive, idea-building. Since I'm listing good things, I'm using it in the second sense. Microsoft didn't originally write DOS, they bought it and *marketed* it.
And in the good sense of marketing, choosing relatively low prices for many of their products is also a part of marketing, and one that they've done well at. Considering the capabilities of MS software, they've brought capabilities that were unavailable 20 years ago outside of printing houses to a huge audience.
Is $400 too much for an office suite? Sure -- for me, and for a lot of other people who either copy them from work, use cheaper competitors like Lotus Smart Suite, Free software, or do without. OK. It's a big world, people can do different things happily. But not that long ago, there's no way someone could have paid the equivalent of $900 dollars for a decent word processor, a 1200dpi printer, a scanner, a monitor and a CD-RW drive, not to mention enough storage to hold what wasn't so long ago much more than the world's entire store of written knowledge. Now someone can go to Walmart and get that, POP.
On with the sticky praise: Getting a working computer with useful applications is now cheap, and MS has a lot to do with that. If it wasn't them, it would have been someone else. In an alternate universe, everyone has beta VCRs, too, metric wrenches adjust automatically to fit True measurements, and computers come standard with several operating systems to choose at bootup.
Basically, what I like about MS is that they have helped to popularize computers.
4) MS Research does some cool stuff. Smart people, most of whom I doubt care much about Microsoft the company nearly as much as they enjoy tweaking things in the world, learning things, codifying knowledge they already have, etc.
5) Entertainment value. Steve Ballmer's monkey dance alone is an attempt to justify XP's horrible, invasive licensing issues. Not enough, though, but at least it's a try.
More generally, I have friends who work or have worked there, and I think MS is often treated unfairly. However, *parts* of MS also spew FUD about every other software maker, and they're obviously worried about the obvious advantages which Free software has over a one-vendor, one-way approach to the world. They should be. As I posted on another occasion, though, I think MS could easily become the world's largest vendor of Free software (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23303&cid=251 0892), and I hope they do, but do not expect that.
timothy
p.s. Don't have room here for all the bad things. Unbalance, I know, I know.
I agree with you. I bear no animus toward MS per se, though they've employed some some crummy marketing tactics at times. I don't like their licensing overmuch (in fact, I think it's horrible), nor some of (what I consider to be) their anti-user attitude (everything possible to get rid of MP3s), high prices, ever-shifting file formats, etc, but there's either nothing or little that *I* (speaking for myself, no one else) believe ought to be criminally liable or lead to government interference. However, I feel that way about most things, not just MS;) I wish well for my friends who work or have worked there, and think MS has some very good aspects.
My arguments for non-MS software aren't dependent on Microsoft (if it wasn't them being Microsoft, someone else would be the largest closed-source vvendor, of course), but it does serve as a convenient example sometimes. ("You'd rather have a proprietary WP format from a crash-worthy, bloated program? OK, give me $400...") I like to argue for Free SW as being similar to blueprints -- would you want to hire an architect who refused to let you have a copy of the blueprints and other technical documents? If MS didn't exist, the argument remains.
You wrote: "Now for the authors here, I can almost see a reason to want MS to lose market share. Their readership is made almost entirely of linux users and they are operating under the assumption that for there to be more linux users, there will have to be less MS users as if the number of potential computer users were a finite quantity of persons and organizations that will use MS *or* linux."
Well, there are a couple of statements in there... at a certain level, sure, one system's gain means other systems' loss. But naturally, not that simple -- the market for OSes isn't static, and won't ever be static. I prefer Free software philosophically (and because it's often outstanding, philosophy notwithstanding), but I'd rather people use multiple operating systems anyhow, even if some of them are proprietary. People learn that way, projects are cross pollinated with different ideas. (Also, this enourages universal file formats, my personal small utopian wish.) As you hint, the person computer relationship is complicated, not simple at all, and you can't just start subtracting "them" from "us" to get any meaningful numbers. Them is Us, and sometimes vice versa.
Speaking of which: I dunno current numbers, but I bet way more than 50% of/. readers (80? 75? 85?) are reading with IE on a Windows machine, or [IE,Netscape] on a Mac running Mac OS. Sure, I hope they're at least somewhat intrigued by Free / free SW, but it's just not the case that most readers are MS free. A lot of people feel trapped, and say they "can't" get rid of it, even if they (otherwise) want to, because they have a certain game / piece of hardware / etc. that they want to continue to use. Hard to argue against, but then again, humans are always balancing wishes. If you don't want to use MS, it's still possible to live a relatively productive life, sleep at night etc.
I'm writing from an iBook which is destined to hold Mandrake 8.1 (when it's ready for PPC) but in the meantime has an OS as proprietary as Windows, depending on who's counting*). Compared to my linux desktops, there are good and bad things -- one of the bad is that I can't just loan the OS to friends so they can, say, use the GIMP, which most people want to do after even a quick demo.
