Actually, the future of Redmond is secure. They're strategically letting all these folks go, so that they can all go work for, and eventually destroy, Apple from the inside out. It's like the Cylon infiltration of the human race on Caprica in BSG...
I've taught an intro course to UNIX and systems administration to MIS students years ago. The concepts are the same for Linux. And I've got a pretty good background in instructional design. If your students are starting off, teaching them complex sed/awk stuff, packages, pipes, and the GUI is going to start already leaving them behind. And there are so many people who work on that stuff, but don't understand the basics.
In the course I taught, I started with things that many of them, even the Linux users among them, never knew about their systems. Such as the fundamental that *everything* in UNIX/Linux is a file. Directories are really files. The keyboard is a file. So is the display. And the network card. That is an important concept to understand later why redirection, pipes and the like work as well as they do.
I also taught things like symbolic vs. hard links. And how that all relates to inodes. Therefore, how you can move or copy files and create symbolic links that can change the one or the other. True of just about every file system.
Then you can get into how processes work. And how all of them spawn from one root process (initd). Children, zombies and the rest come into play, and the kill command, and how to use a tool like top to see how they all work. And how to reset them when they run amok. I used Mark Sobell's book on UNIX, but he has newer ones out on Ubuntu and Linux and such as well.
You can then continue with a basic editor like vi, which is a good one simply because it's likely going to be on just about any system they'll come across. Emacs is not as ubiquitous, so I won't get into a war over which is better. If you like emacs, you can install that too, but some systems won't have it and you may need basic vi or even ed skills to get the box going enough to get emacs installed. The same is true for shell programming. I would use bash, simply because the context and syntax carries across most systems well, regardless of the type (Linux, BSD, Mac OS X).
Once they get all that you can get them into pipes and redirects and how they can be used to create wonderful things by coupling lots of simple tools together.
The Android App Store?? Since when? I've never heard it called that, at least officially, in any trade press, IT journals, etc. Android calls it (and always has) the Android Market. The Microsoft Zune has the Zune Marketplace. So I'm sorry but I don't see why Apple can't use App Store, especially when Microsoft gets to hold separate trademarks for Office, Word, Windows (note, the Microsoft and the other word each are separate trademarks).
I can't help but wonder that the cost of "800 actions in 16 countries" isn't somehow costing Nintendo more in attorney's fees and court costs than they ever likely originally lost in the piracy in the first place. From all the cases I've read about in piracy proceedings, the person the company goes after never has the kind of cash the company would need to pay back the lawyers. If they wouldn't charge so much for the games (movies/TV/etc.) in the first place, people would probably be more inclined to purchase legitimately. Apple's about to break the 10 billion mark in the ITMS, so clearly there's a willingness to pay for content.
Virginia made texting illegal as well. So I can't text on my iPhone while driving, but I can still update my location with Loopt, send Tweets on whatever comes to mind, update my Facebook status and check on my friends, check the weather, look at Salesforce.com, etc. In other words, specific laws aren't going to solve the problem. And what about all the drivers on the Beltway and surrounding roads in the DC area, for example, who are also applying makeup, reading the newspaper, etc.? If you're going to make a law, you should probably get it right...
If high availability is your concern, then you need redundancy from end-to-end, not just in the servers. A cost-effective way to do that is use Stonesoft's firewall/VPN solution. It can load balance DSL, cable modem and other Internet connections, clusters the devices themselves, and perform back end server load balancing of your Web servers. The centralized management is very powerful as well. 30 day evaluations available off their Web site.
[full disclosure: I own no monkeys, but I do work for Stonesoft]
OK, my first cellphone was a Nokia 210 or something. Ancient brick from around 1993 or so. The only exciting thing about it was that it was like the one Mulder first used on the X-Files. Then a Motorola Startac. Pretty much the first flip phone.
I've had many since then and they all suck in various ways, including many a Nokia (though the 6310i was a damn good phone for basic phone stuff).
Honestly, having the iPhone and now the iPhone 3G I can say that the phone and AT&T are pretty good. I live in the DC area and have my dead spots, but so does every carrier. I had the same thing with T-Mobile and a Nokia E61. The 3G seems (subjectively) no worse for me in DC or Atlanta, or Cleveland (places I've been with it so far) than the original iPhone.
