I have been coding webpages since March of 1995. I have learned HTML 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and now CSS1.0 and CSS2.0 and... As exciting as all that can be sometimes I just want to post my thoughts and be done with it. There's nothing wrong with efficiency. Blog sites can be great time savers. I used to have a web journal, wrote entries in my Palm Pilot, hotsynced the data to my Mac and ftp'd it onto my server using Applescript - all the while snorting at all the newbies using blog sites. Then I decided I valued my time better. I opened up a blog in January of this year (http://thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com/ and have had a blast. I post once a week.
Now, my blog isn't going to be popular. I cover mostly neurological problems and how to deal with them. But I've had some fascinating discussions with complete strangers because of my blog and I'll continue blogging into the forseeable future. Because of Google many people find my blog despite it being a small fish in a big and noisy blog sea. Google is a great tool and I'm glad they index blogs. Now, I'm as upset as the next guy about spam blogs, but "crap" blogs are relative. You may read my blog and find it lame. Others, including myself, would disagree with you. But if you don't find the subjects I write about interesting or valuable, so what?
Slashdot cracks me up sometimes. What is it to some of you guys if somebody wants to blather on and on about their breakfast or their boyfriend? If the site is a bore move on, but you could tell that from the Google search, right? Seriously, I haven't found many blogs that come up in my searches that aren't related to my searches. Not as much as parked domain sites and adsense whores at any rate.
Not all bloggers can't be bothered to code a web page. In fact, because I do code I'm able to personalize my site. Every month I tinker and tinker with the code when I find some time. Blogging may be an exercize in vanity, but then so isn't hosting your own website. In fact, the whole web publishing scene is about personal expression, and what's wrong with that?
I respectfully disagree. How did you hear about Delicious Library? It created buzz. Even though there had been how many countless "categorize your comics/videos/games/books into a searchable database" apps out there Delicious Library still turned heads. Same with the other apps. Word of mouth and positive reviews push certain apps to the top. The only thing that I think gigabytes of dreck will do for the Mac software community is make it harder for the cream to rise to the top, but the cream will still rise.
A lot of people are bemoaning the fact that with apps being able to run natively in Windows mode on the Macintels that nobody will bother porting their apps over to OSX. Although there will be some lazy/cheap idiot developers out there who will take this approach native OSX apps will get the buzz and the recommendations and ultimately the sales.
Although I am very excited about running my favorite PC fractal apps in Windows mode on Macintels (http://www.cootey.com/fractals/) I still look forward to the day that a Mac developer brings a fractal app to OS X that outperforms UltraFractal (and my UI favorite Fractal eXtreme) by taking advantage of Quartz Extreme, etc. (Yeah, I envision something called iFrac - Photoshop crossed with iMovie). If a better OS X fractal app appeared, I would switch to it even though I've been using the PC ones for years.
That's my optimistic outtake on it anyway. I think apps will be rewarded with positive press if they come out native and Mac users will push those apps over PC ones. But we'll still have access to the PC ones if they don't have correlations on the Mac side. I see it as win-win.
Thanks for the reply. To some, suggesting that medication isn't the best solution for treating neurological disabilities is like suggesting that computers aren't the best solution for adding sums. To extend the analogy I think that computers are great at what they do, but sometimes a simple old calculator is better for the job if all you want to do is add. Meds have their place, but the industry over-relies on them.
Be sure to leave comments when you visit. That way I know *somebody* is reading the blog. lol
This dialog we are having now is exactly why I don't believe that blogs are falling, despite all the excessive hype, commercialization, and peeing in the pool that is happening in the blogosphere currently. If blogs are about personal expression and connecting with new individuals with shared thoughts and interests, then blogs still have a vital place in the fast paced online world of today.
