Agree, it's about the songs first. Last year I DJ'd in New York and copped grief from our co-DJs who thought we amateurs because we brought CDs and not a million 45s (we play 60s stuff not hip hop or dance). We were travelling the US and had already been on the road for a month by the time we hit New York and wanted to travel light, and many of the songs we had on CD were from albums that we didn't want to bring because they are too fragile/rare.
At any rate, predictably, our songs from humble CDs got the crowd up and dancing, while their sets full of technical hitches (lots of between song breaks, and one of the girls dropped the mixing unit on a turntables - eeek) had them sitting down contemplating their vodkas.
"She just picked it up the way kids pick up anything else, by watching mom and dad."
Do you think she could still use a computer just as well if she didn't have the opportunity to watch you?
Many kids don't have that opportunity. When my family got a PC and put it in the living room, no one knew how to use it. I learnt the hard way - by making a lot of mistakes. I was forever formatting DOS3 discs by mistake. Not the best way to learn. But fortunately I had a lot of time to learn - when you're 9 you have all the time in the world, not so if you suddenly have to use the computer as an adult, or as someone in a Majority World country who may have consistent access to any kind of technology.
Computers *are hard*, even for the very smart, no matter how much I try and show them that it's easy and useful and they won't 'break' it. I work every day with 18 year olds who don't have computer skills besides typing up a word document, saving it to a floppy (even in 2005) and printing. They might be Gen Y, 'born with the chip', but that doesn't mean they automatically have computer skills or the desire to have computer skills, even if they had computer classes at school and had a computer at home. Besides being able to watch other people do something to learn it, you need to have motivation to do it. That's great that your daughter is so into the computer - sounds like me at that age, but you do still need motivation. My siblings had the same computer as me and can use the Internet and send email but that's about it, because they weren't motivated to learn more.
I run classes in which I emphasise that whatever I'm teaching them that day will make their lives easier and even those that are really keen often still have trouble. You have one daughter who is doing really well, but I see so many people who are not, despite their intelligence. It really is not about telling them whether it's hard or not.
Right, because people benefiting from the $100 laptops are going to want Garage Band and iDVD installed.
I would suppose that for this project, if it was to have happened, Apple would provide a slimmed down version of the OS, removing all the unnecessary apps, but adding AppleWorks, etc.
Huh? OSX is noted for its exceptional multi-language ability. I've not heard anyone rave about Linux's language abilities.
"Mac OS X ships with localized versions of English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese and includes broad support for many additional languages, including Thai, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Cherokee, Hawaiian, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Armenian, Russian and Greek, so you don't have to purchase separate copies of the operating system if you're multilingual. You can mix and match character sets in the same document. Chinese, Japanese and Korean fonts are already grouped together, so you can quickly switch to a new font in your language."
I have English, French, and the Japanese kit loaded in my OSX language set.
I prefer to not work in an office. I find offices quiet, lonely, and disconnected.
I'm in an open plan office/department. We all work in one area, but with no walls dividing us. You get your corner of the room, but you also get to talk to others regularly.
Most places are either cube farms or open plan. Very very few people have offices in any industry.
I've always thought the US undergraduate library to be an oddity - we don't have them in Australia (apart from University of Sydney) nor do many other countries.
One thing that is very different now though, is that stacks may be open to all students, but closed entirely to the public. Which in some instances, creates a situation of reduced access.
Re:Won't somebody please think of the ATM machines
on
IBM Officially Kills OS/2
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Indeed. IBM pretty much left the ATM market entirely about 5 years ago. There's only a few left, most are Diebold (which I curse every time I have to use one)
I've just started evaluating OCS for a conference myself, and I am confident that it will cover all of the program functions (submitting abstracts, routing for review, posting the program and schedules). I wouldn't use it for registration, but there are many many other systems for that.
Is there anything specific that you want conference software to do that OCS won't?
I've been trying to teach email to staff for a few weeks now. It's a nightmare. These are people that would prefer to learn keyboard shortcuts than try and manipulate mouse-clicking.
If you can, try and remember when you learnt to use a mouse. It hurt, didn't it? It strained your thumb and your fingers, yes? And that's what these people are going through now, and we expect them to just get used to it and learn all these crazy left/right commands.
This is another one of those occasions where technology is being used for the sake of it, not because it will enhance the quiz for participants.
The joy in pub trivia is that it is simple, no computers, no technology, no hassles. You show up, get your piece of paper, and scribble away. Why unnecessarily complicate things?
When you create an index or taxonomy after the content has been produced, that's called Post-coordinate indexing (as opposed to pre-coordinated indexing, eg faceted taxonomies).
No new term needed. Thanks again to library science.
