If you happen to buy an mp3 player that isn't made by apple, not only does it not "just work" it doesn't work AT ALL and the reason is that Apple hath forbade it. People who want it to be easy and just work usually also don't want to have the technical knowledge to understand that; the fact that they mostly buy ipods and use itunes is a triumph of marketing and lockin, not successful interface design.
"Just works" is not incompatible with open standards; in fact, the 2 go hand in hand. Despite all of the complaints about web standards, the web and the internet in general are the single most successful example of "just works" device and software interoperability in the history of engineering, and it's all based on open standards.
The personal computing industry owes a lot to YouTube, Hulu, iPlayer and the like: outside gaming, these are the only mainstream killer apps that actually require 21st century hardware.
And the only reason they require it is because flash performance is horrible. (at least for YouTube and Hulu, I don't know much about iPlayer). My 6.5 year old system can play anything up to and including 720HD video just fine, but even a 320x240 flash video causes the CPU to grind.
the discussion you two are having has to be one of the few on slashdot of any redeeming value in recent memory. anyhow, i'd like to raise a question and hear your opinion.
the objection i've had to RFID is that it doesn't require you to physically hand over the information; information can be forcibly taken without consent, and perhaps even without the knowledge that the information is being requested. here's an example.
my library recently switched from using barcodes to rfid tags in the books. now, the libraries have only just gotten through fighting very hard to say that they will require a subpoena before they will turn over library records. in the nightmare scenario i have been thinking of, the homeland security agents or whoever who wants to know what books i am taking out sets up a long-range rfid scanner outside the door of the library and watches me come through. now, even though they didn't ask anybody at all (not me, not the library, not a court), they can know what books i'm taking out.
is the situation i'm creating completely bonkers? can rfid not do this? sometimes it's hard to read through the hype.
anyhow, i suppose one way around this is to pass laws saying that this kind of behavior counts as electronic surveillance and mustn't be conducted without a warrant, but of course that doesn't really seem to stop our government nowadays.
by the way, i do think there are some great applications for rfid, for example to help the blind identify items they pick up off the shelf. they have barcode readers that do this, but think how much easier it is for a blind person to use an rfid reader than a barcode scanner.
"what he means is that the interface is difficult to use."
That is not what he means at all, and Beer makes the same mistake. Reading Mossberg's column, it sounds to me like what he's complaining about is change, which is why he first says that "After months of working with the Ribbon and other new features of Office, I believe they are an improvement" before moving on to the "steep learning curve" part. Basically he's saying "wow, this is very different, so if you're used to the old one it may take some getting used to." and the time it takes to get used to it may not be worth it if you are already productive with whatever you are switching from.
ACK if you're going to deride the editors, at least make sure you properly proof your own post. Two things right off the bat:
- You neglected to remove the word "the" from the first sentence of the revised article. - "... each submission would be higher quality" should probably read "each submission would be of higher quality."
While your general point (that the story's grammar and spelling are abysmal) is correct, all you have done is proven that editing is harder than it looks.
I am sure there are mistakes in this post too. Please don't bother trying to find them.
quoting from neal stephenson's "in the beginning was the command line":
The opening "splash screen" for Microsoft Word 6.0 summed it up pretty neatly: when you started up the program you were treated to a picture of an expensive enamel pen lying across a couple of sheets of fancy-looking handmade writing paper. It was obviously a bid to make the software look classy, and it might have worked for some, but it failed for me, because the pen was a ballpoint, and I'm a fountain pen man. If Apple had done it, they would've used a Mont Blanc fountain pen, or maybe a Chinese calligraphy brush.
No, the added directories do not need to be added to the PATH.
GNUStep (and OSX, and whatever other NEXT derived system you'd like to bring up that uses app bundles) require only that you refer the system to the bundle, not to the executable inside of it. With GNUStep, this is generally done with an "openapp" command which does reside on the PATH. For example, when I run "openapp Ink", openapp only needs to know where the applications directory is, and it looks for the the Ink executable, and everything that goes along with it, in a directory called Ink.app in the GNUStep applications directory. There is no reason to add every application's directory to the path.