I've already written too much in this forum today, but I did want to add that Google, page ranking, and SEOs have had an affect on blogging as well. I don't mind teenage angst blogs. They don't come up in my searches and if they do I can ignore them easily. MLM and adblogs are easy to spot as well. But nothing is more irritating than lousy SEO spam blogs coming up at the top of a Google search when the blog offers nothing to the subject except keywords. When Google began ranking blogs higher (perhaps around the same time they bought blogger.com?), they made blogs attractive to SEOs as methods of increasing page ranking for their clients. Google adsense (which I use on my blog, I should disclose), also added into the mix creating a market for reams of digital crap whose sole purpose is to keyword web patrons to death with pages filled with text ads and no relevant content. Look into the fiasco the WordPress guys ran into last March (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050331-475 9.html)
How is this all Google's fault? As I see it, they have a responsibility to guarantee the relevance of their service by filtering out abuses in a timely manner. They don't have to do this, of course, and nobody forces me to use their service, but Google cannot choose the consequences of their actions. What Google deems as important affects our daily web experience. Like it or not, they shape the Web. If Google allows sites to poison Google's search results then Google not only dilutes the value of their search and blog services, but inconveniences the web as a whole.
Rant all you want about the late comers to blogging ruining things for the "real" bloggers, but some girl's rant about her girlfriend's lipstick isn't going to spoil your internet experience or ruin blogs for you. I read blogs based on content. I'm sure you do as well. So I avoid those blogs like the plague. But when blogs are being used to promote Google's page ranking and Adsense revenues, thus making it harder for us to find legitimate content, then Google has a responsibility to separate the wheat from the chaffe and restore some much needed enlightenment to the blogging world.
Excellent point, though I bristle at the "American" comment. I've read some very pointed rants about the death of blogging from non-Americans as well (http://thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com/2005/06/blo gging-part-one-has-blogging.html). Bloggers world over started because they found a new vehicle for self expression. Then some of them made money at it and some of them became popular and culturally relevant, some achieved both at the same time. Then the late-comers and carpet baggers came in to get in on the action/fun and now there is pandemonium. It's like the hippies got together, started a movement, got frustrated when their movement was reduced to cheesy fashion statements, then wondered why they ever wore beads in the first place.
Blogging hasn't stopped being relevant, but at the moment the signal to noise ratio is abominable. It's hard to get noticed. The greats get greater and the other savvy, pithy, voices scrabble for mindshare amidst teenage angst blogs, spammer blogs, and MLM blogs. Soon there will be another trend that will take the public and investment world by storm (podcasting and vlogging next year for instance) and the useless blogs will be abandoned. Then the signal to noise ratio will become a bit more tolerable. That's how I see it, at any rate.
But there does seem to be a collective sigh out there in the blogosphere from all the noise coming in. Just the other day I had hits galore on my site from people coming off some spammer's blogs. Networkwebsites.com created a large number of blogs on Sunday in the following format: Everything you want to know about LINK. Everything you want to know about LINK... All the way down the page. All their blogs looked like that with names like bobthebuilder123 and find260info. Obvious SEO websites. What a mess. This Google whoring is another problem affecting the blogging community.
That is not always the case. I have an interesting blog, IMO, but how many people does it appeal to? I cover neurological disabilities like AD/HD, Depression, and tic disorders and how to cope with them WITHOUT medication - and always with a bit of humor mixed in. Mine is a lone voice out there. I've been blogging for six months and I have 4 readers subscribed to my feed. Four. I've been searching for just as long for blogs like mine and can't find them so one would think that I would corner the market. And I do to the extent that the market allows. People find my site mostly by searching for info on the topics I mentioned. But how many people are looking for that info?
Wil Wheaton says he has a cold and 140 people wish him well. I write an essay on blogging or psychotropic meds and they are met with silence. That may sound like sour grapes, but the raw fact is that I'm not a celebrity. He is. Getting heard above the din of thousands of blogs is tough to do without money, connections, or fame. My site is simply lost in the confusion no matter how well written I think it is. Check out this excellent news story about the problem: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,69 03,972764,00.html. Freedom of speech is nothing more than an exercize in vain futility if nobody is there to hear what you have to say.
So here's a shamless plug. Read my blog http://thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com/ and let me know there whether I'm wasting a bit of your life by speaking or not. Heaven knows I could use the activity in the comments section.;)
A lot of posts here applaud Intel for offering a viable alternative to Apple's Mac Mini, but if I remember correctly a large percentage of the "Mac Mini's no big deal" posts on/. previously were that small PCs were already available. If that was the case before then this Intel announcement is "no big deal" as well. Besides, this is only a prototype, not an actual shipping product.
