i got a free book on study skills from my undergraduate university on the day I enrolled, a couple of months before I started classes. Gave me time to read up on how it would be different from high school.
The watch is useful when you forget what time it is out on the lawn.
When I started high school in 1991, I had typing lessons on good old fashioned typewriters. Granted, this was a girls school so we had a lot of traditional subjects like typing, cooking, sewing etc.
However, learning to type properly has really helped me to reduce pain. I sit properly, i don't rest my wrists on the table, and i have learnt how to reach every key from the 'home row'. those two years of classes were horrible, but if it's saved me from RSI then it's worth it.
unfortunately, i can't type in the same way on my iBook and bad habits are starting to creep in.
group copyright, expiration etc
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 1
group/corporate copyright is essential in some areas. for example, I often write policy and documenation for a radio co-operative. Were I to leave, it would be annoying if I had to be contacted each and every time and policy was amended. by having the co-operative hold the copyright, changes can be made with the consent of the group easily.
One thing I am worried about is that books and records etc go out of print and they are still in copyright, so no one can make use of that knowledge. I would propose that holders of copyright be bound to have available galleys, machine copies or a safehold of printed copies deposited with a national library or other body so that the work can continue to be produced in the future. Work that is deemed out of print should also be able to be printed by others.
if CNN/Money has an academic audience who make reference to their stories in conference papers, then they have a problem. Academics need to get into the practice of saving or printing everything that they wish to refer to. Many essential comments or editorials that I have referred to in my thesis are already gone, but I have printed copies.
if CNN/Money is just aiming to duplicate newswires to a specialised audience, they should make it clear that this is the site's intention. Wire readers generally understand that things get reposted, rewritten, or deleted. I work with journalists and wire postings on Reuters etc change from minute to minute.
Online media is very different from traditional media because it is immediate. I don't think that news services have decided whether they want to take advantage of that and be wire services, or just be online versions of their print selves. Until then, it just makes things more difficult for consumers.
an update of 80s kidstuff
on
Sony PCG-U1
·
· Score: 1
anyone else remember those little battery operated electronic 'laptops' for kids that were supposed to help you learn spelling and maths, etc? this is just that, gone mad. there's not enough built-in bits and pieces to do all the things that people expect laptops to do these days.
of course, what one expects laptops to do and what the actually can do for the size is rarely equal.
all the same, I'm very happy with my iBook for thesis writing, ripping audio, and watching DVDs. things i can't do on my desktop pc!
My partner is in constant contact with publishers, and fantasy well and truly outstrips SF sales. Fantasy is the biggest selling genre, even beating romance.
If this sort of thing happened, you would get a lot more manipulation of the definition of the 'fantasy genre', so that books can be classified that way in the store and thus appear more enticing to fantasy buyers. It's happening already with some authors desparate to be labelled fantasy to increase sales.
Who would pay for bookscan? How many small, independent bookstores that currently make up the bulk of the bestseller information would be left out?
leave conditions etc are generally worked out by industry/company here in australia, and four weeks is the average. i get six weeks because i don't get any public holidays/long weekends.
despite that, i think you'd be hard pressed to find a company where everyone used their entitlements every year.
the lack of leave in the US is really outdated considering the era of 'family friendly' working conditions etc.
wow! we must be doing something wrong.
on
USB Audio Recorders?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Man, our public radio station must be doing really bad if little Indian villages have computers.
We have cassette and minidisc. and it took 8 months to convince our stingy finance director to let go of enough money to buy an MD recorder.
you do not need a computer for recording. It basically just replicates what the MD can do. I doubt that your people want to do complex editing.
put your money into microphones, codecs, and your transmitter.
ooh i feel so sorry for you sweetie pie. what an *inconvenience* it is for you to have to come and fix my computer problems. oh wait, isn't that what you get paid for?
if you don't like the job, work in a different industry.
maybe we don't listen to you because we've had to wait nine months for you to come and install a program that we paid a lot of money for and had to listen to your whining on about how it's going to take you five whole minutes out of your whole day to install. or because you assume that we are stupid, and respond to our questions with responses like, 'is the printer turned on?'
until you realise that you are being extremely disrespectful with this kind of attitude and behaviour, you will continue to be unemployed.