One thing this paper leaves out is reading UPDATING. You really really should check out the file/usr/src/UPDATING after you sync your tree but before you start building. Of course, the handbook will tell you that you should also be subscribed to the proper mailing list (freebsd-current or freebsd-stable) but at the very least, reading UPDATING is a Good Thing.
Not only do the radio scripts discuss a completely different origin of the name (see below), but they also talk rather clearly about Adams typing the scripts up on something called "snappies" which seem to be some kind of carbon paper system, so that copies did not need to be typed up. So this story about the typist is a bit odd. Sources?
read that article again. nowhere does it say they are getting rid of the option to pay with coins. they're getting rid of the option to pay w/ a token+50 cents in coins.
now, whether or not this means that eventually metrocard will be the only option is another thing entirely. hopefully that will not happen until they fix the major problem you mentioned, being the difficulty of buying one.
btw, there are many shops that sell metrocards. mostly convenience stores, newsstands, that sorta thing. your best bet, shockingly enough, is near a major bus route. however, the number of stores selling them went down recently because the mta cut the percentage of sales that the retailers got.
>apparently he's talking about people who are blind.
no, he's not.
if you read the article again, he uses 2 terms. one is "vision impaired," the other is "legally blind." In this context they mean pretty much the same thing, but he used both for clarity. He IS talking about people with poor eyesight, and not people who are blind.
you know, as i was writing this, i thought to myself "isn't that thing just a bunch of scrollers?" but i remembered so clearly seeing it BSOD'd that i dismissed the nagging doubt. it must have been some other massive times square vidscreen. ah well. thanks for the correction.
wordperfect is not just a wordprocessor. for several years now, it has not been available for purchase without a whole office suite package(which by the way, includes something no microsoft office suite ever has, at least to my knowledge, had a comparable application to, dragon naturally speaking). while it is feasible that hp is including just the wordprocessor application, this seems unlikely.
not at all. if they did anything like what is being suggested (big if), it would probably be in the form of a little sealed box. i doubt they would distribute disks of the aolOS... they're not about to tell their target audience to install a new operating system on their existing computers. little sealed box means that they can work obsessively to get near-perfect drivers for what's in that box - no need to make good drivers for anything else.
True, the web is a primarily visual medium. But the internet isn't. There's nothing in IP that says you must be sending text, or pictures, or anything visual... just data. Furthermore, don't you think that the government, as part of its "equal protection" impetus, should be obligated to provide the same or equivalent services to the disabled as to the rest of the population? While they could provide alternate versions, often its just easier to jury rig it so that the existing things are usable by more people.
>Except blind people, who are now unable to use
>their cane to find the edge of the curb...
On the contrary, correct curb cuts can actually help. The ridges alert someone using a cane as to when they have gotten to a curb cut, and the cut itself can help direct them along the straight path of the sidewalk and crosswalk.
The fact that, as noted, many of these products are extremely pricey is one that greatly upsets me. While I don't condone them simply for trying to make a profit off of a product which people need, the fact is that anyone looking at the pricing can easily tell that some of these companies are clearly gouging their customers. Further evidence of this lies in the fact that at least one of these programs uses one of the more elaborate copy-protection schemes I've seen. ok, not quite as crazy as ms "activation", but I would guess that most slashdotters would agree that this is another example of excessive copy protection protecting excessive pricing.
>There's just too many technical problems that can happen that a pay-per-page scheme can work.
exactly. what will happen is this will turn in to the nyc subway system... it is often said that the cost of actually running the system is nill, and that most of your token goes towards selling and collecting tokens. I would forsee that the same thing would happen here... the cost of "penny per page" would keep going up, mostly to cover the cost of collecting money which will be far greater than content creation (mostly cause of those technical problems).
absolutely. i'm no sysadmin, but i went crazy about 2 months back, and successively installed every os i could think of on one poor harddrive (on a laptop no less). I thought i was pretty good w/ unices (solaris, linux) but then i installed a bsd (i think it was netBSD, but that's not the point). I then finally started to understand what it meant to use unix. linux distros make things super cushy what with things like bash installed by default. it was definitely a worthwile (and eye-opening) learning experience.