The main reason people were excited about the Mac Mini was that you got a small form factor, Apple quality and style, and OS X for $499. Frankly, it's not hard to beat the Mac Mini on style. It IS a box after all. But the included software and OS X at an entry price was what the Mac Mini was all about anyway. According to the article:
"The Pentium M and Windows XP are pretty expensive components. It would be hard to hit the Mac mini's $499 price point with that combo," wrote IDC's Kay.
At $499 minus $129 for OS X and another $79 for iLife (Apple's digital software suite), the Mac Mini's hardware is only $291. I suspect, instead, that Apple is practically giving their software away instead of losing money on hardware. It's not impossible to compete with them on pricepoint there, but not profitable unless the software bundled with the AOpen machine is compelling enough to offset the box's non-upgradability - something that the Mac Mini takes a lot of flak for.
Podcasts are a mess right now. Even if you find a really good podcast there is no way to promote them short of word of mouth. This presents another problem, podcasts are too complicated. You can't email your buddy and mine, Joe Sixpack, a link to an RSS feed and expect them to know what to do with it. People struggle to wrap their heads around web pages, never mind RSS feeds and MP3 files.
You've nailed the two largest problems with podcasts right on the head. Many people will tell you to submit your podcast to a podcast listing, but how does somebody find your podcast then? Unless they are specifically looking for you, or the type of content you provide, they won't find you. I know somebody who listed his podcast on half a dozen sites and saw only a slight increase in subscriptions and no increase in hits to his website. Word of mouth is the only way to get others to hear your podcast. And viral marketing is most often a very slow process.
The other problem is that podcasts tend to be performance art or geeky. Their audience is already technologically savvy, but the mainstream podcasts won't make inroads until the mainstream audience can easily access the content. Telling somebody to use a podcast aggregator to subscribe to a RSS XML feed is tantamount to speaking a foreign language. Look at the word "aggregator"!! That's not something Joe Sixpack is even going to be able to pronounce, nevermind understand. LOL
I hope Apple does this right. I haven't been pleased with their implementation of internet radio. It fell short of the mark. Their index is not updated enough or expansive enough. They also haven't emphasized enough that MP3 streams are playable on itunes. Visit any mainstream site that offers a radio feed and you will find Real streams, WMP streams, MP3 streams and sometimes Quicktime streams. iTunes is never mentioned on the page as being able to play MP3 streams. I don't think most people know that it can. If Apple implements podcast support the way they implemented internet radio support only the Mac geeks will be excited about it.
I recently had a slightly difficult time getting the webmaster of a popular Country artist site to understand that linking a MP3 to a website doesn't make that MP3 a podcast. He was initially insulted by my suggestion he include an RSS feed to make the file a true podcast. Fortunately, there were plenty of links at http://www.ipodder.org/ to share with him that showed him how RSS is the magic ingredient. It wasn't that he couldn't roll RSS code; he was a competent coder. He, like most of the public out there, was simply misinformed. Let's face it, RSS is wicked geeky and trying to explain it to somebody is often an exercize in futility (See the end of Josh's vlog on the subject - lesson #4). After all, isn't Really Simple Syndication such an obvious sort of technology that you wonder why somebody had to invent it in the first place?;)
But if you want to see how completely the public misunderstands just what the heck a podcast is check out Bill Gate's first podcast as an example. The MEDC site refers to it as a "Video Podcast", but on film they just call it a podcast, so if you are new to podcasting then this is what you are going to think a podcast is: a video broadcast via WMV. Obviously there's a slight problem here in that podcasts are audio enclosures via RSS and vlogs are video enclosures via RSS. One could argue that this is a simply an exercize in semantics, or one could argure that Bill & Co. are once again trying to embrace and extend a technology/term for their own purposes. But the main result is that the common guy isn't going to have a clue about any of this. He only knows what he is told.
So, IMO, iTunes adding podcast support is a really good thing. This will help solidify the meaning of the word "podcast" before more confusion sets in. (Of course, if Steve & Co. are also embracing and extending...)
