I think the problem is that the fan base has changed. I'm so young that by the time I actually got into Trek, they were at the fifth movie. The people who are old enough to remember TOS when it originally aired don't care as much about TNG. "The Next Generation" rings too true.
Generations sucked, but had Kirk. 1st Contact was a kickass flick, IMO*. Insurrection was pathetic. After Insurrection, I think the TOS-generation probably lost interest.
Also, I watch a fair amount of Trek and other Sci-Fi on TV, and I saw some but not a whole lot of advertising, especially right before it came out. It's like there was more build-up hype than "in theatres now!" hype.
(* - I mean, we're talking about the damn Borg - very cool enemy. The Borg even get personified into a very villainously cool queen. They bring in events from the series (Picard's previous encounter with the Borg); They did a few moderately cool things with Data (in sort of a quasi-gay 3CPO sort of way). The time travel was done is such a way as to not bring too much attention to time paradoxes.)
They might need to demote Admiral Janeway back to Captain (a la Kirk) in order to get her out of her office. Possible, but now we're really running in circles with the Trek franchise.
Inflexible Search Engines Overly literal search engines reduce usability in that they're unable to handle typos, plurals, hyphens, and other variants of the query terms. Such search engines are particularly difficult for elderly users, but they hurt everybody. A related problem is when search engines prioritize results purely on the basis of how many query terms they contain, rather than on each document's importance. Much better if your search engine calls out "best bets" at the top of the list -- especially for important queries, such as the names of your products.
Anybody else think that the real problem with search engines is exactly the opposite? Ever struggle with an engine to be as explicit as possible, only to have it return a bunch of not-so-related crap?
FYI for those not familiar w/ the Pennsylvania higher ed system. (Not necessarily the parent).
Penn State and Pitt are "semi-private" Commonwealth affiliated institutions. They get interesting tax status, charge in-state students less, and get some Commonwealth funding.
Then there are the more traditional state colleges: Lock Haven, IUP, Shippensburg(??), etc.
Not just an IE thing - using Phoenix and sometimes Moz 1.x - Javascript enabled but not allowed to do certain annoying things. Cookies on same site only.
the Post tech articles are sometimes available without entering demo info.
For regular WashPost stuff you need to enter info only once, and then I guess you get a cookie so they don't bug your ass until the cookie expires. I assume that the ad bar works on a similar principle, though I seem to bump into it more often - maybe I'm just imagining things.
WashPost doesn't even ask for your email addy. Just basic demo info. I'm more upset about that ad bar at the bottom of the page I keep having to close. That is a PITA.
I don't think that legal rulings from that time have a lot to do with reality.
I'm not saying he was or wasn't gay, but consider two modern rulings: (1) OJ Simpson is innocent; (2) Liberace, at one point, convinced a British court he was not gay.
Until the recent 0.7 release, KM didn't have tabs or equivalent. (They have "layers". No, I don't know the difference.) My biggest gripe about the tabs/layers implementation is that it takes two clicks to close a KM layer, one to close a Phoenix tab.
The previous release (0.6? 0.63? whatever.) of KM crashed a lot more than Phoenix 0.3 did. I haven't pushed the 0.7 KM to its limits, but I hope most of the stability problems were fixed.
As to the specific "why" question I addressed in my previous post... Winamp and some other free (beer) programs can be downloaded free of charge and free of any registration of any kind. Using a GNU alternative is dumb from my perspective when no money is involved and the end-user is satisfied. This is what I mean by being GNU-anal. Another great example of the "why" question is alternative browsers. Some people think I am insane for using Mozilla. "What's wrong with IE?". I tell them, and they don't care. NO THEFT INVOLVED.
Installing "free" Acrobat reader on more than one computer may or may not actually violate the EULA. It probably does, but then again, there are copies of the AcroReader installer on all kinds of CDs that never ever get "registered" for free or whatever the hell Adobe does nowadays. I'm not losing any sleep over this, and neither should anybody else.
