...who is disappointed that the screen doesn't flip all the way around so that the phone could close with the main display exposed? it could have been a cool little phone/PDA convertible....alas...
I'm more shocked that it got through when the article submitter works for the source website. Surely waiting for some qualified thirdparty to confirm the news isn't nonsense would've been wise?
Are you new here? Practically every other article is submitted by a party related to the article source websites. Nothing here is really news, but more just fodder for discussion. Or at least bitching (as the case may be here).
Imagine you're at the nerd table in high school, and people are continually coming up to the table peddling their wares or ideas. Maybe a couple people at the table chime in with something they heard in the news every now and then. In any case, it's all subject for discussion. We can talk about how something is crap, discuss the implications about this or that, or at least see if we can make milk come out someone's nose. That's really all/. is about. If you're coming here expecting a peer-reviewed scientific journal, or actual journalism, I'm afraid you're in the wrong place.
the electricity has a price. the processor has a price. the combined amount being the cost of using the processor for a year... i see that you cannot be convinced, and neither can i, so let's call the whole thing off:)
Is that not what I said? Price is the price of obtaining the item, but does not include the costs incurred with its use. The purchase price is a subset of the total cost of ownership. A CPU may cost significantly more than its price, but it's price stays the same.
the power to run your computer in the long run is likely to account for a significant fraction of the overall price, so you should factor that in.
That's not the price, that's the cost. The price is whatever you pay to make it yours. The cost is whatever you pay to use it (including making it yours). Subtle difference, I know, but I'm a pedant.
Are you talking about the Compaq Portable 386? Those things rocked. Mine still does. Every once in a while I boot it up (with my EGA monitor attached) to play Space Quest 2 in all of its glory. For some reason computers just don't seem as fun anymore...
of course resolution determines how much information you can fit on the screen. the same information is there whether you're running a 19" monitor at 1600x1200 or a 15" monitor at the same resolution. everything is, of course, a lot smaller when all those pixels are crammed into a smaller area, but it's all there. maybe some of us have better vision than you do. i've got my 17" monitor here at work set at 1280x1024, and all my older coworkers are always saying "how can you see anything with it that small!" but it looks totally normal to me. if i set it to 1024x768, everything looks absurdly huge.
"So we had made this 'cocaine' stuff, and we had tried various methods of getting it into our bloodstream, but none of them seemed to be quick and easy. Then Martin gets this brilliant idea..."
but I don't see they have a defense against the "no commerical use without permission" rule
But that's not the rule. The rule is about commercial use that implies endorsement, as in selling "Presidential" Hair Care Products with the seal on them, or putting the seal on an ad for your product to lend your product credibility (ha, not that that would be implied with this administration). The Onion is obviously satire, and it should be obvious to any reader that the seal is not implying any endorsement of The Onion or what is written in it. Satire is protected by the first amendment, and they shouldn't have any difficulty making a case here, if they wish to do so.
yes, and then once we have all these separate tools- one for resize, one for hue/saturation, one for cropping, one for brightness/contrast, one for sharpening, one for softening, one for despeckling, one for mosaic, one for posterizing, etc, etc, etc, we'll think- gee- wouldn't it be nice if there were a common interface for these programs? something that makes it easy to step forward and backward through the changes i've made to my original image? where i can easily, visually select a part of an image once and run these different processes on that selection? and then someone will make that program, and since it'll be a suite of little tools with everything you need for manipulating photos, a one-stop shop, if you will, i wonder what they'll call it...
I think the problem here is that some of the people who make the claim "easy to use" are expecting the people who are using their products to not be total retards, and that they are willing to try to learn.
Photoshop really IS easy to use, but there are some conceptual things people have to wrap their heads around before it becomes that easy. These things (e.g., layer compositing, masks, etc) while seemingly complicated, are really just conceptual shifts. Once you understand them, you're able to do things easily that otherwise would have been nearly, if not totally, impossible. Not making the effort to understand concepts like that is akin to buying the watch and complaining "This whole hours, minutes, seconds thing is too complicated! Why can't it just beep at me when it's time to wake up?"
But seriously, if the guy doesn't know about Picasa, he has seriously failed to do his due diligence as a "reporter" in performin any kind of research, and if he does know about it and can't figure it out, he has to be an idiot. There's no excuse for not understanding such a simple piece of software.
