and it looks a million times better with less buttons. While I personally want to buy it, I won't until the screen is the size of textbooks or a standard 8x11 page sheet. I hate squinting -- I might as well read off a PDA if they keep insisting on making screens so small. What is so frustrating is that we could have our libraries - every newspaper we read, every book we ever bought, every textbook in such devices already with current technology.
But how long will it be in coming? Will textbook manufacturers stall until the wikibooks project provides real competition on any level?
Will the future releases of J.K. Rowling come in pdf or will they wait until, like music, they can't ignore the market due to downloads they don't get any compensation for?
What is interesting is that Simmons puts the greatest argument against records in that article himself:
There is nothing in me that wants to go in there and do new music. How are you going to deliver it? How are you going to get paid for it if people can just get it for free? I will be putting out a Gene Simmons box set called "Monster" -- a collection of 150 unreleased songs. KISS will have another box set of unreleased music in the next year.
2 boxed sets of unreleased music - at best second rate crap that was not good enough to put out the first time - coming. All to just make money as he admitted in the first sentence was his main motivation since making music for it's own sake or attracting new fans isn't enough by itself.
I don't know what motivates musicians, but knowing enough young visual artists, when they start out, most of them are ambitious, just want to make an impact on the world, and make their living doing what they love which doesn't necessarily mean making a fortune. Making an impact seems to be especially important to them -- although I don't know if that's just intended as a road to money.
I don't know much about Kiss, but I imagine he's getting to that age where he wants to tour less (and thus make less merchandise sales) and thus would like to live off royalties.
That a Linux machine is sold out at Walmart suggests that plain folks -- not like you and me -- know and respect Linux.
Once, I carried the same hopes you did. After doing an endless amount of "helpdesk" support for people, I will say:
a)Plain folks hardly understand the difference between Windows and OS X, let alone Linux b)If Plain folks bought this, it was purely for the price tag. The other customers are geeks or had Linux experience before and preferred it (no malware for one). c)A few of the buyers bought it to load XP, pirated, on it. It's a cheap machine.
This isn't to say that there will be no converts to Linux -- but I don't think average people knows what it is.
"There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties."
Definitely. For one, I can choose not to interact with certain private parties if they piss me off. But I probably can't choose to ignore the government and have to interact with it on some level.
Also, private parties can't demand I hand over certain private information -- sure, they might decide not to do business with me, but the government seems to think it's priviledged to anything and everything since the Patriot Act. Good luck turning them down.
Now it's no longer based on evidence that a crime was done -- we are welcomed to the pre-emptive society. Pre-emptive wars. Pre-emptive invasion of my privacy (without warrant) based on crimes that might happen. I'm just waiting to be pre-emptively thrown in jail.
I find it interesting that this government official is trying to sell us on the government safeguarding our information. HAH! What a joke.
It could be that there is exponentially more to remember. Back a generation ago, you had to know your name, address, a single phone number, social security number, and perhaps a few odds and ends like bank account number and/or atm number -- and you're good to go.
A generation before that list gets reduced further.
Today, how many phone numbers, email addresses, irc addresses, computer and site logins and their accompanying passwords does one have to remember? For personal, work and/or school?
Personally I welcome modern technology alleviating the burden it placed on us in the first place. People still should learn to work without a calculator -- but I don't think it's quite a disaster to forget your own phone number (kids used to have to remember only their single home number, now they'd have to remember their own number and a seperate number for each family member).
As to the topic on hand, I wouldn't be surprised if adult brains were as flexible as children -- compare to adults who have a debilitating accident and have to learn again. I think children learn faster because they have a lot less on their mind. Adults multi-task and many studies have shown that is counterproductive to efficiency. Kids have the luxury of time and lack of responsibility adults don't. Remove that, you remove a lot of stress, and the brain can focus on other things -- consciously or unconsciously.
The iPhone is the king of convergence devices this year (in that it actually works well) but it still could never come close to replacing a PC. I don't think anything ever will - beyond a laptop with a holographic screen and voice input capability - which still is a PC.
