In the last few years the browser platform has matured and after a long period of it being awkful, I'm content with the current state of things. But I feel that email has not improved at all over the last ten years. The only major change has been the rise of spam - a step backwards.
There's a solution to this -- use the Web browser as an e-mail client. GMail fits every one of the points you list. I'm still not entirely happy with it (mostly because there's no reasonable way to do GPG), but I find that it generally fails to suck.
The Happy Hacker 2 Lite keyboard is about the closest thing I've found to a Macbook (well, iBook in my case) keyboard for a PC -- most of the keys are in the right places, though I had to remap Control to Caps Lock on my laptop so I didn't get confused every time I switched between the two machines. The HH2 Lite has a pretty decent feel for a membrane keyboard.
My own current solution on my personal Web site involves doing a more limited version of that using PHP. I'm debating whether I want to try to move it to a Real Web Framework or not.
If you like Perl, you might be interested in Jifty, a new open-source Perl-based Web framework. It's only a "developer release" right now (ie. don't use it to run your banking site), but it's pretty useable all the same. It's got a lot of the shiny AJAX stuff people have come to expect, and it makes setting basic things up ridiculously easy, but it's also got a solid core foundation for database stuff. It's a pretty spiffy framework.
Seaside is technically superior, it uses continuations to mantain state and this make it really transparent...
If you want a continuations-based open-source Web framework built on top of a stable, popular, well-tested language, you might check out Jifty, a Perl Web framework. Wait a second, you say -- Perl doesn't have continuations! This is true. Perl doesn't have continuations. Jifty does. It's only a "developer release" right now, but it's surprisingly useable all the same.
(Disclaimer: I work for Best Practical Solutions, the company behind Jifty. Yeah, yeah, shameless self-promotion and all that. It's a spiffy framework, and it's open-source.)
Well, given the kind of movies the Brattle is showing (esp. the historical movies), that kind of environment is exactly the "big screen" they were intended to be shown on. Most movies of that era had stereo sound at best, and were shown in theaters converted from other uses. It may not be comparable to our modern idea of the "big screen," with Dolby 7.1 surround sound and a 20-foot high screen, but it's very much the way people used to experience the movies.
The point still stands. To use a BBS you needed a terminal program, which you had to get off a (drumroll please) *floppy* *disk*... and to use AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy, GEnie, the Microsoft Network, eWorld, or any other online service, you had to get their proprietary client off a *floppy* *disk*.
Your computer didn't learn about how to use its modem all by itself, now did it? Somewhere, somehow, there was a floppy disk involved.
(Ah, how fondly I recall the days of ordering groceries over Prodigy... Don'tcha just love geek pissing contests?;)
Does the info about people who complain about a movie ever make it back to those who make it?
If one person walks out? Not normally. It would take a *lot* of walk-outs for us to mention something to the booking people, and it might or might not get from them to the studios.
Otherwise, the biggest way the studios know what people think of a movie is the box-office numbers. Movies rely a lot on "viral marketing" -- that is, people saying, "oh yeah, The Village was really good!" Sure, you'll get a bunch of people who come on opening day without relying on that kind of feedback, but whether the movie performs well in the long run is really dependent on what people thought of it. If a movie is bad, you can almost always see it in the numbers, and if the people who book movies for our chain start to see a pattern (eg. Jackie Chan movies tank, or nobody watches horror flicks) we won't get them any more. If *enough* theaters don't want them, the studios will move on to more profitable movies (at least in theory). Money speaks louder than words, for better or worse.
I was thinking more about DVDs than theaters, but I did mention it, so I apologize if my post was disheartening to the theaters that understand the value of good service.
