I understand the eMac was conceived for the educational market. High school libraries and computer labs at universities is where I would expect eMacs around. And there, you often need thin (or at least thinner clients). You don't want people to play games or store stuff locally on the harddrives. So the graphics card is just fine for office software, web surfing, playing video clips and whatever you might do in an educational setting. And you don't want your average student download gigabytes of movies from the internet to burn it on a DVD.
What you want is a rock-stable, low-maintenance operating system that easy to use for computer newbies. And I think that's exactly what the eMac has to offer for a reasonably competitive price.
Contrary to popular belief where you live, the world doesn't end at some United States controlled border.
Check out Canada, or, if you really want to have fun, Europe. They even speak English there:-) Some countries, like Spain, are pretty cheap in terms of living expenses (despite the current exchange rate).
I guess I can sing the security clearance blues myself. American research labs (MERL, AT&T, I assume even the IBM ones) expect candidates to obtain a clearance -- which I, as a foreign national, can't get. My clean record, my good karma at Slashdot, and my heavy American accent won't do anything for me.
So, I'm sticking around Europe. And hey... IT'S GREAT HERE!
Well if it wasn't for that 'cheap consumer crap', Windows users would probably retreat from the internet sooner or later because of all the viruses they get.
That said, you seem to forget that something like The Gimp has thousands of functions and options, with a great deal of flexibility as to what the user can do. (An anti-virus program does only one thing.)
You'd better compare the quality of the Gimp's interface to the one found in Photoshop or its veritable replacement, Jasc PaintShop Pro. That means, you should look at consistency, adherence to operating system standards, responsiveness, and user trails, i.e. the workload a user has (number of clicks and mouse-miles) in order to execute a certain manipulation of the document.
In terms of OS standards, for example, the Mac OS X GIMP is worlds behind Adobe Photoshop. Do I still have to click on every single tool twice in order to activate it? (Once to activate the window, once for the tool). (A global focus-follows mouse setting for X11 would bring up UI issues with all other X11 programs I use.) Is the menu bar in the 'real' menu bar on top of the screen now? Does it use the OS standard keyboard shortcuts (Apple-S, Apple-C, Apple-W etc.?)
I'd really like to use The Gimp, but the interface has been putting me off all along.
That applies to all languages -- spoken languages are idiosynchratic, too. You develop your own 'favorite expressions', and you also align with your interlocutor in many ways.
* SPF is useless for several entire classes of people.
That would be anyone who sends direct-to-mx email from random IPs.
Those people will have to change.
Sorry, sucks to be you.
The percentage of people in this class is very near zero.
I have to send e-mail with my locally installed postfix or with an authenticating third party mail-server when I am on the go, because my employer doesn't offer SMTP services to the outside world. SPF would mean that I'd have to VPN into the lab everytime I want to send an e-mail. It indeed sucks to be me.
But I doubt I'm one of only a few.
I have put together a list of software that I recommend using (for common tasks), after evaluating several alternatives. Also, there is a detailed discussion about how I moved my mail archives over to the Mac, with pointers to appropriate helper software. Admittedly, some of this might be easier nowadays. Hope it helps.
In Germany, a TV license is necessary whether you operate the equipment or not, whether you hook up and antenna or not. It's enough to have the device ready.
Private licenses often cover for more than one machine. But I remember that this doesn't apply to businesses.
I guess there are good reasons for not including a TV card by default. But it would have been a smart move to offer this as a built-in add-on!
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, however, even though long proven wrong, has shaped the thinking of a whole generation of people, including those in the feminist movement, proposing "politically correct" words (female forms e.g.) hoping that they would induce a new thinking.
Language may be a result of knowledge and cultural concepts, thus reflect it. But it does not shape it, because - and that's known as de Saussure's work - the word is not equal to the concept. Whether you call something a small feline animal or a cat, it's still the same entity that you are thinking of. Whether you call someone a nigger, an african american, a 'brother', a black person -- the name does force us to change our thinking. (It may prompt us to think about misconceptions, of course!)