this just absolutely reeks of a story a prof of mine once told.
the basic gist was that on some european rail system, getting your ticket punched is basically an honor system. but the system works cause there are all these old ladies on the train who poke you with their canes unless get your ticket punched. maybe grandma is a better way to enforce "morality" then federal law. or not.
well, all i can say about that is naive and misguided or not, he had the initiative... the rest of us didn't. however, there are other guys out there like xfce and gnustep (yes yes technically they're all different things but the point is kinda the same) and for some reason they just don't get nearly as much coverage as gnome and kde. i wonder why that is.
ok, i posted this once before, but it was so far down no one ever saw it. so i'll ask it again. i do understand that agre's essay espouses a clear viewpoint on my question, but i still am interested in what YOU think.
I know someone who sells computer systems to a public school system (i won't say which one). Recently, he was asked to come up with a proposal for an electronic attendance/security system which could be used quickly as the students walked through the door of the high school. one of the things he has thought about using was facial recognition.
now, there is no doubt in my mind that the way he wants to use it is fine; he's not hiding the camera or anything, there will be a station and the student will walk up to the station, be id'd and move on. my problem w/ it was the potential for abuse, say if the fbi comes in and demands access to the facial recognition records for a student that they are looking for. what I told him was that there was a fundamental difference with this type of identification... unlike an id card, or even a fingerprint, the system can be used to id the student by anyone w/ access to it without the student's consent, whereas w/ a card the student would have to volunteer the card etc.
i would be really interested in the slashdot community's response to a system like this. do you think a system like this is acceptable? if not, why? is it the "hiddeness" of the current security facial recognition that bothers you, or is it something more elemental?
Ok, so clearly it's better for Slyarov if he's found not guilty. But in the grand scheme, I really wonder which is better. If he's found not guilty, might that not go to show that the DMCA works as it should, as he was found not guilty because he did nothing wrong? Whereas if he's found guilty, we can yell and scream about the injustice inherent in the DMCA.
Slashdot Mirror
What a load of shit.
If you happen to buy an mp3 player that isn't made by apple, not only does it not "just work" it doesn't work AT ALL and the reason is that Apple hath forbade it. People who want it to be easy and just work usually also don't want to have the technical knowledge to understand that; the fact that they mostly buy ipods and use itunes is a triumph of marketing and lockin, not successful interface design.
"Just works" is not incompatible with open standards; in fact, the 2 go hand in hand. Despite all of the complaints about web standards, the web and the internet in general are the single most successful example of "just works" device and software interoperability in the history of engineering, and it's all based on open standards.
The personal computing industry owes a lot to YouTube, Hulu, iPlayer and the like: outside gaming, these are the only mainstream killer apps that actually require 21st century hardware.
And the only reason they require it is because flash performance is horrible. (at least for YouTube and Hulu, I don't know much about iPlayer). My 6.5 year old system can play anything up to and including 720HD video just fine, but even a 320x240 flash video causes the CPU to grind.
the discussion you two are having has to be one of the few on slashdot of any redeeming value in recent memory. anyhow, i'd like to raise a question and hear your opinion.
the objection i've had to RFID is that it doesn't require you to physically hand over the information; information can be forcibly taken without consent, and perhaps even without the knowledge that the information is being requested. here's an example.
my library recently switched from using barcodes to rfid tags in the books. now, the libraries have only just gotten through fighting very hard to say that they will require a subpoena before they will turn over library records. in the nightmare scenario i have been thinking of, the homeland security agents or whoever who wants to know what books i am taking out sets up a long-range rfid scanner outside the door of the library and watches me come through. now, even though they didn't ask anybody at all (not me, not the library, not a court), they can know what books i'm taking out.
is the situation i'm creating completely bonkers? can rfid not do this? sometimes it's hard to read through the hype.
anyhow, i suppose one way around this is to pass laws saying that this kind of behavior counts as electronic surveillance and mustn't be conducted without a warrant, but of course that doesn't really seem to stop our government nowadays.
by the way, i do think there are some great applications for rfid, for example to help the blind identify items they pick up off the shelf. they have barcode readers that do this, but think how much easier it is for a blind person to use an rfid reader than a barcode scanner.