I wasn't offended -- I just wanted to mention that the refund policy depends on the theater. You've got a point, though, that I had never thought of before. You have a reasonable expectation that, if you buy a toaster, it will toast bread; you *aren't* necessarily able to expect that if you buy entertainment, it will entertain you. Some of that is endemic (Sturgeon's Law and all), but some of it is how the studios and theaters, especially the big chains, do business. From the perspective of this small-chain popcorn-slinger, it's always nice to exceed expecations.:)
I used Trumpet Winsock back in the day, and lemme tell you, it would have been a little hard to download Trumpet Winsock without... well, having Trumpet Winsock. Seeing as you wouldn't have a TCP/IP stack to do the downloading with, y'know? None of this fancy "built into the operating system" shit, nosirree. If we wanted Trumpet Winsock, we had to get it on a *floppy*, and not one o' them newfangled 3.5 in. floppies-that-don't-flop, either. We used real 5.25 in. floppies, and we liked 'em!
Trumpet Winsock, let me tell you, we thought that was the best thing since striped suspenders. (sniff) I'll never forget the day I threw out the Procomm Plus disks...
If the industry wants the data for itself, I suspect the results will be relatively accurate. If the industry wants the data so it can persuade others, the results will be highly questionable.
In theory, at least, you don't want your studies lying to you -- lying to the public, or Congress, or some other impressionable body is another matter.
At the theater I work at, we're willing to give somebody a pass for a free movie if they come out and tell us the movie sucks. We've actually told people flat-out that a certain movie was terrible so they wouldn't waste their money on it. (My boss claimed it was the worst movie he had seen the whole year, although he admitted he hadn't seen _Gigli_ to compare it to.)
We're at least *trying* to make it fair for our customers.
b) Somebody strip out or rewrite all parts of the kernel copyrighted by people who objected to the license change, which in the end would probably amount to an effective rewrite of the whole thing.
And if you're going to rewrite the Linux kernel under the BSD license, you might as well look into any one of the several already-mature, BSD-licensedoperating systems that exist. Honestly, there's no need to relicense Linux, unless you're concerned about buzzword-compatability issues. Why reinvent *BSD?
Uhh... yeah, I think that's the point. Do you have iptables (the Linux firewall) on your Linux box? Does it come with RedHat, or Debian, or Mandrake?
The answer is *yes*, unless you *specifically* disable it. Not only that, it's configured to be relatively secure by default. And you'll never even know you have it unless you go looking for it, because it doesn't annoy you with pop-ups "requesting permission," it just silently and effectively protects your computer.
I'll second (third?) that -- my copy of K&R almost single-handedly taught me C, and it, like yours, sits within arm's reach. As the authors say in the preface, "We have tried to retain the brevity of the first edition. C is not a big language, and it is not well served by a big book." Truer words...
It isn't the be-all and end-all, of course -- I've supplemented my education with a few online tutorials, chatting with people who are more familiar with C, and reading the copious amounts of open source code available. I've never found those "tutorial" books to be worth the money, because I don't have the patience to work through all their stupid examples. Even with K&R I jumped around a lot, pulling it out as needed when I ran into a problem on my own projects. It hasn't made me a super-coder, but it has sure saved my butt a couple of times. When I buy computer books, I'm looking for utility as a *reference*, not shelf-space filler.
You can just unplug the wire going to the LEDs on the front -- IIRC, it's the connector that only has two wires. (On mine, at least, I think it was labeled 'LED'.) I've been running without the LEDs for a while now because I leave my computer on at night and found it virtually impossible to sleep with those two blue eyes staring at me out of the darkeness. I've half thought about wiring that connector through a switch and mounting it on the front of the case, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
That said, I really, really like the Antec case -- it's quiet *and* cool (my Athlon64 3200+ runs between 32-35 C under normal (pretty low) load, and 45C when I'm running SETI@Home). Now I just need to do something about the fan on that blasted graphics card...
Okay, bub, I don't care what Bush knew or didn't know about the torture of the Iraqi prisoners. When a president asks his people to find some legal loophole to justify using torture on the prisoners he's already declared "enemy combatants" and stripped of rights held dear by Americans, I don't think it matters.