Steven Pinker's book "The Language Instinct" is a good read.
Haven't read Feigenson's original article. But it seems painfully obvious to me that given all the other linguistic evidence, the Brazilian tribe might simply have established a culture of arithmetics that doesn't allow you to count more than two things.
- Banks will possibly want to make money with every transaction, not just with bonds that get collected, especially if you take into account that bonds will rarely be collected. That means that banks will make a sh*tload of money just in order to prevent criminal or annoying behavior of a few spammers.
- It's not clear how the "challenge" step involving the whitelist is supposed to be implemented. Right now, we have mail servers receive mail and store it until the final recipient (client) polls it, e.g. via IMAP/POP3/Exchange. Would this mail server have to store the whitelist and bond info? Probably yes. Privacy issues?
- How does it integrate with the current e-mail world? Not very well. Sure, you can still accept e-mails without a bond and rank them low (i.e. mark them as potential junk). But for quite a while, people will not be able to discard these e-mails automatically. Therefore, there will be no incentive for senders to move to the bond mechanism.
- There are many parties involved: Right now, we're talking about sender-SMTPrelay-mailserver-client. In addition to these four parties we need two escrow agencies: one for the sender, one for the recipient. these will need to be organized, so they can talk to each other - which means there is some kind of additional club involved. (We can get rid of the SMTP relay entitiy mentioned above - this can be done by the client directly.) The problem is that with the new entities, things can go wrong. They can simply be down (keeping me from sending or receiving e-mail!). Or their security can be compromised. The bottomline is: this is too complicated.
I wonder what is better about the bond scheme, compared to the challenge-response idea that circulated a while ago, where sending e-mail is simply computionally expensive enough (unless you're on the recipient's whitelist).
well i applied the current exchange rate... we should be able to get a much better deal, BECAUSE euro and pound sterling are so strong.
also, what really matters are exchange rates compared to asia, right?
on the other hand, a significant percentage of the cost of electronic devices go into patent royalties. the actual hardware is relatively cheap afaik.
the European version sells for 284 (370) Euros excluding sales tax (which is usually another 15-20 percent!). That is USD 353 plus tax. Why the markup? Are there higher import taxes for electronics from Taiwan?
Or is the Eurpean market just considered not so competitive?
(Btw: Canon is doing that as well with their digital cameras. Really annoying!)
well, i sent dozens of "tell a friend" e-mails from the store -- because those participate in the contest, too. remember that 'NO PURCHASE NECESSARY' clause?
i briefly considered staying up all night to hit the 100 million mark, but heck,... it didn't happen...
You're right, it's not exactly user-centric design that's reflected in the original post. But I can't really think of a big open source project that was driven in a user-centric fashion from the start.
I think the author's stay is a summer job in research, so why shouldn't they do some research, figure out if their new functions fly, and then, maybe, it'll make it into the mainstream browser... Why not play around a little?
Nothing wrong with your decision -- and M$ Research is well-respected, at least in my field...
But hey, some people may simply enjoy working on arcane things that don't really solve pressing practical problems. Chaque à son gout! (One of the great achievements of civilization is the affordance of people that produce knowledge rather than commercial products.)
In the academic world, I have yet to see people steal credit from me, but it happened to people I know - maybe one has to pick & convince the right advisors. It was about like this: for two years, professor wanted to be first author on all papers in her group. then, annoyed grad students started to leave group. professor is working now at a smaller university. too bad.
"Do I want to do cutting-edge research, find out about new things, finding solutions to problems, maybe getting patents, work with colleagues around the world, travel to conferences and workshops, or do I like to manage people and an organization, come up with visions, conduct hundreds of interviews with applicants, go to fancy dinners with my lab's sponsors or the company's clients?"
I played around with them the other day at the Apple store. I think, they don't feel right: the metal feels cold, the edges are sharp, the paint seems to come off at the edges, and the controls felt crappy. They just felt very unpolished, especially when compared to the original iPods. Does anyone know if they show actual production samples at the stores?
