People do this already. To learn to drive a car, ride a bike, ski, or control any other type of vehicle, you go through a learning process where you commit the control procedures to muscle memory. Once you have that covered, you pretty much go where you want to go, without necessarily thinking 'ok, now I need to turn the steering wheel'.
By and large, barring any significant equipment failure, you pretty much go towards whatever has your attention - for better or worse. Target fixation is alive and well in pretty much all of us. If you're on your bike and you keep staring at it, you'll most likely hit it. If you look at the path around it, most likely you won't. It has nothing to do with your ability to control the bike, and everything with the ability to control your attention.
I'll be the first to say that, for encyclopedia-level research, I do just about ALL of it online. Don't think there's anyone on this site who does any differently.
But, as a teenager, I got a full Encyclopaedia Brittanica from my grandmother as a gift. And the nerd in me couldn't keep me from picking up a random volume, leafing through it and waiting for something to catch my eye.
The variation on that would be that I'd look something up, and, in the process of finding the right page, some other entry would catch my eye and I'd read up on something (usually completely unrelated) after finding what I'd originally gone looking for.
Hypertext kicks ass. Ain't no arguing against that one. But search engines show you what you were looking for - it's a lot harder to 'stumble across' completely unexpected stuff on online reference engines. I ain't buying another paper encyclopedia, to be sure... at least not at the price my grandmother paid for mine... but, in the quest for pure, unadulterated trivia, there ain't nothing like it...
The swift adoption of Linux last year within the online government and non-government server community, coupled with inadequate training and knowledge on how to keep that environment secure when running vulnerable third party applications, has contributed to a consistently higher proportion of compromised Linux servers. Migration to Open Source can be fool's gold without adequate training and understanding of the impact that third party applications have on overall safety and security.
I think this paragraph says it all - it comes down to poor admins. If you have a bajillion-dollar lock made out of unobtainuim, but leave the key under the doormat, you're less secure than if you have a 2-dollar master lock but aren't dumb about the key.
What I meant to say was that unless the fan is on, the loudest sound the ibook produces are the clicks of the keyboard. When and if the fan ever comes on, however, it sounds like a dremel...
I have a dual USB (snow) iBook, with the 600 MHz G3 in it. Every once in a while, I'd get the fan to go on, and it HOWLED. Only for about 3 minutes though... then again, I was playing Tony Hawk, which had the cd-drive spinning, the processor cranking, the gpu driving, the hard drive, the ram, etc... basically, anything that could possibly produce heat, was. Plus, the iBook was sitting nicely on my pillow as I lay in bed... so yeah. No airflow + everything cranking = LOUD noise... it scared me so much the first time I heard it , I basically shut it down and propped it up vertically, so that it would cool faster. By a long shot, the loudest sound it produces are the clicks of the keyboard (yes, even louder than the speakers:c) ).
But yes, the iBook does have a fan, and it sounds like a power tool. But it never came on again... simply propping up the back of the ibook with a paperback gave it the airflow it needed....
Is it just me, or is the "it got destroyed in a car accident / plane crash / flood / lightning bolt from Zeus" excuse the grown-up version of "my dog ate my homework"?
I agree with you on this one. The fact that Lucas is actively producing more Star Wars opens him up to a very risky situation.
As you said, there's the copyright risk. Even if he had already scripted a part of the story which bears resemblance to anything produced by fans, the fact that the fans' work came into the eye of the public first allows for a potentially costly lawsuit. IANAL, however, so I may be wrong.
At the same time, while storylines produced by fans can serve as inspiration, they can also close down on Lucas' creativity for two reasons.
The first is the risk of copyright and steering far from fan films to avoid the slightest resemblance.
The second is the fact that he doesn't want any speculation of what happens in Episode III. I presume he already has a vision of where the story goes, but, supposing a fan writes something dangerously similar, he'll have to change things. So, to some extent, he's making sure the story ends up the way he wants it to. He (presumably) wants to leave as many options open for Episode III, which I consider will be the toughest of the 6 to make (that's another story, however).