My personal hope, too, is that MS becomes the world's largest Free Software vendor. I can't say there's "no reason" they couldn't be that in 18 months from now (though I have said that on occasion), but it certainly would be posssible. Imagine MS-branded cross-platform free software, with certificates for limited MS support instead of an insane license agreement:) That would perhaps make the box worth buying, take advantage of the MS name, etc.
Anyhow, just a small rant re: what the authors think (rather, what one of the thinks), and the conflict or imagagined conflict among various OSes and devpt systems. In sum, I like Free but respect closed source software as one way to organize things which is perfectly within the rights of the developers to choose. OTOH, speaking as a taxpayer, for anything the government buys, I think Open sure makes a better investment in the commonweal, encourages pursuit of happiness better, etc, discourages horrible code on teh taxpayer dime, etc.
This is the most concise (and best) summary I've seen of a rational way to approach not just this but possibly-offensive materials of any kind! It's even a reasonable.sig file!
Assume the worst, hope for the best, don't read in any warranties or promises that aren't given, be mad as hell when *actual* promises are made and broken. Lots of things are bad, most things one (*any* one; anyone) can say are offensive somewhere or other. No escape from the "Life is Risky" clause.
[Please mod up the parent, since I just lost my chance to!]
I just disagree completely with her claims. (Well, not "completely," since they have certain truthful elements, but I do disagree with her conclusions.)
Conventional photography does have some advantages, among them the fact that it's often easier to keep unwanted photos around (in the form of negatives at least) than to discard them. OK. That's interesting and good, in a glass-half-full way. Books also trap insects sometimes, so they're useful to historical entomologists who want to see what mites Napoleon kept in his diary -- OK. True, and perhaps occasionally with highly interesting outcomes, but I think at heart still a trivial claim.
If you had film that you *could* re-use if you were unsatisfied with the image it contained, or if you were simply running short of film, would you? I would. I have taken a lot of crap photographs in my life, and would trade much for that ability;)
That would mean dropping some possibly interesting shots, sure (30 years from now, I might find that the newest President was my age and on vacation at the same beach I was in 1998, and want to see if I had an accidental shot of him making dirty gestures at lifeguards... OK, could happen), but it would also mean that I could take images I more wanted to keep in the first place.
Hypothetical losses vs. quantifiable gains puts a pretty big burden of proof on the hypothetical losses before I'm interested.
I find negatives a lot more annoying than digital files, but then I'm spoiled by digital in a lot of ways. On the trip I just took to Austin, I took a lot of pictures, showed them to the subject or emailed them the results... with film, this would be such a hassle I probably never would.
And really, the idea that we're "losing information" because digital allows easy deletion / overwriting of data I think is spurious in the first place. I dunno how many exposures the typical pro photographer carries for a day of shooting -- perhaps 500? I bet less than a thousand, anyhow... whatever the number, they still want to take images worth keeping -- not just shoot randomly to play some very high odds. Editing is part of it, and I bet most photographers would say they edit 99% of their shots just by choosing when to squeeze the release.
Film is finite, even when you have a lot of it -- people don't indiscriminantly shoot film, no matter *how* much they have, if only because it might mean missing an anticipated vital moment because it's time to change rolls. Ever roll shot takes time / money / attention to develop and choose images -- being able (for instance) to knock out the top and bottom of a bracketed series doesn't "rob history" of anything particular, except in the sense that not shooting a continuous video feed of every day from every angle and keeping it at highest quality settings forever robs history.
Photography is a selective process; I think the advantages of digital storage, sorting and transmission (though flawed) win hugely over film, even though film still has greater resolution for the most part part. (In some areas it's getting a *little* closer... or even a lot -- Hard to tell a lot of D1x images aren't film when you see them in typical magazine resolution.) For people with well-developed and pushed-to-the-limit conventional photo systems, the same thing might not hold, but I'm not one of them:)
The point is, you choose with any sort of photography what to commit to your sensor (film or ccd or coated tin plate or whatever) at several levels, by selecting your location (to the degree you can), the time of day (if possible), the light (if you can influence it), the awareness of your subject (if applicable), the type of lens, the depth of field, the shutter speed, whether handheld or tripod, etc. Great. Digital adds another level by allowing you to get rid of unsatisfactory ones and "magically" extend your blank space. Are all the lens cap shots in the world a valuable addition to history?;) Defending a technology for its accidental benefits I think needs a lot more than what she's portrayed here as offering. Maybe the full thesis would be more satisfying.
Well, I haven't measured -- but I also haven't noticed any difference. Certainly not cutting from 5 hours to 1. I'd be surprised if it makes even 20 minutes difference, but I'm not planning to take it out in order to run a controlled experiment:)
I really am somewhat disappointed in the battery life, but then again a spare battery is something I wish I had anyhow.
Hmmm -- I'm viewing it fine in a new tab in mozilla, just pasted it in straight from my post to check, shows 8 screen shots from Scribus...
