Re:raido sucks and advertisers are stoooopid
on
Homogenized Music
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· Score: 2, Interesting
So, again, why don't advertisers like the 60+ crowd, helluva lot of money to be made there.
I believe it's because older consumers tend to be more loyal to specific brands, and therefore less likely to be swayed by advertising to new products. For the most part, you're either already getting their money, or you're not going to.
It was really hard to watch, but I'm really glad they tied the loose ends well, and showed them the respect they deserved.
Not to get too worked up over a TV show, but I wish the "respect" part were true.
While it's a fact that planning in advance was never these guys' strong suit, it seems the writers decided to give them either a major brain lock or a case of suicidal depression. Obviously, their plan for saving the world involved one guy pulling a switch and the other two, ummm, standing around waiting to die. Couldn't two have been saved while one pulled the switch?
Or better yet, knock the guy out and then all three could escape before the wall came down?
if I defined all the enum lables as finals in Java, and then used them in switch statements/assigns on variables, I don't get the type-checking I do in C. So in C:
enum PersonType aPerson = Desktop;
would be flagged as an error, but in Java the equivalent
int PersonType = DESKTOP;
would be perfectly fine as far as the compiler is concerned.
This could be a problem.
True, which is why you shouldn't do enumerations in Java that way:-). See this article for a description of how to do typesafe enumerations. However, as is pointed out in the article, you still must do more work in Java than in C++ to accomplish this.
As for "blending into the background", Don Norman (author of "The Invisible Computer") seems to think the iMac is on the right track. I've certainly seen reports that the iMac's base effectively disappears behind the screen.
Wireless KB and mouse? Meh - they are nice but not (IMO) essential. It might be nice if it were available as an option from Apple, but then people would complain about how it costs too much:-)
And as for the "normal people", an argument could be made that the freak dancing in the iPod commercial is still more "normal" than Jeff Goldblum.
Actually the latest version also burns ISO discs from the Finder (as described above). When initializing, a dialog box allows you to choose a format - Mac HFS+, ISO or Audio CD. Works just great.
They essentially did the Visual J++ thing but they did it __right__. Their classes are in addition to the Java 2 platform, not a sneaky replacement for it. I personally wish __more__ vendors would provide platform-level access in bridged Java classes.
Just to note: they've also done this with libraries other than Cocoa, such as QuickTime, Speech Framework and Spelling Framework. From their presentation at JavaOne, it sounded like they are planning to do this for other libraries/services as well. They're not cross-platform, but they do play well with pure Java (as opposed to certain other attempts to do the same thing).
I tought she was looking pretty sweet on the show but watching the Maxim photo shoot and reading some of the quotes attributed to her on that page I find her much LESS impressive now.
FWIW, I've successfully started up (but not pounded on) Forte 2, using the standard "generic" Java startup instructions. However, one big problem - the icon bar at the top (for the Swing widgets) did not load the icons successfully. They all showed up as generic question mark icons making the palette useless. Also, it wasn't the speediest app I've ever run (but I only have a G3/266, the second slowest supported machine for Mac OS X). I haven't yet tried Forte 3, which was recently released.
That would be nice, but unlikely. A better bet would be the iMacs and eventually the iBooks bumping up to G4s as the PowerMacs and eventually PowerBooks get up to G5. Hopefully there will be some reworking of the iMacs also - I guess LCD is a possibility given Apple's no-CRT position, and at any rate it's been now three years since Apple's last "whoa" design (although I give the TiBook at least a "wow").
Of course, on the other hand we don't even expect a "yawn" design from Dell every three years....
You know, I've seen this kind of comment in a number of reviews:
Despite nearly every robotics (a word Asimov coined), despite every robotics major ANYwhere having read his robot novels, somehow they forgot the laws of robotics.
Here's an idea - it might, just might, if you think real hard, be possible to come up with a story about robots THAT DOESN'T USE THE ASIMOV MODEL. Not every single story about robots since "Runaround" has to reference them, you know!
Slashdot Mirror
As I checked the front page this morning, the last line of the Apple story read:
( Read More... | 482 of 666 comments | Apple )
Coincidence?????
Not to get too worked up over a TV show, but I wish the "respect" part were true.
While it's a fact that planning in advance was never these guys' strong suit, it seems the writers decided to give them either a major brain lock or a case of suicidal depression. Obviously, their plan for saving the world involved one guy pulling a switch and the other two, ummm, standing around waiting to die. Couldn't two have been saved while one pulled the switch?
Or better yet, knock the guy out and then all three could escape before the wall came down?
Actually I heard if you put green around the outside edge of the case, the sound quality goes up.
This means that for now, this can't be an "iPod killer", since they run on different platforms. Perhaps in the future, but not now.
As for "blending into the background", Don Norman (author of "The Invisible Computer") seems to think the iMac is on the right track. I've certainly seen reports that the iMac's base effectively disappears behind the screen.
Wireless KB and mouse? Meh - they are nice but not (IMO) essential. It might be nice if it were available as an option from Apple, but then people would complain about how it costs too much :-)
And as for the "normal people", an argument could be made that the freak dancing in the iPod commercial is still more "normal" than Jeff Goldblum.
Actually the latest version also burns ISO discs from the Finder (as described above). When initializing, a dialog box allows you to choose a format - Mac HFS+, ISO or Audio CD. Works just great.
Just to note: they've also done this with libraries other than Cocoa, such as QuickTime, Speech Framework and Spelling Framework. From their presentation at JavaOne, it sounded like they are planning to do this for other libraries/services as well. They're not cross-platform, but they do play well with pure Java (as opposed to certain other attempts to do the same thing).
FWIW, I've successfully started up (but not pounded on) Forte 2, using the standard "generic" Java startup instructions. However, one big problem - the icon bar at the top (for the Swing widgets) did not load the icons successfully. They all showed up as generic question mark icons making the palette useless. Also, it wasn't the speediest app I've ever run (but I only have a G3/266, the second slowest supported machine for Mac OS X). I haven't yet tried Forte 3, which was recently released.
That would be nice, but unlikely. A better bet would be the iMacs and eventually the iBooks bumping up to G4s as the PowerMacs and eventually PowerBooks get up to G5. Hopefully there will be some reworking of the iMacs also - I guess LCD is a possibility given Apple's no-CRT position, and at any rate it's been now three years since Apple's last "whoa" design (although I give the TiBook at least a "wow").
Of course, on the other hand we don't even expect a "yawn" design from Dell every three years....
Thanks. That cleared things up.