First, let's all just admit that out GPUs are sitting mostly idle 96% of the time. This is not simply a question of CPU cycles anymore, like it used to be.
Second, lets admit that when you refer to 'eye candy', you are framing the quesiton as a perjorative. It strongly implies that what you are talking about has already been judged as useless decoration.
Good design follows function, as the saying goes. Examples of "good" eye candy - the Dock in OS X's genie effect. Its fast, it tells you where your minimized document is living, and it can be turned off (to straight scaling). Nothing wrong with this at all.
Where developers go wrong is usually in two areas. One, developers are not designers. Developers write code, and should not attempt serious design, any more than the Photoshop and Illustrator jockeys should attempt C++. Second, picking an appropriate bit of eye candy should always follow an already identified need. This is the form-follows-function. Animation always draws the eye, it should not be misused to redirect your attention where it is not needed. Here's a great example: pull-down menus in Mac OS X vs the same in Windows XP. On the Mac, pulldowns appear instantly, and fade away once something is selected; this is correct behaviour, as you asked for a menu - there should be no delay. Fading away is fine because the selection has been made, and you have moved on. In XP, the menus fade up, and vanish instantly - totally backwards. That is bad eye candy.
In the end it is always a question of design. Eye candy by itself is nothing, no value judgement can be rendered.. it is the application. So the way this article is framed is mostly useless for purposes of deciding when and where to employ such effects.
You completely missed the point. Her objecting isn't to the way the students are trying to transcribe her words, but rather the fact that they're transcribing at all. The are trying to make an external record rather than coming to an internal understanding.
I think you've missed my point.
I don't think the student should be 'transcribing' anything at all. I think they should listen, think, and ask questions. Recording the lecture is back-up and reference for later.
So - I agree with you insofar that students need 'internal' understanding, but I fail to see how letting the iPod (or whatever) record the lecture as you listen and participate (and think) precludes this level of understanding.
Although some old schoolers will disagree, taking notes is a waste of time. She needs to go one step further and give the students the notes in the first place. Then, if necessary, the students can add their own comments and annotations.
Dingdingding! We have a winner!
Prof should record herself and offer a podcast of the lecture. Additionally, diagrams and more complex imagery could be made available at a web address - even if it was just a digital camera photo of the blackboard, it would be a great help.
I do recall reading about a University (not sure which it was) that offered students iPods at the beginning of the year with lectures pre-recorded. Now that's smart.
She may well be concerned about IM'ing and whatnot, but she shouldn't ban computers without providing some kind of alternative method - paper and pencils are not going to address the problem she identified (eye contact, engagement).
It's a fairly blind system because nobody wants to be the guy fingered for not watching some guy because "he claimed to be a Quaker", then having him turn out to be a nut with a sack of anthrax spores. They simply have no means available of making the distinction beyond their intelligence gathering apparatus. It's a very strange culture, the "intelligence community". I was an intelligence analyst both in the US Army and later as a civilian. I quit because I could no longer stomach the mindset. Basically, I kinda turned into a peacenik myself.
Huh. I hadn't really thought of it that way... thanks for the insight.
Are you seriously suggesting that law enforcement gather evidence using a cameraphone? I'd much rather have my tax money "wasted" on giving agents the actual tools (GPS receivers, telephoto-lens cameras, maybe a laptop) they need, not gimmicky RadioShack all-in-one gadgets.
No - I should have been more explicit - I'm not talking about any consumer crap. They should have specific gear commissioned directly from a company/provider, like they do with everything else (think police cars, or "military" gear, that sort of thing). The original question was should they have it at all - I say yes, but I'm not thinking of Nokias and iPaqs.
I also don't want to read email (which increasingly includes web-like formatting), chat on IRC, or read UseNET on a 1.5 inch screen; And my phone doesn't make the best destination for downloading files via FTP or any P2P; And it takes far too long to enter alphanumeric data to make anything even remotely interactive (ie, ssh) useful on a cellphone.
I suppose getting an RSS feed might prove vaguely useful, but not nearly enough to justify the increased expense - And y'know, with a government that can't seem to spend our tax dollars fast enough, I can't say it really bothers me that the FBI hasn't caught on to yet another way to waste our money.
You are really not using your imagination.