What kind of idiot submits an article containing screenshots without a coral cache link, anyhow?
An idiot who realizes that many people are behind firewalls/at work where port 8090 doesn't work for them, and that it's pretty trivial for those who can use the coral cache to type it in by hand?
Project run for free by people with collectivist view of the word resorts to advertising because otherwise number of people who use system without contributing thereto makes system unsustainable... hmm... yes, shocking indeed...
The main problem Ted Nelson faces might be that he's a very bad communicator - he may very well have truly wonderful ideas, but since nobody manages to understand what the hell he's talking about it's really difficult to support him.
That, and he's too busy insulting other people's ideas and being insulted by other people's criticisms to be taken seriously.
I don't think anyone's arguing that hypertext/www IS the internet, or that it will be around forever. Most people on/. know better than that. I think what most people take issue with is that this guy is going about blabbering about how the new paradigm is upon us but offers no substantive idea of what it will be, much less a working model of it. TBL didn't just spout off about his idea, he actually made a working prototype of it. Until your idea exists in reality, or until you can at least pin it down in a very specific document that outlines it in a way that more skilled programmers can use as a blueprint, you're just spouting hot air. Like this guy.
But this system doesn't manage the stock market, guide smartbombs, or manage blood banks. It's a supposed to manage a prison population's incarceration terms. Given that, flaws don't really get any more major than getting those terms wrong. I suppose they could have been off by MORE time, but imprisoning someone for even a day longer than the courts decided was appropriate for their crime is MAJORLY wrong.
As far as punishment goes, it enables law enforcement officials to link the counterfiter with his product, and thus punish the counterfeiter. What's so hard to understand about that?
Nobody's freedom of speech is being abridged, it's just their anonymity in doing it. Nowhere in the constitution are you explicitly or implicitly guaranteed anonymous speech. Nor is anonymous speech requisite for political discourse. The first amendment (at least theoretically) guarantees that your speech cannot be held against you, but consider that our founding fathers didn't publish the Declaration of Independence anonymously, and for them it was risking their lives to do so.
But get over it. It's not going to get used to track down color-printing dissidents. Really, it's not. And how do you propose a prosecutor make a case against a counterfeiter who uses a color laser printer if there is no way to link the phony money to the tools used to make it?
As an owner of an iPaq h6315 PocketPC phone, I can understand this question as well as answer it. The device is awesome, conceptually, and for a geek with my patience, it's great about 90% of the time, but 10% of the time for me it's a pain in the ass, and for the average user, it just sucks.
Major Flaws-
Every once in a while (like every few months), it performs a hard reset, losing all information, settings, etc. Usually not too big of a problem because it performs an incremental backup on my computer when I plug it into the charging cradle, but still a pain in the ass. Especially when it did it in the middle of my trip to NYC, when I was away from my computer.
Stupid interface decisions, such as-
-Copying the windows interface is insufficient for a handheld device. None of the programs can be easily operated with one's fingers. Even the on-screen "buttons" for the phone are too small. I don't want to have to pull out the stylus just to do basic things. Like, if I'm browsing the web, I should be able to use my fingers to scroll up and down, go forward/back, etc. Fortunately, I'm pretty good at tapping with the corner of my pinky, but I don't think this is acceptable for most people.
-No way to lock the screen without putting the device in standby. I can start music playing in WMP, but I can't put the phone back in my pocket, because the only way to lock the buttons and screen is to put the device in standby, which turns off the sound! One would think that the most basic usability testing would have revealed this flaw.
-The whole "programs don't close, they just disappear" paradigm. I don't know whose stupid idea it was, but fortunately there's SPB Pocket Plus to get around it. I shouldn't HAVE to buy 3rd party software to make my device work properly.
-Inadequate webpage rendering. It's getting better, and NetFront is pretty good, but it's in no way there yet.
The camera is worthless. They basically put the simplest, cheapest sensor in there just to say it has a camera. And it doesn't record video, either.
Insufficient storage is also a problem, as well as the USB being too slow for data transfer. Neither of these are huge problems for what I use the phone for (I don't care about having my ENTIRE music collection with me at all times) but I think the average consumer demands more than the 64MB onboard plus 2GB one can add w/SD cards.