Dunno why it shouldn't work for you, but you may want to look at http://apps.kde.com and scroll down to the entry for Scribus. This too works fine for me in Mozilla though, so maybe you'd encounter the same thing:(
I have a 2001 iBook. Apple claims 5 hours of battery life; I've never gotten more than 4:10, and usually closer to 3:40. I do like the machine, but... 5 hours would be a lot nicer, and considering the marketing, also a lot more honest. I'm going to be buying a 2nd battery, but don't kid yourself -- the 2nd battery will make it more acceptable, not as outstanding as the brochure says. Caveat emptor, etc etc. (Yes, set to maximum battery savings, too.) The airport card doesn't seem to change the battery life either direction, either; I was afraid that it would make it noticeably worse, but hasn't, and having it built in is nice enough to be worth a (moderate) battery life cut anyhow.
Besides not getting 5 hours (ever), the battery meter (at least under OS 9.1) is pretty jumpy, changing times pretty strangely, sometimes up, sometimes down.
When Mandrake 8.1 is ready for PPC, I would like to see what sort of battery life it gets.
timothy
My favorite KDE app to watch :) -- Scribus
on
Five Years of KDE
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· Score: 1
It may not be central to KDE the way konqueror is, but I like to see how frequently Scribus is being updated.
DTP was the killer app for the Macintosh / LaserWriter combination in the mid-80s, and while I know that's a long time back, there still isn't a great Free software replacement for PageMaker / Quark, and Scribus looks promishing that direction. (KWord does too, I must admit, but I like the Scribus look, a lot like the PageMaker I used to like a lot.)
I didn't know it when I began drafting this response, but Scribus now also has a nice new logo and home page design:
http://web2.altmuehlnet.de/fschmid/index.html
and has added more screenshots than were previously available to the KDE Apps page:
http://apps.kde.com/na/2/show/id/1064/ss
With a GPL'd DTP program, many school newspapers could save money by teaching generic, transferable skills that would apply to the Big Name Big Money applications as well, but which they ought not be spending tax dollars on on the basis that "kids need to be ready for the workplace" because the argument just doesn't hold up as a reason to buy proprietary software, at least when anything even plausibly similar exists under a decent license.
timothy
replies to self for clairification :)
on
Mozilla 0.9.5
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· Score: 2, Interesting
... " DANGER DANGER WILL ROBINSON use at own risk" is not to say that it's actually risky:) In fact, I find Mozilla (recent nightlies) closer to crash free than most other software I use, certainly on a per-hour browser, since I spend most waking hours in it of late.
I just mean, if the "one point zero" is that important, maybe the wrong things are being evaluated. I bet every release is tempting to call one point zero, but Hey, aren't "point zero" releases supposed to be unstable / expected-to-be-updated anyhow? When 1.0 comes, wait for the "why only 1.0?!" flame...
Mozilla developers, please ignore silly number flames.
timothy
p.s. time to break in 9.5 in Berlin:) Greetings to all from the KongreBhalle:)
they should start going backwards with the numbers
on
Mozilla 0.9.5
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· Score: 4, Funny
... until people start feeling grateful for 0.9.5;)
Or call it "one point oh beta minus initial release testing phase DANGER DANGER WILL ROBINSON use at own risk edition, AKA 'only 4 more points'"
That Mac use at NIH led to one of my favorite (though now well behind the times, I guess) pieces of free software (I think only little f free, though) on my old mac IIfx, the most expensive computer I have ever personally owned.
OK, now I'm inspired, and have just downloaded it to my iBook -- here's the main web site for Image:
http://rsb.info.nih.gov/nih-image/
Good stuff, and it turns out, full source code is available:), and there's a Windows knockoff too, and a similar progam for *nix in Java.
Some of the filters (I like erode and skeletonize) still hold up very very well, though I don't see a release date on here for the version I just grabbed...
I can't say it's *perfect* (what is?), but I am very happy with recent Mozilla builds (grabbing binaries from their site), don't find them crashy at all on either Linux (running on Mandrake and sometimes other distros, no real difference I've noticed) as well as Mac OS (9).
The tabs rock, the bookmarks are more manageable, and even the IRC client chatzilla is now quite nice. (Huge improvements there! Incredible progress, from 'barely useable, funny novelty' to 'Uhh, why was I starting that other program to do IRC?'*)
I find it faster and more stable than Netscape on the same hardware (midrange athlons and durons for the Linux machine, one has 128, one has 586 MB of RAM, the Mac is an iBook which worked fine with 128MB and now has 384).
Anyhow, maybe you're just hitting things I have no need for, but I can't see any 4.XX netscape being better in normal use than current mozilla...
And besides, (I hope that) Mozilla will never be "finished" no matter what numbers are attached to it... when it's finished, wouldn't that mean no more progress?
Tim
*Chatzilla is also not yet perfect, but it is a pretty good subset of perfect for my needs right now. Better DCC capabilities would be good, as would instant new channels for private msgs, like Xchat.
That's because the story took a minute to update after I inserted the link to that story, and it looks like he saw the unfilled link, rather than the filled one, and it really would have just pointed to Slashdot.:)
Hmmm -- you seem to be reading an awful lot into that comment that isn't there.
Actually, I quite like OS X on my iBook, though when I use the iBook, I keep it in system 9 most of the time anyhow, just because of the extra overhead that X takes up.
