The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was. (La Rochefoucauld)
almost anybody can pluck up their vocal chords, and sing an incredible song like 'let it be'.. but it takes a john lennon or paul mcCartney to originate and write the song.. everyone had access to the same technologies and components, but apple made a series of deliberate design decisions which raised the bar to what was expected in a phone. samsung copied, just like microsoft windows copied apple — which got its concepts form xerox, and those back to douglas englebart.
now it looks like samsung has now got to give a billion bucks o credit where it is due — wonder if apple should go back and pay xerox parc for developing the concepts for the GUI, network, and object-oriented code (oh wait, they already did).
microsoft oto got away without paying anything for ripping off the mac (thx to msr bush) when they were found engaging in monopolistic practices by (foolishly, by technical standards) tying the browser to the OS in order to gain dominance over netscape (the original entry, and explorer was a clone; just as excel was a clone off dan bricklin's visicalc)..
back in the birth of the PC computer daaays it was ALL sharing - you gave your circuit designs away (apple II schematics and source code came with the machine - as was common practice - and still is today with open source today). it wasnt until the money people came into it that people started getting all legal about what should come naturally -- sharing and playing nice in the sandbox of the tech world..:-^
you may be able to get a clueless user to launch VNC server in under ten minutess of painful explanation..
but to then be able to talk a clueless user through how to enable port forwarding for port 5900 to their router IP on any given router they may happen to have.. over the phone... i have done it, but it was more than painful -- get them to find out the router ip; get them to type it into browser. pray they havent lost the posty w the router admin password.. no not the wifi password. ok, i found you a list of default router passwords.. yess hold the paperclip for 30 seconds.. login (half hour later).. okay, send me a screenshot of the router's webpage, instruct them how to do a screenshot over the phone (cmd shift 3.. no, dont hold the 3...!!).. instruct them how to attach a file to their yahoo mail.. email it to me.. half hour later.. okay, now we know what youre seeing, do blah blah blah to enable port forwarding of port 5900 to your ip, and click apply.. back to finding, downloading and installing vnc server, because youre still running osx 10.4..!?! another half hour. great.. types password, and we're in -- good, now i can install that scanner driver that was hanging on you because you tried to install the version for snow leopard..:-%
it is truly niave to think you can talk a clueless user through setting up vnc and enabling port forwarding over the phone if you havent previously been there yourself in person to setup the session.
The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media. (Former CIA Director, William Colby)
the chineese can build backdoors into the chips, because they do the manufacturing, but this sort of spying activity is not so much different than the american government / snoops requiring installation of their IP sniffers at google and every major ISP..:-\\
they are both a form of censorship / control of communication — however, whereas the chineese govt tries to simply block dissenting traffic, the americans allow the traffic to flow, in order to allow it to lead them to the identify of whom they're after..
you might have a fancy club n all - but if all yr friends are down at the pub, where you gonna go??
nobody's going to switch from facebook unless all 300 of their friends have magically switched to another service at the same time as they have - this is why google's social network never caught on. having another social network with only twenty of yr friends is useless if the other 270 are still on facebook.
we're looking for a gene that 'causes' intelligence — while we forget it is we ourselves who actually *think* — and as such, we can know the processes of intelligence from the inside, and with understanding.
perhaps it is not so much a 'gene that causes intelligence' — so much as an *attitude* that yields results. a critical attitude closes us off from intelligence, while being open/transparent to the perceptions available yields its secrets — the whispers of knowledge from nature are ours to hear if we have the inner disposition to calmly listen.. as the good dr. steiner recounts:
"Our civilization is more inclined to criticize, judge, and condemn than to feel devotion and selfless veneration.. But just as surely as every feeling of devotion and reverence nurtures the soul's powers for knowledge.. so every act of criticism and judgement drives these powers away..
"As the sun's rays quicken all living things, so reverence in us quickens all the feelings in the soul. At first glance, it is not easy to believe that feelings of reverence and respect are in any way connected with knowledge. This is because we tend to see cognition as an isolated faculty that has no connection whatsoever with anything else going on in our souls... Disrespect, antipathy, and disparaging admirable things, on the other hand, paralyze and slay our cognitive activities." (R.S., HTKHW)
-- "It is the still, small voice that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom." (William Dean Howells)
its not just the device.. an ipad with a bluetooth keyboard/cover is great and all.. and i keep most of my own notes in ascii files in bbedit on osx.. but a paper pad offers conveniences that involve no freeform editor modes.. the software needs to be good too - Dan Bricklin (who invented the spreadshhet / visicalc - has lately written 'Note Taker' for the ipad.. gives you the software that makes all the difference - which is more than just choosing between any generic device without regard to the usability of the software for note taking.
in terms of how many total users are helped — putting resources behind OSX will get more users helped then the bang for the buck being spent supporting fractional-percent niches.