I think my stereo CD player is a good compromise. the CD is counterweighted, which gets rid of that crappy tray system, and cd's have never skipped. ever.
I really think it depends on what you are used to. my machine at work runs NT4. it's exceedingly slow and painful. my PC at home is a PIII 450 mhz, running win 98. it's also exceedingly slow and painful.
my new ibook is g3 600, with 256mb ram. it runs like a dream in OS X.
sure, if you're used to a P4 1.6ghz or something, you will find the iBook slow.
if you're putting 640mb in that thing, you should really have bought a powerbook. there's only so much that RAM can do when you still have a G3.
I think that if you give a child the basic building blocks for learning, they can learn things for themselves. However, there must be some direction in learning to ensure that they learn important things like math, science, history etc. What is the point of a creative learner who only knows how to build computer boxes, for example.
Children are often lazy because their parents take no interest in their child's education and so kids don't get the reinforcement that they need at home. Kids need repetition.
If for no other reason, you need to attend regular schooling in order to get into university. I have a friend who was not considered eligible for admission to university because she went to a montessori school, and then was homeschooled.
I hate even more is when you have some software that you have purchased and the company wants to you register it in X days or it will not work anymore. That's awful, don't make me feel like warez scum. I'm still waiting for an auth code for Bias' Peak LE that I sent in a couple of days ago.
I have several thousand books, and I want to catalogue them for insurance purposes (they're not worth anything, I just want a list in case something happened to them, like fire).
I'm not particularly competent with scripting so I've just been using endnote (www.endnote.com) which is a bibliographic tool, to look up book information and download it to my computer. I then export that information to an Access database. I've also done a similar thing for my CDs.
It is extremely tedious. At work in our library we catalogue everything ourselves because we can't afford access to the big databases like Kinetica.
An open source system would be extremely expensive, because acquiring all that data from LOC, BIP, etc will cost you money. Not to mention the fact that it is hardly comprehensive. Unless you only own run of the mill paperbacks, you will find that there is almost no information left about your books. Knowledge about classic texts from the 60s even, is starting to disappear as last copies are discarded.
I would like to think that the American Library Association or similar could get involved with such a project if it started up but i doubt that they would.
Hardcore people are not the only audience for home built.
I built my last computer for $35:) It's got a new 15" monitor (which granted, my dad paid $70 for at a staff selloff), CD-R, non-functioning floppy (which I will have to spend $10 to replace), one of those all in one mobo deals where the modem and soundcard are integrated, PIII 500, 128mb of ram, and runs win98 quite nicely.
I'm not technically proficient in any way but all these things are easy to put together. I wouldn't buy from Dell just because I don't need all the bits and pieces like new drives. I only upgrade my motherboard and memory.
The most complex thing I've ever done is solder a theremin from a kit. I wouldn't let a solder iron anywhere near my computer with my novice hands, but I'm quite willing to pull things in and out.
I would not however, build my own laptop. I purchased an iBook last week because I need a stable hardware setup.
Don't forget that most production work is outsourced. This includes graphics, advertising, branding, and most technical solutions are purchased from outside.
If you want to get a crack into editing go to an advertising company. You will be waiting a very long time if you look for work only in TV studios. Most editors here have been here for 10 years or more.
Sure, there are a few tech jobs out there in TV. But you will find that most jobs that are design related. Where I work, we have a large presentation & graphics department, who work on the website, steaming, logos, etc.
We have a very small technical group of people, most of their work is done when new systems are implemented, like setting up the DV system.
On a tangent, have you considered radio? There's lots of opportunities in steaming, digital audio, etc. Lots of Digital master control stuff there. This could give you more options while you're waiting for TV stuff.
endnote and appleworks don't play together. endnote only plays with ms word. i couldn't care less about file formats, i just have to have endnote working.
I bought my first iBook 2 days ago, in order to get a stable portable. And lo and behold, wouldn't you know it, yesterday I found myself installing Windows Media Player and using IE. As much as we can whinge about MS and WMP, I've never been able to get QT to play in anything but a QT player, so that's just as bad when it comes to propietary apps.