As for the signal bars fluctuating, that's a given. They do that all the time and here on/. they had a post not too long ago about the signal-to-noise ratio issue. The bars tell you how strong the signal is from the towers to you, not the other way around, and don't factor in the noise that can mess it up.
As Marcus Ranum recently said in a SANS NewsBites about people complaining about the iPhone app kill-switch, if you don't like it, "So use another phone" !!
Besides, the games and apps are so much fun and so cool, who cares about phone calls??:-P
they should do an optical scanner per precinct. Virginia does this and they work very well, they're not expensive (certainly when compared to the touch screen ones), they still collect the paper trail that can be audited (the actual ballot), they can verify you didn't overvote, or have any ambiguity in what you filled out...the problem the ACLU sees here is a valid one: if the ballots are all hauled away first, then scanned, then you find the ballot has a stray mark or an overvote and you have to reject it. If it happens in the precinct the election officer can spoil the ballot and give the voter a new one to try again.
I think there's been some good analysis in this discussion/comment thread, but as a Mac user (17" MBP) and an IT security specialist, and as someone who's tested both Parallels and VMware Fusion beta, I can say that it really does push Windows relevance to the back burner, if not off the stove entirely. I use Parallels for Visio 2003 at this point, and that's about the only thing I need from the Windows world that does not have an equivalent, if not better, application in OS X. Even for diagramming, I could use OmniGraffle or that other diagramming tool, but they only read Visio XML, not native Visio 2003, and it's a pain to ask others to save as... all the time.
Keynote and Pages blow PowerPoint and Word out of the water, and also are compatible. OpenOffice, the GIMP and other FOSS tools are available. I use nmap (compiled from source), Andreas Fink's Wireshark package (too much of a pain to compile on my own), and yeah, so on and so forth. System uptime: two days and 24 minutes; rebooted only to apply some software updates recently. The stability and CLI of UNIX, the beauty of Apple GUI...it just works. And well.
It'd be really great if they'd also learn the lessons and great ideas from the mainframe, where IBM has been doing virtualization (VM, now z/VM) and a decoupled hipervisor (that's their term I believe) for more than 35 years now. It's clear that the hipervisor in System i and System p are all gearing up to really allow one to move VMs from one place to another as the situation demands.
Disclaimer: I do not work for IBM, but I think they've got great technology. I'd love to have the dough to buy a new System z9 and load it up with all things Linux.
I've got a new MacBook Pro, so I *could* use Boot Camp. I love OS X and the stability and all the good stuff that comes with it (being able to multi-task like no one's business while still having open source apps available, without the hardware aggrevation of Linux).
I'd never consider Boot Camp to taint my Mac with Windows tho. I have to use a ThinkPad for work right now because I need the virtualization technology to do product demos. Everything else I can do on the Mac OS X side of things. But dual booting is not for me. I would not want to have to shut down all the OS X stuff to get that one bit.
What I need is virtualization technology, (which the Intel chip in the Mac supports nicely), so that I can run Windows *and* Mac OS X. VMware doesn't seem to be doing anything there yet, at least based on info on their Web site as of last night. But Parallels.com has a product to do just that, and I'm testing the beta now. That's the way to go.
On the flip side, I believe that Boot Camp will be the answer for others who aren't as familiar or comfortable with VM technology.
No kidding. I know that all of that goes into it. But I still don't buy it. Watch MTV's "Cribs" sometime if you don't think there's maybe just a bit too much money coming off those discs. I'm sorry but if they have to pay for all of the above, but the artist can still live in a mansion with individual rooms for different video game consoles, a bigger swimming pool than my local community can afford, and have at least four cars and two planes, I think they're doing OK. And the music video is paid for in part by the replay rights Viacom (MTV and VH1) pays to air them, and they then charge piles of money to the advertisers who get their commercials tacked on either end. For the tour bus and interviews and stuff that in part also comes from the bucks paid at the concerts when they're on tour. Think about it for a minute: An album that costs us all $ 16 bucks goes platinum (over 1 mil. sold) means 16 million bucks right there. Do a concert at a stadium and charge a minimum of 50 bucks per person, some even charge a hundred or more now...for a stadium that holds 100,000, that's another five million. I know, I know, there are also the sound techs, equipment shipment, paying the venue for the use of the stadium, etc. but even still, you cannot convince me they need to charge that much. It's plain greed, pure and simple, and the fact that something like iTunes can potentially destroy that revenue stream scares them. But I think iTunes has already proven that a new model can be equally successful. The service raked in more than $ 5 million in the first month or so as well, and for a distribution that only cost pennies vs. pressing a disc...
