I think the PC is superior for consuming content as well, except for books. But I think the Kindle crushes tablets for book reading unless color is needed. I read comics on my pc (Fedora here).
My girls have 5 inch tablets and use them a lot for personal entertainment - games, music - but when they want to chat or do email they get on one of the family computers. They have read books on them while we waited to replace broken Kindles. My son is saving for a Nexus 7. His trouble is restraining from spending money long enough to save up for it. He always wants more legos and still hasn't learned how to be more patient.
A lot of people I work with have tablets now. I've seen guys give presentations with their laptop running the presentation and their notes on a tablet. So I guess that's another use case I can see. Airplanes and presentation notes. Other than that I haven't seen good use cases for them yet. But then again, I'm obviously not the typical electronics user. My phone is good (Galaxy S3) as a gap filler for what I do. I guess that's the other part I didn't mention.
I can't deny their popularity but I really don't understand it.
I've got a Nexus 7 sitting a few inches away. I play my tower defence game on it occasionally but it's not really any better than playing it on my phone. I don't read books on it - it's so much heavier and tougher on the eyes than my kindle. The one hope I had was comics - but I'm still working on that. The one that I've downloaded from Amazon is impossible to read in the kindle app. (When it 'zooms' panels it's not nearly enough to make the text legible.)
If I am going to be going on a long trip I can see where it would be handy there. It will be better for watching shows than my phone, a little more convenient than my laptop. Though the lack of storage space limits how much media I'll be able to put on it.
The reason I have it is for testing some software we'll be using down the road. People will basically 'sign up' for stuff in person, using the tablet to enter their data rather than filling out cards. When we've used cards - it's labor intensive and their are lots of errors getting the information entered into other systems.
But around the house, on the couch, in the kitchen - I just grab a laptop. Easier to hold, easier to surf, all that stuff.
Well - let's face it. The majority of Americans are pretty clueless about much outside the U.S.
I lived in Florida for 5 years and had a lot of Brazilian friends so I don't think of all of the Americas as Spanish speaking - just most of it outside of US/Canada.
German is very useful all over Europe. I'd say from Central Europe and East it's a good back up after English. In my time living and traveling in Europe I have not seen French used much at all. Though I've mostly been in those Central Europe/Eastern Europe countries. Where I live in Hungary the signs around the villages and towns often have the name in Hungarian and German. My wife knows German and it has gotten us out of a pickle more than once when our Hungarian failed us. This was also true in Slovenia as well as Croatia. And after having worked on Hungarian for the last 18 months or so - German looks like a walk in the park. So it's all relative.
I would like to pick up Russian at some point - it's also widely useful though one has to take care. Some places it's loved, others not so much.
"Perhaps if you include Central America" - did I not? I included part of North America too.
A quick google gives me a rough estimate of population from Mexico down at 554,879,538 which means the population of Brazil is about 36% of that area.
But that's really secondary. In my mind kids ought to be learning 2 languages besides their native language. In America I think for the reasons I listed the first of those two ought to be Spanish. The third is, I think, less crucial though if it were my kids I'd lean towards German. But that's a European bias of mine.
But really if you don't have a chance to use it regularly it doesn't matter because proficiency wont come and vocabulary wont stick. This is what gives Spanish the greatest potential for most US residents.
How would any language after English help him as a programmer? Whatever your answer it's also probably true for Spanish.
Top that off with it's the language he has the highest chance of gaining a high level of proficiency unless he lives in close proximity to a group that speaks something else - and he's willing to really engage with those people.
It's not easy to learn a language you don't use. In the US spanish is being used all over - at the fast food joint, on tv and radio, in his neighbors homes. It's one that is practical in a wide number of ways and it he'll have a higher chance of success because he'll have the most opportunities to actually use it.
If I lived in the US I'd learn Spanish as a second language. It ought to be compulsory for all American school children. It's the second most spoken language in the U.S. It's the language of the majority of the Americas from Mexico down. And trends I don't see changing significantly seem to indicate it will only have a stronger presence in the U.S. over time. So that's what I'd focus on first, regardless of vocation.
People don't use google because they know you write great articles. They use google because they are looking for something. The people writing on the other hand, really want people to see what they wrote. Google provides a free service to those writers, bringing in viewers without charging them anything. How can google do this? How can they provide this amazing service for free with all the hardware and bandwidth required? They charge advertisers.
If a site is so popular and so important that people do just want information from them - they wont be going via google, they'll be coming straight in.
