Sure, of course; we all know the history. Mouse and GUI ideas were bought by Apple from Xerox PARC in the founding days. The key word here is "bought," and not "copied." (That is, a license fee was paid.)
MS has always, apparently as a policy, simply copied the most successful company in a particular market-space. Or, alternatively, they buy the out for the IP and fire everyone. Or, as a third alternative, they "suck the oxygen out of the room" in an effort to crush and bankrupt companies who innovate, so that they can later buy their IP for pennies-on-the-dollar.
This is all ancient history that everyone knows. So, perhaps Apple collects ideas for interface improvements for computing devices from multiple sources. But, they have never been publicly shamed for having "stolen" a particular idea. They buy it, usually with the intention of employing the innovators. Trust me, I know of several innovators who sold (or "almost" sold) their company to Apple, because Apple had the capability to recognize a good thing when they saw it. Very old and oft-repeated story, too.
Yep. This is why I recently deleted the FB App from my mobile.
Recently went through my "Public Profile" or whatever they call it, and they had a map of all of the states, countries, and cities I had recently been to. And I DO NOT use their "check in" feature when arriving at locations. In fact, I hadn't used the App in months.
MpVpRb:If I could buy a new machine, clone my hard drive and go, I would upgrade about three times as often.
I've done that cloning trick multiple times with Macs, when moving from one lab to another, or upgrading a laptop. It is a beautiful experience.
Or, if your new laptop has a newer OS, the Mac's Migration Assistant still makes moving over completely painless. I've done this a couple of times, too. Usually no applications barf or ask for activation, etc. And again, everything is where you left is. A beautiful experience.
And, (now I'm sounding all fanboi), I recently smashed my iPhone. Bought a replacement, wiped the old one right there in the Store. Got home, plugged in the new phone, and iTunes figured out that I had a new iPhone. It copied the backup right over, along with apps, settings, old messages, etc. Everything right where I left it. So painless.
Possibly off-topic, but a physician of mine bragged that all of his many patients' data was very handily available to him at all times –– on a 32GB USB stick that he wore around his neck on a lanyard.
My first thought was, "Dude, what if you lost it?"
That is: HIPAA violations all over the place if he did.
Wow, didn't mean to go off on a tangent in my previous post...
You learned two fantastic skills. Soldering ability in a graduate student is highly desired.
The other skill, printmaking, is a complicated art that requires not only patience, but also the development of a good eye, and also the 'feeling' of what exposure is going to make print come out great. Those are physical skills that never go away, but they also inform your intuition, so that when you shift to Photoshop, you have all of the 'ocular' skills entrenched in your mind.
Good luck! My best was an 18X11 print made using an ancient enlarger and am 8X11-inch tray. That ws some work, but got me a small prize at the time.
NOTE: Most elargers use spherical lenses, which therefore distort the image outside of the central regoin. You could seek out a super-expensive (Canon) enlarger, but will be better off just getting a good scan of you large, flat negative, and going digital fro therel
anagama: That summer, I dissolved the skin on my fingertips to painful thinness from touching the stop bath...
That stuff is typically 'glacial' acetic acid. Think super-concentrated vinegar; that is all it is. Just stops the development process (of silver gel film) very quickly. Then your 'fixation' bath inactivates all of the non-reacted photoreceptors/electron photoreceptors, thus rendering the negative an archival record of the 'imaged' event.
Just
PRO TIP: (from my just-retiring dermatologist) Foot callouses? NO PROBLEM! Simply (1) wrap them in paper towels, (2) soak the paper towels in vinegar, (3) go to be until the discomfort awakens you around 4:00 am, and finally (4) Peel away the former callouses like cottage cheese from the affected area (usually your heels, balls of feet, and big toe). It all just comes off with your fingers, and leaves baby-smooth skin intact underneath! I've tried it. It works like magic, and it's nearly free!