And all these devices like the iPhone do are ultimately do are computerize previously analog-only devices and merge them together. It wasn't too far long ago that the phone was analog only. Same with the camera. Same with a music player (portable CD player previously). The farthest along that it has gone to encroaching on traditional PC turf is browsing or some PDA functions.
It may change in the future -- but I don't see AI or voice recognition input getting there anytime soon. A necessity for ultimately replacing the laptop or desktop and getting serious work done.
I have a solution. Transparent packaging. It's doable, heck, it's been done a lot of times. If you need bullet points and lists to sell the item, just make paper flap that swings out to see the product.
They make money, good for them. As long as they give what the customer wants, they'll get sales (I don't have one. At most, I'll get an iPod Touch one day. Mostly because of the limitations of AT&T service rather than the cost).
I just find it amusing that some people get upset that a hardware manufacturer makes money or a lot of it. Maybe they are so accustomed to the subsidized Xbox model where MS supposedly loses money on each sale only to try to salvage it later (MS couldn't afford it if Xbox was their business like Windows/Office is anyway). It is no way to say that Apple has to be doing things that way and there is a lot of competition out there for these devices if you don't like their way of business.
I still think Apple is being rather silly about the cash issue. Many people I know don't have credit cards because that's how they control their spending. This isn't to say that they don't have money though.... their probably more affluent than average and can afford these gadgets.
Speed Limits are set low so the police can have a field day when they feel like it. And to have any reason to pull you over. If you aren't a criminal, the state will just pass enough laws until you become one, meaning they can arrest you for various reasons.
I agree. In fact, I think the state/government should stay out of it entirely because it's a party issue and it's none of their business what party you profess allegiance to - I think it's dangerous knowledge for the state to have in the first place and it also promotes the corrupt 2 party system.
How the heck is Ron Paul going to win if you and like-minded supporters aren't going to vote for him in the primaries? I assume you are in South Carolina, the only state Colbert is running in.
Also, are you really saying that you will vote for Colbert in the primaries over Paul? I have no problem with that... but it seems like a huge assumption you are talking about voting for Colbert in the general elections (unless you write his name in) and not just primaries.
Government either subsidizes something or bans it. And when you subsidize it, you get more of it - and here productivity is based on completely the wrong thing.
I wonder what his views on the patent problem is. Or a libertarian's views in general - Private "Property" vs. Free Market.
What it doesn't say is that humans are also great at altering their own memories -- false memories -- I have experienced this myself where, say I remember someone like a Highschool friend doing something at my 18th birthday party and then when I view the tape and he wasn't even there!
I don't know about others, but I certainly don't put a lot of stock in human memory past a certain point. It's like an analog signal and everytime we re-remember something, we write a new record down that may introduce random errors (perhaps associations) that shouldn't be there.
one highly rated on amazon.com and simply start doing problems. This is what I did before entering college again. I never failed math, but I did the minimum in highschool and that was bad later on.
There are no two ways around it. You can learn or pretend you learned the material, but if you never have to apply it (doing problems) you'll never know. Community College courses like some suggested I offer hesitantly - I never liked classes as I have to keep to their schedule - in going there, etcetera. I learn faster than their pace, but some don't. Also a different perspective (that of the teacher and fellow students) may help you and a teacher may guide you to the correct higher maths you need for your job/career.
I would suggest doing the odd or even half of the problems in your notebook and keep trudging on. If you think you know a section, there is no need to be anal about it and write down the problems, but do them mentally and check if you have the correct answers. At least that is how I did it. I actually like math now that I'm not tethered to a boring class and for it's own sake.
Also, fundamentals are most important. If you don't know your pre-calc, you aren't going to do well with calculus. Get your calc book after you went through your pre-calc. Don't trust people who offer easy solutions - study after study has shown you get in what you get out. Even if you learn fast (or think you learn fast), you can forget fast without ever applying what you learned.
If you do consider a community college, check out the reputation of the professors you are selecting at ratemyprofessors.com, there is no need to stumble upon a nightmare teacher. Adult students have enough things to worry about without adding another obstacle to their path.