I also wouldn't mind having a more powerful processor that can handle playing through bluetooth stereo headphones. I tried a pair, but you basically can't be doing anything else with the phone, and it's still glitchy.
Don't get me wrong- there are tons of things I love about it. Being able to check my e-mail and surf the web from anywhere is cool. Being able to sync w/MS Money is a godsend, because I'm terrible about keeping a checkbook register. Having one single device to put in my pocket that is all these things, as well as a MP3 player and my phone, is excellent.
Alas, this continual source of joy is also a continual source of frustration. I suppose those of you who are Linux users can sympathize. I can't help thinking Apple, or some other company with an eye for good UI/product design could make something that does everything my device does, but without the headaches. Maybe someday they will... but I'm not holding my breath...
Speaking of the Constitution, let's look at Article I, Section 8, specifically clauses 5-6:
"[The Congress shall have Power] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;"
I'd say that this falls under the purview of clause 6.
You suggest that this will be used to track political speech. Pray tell, what kind of political speech requires the use of a color laser printer?
I think they mean "worries" in the sense that is synonymous with the word "concerns", as in "And the politicians think [that] concerns about electronic voting machine fraud is just a bunch of conspiracy nuts"
I kinda like that idea, so long as there is some standard for intelligence and knowledgability involved. Maybe a Presidential Candidate Qualifying Test that would be a broad survey of history, science, math, logic, etc. Of course, then the politicians would try and rig the test... You can't win, really...
Newsflash- Anonymity, particularly with regard to color printing, is not a right. Making color printers so that they leave a signature, so that when someone uses them to counterfeit money (which they would otherwise do fairly well) it can be proven conclusively that it came from their printer, does not lead down a slippery slope into totalitarianism. You're being paranoid and silly.
I think it would be more effective to redirect it to something with a more negative stimulus. If I got sent to Goatse every time I went to/., I'd think twice before entering it. But then, I'd probably just get good at changing my hosts file back every time I wanted to look at slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
...who is disappointed that the screen doesn't flip all the way around so that the phone could close with the main display exposed? it could have been a cool little phone/PDA convertible. ...alas...
The Yakuza are the Japanese Mafia.
I'm more shocked that it got through when the article submitter works for the source website. Surely waiting for some qualified thirdparty to confirm the news isn't nonsense would've been wise?
/. is about. If you're coming here expecting a peer-reviewed scientific journal, or actual journalism, I'm afraid you're in the wrong place.
Are you new here? Practically every other article is submitted by a party related to the article source websites. Nothing here is really news, but more just fodder for discussion. Or at least bitching (as the case may be here).
Imagine you're at the nerd table in high school, and people are continually coming up to the table peddling their wares or ideas. Maybe a couple people at the table chime in with something they heard in the news every now and then. In any case, it's all subject for discussion. We can talk about how something is crap, discuss the implications about this or that, or at least see if we can make milk come out someone's nose. That's really all
the electricity has a price. the processor has a price. the combined amount being the cost of using the processor for a year... i see that you cannot be convinced, and neither can i, so let's call the whole thing off :)
4 : the cost at which something is obtained
Is that not what I said? Price is the price of obtaining the item, but does not include the costs incurred with its use. The purchase price is a subset of the total cost of ownership. A CPU may cost significantly more than its price, but it's price stays the same.
the power to run your computer in the long run is likely to account for a significant fraction of the overall price, so you should factor that in.
That's not the price, that's the cost. The price is whatever you pay to make it yours. The cost is whatever you pay to use it (including making it yours). Subtle difference, I know, but I'm a pedant.
Are you talking about the Compaq Portable 386? Those things rocked. Mine still does. Every once in a while I boot it up (with my EGA monitor attached) to play Space Quest 2 in all of its glory. For some reason computers just don't seem as fun anymore...
of course resolution determines how much information you can fit on the screen. the same information is there whether you're running a 19" monitor at 1600x1200 or a 15" monitor at the same resolution. everything is, of course, a lot smaller when all those pixels are crammed into a smaller area, but it's all there. maybe some of us have better vision than you do. i've got my 17" monitor here at work set at 1280x1024, and all my older coworkers are always saying "how can you see anything with it that small!" but it looks totally normal to me. if i set it to 1024x768, everything looks absurdly huge.