I have explicitly stated that I install serialed software. No rationalization necessary. I fucking stole it. And not to "justify" or "rationalize" my actions, but I'm not the only person who does this. The reality is that people steal software. Projects like this one are a good place to start. Being overly GNU is probably holding back the project's popularity at this point, but it ain't my project.
Some of the choices on the CD aren't choices that I would personally make. But it ain't my project, so they can do whatever the hell they want. I only offer my suggestions.
My suggestion to somebody with a lot of free time is to make a virtual CD. From the project's perspective, doing this would eliminate issues of software registration for free stuff, and eliminate the whole "Mozilla not being an end-user item and we don't want outdated software being shipped" thing. Basically, a list of BEST TOOLS FOR THE JOB, gratis. The GPL-license sufficient but not necessary. Having such a collection of legal but not necessarily GPL software will bring down the amount of total software piracy, and I think we can all agree that would be a good thing.
I won't use this project exactly as it stands, but I wasn't previously aware of some of the programs, and I will incorporate some of them into my own shareware/OSS/cracked CD.
As somebody who (like many/.-ers) provides cheap and/or free tech support to family and friends, I make my own "distro" of software for Windows that gets installed as needed. Being a pragmatist, some of the software I have used is less than legally pure. I try to find free (beer) and free (GNU) software wherever I can, but sometimes a few serial numbers come in handy.
As has been pointed out, nobody is going to install Beonix on somebody else's computer. You're either going to update their IE and leave it at that, or you're going to give 'em Mozilla at best.
Also, I'm going to keep giving people WinAmp. No, it isn't free in the GNU sense, but lots of people use it... It's not some wierd product that nobody has ever heard of and can't figure out how to use. And I always keep an installer of Adobe Acrobat around. Sure, I'm probably violating the EULA, but what the hell? I hate going to somebody else's house and waiting for a dialup download and then charge these good people by the hour when I have already spent a lot of time ridding their computer of viruses and I have better things to do.
Probably, the biggest question I am asked about the super-anal-free-GNU software I install on other people's computers is "why?". Why, when Winamp exists and is supported, would I install FreeAmp or anything else? People don't want to hear about RMS and the GNU philosophy, they just want their shit to work, and as cheaply and easily as possible.
To summarize, my personal softare collection will
Try to minimize the amount of legally questionable software on it, while not being anal about certain things like re-distribution of a free (beer) product.
Give people software I think they are capable of using - if this means occasionally using a serial-ized shareware program, so be it.
Not leave a computer unable to read common file formants (acrobat, zip), thus minimizing the amount of time I have to deal with these people.
My biggest wish from the OSS community (and I am not a programmer, and I don't have the time to learn), is for a good Windows virus scanner. I have used (and still use) free (beer) virus scanners because people don't want to pay a ton of cash to make their computer usable. I more-or-less like the one I am using now (grisoft), but I have been burnt by "discontinued programs" before. Bait and switch. I suspect that the scanner itself wouldn't be too hard to write, but updating virus sigs on a regular basis would be.
What would probably be more useful to people like myself is a "virtual" CD.... A list of freely available (but not anally or unnecessarily GNU-ized) collection of download links to software... and the total download size magically adds up to 650 MB or less.
I just finished working (temp job) for a company that used Harvard Graphics to make the charts, and then Copy-and-Paste everything into PowerPoint as graphics and put the finishing touches on them.
It was very labor intensive. And, if there was a substantial edit, you had to go back into the HG file, fix your chart, and re-import the whole damn slide. But the end result was spectacular.
We used HG-98 and Ppt-2002. After we finally transitioned off Win9x to totally XP, most of the HG98 problems (mostly crashes) we were having disappeared. (There was one pesky problem I encountered... but not something I came accross frequently)
HG makes graphics look so much better than the MS-Office produced stuff that it makes me sick anymore to see Excel graphs.
I agree with most of what you say, but there is one interesting aspect of IM that has yet to be fully exploited... parallel conversations. You say the thread of the conversation is lost, well, I say you can carry a two threaded conversation with the same person. My friends and I have slipped into it a number of times, and it overcomes some of the inefficiencies of type-lag in a single threaded conversation.