The problem with this view is that it presumes that politics is all about making the right choices for *you*. In fact, that's not it at all -- the point of politics is about making the right choices for the *country*. Here's an example:
(okay, got my asbestos suit on) I'm a Kerry supporter, but I tend to think he doesn't go far enough in his views. For instance, he's not in favor of gay marriage, although he is in favor of civil unions. (Bush, for the record, is in favor of a Constitutional amendment banning *both*, so the original submitter of this story has it wrong). I see absolutely no reason why gays shouldn't be allowed to get married, and so I'd really like Kerry a lot more if he fully supported the right of gays to get married.
Why, then, aren't I supporting someone who *would* fully support that right? Because the question isn't who best represents my views, the question is who would be the best for the majority of the people. *My* personal views are never, ever going to be perfectly represented by the person running the country unless *I* run for president. Since that will never happen, I have to choose the person who I think best approximates my views and has the best chance of effecting positive change. I have no problem with that, because the question is not, and never has been, which candidate is best for *me*. The question is which candidate is best for the *country*.
Oh, how I wish I could get one of those blankets -- but, of course, by the time Fred mentioned that the blankets wouldn't be in the new store, they were already out of stock at ThinkGeek.
WE NEED BLANKETS! YOU HEAR ME, FRED? MEGATOKYO READERS EVERYWHERE DEMAND BLANKETS!!!
Megatokyo? Do you have one of those blue 'Miho in the snow' blankets you'd like to sell to me? (I'm in.au)
In regards to your sig -- IIRC, the Kimiko blanket was blue, and the Miho blanket was black. (See the old store at the Internet Archive.) I'm afraid I don't have one, although I wish I did. Here's hoping Fred will add them to the new store soon!
Ehrm. Actually, I just bought an Apple iBook, and it came with Internet Explorer preinstalled. I'm liking Safari right now, so I'll probably get around to deleting it eventually, but IE is available for Mac.
Actually, if you look closely you'll see that "Other" (presumably including Opera) and Mozilla have been growing in use slowly but steadily for almost a year now, perhaps people switching from older versions of IE to alternative browsers instead of IE 6. As you mentioned, IE 6.0 *does* shows a decline in June. It's really too early to draw any conclusions, given the lack of data, but the Google Zeitgeist charts do suggest that there *may* be a migration in the offing.
That said, I can say anecdotally I know of at least one user who switched to Firefox because of the latest IE exploit news -- she was recently bemoaning to me the fact that she couldn't install it on her work computer too, because she does a lot of purchasing, and tabbed browsing makes price comparison a lot easier. One user at a time...
Actually, if I understand correctly what Prof. Lessig was trying to say, the quote wasn't
"Here are all the Disney movies based of public domain stories..."
it was
"Here are all the Disney movies based off of *somebody* *else's* story..."
That is, Disney didn't employ a writer to come up with an original screenplay for their new movie, they hired someone to adapt somebody else's property into a screenplay for their movie (ie. the difference between Disney and Pixar). In Prof. Lessig's book, these were all instances of Disney taking cultural icons, whether or not they were in copyright, and "remixing" them into something new and different. He wasn't so much making the case that Disney was hypocritical in their actions, as making the case that "remixing" is a vital part of how we experience our culture.
There's already the.example TLD (RFC 2606), plus example.com, example.org, and example.net.
It would be nice to have something a little shorter, but no matter what you do, it's going to seem a little odd to people reading the book or watching the movie or TV show, because they've never seen a domain name ending in 'example' in real life. Every time one of those 555 numbers comes on I wince a little, because I've never used one and it doesn't help my suspension of disbelief any.
OTOH, using an unroutable phone number or URL is better than deluging some poor person with prank calls or unwanted Web site attention. You would think Penguin Putnam would have *wanted* to use the title of the book to promote their website for it. Dumbasses.
Slashdot Mirror
In the last few years the browser platform has matured and after a long period of it being awkful, I'm content with the current state of things. But I feel that email has not improved at all over the last ten years. The only major change has been the rise of spam - a step backwards.
There's a solution to this -- use the Web browser as an e-mail client. GMail fits every one of the points you list. I'm still not entirely happy with it (mostly because there's no reasonable way to do GPG), but I find that it generally fails to suck.