I will probably put on X 10.1, but probably when a bug-fix version comes out. Not for any specific bugs, just because I tend to be conservative about upgrading.
For the same reason, I haven't tried any of the various Linux-for-PPC distros on it yet, but I do plan to; Mandrake on my iBook would be pretty nice:)
look at linuxweeklynews.com and visit their weekly roundup of distributions.
Yes, a lot of them are small, and a lot are unmaintained. That there aren't hundreds of commercially successful distro makers isn't surprising -- what *would* be surprising is if no new ones emerged to take advantage of market openings when they become glaringly obvious:)
"90% of you people here think that it's ok to ban or prohibit people from using guns. Guns don't kill people.. people kill people. You disgusting group of hippocrites."
I wonder about the actual percentage of Slashdot readers who think that guns should be banned, or (say) are happy with the current level of gun-banning, which includes a de facto prohibition on the private ownership of handguns in many states, and certainly abridges the right "to keep and bear arms."
I suspect that it's a majority, but I doubt it's anything like 90 percent. Besides computers, a lot of people who read slashdot have other interests, and I've seen enough related comments to know that this occasionally includes guns.
Slashdot Mirror
When I bought the linksys (same model you did) a few weeks ago, I considered an SMC barricade (same model you did ;)). There were two things which made me choose the Linksys:
;)
1) Not fair, but when I got to the store (and boy, did I need the box that day, couldn't wait for mail order or I would have saved a bunch), they only had the Linksys in stock. OK, saved me 30 seconds of deliberation I suppose
2) When I last looked at the docs that came with a few SMC products (and Yes, it was at least a year ago), they were poorly written and skimpy anyhow. As the world's (or at least Slashdot's) least intuitive user of computers, I like documents that are written with consideration for users.
Despite Linksys (IMO foolish) lack of interest in Mac users' (and I was hooking this up to a friend's Mac), a) their configuration instructions weren't bad anyhow and b) I found a good online tutorial (which I would post the link to if I could find it here, bookmarked about 1000 miles away though) so it was quick work to attach it to the Mac. There were some difficulties, probably all attributable to inexperience, but it didn't take that long to attach.
So how would someone who's seen both compare (current) SMC and Linksys docs?
Cheers,
timothy
p.s. And are claims accurate that while 2 Linksys units can bridge wired networks with a wireless connection, SMC / Airport / others mostly cannot?
Sgifford wrote: "Having both is very cool for portability. I have one of the original Apple Airports, and I use it at home and at work on an Ethernet-based Internet connection, and at my girlfriend's apartment and during presentations with a modem-based Internet connection.
My only complaint is that it's awkward shape makes it hard to fit into my bag."
hear hear! I went with the linksys (the one with the 4-port switch, too) in part because it seemed more stable sitting on the top of a PC case than the Airport does, and in part because I had immediate need of the additional ethernet connections.
If apple would make a nice g4-translucent case but at least vaguely rectangular, with sturdy and stable rubber feet, and all the features of the current (new) AP, I would have bought that instead, and an additional little tiny linksys 10/100 switch in addition.
Oh well -- sometimes Apple makes aesthetically pleasing decisions, and sometimes they make aesthetically pleasing *and* practical decision. The shape of the adapter on my iBook unfortunately falls only under the first of these.
timothy
Hmmm. From the sound of what you wrote (and excepting the bit about the NEA), I don't think we're even coming from very different angles, actually ;) [At least narrowly ...]
;)
... it's definitely artistic, and a good example of how engineering projects can be beautiful -- I wonder (seriously, not something I have any idea about) whether Mr. Eiffel did intend it as art per se, as much as a demonstration of "what a cool thing I can build with steel."
Yes, Duchamp's Fountain is exactly the sort of thing I'm thinking about. Whether or not it's to my taste, and however "legitimate" I or anyone else thinks it is, if Duchamp called it art and meant it as art, his call as the work's creator trumps mine as an ill-bred, thick-headed, literalist critic. Sure, I might be the guy scoffing at it as "just a toilet" but I'd still consider myself to be making fun of an artwork, rather than denying an artist the right to define the intent of his work.
I see no reason that video games can't be art in the same sense, and often with about as much appreciation from me
Aside: The K-cars sucked, which may be the fault of the engineers, but surely they're not the most representive product of pure "engineering"! Unreliable, unergonomic pieces of junk that seemed to come most often in a shade of brown UPS turned down. (Now, a nice Volvo 240 wagon or a Volkswagen Beetle is a different story. Those I think the engineers can be proud of.)
The Eiffel tower I think is part of a thin overlap
And the NEA? Well, I think I have run out of shame on that count. Only in my darker moments would I concede that America "deserves" certain of the projects that money from that organization has supported. A fully voluntary NEA I'd be fine with (and there are plenty of art-supporting foundations) although I might have an aesthetic objection still, but so long as a penny of tax dollars go into it, I'm all for dismemberment -- immediate, complete and unapologetic. I'm unconvinced that the NEA contributes to the general welfare, and certain that collecting taxes for it does not. (As a pursuit of happiness issue, though, people can freely support even art which I wouldn't purchase for the lavish mansion I do not own.)