I didn't see any indcation on the linked sites (maybe I didn't look closely enough), but I assume those represent digital service (as your comment indicated), and not plain old analog service. The Penn map shows no service in Lewistown on any system and I know that they've had service of some kind for a while - there's a cell store two blocks from my parents' house.
I also suspect that those Penn maps are a little outdated. I find it hard to believe that there is no digital service at all in Lewistown. Possible, but unlikely.
What I find almost impossible is that only Sprint (barely) and Cingular have digital service in State College, and that only Cingular has coverage in surrounding areas. It's the home of Penn State, perhaps the textbook definition of a college town, and everybody has a cell phone.
They could bring in Q and explain it at least as well as they explained Kahn in ST:II. AND it would give fans something to energize them to see the movie (a few dozen times).
I am rather surprised that Q hasn't been a movie plot, though I suppose a conflict with the Romulans were a bit overdue too. Q was involved in the first AND last TNG episodes... sort of a hallmark of the series.
However, a Romulan-based plot could be postponed in order to use John Delancy (sp?) before he gets too old. I mean, how much should an immortal, omnipotent being age? I would say not too much.
Additionally, once upon a time, I heard a vague and unreliable rumor that they were going to kill Data because Spiner decided that he was type-cast. (And I suppose being typecast as a single character that is impossible to duplicate elsewhere would be somewhat limiting;-)
I agree with your general sentiment that the definition is lacking, but in short, yes, there will be magically 2 distinct species.
If A==B, and B==C, and if transitivity means anything to us, then A==C (even when it really doesn't). Unfortunately, the "fertile offspring" test seems to be the best we have. There are several examples of same genus different species cross breeding, but the offspring are sterile - yes that is sort of true definitionally, but it does make some sense.
I didn't invent the system, but most of the time it does OK. I can't personally think of a better way of doing it.
Could you please define what a dog is, and how much divergence is needed for you to consider a dog breed to be a different species?
If I recall my 7th grade science class correctly, two organisms are considered to be the same species (at least among sexually reproductive species) if by mating the two you can produce fertile offspring. I seem to recall a story about a frog (or toad?) species with three subspecies. (Let's call them A, B, and C.) A and C could not mate successfully, but A and B could, and B and C could, so it was possible (through a couple of generations) that the A and C populations could share genetic material. Thus, by the existence of the B population, A, B, and C were all considered to be the same species.
The existence of mutt dogs proves that most or all dog breeds are still the same species.
The test was a general math/arithmetic test with a few pre-algebraic principles. But what I meant when I said it was sad (and I know I wasn't clear about this) is that the test used that sort of notation because it assumed that the tester may not understand algebra.
Furthermore, I thought it would probably confuse less advanced students who had taken algebra and had just rid themselves of the ( 6x = 60 something ) mentality.
The test was a "let's see how your high school compares to others" test.
By sixth grade some of us were helping the teacher with our math. An elemenary ed teacher can teach 6th grade math (at least in Pennsylvania) with no special background in the subject because 6th is "elementary". This is very, very wrong, and must be changed ASAP.
Fortunately I had good 7th -9th math instruction. 7th = "Algebra 1/2", 8th = Algebra 1, 9th = Advanced Algebra 2.
Advanced Alg 2 was probably the hardest math class at my high school (considering that only 9th graders took it). In pre-Calc you could immediately tell the difference between the normal Alg2 and the Advanced class. Basically, Precalc was redundant for us, but it was pre-req to take Calc.
I actually took a standardized test once in high school where we were supposed to think like that. It was really sad. It very hard to force myself to view it that way.
Yup. And I'd imagine some highly paid contract lawyer is getting carpetted over leaving such a dumbass loophole in it right now...
That loophole exists in the "dumbass" form that it exists in because to do otherwise would be a clear exertion of Monopoly power.
With this style of contract, MS said to the OEMs, "Oh yeah!? Just go ahead and try to support some other OS. But don't you go around encouraging people to pirate Windows!"
