Many people get a Mac and discover some new favorite activity that they didn't do before because it's more complicated and less fun on a PC. Digital photography with iPhoto, digital video with iMovie, or digital music with the formerly Mac-only iTunes are three possibilities.
I had the same experience. I've been all Windows and some Unix for years now at work. For me, computers were about development, project mgt., office apps, e-mail, and web browsing.
That changed when I bought a Mac for home use. Before then, I didn't bother downloading music b/c I didn't really care that much about music. I mostly listened to the radio and bought the occasional CD. Before this year, I've probably spent less than $300 on albums in my entire life.
Since getting my iBook, I ripped my complete (if small) collection of CDs, began buying tracks on iTMS, and started listening to music almost exclusively on my computer. And much more than i used to, I think about music, listen to it for hours at a time (totally weird for me!), and actively search out new tracks. I'm going to buy an iPod sometime in the next few months.
As for photos, I've never owned a camera in my life. I'd been having so much fun with my iBook that I bought my first digital camera and been having a rockin' time with that too.
That "digital lifestyle hub" campaign Apple started a few years ago sounded like so much marketing vapor--but my Mac really HAS started me on some fun hobbies. Damn, I sound like a switcher commercial...
Dell said standards benefit users, while proprietary hardware benefits only the company selling it.
Yeah, one of the biggest examples of this is Microsoft's proprietary Office formats. From the user's point of view, it's really too bad vendors can't compete fairly on merits...despite the ideas like those in this thread.
Some of the ideas in the article remind me of the Hulk. Yeah, tons of people didn't like this movie, but I liked the risks Ang Lee took in trying to convey a comic book feel by using multiple panels, split-screens, etc. Sometimes Lee's compositions were distracting or redundnant, but at moments they gave a multi-character perspective that worked quite nicely. Like when you simultaneously see Banner watching Betty watching the experiment. (Cross pollination between comics and film is a fun geek topic, e.g., the Watchmen, Matrix, Ghost World, etc.)
It's even worse than that...we're in the middle of a politically-correct rewriting of history that will have untold effects. Also, there is an Orwellian twisting of our textbooks that no one seems to recognize as such.
I definitely agree that this is a problem. California and Texas are such a large markets that their state education laws impact textbooks across the nation b/c it's more cost-effective for publishers to have a national edition. Textbook bowdlerization is a nationwide phenomenon, and it's not just limited to the hypersensitivities of the left. Rightwing groups have also pressured textbook publishers based on their own hot button issues.
Have you read "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn" by Diane Ravitch? I haven't but I've read some very interesting excerpts and reviews. You can find it here.
One thing i dreamed about when I was a student lugging around all those heavy textbooks was dynamic innstructional material that could be downloaded to low-cost high-quality media. (Still not there with electonic paper, etc.) But another benefit would be giving teachers some more control over what to use in their classes.
DeBeers has been much more effective than RIAA
on
Diamonds & the RIAA
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Not sure how things have changed in the last 20 years since this article came out, but here's an interesting piece on how dimaond engagement rings are an invented tradition that only started 60 years ago. (It's comes in three parts b/c it's pretty long.)
Re:ADD Version
on
The Red Queen
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Interestingly a similar study was done on suicide. It is a trait that reduced the population in difficult (depressing) times thereby leaving more resources for the group.
This is an example of "group selectionism", which doesn't find much favor among professional biologists nowadays. Their reasoning is that it is easy for such groups to be invaded by mutants who "cheat".
For example, in a population where everyone has a tendency towards suicide in lean times, any mutant that lacks suicidal tendencies will probably leave more offspring. This is because the mutant's kids enjoy the same benefits the regular suicidal folk enjoy (fewer members in group to divide limited resources) without paying the costs which are only borne by the regular individuals (higher probabilty of killing themselves).
Over several generations, fewer and fewer members of the population will be suicidal as the descendants of that mutant "cheater" become more relatively numerous.
The only way an "altruistic" gene can spread is if it is an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) that can coexist with other alleles in the population. In other words, it's structured in such a way to guard against cheaters or find some way of cohabiting in a stable manner with other strategies in the local population's gene pool.
Oracle is the 2nd largest independent software vendor by revenue. If IBM's software division was independent, it would be #2 and Oracle #3. Microsoft is largest in revenue either way.
"Please cite one example where large scale government intrusion in the form of regulation has helped any market."
Consider the banking reforms in 1932, 1933 after the stock market crash of 1929. Among other things, these new gov't regulations forced more open disclosure of public company info. Once investors had a clearer idea of what was really going on in individual companies, investors could shift money from inefficient companies to more efficient companies. In addition, these laws built investor confidence in the market (i.e., it was not as much of an insider game as it once was) so that more money could flow into it in general.
Of course, given what's happened in the boom of the late 90's and the bear market of the 2000s, you may be skeptical about how effective these laws are. But I'd bet that as bad as things may seem on Wall Street (insiders and institutions still having the advantage over individual investors, research analysts rating terrible stocks "Strong Buys", etc.) it's *nothing* like what happened in the boom of the 1920's and the bust of the 30's.
I don't have time now, but maybe other people can give more detail on how these other gov't regulations might have improved markets, the public good, or both: food safety regulations, environmental regulations, public health regulations, etc...