Cheers,
timothy
Why do people agonize about whether particular things can be "considered" art?
... again, a matter of intention. If I make an object with a long metal prong flattened into a small, blunted, flat-edge blade that happens to fit into the slot at the end of a woodscrew, and declare that the primary purpose and my artistic intent is for it to be manipulated by human hands to express the beauty of simple machines by inserting or removing screws from objects, Fine -- it's art that happens to serve as a screwdriver. That doesn't make every screwdriver art.
If you consider something to be art, who the heck is going to stop you? Other people might disagree (hey, my thoughts on art may vary from yours -- so what?) but that's about the extent of it.
Now given that, I don't particularly agree that video games are art, *unless that's what the creator intended*, in which case I have no objection -- then it's art. IMO (which one one else has to buy), Art is *intentional* - accidental doodles, sunsets, plants, shadows, streams or functional objects might be artful, or beautiful, or even artistic, but things get too floppy for me if anything that happens to look nice, or that makes you think, is automatically "art." Not everything sculptural (Zhang Ziyi, for instance, or a Nagra tape recorder) is actually sculpture.
Having groused that practical objects which happen to be pretty aren't, I would say that the other direction is not quite the same, though. An artwork could have a hands-on function which rendered it a useful object
Maybe this helps to explain why I think the money given to the NEA would be much better given to model rocket clubs around the country, or never taken from taxpayers in the first place.
timothy
They also had a higher-speed fixed service. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/221240
;) Similar service from Verizon is slightly cheaper, but it's also not available (at least in the flat-rate plan) all that far ... this is cheaper, for more speed, but of course, does mean living in places that most people don't want to live. (They don't look bad to me, necessarily -- I like cold, but not sure if I like it *quite* that much.)
Bird in hand, two in bush
Well, there's hope of it, anyhow --4 .
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/05/22920
It would be a shame for all that infrastructure to go to waste -- 128Kbps, flat rate, is really all I need for the most part. Sure, I like cable modems, DSL, and faster things when I have them to use, but on a day-t'-day basis, 128 wireless and flat-rate would be not bad. However, this stuff is so far still too localized for me to buy a Honda Goldwing and roam the country with an always-connected laptop. Low-Earth-Orbit Satellites are what I'm looking for.
Cheers,
timothy
Vivid is known for putting to use some of the interesting features of the DVD format (like multiple angles / "story" jumping akin to Choose Your Own Adventure, but ... with naked people) while mainstream filmmakers mostly haven't.
One of the features they have apparenly added is a 3-D walkthrough as a menu-choosing function (navigate choices by browsing, first-person-like through a hallway in their simulated House O' Skin). Perhaps someone with a functioning DVD player can better comment on this.
Added to which, they have a big online / computer interest if not presence (the vivid studio head, whose name I forget, gets shown / interviewed on TV sometimes talking about such), so this seems like a natural fit for them.
timothy
1) provided a low-priced foil to the high-priced (and , IMO, consistently superior) Mac OS. I call the Mac OS high-priced because of the bundled hardware, compared to the combo of a low-end Windows machine and some variety of Windows. An iBook vs. a capability-comparable and similarly sized Windows notebook I wouldn't call high-priced, though. But in the mid-80s, it was a lot cheaper to get a funtional computer running DOS (and then primitive Windows) than a Macintosh. The existence of Windows probably improved the Mac OS just by being a competitor, and likewise the existence of Mac and MS OSes makes Linux and other Free software better.
1 0892), and I hope they do, but do not expect that.
2) DOS -- see #3
3) Marketing computers as tools and playthings for everyone's desk / home / whatever. Marketing, as in "Sara has a degree in Marketing, too bad she didn't get into Med school," can be a dirty word. But if you squint your eyes a bit and think happy thoughts about the wonders of the free market, and think of marketing as in "exploring and opening markets, raising awareness of the availability and capabilities of your chosen object," then marketing can go straight into the Good Things About Capitalism checklist. MS has done plenty of both kinds of marketing -- scammy and misleading, and logically persuasive, idea-building. Since I'm listing good things, I'm using it in the second sense. Microsoft didn't originally write DOS, they bought it and *marketed* it.
And in the good sense of marketing, choosing relatively low prices for many of their products is also a part of marketing, and one that they've done well at. Considering the capabilities of MS software, they've brought capabilities that were unavailable 20 years ago outside of printing houses to a huge audience.
Is $400 too much for an office suite? Sure -- for me, and for a lot of other people who either copy them from work, use cheaper competitors like Lotus Smart Suite, Free software, or do without. OK. It's a big world, people can do different things happily. But not that long ago, there's no way someone could have paid the equivalent of $900 dollars for a decent word processor, a 1200dpi printer, a scanner, a monitor and a CD-RW drive, not to mention enough storage to hold what wasn't so long ago much more than the world's entire store of written knowledge. Now someone can go to Walmart and get that, POP.