Re:What a complex world we live in! Is it worth it
on
Defining Google
·
· Score: 1
hmm, I like intellectualism but not of the "memorise and regurgitate" type. However, I guess that's the kind of recruitment method that works best for people that are just graduating from Comp. Sci degrees, as that is what they are used to.
It is misleading to tell people to just learn Katakana. There aren't really that many foreign (loan) words unless all you're doing in Japan is buying beer (biiru) or a computer (pasokon).
If you actually want to eat, learn both Kana (Hiragana and Katakana).
There are hundreds of sites on the Internet for learning the basics of Japanese. Check the Japan Reference forum first - http://www.jref.com/forum/
I do not believe that one needs to use a computer for school until you are in high school. It is a waste of time for teachers to have computers in classrooms before this time. It is only taking away from other, more critical skills like reading which have been on a downward spiral in recent years.
I think I benefited from an era when computers were simpler. I had an Amstrad at home. I could use a word processor that wasn't much more complex than a typewriter, play Brick and other very basic games. Drawing was similar to MS Paint. Kids these days are overwhelmed by extremely complex tools and so spend way too much time even learning the basics.
that way you convert them and take all the hassles out of it:)
I have bad memories of technology and christmas. One year we got a Sega and it broke 4 times. It's very frustrating when tech stuff won't work on christmas day.
For most websites, unless your site is for museums or to showcase design and the like, I believe that the architecture is much more important than design specifics. If you spend the time to correctly establish all the elements on a site and how they will work together, it is very elementary to then design a simple banner and colour scheme (which is all most sites need). Spend time concentrating on the layout, not the design and drawing, and the rest will fall into place eventually.
As for digital art... I started at the age of 7 on MS Paint and the like. There's something to be said for starting out with very limited tools and only progressing to PhotoShop etc when you have the basics down. It's like in art class... you would never start with oils on a canvas, but with a pencil on paper.
Simple tips -
Use one font. One standard font. Three colours max to start with.
I'd prefer to attempt rotoscope. The results are amazing. Best example is probably Waking Life
I tinker occasionally with animation and despite all the technology we have today, if you are a 2D/cel animator it's still an extremly slow process. But fun.
For some unknown reason, my XP box recently asked me to reactivate the product key when I booted. The machine would not recognise the DSL modem so I had to, god forbid, call the MS telephone support line.
It was a fairly lengthy process but it worked just fine. Certainly less painful than other methods. One of the software products we run at work still uses a dongle, it's a complete PITA.
I once suggested to our IT people, in all seriousness, that our library should dump the Visual Basic library management software that we were using that never worked in favour of Linux and open source management software and got laughed at.
My NT4 box is getting upgraded to XP next week. It's depressing.
Does the average user care about security flaws? I regularly speak to a lot of people with poor computer skills who believe that security problems are just a hassle that comes with the Internet. They don't have the skills or the willingness to do anything about the annoying popups they get, or the pr0n spam in their email. They just expect it. Some people feel that their anti-virus software is wasted if they never get a virus!
It will take a lot to change this perception.
Besides that, for the average PC Joe, and especially older users, Linux is still too hard to obtain, let alone use. There are some great projects to get distros into public libraries, but there needs to be more work done to make sure people are aware of them in the first place.
I've been downloading debian via jigdo this week. If I was an average Jane PC person, I would have given up.
Anyway, so the initial enemy was IBM, who were thought of back then in much the same way many people think of MS now. It's one of the biggest ironies in the history of the computing industry that at this moment, the only major internal part that separates Apple architecture from (IBM-compatible) PC architecture is a CPU that's co-produced and designed by IBM.
Yes.:) My dad reminds me of this every time an article on the subject is published by emailing it to me with some smart-ass comment. Dad, 25-year IBM employee, me, iBook owning Apple fan. Oh, the hilarity!
I was also a Coca-Cola addict. I was drinking three cans a day which isn't a massive amount but if I skipped one, I noticed right away.
I now drink a litre of water a day and have a couple of cups of tea, and one orange juice. I *like* having to go to the bathroom more often because it gets me out of my chair and gives my eyes a break from the computer.
I went cold turkey and the headaches lasted about a week. I suffer migraines and sinus headaches fairly regularly anyway so it was pretty painful during that time.
The other plus is that I am less bloated from drinking carbonated beverages.
My first computer was an Amstrad, it was an all in one mobo/keyboard deal and we plugged it into our Sony TV. I used it from 1988-1995, when I finally begged my Dad to get me an IBM 486. My dad's girlfriend at the time then used the Amstrad all the way up until 1999. Such longevity!
The Amstrad was more sturdy than any computer I've owned since. The 486 crapped out on me several times, a later PC's soundcard kept dying, and my iBook has had three trips to be serviced for a reed switch. But damn, that Amstrad. I used to carry it around to different TVs, friends would shove discs in the wrong way, and it would deal with it all. Sniff.