Well the dog learns words (maybe) but cannot form sentences. Complex grammar seems to be impossible for animals to learn - that's what these experiences have consistently showed. So much about language.
When it comes to reasoning - or, what we understand as being intelligent, the fact that the dog infers the meaning of novel input does prove something about learning.
But reasoning as in: being intelligent, is much more. It involves a working model of the world and also a model of others ("theory of mind"). babies learn this at some stage ("they are like me!") and start to imitate their mother's facial expressions. Depending on how you look at it, reasoning should involve a range of simple semantic operators: quantifiers (every, some, a) and negation, for example. of course, there is much more to it. so what exactly does the experiment prove?
Rekimoto gave a keynote at CHI, and as I might add, not a too impressive one. The interaction techniques aren't all that new to HCI researchers, some of them told me.
One of the questions asked by an audience member after his talk was: Why do we need electronic whiteboards in meeting rooms, or a pen like this, when people just use paper to quickly exchange small amounts of information physically?
Well, it's a somewhat naive question, and maybe it was ment to be. Rekimoto's reply was: "I don't answer this question!"
One problem with this HCI research seems to be that there's not always a lot evaluation going on -- because the success of these interfaces are hard to capture quantitatively, and evaluating them means getting a lot of human subjects involved. No fun!
The real problems in this pen are of a technical / networking / interfacing nature. How do you ensure that computers can actually understand the files being exchanged, across platforms and applications (Word version, for example)? Do you need a central db to resolve the RFID code of the pen to the IP address of the laptop it was held to before, or does the pen store it then? Or does the pen store the actual file?? How do you make sure that the laptops can easily connect to the central db server? Zero-conf? But if you have zero-conf, how do you make ensure security? Hacking the think, can't I just listen to RFID codes around me (or whatever transmission technique is used) and then request the file transfered from the network?
A lot of interesting questions that are outside the range of "HCI", but that are vital a good user experience!
Slashdot Mirror
I understand the eMac was conceived for the educational market. High school libraries and computer labs at universities is where I would expect eMacs around. And there, you often need thin (or at least thinner clients). You don't want people to play games or store stuff locally on the harddrives. So the graphics card is just fine for office software, web surfing, playing video clips and whatever you might do in an educational setting. And you don't want your average student download gigabytes of movies from the internet to burn it on a DVD. What you want is a rock-stable, low-maintenance operating system that easy to use for computer newbies. And I think that's exactly what the eMac has to offer for a reasonably competitive price.
(Like everybody else, I wonder what Patrick's problem turned out to be in the end... )
Sorry man, didn't see you're from Canada :) I wonder if they give you guys a clearance in the States... doubt it!
Contrary to popular belief where you live, the world doesn't end at some United States controlled border.
:-) Some countries, like Spain, are pretty cheap in terms of living expenses (despite the current exchange rate).
Check out Canada, or, if you really want to have fun, Europe. They even speak English there
I guess I can sing the security clearance blues myself. American research labs (MERL, AT&T, I assume even the IBM ones) expect candidates to obtain a clearance -- which I, as a foreign national, can't get. My clean record, my good karma at Slashdot, and my heavy American accent won't do anything for me.
So, I'm sticking around Europe. And hey... IT'S GREAT HERE!
what was that Bushism again... "Too bad all the people who know how to run this country are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair"...
Well if it wasn't for that 'cheap consumer crap', Windows users would probably retreat from the internet sooner or later because of all the viruses they get.
That said, you seem to forget that something like The Gimp has thousands of functions and options, with a great deal of flexibility as to what the user can do. (An anti-virus program does only one thing.)
You'd better compare the quality of the Gimp's interface to the one found in Photoshop or its veritable replacement, Jasc PaintShop Pro. That means, you should look at consistency, adherence to operating system standards, responsiveness, and user trails, i.e. the workload a user has (number of clicks and mouse-miles) in order to execute a certain manipulation of the document.
In terms of OS standards, for example, the Mac OS X GIMP is worlds behind Adobe Photoshop.