Geez louise! That's exactly the problem with CD distribution in the first place! They still want me to believe I need to spend over $ 16 bucks on a disc that I know damn well cost them only $ 0.40 to manufacture and distro. Even with a couple bucks to the artist and the studio, it's overpriced. Then, I have to buy 12 or more songs, of which I'm only ever going to like about 3. Which is why I want my iTunes and MP3s in the first place. I like to be able to take even my legitimately purchased music and reduce it to the set of what *I* want to listen to. Isn't that my right as a consumer? Oh, and let me pick the medium to do it, whether that's my PC, my iPod, or a CD mix I burn for the car...
Yeah, I can see waiting up to a week being fine with most home subscribers, but for businesses, it's a real issue. I work for a company that switched the whole corporate plan from AT&T to T-Mobile now. We all got new free Nokia 6610s, and a better plan for each person as part of the deal. But we do network security software sales, and the sales people CANNOT be a week without being able to get calls from customers. It affects the bottom line of business, while AT&T tries to pocket more money by holding onto our service as long as possible.
They knew about this switch with PLENTY of advanced warning. Other providers can switch in hours or a day, it should not take more than that. I've been without my phone for two days now personally, and I'm getting tired of it.
Funny how so many seem to be switching from AT&T...such SHITTY service, dropped calls, overcharges...not sure if T-mobile will be that much better, but the phone rocks at least.
I agree that the main theme of the X-Men is more to appeal to ANY type of outcast, not just gays and lesbians.
However, I completely disagree that we're only "2-10% of the population", and we're certainly NOT with a sexual identity problem. I have no problem at all with my sexual identity, thanks. If you have a problem with my sexual identity, tough...I don't give a shit.
In Star Trek: Voyager, the crew of Voyager uses technology extensively. Ask the replicator for the food you want, without having to print off a copy of the recipe to keep next to the cooker. Want to know something? Pull it up on a display or ask the computer directly. Old media, such as TV shows, and music are played in crew's quarters by the computer from databases on the ship.
But interestingly enough, in several episodes, crewmembers (such as Janeway in "Fairhaven"), have books replicated to read, instead of reading the texts on the computer screen.
So yes, although media delivery may change in many profound or not-so-profound ways, I would argue that books will be around for quite some time to come. But will technology change the way we receive at least some content? Absolutely.
Re:"New" and "Old" Makes no Sense
on
Middle Media
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· Score: 1
Which was, I belive, Katz's point as well.
Re:Don't create a causal relationship out of thin
on
Middle Media
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· Score: 1
So you're agreeing with Katz, then. You make the statement that you "don't necessarily think that the increase in theater receipts and music sales can be directly attributed to advances in 'new' media and the internet". That's Katz's point. He states:
Although online book sales are growing on sites like Fatbrain, Amazon and BN.com, so are the sales of books in stores. The technological absolutism invoked by the rise of the Net - everything will go digital - is not coming to pass.
In other words, others are claiming that the Internet is impacting sales in older distribution channels, but he's pointing out that that's not correct.
Try reading the text closer...
on
Middle Media
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· Score: 1
And NOW you're popping up telling us that there's some new "middle media" that we should all be bowing down to? What rock have you been living under?
Jon's article isn't saying we should be "bowing down to" this middle media. On the contrary, his text cleary indicates he's not certain where it's going, but is asking questions about the implications and the direction things *could* move in. If you read carefully, you'll see he uses terms like, "And the form of media might vary in terms of content as well" or "might always remain popular to consumers on paper"
At no point did I see a statement that said anything about the certainty of middle media succeeding, or that we should be completely submissive and accepting of it (bowing down to it, as you claim). On the contrary, he points out that the electronic media dictates a greater openess and consumer participation in the content and success of the material in question.