As a poster above said, talking about Flash on/. always provokes knee-jerk reactions...
To summarize (and grossly over-simplify)/.ers' main points of criticism of Flash, a) It makes sites that look like angry fruit salads, b) it requires use of a FAIB, proprietary plugin which is unavailable for some platforms, and c) is generated by a commercial program that is not open-source.
The truth be told, flash is such an easy-to-use, powerful program that abusing it is really easy. Cheesy text effects are really quickly done, and this is even worse when you throw in programs such as Swish, whose sole purpose is to make these cheesy text effects. Only once in a blue moon do you come across a site that actually gains functionality from these effects.
On the other hand, flash is an extremely good environment for three kinds of developers. First, it's wonderful for cartoonists and animators, giving them tons of tools with which to make...er... cartoons and animations. The ability to work with a library to recycle elements, the timeline, the various techniques and options available for animating all allow for easy cartoon-making.
Second, it's a nice environment for making web applications that require tight control over the site's graphical representation (when customizing products, etc). Flash sites with good design and good actionscripting (hopefully integrating to the server via xml) allow programmers to make different apps that get things done, while keeping tight control on the GUI (example: OneScreen for hotel reservations - go to http://www.ihotelier.com/onescreen).
And thirdly, it is really good for designers who want to have absolute control over how their website looks and feels. Granted, often these websites don't look and feel like 'standard'; however, the limitations that come with making 'standard' webpages are avoided. I personally prefer to have control over as many elements of my site as possible.
Speaking in terms of the original topic of discussion, I'd consider Flash to be a strong possibility because, after making a few selections, one could quickly access different media and have them play directly in the browser window. A quick change of options leads to a quick change of what information's being shown. Text (and in flash mx, sound and images) can be loaded dynamically, making site maintenance a lot easier to swallow. All in all, I don' t think flash is too bad an alternative, especially if , as quoted by another poster, 98.3% (I think) of computers can already view.swf files.
In terms of how to find it, academic pricing is usually very generous (someone said $99 for Flash MX), and since the site in question seems to be non-commercial, I'm sure there wouldn't be any problems.
"Outside activities"
on
Browsing Alone
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Katz writes that, in providing an alternative for activities that require public presence, such as shopping, interaction between real people has been cut down by the net.
Seriously, though... How many of you have had meaningful conversations with random people you meet at your local mall? And how many of you have had meaningful conversations with strangers on ICQ/IM/whatever? In my case, at least, the latter has happened far more often than the former. While I'm of the old-fashioned mind and believe that you can't really know anyone until you've spent a few hours with them in person, I still find that IM is a complement, not a substitute, to my social life.
In terms of 'public life', the use of the net as a shopping medium doesn't cut into social interactions; on the contrary, by allowing me to shop late on weeknights, for instance, I don't have to lock myself in a car, drive for however long, walk around a mall full of people I probably won't have conversations with, etc. Instead, I spend that daytime with my friends.
Actually, at a farm I've been to, I saw a REALLY old refrigerator that ran on kerosene. Yup, by COMBUSTION of kerosene, which somehow got the refrigerator to cool. Any knowledge about them and how they worked?
In terms of interface, I find it hard to believe that the iPod can be easily topped. I've had mine since thanksgiving, and have been fascinated by it.
Not only is it awesome as an mp3 player (excellent sound quality, great battery life, fast connection, high capacity), or as an external hd (I've used it to fix broken macs by booting off it). What I find most impressive of all is the fact that its ui is unbelievably efficient at getting you to the song, playlist, artist, album, etc. you want to hear.
In terms of usability and 'learning curve', my grandfather figured out how to use it in about 3 minutes, without my telling him anything about it. Granted, he limited himself to the gigabyte-or-so that I have of classical music, but still, he was impressed at how easy it was to use.