Slashdot Mirror
Many people get a Mac and discover some new favorite activity that they didn't do before because it's more complicated and less fun on a PC. Digital photography with iPhoto, digital video with iMovie, or digital music with the formerly Mac-only iTunes are three possibilities.
I had the same experience. I've been all Windows and some Unix for years now at work. For me, computers were about development, project mgt., office apps, e-mail, and web browsing.
That changed when I bought a Mac for home use. Before then, I didn't bother downloading music b/c I didn't really care that much about music. I mostly listened to the radio and bought the occasional CD. Before this year, I've probably spent less than $300 on albums in my entire life.
Since getting my iBook, I ripped my complete (if small) collection of CDs, began buying tracks on iTMS, and started listening to music almost exclusively on my computer. And much more than i used to, I think about music, listen to it for hours at a time (totally weird for me!), and actively search out new tracks. I'm going to buy an iPod sometime in the next few months.
As for photos, I've never owned a camera in my life. I'd been having so much fun with my iBook that I bought my first digital camera and been having a rockin' time with that too.
That "digital lifestyle hub" campaign Apple started a few years ago sounded like so much marketing vapor--but my Mac really HAS started me on some fun hobbies. Damn, I sound like a switcher commercial...
Dell said standards benefit users, while proprietary hardware benefits only the company selling it.
Yeah, one of the biggest examples of this is Microsoft's proprietary Office formats. From the user's point of view, it's really too bad vendors can't compete fairly on merits...despite the ideas like those in this thread.
Some of the ideas in the article remind me of the Hulk. Yeah, tons of people didn't like this movie, but I liked the risks Ang Lee took in trying to convey a comic book feel by using multiple panels, split-screens, etc. Sometimes Lee's compositions were distracting or redundnant, but at moments they gave a multi-character perspective that worked quite nicely. Like when you simultaneously see Banner watching Betty watching the experiment. (Cross pollination between comics and film is a fun geek topic, e.g., the Watchmen, Matrix, Ghost World, etc.)
It's even worse than that...we're in the middle of a politically-correct rewriting of history that will have untold effects. Also, there is an Orwellian twisting of our textbooks that no one seems to recognize as such.
I definitely agree that this is a problem. California and Texas are such a large markets that their state education laws impact textbooks across the nation b/c it's more cost-effective for publishers to have a national edition. Textbook bowdlerization is a nationwide phenomenon, and it's not just limited to the hypersensitivities of the left. Rightwing groups have also pressured textbook publishers based on their own hot button issues.
Have you read "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn" by Diane Ravitch? I haven't but I've read some very interesting excerpts and reviews. You can find it here.
One thing i dreamed about when I was a student lugging around all those heavy textbooks was dynamic innstructional material that could be downloaded to low-cost high-quality media. (Still not there with electonic paper, etc.) But another benefit would be giving teachers some more control over what to use in their classes.
Not sure how things have changed in the last 20 years since this article came out, but here's an interesting piece on how dimaond engagement rings are an invented tradition that only started 60 years ago. (It's comes in three parts b/c it's pretty long.)
part 1
part 2
part 3
Interestingly a similar study was done on suicide. It is a trait that reduced the population in difficult (depressing) times thereby leaving more resources for the group.
This is an example of "group selectionism", which doesn't find much favor among professional biologists nowadays. Their reasoning is that it is easy for such groups to be invaded by mutants who "cheat".
For example, in a population where everyone has a tendency towards suicide in lean times, any mutant that lacks suicidal tendencies will probably leave more offspring. This is because the mutant's kids enjoy the same benefits the regular suicidal folk enjoy (fewer members in group to divide limited resources) without paying the costs which are only borne by the regular individuals (higher probabilty of killing themselves).
Over several generations, fewer and fewer members of the population will be suicidal as the descendants of that mutant "cheater" become more relatively numerous.
The only way an "altruistic" gene can spread is if it is an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) that can coexist with other alleles in the population. In other words, it's structured in such a way to guard against cheaters or find some way of cohabiting in a stable manner with other strategies in the local population's gene pool.
Oracle is the 2nd largest independent software vendor by revenue. If IBM's software division was independent, it would be #2 and Oracle #3. Microsoft is largest in revenue either way.
"Please cite one example where large scale government intrusion in the form of regulation has helped any market."
Consider the banking reforms in 1932, 1933 after the stock market crash of 1929. Among other things, these new gov't regulations forced more open disclosure of public company info. Once investors had a clearer idea of what was really going on in individual companies, investors could shift money from inefficient companies to more efficient companies. In addition, these laws built investor confidence in the market (i.e., it was not as much of an insider game as it once was) so that more money could flow into it in general.
Of course, given what's happened in the boom of the late 90's and the bear market of the 2000s, you may be skeptical about how effective these laws are. But I'd bet that as bad as things may seem on Wall Street (insiders and institutions still having the advantage over individual investors, research analysts rating terrible stocks "Strong Buys", etc.) it's *nothing* like what happened in the boom of the 1920's and the bust of the 30's.
I don't have time now, but maybe other people can give more detail on how these other gov't regulations might have improved markets, the public good, or both: food safety regulations, environmental regulations, public health regulations, etc...
Jeff Hwang
jh600@yahoo.com