As for podcasts being "Wayne's World for radio", sometimes that is the case. If I have to download another walk to the (backyard shed, park, bigwig meeting, etc) soundseeing tour on Daily Source Code I will scream, or just not subscribe anymore. Vlogs can be just as bad. I've seen some kid animate her Barbies in a sordid romance, a guy video tape his trip home from work, and somebody wash their dirty sink to music. Not winning content by any means. However, like anything out there, there is crap and there is gold. And then there's the whole realm inbetween. YMMV, but podcasts are turning out to be an alternative form of entertainment. Don't write them off before trying out some of the more interesting ones. I wouldn't recommend sampling them at random if you don't have the time or patience to filter out the dross.
I know that tech podcasts get covered here a lot. Maybe some of you might enjoy these music podcasts:
Well, Lucas could always make his OWN Phantom Edit and remove Jar Jar completely and claim that was how he had originally intended it but was limited by the technology.;)
As an aside, it is IMPOSSIBLE to find the Phantom Edit anywhere. I spent an hour searching every torrent site I could find with no results. I found Phantom of the Opera, Star Wars Ep. III, the original Phantom Menace, and Elvis specials (not sure how those came up with "phantom edit" as the search string. lol), but no Phantom Edit. Google only shared with me year old links and news articles dating back to 2001 when the Phantom Edit originally shook things up. I can assume one of two things: That Lucas has dutifully removed the Phantom Edit from online existance or that nobody cared enough about even an edited version of Episode I to bother keeping it around.
What's odd to me is that the last paragraph you quoted wasn't in the article when I read it the first time from the other link supplied above. I must have missed that, too.;) However, the USAToday data you list isn't the same as the data listed in the MSNBC article I linked to. I didn't miss that discrepency.
And thus we see that the media can't even get facts from a survey the same and so I believe polls aren't worth the paper they're printed on (especially if the paper is made of electrons) when the numbers differ from source to source. That's what makes me so skeptical. In addition, surveys often have an objective and the results are skewed to support that objective.
Take the recent differences between the gay and straight sense of smell highly covered recently. From the article:
Wysocki's team at the Monell Chemical Senses Center studied the response of 82 heterosexual and homosexual men and heterosexual and homosexual women to the odors of underarm sweat collected from 24 donors of varied gender and sexual orientation.
So from the sample of 24 armpits we have a study that purports to define the differences between all sexual orientations by using only 82 humans to get the results. They may be on to something, but that sort of sampling is simply too small. So the results are suspect.
This is why I didn't just accept the numbers the first poster tossed out. Even if he had quoted an article as you two have done I still would have been suspicious, but more inclined to take the numbers seriously.
Anyway, thanks for your post. I appreciate the links and quotes.
Citing a Google search isn't the same thing as citing a reference, but kudos to you for listing the actual reference. Thanks. Since this happened in January it would have been nice if the original poster had done the same.
Still, after reading the article I still don't know who conducted the poll, or how they worded the questions. I still don't know how wide their sampling of students was. One school district? One town? One state? A better article that answers those questions can be found here
As large as the survey as being touted, it still sounds like it was done locally in Conn. So one could say that Conn. or New England students have a serious lack of understanding of the First Amendment, but compared to nationwide it is still a small sample. That's the inherent problem with surveys. I remain skeptical. The students I know aren't that ignorant. YMMV
Great username, btw. Must be popular with the chicks...;)
Until last Fall, I used my PDAs for everything. I have been in love with the silly things since the early Palm days. I find my current Zire72 indispensible.
However, last Fall I purchased an iBook. It was my first laptop. My PDA use has changed. I no longer develop story ideas on my PDA. I no longer think I need WiFi on a PDA. Bluetooth hotsyncing has not proven to be as useful as I had hoped (it's so dang slow. Easier to just go to the computer and hotsync that way. Besides, my bedroom is too far away from the desktop to reach via Bluetooth) Because I sync my iBook and PDA addressbooks I often refer to my iBook first instead of the PDA when I need a number. I don't jot down as many notes as I used to on my PDA. I have stickies for that on my iBook.