I would do without Office except Endnote (http://www.endnote.com) does not support automatic citations in AppleWorks.
>The very idea of having to pay royalties for the >songs I play through a web cast is outrageous.
hey, guess what. it's called copyright. to make use of copyrighted material, you have to pay for it. bitrate quality, or no bitrate quality.
i work for a public radio station. we have a rather shitty transmitter. the sound is rather hissy. probably the equivalent of your shoutcast. should we forfeit on our royalty payments because of that? no, because it's the law, and we do what we have to do.
>1. entertainment. >2. To promote the artists.
as much as we'd all like to believe that, 99% of radio is about stroking the announcer's ego and getting advertising/sponsorship sales.
for many artists, radio royalties are the only way they make any money. if your song gets played on a station that submits playlists to the royalty company, and you have submitted a claim, bingo! i know someone that actually made something like $30000 in radio royalties one year, but sales of the actual product were tiny.
>This would merely involve taking a trip to our >local music store, and purchasing a copy of the >artists album.
sorry, you've bought yourself a single person license which allows you to play your one copy only on one stereo at one time, and you may not make copies unless you are a licensed broadcaster - in that case you can make one 'ease of use' copy.
i'm an australian living in australia. yet my web server is located in the US. i don't want to be subject to US law. why should i be?
there needs to be a way to identify location of the author when a web page is posted. RDF, and other metadata standards need to be enforced on all website authors so that we get useful, meaningful information about sites so that jurisdiction can be clearly established.
the internet is now completely unworkable, every government is involved and every government doesn't understand the technology.
if commerical interests were not involved, all this would be easier IMHO. if the internet remained as an academic communication tool, we wouldn't have all this DMCA, CIPA, RIAA madness.
as for libel and defamation? there's a much easier solution. write to the owner of the server and get the material you dislike taken off. far easier and cheaper than court.
Slashdot Mirror
i got a free book on study skills from my undergraduate university on the day I enrolled, a couple of months before I started classes. Gave me time to read up on how it would be different from high school.
The watch is useful when you forget what time it is out on the lawn.
When I started high school in 1991, I had typing lessons on good old fashioned typewriters. Granted, this was a girls school so we had a lot of traditional subjects like typing, cooking, sewing etc.
However, learning to type properly has really helped me to reduce pain. I sit properly, i don't rest my wrists on the table, and i have learnt how to reach every key from the 'home row'. those two years of classes were horrible, but if it's saved me from RSI then it's worth it.
unfortunately, i can't type in the same way on my iBook and bad habits are starting to creep in.
group/corporate copyright is essential in some areas. for example, I often write policy and documenation for a radio co-operative. Were I to leave, it would be annoying if I had to be contacted each and every time and policy was amended. by having the co-operative hold the copyright, changes can be made with the consent of the group easily.
One thing I am worried about is that books and records etc go out of print and they are still in copyright, so no one can make use of that knowledge. I would propose that holders of copyright be bound to have available galleys, machine copies or a safehold of printed copies deposited with a national library or other body so that the work can continue to be produced in the future. Work that is deemed out of print should also be able to be printed by others.
err, the majority of 'journalism' is quotes from press releases.
if CNN/Money has an academic audience who make reference to their stories in conference papers, then they have a problem. Academics need to get into the practice of saving or printing everything that they wish to refer to. Many essential comments or editorials that I have referred to in my thesis are already gone, but I have printed copies.
if CNN/Money is just aiming to duplicate newswires to a specialised audience, they should make it clear that this is the site's intention. Wire readers generally understand that things get reposted, rewritten, or deleted. I work with journalists and wire postings on Reuters etc change from minute to minute.
Online media is very different from traditional media because it is immediate. I don't think that news services have decided whether they want to take advantage of that and be wire services, or just be online versions of their print selves. Until then, it just makes things more difficult for consumers.
anyone else remember those little battery operated electronic 'laptops' for kids that were supposed to help you learn spelling and maths, etc? this is just that, gone mad. there's not enough built-in bits and pieces to do all the things that people expect laptops to do these days.
of course, what one expects laptops to do and what the actually can do for the size is rarely equal.
all the same, I'm very happy with my iBook for thesis writing, ripping audio, and watching DVDs. things i can't do on my desktop pc!
