TabletPC's have always had way too much "laptop" built into them to be accepted as tablets (even the few slates, like the old HP TC1100). They're neither fish nor fowl. I'm using one... but I wish I could trade all the rattling keys and latches for an SSD and a larger screen.
I actually have a Thinkpad X61. It's usable, but it's not what I described. I like that it has a few buttons, and it's the least-clunky convertible I've handled. Most of those are... well... there's a reason Steve Jobs used to throw up a little every time Bill Gates talked about TabletPCs, and hardly anyone bought them with their own money (just company purchases). As your description makes clear, even the relatively lightweight X61 is saddled with a bunch of kitchen-sink that just makes it heavier (keyboard, trackpoint, hinge, hard drive) without contributing to my primary use for it: as a drawing tablet. When I drawn on paper, I use 11x14" pads (over 17" diagonal); a 12" XGA screen is like I'm still using a 1990s laptop.
It amazes me to say this, but Microsoft is almost on the right track. Take a Surface Pro. Give it a 50% larger screen and a few of the X61's buttons. Then maybe I'll be interested.
You managed to completely fail to understand everything I wrote. The programs I mentioned are not mouse-and-keyboard software, and they damn well aren't touch-screen software. They are software that was designed to be used with a pressure-sensitive stylus, and would work so much better with a larger screen than most tablets have.
It's dull, but I usually spend the evening at home with a bottle of wine, cleaning the house, rearranging the furniture... generally getting things ready for another fresh start on a new year. Tomorrow morning I'll probably fix pancakes, take down the holiday lights from the front porch, and... begin.
My wish-list tablet would have an x86 CPU capable of running off-the-shelf visual-arts software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Manga Studio, and Painter. Win7, Win8, OS X... whatever. Give me wifi and Dropbox, and I'm all set for getting data on/off it. Don't bother with a keyboard; if I wanted to type I'd use a laptop. But give me a pressure-sensitive stylus (Wacom or UC-Logic digitizer), and a few buttons on the frame which can be programmed to simulate keypresses like Ctrl-Z or Alt. Give it a 14" 4:3 screen with a resolution of at least 1280x1024. This is totally feasible. I just need someone to make it.
It isn't correct to say that Stan "created or co-created" those characters. It is "co-created" in every instance. The artist who designs the appearance of a comics character is as essential to the process of creating it as the writer. Since Stan is not an artist, and has never claimed to have designed the visuals of the characters, he hasn't simply "created" any of them.
He's an enormously imaginative and influential creative force, without whom the American comics industry would be very different, and his vitality and charm at 90 is a testament to him as a person. There's no need to pad his résumé by denying the roles of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and every other artist he has worked with over the decades, as co-creators of the characters they jointly brought into being.
Will some grads suddenly find themselves in jobs where it isn't used? You bet. There are cloud-loving Google Docs shops, penny-pinching OpenOffice businesses, and even some kool-aid-drinking Pages studios out there already.
I'll echo the above, but add that (unlike MS Office), Libre/Neo/OpenOffice also has a mature user interface. MS Office's ribbonwhatsit might arguably be "better", but there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the old UI, and LibreOffice preserves it. It's familiar, and I can be productive with it. I can install LibreOffice on every computer I use: a Windows 7 system, a legacy XP box, and a Mac at work; my MacBook and Mac Mini at home; the TabletPC I mainly use for drawing; and it's even on my Linux server at home. The documents I'm working on are synched painlessly through Dropbox. It is nearly impossible for me to suffer "downtime", even offline. A couple years ago I was dragged along on a week-long cruise, and instead of losing a week (as I would with cloud services), I got a whole lot of writing done at sea. The cloud could evaporate, and I'd barely see a hiccup in my workflow: all of my software and all of my data are on almost every computer I own. (So my house could evaporate too, and at least my work would be OK.) The only fly in the ointment are my phone and tablet: At this point I can only view files in MS formats, and there's no LibreOffice (or even a subset) for working on iOS or Android.
If you'd like one, I can offer several good arguments for the legalization of recreational use of marijuana, such as those revolving around the monetary and social costs of criminalization. But all I was doing was pointing out that the criminalization of marijuana – even for legitimate, supervised scientific study – prevents the kind of research which might better establish whether the recreational use is harmful, and to what extent. To use your half-baked analogy, we do permit the possession of lead, so that its impact on lab animals could be tested... but apparently not possession of cannabis for that purpose.
So the only clear conclusion is that we need further study. Which will be made more difficult by the criminalization of the substance in so many jurisdictions where that research could be performed.