What I do use my PDA for is voice memos and alarms. Both of those features are vital to my daily productivity, especially the alarms. I have ADD, so if that stupid PDA didn't beep at me all day long, I'd never remember what I was supposed to be doing! LOL My iBook doesn't turn back on and let me know when I have an appointment. However, my iPod *does* now that I sync my calendar with it. I sync my address book with my iPod as well, but don't use it to access people's data very often.
If there was a lores screen built into the lid of my iBook that stayed on when the iBook was asleep that gave me access to voice memos and calendars (basically a PDA that hotsynced with the iBook data whenever the iBook was running) I wouldn't need my PDA much anymore. But that sounds impractical.
I don't envy Palm's position. PDAs are still very useful to those that live and breath by them, but so much of the PDAs old functionality is being replaced with other devices like phones, laptops, iPods, etc. With the PDA market shrinking I worry what I'll do when businesses like Palm decide they can't afford to make PDAs anymore.
BTW, using marketspeak to call the Lifedrive a "Mobile Manager" instead of a PDA is just stupid. I am entirely skeptical that anybody will honestly think the Lifedrive isn't a PDA just because it plays movies and such. Sony's Clié's offered all these same features (minus the hard drive but with decent camera lenses) for years before Palm started updating their product line. At least the Lifedrive is priced more reasonably than the Clié's...
Who are you quoting? And if you can name a source for your "statistic" who funded the poll and for what purpose? I am skeptical of most polls because their objective isn't always stated up front, their samples of the population are too small, and the questions can sometimes be misleading.
For example, how often have we laughed here when one study (funded by the RIAA) proclaims filesharing down and then another study claims that filesharing is up? Who do you believe? Often, people side with the poll numbers that back up their own opinion and ignore the other poll numbers that are contrary. That's been my experience, anyway...
Are you serious!?! Where is your sense of humor? Don't you realize the Register article is the satire!?! For crying out loud! They are mocking Huffinton's entire website by stating that Rosen's article is so obviously funny it must be written as a joke.
Rosen's article is so obviously a commercial for Microsoft's DRM that I couldn't bring myself to read anything else Huffinton's site offered. More shills no doubt.
Try rereading the Reg's article with a tongue planted firmly in your cheek. (^_-)
Convenience and ease of use are two large factors that account for why I use my Macs more than my PC. So I agree with you that the "open safe files" feature is very handy. Usually, this merely opens up files that I clicked on to download, be they zipped archives, PDFs, or disk images. But since Safari can be forced to autodownload files via the meta refresh tag and then autoinstall them if they are dashboard widgets, this convenient feature just became a liability.
Of course, if Apple plugs up the holes "open safe files" can return to its useful state. I think this is the first time we've seen a security hole like this in OSX. It's Windowsian in its scale and incompetence... I am curious to see how quickly Apple fixes this breech.
Fascinating article. I installed zaptastic_evil and was amused by it. Very annoying indeed. Widgets simply should not do this.
Just a few points of interest.
1) The widget may automatically download and get copied into the widgets folder, but it is not automatically installed onto the active dashboard. Therefor the user would have to manually click on it. Without knowing the widget is there, the user may not ever notice it. Of course, this is still a security risk, but this isn't the best way to propogate malware.
2) Widgets can be deleted manually as pointed out in the article by going into ~/Library/Widgets and removing the unwanted widget
3) The Dashboard can be reinitialized by killing the Dock. Those not familiar with terminal can just fire up Activity Monitor and kill the Dock there. The Dock immediately relaunches, then Dashboard reinitializes when it is launched again and the offending widgets are gone.
4) Apple should allow us to delete widgets from the dashboard, but the behavior when clicking and dragging a widget off of the Dashboard installs the widget instead of bringing up the delete puff of smoke. This behavior is at odds with every other taskbar/dock/menubar in OS X. I would recommend Apple change this.
5) We ARE dealing with Dashboard 1.0 so there are bound to be bugs needing to be squashed. Personally, I enjoy Dashboard but find it difficult to manage when there are too many widgets deployed. I find myself wishing for Exposé for Dashboard! LOL I also wish that widgets would reinitialize without force quiting the dock and that the dashboard would be a bit more dynamic. Sometimes deleted widgets take a while to disappear off the dashboard as well as newly installed widgets. I look forward to the upcoming 10.4.1 release.