Just because the dot.coms and others are using paper catalogs now doesn't mean that everything won't finally go all electronic. Even paper will have interactive abilities eventually. This is all just a transition period not some Middle Media thing.
I think that was Jon's argument. The reason he used the term middle media is because he's trying to demonstrate that there really isn't a clear divide between new media and old media, as many other pundits suggest. That it is a transition, as you state, and a transformation, exactly because people like to still read paper.
Re:"Gender Exploration?" That's like, totally gay!
on
Men Playing as Women
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· Score: 1
Too bad you're so obviously repressing your true tendencies, except through gender obfuscation in IRC. The pics on your site at RIT indicate you're a real hottie...:)
The years 100 and 19100 are *not* Perl script errors, but bad programming (Matt's Script Archive, anyone?). The same errors crop up if the programmer didn't read the documentation in C as well. The documentation clearly states that localtime() will return tm_year as an integer of the number of years since 1900. 19100 occurs because the dumba** called the function, saw two digits, and ASSUMED that it would always return two digits, so they prepend the "19", which is WRONG. If you programmed it right, you'd know that you just add 1900 to whatever localtime() returns as tm_year.
No, Jim's the moron on this one. Religious structures can be anything, including stone circles, mosques, tabernacles, or even, arguably, the "Golden Arches" of McDonald's or the Cinderella castle in the Magic Kingdom. A church is only one form of religious structure. Duh.
While I agree that de-regulation has improved competition from the break-up of monopolistic groups, such as the AT&T breakup in 1984, and that the hands-off approach helps in many ways, I see one problem:
The FCC also decided to take a complete hands-off approach to cellular phone standards. Each company was allowed to create or support whatever they wanted, and as a result we have PCS, GSM, and a host of other incompatible standards. The Europeans, who are usually much more pro-standards" than we are, are now years ahead of the US in cellular technology...because they were able to agree on using GSM.
I have no problem with having the broadband market open, but it would be nice if there was a STANDARD so that I could take my broadband box/TV/whatever to some other state and sign up with a different company without having to worry that the damn thing won't work because my box uses FOO, but my new provider only supports BAR.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the future of Redmond is secure. They're strategically letting all these folks go, so that they can all go work for, and eventually destroy, Apple from the inside out. It's like the Cylon infiltration of the human race on Caprica in BSG...
Or Google, or both.
I've taught an intro course to UNIX and systems administration to MIS students years ago. The concepts are the same for Linux. And I've got a pretty good background in instructional design. If your students are starting off, teaching them complex sed/awk stuff, packages, pipes, and the GUI is going to start already leaving them behind. And there are so many people who work on that stuff, but don't understand the basics.
In the course I taught, I started with things that many of them, even the Linux users among them, never knew about their systems. Such as the fundamental that *everything* in UNIX/Linux is a file. Directories are really files. The keyboard is a file. So is the display. And the network card. That is an important concept to understand later why redirection, pipes and the like work as well as they do.
I also taught things like symbolic vs. hard links. And how that all relates to inodes. Therefore, how you can move or copy files and create symbolic links that can change the one or the other. True of just about every file system.
Then you can get into how processes work. And how all of them spawn from one root process (initd). Children, zombies and the rest come into play, and the kill command, and how to use a tool like top to see how they all work. And how to reset them when they run amok. I used Mark Sobell's book on UNIX, but he has newer ones out on Ubuntu and Linux and such as well.
You can then continue with a basic editor like vi, which is a good one simply because it's likely going to be on just about any system they'll come across. Emacs is not as ubiquitous, so I won't get into a war over which is better. If you like emacs, you can install that too, but some systems won't have it and you may need basic vi or even ed skills to get the box going enough to get emacs installed. The same is true for shell programming. I would use bash, simply because the context and syntax carries across most systems well, regardless of the type (Linux, BSD, Mac OS X).
Once they get all that you can get them into pipes and redirects and how they can be used to create wonderful things by coupling lots of simple tools together.
And all of that even without a GUI!
The Android App Store?? Since when? I've never heard it called that, at least officially, in any trade press, IT journals, etc. Android calls it (and always has) the Android Market. The Microsoft Zune has the Zune Marketplace. So I'm sorry but I don't see why Apple can't use App Store, especially when Microsoft gets to hold separate trademarks for Office, Word, Windows (note, the Microsoft and the other word each are separate trademarks).