The Riot seems to be a slick little machine, and its 20 gb are very impressive. But, as people have already mentioned, 20 gb over USB are worth more than a few coffee breaks' wait...
Not to discredit the Riot's interface, but the jog dial doesn't let you go all the way around, which wouldn't let you really speed up (crucial element of iPod's navigation), and the buttons aren't in the center of the dial, but off to the side, so you'd have to take your thumb off the dial, move it up or down and push accordingly, as opposed to having the main button right there and the others right around the dial. In addition, the Riot seems to require 2-handed operation. On the other hand, though, the larger screen is impressive, and the hints at a graphical interface as opposed to a text-driven one make me quite curious.
The fact that I can do everything I could possibly want to with one hand on my iPod (with one finger, mind you) is one of the most fascinating aspects of the interface. And FireWire makes it all manageable. As soon as I get a new CD and rip it, I update my playlists and within seconds I'm good to go, new music and all. I'm very happy with my iPod, as you could have guessed. But it would be stupid to say that it's unsurpassable. It's just very difficult, but my eyes are open...
From my point of view, it's very simple.
Adobe and countless other "traditionally-run" companies are threatened by the fact that in theory, there is no such thing as an impenetrable system.
At the same time, these companies have the need to ensure that they get paid for what they develop; the problem with digital products is that, as they're composed of numbers as opposed to atoms, they can be copied and redistributed extremely easily. They aren't like, say, a bottle of coca-cola. I can't make two bottles from one bottle.
If companies don't get paid for the software they produce, they can no longer sustain the process of developing new software. Same goes for movies and, to a lesser extent, music. At the same time, since digital media can always be reproduced, the threat of 'piracy' is very high. And very few people pay for what they know they can get for free. Unless there is a law that bans it, that is...
The DMCA is an attempt to redefine copyright laws and have them protect digital media. The problem is, since it was lobbied for by the companies which most benefit from it, there are tons of workarounds and loopholes which benefit these companies. Example: if I have an mp3 on my computer and don't own that song on a commercially-bought CD, it's wrong. On the other hand, if I write a novel on Microsoft Word, Microsoft is entitled to use it (read the fine print in the EULA... oh wait, nobody does).
The principal problem is that in computing, to make something better, you first have to break it. Companies have neither the resources nor the time to put out something failsafe (remember nothing's 100% secure), so they need to have the safety net of "if you touch it, the law's going to get you". On the other hand, in the interest of producing something better, they need help in breaking their own programs in order to fix them. Skylarof did just that. The Princeton professor did just that (a workaround to the digital watermarks in secure audio files). No malice, just reminding the companies that they aren't infallible.
Skylarov's imprisonment is outrageous. It's contrary to progress, and, from my point of view, is an example of a relatively good initiative being manipulated to benefit the greedy.
It would be really cool if the 'holding electrical fields' bit turned out to be easily manageable. There used to be a joke that went "when microsoft asks 'where do you want to go today', they're not kidding. rebooting takes so long that you might as well be sightseeing".
I've always been a bit cheesed off at the fact that turning on the box takes a good 3 minutes or so (yes, I'm a lame M$ user, although it's pretty much under protest), so I usually go to the loo, grab a glass of water, or do some other quick activity between hitting on and getting prompted for my password, and again between punching in my password and having windows finish loading up.
having computers boot up immediately from the word go would be a great step in the right direction. It would also force microsoft to rethink their entire "reboot every time you touch your system" mechanism.
My question is: does anyone know about any drawbacks to using this pervy oxide as opposed to silicon dioxide? If this perv-suchandsuch oxide turns out to be worth its salt, we'll all end up wasting a lot less time whenever we want to use our computers...
It might be as revolutionary as.....
THE SOLAR POWERED CALCULATOR!
Seriously, though, the dream of moving to a tropical paradise, typing away at a laptop on the beach sounds so much closer now...