The Happy Hacker 2 Lite keyboard is about the closest thing I've found to a Macbook (well, iBook in my case) keyboard for a PC -- most of the keys are in the right places, though I had to remap Control to Caps Lock on my laptop so I didn't get confused every time I switched between the two machines. The HH2 Lite has a pretty decent feel for a membrane keyboard.
My own current solution on my personal Web site involves doing a more limited version of that using PHP. I'm debating whether I want to try to move it to a Real Web Framework or not.
If you like Perl, you might be interested in Jifty, a new open-source Perl-based Web framework. It's only a "developer release" right now (ie. don't use it to run your banking site), but it's pretty useable all the same. It's got a lot of the shiny AJAX stuff people have come to expect, and it makes setting basic things up ridiculously easy, but it's also got a solid core foundation for database stuff. It's a pretty spiffy framework.
(Disclaimer: I work for Best Practical Solutions, the company that started Jifty.)
Seaside is technically superior, it uses continuations to mantain state and this make it really transparent...
If you want a continuations-based open-source Web framework built on top of a stable, popular, well-tested language, you might check out Jifty, a Perl Web framework. Wait a second, you say -- Perl doesn't have continuations! This is true. Perl doesn't have continuations. Jifty does. It's only a "developer release" right now, but it's surprisingly useable all the same.
(Disclaimer: I work for Best Practical Solutions, the company behind Jifty. Yeah, yeah, shameless self-promotion and all that. It's a spiffy framework, and it's open-source.)
Well, given the kind of movies the Brattle is showing (esp. the historical movies), that kind of environment is exactly the "big screen" they were intended to be shown on. Most movies of that era had stereo sound at best, and were shown in theaters converted from other uses. It may not be comparable to our modern idea of the "big screen," with Dolby 7.1 surround sound and a 20-foot high screen, but it's very much the way people used to experience the movies.
The Complete Guide to the Publishing World, by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
You have to scroll down a bit, and there's a lot there to read, but believe me, it's worth it. Teresa knows what she's talking about.
The point still stands. To use a BBS you needed a terminal program, which you had to get off a (drumroll please) *floppy* *disk*... and to use AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy, GEnie, the Microsoft Network, eWorld, or any other online service, you had to get their proprietary client off a *floppy* *disk*.
;)
Your computer didn't learn about how to use its modem all by itself, now did it? Somewhere, somehow, there was a floppy disk involved.
(Ah, how fondly I recall the days of ordering groceries over Prodigy... Don'tcha just love geek pissing contests?
Does the info about people who complain about a movie ever make it back to those who make it?
:)
If one person walks out? Not normally. It would take a *lot* of walk-outs for us to mention something to the booking people, and it might or might not get from them to the studios.
Otherwise, the biggest way the studios know what people think of a movie is the box-office numbers. Movies rely a lot on "viral marketing" -- that is, people saying, "oh yeah, The Village was really good!" Sure, you'll get a bunch of people who come on opening day without relying on that kind of feedback, but whether the movie performs well in the long run is really dependent on what people thought of it. If a movie is bad, you can almost always see it in the numbers, and if the people who book movies for our chain start to see a pattern (eg. Jackie Chan movies tank, or nobody watches horror flicks) we won't get them any more. If *enough* theaters don't want them, the studios will move on to more profitable movies (at least in theory). Money speaks louder than words, for better or worse.
I was thinking more about DVDs than theaters, but I did mention it, so I apologize if my post was disheartening to the theaters that understand the value of good service.
I wasn't offended -- I just wanted to mention that the refund policy depends on the theater. You've got a point, though, that I had never thought of before. You have a reasonable expectation that, if you buy a toaster, it will toast bread; you *aren't* necessarily able to expect that if you buy entertainment, it will entertain you. Some of that is endemic (Sturgeon's Law and all), but some of it is how the studios and theaters, especially the big chains, do business. From the perspective of this small-chain popcorn-slinger, it's always nice to exceed expecations.