My partner is in constant contact with publishers, and fantasy well and truly outstrips SF sales. Fantasy is the biggest selling genre, even beating romance.
If this sort of thing happened, you would get a lot more manipulation of the definition of the 'fantasy genre', so that books can be classified that way in the store and thus appear more enticing to fantasy buyers. It's happening already with some authors desparate to be labelled fantasy to increase sales.
Who would pay for bookscan? How many small, independent bookstores that currently make up the bulk of the bestseller information would be left out?
leave conditions etc are generally worked out by industry/company here in australia, and four weeks is the average. i get six weeks because i don't get any public holidays/long weekends.
despite that, i think you'd be hard pressed to find a company where everyone used their entitlements every year.
the lack of leave in the US is really outdated considering the era of 'family friendly' working conditions etc.
Man, our public radio station must be doing really bad if little Indian villages have computers.
We have cassette and minidisc. and it took 8 months to convince our stingy finance director to let go of enough money to buy an MD recorder.
you do not need a computer for recording. It basically just replicates what the MD can do. I doubt that your people want to do complex editing.
put your money into microphones, codecs, and your transmitter.
ooh i feel so sorry for you sweetie pie. what an *inconvenience* it is for you to have to come and fix my computer problems. oh wait, isn't that what you get paid for?
if you don't like the job, work in a different industry.
maybe we don't listen to you because we've had to wait nine months for you to come and install a program that we paid a lot of money for and had to listen to your whining on about how it's going to take you five whole minutes out of your whole day to install. or because you assume that we are stupid, and respond to our questions with responses like, 'is the printer turned on?'
until you realise that you are being extremely disrespectful with this kind of attitude and behaviour, you will continue to be unemployed.
I think my stereo CD player is a good compromise. the CD is counterweighted, which gets rid of that crappy tray system, and cd's have never skipped. ever.
e rc =8626x8645x8722&catid=8722&pid=3861&type=s
http://www.sonystyle.com/electronics/prd.jsp?hi
I really think it depends on what you are used to. my machine at work runs NT4. it's exceedingly slow and painful. my PC at home is a PIII 450 mhz, running win 98. it's also exceedingly slow and painful.
my new ibook is g3 600, with 256mb ram. it runs like a dream in OS X.
sure, if you're used to a P4 1.6ghz or something, you will find the iBook slow.
if you're putting 640mb in that thing, you should really have bought a powerbook. there's only so much that RAM can do when you still have a G3.
Ok, some stats please. How many US users have broadband, and how many use modems.
Here in Australia, it's like 90% modem at home. I'm sure it's that way in many other countries too. Modems are far from obselete.
I think that if you give a child the basic building blocks for learning, they can learn things for themselves. However, there must be some direction in learning to ensure that they learn important things like math, science, history etc. What is the point of a creative learner who only knows how to build computer boxes, for example.
Children are often lazy because their parents take no interest in their child's education and so kids don't get the reinforcement that they need at home. Kids need repetition.
If for no other reason, you need to attend regular schooling in order to get into university. I have a friend who was not considered eligible for admission to university because she went to a montessori school, and then was homeschooled.
Are these business people's lives so busy and complex that they can't be without the net for 3 frigging hours? How sad is that.
I hate even more is when you have some software that you have purchased and the company wants to you register it in X days or it will not work anymore. That's awful, don't make me feel like warez scum. I'm still waiting for an auth code for Bias' Peak LE that I sent in a couple of days ago.
I have several thousand books, and I want to catalogue them for insurance purposes (they're not worth anything, I just want a list in case something happened to them, like fire).
I'm not particularly competent with scripting so I've just been using endnote (www.endnote.com) which is a bibliographic tool, to look up book information and download it to my computer. I then export that information to an Access database. I've also done a similar thing for my CDs.
It is extremely tedious. At work in our library we catalogue everything ourselves because we can't afford access to the big databases like Kinetica.
An open source system would be extremely expensive, because acquiring all that data from LOC, BIP, etc will cost you money. Not to mention the fact that it is hardly comprehensive. Unless you only own run of the mill paperbacks, you will find that there is almost no information left about your books. Knowledge about classic texts from the 60s even, is starting to disappear as last copies are discarded.