A vulgar mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done, but if he is in error, he knows not how to find it out and correct it;... Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure, force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub. (Isaak Newton, in a letter to Nathaniel Hawes)
in canada - you are not an engineer, unless you've been professionally credited as an engineer. what you are is a professional software programmer — to call yourself an engineer when you are not is akin to adding a: PhD after your name when you never actually received those honours. so stop abusing the term.
(i'm an amateur coder myself, but i strive for excellence in what i do)
no, it is Fahrenheit that is weird.. 32 for freezing is totally arbitrary, and what was the boiling point..? try 0 for ice freezes, and 100 for water boils.. now that is simple.. but i guess you get used to what you grow up with.. even if it is as crazy and arbitrary as the imperial system (or like microsoft html, with gallons meaning something different depending on what country you happen to be in (i live in canada, and americans never knew the difference between a regular gallon vs their bastardized version of a gallon)..
imperial measurements with their 3 feet to a yard, and 12" to a foot - blech.. good riddance. there's a good reason science is done in metric.. but some backwaters of the world just cant let go of their croaks to the mile.. pfft.:-p
oh great, the hellfire missiles are coming in.. and your enemy just discovered they can do: uuddlrlrba to disable your whole swarm of UAVs.
opening up mission critical apps to game devs who are used to putting in back-doors and cheat codes without line-by-line code review when lives are on the line?!?! hmmm..
i run my iphone with the local-sync only - the contacts and calendars go between my hard disk, usb cable, and iphone ONLY - i have totally switched off the 'sync to the iCloud' - unlike google - the contact info is nowhere except on my hard drive and my phone.
you have the option (and convenience) of using the cloud if you want to - but unlike google, iCloud isn't required, you can set it to run completely locally, and in iOS 5, you can turn off your navigation services, and you're pretty good.
however, all cell phones still track all incoming and outgoing phone numbers, that the time and length of those calls - you're not going to get around that -- so, if you get rid of the phone, and run it completely on the internet with skype (which is registered somewhere anyway) -- you could do it all with an ipod touch. at least that way, you don't have the long trail of phone calls, numbers, and times following you.
| I have no interest in wasting any of my precious time | taking classes in English, Philosophy, History, Art | and the like. While these fields are useful and | perhaps enriching, they will not contribute | to making me better at my job
this is a narrow view, an perhaps runs counter to the well-rounded nature of what a *bachelor of science* may imply.
also, some people might differ with you though in regards to the 'not contributing to making you better at your job'.
this whole address is really worth a read:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html > > Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I > decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned > about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space > between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography > great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that > science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. > > None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. > But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh > computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. > It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never > dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never > had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows > just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have > them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this > calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful > typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots > looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear > looking backwards ten years later. > > (Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement address, 2005)
there is no conspiracy - simple is hard, and the elderly have a harder time learning the new (as computers essentially are). sometimes you just cant teach an old dog new tricks.:->
"Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple". (Charles Mingus)
> Teaching children how to play chess will only > improve their skills in one area - playing chess..
no - that's wrong - learning chess helps you think clearly in other parts of your life too, and it expurges faulty reasoning. if you dont think so - try it. but don't take my word for it -- as Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1750 in 'The Morals of Chess':
The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement;
several very valuable qualities of mind, useful in the course
of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so
as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is
a kind of Chess...By playing at Chess then, we may learn:
1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers
the consequences that may attend an action.
2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board,
or scene of action—the relation of the several pieces and
their situations...
3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily...
--
if we could cultivate just those qualities in our schools, maybe we'd avert other disasters down the line..