Do I still have to click on every single tool twice in order to activate it? (Once to activate the window, once for the tool). (A global focus-follows mouse setting for X11 would bring up UI issues with all other X11 programs I use.) Is the menu bar in the 'real' menu bar on top of the screen now? Does it use the OS standard keyboard shortcuts (Apple-S, Apple-C, Apple-W etc.?)
I'd really like to use The Gimp, but the interface has been putting me off all along.
That applies to all languages -- spoken languages are idiosynchratic, too. You develop your own 'favorite expressions', and you also align with your interlocutor in many ways.
I have put together a list of software that I recommend using (for common tasks), after evaluating several alternatives. Also, there is a detailed discussion about how I moved my mail archives over to the Mac, with pointers to appropriate helper software. Admittedly, some of this might be easier nowadays. Hope it helps.
In Germany, a TV license is necessary whether you operate the equipment or not, whether you hook up and antenna or not. It's enough to have the device ready.
Private licenses often cover for more than one machine.
But I remember that this doesn't apply to businesses.
I guess there are good reasons for not including a TV card by default. But it would have been a smart move to offer this as a built-in add-on!
Yes.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, however, even though long proven wrong, has shaped the thinking of a whole generation of people, including those in the feminist movement, proposing "politically correct" words (female forms e.g.) hoping that they would induce a new thinking.
Language may be a result of knowledge and cultural concepts, thus reflect it. But it does not shape it, because - and that's known as de Saussure's work - the word is not equal to the concept. Whether you call something a small feline animal or a cat, it's still the same entity that you are thinking of. Whether you call someone a nigger, an african american, a 'brother', a black person -- the name does force us to change our thinking. (It may prompt us to think about misconceptions, of course!)
Steven Pinker's book "The Language Instinct" is a good read.
Haven't read Feigenson's original article. But it seems painfully obvious to me that given all the other linguistic evidence, the Brazilian tribe might simply have established a culture of arithmetics that doesn't allow you to count more than two things.
Several problems with this:
- Banks will possibly want to make money with every transaction, not just with bonds that get collected, especially if you take into account that bonds will rarely be collected. That means that banks will make a sh*tload of money just in order to prevent criminal or annoying behavior of a few spammers.
- It's not clear how the "challenge" step involving the whitelist is supposed to be implemented. Right now, we have mail servers receive mail and store it until the final recipient (client) polls it, e.g. via IMAP/POP3/Exchange. Would this mail server have to store the whitelist and bond info? Probably yes. Privacy issues?
- How does it integrate with the current e-mail world? Not very well. Sure, you can still accept e-mails without a bond and rank them low (i.e. mark them as potential junk). But for quite a while, people will not be able to discard these e-mails automatically. Therefore, there will be no incentive for senders to move to the bond mechanism.
- There are many parties involved: Right now, we're talking about sender-SMTPrelay-mailserver-client. In addition to these four parties we need two escrow agencies: one for the sender, one for the recipient. these will need to be organized, so they can talk to each other - which means there is some kind of additional club involved. (We can get rid of the SMTP relay entitiy mentioned above - this can be done by the client directly.)
The problem is that with the new entities, things can go wrong. They can simply be down (keeping me from sending or receiving e-mail!). Or their security can be compromised.
The bottomline is: this is too complicated.
I wonder what is better about the bond scheme, compared to the challenge-response idea that circulated a while ago, where sending e-mail is simply computionally expensive enough (unless you're on the recipient's whitelist).
shut down, pull the plug and fill with concrete. wait for it to harden. machine secured.
... not to mention that you are going to have a hell lot more fun in the Bay area... congratulations (and greetings from grey&rainy Ireland, har har)
... because this is a valid criticism of the subject...
well i applied the current exchange rate... we should be able to get a much better deal, BECAUSE euro and pound sterling are so strong. also, what really matters are exchange rates compared to asia, right? on the other hand, a significant percentage of the cost of electronic devices go into patent royalties. the actual hardware is relatively cheap afaik.
the European version sells for 284 (370) Euros excluding sales tax (which is usually another 15-20 percent!). That is USD 353 plus tax. Why the markup?