"what he means is that the interface is difficult to use."
That is not what he means at all, and Beer makes the same mistake. Reading Mossberg's column, it sounds to me like what he's complaining about is change, which is why he first says that "After months of working with the Ribbon and other new features of Office, I believe they are an improvement" before moving on to the "steep learning curve" part. Basically he's saying "wow, this is very different, so if you're used to the old one it may take some getting used to." and the time it takes to get used to it may not be worth it if you are already productive with whatever you are switching from.
ACK if you're going to deride the editors, at least make sure you properly proof your own post. Two things right off the bat:
- You neglected to remove the word "the" from the first sentence of the revised article.
- "... each submission would be higher quality" should probably read "each submission would be of higher quality."
While your general point (that the story's grammar and spelling are abysmal) is correct, all you have done is proven that editing is harder than it looks.
I am sure there are mistakes in this post too. Please don't bother trying to find them.
No, the added directories do not need to be added to the PATH.
GNUStep (and OSX, and whatever other NEXT derived system you'd like to bring up that uses app bundles) require only that you refer the system to the bundle, not to the executable inside of it. With GNUStep, this is generally done with an "openapp" command which does reside on the PATH. For example, when I run "openapp Ink", openapp only needs to know where the applications directory is, and it looks for the the Ink executable, and everything that goes along with it, in a directory called Ink.app in the GNUStep applications directory. There is no reason to add every application's directory to the path.
One thing this paper leaves out is reading UPDATING. You really really should check out the file /usr/src/UPDATING after you sync your tree but before you start building. Of course, the handbook will tell you that you should also be subscribed to the proper mailing list (freebsd-current or freebsd-stable) but at the very least, reading UPDATING is a Good Thing.
Not only do the radio scripts discuss a completely different origin of the name (see below), but they also talk rather clearly about Adams typing the scripts up on something called "snappies" which seem to be some kind of carbon paper system, so that copies did not need to be typed up. So this story about the typist is a bit odd. Sources?
the ad has not been updated. the runner is wearing an ipod. the runner has always been wearing an ipod.
a message from the ministry of truth
read that article again. nowhere does it say they are getting rid of the option to pay with coins. they're getting rid of the option to pay w/ a token+50 cents in coins.
now, whether or not this means that eventually metrocard will be the only option is another thing entirely. hopefully that will not happen until they fix the major problem you mentioned, being the difficulty of buying one.
btw, there are many shops that sell metrocards. mostly convenience stores, newsstands, that sorta thing. your best bet, shockingly enough, is near a major bus route. however, the number of stores selling them went down recently because the mta cut the percentage of sales that the retailers got.
>apparently he's talking about people who are blind.
no, he's not.
if you read the article again, he uses 2 terms. one is "vision impaired," the other is "legally blind." In this context they mean pretty much the same thing, but he used both for clarity. He IS talking about people with poor eyesight, and not people who are blind.
you know, as i was writing this, i thought to myself "isn't that thing just a bunch of scrollers?" but i remembered so clearly seeing it BSOD'd that i dismissed the nagging doubt. it must have been some other massive times square vidscreen. ah well. thanks for the correction.
the really huge multi-panel display outside of toys 'r us in times square.
wordperfect is not just a wordprocessor. for several years now, it has not been available for purchase without a whole office suite package(which by the way, includes something no microsoft office suite ever has, at least to my knowledge, had a comparable application to, dragon naturally speaking). while it is feasible that hp is including just the wordprocessor application, this seems unlikely.
not at all. if they did anything like what is being suggested (big if), it would probably be in the form of a little sealed box. i doubt they would distribute disks of the aolOS... they're not about to tell their target audience to install a new operating system on their existing computers. little sealed box means that they can work obsessively to get near-perfect drivers for what's in that box - no need to make good drivers for anything else.