In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this [cosmic religious] feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it. (Albert Einstein)
In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this [cosmic religious] feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it. (Albert Einstein)
i was already working on 'audiobrain' for pChess - mapping move scores to pitch, but jon stokes system for mapping square values to note and octave makes too much sense - using Bflat for B, and Bnatural for the H column is just genius, and provides the missing link - i sense a new feature coming to pChess..:-}
hope they have integration with bicycles -- if the new system is anything as good as germany's existing system, it will be amazing. in germany, they have an incredible integration of subway and regional trains, and all station platforms are level with the train - so you can roll bikes on and off the train at any stop, and it continues with bike paths.. it makes getting from A-B with bikes and trains pretty seamless. although, in america, maybe just having a place to lock your bike up at the station might be considered progress.
nice design - but it sucks, because for years, i could read/. just fine on my iphone.. but now i cant -- all the text has become microscopic. you have broken what was working just fine -- the wider columns make the text extremely tiny and hard to read.
no -- i do not want a mobile version of slashdot, because then i cant pinch-zoom images any more. just give us the old font size/column widths back.
i knew it -- he got his plan from johnny cash --:-D
One Piece at at Time
Well, I left Kentucky back in '49 An' went to Detroit workin' on a 'sembly line The first year they had me puttin' wheels on cadillacs
Every day I'd watch them beauties roll by And sometimes I'd hang my head and cry 'Cause I always wanted me one that was long and black.
One day I devised myself a plan That should be the envy of most any man I'd sneak it out of there in a lunchbox in my hand Now gettin' caught meant gettin' fired But I figured I'd have it all by the time I retired I'd have me a car worth at least a hundred grand.
CHORUS I'd get it one piece at a time And it wouldn't cost me a dime You'll know it's me when I come through your town I'm gonna ride around in style I'm gonna drive everybody wild 'Cause I'll have the only one there is a round.
(Written by W. Kemp; Recorded by Johnny Cash, 1976)
Slashdot Mirror
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was. (La Rochefoucauld)
almost anybody can pluck up their vocal chords, and sing an incredible song like 'let it be'.. but it takes a john lennon or paul mcCartney to originate and write the song.. everyone had access to the same technologies and components, but apple made a series of deliberate design decisions which raised the bar to what was expected in a phone. samsung copied, just like microsoft windows copied apple — which got its concepts form xerox, and those back to douglas englebart.
now it looks like samsung has now got to give a billion bucks o credit where it is due — wonder if apple should go back and pay xerox parc for developing the concepts for the GUI, network, and object-oriented code (oh wait, they already did).
microsoft oto got away without paying anything for ripping off the mac (thx to msr bush) when they were found engaging in monopolistic practices by (foolishly, by technical standards) tying the browser to the OS in order to gain dominance over netscape (the original entry, and explorer was a clone; just as excel was a clone off dan bricklin's visicalc)..
back in the birth of the PC computer daaays it was ALL sharing - you gave your circuit designs away (apple II schematics and source code came with the machine - as was common practice - and still is today with open source today). it wasnt until the money people came into it that people started getting all legal about what should come naturally -- sharing and playing nice in the sandbox of the tech world.. :-^
2cents from toronto island
jp
you may be able to get a clueless user to launch VNC server in under ten minutess of painful explanation..
but to then be able to talk a clueless user through how to enable port forwarding for port 5900 to their router IP on any given router they may happen to have.. over the phone... i have done it, but it was more than painful -- get them to find out the router ip; get them to type it into browser. pray they havent lost the posty w the router admin password.. no not the wifi password. ok, i found you a list of default router passwords.. yess hold the paperclip for 30 seconds.. login (half hour later).. okay, send me a screenshot of the router's webpage, instruct them how to do a screenshot over the phone (cmd shift 3.. no, dont hold the 3...!!).. instruct them how to attach a file to their yahoo mail.. email it to me.. half hour later.. okay, now we know what youre seeing, do blah blah blah to enable port forwarding of port 5900 to your ip, and click apply.. back to finding, downloading and installing vnc server, because youre still running osx 10.4..!?! another half hour. great.. types password, and we're in -- good, now i can install that scanner driver that was hanging on you because you tried to install the version for snow leopard.. :-%
it is truly niave to think you can talk a clueless user through setting up vnc and enabling port forwarding over the phone if you havent previously been there yourself in person to setup the session.