And of course, Dell pulls the FreeDOS thing. FreeDOS saves Dell from 1) Having to choose a Linux disto and then alienate those who like a different distro. (Really, OEM choices for "Big Linux" include RH, mdk, and maybe suse. I would say Deb but there isn't an existing enterprise-style support like there is for RH.). This also saves them from having to provide support for said linux distro.
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Generations sucked, but had Kirk. 1st Contact was a kickass flick, IMO*. Insurrection was pathetic. After Insurrection, I think the TOS-generation probably lost interest.
Also, I watch a fair amount of Trek and other Sci-Fi on TV, and I saw some but not a whole lot of advertising, especially right before it came out. It's like there was more build-up hype than "in theatres now!" hype.
(* - I mean, we're talking about the damn Borg - very cool enemy. The Borg even get personified into a very villainously cool queen. They bring in events from the series (Picard's previous encounter with the Borg); They did a few moderately cool things with Data (in sort of a quasi-gay 3CPO sort of way). The time travel was done is such a way as to not bring too much attention to time paradoxes.)
They might need to demote Admiral Janeway back to Captain (a la Kirk) in order to get her out of her office. Possible, but now we're really running in circles with the Trek franchise.
(Courtesy of the SNL Celebrity Jeopardy skits - No, I couldn't resist.)
Anybody else think that the real problem with search engines is exactly the opposite? Ever struggle with an engine to be as explicit as possible, only to have it return a bunch of not-so-related crap?
Penn State and Pitt are "semi-private" Commonwealth affiliated institutions. They get interesting tax status, charge in-state students less, and get some Commonwealth funding.
Then there are the more traditional state colleges: Lock Haven, IUP, Shippensburg(??), etc.
the Post tech articles are sometimes available without entering demo info.
For regular WashPost stuff you need to enter info only once, and then I guess you get a cookie so they don't bug your ass until the cookie expires. I assume that the ad bar works on a similar principle, though I seem to bump into it more often - maybe I'm just imagining things.
WashPost doesn't even ask for your email addy. Just basic demo info. I'm more upset about that ad bar at the bottom of the page I keep having to close. That is a PITA.
Didn't Shaq do an ad for these things?
I'm not saying he was or wasn't gay, but consider two modern rulings: (1) OJ Simpson is innocent; (2) Liberace, at one point, convinced a British court he was not gay.
The previous release (0.6? 0.63? whatever.) of KM crashed a lot more than Phoenix 0.3 did. I haven't pushed the 0.7 KM to its limits, but I hope most of the stability problems were fixed.
As somebody who (like many /.-ers) provides cheap and/or free tech support to family and friends, I make my own "distro" of software for Windows that gets installed as needed. Being a pragmatist, some of the software I have used is less than legally pure. I try to find free (beer) and free (GNU) software wherever I can, but sometimes a few serial numbers come in handy.
As has been pointed out, nobody is going to install Beonix on somebody else's computer. You're either going to update their IE and leave it at that, or you're going to give 'em Mozilla at best.
Also, I'm going to keep giving people WinAmp. No, it isn't free in the GNU sense, but lots of people use it... It's not some wierd product that nobody has ever heard of and can't figure out how to use. And I always keep an installer of Adobe Acrobat around. Sure, I'm probably violating the EULA, but what the hell? I hate going to somebody else's house and waiting for a dialup download and then charge these good people by the hour when I have already spent a lot of time ridding their computer of viruses and I have better things to do.
Probably, the biggest question I am asked about the super-anal-free-GNU software I install on other people's computers is "why?". Why, when Winamp exists and is supported, would I install FreeAmp or anything else? People don't want to hear about RMS and the GNU philosophy, they just want their shit to work, and as cheaply and easily as possible.
To summarize, my personal softare collection will
My biggest wish from the OSS community (and I am not a programmer, and I don't have the time to learn), is for a good Windows virus scanner. I have used (and still use) free (beer) virus scanners because people don't want to pay a ton of cash to make their computer usable. I more-or-less like the one I am using now (grisoft), but I have been burnt by "discontinued programs" before. Bait and switch. I suspect that the scanner itself wouldn't be too hard to write, but updating virus sigs on a regular basis would be.