Just because you cannot picture a useful application for FBI agents, based on your experience with crappy consumer cellphone browsers and whatnot, does not mean a useful function for an internet-connected mobile phone does not exist. Particulary a camera phone, or GPS-enabled phone.... you don't see a use for things like that? Why would you want to shoot down the notion before you even investigate? Believe me, they will waste your tax money one way or the other.
While surely no Quaker would ever knowingly provide aid or support to "terrorists", they're certainly more likely to end up mixed up with some who might than (say) my elderly grandmother who only watches Matlock and knits all day. It's hardly surprising that a Quaker would end up being watched, if for no other reason than the fact that "the opposition" of the government runs the gamut from good old fashioned peaceniks all the way to rabid, "shed the infidel's blood" jihadis, and they generally end up mixing due to vaguely common interest.
That.... is the funniest thing I have read all day.
When you're dealing with the people who watch nerdy niche programming, you're dealing with an uncommonly tech-savvy crowd that owns TiVos, refuses to watch commercials and never pays for anything anyway.
Well, except for TiVos, HD sets, fancy home theater gear and the like.
You've got a fan base of freeloading music and software and movie pirates. Just look at the ads that run during reruns of Star Trek. It's all penis enlargement and debt relief. It's pretty obvious that this isn't a crowd that has much disposable income to squeeze out of it.
Now that's just a gross generalization. Geeks are perfectly willing to pay for good content. Also: I see tampon ads during the Simpsons. What does it prove? Not much, other than the advertisers sometimes have targeted spots, and sometimes they don't, and sometimes they mix both pools together.
Besides I think Star Trek is a terrible example anyways.
There's a lot of demand for the 18-35 male population, because it spends a lot of money. But our niche, for whatever reason, is VERY undesirable.
This might be true, but only because they tend to be more difficult to sell pablum to. You can get practically any idiot to watch American False Idol but if you need to actually hire (for example) sci-fi writers that are competent, or license Sigur Ros for the soundtrack, it costs more and you still get less viewers. I don't think the group is any less desirable, just a harder 'get'.
Note: I am not suggesting that everything in the first paragraph is TRUE,
Oh, good.
... and certainly not of every single person who watches Futurama. But look at the commercials that run on Spike and during Next Gen rebroadcasts...
There's your answer. Look at the commercials Spike and NG run any time. Its the same. More to do with the network than anything else.
Anyway... there's some assumptions being made about their demographics and those assumptions fuel the types of advertisers they get and thus their revenue off broadcasting. I think some of those assumptions can be borne out, as uncomfortable as that may make some of you.
I think your larger point is probably correct but that does not make me uncomfortable. Sure it would be better to have high-quality, engaging entertainment shoved down my throat than the guano that suffices for pop culture we actually get, but just the same I'm ok seeking out my own enjoyment. It is the geek ethos, after all. I mean its not like we make it real easy either; how do you advertise to a group of people who desperately would like to take your product home, bust it open, re-wire it, add several capabilities it that were never intended, and a blue LED? Some have pulled it off (see Robosapien) but it is 'incompatible' with the 'consumer lifestyle'.
Just don't read too much into the ads. I wouldn't judge you by your spam folder.:)
I'm not a MS fanboy, but I do have very good experiences with Microsoft over my lifetime. I've had some terrible problems, too, but nothing that has affected me in a bad way. I believe Microsoft's Windows has been a big reason why PCs are so cheap
That's totally untrue; the percentage of a PC's price that is taken up by Windows licensing has crept steadily upwards for the last several years. PCs would be much cheaper if not for Windows; the price going down overall is simple commodotization, in spite of MS's charges to OEMs.
Let's just admit that they've created something new, and it's not entirely unreasonable for them to wish to protect their exclusive use of their creations.
Or, here's a better idea: lets just admit that the system was absurd to begin with, and talk about why that has been allowed to persist?
Now if you don't mind, I'd like to gaze out my Windows(TM) for awhile and contemplate it.
Imagine that... early adopters CONTROLLED by Sony. You made my point for me. When Sony first released their iPOD killer, they put their users through a long cumbersome conversion process which resulted in proprietary DRM'ed music filed. Sony then realized that their users wanted more. SONY seemed to get the message that as long as they were shoving the proprietary Sony music and DRM format down the throats of the consumer that sales were suffering.