I can't help but wonder that the cost of "800 actions in 16 countries" isn't somehow costing Nintendo more in attorney's fees and court costs than they ever likely originally lost in the piracy in the first place. From all the cases I've read about in piracy proceedings, the person the company goes after never has the kind of cash the company would need to pay back the lawyers. If they wouldn't charge so much for the games (movies/TV/etc.) in the first place, people would probably be more inclined to purchase legitimately. Apple's about to break the 10 billion mark in the ITMS, so clearly there's a willingness to pay for content.
Virginia made texting illegal as well. So I can't text on my iPhone while driving, but I can still update my location with Loopt, send Tweets on whatever comes to mind, update my Facebook status and check on my friends, check the weather, look at Salesforce.com, etc. In other words, specific laws aren't going to solve the problem. And what about all the drivers on the Beltway and surrounding roads in the DC area, for example, who are also applying makeup, reading the newspaper, etc.? If you're going to make a law, you should probably get it right...
If high availability is your concern, then you need redundancy from end-to-end, not just in the servers. A cost-effective way to do that is use Stonesoft's firewall/VPN solution. It can load balance DSL, cable modem and other Internet connections, clusters the devices themselves, and perform back end server load balancing of your Web servers. The centralized management is very powerful as well. 30 day evaluations available off their Web site.
[full disclosure: I own no monkeys, but I do work for Stonesoft]
OK, my first cellphone was a Nokia 210 or something. Ancient brick from around 1993 or so. The only exciting thing about it was that it was like the one Mulder first used on the X-Files. Then a Motorola Startac. Pretty much the first flip phone.
I've had many since then and they all suck in various ways, including many a Nokia (though the 6310i was a damn good phone for basic phone stuff).
Honestly, having the iPhone and now the iPhone 3G I can say that the phone and AT&T are pretty good. I live in the DC area and have my dead spots, but so does every carrier. I had the same thing with T-Mobile and a Nokia E61. The 3G seems (subjectively) no worse for me in DC or Atlanta, or Cleveland (places I've been with it so far) than the original iPhone.
As for the signal bars fluctuating, that's a given. They do that all the time and here on /. they had a post not too long ago about the signal-to-noise ratio issue. The bars tell you how strong the signal is from the towers to you, not the other way around, and don't factor in the noise that can mess it up.
As Marcus Ranum recently said in a SANS NewsBites about people complaining about the iPhone app kill-switch, if you don't like it, "So use another phone" !!
Besides, the games and apps are so much fun and so cool, who cares about phone calls?? :-P
they should do an optical scanner per precinct. Virginia does this and they work very well, they're not expensive (certainly when compared to the touch screen ones), they still collect the paper trail that can be audited (the actual ballot), they can verify you didn't overvote, or have any ambiguity in what you filled out...the problem the ACLU sees here is a valid one: if the ballots are all hauled away first, then scanned, then you find the ballot has a stray mark or an overvote and you have to reject it. If it happens in the precinct the election officer can spoil the ballot and give the voter a new one to try again.
I think there's been some good analysis in this discussion/comment thread, but as a Mac user (17" MBP) and an IT security specialist, and as someone who's tested both Parallels and VMware Fusion beta, I can say that it really does push Windows relevance to the back burner, if not off the stove entirely. I use Parallels for Visio 2003 at this point, and that's about the only thing I need from the Windows world that does not have an equivalent, if not better, application in OS X. Even for diagramming, I could use OmniGraffle or that other diagramming tool, but they only read Visio XML, not native Visio 2003, and it's a pain to ask others to save as... all the time.
Keynote and Pages blow PowerPoint and Word out of the water, and also are compatible. OpenOffice, the GIMP and other FOSS tools are available. I use nmap (compiled from source), Andreas Fink's Wireshark package (too much of a pain to compile on my own), and yeah, so on and so forth. System uptime: two days and 24 minutes; rebooted only to apply some software updates recently. The stability and CLI of UNIX, the beauty of Apple GUI...it just works. And well.