Airplanes are to the point where flying, landing, and taking off can be achieved by the computer automatically (if the parameters of the take-off and landing strips are known).
I could see this idea take off (pun intended), but it would require a massive computerized infrastructure signaling take-offs and landings. Your local suburb could have a central strip and every aspect would have to be automated to make it efficient.
The only other thing that I could see as semi-viable would be small, zeppelins that act as buses with a rigid structure out of nanotubes or carbon fiber that would be able to store themselves (compress the gas in a tank and collapse the structure into something small). That has issues with landing more than anything.
I also expect, as cool as any of these ideas are, and as badly needed to overcome traffic - we won't see anything come of it. Anti-gravity will have to be discovered first to make the flying car or flying bus of imagination feasible as all of our current methods of flight have too many downfalls when applied to such an idea.
Yes, it can be abused in some cases, but I ame seeing the abuse of Corporations against the people via Congress and the courts as overwhelming at the moment and jury nullification would send some clear signals that some oppressive laws won't be tolerated. Unfortunately, it requires an intelligent jury who doesn't buy into the old media and government's propaganda.
Do you view Digg as competition?
on
Ask Rob Malda
·
· Score: 1
And how will/. fend them off?
As a longtime/. user, I really like the conversations here much better and find them to be of greater value than at digg. But Digg is more dynamic from a user standpoint, has more stories to choose from (though many are hyped, frivolous), and the conversations are getting slightly better with the tweaks they are applying to the site. I guess I'm really asking if/. is going to become more user oriented in the future or will find another path... or just stay the current course?
Crap, if there were such a thing as a 30 year battery, eletric cars would be no problem along with a lot of other applications that are more important than a notebook, though I would worry about the amount of energy in my lap.
Also, if it had a 30 year charge already built in, I would have to wonder what they would have sold it for?!
Slashdot Mirror
I mean a six inch screen at $399? What's so revolutionary? I can get a sony ereader with eink right now for $299:
http://www.amazon.com/E-reader-Portable-Silver-E-book-Approx/dp/B000WPXQ2M
and it looks a million times better with less buttons. While I personally want to buy it, I won't until the screen is the size of textbooks or a standard 8x11 page sheet. I hate squinting -- I might as well read off a PDA if they keep insisting on making screens so small. What is so frustrating is that we could have our libraries - every newspaper we read, every book we ever bought, every textbook in such devices already with current technology.
But how long will it be in coming? Will textbook manufacturers stall until the wikibooks project provides real competition on any level?
Will the future releases of J.K. Rowling come in pdf or will they wait until, like music, they can't ignore the market due to downloads they don't get any compensation for?
that the Iraq and Afghanistan War aren't even part of that massive DoD budget!
I don't know what motivates musicians, but knowing enough young visual artists, when they start out, most of them are ambitious, just want to make an impact on the world, and make their living doing what they love which doesn't necessarily mean making a fortune. Making an impact seems to be especially important to them -- although I don't know if that's just intended as a road to money.
the greedier they get.
I don't know much about Kiss, but I imagine he's getting to that age where he wants to tour less (and thus make less merchandise sales) and thus would like to live off royalties.
That's simple -- to transport and play on a friend's TV or computer. Next question?
a)Plain folks hardly understand the difference between Windows and OS X, let alone Linux
b)If Plain folks bought this, it was purely for the price tag. The other customers are geeks or had Linux experience before and preferred it (no malware for one).
c)A few of the buyers bought it to load XP, pirated, on it. It's a cheap machine.
This isn't to say that there will be no converts to Linux -- but I don't think average people knows what it is.
"There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties."
Definitely. For one, I can choose not to interact with certain private parties if they piss me off. But I probably can't choose to ignore the government and have to interact with it on some level.
Also, private parties can't demand I hand over certain private information -- sure, they might decide not to do business with me, but the government seems to think it's priviledged to anything and everything since the Patriot Act. Good luck turning them down.