2cents from toronto island
jp
The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media. (Former CIA Director, William Colby)
the chineese can build backdoors into the chips, because they do the manufacturing, but this sort of spying activity is not so much different than the american government / snoops requiring installation of their IP sniffers at google and every major ISP.. :-\\
they are both a form of censorship / control of communication — however, whereas the chineese govt tries to simply block dissenting traffic, the americans allow the traffic to flow, in order to allow it to lead them to the identify of whom they're after..
you might have a fancy club n all - but if all yr friends are down at the pub, where you gonna go??
nobody's going to switch from facebook unless all 300 of their friends have magically switched to another service at the same time as they have - this is why google's social network never caught on. having another social network with only twenty of yr friends is useless if the other 270 are still on facebook.
2cents from toronto
jp
we're looking for a gene that 'causes' intelligence — while we forget it is we ourselves who actually *think* — and as such, we can know the processes of intelligence from the inside, and with understanding.
perhaps it is not so much a 'gene that causes intelligence' — so much as an *attitude* that yields results. a critical attitude closes us off from intelligence, while being open/transparent to the perceptions available yields its secrets — the whispers of knowledge from nature are ours to hear if we have the inner disposition to calmly listen.. as the good dr. steiner recounts:
"Our civilization is more inclined to criticize, judge, and condemn than to feel devotion and selfless veneration.. But just as surely as every feeling of devotion and reverence nurtures the soul's powers for knowledge.. so every act of criticism and judgement drives these powers away..
"As the sun's rays quicken all living things, so reverence in us quickens all the feelings in the soul. At first glance, it is not easy to believe that feelings of reverence and respect are in any way connected with knowledge. This is because we tend to see cognition as an isolated faculty that has no connection whatsoever with anything else going on in our souls... Disrespect, antipathy, and disparaging admirable things, on the other hand, paralyze and slay our cognitive activities." (R.S., HTKHW)
--
"It is the still, small voice that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom." (William Dean Howells)
its not just the device.. an ipad with a bluetooth keyboard/cover is great and all.. and i keep most of my own notes in ascii files in bbedit on osx.. but a paper pad offers conveniences that involve no freeform editor modes.. the software needs to be good too - Dan Bricklin (who invented the spreadshhet / visicalc - has lately written 'Note Taker' for the ipad.. gives you the software that makes all the difference - which is more than just choosing between any generic device without regard to the usability of the software for note taking.
2cents from toronto island
jp
in terms of how many total users are helped — putting resources behind OSX will get more users helped then the bang for the buck being spent supporting fractional-percent niches.
2cents
j
have you trie using an (ahem).. keyboard?
the regular bluetooth keyboard is supported on the ipad as easily as on a mac.
2cents
jp
Isaak Newton put it well —
A vulgar mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done,
but if he is in error, he knows not how to find it out and correct it;...
Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure,
force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub.
(Isaak Newton, in a letter to Nathaniel Hawes)
that about covers it.
2cents from toronto island
jp
in canada - you are not an engineer, unless you've been professionally credited as an engineer.
what you are is a professional software programmer — to call yourself an engineer when
you are not is akin to adding a: PhD after your name when you never actually received those honours.
so stop abusing the term.
(i'm an amateur coder myself, but i strive for excellence in what i do)
best regards from toronto island
j
no, it is Fahrenheit that is weird.. 32 for freezing is totally arbitrary, and what was the boiling point..? try 0 for ice freezes, and 100 for water boils.. now that is simple.. but i guess you get used to what you grow up with.. even if it is as crazy and arbitrary as the imperial system (or like microsoft html, with gallons meaning something different depending on what country you happen to be in (i live in canada, and americans never knew the difference between a regular gallon vs their bastardized version of a gallon)..
imperial measurements with their 3 feet to a yard, and 12" to a foot - blech.. good riddance. there's a good reason science is done in metric.. but some backwaters of the world just cant let go of their croaks to the mile.. pfft. :-p
2cents from toronto
j
oh great, the hellfire missiles are coming in.. and your enemy just discovered they can do: uuddlrlrba to disable your whole swarm of UAVs.
opening up mission critical apps to game devs who are used to putting in back-doors and cheat codes without line-by-line code review when lives are on the line?!?! hmmm..
i run my iphone with the local-sync only - the contacts and calendars go between my hard disk, usb cable, and iphone ONLY - i have totally switched off the 'sync to the iCloud' - unlike google - the contact info is nowhere except on my hard drive and my phone.
you have the option (and convenience) of using the cloud if you want to - but unlike google, iCloud isn't required, you can set it to run completely locally, and in iOS 5, you can turn off your navigation services, and you're pretty good.
however, all cell phones still track all incoming and outgoing phone numbers, that the time and length of those calls - you're not going to get around that -- so, if you get rid of the phone, and run it completely on the internet with skype (which is registered somewhere anyway) -- you could do it all with an ipod touch. at least that way, you don't have the long trail of phone calls, numbers, and times following you.