This is no different than Microsoft's responses, or any software vendor for that matter, PC or otherwise. So don't think Apple has cornered the market on this sort of mentality. This is standard business procedure for most of the software companies I've dealt with. Palm doesn't even offer the ability to upgrade the OS on your PDA and expects you to buy an entirely new PDA to get bug fixes. If I were you I'd try to escalate that issue and get a manager involved. That worker bee you dealt with was a bit clueless. Still, I think you are right in that Apple the corporation may not fully understand yet what it takes to produce Enterprise software. They've only been targeting Enterprise for a few years now...
Something did occur to me when I read your comments, though. I wonder how much of IT complaints are centered around not being used to the Apple way of doing things? I can't speak for you, but a lot of IT guys I know are trained/conditioned to do things the PC way and get frustrated with Apple not because Apple's solutions don't work but because Apple's solutions aren't familiar to them. Maybe there is a cultural difference involved with their frustration? I hear them complain about Apple as if the Wintel solution has never been without it's bugs, glitches, or pains.
Apple's SMB implementation hasn't been the smoothest process. Lot's of weird glitches and performance differences depending on which flavor of Windows you are using. I can see why you'd be frustrated to have to pay for upgrades just to get a fix. I just wish that software companies as a whole didn't do that to their customers.
You're sipping a bit from the liberal Kool-Aid(TM) if you think that Fox News is the only organization that does this.
Try cynicism instead of political idealism - you get to be upset with more people that way!;)
Not to be cynical.. well, OK, forget that. I'm a full blown cynic. Let me start again...
How is the "entire American government" different from any other government on Earth? There is no utopia. Money makes the world go round...so make the best of where you are. American government has a few strong points going for it. Not all decisions benefit corporate America. Take the "do not call" list as one example. It was put into affect despite corporate resistance and still has supporters in the government despite further attacks on it.
So write your congresscritter and local news agencies. Spread the word about the evils of the broadcast flag. It's a lot of work but we can't let apathy get us down. Cynically speaking, if we don't speak up they'll assume we agree with whatever they decide is best for us.
The pre release review from Ain't It Cool for Episode II was filled with just enough concern to make him sound cautious, and therefor non-objective, but then Harry threw caution to the wind and began to gush. Then I lost all respect for him when he dropped these mature and non-objective statements:
When I saw this, I screamed like a little girl.
And my favorite...
I jumped about 12 feet up in the air and squealed.
Ah, yes. Ep. II was just sooo exciting. We had the Sound of Music picnic, the little orphan Ani/Amidala "feel my pain. I just slaughtered an entire village. - ooh, you poor dear" scene, and the bouncing, green CG Yoda fighting machine scene. Why do cool stuff with the force like hold spaceships in place since size doesn't matter when you can mix it up with the boys and let the bad guy get away? No, none of the glowing pre-reviews held up once the movie came out. Everyone still felt raped, unless they were fanboys...
Slashdot Mirror
I have been coding webpages since March of 1995. I have learned HTML 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and now CSS1.0 and CSS2.0 and... As exciting as all that can be sometimes I just want to post my thoughts and be done with it. There's nothing wrong with efficiency. Blog sites can be great time savers. I used to have a web journal, wrote entries in my Palm Pilot, hotsynced the data to my Mac and ftp'd it onto my server using Applescript - all the while snorting at all the newbies using blog sites. Then I decided I valued my time better. I opened up a blog in January of this year (http://thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com/ and have had a blast. I post once a week.
Now, my blog isn't going to be popular. I cover mostly neurological problems and how to deal with them. But I've had some fascinating discussions with complete strangers because of my blog and I'll continue blogging into the forseeable future. Because of Google many people find my blog despite it being a small fish in a big and noisy blog sea. Google is a great tool and I'm glad they index blogs. Now, I'm as upset as the next guy about spam blogs, but "crap" blogs are relative. You may read my blog and find it lame. Others, including myself, would disagree with you. But if you don't find the subjects I write about interesting or valuable, so what?