Now it's no longer based on evidence that a crime was done -- we are welcomed to the pre-emptive society. Pre-emptive wars. Pre-emptive invasion of my privacy (without warrant) based on crimes that might happen. I'm just waiting to be pre-emptively thrown in jail.
I find it interesting that this government official is trying to sell us on the government safeguarding our information. HAH! What a joke.
It could be that there is exponentially more to remember. Back a generation ago, you had to know your name, address, a single phone number, social security number, and perhaps a few odds and ends like bank account number and/or atm number -- and you're good to go.
A generation before that list gets reduced further.
Today, how many phone numbers, email addresses, irc addresses, computer and site logins and their accompanying passwords does one have to remember? For personal, work and/or school?
Personally I welcome modern technology alleviating the burden it placed on us in the first place. People still should learn to work without a calculator -- but I don't think it's quite a disaster to forget your own phone number (kids used to have to remember only their single home number, now they'd have to remember their own number and a seperate number for each family member).
As to the topic on hand, I wouldn't be surprised if adult brains were as flexible as children -- compare to adults who have a debilitating accident and have to learn again. I think children learn faster because they have a lot less on their mind. Adults multi-task and many studies have shown that is counterproductive to efficiency. Kids have the luxury of time and lack of responsibility adults don't. Remove that, you remove a lot of stress, and the brain can focus on other things -- consciously or unconsciously.
as the Mac in the past.
The iPhone is the king of convergence devices this year (in that it actually works well) but it still could never come close to replacing a PC. I don't think anything ever will - beyond a laptop with a holographic screen and voice input capability - which still is a PC.
And all these devices like the iPhone do are ultimately do are computerize previously analog-only devices and merge them together. It wasn't too far long ago that the phone was analog only. Same with the camera. Same with a music player (portable CD player previously). The farthest along that it has gone to encroaching on traditional PC turf is browsing or some PDA functions.
It may change in the future -- but I don't see AI or voice recognition input getting there anytime soon. A necessity for ultimately replacing the laptop or desktop and getting serious work done.
I have a solution. Transparent packaging. It's doable, heck, it's been done a lot of times. If you need bullet points and lists to sell the item, just make paper flap that swings out to see the product.
Interesting... more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy)
They make money, good for them. As long as they give what the customer wants, they'll get sales (I don't have one. At most, I'll get an iPod Touch one day. Mostly because of the limitations of AT&T service rather than the cost).
I just find it amusing that some people get upset that a hardware manufacturer makes money or a lot of it. Maybe they are so accustomed to the subsidized Xbox model where MS supposedly loses money on each sale only to try to salvage it later (MS couldn't afford it if Xbox was their business like Windows/Office is anyway). It is no way to say that Apple has to be doing things that way and there is a lot of competition out there for these devices if you don't like their way of business.
I still think Apple is being rather silly about the cash issue. Many people I know don't have credit cards because that's how they control their spending. This isn't to say that they don't have money though.... their probably more affluent than average and can afford these gadgets.
Speed Limits are set low so the police can have a field day when they feel like it. And to have any reason to pull you over. If you aren't a criminal, the state will just pass enough laws until you become one, meaning they can arrest you for various reasons.
I haven't read 1984, but IIRC, that was one of the premises for a police state. No one goes 55 anyway, it would only fuck up the natural flow of traffic as this video shows:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1121745508403211770&q=speed+limit+georgia+students&total=10&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2
I agree. In fact, I think the state/government should stay out of it entirely because it's a party issue and it's none of their business what party you profess allegiance to - I think it's dangerous knowledge for the state to have in the first place and it also promotes the corrupt 2 party system.
How the heck is Ron Paul going to win if you and like-minded supporters aren't going to vote for him in the primaries? I assume you are in South Carolina, the only state Colbert is running in.
Also, are you really saying that you will vote for Colbert in the primaries over Paul? I have no problem with that... but it seems like a huge assumption you are talking about voting for Colbert in the general elections (unless you write his name in) and not just primaries.
Am I the only one confused?