True, the web is a primarily visual medium. But the internet isn't. There's nothing in IP that says you must be sending text, or pictures, or anything visual... just data. Furthermore, don't you think that the government, as part of its "equal protection" impetus, should be obligated to provide the same or equivalent services to the disabled as to the rest of the population? While they could provide alternate versions, often its just easier to jury rig it so that the existing things are usable by more people.
>Except blind people, who are now unable to use
>their cane to find the edge of the curb...
On the contrary, correct curb cuts can actually help. The ridges alert someone using a cane as to when they have gotten to a curb cut, and the cut itself can help direct them along the straight path of the sidewalk and crosswalk.
The fact that, as noted, many of these products are extremely pricey is one that greatly upsets me. While I don't condone them simply for trying to make a profit off of a product which people need, the fact is that anyone looking at the pricing can easily tell that some of these companies are clearly gouging their customers. Further evidence of this lies in the fact that at least one of these programs uses one of the more elaborate copy-protection schemes I've seen. ok, not quite as crazy as ms "activation", but I would guess that most slashdotters would agree that this is another example of excessive copy protection protecting excessive pricing.
>There's just too many technical problems that can happen that a pay-per-page scheme can work.
exactly. what will happen is this will turn in to the nyc subway system... it is often said that the cost of actually running the system is nill, and that most of your token goes towards selling and collecting tokens. I would forsee that the same thing would happen here... the cost of "penny per page" would keep going up, mostly to cover the cost of collecting money which will be far greater than content creation (mostly cause of those technical problems).
absolutely. i'm no sysadmin, but i went crazy about 2 months back, and successively installed every os i could think of on one poor harddrive (on a laptop no less). I thought i was pretty good w/ unices (solaris, linux) but then i installed a bsd (i think it was netBSD, but that's not the point). I then finally started to understand what it meant to use unix. linux distros make things super cushy what with things like bash installed by default. it was definitely a worthwile (and eye-opening) learning experience.
this just absolutely reeks of a story a prof of mine once told.
the basic gist was that on some european rail system, getting your ticket punched is basically an honor system. but the system works cause there are all these old ladies on the train who poke you with their canes unless get your ticket punched. maybe grandma is a better way to enforce "morality" then federal law. or not.
well, all i can say about that is naive and misguided or not, he had the initiative... the rest of us didn't. however, there are other guys out there like xfce and gnustep (yes yes technically they're all different things but the point is kinda the same) and for some reason they just don't get nearly as much coverage as gnome and kde. i wonder why that is.
ok, i posted this once before, but it was so far down no one ever saw it. so i'll ask it again. i do understand that agre's essay espouses a clear viewpoint on my question, but i still am interested in what YOU think.
I know someone who sells computer systems to a public school system (i won't say which one). Recently, he was asked to come up with a proposal for an electronic attendance/security system which could be used quickly as the students walked through the door of the high school. one of the things he has thought about using was facial recognition.
now, there is no doubt in my mind that the way he wants to use it is fine; he's not hiding the camera or anything, there will be a station and the student will walk up to the station, be id'd and move on. my problem w/ it was the potential for abuse, say if the fbi comes in and demands access to the facial recognition records for a student that they are looking for. what I told him was that there was a fundamental difference with this type of identification... unlike an id card, or even a fingerprint, the system can be used to id the student by anyone w/ access to it without the student's consent, whereas w/ a card the student would have to volunteer the card etc.
i would be really interested in the slashdot community's response to a system like this. do you think a system like this is acceptable? if not, why? is it the "hiddeness" of the current security facial recognition that bothers you, or is it something more elemental?
I saw part of this, and if I recall correctly, they kind of poo-pooed this as impractical, along with using it as a weapon.
Ok, so clearly it's better for Slyarov if he's found not guilty. But in the grand scheme, I really wonder which is better. If he's found not guilty, might that not go to show that the DMCA works as it should, as he was found not guilty because he did nothing wrong? Whereas if he's found guilty, we can yell and scream about the injustice inherent in the DMCA.