If you want somethings shorter-acting––buy some 60% glycolic acid on the web. FAR stronger than vinegar, so test spots for 5 minutes, etc.. Buyer beware! This is what actual dermatologists use in facial peels, it is not something to mess around with outside of a highly controlled environment (good timer, quick application, immediate rinse-off at end of timed test. If you go this route for your feet, then do a series of test runs to see how fast it dissolves your callouses. And if you decide to try the stuff on your elbows, face, etc, well––I am not responsible, because I have only described its (wonderful) properties of rejuvenating your feet.
anagama:... I recall there were three tracks when I went: vocational (shop, electricity, etc.,easy math, easy English, basic science, etc.), business (typing and whatever else you might study if your goal was to be a receptionist -- easy classes, essentially shop for girls (we were more sexist then)), or college track (various math classes, literature, foreign language, psychology, etc.).
And then some of us went multi-track. I was in all the advanced math/science courses (e.g. Calc. for college credit), but also took several shop classes. I am a much better scientist for having done that. Even though it meant I had to drop choir.:-(
You see, the problem with noise-cancelling headphones is that they cancel repetetive noises. That results in a situation in which human conversation is easier to hear. For an ADHD, ithat's backwards. Right? You need a mask.
In reality, what you want to do is to raise the background level of ambient noise across the entire frequency spectrum, to obscure incidental noises (talking, music, etc.). Play my MP3. Whether you use headphones or speakers, your brain will get used to the monotonous (patternless) broad-band "noise," and will quickly adapt to a base level of "even" noise, so that it will ignore many transients (talking, music, etc.).
I call it gray-brown noise because, well, actually, just see Wikipedia. Anyways, gray noise is equalized to have the same perceived-energy-intensity across all of the octaves of the human range of hearing. So, unlike white noise, which is harsh and high-pitched, this MP3 is gray––it is even. Second, I used a Brownian noise-generator to generate the original 5-miunute sound file. (See Wikipedia, but basically Brownian=random walk vs random distribution of frequency energies––>more natural.) It is gray for me because I have adjusted the equalization to match the response of my over-earbuds (from Brookstone) and my iPod. To attain gray, you may have to play with your equalizer. (But hey, even playing this MP3 " straight" totally kills TONS of distracting ambient noise, as you will easily hear. So, don't sweat the perfection of the "gray" part).
You will have to adjust the equalization to your own computer speakers, or to your chosen type of earphones, to achieve the optimal gray. But, after that, you will be in heaven.
Once adjustments are done, you're set; your brain will quickly get bored of the pattern-less "noise," letting you ignore any spurious auditory input, and just get to work. A bonus is that it covers up lots of ambient and transient noises. That is, it raises the signal floor,the floor above which your brain says, "Hey, what's that noise all about?!?
People can blather, play music, and so on, but if you have your "WALL OF GRAY-BROWN NOISE PRESSURE" up in defense, then you are golden. The BONUS is that NO ONE really hears it. It's background to them; sounds like an airplane engine from inside the cabine).:) Add to that the straight blockage that a pair of earlpugs (from an Audioogist) will provide you, and you will be completely oblivious to all that is around you.
Sincerely,
Sir Holo
sirholo@mac.com
Any thanks from you or other ADHDs (etc.) will make me feel good, knowing that I have helped someone. Feel free to re-post the (unedited) MP3 anywhere (with credit included in meta-data). (
I saw BodyWorlds in 1999. I learned more human anatomy during that two hours than I had in all of my life to that time.
The art pieces are a bit freaky, but they also have several exploded-view (think engineering drawings) versions of human bodies, with the organs all clearly in their original shape, showing clearly how everything fit together.
They also prepare and sell individual organs/parts that are plastinated to medical schools/colleges. These last far longer and are more tactile than formaldehyde-preserved jars of guts. it saves money.
Play video games, drink beer, and occasionally masturbate. I think that pretty much covers it, and it also covers things that you probably won't have time to do during grad school.