Need TCP/IP? Download Trumpet Winsock.
I used Trumpet Winsock back in the day, and lemme tell you, it would have been a little hard to download Trumpet Winsock without... well, having Trumpet Winsock. Seeing as you wouldn't have a TCP/IP stack to do the downloading with, y'know? None of this fancy "built into the operating system" shit, nosirree. If we wanted Trumpet Winsock, we had to get it on a *floppy*, and not one o' them newfangled 3.5 in. floppies-that-don't-flop, either. We used real 5.25 in. floppies, and we liked 'em!
Trumpet Winsock, let me tell you, we thought that was the best thing since striped suspenders. (sniff) I'll never forget the day I threw out the Procomm Plus disks...
If the industry wants the data for itself, I suspect the results will be relatively accurate. If the industry wants the data so it can persuade others, the results will be highly questionable.
In theory, at least, you don't want your studies lying to you -- lying to the public, or Congress, or some other impressionable body is another matter.
At the theater I work at, we're willing to give somebody a pass for a free movie if they come out and tell us the movie sucks. We've actually told people flat-out that a certain movie was terrible so they wouldn't waste their money on it. (My boss claimed it was the worst movie he had seen the whole year, although he admitted he hadn't seen _Gigli_ to compare it to.)
We're at least *trying* to make it fair for our customers.
b) Somebody strip out or rewrite all parts of the kernel copyrighted by people who objected to the license change, which in the end would probably amount to an effective rewrite of the whole thing.
And if you're going to rewrite the Linux kernel under the BSD license, you might as well look into any one of the several already-mature, BSD-licensed operating systems that exist. Honestly, there's no need to relicense Linux, unless you're concerned about buzzword-compatability issues. Why reinvent *BSD?
Uhh... yeah, I think that's the point. Do you have iptables (the Linux firewall) on your Linux box? Does it come with RedHat, or Debian, or Mandrake?
The answer is *yes*, unless you *specifically* disable it. Not only that, it's configured to be relatively secure by default. And you'll never even know you have it unless you go looking for it, because it doesn't annoy you with pop-ups "requesting permission," it just silently and effectively protects your computer.
I'll second (third?) that -- my copy of K&R almost single-handedly taught me C, and it, like yours, sits within arm's reach. As the authors say in the preface, "We have tried to retain the brevity of the first edition. C is not a big language, and it is not well served by a big book." Truer words...
It isn't the be-all and end-all, of course -- I've supplemented my education with a few online tutorials, chatting with people who are more familiar with C, and reading the copious amounts of open source code available. I've never found those "tutorial" books to be worth the money, because I don't have the patience to work through all their stupid examples. Even with K&R I jumped around a lot, pulling it out as needed when I ran into a problem on my own projects. It hasn't made me a super-coder, but it has sure saved my butt a couple of times. When I buy computer books, I'm looking for utility as a *reference*, not shelf-space filler.
You can just unplug the wire going to the LEDs on the front -- IIRC, it's the connector that only has two wires. (On mine, at least, I think it was labeled 'LED'.) I've been running without the LEDs for a while now because I leave my computer on at night and found it virtually impossible to sleep with those two blue eyes staring at me out of the darkeness. I've half thought about wiring that connector through a switch and mounting it on the front of the case, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
That said, I really, really like the Antec case -- it's quiet *and* cool (my Athlon64 3200+ runs between 32-35 C under normal (pretty low) load, and 45C when I'm running SETI@Home). Now I just need to do something about the fan on that blasted graphics card...
Okay, bub, I don't care what Bush knew or didn't know about the torture of the Iraqi prisoners. When a president asks his people to find some legal loophole to justify using torture on the prisoners he's already declared "enemy combatants" and stripped of rights held dear by Americans, I don't think it matters.