But how does that prove that they have 'lost their edge'? It looks to me like they made a huge mistake, and now are correcting that position. (At least in hardware.) Believe me, I don't disagree about the iPod and all, and I witnessed the (almost unfathomably slow) MP3-ATRAC conversion at a friends house; what a fiasco. But recent signs seem to indicate an about-face, not more intransigence.
"Sony" could have decided to disassociate the brand from the rootkit decision in any number of ways, they have not.
I understand your point about paying a price for irresponsible actions in the marketplace, but really the only thing they can do is retract discs in a prompt manner (which they did not) and try to mitigate and apologize. The brand has way too much invested in it to just abandon it.
Besides, would you really have given them a free pass if the timeline had gone like: SONY rootkit discovered, SONY Corporation sued, SONY Corporation announces that it has sullied its good name forevermore and will now be known as PurpleMonkeyDishwasher? It would look exactly like they were trying a brand change to avoid blame even if it were possible, like the tobacco company that changed its name to the nice breezy-sounding Altria.
I understand what you're saying, but I think the message will be even clearer if I just don't buy anything from any part of Sony. Maybe it's only Sony-BMG that is bad, but they've degraded the name. Sony Electronics should drop the name "Sony" if it doesn't want to take responsibility for the actions of other users of that name.
Sure, that makes sense, but only from a human perspective. From a corporate view, money talks the loudest. If they noticed a sharp downward spike in all DRM'd products, they will know that this is not acceptable hardware. Across-the-board lower sales would leave that question open.
Here's a hypothetical: if Sony came out with a great MP3 player tomorrow that was actually open source software, with a documented extensible spec, plays Ogg Stupidname and all other penguin-related crap, was cheap and worked almost as nicely as an iPod with an equivalent spec.... which is the better way to get your point across: would you want to support that kind of development, rather than watch it languish? Or, would you not buy it just because it said SONY on it, to spite that ridiculous rootkit stunt that the retards (no offense to retards) over in the music arm pulled?
Sony, the guys who just released the "iPOD Killer" that can't even play MP3's and requires converting them to Sony's proprietary format (because it's better right?).
Sony has not released any audio devices that use ATRAC in over a year.
Sure Betamax was a superior technology compared to VHS, but who won that war?
Sony lost the home format but won the broadcast-level market and holds it to this day. Betacam SP has been the industry standard for production for many years, only recently supplanted by newer digital efforts (and even those are still in their infancy).
You make a fine point, but it is worth mentioning that while Sony lost the living room, they won the studio.
Some of you guys have a very strange understanding of Sony, but that is kind of expected, as Sony is a strange entity in and of itself.
Let me illustrate with an example: Sony regularly names Sony as a defendant in copyright lawsuits.
Sony Corporation is: several mini-divisions of Sony Electronics (Walkmans, stereo gear, camcorders, TVs, phones, not to mention an entire division dedicated to pro-level broadcast hardware and Betacam SP); a large media arm in Sony-BMG Music Group which has its own problems, Sony's movie studio - again, schizo in performance but huge and sprawling; Sony's various software divisions (SCE*), in NA, Japan, and Europe; 'online' or SonyConnect verisons for each of those again...not to mention weirdo initiatives like Sony Ericsson (very successful)...
You see where I'm going with this. Here's an article that does a good job summing it up.
It is pointless to discuss an entity called SONY as if it were a coherent entity. It is more like the EU. Very competitive, aligned loosely, but basically all fighting each other tooth and nail for internal dominance, which usually translates to external dominance. This has been Sony's culture for a long time, only recently changing under their new CEO (a Welsh guy, another first for the corporation).
If you ask Sony's hardware guys about the iPod, most of them will readily concede that they were soundly thrashed by Apple. iPod is the new Walkman, no doubt. Sony could have competed with Apple if they didn't have the content arms sniping at them throughout the development process (and also if they had let go of certain insane engineers who loved minidisc a little too much).