Just buy her a Mac. All of those tech-support type of questions will just go away,
Expecially if she buys a new Mac with the "3-years of on-hands support" from the Mac store. They will take care of the minor hiccups. And, she'll be in a computational environment that does not change dramatically from year-to-year (as MS7-8 did).
Anyone over 50 just wants stability of interaction in their computer, above all else. Mac delivers this.
I'm not even remotely clear on what you are asking for.
Is this some device that you find gives you underwhelming performance, yet you want to configure it to be a mounted, in-home, ultra-secure but child-monitoring, tiny-screened media player?
If that's the case, then you should not waste your valuable time. Just buy a used laptop off of ebay and set it up as a media center. Then you're done!
Remember, humans are still meat-bags. We still need to mark-up and underline and scribble notes –– to sort our thoughts. When reviewing, I still print and scribble to organize my analysis. My final review is indeed typed into a browser, but the process is still not reasonably do-able without the intermediary stage of physicality.
Nothing is faster than a pen on paper, nor is it likely to be any time soon.
Give me a tablet that I can spread out over my desk, enabling me to compare 8 pages at a time, to stick my fingers and post-its in for quick back-and-forth referencing, and I will buy it. Until then, paper will remain king for complex writing, reviewing, and editing.
In my very first job, we pre-melted the deep-fry oil in the back, and carried it into the kitchen in a pot held by tongs and wet towels. I went off to college, but returned for breaks. Once, upon return, I found a horrifically scarred African-immigrant cook, who had dropped the pot, resulting in a splash-from-hell to the face and hands.
I probably deserve to have my own scars from throwing ice cubes into smoking-hot pots of oil, but had the sense to stand back, so no scars from that (knives are another matter).
SSD's follow the familiar engineering "bathtub curve" for failures, just like anything else. But...
In the case of SSDs, the failure of individual memory cells will follow this curve. Therefore, you will probably not notice a few dead cells at first, because SSD's are built with a few "extras." But after a number of writes, 100,000 or so, cell failure rates will rise quickly. That is why the SMART or other drive-lifetime native ware will exclude the failed or over-used cells from use.
Result is that an SSD drive is not likely to "fail" in the sense that a platter HD crashes. Instead, it will just slowly lose usable capacity. Once it's enough to notice, it is time to replace.
But that's really only if it's in a server. If it's in your laptop, you will have upgraded to a new laptop long before noticing the SSD capacity degradation.
FTA: ...Microsoft is starting out as the underdog."
That's a strange way to put it.
More accurate would be "...Microsoft has been unsuccessful in its more than 15 years of attempts at the mobile platform, despite its dominance in other sectors during that time."
YES! It is cheap and easy. Nested PVC pipe sections serve as leg-extenders!
I made mine for a regular pipe-legged IKEA-type desk. Worked wonders for my back.
Measure the diameter of your desk's legs. Buy lengths of PVC pipe that are just-narrower and just-wider than the desk legs. One pair for each leg. The pipes will nest one-in-the-other. Desk legs sit on the narrow pieces, like stilts. Wide pieces nest over the narrow pieces, and should be much longer than the narrow pieces, to stabilize the whole thing. If it's too wobbly, squirt some spray-foam insulation between the PVC pipes to make solid composite pieces. If safety complains, you could mount the desk to the wall with L-brackets.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, of course; we all know the history. Mouse and GUI ideas were bought by Apple from Xerox PARC in the founding days. The key word here is "bought," and not "copied." (That is, a license fee was paid.)
MS has always, apparently as a policy, simply copied the most successful company in a particular market-space. Or, alternatively, they buy the out for the IP and fire everyone. Or, as a third alternative, they "suck the oxygen out of the room" in an effort to crush and bankrupt companies who innovate, so that they can later buy their IP for pennies-on-the-dollar.
This is all ancient history that everyone knows. So, perhaps Apple collects ideas for interface improvements for computing devices from multiple sources. But, they have never been publicly shamed for having "stolen" a particular idea. They buy it, usually with the intention of employing the innovators. Trust me, I know of several innovators who sold (or "almost" sold) their company to Apple, because Apple had the capability to recognize a good thing when they saw it. Very old and oft-repeated story, too.