Seriously, though, remember to bring along the sunscreen...
Slashdot Mirror
People do this already. To learn to drive a car, ride a bike, ski, or control any other type of vehicle, you go through a learning process where you commit the control procedures to muscle memory. Once you have that covered, you pretty much go where you want to go, without necessarily thinking 'ok, now I need to turn the steering wheel'.
By and large, barring any significant equipment failure, you pretty much go towards whatever has your attention - for better or worse. Target fixation is alive and well in pretty much all of us. If you're on your bike and you keep staring at it, you'll most likely hit it. If you look at the path around it, most likely you won't. It has nothing to do with your ability to control the bike, and everything with the ability to control your attention.
I'll be the first to say that, for encyclopedia-level research, I do just about ALL of it online. Don't think there's anyone on this site who does any differently.
But, as a teenager, I got a full Encyclopaedia Brittanica from my grandmother as a gift. And the nerd in me couldn't keep me from picking up a random volume, leafing through it and waiting for something to catch my eye.
The variation on that would be that I'd look something up, and, in the process of finding the right page, some other entry would catch my eye and I'd read up on something (usually completely unrelated) after finding what I'd originally gone looking for.
Hypertext kicks ass. Ain't no arguing against that one. But search engines show you what you were looking for - it's a lot harder to 'stumble across' completely unexpected stuff on online reference engines. I ain't buying another paper encyclopedia, to be sure... at least not at the price my grandmother paid for mine... but, in the quest for pure, unadulterated trivia, there ain't nothing like it...
First their webserver farm gets seized by the FBI, then you post their story on /. ??? Give these guys a break!
I think this paragraph says it all - it comes down to poor admins. If you have a bajillion-dollar lock made out of unobtainuim, but leave the key under the doormat, you're less secure than if you have a 2-dollar master lock but aren't dumb about the key.
does anyone else miss the wawa bolis? I certainly do...
What I meant to say was that unless the fan is on, the loudest sound the ibook produces are the clicks of the keyboard. When and if the fan ever comes on, however, it sounds like a dremel...
I have a dual USB (snow) iBook, with the 600 MHz G3 in it. Every once in a while, I'd get the fan to go on, and it HOWLED. Only for about 3 minutes though... then again, I was playing Tony Hawk, which had the cd-drive spinning, the processor cranking, the gpu driving, the hard drive, the ram, etc... basically, anything that could possibly produce heat, was. Plus, the iBook was sitting nicely on my pillow as I lay in bed... so yeah. No airflow + everything cranking = LOUD noise... it scared me so much the first time I heard it , I basically shut it down and propped it up vertically, so that it would cool faster. By a long shot, the loudest sound it produces are the clicks of the keyboard (yes, even louder than the speakers :c) ).
But yes, the iBook does have a fan, and it sounds like a power tool. But it never came on again... simply propping up the back of the ibook with a paperback gave it the airflow it needed....
Is it just me, or is the "it got destroyed in a car accident / plane crash / flood / lightning bolt from Zeus" excuse the grown-up version of "my dog ate my homework"?
I agree with you on this one. The fact that Lucas is actively producing more Star Wars opens him up to a very risky situation.
As you said, there's the copyright risk. Even if he had already scripted a part of the story which bears resemblance to anything produced by fans, the fact that the fans' work came into the eye of the public first allows for a potentially costly lawsuit. IANAL, however, so I may be wrong.
At the same time, while storylines produced by fans can serve as inspiration, they can also close down on Lucas' creativity for two reasons.
The first is the risk of copyright and steering far from fan films to avoid the slightest resemblance.
The second is the fact that he doesn't want any speculation of what happens in Episode III. I presume he already has a vision of where the story goes, but, supposing a fan writes something dangerously similar, he'll have to change things. So, to some extent, he's making sure the story ends up the way he wants it to. He (presumably) wants to leave as many options open for Episode III, which I consider will be the toughest of the 6 to make (that's another story, however).