If google were rehosting the full content - I could see it. But if they are just linking to things on the WEB - well, it should be obvious that what this law does is break the web. That's what really gets me. These news outlets see the web as a way to make money but they don't want anyone else to benefit from the information they provide unless they get a cut.
Following this logic, investors who read the business page should pay a percentage of their profits to the newspapers as well.
There was this really long troll comment that was around for a while about killing and eating muppets - which I thought was just hilarous. Unfortunately I've been able to find an example of it again.
I get a kick out of looking through my old journal entries. Which reminds me that I should ask the people who run slashdot again - there should be a way to export journal entries. Being able to export a users own comments would be nice too - though probably very resource intensive. Journal Entries, I would think wouldn't be too taxing.
I think this view is rather limited, thinking of the smart phone as either a phone or a poor replacement for a laptop.
The smart phone is a truly mobile computer. I travel quite a bit and I do appreciate that I can do some things with my phone that used to require my laptop - like checking email, checking my calendar, looking at documents (editing them -though I wouldn't want to do that too much) and so on. But I will have my laptop with me if I need to do more work as you mention.
But where the mobile device really shines is the places where it does things that the laptop can't do (or does poorly) and a regular phone can't do. The most obvious is GPS. I love having my phone to find my way around, but beyond that I also love the apps that will help me to find and/or identify things of interest around me. Google Goggles and Google Sky are great applications that take advantage of how interactive this truly mobile computer can be since it is aware of my physical location.
The phone is also much more convenient when I have limited space and has much better battery life. It lets me stay connected at a level that gives me much more freedom.
I'm not ditching my laptops - (I have one for travel and one for in the office) but it's also been over 6 years since I used my mobile phone just for calls.
I know all this is rather subjective and personal. While I love my phone I don't get larger tablets at all. But from the trends I see, I think what I describe and even more great uses of mobile technology coming mean that a lot of computing will be moving to much more mobile platforms than laptops.
I agree with the cautions on trusting an instructor, yet at the same time a student is not a good judge either. If I am learning something for the first time, how am I to know that what I've been taught is good until I have a chance to put it to use?
He backs up his arguments with actual examples and provides a foundation for rational discourse about the class he took. I don't think one could ask for much more.
That said, all this proves in general, is that if all his arguments are valid then it is possible to have a terrible course on-line just like in the traditional classroom. And his worries at the end about the value of having finished the class really misses the point of free on-line education.
I'm always shocked at just how much American culture has spread world wide. And the thing is - it often works in our favor. Iranian kids playing WoW can't in any way benefit Iran that I can think of, but has multiple benefits for the U.S. Someone from the gov should be on the horn right now getting those accounts reactiviated.
I went through one right after passport control (I was leaving EU) and one at the gate.
I did not go through one at Liszt Ferenc here in Budapest and I didn't go through one in Minneapolis - which was my point of entry into the US. I also did not have to go through one in Phoenix, though I know they have them. My return trip was Phoenix, Detroit, Amsterdam, Budapest and I can't remember for sure if I had to go through one in Detroit. I don't think I did. I did in Amsterdam though - on my way back though not at the gate, just at customs.
Absolutely right. I found out a friend was very sick just a few weeks ago - I bought my ticket on-line for the next day, checked in on-line immediately after and was on a different continent the following evening. I am not wealthy (by developed world standards) and it'll stretch my budget a bit but it was completely doable. I made it home before my friend died and was able to see her and the family.
I found out she was ill via a call on our Vonage phone - no additional cost to my friend calling me.
I have no desire to go back to an earlier time when I probably would not have found out until after she had died and not been able to afford going back - and even if I could it would have taken a lot longer than a day.
This isn't true - just went through scanners in Amsterdam last week. I was flying between Europe and the US - and only went through scanners in Europe.
Slashdot Mirror
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/05/01/29/030223/safeway-club-card-leads-to-bogus-arson-arrest
I think the PC is superior for consuming content as well, except for books. But I think the Kindle crushes tablets for book reading unless color is needed. I read comics on my pc (Fedora here).
My girls have 5 inch tablets and use them a lot for personal entertainment - games, music - but when they want to chat or do email they get on one of the family computers. They have read books on them while we waited to replace broken Kindles. My son is saving for a Nexus 7. His trouble is restraining from spending money long enough to save up for it. He always wants more legos and still hasn't learned how to be more patient.