Slashdot cracks me up sometimes. What is it to some of you guys if somebody wants to blather on and on about their breakfast or their boyfriend? If the site is a bore move on, but you could tell that from the Google search, right? Seriously, I haven't found many blogs that come up in my searches that aren't related to my searches. Not as much as parked domain sites and adsense whores at any rate.
Not all bloggers can't be bothered to code a web page. In fact, because I do code I'm able to personalize my site. Every month I tinker and tinker with the code when I find some time. Blogging may be an exercize in vanity, but then so isn't hosting your own website. In fact, the whole web publishing scene is about personal expression, and what's wrong with that?
Thanks! I hadn't peeked into Deep Links. Glad you brought to my attention.
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There was also a follow-up on Slashdot's front page: http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06
I respectfully disagree. How did you hear about Delicious Library? It created buzz. Even though there had been how many countless "categorize your comics/videos/games/books into a searchable database" apps out there Delicious Library still turned heads. Same with the other apps. Word of mouth and positive reviews push certain apps to the top. The only thing that I think gigabytes of dreck will do for the Mac software community is make it harder for the cream to rise to the top, but the cream will still rise.
A lot of people are bemoaning the fact that with apps being able to run natively in Windows mode on the Macintels that nobody will bother porting their apps over to OSX. Although there will be some lazy/cheap idiot developers out there who will take this approach native OSX apps will get the buzz and the recommendations and ultimately the sales.
Although I am very excited about running my favorite PC fractal apps in Windows mode on Macintels (http://www.cootey.com/fractals/) I still look forward to the day that a Mac developer brings a fractal app to OS X that outperforms UltraFractal (and my UI favorite Fractal eXtreme) by taking advantage of Quartz Extreme, etc. (Yeah, I envision something called iFrac - Photoshop crossed with iMovie). If a better OS X fractal app appeared, I would switch to it even though I've been using the PC ones for years.
That's my optimistic outtake on it anyway. I think apps will be rewarded with positive press if they come out native and Mac users will push those apps over PC ones. But we'll still have access to the PC ones if they don't have correlations on the Mac side. I see it as win-win.
Any chance we could get an update of this? I'd like to know how well the campaign is going or even if this rumor turned out to be true or not. There isn't updated info on EFF's site (https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?JServSession Idr005=h6syvpnbt1.app8a&page=UserAction&cmd=displa y&id=145)
Thanks for the reply. To some, suggesting that medication isn't the best solution for treating neurological disabilities is like suggesting that computers aren't the best solution for adding sums. To extend the analogy I think that computers are great at what they do, but sometimes a simple old calculator is better for the job if all you want to do is add. Meds have their place, but the industry over-relies on them.
Be sure to leave comments when you visit. That way I know *somebody* is reading the blog. lol
This dialog we are having now is exactly why I don't believe that blogs are falling, despite all the excessive hype, commercialization, and peeing in the pool that is happening in the blogosphere currently. If blogs are about personal expression and connecting with new individuals with shared thoughts and interests, then blogs still have a vital place in the fast paced online world of today.
I've already written too much in this forum today, but I did want to add that Google, page ranking, and SEOs have had an affect on blogging as well. I don't mind teenage angst blogs. They don't come up in my searches and if they do I can ignore them easily. MLM and adblogs are easy to spot as well. But nothing is more irritating than lousy SEO spam blogs coming up at the top of a Google search when the blog offers nothing to the subject except keywords. When Google began ranking blogs higher (perhaps around the same time they bought blogger.com?), they made blogs attractive to SEOs as methods of increasing page ranking for their clients. Google adsense (which I use on my blog, I should disclose), also added into the mix creating a market for reams of digital crap whose sole purpose is to keyword web patrons to death with pages filled with text ads and no relevant content. Look into the fiasco the WordPress guys ran into last March (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050331-475 9.html)
How is this all Google's fault? As I see it, they have a responsibility to guarantee the relevance of their service by filtering out abuses in a timely manner. They don't have to do this, of course, and nobody forces me to use their service, but Google cannot choose the consequences of their actions. What Google deems as important affects our daily web experience. Like it or not, they shape the Web. If Google allows sites to poison Google's search results then Google not only dilutes the value of their search and blog services, but inconveniences the web as a whole.