So MS is now trying to get ahead of the curve.
Forget their time-honored tactic of copying Apple three years after they launch any given product.
Now, MS is copying rumors about possible Apple products, that may or may not actually ever launch. Pretty embarrassing...
Yep. This is why I recently deleted the FB App from my mobile.
Recently went through my "Public Profile" or whatever they call it, and they had a map of all of the states, countries, and cities I had recently been to. And I DO NOT use their "check in" feature when arriving at locations. In fact, I hadn't used the App in months.
Too creepy.
MpVpRb: If I could buy a new machine, clone my hard drive and go, I would upgrade about three times as often.
I've done that cloning trick multiple times with Macs, when moving from one lab to another, or upgrading a laptop. It is a beautiful experience.
Or, if your new laptop has a newer OS, the Mac's Migration Assistant still makes moving over completely painless. I've done this a couple of times, too. Usually no applications barf or ask for activation, etc. And again, everything is where you left is. A beautiful experience.
And, (now I'm sounding all fanboi), I recently smashed my iPhone. Bought a replacement, wiped the old one right there in the Store. Got home, plugged in the new phone, and iTunes figured out that I had a new iPhone. It copied the backup right over, along with apps, settings, old messages, etc. Everything right where I left it. So painless.
_xeno_: ...they removed the ability to shutdown the computer."
I have two Win8 machines in a University class I teach. I just yank the plug out of the wall at the end of class.
Possibly off-topic, but a physician of mine bragged that all of his many patients' data was very handily available to him at all times –– on a 32GB USB stick that he wore around his neck on a lanyard.
My first thought was, "Dude, what if you lost it?"
That is: HIPAA violations all over the place if he did.
Wow, didn't mean to go off on a tangent in my previous post...
You learned two fantastic skills. Soldering ability in a graduate student is highly desired.
The other skill, printmaking, is a complicated art that requires not only patience, but also the development of a good eye, and also the 'feeling' of what exposure is going to make print come out great. Those are physical skills that never go away, but they also inform your intuition, so that when you shift to Photoshop, you have all of the 'ocular' skills entrenched in your mind.
Good luck! My best was an 18X11 print made using an ancient enlarger and am 8X11-inch tray. That ws some work, but got me a small prize at the time.
NOTE: Most elargers use spherical lenses, which therefore distort the image outside of the central regoin. You could seek out a super-expensive (Canon) enlarger, but will be better off just getting a good scan of you large, flat negative, and going digital fro therel
Have fun!
anagama: That summer, I dissolved the skin on my fingertips to painful thinness from touching the stop bath...
That stuff is typically 'glacial' acetic acid. Think super-concentrated vinegar; that is all it is. Just stops the development process (of silver gel film) very quickly. Then your 'fixation' bath inactivates all of the non-reacted photoreceptors/electron photoreceptors, thus rendering the negative an archival record of the 'imaged' event.
Just PRO TIP: (from my just-retiring dermatologist) Foot callouses? NO PROBLEM! Simply (1) wrap them in paper towels, (2) soak the paper towels in vinegar, (3) go to be until the discomfort awakens you around 4:00 am, and finally (4) Peel away the former callouses like cottage cheese from the affected area (usually your heels, balls of feet, and big toe). It all just comes off with your fingers, and leaves baby-smooth skin intact underneath! I've tried it. It works like magic, and it's nearly free!
If you want somethings shorter-acting––buy some 60% glycolic acid on the web. FAR stronger than vinegar, so test spots for 5 minutes, etc.. Buyer beware! This is what actual dermatologists use in facial peels, it is not something to mess around with outside of a highly controlled environment (good timer, quick application, immediate rinse-off at end of timed test. If you go this route for your feet, then do a series of test runs to see how fast it dissolves your callouses. And if you decide to try the stuff on your elbows, face, etc, well––I am not responsible, because I have only described its (wonderful) properties of rejuvenating your feet.