"So we had made this 'cocaine' stuff, and we had tried various methods of getting it into our bloodstream, but none of them seemed to be quick and easy. Then Martin gets this brilliant idea..."
but I don't see they have a defense against the "no commerical use without permission" rule
But that's not the rule. The rule is about commercial use that implies endorsement, as in selling "Presidential" Hair Care Products with the seal on them, or putting the seal on an ad for your product to lend your product credibility (ha, not that that would be implied with this administration). The Onion is obviously satire, and it should be obvious to any reader that the seal is not implying any endorsement of The Onion or what is written in it. Satire is protected by the first amendment, and they shouldn't have any difficulty making a case here, if they wish to do so.
yes, and then once we have all these separate tools- one for resize, one for hue/saturation, one for cropping, one for brightness/contrast, one for sharpening, one for softening, one for despeckling, one for mosaic, one for posterizing, etc, etc, etc, we'll think- gee- wouldn't it be nice if there were a common interface for these programs? something that makes it easy to step forward and backward through the changes i've made to my original image? where i can easily, visually select a part of an image once and run these different processes on that selection? and then someone will make that program, and since it'll be a suite of little tools with everything you need for manipulating photos, a one-stop shop, if you will, i wonder what they'll call it...
I think the problem here is that some of the people who make the claim "easy to use" are expecting the people who are using their products to not be total retards, and that they are willing to try to learn.
Photoshop really IS easy to use, but there are some conceptual things people have to wrap their heads around before it becomes that easy. These things (e.g., layer compositing, masks, etc) while seemingly complicated, are really just conceptual shifts. Once you understand them, you're able to do things easily that otherwise would have been nearly, if not totally, impossible. Not making the effort to understand concepts like that is akin to buying the watch and complaining "This whole hours, minutes, seconds thing is too complicated! Why can't it just beep at me when it's time to wake up?"
But seriously, if the guy doesn't know about Picasa, he has seriously failed to do his due diligence as a "reporter" in performin any kind of research, and if he does know about it and can't figure it out, he has to be an idiot. There's no excuse for not understanding such a simple piece of software.
What kind of idiot submits an article containing screenshots without a coral cache link, anyhow?
An idiot who realizes that many people are behind firewalls/at work where port 8090 doesn't work for them, and that it's pretty trivial for those who can use the coral cache to type it in by hand?
Project run for free by people with collectivist view of the word resorts to advertising because otherwise number of people who use system without contributing thereto makes system unsustainable... hmm... yes, shocking indeed...
The main problem Ted Nelson faces might be that he's a very bad communicator - he may very well have truly wonderful ideas, but since nobody manages to understand what the hell he's talking about it's really difficult to support him.
That, and he's too busy insulting other people's ideas and being insulted by other people's criticisms to be taken seriously.
I don't think anyone's arguing that hypertext/www IS the internet, or that it will be around forever. Most people on /. know better than that. I think what most people take issue with is that this guy is going about blabbering about how the new paradigm is upon us but offers no substantive idea of what it will be, much less a working model of it. TBL didn't just spout off about his idea, he actually made a working prototype of it. Until your idea exists in reality, or until you can at least pin it down in a very specific document that outlines it in a way that more skilled programmers can use as a blueprint, you're just spouting hot air. Like this guy.
This is minor, no bones about it.
But this system doesn't manage the stock market, guide smartbombs, or manage blood banks. It's a supposed to manage a prison population's incarceration terms. Given that, flaws don't really get any more major than getting those terms wrong. I suppose they could have been off by MORE time, but imprisoning someone for even a day longer than the courts decided was appropriate for their crime is MAJORLY wrong.
As far as punishment goes, it enables law enforcement officials to link the counterfiter with his product, and thus punish the counterfeiter. What's so hard to understand about that? Nobody's freedom of speech is being abridged, it's just their anonymity in doing it. Nowhere in the constitution are you explicitly or implicitly guaranteed anonymous speech. Nor is anonymous speech requisite for political discourse. The first amendment (at least theoretically) guarantees that your speech cannot be held against you, but consider that our founding fathers didn't publish the Declaration of Independence anonymously, and for them it was risking their lives to do so. But get over it. It's not going to get used to track down color-printing dissidents. Really, it's not. And how do you propose a prosecutor make a case against a counterfeiter who uses a color laser printer if there is no way to link the phony money to the tools used to make it?