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/
Government either subsidizes something or bans it. And when you subsidize it, you get more of it - and here productivity is based on completely the wrong thing.
I wonder what his views on the patent problem is. Or a libertarian's views in general - Private "Property" vs. Free Market.
What it doesn't say is that humans are also great at altering their own memories -- false memories -- I have experienced this myself where, say I remember someone like a Highschool friend doing something at my 18th birthday party and then when I view the tape and he wasn't even there!
I don't know about others, but I certainly don't put a lot of stock in human memory past a certain point. It's like an analog signal and everytime we re-remember something, we write a new record down that may introduce random errors (perhaps associations) that shouldn't be there.
one highly rated on amazon.com and simply start doing problems. This is what I did before entering college again. I never failed math, but I did the minimum in highschool and that was bad later on.
There are no two ways around it. You can learn or pretend you learned the material, but if you never have to apply it (doing problems) you'll never know. Community College courses like some suggested I offer hesitantly - I never liked classes as I have to keep to their schedule - in going there, etcetera. I learn faster than their pace, but some don't. Also a different perspective (that of the teacher and fellow students) may help you and a teacher may guide you to the correct higher maths you need for your job/career.
I would suggest doing the odd or even half of the problems in your notebook and keep trudging on. If you think you know a section, there is no need to be anal about it and write down the problems, but do them mentally and check if you have the correct answers. At least that is how I did it. I actually like math now that I'm not tethered to a boring class and for it's own sake.
Also, fundamentals are most important. If you don't know your pre-calc, you aren't going to do well with calculus. Get your calc book after you went through your pre-calc. Don't trust people who offer easy solutions - study after study has shown you get in what you get out. Even if you learn fast (or think you learn fast), you can forget fast without ever applying what you learned.
If you do consider a community college, check out the reputation of the professors you are selecting at ratemyprofessors.com, there is no need to stumble upon a nightmare teacher. Adult students have enough things to worry about without adding another obstacle to their path.
would feel a bit differently if they are one of those who will get victimized (ID theft for one) as a consequence of this slip up. It may yet happen.
Airplanes are to the point where flying, landing, and taking off can be achieved by the computer automatically (if the parameters of the take-off and landing strips are known).
I could see this idea take off (pun intended), but it would require a massive computerized infrastructure signaling take-offs and landings. Your local suburb could have a central strip and every aspect would have to be automated to make it efficient.
The only other thing that I could see as semi-viable would be small, zeppelins that act as buses with a rigid structure out of nanotubes or carbon fiber that would be able to store themselves (compress the gas in a tank and collapse the structure into something small). That has issues with landing more than anything.
I also expect, as cool as any of these ideas are, and as badly needed to overcome traffic - we won't see anything come of it. Anti-gravity will have to be discovered first to make the flying car or flying bus of imagination feasible as all of our current methods of flight have too many downfalls when applied to such an idea.
I heard Goatse can achieve it. Quite easily in fact.
I disagree with you on Jury Nullification.
Here is Presidential Candidate Ron Paul on Jury Nullification:
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA4GKG__B-s
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRdse8zBzyI
Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbw8rF_hA9I
Yes, it can be abused in some cases, but I ame seeing the abuse of Corporations against the people via Congress and the courts as overwhelming at the moment and jury nullification would send some clear signals that some oppressive laws won't be tolerated. Unfortunately, it requires an intelligent jury who doesn't buy into the old media and government's propaganda.
And how will /. fend them off?
/. user, I really like the conversations here much better and find them to be of greater value than at digg. But Digg is more dynamic from a user standpoint, has more stories to choose from (though many are hyped, frivolous), and the conversations are getting slightly better with the tweaks they are applying to the site. I guess I'm really asking if /. is going to become more user oriented in the future or will find another path... or just stay the current course?
As a longtime
Crap, if there were such a thing as a 30 year battery, eletric cars would be no problem along with a lot of other applications that are more important than a notebook, though I would worry about the amount of energy in my lap.
Also, if it had a 30 year charge already built in, I would have to wonder what they would have sold it for?!
I always knew Bill Gates posted here!