A lot of people I work with have tablets now. I've seen guys give presentations with their laptop running the presentation and their notes on a tablet. So I guess that's another use case I can see. Airplanes and presentation notes. Other than that I haven't seen good use cases for them yet. But then again, I'm obviously not the typical electronics user. My phone is good (Galaxy S3) as a gap filler for what I do. I guess that's the other part I didn't mention.
I can't deny their popularity but I really don't understand it.
I've got a Nexus 7 sitting a few inches away. I play my tower defence game on it occasionally but it's not really any better than playing it on my phone. I don't read books on it - it's so much heavier and tougher on the eyes than my kindle. The one hope I had was comics - but I'm still working on that. The one that I've downloaded from Amazon is impossible to read in the kindle app. (When it 'zooms' panels it's not nearly enough to make the text legible.)
If I am going to be going on a long trip I can see where it would be handy there. It will be better for watching shows than my phone, a little more convenient than my laptop. Though the lack of storage space limits how much media I'll be able to put on it.
The reason I have it is for testing some software we'll be using down the road. People will basically 'sign up' for stuff in person, using the tablet to enter their data rather than filling out cards. When we've used cards - it's labor intensive and their are lots of errors getting the information entered into other systems.
But around the house, on the couch, in the kitchen - I just grab a laptop. Easier to hold, easier to surf, all that stuff.
it's been on reddit and hn too - and who knows where else.
probably my last of the year
Well - let's face it. The majority of Americans are pretty clueless about much outside the U.S.
I lived in Florida for 5 years and had a lot of Brazilian friends so I don't think of all of the Americas as Spanish speaking - just most of it outside of US/Canada.
German is very useful all over Europe. I'd say from Central Europe and East it's a good back up after English. In my time living and traveling in Europe I have not seen French used much at all. Though I've mostly been in those Central Europe/Eastern Europe countries. Where I live in Hungary the signs around the villages and towns often have the name in Hungarian and German. My wife knows German and it has gotten us out of a pickle more than once when our Hungarian failed us. This was also true in Slovenia as well as Croatia. And after having worked on Hungarian for the last 18 months or so - German looks like a walk in the park. So it's all relative.
I would like to pick up Russian at some point - it's also widely useful though one has to take care. Some places it's loved, others not so much.
"Perhaps if you include Central America" - did I not? I included part of North America too.
A quick google gives me a rough estimate of population from Mexico down at 554,879,538 which means the population of Brazil is about 36% of that area.
But that's really secondary. In my mind kids ought to be learning 2 languages besides their native language. In America I think for the reasons I listed the first of those two ought to be Spanish. The third is, I think, less crucial though if it were my kids I'd lean towards German. But that's a European bias of mine.
But really if you don't have a chance to use it regularly it doesn't matter because proficiency wont come and vocabulary wont stick. This is what gives Spanish the greatest potential for most US residents.
Sure - use the new Rosetta Stone Hungarian software.
You're right except for limiting it to the South-West.
The kids and I were talking about Dora just last night and thought it was a good tie in for the hobbit.
"I'm the map. I'm the map. I'm the MAP! Rivendell, Misty Mountains, Lonely Mountain. Rivendell, Misty Mountains, Lonely Mountain."
"Saruman no swiping! Saruman no swiping!"
"Hobbitses. yum, yum, yum delicioso"
"Oh no! The dwarves can't find the door into the mountain! What will we do?"
How would any language after English help him as a programmer? Whatever your answer it's also probably true for Spanish.
Top that off with it's the language he has the highest chance of gaining a high level of proficiency unless he lives in close proximity to a group that speaks something else - and he's willing to really engage with those people.
It's not easy to learn a language you don't use. In the US spanish is being used all over - at the fast food joint, on tv and radio, in his neighbors homes. It's one that is practical in a wide number of ways and it he'll have a higher chance of success because he'll have the most opportunities to actually use it.
If I lived in the US I'd learn Spanish as a second language. It ought to be compulsory for all American school children. It's the second most spoken language in the U.S. It's the language of the majority of the Americas from Mexico down. And trends I don't see changing significantly seem to indicate it will only have a stronger presence in the U.S. over time. So that's what I'd focus on first, regardless of vocation.
the real message is much harder to decipher -- and we'll never tell.
I find this suggestion offensive.
I would hope so. If I do pay extra to get something sooner - I'd be ticked if it weren't given priority.
That's a completely backwards approach.