Slashdot Mirror
Agree, it's about the songs first. Last year I DJ'd in New York and copped grief from our co-DJs who thought we amateurs because we brought CDs and not a million 45s (we play 60s stuff not hip hop or dance). We were travelling the US and had already been on the road for a month by the time we hit New York and wanted to travel light, and many of the songs we had on CD were from albums that we didn't want to bring because they are too fragile/rare.
At any rate, predictably, our songs from humble CDs got the crowd up and dancing, while their sets full of technical hitches (lots of between song breaks, and one of the girls dropped the mixing unit on a turntables - eeek) had them sitting down contemplating their vodkas.
So you hire some other poor woman to do the menial housework, how does that solve anything?
My husband and I clean together, we buy food together, we fix things in the house together. It's all equal because it's 100% from the both of us.
"She just picked it up the way kids pick up anything else, by watching mom and dad."
Do you think she could still use a computer just as well if she didn't have the opportunity to watch you?
Many kids don't have that opportunity. When my family got a PC and put it in the living room, no one knew how to use it. I learnt the hard way - by making a lot of mistakes. I was forever formatting DOS3 discs by mistake. Not the best way to learn. But fortunately I had a lot of time to learn - when you're 9 you have all the time in the world, not so if you suddenly have to use the computer as an adult, or as someone in a Majority World country who may have consistent access to any kind of technology.
Computers *are hard*, even for the very smart, no matter how much I try and show them that it's easy and useful and they won't 'break' it. I work every day with 18 year olds who don't have computer skills besides typing up a word document, saving it to a floppy (even in 2005) and printing. They might be Gen Y, 'born with the chip', but that doesn't mean they automatically have computer skills or the desire to have computer skills, even if they had computer classes at school and had a computer at home. Besides being able to watch other people do something to learn it, you need to have motivation to do it. That's great that your daughter is so into the computer - sounds like me at that age, but you do still need motivation. My siblings had the same computer as me and can use the Internet and send email but that's about it, because they weren't motivated to learn more.
I run classes in which I emphasise that whatever I'm teaching them that day will make their lives easier and even those that are really keen often still have trouble. You have one daughter who is doing really well, but I see so many people who are not, despite their intelligence. It really is not about telling them whether it's hard or not.
Right, because people benefiting from the $100 laptops are going to want Garage Band and iDVD installed.
I would suppose that for this project, if it was to have happened, Apple would provide a slimmed down version of the OS, removing all the unnecessary apps, but adding AppleWorks, etc.
Huh? OSX is noted for its exceptional multi-language ability. I've not heard anyone rave about Linux's language abilities.
"Mac OS X ships with localized versions of English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese and includes broad support for many additional languages, including Thai, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Cherokee, Hawaiian, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Armenian, Russian and Greek, so you don't have to purchase separate copies of the operating system if you're multilingual. You can mix and match character sets in the same document. Chinese, Japanese and Korean fonts are already grouped together, so you can quickly switch to a new font in your language."
I have English, French, and the Japanese kit loaded in my OSX language set.
I prefer to not work in an office. I find offices quiet, lonely, and disconnected.
I'm in an open plan office/department. We all work in one area, but with no walls dividing us. You get your corner of the room, but you also get to talk to others regularly.
Most places are either cube farms or open plan. Very very few people have offices in any industry.
O'Reilly books cannot be downloaded through Safari. They are HTML only, page by page.
Great summary there!
I've always thought the US undergraduate library to be an oddity - we don't have them in Australia (apart from University of Sydney) nor do many other countries.
One thing that is very different now though, is that stacks may be open to all students, but closed entirely to the public. Which in some instances, creates a situation of reduced access.
Indeed. IBM pretty much left the ATM market entirely about 5 years ago. There's only a few left, most are Diebold (which I curse every time I have to use one)
I've just started evaluating OCS for a conference myself, and I am confident that it will cover all of the program functions (submitting abstracts, routing for review, posting the program and schedules). I wouldn't use it for registration, but there are many many other systems for that.
Is there anything specific that you want conference software to do that OCS won't?
I've been trying to teach email to staff for a few weeks now. It's a nightmare. These are people that would prefer to learn keyboard shortcuts than try and manipulate mouse-clicking.
If you can, try and remember when you learnt to use a mouse. It hurt, didn't it? It strained your thumb and your fingers, yes? And that's what these people are going through now, and we expect them to just get used to it and learn all these crazy left/right commands.
This is another one of those occasions where technology is being used for the sake of it, not because it will enhance the quiz for participants.
The joy in pub trivia is that it is simple, no computers, no technology, no hassles. You show up, get your piece of paper, and scribble away. Why unnecessarily complicate things?