The problem with this view is that it presumes that politics is all about making the right choices for *you*. In fact, that's not it at all -- the point of politics is about making the right choices for the *country*. Here's an example:
(okay, got my asbestos suit on)
I'm a Kerry supporter, but I tend to think he doesn't go far enough in his views. For instance, he's not in favor of gay marriage, although he is in favor of civil unions. (Bush, for the record, is in favor of a Constitutional amendment banning *both*, so the original submitter of this story has it wrong). I see absolutely no reason why gays shouldn't be allowed to get married, and so I'd really like Kerry a lot more if he fully supported the right of gays to get married.
Why, then, aren't I supporting someone who *would* fully support that right? Because the question isn't who best represents my views, the question is who would be the best for the majority of the people. *My* personal views are never, ever going to be perfectly represented by the person running the country unless *I* run for president. Since that will never happen, I have to choose the person who I think best approximates my views and has the best chance of effecting positive change. I have no problem with that, because the question is not, and never has been, which candidate is best for *me*. The question is which candidate is best for the *country*.
You're welcome.
:)
Oh, how I wish I could get one of those blankets -- but, of course, by the time Fred mentioned that the blankets wouldn't be in the new store, they were already out of stock at ThinkGeek.
WE NEED BLANKETS! YOU HEAR ME, FRED? MEGATOKYO READERS EVERYWHERE DEMAND BLANKETS!!!
Megatokyo? Do you have one of those blue 'Miho in the snow' blankets you'd like to sell to me? (I'm in .au)
In regards to your sig -- IIRC, the Kimiko blanket was blue, and the Miho blanket was black. (See the old store at the Internet Archive.) I'm afraid I don't have one, although I wish I did. Here's hoping Fred will add them to the new store soon!
AAAAAAAAAARGH!!! bastards...
Ehrm. Actually, I just bought an Apple iBook, and it came with Internet Explorer preinstalled. I'm liking Safari right now, so I'll probably get around to deleting it eventually, but IE is available for Mac.
Actually, if you look closely you'll see that "Other" (presumably including Opera) and Mozilla have been growing in use slowly but steadily for almost a year now, perhaps people switching from older versions of IE to alternative browsers instead of IE 6. As you mentioned, IE 6.0 *does* shows a decline in June. It's really too early to draw any conclusions, given the lack of data, but the Google Zeitgeist charts do suggest that there *may* be a migration in the offing.
That said, I can say anecdotally I know of at least one user who switched to Firefox because of the latest IE exploit news -- she was recently bemoaning to me the fact that she couldn't install it on her work computer too, because she does a lot of purchasing, and tabbed browsing makes price comparison a lot easier. One user at a time...
Winnie the Pooh is Disney's *solely*??? Dear God, I hope not. They've done enough to desecrate the corpse of A.A. Milne.
The original Pooh books are *good* and they're *funny* -- in fact, they're everything that Disney's bastardized version isn't.
Actually, if I understand correctly what Prof. Lessig was trying to say, the quote wasn't
"Here are all the Disney movies based of public domain stories..."
it was
"Here are all the Disney movies based off of *somebody* *else's* story..."
That is, Disney didn't employ a writer to come up with an original screenplay for their new movie, they hired someone to adapt somebody else's property into a screenplay for their movie (ie. the difference between Disney and Pixar). In Prof. Lessig's book, these were all instances of Disney taking cultural icons, whether or not they were in copyright, and "remixing" them into something new and different. He wasn't so much making the case that Disney was hypocritical in their actions, as making the case that "remixing" is a vital part of how we experience our culture.
There's already the .example TLD (RFC 2606), plus example.com, example.org, and example.net.
It would be nice to have something a little shorter, but no matter what you do, it's going to seem a little odd to people reading the book or watching the movie or TV show, because they've never seen a domain name ending in 'example' in real life. Every time one of those 555 numbers comes on I wince a little, because I've never used one and it doesn't help my suspension of disbelief any.
OTOH, using an unroutable phone number or URL is better than deluging some poor person with prank calls or unwanted Web site attention. You would think Penguin Putnam would have *wanted* to use the title of the book to promote their website for it. Dumbasses.