On with the sticky praise: Getting a working computer with useful applications is now cheap, and MS has a lot to do with that. If it wasn't them, it would have been someone else. In an alternate universe, everyone has beta VCRs, too, metric wrenches adjust automatically to fit True measurements, and computers come standard with several operating systems to choose at bootup.
Basically, what I like about MS is that they have helped to popularize computers.
4) MS Research does some cool stuff. Smart people, most of whom I doubt care much about Microsoft the company nearly as much as they enjoy tweaking things in the world, learning things, codifying knowledge they already have, etc.
5) Entertainment value. Steve Ballmer's monkey dance alone is an attempt to justify XP's horrible, invasive licensing issues. Not enough, though, but at least it's a try.
More generally, I have friends who work or have worked there, and I think MS is often treated unfairly. However, *parts* of MS also spew FUD about every other software maker, and they're obviously worried about the obvious advantages which Free software has over a one-vendor, one-way approach to the world. They should be. As I posted on another occasion, though, I think MS could easily become the world's largest vendor of Free software (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23303&cid=25
timothy
p.s. Don't have room here for all the bad things. Unbalance, I know, I know.
I agree with you. I bear no animus toward MS per se, though they've employed some some crummy marketing tactics at times. I don't like their licensing overmuch (in fact, I think it's horrible), nor some of (what I consider to be) their anti-user attitude (everything possible to get rid of MP3s), high prices, ever-shifting file formats, etc, but there's either nothing or little that *I* (speaking for myself, no one else) believe ought to be criminally liable or lead to government interference. However, I feel that way about most things, not just MS ;) I wish well for my friends who work or have worked there, and think MS has some very good aspects.
...") I like to argue for Free SW as being similar to blueprints -- would you want to hire an architect who refused to let you have a copy of the blueprints and other technical documents? If MS didn't exist, the argument remains.
... at a certain level, sure, one system's gain means other systems' loss. But naturally, not that simple -- the market for OSes isn't static, and won't ever be static. I prefer Free software philosophically (and because it's often outstanding, philosophy notwithstanding), but I'd rather people use multiple operating systems anyhow, even if some of them are proprietary. People learn that way, projects are cross pollinated with different ideas. (Also, this enourages universal file formats, my personal small utopian wish.) As you hint, the person computer relationship is complicated, not simple at all, and you can't just start subtracting "them" from "us" to get any meaningful numbers. Them is Us, and sometimes vice versa.
/. readers (80? 75? 85?) are reading with IE on a Windows machine, or [IE,Netscape] on a Mac running Mac OS. Sure, I hope they're at least somewhat intrigued by Free / free SW, but it's just not the case that most readers are MS free. A lot of people feel trapped, and say they "can't" get rid of it, even if they (otherwise) want to, because they have a certain game / piece of hardware / etc. that they want to continue to use. Hard to argue against, but then again, humans are always balancing wishes. If you don't want to use MS, it's still possible to live a relatively productive life, sleep at night etc.
:) That would perhaps make the box worth buying, take advantage of the MS name, etc.
My arguments for non-MS software aren't dependent on Microsoft (if it wasn't them being Microsoft, someone else would be the largest closed-source vvendor, of course), but it does serve as a convenient example sometimes. ("You'd rather have a proprietary WP format from a crash-worthy, bloated program? OK, give me $400
You wrote: "Now for the authors here, I can almost see a reason to want MS to lose market share. Their readership is made almost entirely of linux users and they are operating under the assumption that for there to be more linux users, there will have to be less MS users as if the number of potential computer users were a finite quantity of persons and organizations that will use MS *or* linux."
Well, there are a couple of statements in there
Speaking of which: I dunno current numbers, but I bet way more than 50% of
I'm writing from an iBook which is destined to hold Mandrake 8.1 (when it's ready for PPC) but in the meantime has an OS as proprietary as Windows, depending on who's counting*). Compared to my linux desktops, there are good and bad things -- one of the bad is that I can't just loan the OS to friends so they can, say, use the GIMP, which most people want to do after even a quick demo.
My personal hope, too, is that MS becomes the world's largest Free Software vendor. I can't say there's "no reason" they couldn't be that in 18 months from now (though I have said that on occasion), but it certainly would be posssible. Imagine MS-branded cross-platform free software, with certificates for limited MS support instead of an insane license agreement
Anyhow, just a small rant re: what the authors think (rather, what one of the thinks), and the conflict or imagagined conflict among various OSes and devpt systems. In sum, I like Free but respect closed source software as one way to organize things which is perfectly within the rights of the developers to choose. OTOH, speaking as a taxpayer, for anything the government buys, I think Open sure makes a better investment in the commonweal, encourages pursuit of happiness better, etc, discourages horrible code on teh taxpayer dime, etc.
Cheers,
timothy
This is the most concise (and best) summary I've seen of a rational way to approach not just this but possibly-offensive materials of any kind! It's even a reasonable .sig file!