2cents
jp
one good clunk oughta do it - anything that dents the platters.
2cents from rainy toronto
its about time. i remember when we got our first roundabout here in hamilton (ontario, canada).
as for the critics - i don't get it - are they saying americans are too stupid to figure out something as basic as a roundabout??
2cents from toronto
j
| I have no interest in wasting any of my precious time
| taking classes in English, Philosophy, History, Art
| and the like. While these fields are useful and
| perhaps enriching, they will not contribute
| to making me better at my job
this is a narrow view, an perhaps runs counter to the
well-rounded nature of what a *bachelor of science* may imply.
also, some people might differ with you though in regards to
the 'not contributing to making you better at your job'.
this whole address is really worth a read:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
>
> Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I
> decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned
> about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space
> between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography
> great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that
> science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
>
> None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.
> But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh
> computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac.
> It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never
> dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never
> had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows
> just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have
> them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this
> calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful
> typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots
> looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear
> looking backwards ten years later.
>
> (Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement address, 2005)
--
there is no conspiracy - simple is hard, and the elderly have a harder time learning the new (as computers essentially are). sometimes you just cant teach an old dog new tricks. :->
"Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple". (Charles Mingus)
> Teaching children how to play chess will only
> improve their skills in one area - playing chess..
no - that's wrong - learning chess helps you think clearly in other parts of your life too,
and it expurges faulty reasoning. if you dont think so - try it. but don't take my word
for it -- as Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1750 in 'The Morals of Chess':
The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement;
several very valuable qualities of mind, useful in the course
of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so
as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is
a kind of Chess...By playing at Chess then, we may learn:
1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers
the consequences that may attend an action.
2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board,
or scene of action—the relation of the several pieces and
their situations...
3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily...
--
if we could cultivate just those qualities in our schools, maybe we'd avert other disasters down the line..
2cents
jp
In my view, it is the most important function of art and science
to awaken this [cosmic religious] feeling and keep it alive
in those who are receptive to it. (Albert Einstein)
In my view, it is the most important function of art and science
to awaken this [cosmic religious] feeling and keep it alive
in those who are receptive to it. (Albert Einstein)
i was already working on 'audiobrain' for pChess - mapping move scores to pitch, but jon stokes system for mapping square values to note and octave makes too much sense - using Bflat for B, and Bnatural for the H column is just genius, and provides the missing link - i sense a new feature coming to pChess.. :-}
pChess (open source chess application for OS X)
hope they have integration with bicycles -- if the new system is anything as good as germany's existing system, it will be amazing. in germany, they have an incredible integration of subway and regional trains, and all station platforms are level with the train - so you can roll bikes on and off the train at any stop, and it continues with bike paths.. it makes getting from A-B with bikes and trains pretty seamless. although, in america, maybe just having a place to lock your bike up at the station might be considered progress.
if we apply the same logic - we should be able to find a gene that predisposes people to atheism too - no?
(fyi - i'm not for the christians or the atheists, i want out of that whole dichotomy, give me option C)
nice design - but it sucks, because for years, i could read /. just fine on my iphone.. but now i cant -- all the text has become microscopic. you have broken what was working just fine -- the wider columns make the text extremely tiny and hard to read.
no -- i do not want a mobile version of slashdot, because then i cant pinch-zoom images any more. just give us the old font size/column widths back.
pleeeeaze
jp
i knew it -- he got his plan from johnny cash --:-D
One Piece at at Time
Well, I left Kentucky back in '49
An' went to Detroit workin' on a 'sembly line
The first year they had me puttin' wheels on cadillacs
Every day I'd watch them beauties roll by
And sometimes I'd hang my head and cry
'Cause I always wanted me one that was long and black.
One day I devised myself a plan
That should be the envy of most any man
I'd sneak it out of there in a lunchbox in my hand
Now gettin' caught meant gettin' fired
But I figured I'd have it all by the time I retired
I'd have me a car worth at least a hundred grand.
CHORUS
I'd get it one piece at a time
And it wouldn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive everybody wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is a round.
(Written by W. Kemp; Recorded by Johnny Cash, 1976)