Good luck!
Why does comment posting not work this thread..?
anagama: ... I recall there were three tracks when I went: vocational (shop, electricity, etc.,easy math, easy English, basic science, etc.), business (typing and whatever else you might study if your goal was to be a receptionist -- easy classes, essentially shop for girls (we were more sexist then)), or college track (various math classes, literature, foreign language, psychology, etc.).
:-(
And then some of us went multi-track. I was in all the advanced math/science courses (e.g. Calc. for college credit), but also took several shop classes. I am a much better scientist for having done that. Even though it meant I had to drop choir.
You are wasting your time.
Same could be said for those who defrag their hard drives weekly, etc.
Your solution is almost in-hand!
:) Add to that the straight blockage that a pair of earlpugs (from an Audioogist) will provide you, and you will be completely oblivious to all that is around you.
I long-ago created a solution that you will find useful, although created for my own self at the time, in a similar situation.
Play the MP3 "Gray-brown noise.mp3," found at the following public link, on repeat: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/84396909/Gray-Brown%20Noise.mp3
You see, the problem with noise-cancelling headphones is that they cancel repetetive noises. That results in a situation in which human conversation is easier to hear. For an ADHD, ithat's backwards. Right? You need a mask.
In reality, what you want to do is to raise the background level of ambient noise across the entire frequency spectrum, to obscure incidental noises (talking, music, etc.). Play my MP3. Whether you use headphones or speakers, your brain will get used to the monotonous (patternless) broad-band "noise," and will quickly adapt to a base level of "even" noise, so that it will ignore many transients (talking, music, etc.).
I call it gray-brown noise because, well, actually, just see Wikipedia. Anyways, gray noise is equalized to have the same perceived-energy-intensity across all of the octaves of the human range of hearing. So, unlike white noise, which is harsh and high-pitched, this MP3 is gray––it is even. Second, I used a Brownian noise-generator to generate the original 5-miunute sound file. (See Wikipedia, but basically Brownian=random walk vs random distribution of frequency energies––>more natural.) It is gray for me because I have adjusted the equalization to match the response of my over-earbuds (from Brookstone) and my iPod. To attain gray, you may have to play with your equalizer. (But hey, even playing this MP3 " straight" totally kills TONS of distracting ambient noise, as you will easily hear. So, don't sweat the perfection of the "gray" part).
You will have to adjust the equalization to your own computer speakers, or to your chosen type of earphones, to achieve the optimal gray. But, after that, you will be in heaven.
Once adjustments are done, you're set; your brain will quickly get bored of the pattern-less "noise," letting you ignore any spurious auditory input, and just get to work. A bonus is that it covers up lots of ambient and transient noises. That is, it raises the signal floor,the floor above which your brain says, "Hey, what's that noise all about?!?
People can blather, play music, and so on, but if you have your "WALL OF GRAY-BROWN NOISE PRESSURE" up in defense, then you are golden. The BONUS is that NO ONE really hears it. It's background to them; sounds like an airplane engine from inside the cabine).
Sincerely,
Sir Holo
sirholo@mac.com
Any thanks from you or other ADHDs (etc.) will make me feel good, knowing that I have helped someone. Feel free to re-post the (unedited) MP3 anywhere (with credit included in meta-data). (
Enjoy!
I saw BodyWorlds in 1999. I learned more human anatomy during that two hours than I had in all of my life to that time.
The art pieces are a bit freaky, but they also have several exploded-view (think engineering drawings) versions of human bodies, with the organs all clearly in their original shape, showing clearly how everything fit together.
They also prepare and sell individual organs/parts that are plastinated to medical schools/colleges. These last far longer and are more tactile than formaldehyde-preserved jars of guts. it saves money.
Play video games, drink beer, and occasionally masturbate. I think that pretty much covers it, and it also covers things that you probably won't have time to do during grad school.