Well, I didn't say "fair and balanced"; even before Faux News spoiled that phrase, it wasn't what you want in a review: you want them to tear something to shreds if it sucks, or praise it to high heaven if it's great.
But simply "fair" is something I look for in a reviewer: someone who'll give each new Will Ferrell film a chance, just in case he gets cast in another Stranger Than Fiction. Entertaining is another good trait, but I'll do without that on a web site, because I'm probably just there to (maybe) buy something in particular, not because I want a regular go-to critic.
I wouldn't say that reviews from random people have no value. But their value is less than that of reviews that have been... reviewed. By someone known to have no reason to scam the system. That's the role that editors used to perform, back when reviewers were professionals who wrote for publications. The New York Times didn't just take open submissions, screen them for profanity and advertising, and print them all; they selected reviewers who demonstrated that they were knowledgeable, fair, and helpful, and only published those reviews. If you wanted to know which books were merely popular... that's what the "bestseller" list was for.
Regardless of the relative merits of Dvorak vs. Qwerty, there's absolutely no benefit in this situation in throwing out however-many years of muscle memory on one layout (which is absolutely critical to speed-typing), to start over learning a different layout.
There's a simple way to identify people of high intelligence: ask them if they think IQ tests are a meaningful measure of it. If they do... they aren't very intelligent.
And I say this as someone who's scored 150, so it isn't sour grapes. Standardized tests just don't tell you very much... at least nothing useful.
I also scored in the 99th percentile on all my college entrance tests (missed three questions on the SAT), scored 92nd-98th percentile on the four GRE tests I took, and I signed up for the LSAT on a whim with no prep whatsoever and scored 90th percentile. None of those scores proved to be a good predictor of my professional success.:/
"redirected their flight patterns to [impact] the far (dark) side of the moon."
Wrong. As TFA takes pains to explain, the "dark side of the Moon" and the "far side of the Moon" are not the same thing. An the impacts were on the near side of the Moon, while it is dark.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I am a pancake veterinarian. The humane way to keep their numbers in check is to neuter them.
TabletPC's have always had way too much "laptop" built into them to be accepted as tablets (even the few slates, like the old HP TC1100). They're neither fish nor fowl. I'm using one... but I wish I could trade all the rattling keys and latches for an SSD and a larger screen.
I actually have a Thinkpad X61. It's usable, but it's not what I described. I like that it has a few buttons, and it's the least-clunky convertible I've handled. Most of those are... well... there's a reason Steve Jobs used to throw up a little every time Bill Gates talked about TabletPCs, and hardly anyone bought them with their own money (just company purchases). As your description makes clear, even the relatively lightweight X61 is saddled with a bunch of kitchen-sink that just makes it heavier (keyboard, trackpoint, hinge, hard drive) without contributing to my primary use for it: as a drawing tablet. When I drawn on paper, I use 11x14" pads (over 17" diagonal); a 12" XGA screen is like I'm still using a 1990s laptop.
It amazes me to say this, but Microsoft is almost on the right track. Take a Surface Pro. Give it a 50% larger screen and a few of the X61's buttons. Then maybe I'll be interested.
You managed to completely fail to understand everything I wrote. The programs I mentioned are not mouse-and-keyboard software, and they damn well aren't touch-screen software. They are software that was designed to be used with a pressure-sensitive stylus, and would work so much better with a larger screen than most tablets have.
It's dull, but I usually spend the evening at home with a bottle of wine, cleaning the house, rearranging the furniture... generally getting things ready for another fresh start on a new year. Tomorrow morning I'll probably fix pancakes, take down the holiday lights from the front porch, and... begin.
My wish-list tablet would have an x86 CPU capable of running off-the-shelf visual-arts software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Manga Studio, and Painter. Win7, Win8, OS X... whatever. Give me wifi and Dropbox, and I'm all set for getting data on/off it. Don't bother with a keyboard; if I wanted to type I'd use a laptop. But give me a pressure-sensitive stylus (Wacom or UC-Logic digitizer), and a few buttons on the frame which can be programmed to simulate keypresses like Ctrl-Z or Alt. Give it a 14" 4:3 screen with a resolution of at least 1280x1024. This is totally feasible. I just need someone to make it.
To deny Stan Lee's role in creating the Marvel Universe is as dishonest as denying Kirby's.
It isn't correct to say that Stan "created or co-created" those characters. It is "co-created" in every instance. The artist who designs the appearance of a comics character is as essential to the process of creating it as the writer. Since Stan is not an artist, and has never claimed to have designed the visuals of the characters, he hasn't simply "created" any of them.