I would like to think that the American Library Association or similar could get involved with such a project if it started up but i doubt that they would.
Hardcore people are not the only audience for home built.
:) It's got a new 15" monitor (which granted, my dad paid $70 for at a staff selloff), CD-R, non-functioning floppy (which I will have to spend $10 to replace), one of those all in one mobo deals where the modem and soundcard are integrated, PIII 500, 128mb of ram, and runs win98 quite nicely.
I built my last computer for $35
I'm not technically proficient in any way but all these things are easy to put together. I wouldn't buy from Dell just because I don't need all the bits and pieces like new drives. I only upgrade my motherboard and memory.
The most complex thing I've ever done is solder a theremin from a kit. I wouldn't let a solder iron anywhere near my computer with my novice hands, but I'm quite willing to pull things in and out.
I would not however, build my own laptop. I purchased an iBook last week because I need a stable hardware setup.
Oh and...
Don't forget that most production work is outsourced. This includes graphics, advertising, branding, and most technical solutions are purchased from outside.
If you want to get a crack into editing go to an advertising company. You will be waiting a very long time if you look for work only in TV studios. Most editors here have been here for 10 years or more.
Sure, there are a few tech jobs out there in TV. But you will find that most jobs that are design related. Where I work, we have a large presentation & graphics department, who work on the website, steaming, logos, etc.
We have a very small technical group of people, most of their work is done when new systems are implemented, like setting up the DV system.
On a tangent, have you considered radio? There's lots of opportunities in steaming, digital audio, etc. Lots of Digital master control stuff there. This could give you more options while you're waiting for TV stuff.
endnote and appleworks don't play together. endnote only plays with ms word. i couldn't care less about file formats, i just have to have endnote working.
I bought my first iBook 2 days ago, in order to get a stable portable. And lo and behold, wouldn't you know it, yesterday I found myself installing Windows Media Player and using IE. As much as we can whinge about MS and WMP, I've never been able to get QT to play in anything but a QT player, so that's just as bad when it comes to propietary apps.
I would do without Office except Endnote (http://www.endnote.com) does not support automatic citations in AppleWorks.
>The very idea of having to pay royalties for the >songs I play through a web cast is outrageous.
hey, guess what. it's called copyright. to make use of copyrighted material, you have to pay for it. bitrate quality, or no bitrate quality.
i work for a public radio station. we have a rather shitty transmitter. the sound is rather hissy. probably the equivalent of your shoutcast. should we forfeit on our royalty payments because of that? no, because it's the law, and we do what we have to do.
>1. entertainment.
>2. To promote the artists.
as much as we'd all like to believe that, 99% of radio is about stroking the announcer's ego and getting advertising/sponsorship sales.
for many artists, radio royalties are the only way they make any money. if your song gets played on a station that submits playlists to the royalty company, and you have submitted a claim, bingo! i know someone that actually made something like $30000 in radio royalties one year, but sales of the actual product were tiny.
>This would merely involve taking a trip to our >local music store, and purchasing a copy of the >artists album.
sorry, you've bought yourself a single person license which allows you to play your one copy only on one stereo at one time, and you may not make copies unless you are a licensed broadcaster - in that case you can make one 'ease of use' copy.
i just want to know how to get rid of taiwanese spam that crashes my computer when it tries to download.
i'm using spamcop but it just keeps mutating and multiplying.
i'm an australian living in australia. yet my web server is located in the US. i don't want to be subject to US law. why should i be?
there needs to be a way to identify location of the author when a web page is posted. RDF, and other metadata standards need to be enforced on all website authors so that we get useful, meaningful information about sites so that jurisdiction can be clearly established.
the internet is now completely unworkable, every government is involved and every government doesn't understand the technology.
if commerical interests were not involved, all this would be easier IMHO. if the internet remained as an academic communication tool, we wouldn't have all this DMCA, CIPA, RIAA madness.
as for libel and defamation? there's a much easier solution. write to the owner of the server and get the material you dislike taken off. far easier and cheaper than court.