Assume the worst, hope for the best, don't read in any warranties or promises that aren't given, be mad as hell when *actual* promises are made and broken. Lots of things are bad, most things one (*any* one; anyone) can say are offensive somewhere or other. No escape from the "Life is Risky" clause.
[Please mod up the parent, since I just lost my chance to!]
Cheers,
timothy
I just disagree completely with her claims. (Well, not "completely," since they have certain truthful elements, but I do disagree with her conclusions.)
;)
... OK, could happen), but it would also mean that I could take images I more wanted to keep in the first place.
... with film, this would be such a hassle I probably never would.
... whatever the number, they still want to take images worth keeping -- not just shoot randomly to play some very high odds. Editing is part of it, and I bet most photographers would say they edit 99% of their shots just by choosing when to squeeze the release.
... or even a lot -- Hard to tell a lot of D1x images aren't film when you see them in typical magazine resolution.) For people with well-developed and pushed-to-the-limit conventional photo systems, the same thing might not hold, but I'm not one of them :)
;) Defending a technology for its accidental benefits I think needs a lot more than what she's portrayed here as offering. Maybe the full thesis would be more satisfying.
Conventional photography does have some advantages, among them the fact that it's often easier to keep unwanted photos around (in the form of negatives at least) than to discard them. OK. That's interesting and good, in a glass-half-full way. Books also trap insects sometimes, so they're useful to historical entomologists who want to see what mites Napoleon kept in his diary -- OK. True, and perhaps occasionally with highly interesting outcomes, but I think at heart still a trivial claim.
If you had film that you *could* re-use if you were unsatisfied with the image it contained, or if you were simply running short of film, would you? I would. I have taken a lot of crap photographs in my life, and would trade much for that ability
That would mean dropping some possibly interesting shots, sure (30 years from now, I might find that the newest President was my age and on vacation at the same beach I was in 1998, and want to see if I had an accidental shot of him making dirty gestures at lifeguards
Hypothetical losses vs. quantifiable gains puts a pretty big burden of proof on the hypothetical losses before I'm interested.
I find negatives a lot more annoying than digital files, but then I'm spoiled by digital in a lot of ways. On the trip I just took to Austin, I took a lot of pictures, showed them to the subject or emailed them the results
And really, the idea that we're "losing information" because digital allows easy deletion / overwriting of data I think is spurious in the first place. I dunno how many exposures the typical pro photographer carries for a day of shooting -- perhaps 500? I bet less than a thousand, anyhow
Film is finite, even when you have a lot of it -- people don't indiscriminantly shoot film, no matter *how* much they have, if only because it might mean missing an anticipated vital moment because it's time to change rolls. Ever roll shot takes time / money / attention to develop and choose images -- being able (for instance) to knock out the top and bottom of a bracketed series doesn't "rob history" of anything particular, except in the sense that not shooting a continuous video feed of every day from every angle and keeping it at highest quality settings forever robs history.
Photography is a selective process; I think the advantages of digital storage, sorting and transmission (though flawed) win hugely over film, even though film still has greater resolution for the most part part. (In some areas it's getting a *little* closer
The point is, you choose with any sort of photography what to commit to your sensor (film or ccd or coated tin plate or whatever) at several levels, by selecting your location (to the degree you can), the time of day (if possible), the light (if you can influence it), the awareness of your subject (if applicable), the type of lens, the depth of field, the shutter speed, whether handheld or tripod, etc. Great. Digital adds another level by allowing you to get rid of unsatisfactory ones and "magically" extend your blank space. Are all the lens cap shots in the world a valuable addition to history?
cheers,
timothy
Nope.
Well, I haven't measured -- but I also haven't noticed any difference. Certainly not cutting from 5 hours to 1. I'd be surprised if it makes even 20 minutes difference, but I'm not planning to take it out in order to run a controlled experiment :)
I really am somewhat disappointed in the battery life, but then again a spare battery is something I wish I had anyhow.
timothy
Hmmm -- I'm viewing it fine in a new tab in mozilla, just pasted it in straight from my post to check, shows 8 screen shots from Scribus ...
:(
Dunno why it shouldn't work for you, but you may want to look at http://apps.kde.com and scroll down to the entry for Scribus. This too works fine for me in Mozilla though, so maybe you'd encounter the same thing
timothy
I have a 2001 iBook. Apple claims 5 hours of battery life; I've never gotten more than 4:10, and usually closer to 3:40. I do like the machine, but ... 5 hours would be a lot nicer, and considering the marketing, also a lot more honest. I'm going to be buying a 2nd battery, but don't kid yourself -- the 2nd battery will make it more acceptable, not as outstanding as the brochure says. Caveat emptor, etc etc. (Yes, set to maximum battery savings, too.) The airport card doesn't seem to change the battery life either direction, either; I was afraid that it would make it noticeably worse, but hasn't, and having it built in is nice enough to be worth a (moderate) battery life cut anyhow.
Besides not getting 5 hours (ever), the battery meter (at least under OS 9.1) is pretty jumpy, changing times pretty strangely, sometimes up, sometimes down.