He's an enormously imaginative and influential creative force, without whom the American comics industry would be very different, and his vitality and charm at 90 is a testament to him as a person. There's no need to pad his résumé by denying the roles of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and every other artist he has worked with over the decades, as co-creators of the characters they jointly brought into being.
Will MS Office disappear soon? No.
Will some grads suddenly find themselves in jobs where it isn't used? You bet. There are cloud-loving Google Docs shops, penny-pinching OpenOffice businesses, and even some kool-aid-drinking Pages studios out there already.
I'll echo the above, but add that (unlike MS Office), Libre/Neo/OpenOffice also has a mature user interface. MS Office's ribbonwhatsit might arguably be "better", but there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the old UI, and LibreOffice preserves it. It's familiar, and I can be productive with it. I can install LibreOffice on every computer I use: a Windows 7 system, a legacy XP box, and a Mac at work; my MacBook and Mac Mini at home; the TabletPC I mainly use for drawing; and it's even on my Linux server at home. The documents I'm working on are synched painlessly through Dropbox. It is nearly impossible for me to suffer "downtime", even offline. A couple years ago I was dragged along on a week-long cruise, and instead of losing a week (as I would with cloud services), I got a whole lot of writing done at sea. The cloud could evaporate, and I'd barely see a hiccup in my workflow: all of my software and all of my data are on almost every computer I own. (So my house could evaporate too, and at least my work would be OK.) The only fly in the ointment are my phone and tablet: At this point I can only view files in MS formats, and there's no LibreOffice (or even a subset) for working on iOS or Android.
Um.... what argument?
If you'd like one, I can offer several good arguments for the legalization of recreational use of marijuana, such as those revolving around the monetary and social costs of criminalization. But all I was doing was pointing out that the criminalization of marijuana – even for legitimate, supervised scientific study – prevents the kind of research which might better establish whether the recreational use is harmful, and to what extent. To use your half-baked analogy, we do permit the possession of lead, so that its impact on lab animals could be tested... but apparently not possession of cannabis for that purpose.
So the only clear conclusion is that we need further study. Which will be made more difficult by the criminalization of the substance in so many jurisdictions where that research could be performed.
Well, I didn't say "fair and balanced"; even before Faux News spoiled that phrase, it wasn't what you want in a review: you want them to tear something to shreds if it sucks, or praise it to high heaven if it's great.
But simply "fair" is something I look for in a reviewer: someone who'll give each new Will Ferrell film a chance, just in case he gets cast in another Stranger Than Fiction. Entertaining is another good trait, but I'll do without that on a web site, because I'm probably just there to (maybe) buy something in particular, not because I want a regular go-to critic.
I wouldn't say that reviews from random people have no value. But their value is less than that of reviews that have been... reviewed. By someone known to have no reason to scam the system. That's the role that editors used to perform, back when reviewers were professionals who wrote for publications. The New York Times didn't just take open submissions, screen them for profanity and advertising, and print them all; they selected reviewers who demonstrated that they were knowledgeable, fair, and helpful, and only published those reviews. If you wanted to know which books were merely popular... that's what the "bestseller" list was for.
Regardless of the relative merits of Dvorak vs. Qwerty, there's absolutely no benefit in this situation in throwing out however-many years of muscle memory on one layout (which is absolutely critical to speed-typing), to start over learning a different layout.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc strikes again.
Yep, already discredited: http://insights.chitika.com/2012/ios-6-adoption-post-google-maps/
There's a simple way to identify people of high intelligence: ask them if they think IQ tests are a meaningful measure of it. If they do... they aren't very intelligent.
And I say this as someone who's scored 150, so it isn't sour grapes. Standardized tests just don't tell you very much... at least nothing useful.
I also scored in the 99th percentile on all my college entrance tests (missed three questions on the SAT), scored 92nd-98th percentile on the four GRE tests I took, and I signed up for the LSAT on a whim with no prep whatsoever and scored 90th percentile. None of those scores proved to be a good predictor of my professional success. :/
OK, in this story, "the dark side of Saturn" and "the far side of Saturn" are effectively equivalent.
Fuck you, mod. Correcting some idiot who can't read is not "flamebait". (This is.)
RTFA. It was not on the far side.
If you RTFA, you'll see that the NYT is correct. The submitter screwed it up.
"redirected their flight patterns to [impact] the far (dark) side of the moon."
Wrong. As TFA takes pains to explain, the "dark side of the Moon" and the "far side of the Moon" are not the same thing.
An the impacts were on the near side of the Moon, while it is dark.
Sounds a bit like H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, but involving just one planet.
"But OS GUI designs need to catch up to the ever horizontally expanding waistline of our monitors."
Or manufacturers could stop assuming that the only thing we want to do with our computers is sit and watch movies.