It'd be really great if they'd also learn the lessons and great ideas from the mainframe, where IBM has been doing virtualization (VM, now z/VM) and a decoupled hipervisor (that's their term I believe) for more than 35 years now. It's clear that the hipervisor in System i and System p are all gearing up to really allow one to move VMs from one place to another as the situation demands.
Disclaimer: I do not work for IBM, but I think they've got great technology. I'd love to have the dough to buy a new System z9 and load it up with all things Linux.
I've got a new MacBook Pro, so I *could* use Boot Camp. I love OS X and the stability and all the good stuff that comes with it (being able to multi-task like no one's business while still having open source apps available, without the hardware aggrevation of Linux).
I'd never consider Boot Camp to taint my Mac with Windows tho. I have to use a ThinkPad for work right now because I need the virtualization technology to do product demos. Everything else I can do on the Mac OS X side of things. But dual booting is not for me. I would not want to have to shut down all the OS X stuff to get that one bit.
What I need is virtualization technology, (which the Intel chip in the Mac supports nicely), so that I can run Windows *and* Mac OS X. VMware doesn't seem to be doing anything there yet, at least based on info on their Web site as of last night. But Parallels.com has a product to do just that, and I'm testing the beta now. That's the way to go.
On the flip side, I believe that Boot Camp will be the answer for others who aren't as familiar or comfortable with VM technology.
No kidding. I know that all of that goes into it. But I still don't buy it. Watch MTV's "Cribs" sometime if you don't think there's maybe just a bit too much money coming off those discs. I'm sorry but if they have to pay for all of the above, but the artist can still live in a mansion with individual rooms for different video game consoles, a bigger swimming pool than my local community can afford, and have at least four cars and two planes, I think they're doing OK. And the music video is paid for in part by the replay rights Viacom (MTV and VH1) pays to air them, and they then charge piles of money to the advertisers who get their commercials tacked on either end. For the tour bus and interviews and stuff that in part also comes from the bucks paid at the concerts when they're on tour. Think about it for a minute: An album that costs us all $ 16 bucks goes platinum (over 1 mil. sold) means 16 million bucks right there. Do a concert at a stadium and charge a minimum of 50 bucks per person, some even charge a hundred or more now...for a stadium that holds 100,000, that's another five million. I know, I know, there are also the sound techs, equipment shipment, paying the venue for the use of the stadium, etc. but even still, you cannot convince me they need to charge that much. It's plain greed, pure and simple, and the fact that something like iTunes can potentially destroy that revenue stream scares them. But I think iTunes has already proven that a new model can be equally successful. The service raked in more than $ 5 million in the first month or so as well, and for a distribution that only cost pennies vs. pressing a disc...
Geez louise! That's exactly the problem with CD distribution in the first place! They still want me to believe I need to spend over $ 16 bucks on a disc that I know damn well cost them only $ 0.40 to manufacture and distro. Even with a couple bucks to the artist and the studio, it's overpriced. Then, I have to buy 12 or more songs, of which I'm only ever going to like about 3. Which is why I want my iTunes and MP3s in the first place. I like to be able to take even my legitimately purchased music and reduce it to the set of what *I* want to listen to. Isn't that my right as a consumer? Oh, and let me pick the medium to do it, whether that's my PC, my iPod, or a CD mix I burn for the car...
(and maybe also first post?)
Yeah, I can see waiting up to a week being fine with most home subscribers, but for businesses, it's a real issue. I work for a company that switched the whole corporate plan from AT&T to T-Mobile now. We all got new free Nokia 6610s, and a better plan for each person as part of the deal. But we do network security software sales, and the sales people CANNOT be a week without being able to get calls from customers. It affects the bottom line of business, while AT&T tries to pocket more money by holding onto our service as long as possible.
They knew about this switch with PLENTY of advanced warning. Other providers can switch in hours or a day, it should not take more than that. I've been without my phone for two days now personally, and I'm getting tired of it.
Funny how so many seem to be switching from AT&T...such SHITTY service, dropped calls, overcharges...not sure if T-mobile will be that much better, but the phone rocks at least.
I agree that the main theme of the X-Men is more to appeal to ANY type of outcast, not just gays and lesbians.