What would probably be more useful to people like myself is a "virtual" CD.... A list of freely available (but not anally or unnecessarily GNU-ized) collection of download links to software ... and the total download size magically adds up to 650 MB or less.
It was very labor intensive. And, if there was a substantial edit, you had to go back into the HG file, fix your chart, and re-import the whole damn slide. But the end result was spectacular.
We used HG-98 and Ppt-2002. After we finally transitioned off Win9x to totally XP, most of the HG98 problems (mostly crashes) we were having disappeared. (There was one pesky problem I encountered ... but not something I came accross frequently)
HG makes graphics look so much better than the MS-Office produced stuff that it makes me sick anymore to see Excel graphs.
I agree with most of what you say, but there is one interesting aspect of IM that has yet to be fully exploited... parallel conversations. You say the thread of the conversation is lost, well, I say you can carry a two threaded conversation with the same person. My friends and I have slipped into it a number of times, and it overcomes some of the inefficiencies of type-lag in a single threaded conversation.
I also suspect that those Penn maps are a little outdated. I find it hard to believe that there is no digital service at all in Lewistown. Possible, but unlikely.
What I find almost impossible is that only Sprint (barely) and Cingular have digital service in State College, and that only Cingular has coverage in surrounding areas. It's the home of Penn State, perhaps the textbook definition of a college town, and everybody has a cell phone.
However, a Romulan-based plot could be postponed in order to use John Delancy (sp?) before he gets too old. I mean, how much should an immortal, omnipotent being age? I would say not too much.
Additionally, once upon a time, I heard a vague and unreliable rumor that they were going to kill Data because Spiner decided that he was type-cast. (And I suppose being typecast as a single character that is impossible to duplicate elsewhere would be somewhat limiting ;-)
But while the NexIIgs will be the bomb-diggity, it will be undersupported and eventually replaced with the NexMacintosh.
If A==B, and B==C, and if transitivity means anything to us, then A==C (even when it really doesn't). Unfortunately, the "fertile offspring" test seems to be the best we have. There are several examples of same genus different species cross breeding, but the offspring are sterile - yes that is sort of true definitionally, but it does make some sense.
I didn't invent the system, but most of the time it does OK. I can't personally think of a better way of doing it.
If I recall my 7th grade science class correctly, two organisms are considered to be the same species (at least among sexually reproductive species) if by mating the two you can produce fertile offspring. I seem to recall a story about a frog (or toad?) species with three subspecies. (Let's call them A, B, and C.) A and C could not mate successfully, but A and B could, and B and C could, so it was possible (through a couple of generations) that the A and C populations could share genetic material. Thus, by the existence of the B population, A, B, and C were all considered to be the same species.
The existence of mutt dogs proves that most or all dog breeds are still the same species.
Furthermore, I thought it would probably confuse less advanced students who had taken algebra and had just rid themselves of the ( 6x = 60 something ) mentality.
The test was a "let's see how your high school compares to others" test.
Fortunately I had good 7th -9th math instruction. 7th = "Algebra 1/2", 8th = Algebra 1, 9th = Advanced Algebra 2.
Advanced Alg 2 was probably the hardest math class at my high school (considering that only 9th graders took it). In pre-Calc you could immediately tell the difference between the normal Alg2 and the Advanced class. Basically, Precalc was redundant for us, but it was pre-req to take Calc.
Question: 6x + (-5) = 63
Answer: x = 8
I actually took a standardized test once in high school where we were supposed to think like that. It was really sad. It very hard to force myself to view it that way.
That loophole exists in the "dumbass" form that it exists in because to do otherwise would be a clear exertion of Monopoly power.
With this style of contract, MS said to the OEMs, "Oh yeah!? Just go ahead and try to support some other OS. But don't you go around encouraging people to pirate Windows!"
And of course, Dell pulls the FreeDOS thing. FreeDOS saves Dell from 1) Having to choose a Linux disto and then alienate those who like a different distro. (Really, OEM choices for "Big Linux" include RH, mdk, and maybe suse. I would say Deb but there isn't an existing enterprise-style support like there is for RH.). This also saves them from having to provide support for said linux distro.