So when you guys are boycotting Sony products - a principal I do not disagree with - I do have to wonder a little if you know exactly what you are boycotting. Sony-BMG are bastards, I deal with them all the time and they really just are the epitome of the 'evil record label'. Sony hardware is a completely different entity, and they more or less hate Sony-BMG as well. When you stop buying Sony TVs and whatnot, you are actually punishing the guys who are (now somewhat successfully) pushing against the DRM in the hardware. They hate this shit, and they know what consumers want (mostly...). DRM comes from the media arms, and its dictating product design inside Sony, and that is the battle.
What I am saying is, you need the carrot and the stick. Don't buy Sony-BMG music, they cam eup with the rootkit. DO buy those Sony products that are free of DRM. The message will be clear. I have a Sony Ericsson phone (W600i) and it does not have any DRM for loading and playing music, short of the veil necessary to keep you from beaming pre-canned content into other phones. it actually is the iTunes phone that everyone wanted, and no one shipped, including Motorola/Apple. My iTunes collection, all uninfected MP3 and AAC, loads (both directions) and plays beautifully.
Sony Electronics has typically kept the underperforming divisions from showing up more drastically on the balance sheet (PS2) but they are suffering now as well. Let's hope the hardware guys win over the media guys.
I forgot, nobody gives a shit about the artists, so we have to invent cute little experiments where files with non-equivalent bitrates are compared, so we can scream "DRM REDUCES BATTERY LIFE!" in some vain attempt to bash DRM yet again. My bad.
Dude, what the fuck? This is a technical issue, one has nothing to do with the other. Get off the box, there's a different thread for that.
Adding CPU-intensive tasks such as encryption/DRM parsing requires more CPU, therefore more power, which therefore drains batteries at an increased rate.
This is why I play NetHack rather than World of Warcraft.
Don't forget - you must also eat nothing but beans and horsemeat.*
(* apologies to the clever slashdotter who originally posted that - i forget who you are)
Slashdot Mirror
First, let's all just admit that out GPUs are sitting mostly idle 96% of the time. This is not simply a question of CPU cycles anymore, like it used to be.
Second, lets admit that when you refer to 'eye candy', you are framing the quesiton as a perjorative. It strongly implies that what you are talking about has already been judged as useless decoration.
Good design follows function, as the saying goes. Examples of "good" eye candy - the Dock in OS X's genie effect. Its fast, it tells you where your minimized document is living, and it can be turned off (to straight scaling). Nothing wrong with this at all. Where developers go wrong is usually in two areas. One, developers are not designers. Developers write code, and should not attempt serious design, any more than the Photoshop and Illustrator jockeys should attempt C++. Second, picking an appropriate bit of eye candy should always follow an already identified need. This is the form-follows-function. Animation always draws the eye, it should not be misused to redirect your attention where it is not needed. Here's a great example: pull-down menus in Mac OS X vs the same in Windows XP. On the Mac, pulldowns appear instantly, and fade away once something is selected; this is correct behaviour, as you asked for a menu - there should be no delay. Fading away is fine because the selection has been made, and you have moved on. In XP, the menus fade up, and vanish instantly - totally backwards. That is bad eye candy.
In the end it is always a question of design. Eye candy by itself is nothing, no value judgement can be rendered.. it is the application. So the way this article is framed is mostly useless for purposes of deciding when and where to employ such effects.
Woosh youself, you ignorant twit. I GOT YOUR POINT. I just don't agree with it. Deal.
A clear nod to the Hot Coffee people.
Yeah, me too. There were so many things I loved about those machi- GURU MEDITATION - TASK HELD
ERROR 0.0004032502524052
I think you've missed my point.
I don't think the student should be 'transcribing' anything at all. I think they should listen, think, and ask questions. Recording the lecture is back-up and reference for later.
So - I agree with you insofar that students need 'internal' understanding, but I fail to see how letting the iPod (or whatever) record the lecture as you listen and participate (and think) precludes this level of understanding.
That's why I mentioned using a recording device.
Bonus points for knowing how to spell ridiculous, however.
"Rediculous" does seem to be a very common mistake.
Dingdingding! We have a winner!
Prof should record herself and offer a podcast of the lecture. Additionally, diagrams and more complex imagery could be made available at a web address - even if it was just a digital camera photo of the blackboard, it would be a great help.
I do recall reading about a University (not sure which it was) that offered students iPods at the beginning of the year with lectures pre-recorded. Now that's smart.