When Mandrake 8.1 is ready for PPC, I would like to see what sort of battery life it gets.
timothy
It may not be central to KDE the way konqueror is, but I like to see how frequently Scribus is being updated.
DTP was the killer app for the Macintosh / LaserWriter combination in the mid-80s, and while I know that's a long time back, there still isn't a great Free software replacement for PageMaker / Quark, and Scribus looks promishing that direction. (KWord does too, I must admit, but I like the Scribus look, a lot like the PageMaker I used to like a lot.)
I didn't know it when I began drafting this response, but Scribus now also has a nice new logo and home page design:
http://web2.altmuehlnet.de/fschmid/index.html
and has added more screenshots than were previously available to the KDE Apps page:
http://apps.kde.com/na/2/show/id/1064/ss
With a GPL'd DTP program, many school newspapers could save money by teaching generic, transferable skills that would apply to the Big Name Big Money applications as well, but which they ought not be spending tax dollars on on the basis that "kids need to be ready for the workplace" because the argument just doesn't hold up as a reason to buy proprietary software, at least when anything even plausibly similar exists under a decent license.
timothy
... " DANGER DANGER WILL ROBINSON use at own risk" is not to say that it's actually risky :) In fact, I find Mozilla (recent nightlies) closer to crash free than most other software I use, certainly on a per-hour browser, since I spend most waking hours in it of late.
...
:) Greetings to all from the KongreBhalle :)
I just mean, if the "one point zero" is that important, maybe the wrong things are being evaluated. I bet every release is tempting to call one point zero, but Hey, aren't "point zero" releases supposed to be unstable / expected-to-be-updated anyhow? When 1.0 comes, wait for the "why only 1.0?!" flame
Mozilla developers, please ignore silly number flames.
timothy
p.s. time to break in 9.5 in Berlin
... until people start feeling grateful for 0.9.5 ;)
.9.5 now, but .9.4 is sweet.
Or call it "one point oh beta minus initial release testing phase DANGER DANGER WILL ROBINSON use at own risk edition, AKA 'only 4 more points'"
At any rate, I'll grab
Tim
That Mac use at NIH led to one of my favorite (though now well behind the times, I guess) pieces of free software (I think only little f free, though) on my old mac IIfx, the most expensive computer I have ever personally owned.
:), and there's a Windows knockoff too, and a similar progam for *nix in Java.
...
OK, now I'm inspired, and have just downloaded it to my iBook -- here's the main web site for Image:
http://rsb.info.nih.gov/nih-image/
Good stuff, and it turns out, full source code is available
Some of the filters (I like erode and skeletonize) still hold up very very well, though I don't see a release date on here for the version I just grabbed
timothy
Hmmm.
...
... when it's finished, wouldn't that mean no more progress?
I can't say it's *perfect* (what is?), but I am very happy with recent Mozilla builds (grabbing binaries from their site), don't find them crashy at all on either Linux (running on Mandrake and sometimes other distros, no real difference I've noticed) as well as Mac OS (9).
The tabs rock, the bookmarks are more manageable, and even the IRC client chatzilla is now quite nice. (Huge improvements there! Incredible progress, from 'barely useable, funny novelty' to 'Uhh, why was I starting that other program to do IRC?'*)
I find it faster and more stable than Netscape on the same hardware (midrange athlons and durons for the Linux machine, one has 128, one has 586 MB of RAM, the Mac is an iBook which worked fine with 128MB and now has 384).
Anyhow, maybe you're just hitting things I have no need for, but I can't see any 4.XX netscape being better in normal use than current mozilla
And besides, (I hope that) Mozilla will never be "finished" no matter what numbers are attached to it
Tim
*Chatzilla is also not yet perfect, but it is a pretty good subset of perfect for my needs right now. Better DCC capabilities would be good, as would instant new channels for private msgs, like Xchat.
That's because the story took a minute to update after I inserted the link to that story, and it looks like he saw the unfilled link, rather than the filled one, and it really would have just pointed to Slashdot. :)
timothy
Hmmm -- you seem to be reading an awful lot into that comment that isn't there.
:)
Actually, I quite like OS X on my iBook, though when I use the iBook, I keep it in system 9 most of the time anyhow, just because of the extra overhead that X takes up.
I will probably put on X 10.1, but probably when a bug-fix version comes out. Not for any specific bugs, just because I tend to be conservative about upgrading.
For the same reason, I haven't tried any of the various Linux-for-PPC distros on it yet, but I do plan to; Mandrake on my iBook would be pretty nice
Why not lighten up, eh?
timothy
look at linuxweeklynews.com and visit their weekly roundup of distributions.
:)
Yes, a lot of them are small, and a lot are unmaintained. That there aren't hundreds of commercially successful distro makers isn't surprising -- what *would* be surprising is if no new ones emerged to take advantage of market openings when they become glaringly obvious
timothy
for several more years, anyhow.
And my wallet is allergic to politicians.
timothy
I suspect that it's a majority, but I doubt it's anything like 90 percent. Besides computers, a lot of people who read slashdot have other interests, and I've seen enough related comments to know that this occasionally includes guns.
timothy