When you create an index or taxonomy after the content has been produced, that's called Post-coordinate indexing (as opposed to pre-coordinated indexing, eg faceted taxonomies).
No new term needed. Thanks again to library science.
hmm, I like intellectualism but not of the "memorise and regurgitate" type. However, I guess that's the kind of recruitment method that works best for people that are just graduating from Comp. Sci degrees, as that is what they are used to.
It is misleading to tell people to just learn Katakana. There aren't really that many foreign (loan) words unless all you're doing in Japan is buying beer (biiru) or a computer (pasokon).
If you actually want to eat, learn both Kana (Hiragana and Katakana).
There are hundreds of sites on the Internet for learning the basics of Japanese. Check the Japan Reference forum first - http://www.jref.com/forum/
I do not believe that one needs to use a computer for school until you are in high school. It is a waste of time for teachers to have computers in classrooms before this time. It is only taking away from other, more critical skills like reading which have been on a downward spiral in recent years.
I think I benefited from an era when computers were simpler. I had an Amstrad at home. I could use a word processor that wasn't much more complex than a typewriter, play Brick and other very basic games. Drawing was similar to MS Paint. Kids these days are overwhelmed by extremely complex tools and so spend way too much time even learning the basics.
why not give a gift voucher that says
:)
"redeemable for one free install of Linux!"
that way you convert them and take all the hassles out of it
I have bad memories of technology and christmas. One year we got a Sega and it broke 4 times. It's very frustrating when tech stuff won't work on christmas day.
For most websites, unless your site is for museums or to showcase design and the like, I believe that the architecture is much more important than design specifics. If you spend the time to correctly establish all the elements on a site and how they will work together, it is very elementary to then design a simple banner and colour scheme (which is all most sites need). Spend time concentrating on the layout, not the design and drawing, and the rest will fall into place eventually.
As for digital art... I started at the age of 7 on MS Paint and the like. There's something to be said for starting out with very limited tools and only progressing to PhotoShop etc when you have the basics down. It's like in art class... you would never start with oils on a canvas, but with a pencil on paper.
Simple tips -
Use one font. One standard font.
Three colours max to start with.
Easy!
I tinker occasionally with animation and despite all the technology we have today, if you are a 2D/cel animator it's still an extremly slow process. But fun.
For some unknown reason, my XP box recently asked me to reactivate the product key when I booted. The machine would not recognise the DSL modem so I had to, god forbid, call the MS telephone support line.
It was a fairly lengthy process but it worked just fine. Certainly less painful than other methods. One of the software products we run at work still uses a dongle, it's a complete PITA.
I once suggested to our IT people, in all seriousness, that our library should dump the Visual Basic library management software that we were using that never worked in favour of Linux and open source management software and got laughed at.
My NT4 box is getting upgraded to XP next week. It's depressing.
Does the average user care about security flaws? I regularly speak to a lot of people with poor computer skills who believe that security problems are just a hassle that comes with the Internet. They don't have the skills or the willingness to do anything about the annoying popups they get, or the pr0n spam in their email. They just expect it. Some people feel that their anti-virus software is wasted if they never get a virus!
It will take a lot to change this perception.
Besides that, for the average PC Joe, and especially older users, Linux is still too hard to obtain, let alone use. There are some great projects to get distros into public libraries, but there needs to be more work done to make sure people are aware of them in the first place.
I've been downloading debian via jigdo this week. If I was an average Jane PC person, I would have given up.
Yes. :) My dad reminds me of this every time an article on the subject is published by emailing it to me with some smart-ass comment. Dad, 25-year IBM employee, me, iBook owning Apple fan. Oh, the hilarity!
I was also a Coca-Cola addict. I was drinking three cans a day which isn't a massive amount but if I skipped one, I noticed right away.
I now drink a litre of water a day and have a couple of cups of tea, and one orange juice. I *like* having to go to the bathroom more often because it gets me out of my chair and gives my eyes a break from the computer.
I went cold turkey and the headaches lasted about a week. I suffer migraines and sinus headaches fairly regularly anyway so it was pretty painful during that time.
The other plus is that I am less bloated from drinking carbonated beverages.
Now I just need to drink less beer...
My first computer was an Amstrad, it was an all in one mobo/keyboard deal and we plugged it into our Sony TV. I used it from 1988-1995, when I finally begged my Dad to get me an IBM 486. My dad's girlfriend at the time then used the Amstrad all the way up until 1999. Such longevity!
The Amstrad was more sturdy than any computer I've owned since. The 486 crapped out on me several times, a later PC's soundcard kept dying, and my iBook has had three trips to be serviced for a reed switch. But damn, that Amstrad. I used to carry it around to different TVs, friends would shove discs in the wrong way, and it would deal with it all. Sniff.