Are there higher import taxes for electronics from Taiwan?
Or is the Eurpean market just considered not so competitive?
(Btw: Canon is doing that as well with their digital cameras. Really annoying!)
i am wondering if that means that M$ is actually getting those 3.5 million bucks from him, or more than 50m$ from all the spammers.
Did the guy keep a couple of millions in the attic, just in case? Or is he broke, struggling to pay his lawyers..?
well, i sent dozens of "tell a friend" e-mails from the store -- because those participate in the contest, too. remember that 'NO PURCHASE NECESSARY' clause?
... it didn't happen...
i briefly considered staying up all night to hit the 100 million mark, but heck,
You're right, it's not exactly user-centric design that's reflected in the original post. But I can't really think of a big open source project that was driven in a user-centric fashion from the start.
I think the author's stay is a summer job in research, so why shouldn't they do some research, figure out if their new functions fly, and then, maybe, it'll make it into the mainstream browser... Why not play around a little?
Nothing wrong with your decision -- and M$ Research is well-respected, at least in my field...
But hey, some people may simply enjoy working on arcane things that don't really solve pressing practical problems. Chaque à son gout! (One of the great achievements of civilization is the affordance of people that produce knowledge rather than commercial products.)
In the academic world, I have yet to see people steal credit from me, but it happened to people I know - maybe one has to pick & convince the right advisors. It was about like this: for two years, professor wanted to be first author on all papers in her group. then, annoyed grad students started to leave group. professor is working now at a smaller university. too bad.
Let me rephrase that question.
"Do I want to do cutting-edge research, find out about new things, finding solutions to problems, maybe getting patents, work with colleagues around the world, travel to conferences and workshops, or do I like to manage people and an organization, come up with visions, conduct hundreds of interviews with applicants, go to fancy dinners with my lab's sponsors or the company's clients?"
I played around with them the other day at the Apple store. I think, they don't feel right: the metal feels cold, the edges are sharp, the paint seems to come off at the edges, and the controls felt crappy. They just felt very unpolished, especially when compared to the original iPods. Does anyone know if they show actual production samples at the stores?
Well the dog learns words (maybe) but cannot form sentences. Complex grammar seems to be impossible for animals to learn - that's what these experiences have consistently showed. So much about language.
When it comes to reasoning - or, what we understand as being intelligent, the fact that the dog infers the meaning of novel input does prove something about learning.
But reasoning as in: being intelligent, is much more. It involves a working model of the world and also a model of others ("theory of mind"). babies learn this at some stage ("they are like me!") and start to imitate their mother's facial expressions. Depending on how you look at it, reasoning should involve a range of simple semantic operators: quantifiers (every, some, a) and negation, for example. of course, there is much more to it. so what exactly does the experiment prove?
Rekimoto gave a keynote at CHI, and as I might add, not a too impressive one. The interaction techniques aren't all that new to HCI researchers, some of them told me.
One of the questions asked by an audience member after his talk was: Why do we need electronic whiteboards in meeting rooms, or a pen like this, when people just use paper to quickly exchange small amounts of information physically?
Well, it's a somewhat naive question, and maybe it was ment to be. Rekimoto's reply was: "I don't answer this question!"
One problem with this HCI research seems to be that there's not always a lot evaluation going on -- because the success of these interfaces are hard to capture quantitatively, and evaluating them means getting a lot of human subjects involved. No fun!
The real problems in this pen are of a technical / networking / interfacing nature. How do you ensure that computers can actually understand the files being exchanged, across platforms and applications (Word version, for example)? Do you need a central db to resolve the RFID code of the pen to the IP address of the laptop it was held to before, or does the pen store it then? Or does the pen store the actual file?? How do you make sure that the laptops can easily connect to the central db server? Zero-conf? But if you have zero-conf, how do you make ensure security? Hacking the think, can't I just listen to RFID codes around me (or whatever transmission technique is used) and then request the file transfered from the network?
A lot of interesting questions that are outside the range of "HCI", but that are vital a good user experience!