As an owner of an iPaq h6315 PocketPC phone, I can understand this question as well as answer it. The device is awesome, conceptually, and for a geek with my patience, it's great about 90% of the time, but 10% of the time for me it's a pain in the ass, and for the average user, it just sucks.
Major Flaws-
Every once in a while (like every few months), it performs a hard reset, losing all information, settings, etc. Usually not too big of a problem because it performs an incremental backup on my computer when I plug it into the charging cradle, but still a pain in the ass. Especially when it did it in the middle of my trip to NYC, when I was away from my computer.
Stupid interface decisions, such as-
-Copying the windows interface is insufficient for a handheld device. None of the programs can be easily operated with one's fingers. Even the on-screen "buttons" for the phone are too small. I don't want to have to pull out the stylus just to do basic things. Like, if I'm browsing the web, I should be able to use my fingers to scroll up and down, go forward/back, etc. Fortunately, I'm pretty good at tapping with the corner of my pinky, but I don't think this is acceptable for most people.
-No way to lock the screen without putting the device in standby. I can start music playing in WMP, but I can't put the phone back in my pocket, because the only way to lock the buttons and screen is to put the device in standby, which turns off the sound! One would think that the most basic usability testing would have revealed this flaw.
-The whole "programs don't close, they just disappear" paradigm. I don't know whose stupid idea it was, but fortunately there's SPB Pocket Plus to get around it. I shouldn't HAVE to buy 3rd party software to make my device work properly.
-Inadequate webpage rendering. It's getting better, and NetFront is pretty good, but it's in no way there yet.
The camera is worthless. They basically put the simplest, cheapest sensor in there just to say it has a camera. And it doesn't record video, either.
Insufficient storage is also a problem, as well as the USB being too slow for data transfer. Neither of these are huge problems for what I use the phone for (I don't care about having my ENTIRE music collection with me at all times) but I think the average consumer demands more than the 64MB onboard plus 2GB one can add w/SD cards.
I also wouldn't mind having a more powerful processor that can handle playing through bluetooth stereo headphones. I tried a pair, but you basically can't be doing anything else with the phone, and it's still glitchy.
Don't get me wrong- there are tons of things I love about it. Being able to check my e-mail and surf the web from anywhere is cool. Being able to sync w/MS Money is a godsend, because I'm terrible about keeping a checkbook register. Having one single device to put in my pocket that is all these things, as well as a MP3 player and my phone, is excellent.
Alas, this continual source of joy is also a continual source of frustration. I suppose those of you who are Linux users can sympathize. I can't help thinking Apple, or some other company with an eye for good UI/product design could make something that does everything my device does, but without the headaches. Maybe someday they will... but I'm not holding my breath...
Hey, google could be working on that, too...
Speaking of the Constitution, let's look at Article I, Section 8, specifically clauses 5-6:
"[The Congress shall have Power] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;"
I'd say that this falls under the purview of clause 6.
You suggest that this will be used to track political speech. Pray tell, what kind of political speech requires the use of a color laser printer?
I think they mean "worries" in the sense that is synonymous with the word "concerns", as in "And the politicians think [that] concerns about electronic voting machine fraud is just a bunch of conspiracy nuts"
I kinda like that idea, so long as there is some standard for intelligence and knowledgability involved. Maybe a Presidential Candidate Qualifying Test that would be a broad survey of history, science, math, logic, etc. Of course, then the politicians would try and rig the test... You can't win, really...
Newsflash- Anonymity, particularly with regard to color printing, is not a right. Making color printers so that they leave a signature, so that when someone uses them to counterfeit money (which they would otherwise do fairly well) it can be proven conclusively that it came from their printer, does not lead down a slippery slope into totalitarianism. You're being paranoid and silly.
I think it would be more effective to redirect it to something with a more negative stimulus. If I got sent to Goatse every time I went to /., I'd think twice before entering it. But then, I'd probably just get good at changing my hosts file back every time I wanted to look at slashdot.