She may well be concerned about IM'ing and whatnot, but she shouldn't ban computers without providing some kind of alternative method - paper and pencils are not going to address the problem she identified (eye contact, engagement).
Why didn't the Prof mandate voice recorders, if that was really the concern?
Huh. I hadn't really thought of it that way... thanks for the insight.
No - I should have been more explicit - I'm not talking about any consumer crap. They should have specific gear commissioned directly from a company/provider, like they do with everything else (think police cars, or "military" gear, that sort of thing). The original question was should they have it at all - I say yes, but I'm not thinking of Nokias and iPaqs.
You are really not using your imagination.
Just because you cannot picture a useful application for FBI agents, based on your experience with crappy consumer cellphone browsers and whatnot, does not mean a useful function for an internet-connected mobile phone does not exist. Particulary a camera phone, or GPS-enabled phone.... you don't see a use for things like that? Why would you want to shoot down the notion before you even investigate? Believe me, they will waste your tax money one way or the other.
That.... is the funniest thing I have read all day.
(You are joking, right?)
Well, except for TiVos, HD sets, fancy home theater gear and the like.
You've got a fan base of freeloading music and software and movie pirates. Just look at the ads that run during reruns of Star Trek. It's all penis enlargement and debt relief. It's pretty obvious that this isn't a crowd that has much disposable income to squeeze out of it.
Now that's just a gross generalization. Geeks are perfectly willing to pay for good content. Also: I see tampon ads during the Simpsons. What does it prove? Not much, other than the advertisers sometimes have targeted spots, and sometimes they don't, and sometimes they mix both pools together.
Besides I think Star Trek is a terrible example anyways.
There's a lot of demand for the 18-35 male population, because it spends a lot of money. But our niche, for whatever reason, is VERY undesirable.
This might be true, but only because they tend to be more difficult to sell pablum to. You can get practically any idiot to watch American False Idol but if you need to actually hire (for example) sci-fi writers that are competent, or license Sigur Ros for the soundtrack, it costs more and you still get less viewers. I don't think the group is any less desirable, just a harder 'get'.
Note: I am not suggesting that everything in the first paragraph is TRUE,
Oh, good.
There's your answer. Look at the commercials Spike and NG run any time. Its the same. More to do with the network than anything else.
Anyway ... there's some assumptions being made about their demographics and those assumptions fuel the types of advertisers they get and thus their revenue off broadcasting. I think some of those assumptions can be borne out, as uncomfortable as that may make some of you.
I think your larger point is probably correct but that does not make me uncomfortable. Sure it would be better to have high-quality, engaging entertainment shoved down my throat than the guano that suffices for pop culture we actually get, but just the same I'm ok seeking out my own enjoyment. It is the geek ethos, after all. I mean its not like we make it real easy either; how do you advertise to a group of people who desperately would like to take your product home, bust it open, re-wire it, add several capabilities it that were never intended, and a blue LED? Some have pulled it off (see Robosapien) but it is 'incompatible' with the 'consumer lifestyle'.
Just don't read too much into the ads. I wouldn't judge you by your spam folder. :)
That's totally untrue; the percentage of a PC's price that is taken up by Windows licensing has crept steadily upwards for the last several years. PCs would be much cheaper if not for Windows; the price going down overall is simple commodotization, in spite of MS's charges to OEMs.
Or, here's a better idea: lets just admit that the system was absurd to begin with, and talk about why that has been allowed to persist?
Now if you don't mind, I'd like to gaze out my Windows(TM) for awhile and contemplate it.
psst, hey buddy: check the location bar in your browser, whats that first word after http?
But how does that prove that they have 'lost their edge'? It looks to me like they made a huge mistake, and now are correcting that position. (At least in hardware.) Believe me, I don't disagree about the iPod and all, and I witnessed the (almost unfathomably slow) MP3-ATRAC conversion at a friends house; what a fiasco. But recent signs seem to indicate an about-face, not more intransigence.
I understand your point about paying a price for irresponsible actions in the marketplace, but really the only thing they can do is retract discs in a prompt manner (which they did not) and try to mitigate and apologize. The brand has way too much invested in it to just abandon it.