People don't use google because they know you write great articles. They use google because they are looking for something. The people writing on the other hand, really want people to see what they wrote. Google provides a free service to those writers, bringing in viewers without charging them anything. How can google do this? How can they provide this amazing service for free with all the hardware and bandwidth required? They charge advertisers.
If a site is so popular and so important that people do just want information from them - they wont be going via google, they'll be coming straight in.
If google were rehosting the full content - I could see it. But if they are just linking to things on the WEB - well, it should be obvious that what this law does is break the web. That's what really gets me. These news outlets see the web as a way to make money but they don't want anyone else to benefit from the information they provide unless they get a cut.
Following this logic, investors who read the business page should pay a percentage of their profits to the newspapers as well.
There was this really long troll comment that was around for a while about killing and eating muppets - which I thought was just hilarous. Unfortunately I've been able to find an example of it again.
I get a kick out of looking through my old journal entries. Which reminds me that I should ask the people who run slashdot again - there should be a way to export journal entries. Being able to export a users own comments would be nice too - though probably very resource intensive. Journal Entries, I would think wouldn't be too taxing.
I think this view is rather limited, thinking of the smart phone as either a phone or a poor replacement for a laptop.
The smart phone is a truly mobile computer. I travel quite a bit and I do appreciate that I can do some things with my phone that used to require my laptop - like checking email, checking my calendar, looking at documents (editing them -though I wouldn't want to do that too much) and so on. But I will have my laptop with me if I need to do more work as you mention.
But where the mobile device really shines is the places where it does things that the laptop can't do (or does poorly) and a regular phone can't do. The most obvious is GPS. I love having my phone to find my way around, but beyond that I also love the apps that will help me to find and/or identify things of interest around me. Google Goggles and Google Sky are great applications that take advantage of how interactive this truly mobile computer can be since it is aware of my physical location.
The phone is also much more convenient when I have limited space and has much better battery life. It lets me stay connected at a level that gives me much more freedom.
I'm not ditching my laptops - (I have one for travel and one for in the office) but it's also been over 6 years since I used my mobile phone just for calls.
I know all this is rather subjective and personal. While I love my phone I don't get larger tablets at all. But from the trends I see, I think what I describe and even more great uses of mobile technology coming mean that a lot of computing will be moving to much more mobile platforms than laptops.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_III#Model_variants
Ordered as well - kindle price is only $17.99 a little more than half the paperback price.
I agree with the cautions on trusting an instructor, yet at the same time a student is not a good judge either. If I am learning something for the first time, how am I to know that what I've been taught is good until I have a chance to put it to use?
He backs up his arguments with actual examples and provides a foundation for rational discourse about the class he took. I don't think one could ask for much more.
That said, all this proves in general, is that if all his arguments are valid then it is possible to have a terrible course on-line just like in the traditional classroom. And his worries at the end about the value of having finished the class really misses the point of free on-line education.
I'm always shocked at just how much American culture has spread world wide. And the thing is - it often works in our favor. Iranian kids playing WoW can't in any way benefit Iran that I can think of, but has multiple benefits for the U.S. Someone from the gov should be on the horn right now getting those accounts reactiviated.
Here's a link to the Schiphol page that talks about the types of scanners that they have.
http://www.schiphol.nl/Travellers/AtSchiphol/CheckinControl/SecurityChecksUponDeparture/SecurityScan.htm
I went through one right after passport control (I was leaving EU) and one at the gate.
I did not go through one at Liszt Ferenc here in Budapest and I didn't go through one in Minneapolis - which was my point of entry into the US. I also did not have to go through one in Phoenix, though I know they have them. My return trip was Phoenix, Detroit, Amsterdam, Budapest and I can't remember for sure if I had to go through one in Detroit. I don't think I did. I did in Amsterdam though - on my way back though not at the gate, just at customs.
Absolutely right. I found out a friend was very sick just a few weeks ago - I bought my ticket on-line for the next day, checked in on-line immediately after and was on a different continent the following evening. I am not wealthy (by developed world standards) and it'll stretch my budget a bit but it was completely doable. I made it home before my friend died and was able to see her and the family.
I found out she was ill via a call on our Vonage phone - no additional cost to my friend calling me.
I have no desire to go back to an earlier time when I probably would not have found out until after she had died and not been able to afford going back - and even if I could it would have taken a lot longer than a day.
This isn't true - just went through scanners in Amsterdam last week. I was flying between Europe and the US - and only went through scanners in Europe.