However, I completely disagree that we're only "2-10% of the population", and we're certainly NOT with a sexual identity problem. I have no problem at all with my sexual identity, thanks. If you have a problem with my sexual identity, tough...I don't give a shit.
In Star Trek: Voyager, the crew of Voyager uses technology extensively. Ask the replicator for the food you want, without having to print off a copy of the recipe to keep next to the cooker. Want to know something? Pull it up on a display or ask the computer directly. Old media, such as TV shows, and music are played in crew's quarters by the computer from databases on the ship.
But interestingly enough, in several episodes, crewmembers (such as Janeway in "Fairhaven"), have books replicated to read, instead of reading the texts on the computer screen.
So yes, although media delivery may change in many profound or not-so-profound ways, I would argue that books will be around for quite some time to come. But will technology change the way we receive at least some content? Absolutely.
Which was, I belive, Katz's point as well.
So you're agreeing with Katz, then. You make the statement that you "don't necessarily think that the increase in theater receipts and music sales can be directly attributed to advances in 'new' media and the internet". That's Katz's point. He states:
Although online book sales are growing on sites like Fatbrain, Amazon and BN.com, so are the sales of books in stores. The technological absolutism invoked by the rise of the Net - everything will go digital - is not coming to pass.
In other words, others are claiming that the Internet is impacting sales in older distribution channels, but he's pointing out that that's not correct.
And NOW you're popping up telling us that there's some new "middle media" that we should all be bowing down to? What rock have you been living under?
Jon's article isn't saying we should be "bowing down to" this middle media. On the contrary, his text cleary indicates he's not certain where it's going, but is asking questions about the implications and the direction things *could* move in. If you read carefully, you'll see he uses terms like, "And the form of media might vary in terms of content as well" or "might always remain popular to consumers on paper"
At no point did I see a statement that said anything about the certainty of middle media succeeding, or that we should be completely submissive and accepting of it (bowing down to it, as you claim). On the contrary, he points out that the electronic media dictates a greater openess and consumer participation in the content and success of the material in question.
Just because the dot.coms and others are using paper catalogs now doesn't mean that everything won't finally go all electronic. Even paper will have interactive abilities eventually. This is all just a transition period not some Middle Media thing.
I think that was Jon's argument. The reason he used the term middle media is because he's trying to demonstrate that there really isn't a clear divide between new media and old media, as many other pundits suggest. That it is a transition, as you state, and a transformation, exactly because people like to still read paper.
Too bad you're so obviously repressing your true tendencies, except through gender obfuscation in IRC. The pics on your site at RIT indicate you're a real hottie... :)
The years 100 and 19100 are *not* Perl script errors, but bad programming (Matt's Script Archive, anyone?). The same errors crop up if the programmer didn't read the documentation in C as well. The documentation clearly states that localtime() will return tm_year as an integer of the number of years since 1900. 19100 occurs because the dumba** called the function, saw two digits, and ASSUMED that it would always return two digits, so they prepend the "19", which is WRONG. If you programmed it right, you'd know that you just add 1900 to whatever localtime() returns as tm_year.
Just a minor clarification...
"It's now well into the first day of the new Millennium..."
Really? Gosh, and I thought you were only about 5 hours ahead of east coast, US. How'd you get an entire year ahead? :)
The new millenium starts Jan 01 '01.
No, Jim's the moron on this one. Religious structures can be anything, including stone circles, mosques, tabernacles, or even, arguably, the "Golden Arches" of McDonald's or the Cinderella castle in the Magic Kingdom. A church is only one form of religious structure. Duh.
While I agree that de-regulation has improved competition from the break-up of monopolistic groups, such as the AT&T breakup in 1984, and that the hands-off approach helps in many ways, I see one problem:
The FCC also decided to take a complete hands-off approach to cellular phone standards. Each company was allowed to create or support whatever they wanted, and as a result we have PCS, GSM, and a host of other incompatible standards. The Europeans, who are usually much more pro-standards" than we are, are now years ahead of the US in cellular technology...because they were able to agree on using GSM.
I have no problem with having the broadband market open, but it would be nice if there was a STANDARD so that I could take my broadband box/TV/whatever to some other state and sign up with a different company without having to worry that the damn thing won't work because my box uses FOO, but my new provider only supports BAR.