Besides, would you really have given them a free pass if the timeline had gone like: SONY rootkit discovered, SONY Corporation sued, SONY Corporation announces that it has sullied its good name forevermore and will now be known as PurpleMonkeyDishwasher? It would look exactly like they were trying a brand change to avoid blame even if it were possible, like the tobacco company that changed its name to the nice breezy-sounding Altria.
Sure, that makes sense, but only from a human perspective. From a corporate view, money talks the loudest. If they noticed a sharp downward spike in all DRM'd products, they will know that this is not acceptable hardware. Across-the-board lower sales would leave that question open.
Here's a hypothetical: if Sony came out with a great MP3 player tomorrow that was actually open source software, with a documented extensible spec, plays Ogg Stupidname and all other penguin-related crap, was cheap and worked almost as nicely as an iPod with an equivalent spec.... which is the better way to get your point across: would you want to support that kind of development, rather than watch it languish? Or, would you not buy it just because it said SONY on it, to spite that ridiculous rootkit stunt that the retards (no offense to retards) over in the music arm pulled?
Sony has not released any audio devices that use ATRAC in over a year.
Sony lost the home format but won the broadcast-level market and holds it to this day. Betacam SP has been the industry standard for production for many years, only recently supplanted by newer digital efforts (and even those are still in their infancy).
You make a fine point, but it is worth mentioning that while Sony lost the living room, they won the studio.
Let me illustrate with an example: Sony regularly names Sony as a defendant in copyright lawsuits.
Sony Corporation is: several mini-divisions of Sony Electronics (Walkmans, stereo gear, camcorders, TVs, phones, not to mention an entire division dedicated to pro-level broadcast hardware and Betacam SP); a large media arm in Sony-BMG Music Group which has its own problems, Sony's movie studio - again, schizo in performance but huge and sprawling; Sony's various software divisions (SCE*), in NA, Japan, and Europe; 'online' or SonyConnect verisons for each of those again...not to mention weirdo initiatives like Sony Ericsson (very successful)...
You see where I'm going with this. Here's an article that does a good job summing it up.
It is pointless to discuss an entity called SONY as if it were a coherent entity. It is more like the EU. Very competitive, aligned loosely, but basically all fighting each other tooth and nail for internal dominance, which usually translates to external dominance. This has been Sony's culture for a long time, only recently changing under their new CEO (a Welsh guy, another first for the corporation).
If you ask Sony's hardware guys about the iPod, most of them will readily concede that they were soundly thrashed by Apple. iPod is the new Walkman, no doubt. Sony could have competed with Apple if they didn't have the content arms sniping at them throughout the development process (and also if they had let go of certain insane engineers who loved minidisc a little too much).
So when you guys are boycotting Sony products - a principal I do not disagree with - I do have to wonder a little if you know exactly what you are boycotting. Sony-BMG are bastards, I deal with them all the time and they really just are the epitome of the 'evil record label'. Sony hardware is a completely different entity, and they more or less hate Sony-BMG as well. When you stop buying Sony TVs and whatnot, you are actually punishing the guys who are (now somewhat successfully) pushing against the DRM in the hardware. They hate this shit, and they know what consumers want (mostly...). DRM comes from the media arms, and its dictating product design inside Sony, and that is the battle.
What I am saying is, you need the carrot and the stick. Don't buy Sony-BMG music, they cam eup with the rootkit. DO buy those Sony products that are free of DRM. The message will be clear. I have a Sony Ericsson phone (W600i) and it does not have any DRM for loading and playing music, short of the veil necessary to keep you from beaming pre-canned content into other phones. it actually is the iTunes phone that everyone wanted, and no one shipped, including Motorola/Apple. My iTunes collection, all uninfected MP3 and AAC, loads (both directions) and plays beautifully.
Sony Electronics has typically kept the underperforming divisions from showing up more drastically on the balance sheet (PS2) but they are suffering now as well. Let's hope the hardware guys win over the media guys.
Yes, but can it stop the crying?
Dude, what the fuck? This is a technical issue, one has nothing to do with the other. Get off the box, there's a different thread for that.
This is why I play NetHack rather than World of Warcraft.
Don't forget - you must also eat nothing but beans and horsemeat.*
(* apologies to the clever slashdotter who originally posted that - i forget who you are)