As a poster above said, talking about Flash on /. always provokes knee-jerk reactions...
/.ers' main points of criticism of Flash, a) It makes sites that look like angry fruit salads, b) it requires use of a FAIB, proprietary plugin which is unavailable for some platforms, and c) is generated by a commercial program that is not open-source.
...er... cartoons and animations. The ability to work with a library to recycle elements, the timeline, the various techniques and options available for animating all allow for easy cartoon-making.
.swf files.
To summarize (and grossly over-simplify)
The truth be told, flash is such an easy-to-use, powerful program that abusing it is really easy. Cheesy text effects are really quickly done, and this is even worse when you throw in programs such as Swish, whose sole purpose is to make these cheesy text effects. Only once in a blue moon do you come across a site that actually gains functionality from these effects.
On the other hand, flash is an extremely good environment for three kinds of developers. First, it's wonderful for cartoonists and animators, giving them tons of tools with which to make
Second, it's a nice environment for making web applications that require tight control over the site's graphical representation (when customizing products, etc). Flash sites with good design and good actionscripting (hopefully integrating to the server via xml) allow programmers to make different apps that get things done, while keeping tight control on the GUI (example: OneScreen for hotel reservations - go to http://www.ihotelier.com/onescreen).
And thirdly, it is really good for designers who want to have absolute control over how their website looks and feels. Granted, often these websites don't look and feel like 'standard'; however, the limitations that come with making 'standard' webpages are avoided. I personally prefer to have control over as many elements of my site as possible.
Speaking in terms of the original topic of discussion, I'd consider Flash to be a strong possibility because, after making a few selections, one could quickly access different media and have them play directly in the browser window. A quick change of options leads to a quick change of what information's being shown. Text (and in flash mx, sound and images) can be loaded dynamically, making site maintenance a lot easier to swallow. All in all, I don' t think flash is too bad an alternative, especially if , as quoted by another poster, 98.3% (I think) of computers can already view
In terms of how to find it, academic pricing is usually very generous (someone said $99 for Flash MX), and since the site in question seems to be non-commercial, I'm sure there wouldn't be any problems.
Katz writes that, in providing an alternative for activities that require public presence, such as shopping, interaction between real people has been cut down by the net.
Seriously, though... How many of you have had meaningful conversations with random people you meet at your local mall? And how many of you have had meaningful conversations with strangers on ICQ/IM/whatever? In my case, at least, the latter has happened far more often than the former. While I'm of the old-fashioned mind and believe that you can't really know anyone until you've spent a few hours with them in person, I still find that IM is a complement, not a substitute, to my social life.
In terms of 'public life', the use of the net as a shopping medium doesn't cut into social interactions; on the contrary, by allowing me to shop late on weeknights, for instance, I don't have to lock myself in a car, drive for however long, walk around a mall full of people I probably won't have conversations with, etc. Instead, I spend that daytime with my friends.
Any thoughts?
Actually, at a farm I've been to, I saw a REALLY old refrigerator that ran on kerosene. Yup, by COMBUSTION of kerosene, which somehow got the refrigerator to cool. Any knowledge about them and how they worked?
The difference being...?
In terms of interface, I find it hard to believe that the iPod can be easily topped. I've had mine since thanksgiving, and have been fascinated by it.
Not only is it awesome as an mp3 player (excellent sound quality, great battery life, fast connection, high capacity), or as an external hd (I've used it to fix broken macs by booting off it). What I find most impressive of all is the fact that its ui is unbelievably efficient at getting you to the song, playlist, artist, album, etc. you want to hear.
In terms of usability and 'learning curve', my grandfather figured out how to use it in about 3 minutes, without my telling him anything about it. Granted, he limited himself to the gigabyte-or-so that I have of classical music, but still, he was impressed at how easy it was to use.