/Uni prof
Just buy her a Mac. All of those tech-support type of questions will just go away,
Expecially if she buys a new Mac with the "3-years of on-hands support" from the Mac store. They will take care of the minor hiccups. And, she'll be in a computational environment that does not change dramatically from year-to-year (as MS7-8 did).
Anyone over 50 just wants stability of interaction in their computer, above all else. Mac delivers this.
I'm not even remotely clear on what you are asking for.
Is this some device that you find gives you underwhelming performance, yet you want to configure it to be a mounted, in-home, ultra-secure but child-monitoring, tiny-screened media player?
If that's the case, then you should not waste your valuable time. Just buy a used laptop off of ebay and set it up as a media center. Then you're done!
Indeed, we are NOT there yet.
Remember, humans are still meat-bags. We still need to mark-up and underline and scribble notes –– to sort our thoughts. When reviewing, I still print and scribble to organize my analysis. My final review is indeed typed into a browser, but the process is still not reasonably do-able without the intermediary stage of physicality.
Nothing is faster than a pen on paper, nor is it likely to be any time soon.
Give me a tablet that I can spread out over my desk, enabling me to compare 8 pages at a time, to stick my fingers and post-its in for quick back-and-forth referencing, and I will buy it. Until then, paper will remain king for complex writing, reviewing, and editing.
Sorry.
In my very first job, we pre-melted the deep-fry oil in the back, and carried it into the kitchen in a pot held by tongs and wet towels. I went off to college, but returned for breaks. Once, upon return, I found a horrifically scarred African-immigrant cook, who had dropped the pot, resulting in a splash-from-hell to the face and hands.
I probably deserve to have my own scars from throwing ice cubes into smoking-hot pots of oil, but had the sense to stand back, so no scars from that (knives are another matter).
... Scientists faced exactly the same forces in the past when they tackled the dangers of asbestos, as well as tobacco smoking...
I think even when science-types proposed that the earth revolves around the sun, they had problems with the establishment trying to discredit them.
I have never visited a web page where I thought "this needs GPU acceleration." Bandwidth is usually the constraint. Who cares about GPU off-loading?
This is one reason why it's not good that iPhones can be jailbroken.
The thief just jailbreaks it, then buys a rechargeable SIM card.
Works in the US. EU, too. No need to move it across a border.
SSD's follow the familiar engineering "bathtub curve" for failures, just like anything else. But...
In the case of SSDs, the failure of individual memory cells will follow this curve. Therefore, you will probably not notice a few dead cells at first, because SSD's are built with a few "extras." But after a number of writes, 100,000 or so, cell failure rates will rise quickly. That is why the SMART or other drive-lifetime native ware will exclude the failed or over-used cells from use.
Result is that an SSD drive is not likely to "fail" in the sense that a platter HD crashes. Instead, it will just slowly lose usable capacity. Once it's enough to notice, it is time to replace.
But that's really only if it's in a server. If it's in your laptop, you will have upgraded to a new laptop long before noticing the SSD capacity degradation.
What haven't I thought of?
...to drop the apostrophe from "its"
FTA: ...Microsoft is starting out as the underdog."
That's a strange way to put it.
More accurate would be "...Microsoft has been unsuccessful in its more than 15 years of attempts at the mobile platform, despite its dominance in other sectors during that time."
anonymous wrote: Can I make one myself?
YES! It is cheap and easy. Nested PVC pipe sections serve as leg-extenders!
I made mine for a regular pipe-legged IKEA-type desk. Worked wonders for my back.
Measure the diameter of your desk's legs. Buy lengths of PVC pipe that are just-narrower and just-wider than the desk legs. One pair for each leg. The pipes will nest one-in-the-other. Desk legs sit on the narrow pieces, like stilts. Wide pieces nest over the narrow pieces, and should be much longer than the narrow pieces, to stabilize the whole thing. If it's too wobbly, squirt some spray-foam insulation between the PVC pipes to make solid composite pieces. If safety complains, you could mount the desk to the wall with L-brackets.