The Riot seems to be a slick little machine, and its 20 gb are very impressive. But, as people have already mentioned, 20 gb over USB are worth more than a few coffee breaks' wait...
Not to discredit the Riot's interface, but the jog dial doesn't let you go all the way around, which wouldn't let you really speed up (crucial element of iPod's navigation), and the buttons aren't in the center of the dial, but off to the side, so you'd have to take your thumb off the dial, move it up or down and push accordingly, as opposed to having the main button right there and the others right around the dial. In addition, the Riot seems to require 2-handed operation. On the other hand, though, the larger screen is impressive, and the hints at a graphical interface as opposed to a text-driven one make me quite curious.
The fact that I can do everything I could possibly want to with one hand on my iPod (with one finger, mind you) is one of the most fascinating aspects of the interface. And FireWire makes it all manageable. As soon as I get a new CD and rip it, I update my playlists and within seconds I'm good to go, new music and all. I'm very happy with my iPod, as you could have guessed. But it would be stupid to say that it's unsurpassable. It's just very difficult, but my eyes are open...
From my point of view, it's very simple.
Adobe and countless other "traditionally-run" companies are threatened by the fact that in theory, there is no such thing as an impenetrable system.
At the same time, these companies have the need to ensure that they get paid for what they develop; the problem with digital products is that, as they're composed of numbers as opposed to atoms, they can be copied and redistributed extremely easily. They aren't like, say, a bottle of coca-cola. I can't make two bottles from one bottle.
If companies don't get paid for the software they produce, they can no longer sustain the process of developing new software. Same goes for movies and, to a lesser extent, music. At the same time, since digital media can always be reproduced, the threat of 'piracy' is very high. And very few people pay for what they know they can get for free. Unless there is a law that bans it, that is...
The DMCA is an attempt to redefine copyright laws and have them protect digital media. The problem is, since it was lobbied for by the companies which most benefit from it, there are tons of workarounds and loopholes which benefit these companies. Example: if I have an mp3 on my computer and don't own that song on a commercially-bought CD, it's wrong. On the other hand, if I write a novel on Microsoft Word, Microsoft is entitled to use it (read the fine print in the EULA... oh wait, nobody does).
The principal problem is that in computing, to make something better, you first have to break it. Companies have neither the resources nor the time to put out something failsafe (remember nothing's 100% secure), so they need to have the safety net of "if you touch it, the law's going to get you". On the other hand, in the interest of producing something better, they need help in breaking their own programs in order to fix them. Skylarof did just that. The Princeton professor did just that (a workaround to the digital watermarks in secure audio files). No malice, just reminding the companies that they aren't infallible.
Skylarov's imprisonment is outrageous. It's contrary to progress, and, from my point of view, is an example of a relatively good initiative being manipulated to benefit the greedy.
It would be really cool if the 'holding electrical fields' bit turned out to be easily manageable. There used to be a joke that went "when microsoft asks 'where do you want to go today', they're not kidding. rebooting takes so long that you might as well be sightseeing".
I've always been a bit cheesed off at the fact that turning on the box takes a good 3 minutes or so (yes, I'm a lame M$ user, although it's pretty much under protest), so I usually go to the loo, grab a glass of water, or do some other quick activity between hitting on and getting prompted for my password, and again between punching in my password and having windows finish loading up. having computers boot up immediately from the word go would be a great step in the right direction. It would also force microsoft to rethink their entire "reboot every time you touch your system" mechanism.
My question is: does anyone know about any drawbacks to using this pervy oxide as opposed to silicon dioxide? If this perv-suchandsuch oxide turns out to be worth its salt, we'll all end up wasting a lot less time whenever we want to use our computers...
It might be as revolutionary as..... THE SOLAR POWERED CALCULATOR! Seriously, though, the dream of moving to a tropical paradise, typing away at a laptop on the beach sounds so much closer now... Seriously, though, remember to bring along the sunscreen...