Rant all you want about the late comers to blogging ruining things for the "real" bloggers, but some girl's rant about her girlfriend's lipstick isn't going to spoil your internet experience or ruin blogs for you. I read blogs based on content. I'm sure you do as well. So I avoid those blogs like the plague. But when blogs are being used to promote Google's page ranking and Adsense revenues, thus making it harder for us to find legitimate content, then Google has a responsibility to separate the wheat from the chaffe and restore some much needed enlightenment to the blogging world.
Excellent point, though I bristle at the "American" comment. I've read some very pointed rants about the death of blogging from non-Americans as well (http://thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com/2005/06/blo gging-part-one-has-blogging.html). Bloggers world over started because they found a new vehicle for self expression. Then some of them made money at it and some of them became popular and culturally relevant, some achieved both at the same time. Then the late-comers and carpet baggers came in to get in on the action/fun and now there is pandemonium. It's like the hippies got together, started a movement, got frustrated when their movement was reduced to cheesy fashion statements, then wondered why they ever wore beads in the first place.
Blogging hasn't stopped being relevant, but at the moment the signal to noise ratio is abominable. It's hard to get noticed. The greats get greater and the other savvy, pithy, voices scrabble for mindshare amidst teenage angst blogs, spammer blogs, and MLM blogs. Soon there will be another trend that will take the public and investment world by storm (podcasting and vlogging next year for instance) and the useless blogs will be abandoned. Then the signal to noise ratio will become a bit more tolerable. That's how I see it, at any rate.
LOL Great headline. I just blogged about a blog that wondered if blogging had plateaud. I didn't agree with it. http://thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com/2005/06/blog ging-part-one-has-blogging.html
But there does seem to be a collective sigh out there in the blogosphere from all the noise coming in. Just the other day I had hits galore on my site from people coming off some spammer's blogs. Networkwebsites.com created a large number of blogs on Sunday in the following format: Everything you want to know about LINK. Everything you want to know about LINK... All the way down the page. All their blogs looked like that with names like bobthebuilder123 and find260info. Obvious SEO websites. What a mess. This Google whoring is another problem affecting the blogging community.
Ooh! Ooh! I should write a blog about it.
That is not always the case. I have an interesting blog, IMO, but how many people does it appeal to? I cover neurological disabilities like AD/HD, Depression, and tic disorders and how to cope with them WITHOUT medication - and always with a bit of humor mixed in. Mine is a lone voice out there. I've been blogging for six months and I have 4 readers subscribed to my feed. Four. I've been searching for just as long for blogs like mine and can't find them so one would think that I would corner the market. And I do to the extent that the market allows. People find my site mostly by searching for info on the topics I mentioned. But how many people are looking for that info?
9 03,972764,00.html. Freedom of speech is nothing more than an exercize in vain futility if nobody is there to hear what you have to say.
;)
Wil Wheaton says he has a cold and 140 people wish him well. I write an essay on blogging or psychotropic meds and they are met with silence. That may sound like sour grapes, but the raw fact is that I'm not a celebrity. He is. Getting heard above the din of thousands of blogs is tough to do without money, connections, or fame. My site is simply lost in the confusion no matter how well written I think it is. Check out this excellent news story about the problem: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6
So here's a shamless plug. Read my blog
http://thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com/ and let me know there whether I'm wasting a bit of your life by speaking or not. Heaven knows I could use the activity in the comments section.
A lot of posts here applaud Intel for offering a viable alternative to Apple's Mac Mini, but if I remember correctly a large percentage of the "Mac Mini's no big deal" posts on /. previously were that small PCs were already available. If that was the case before then this Intel announcement is "no big deal" as well. Besides, this is only a prototype, not an actual shipping product.
The main reason people were excited about the Mac Mini was that you got a small form factor, Apple quality and style, and OS X for $499. Frankly, it's not hard to beat the Mac Mini on style. It IS a box after all. But the included software and OS X at an entry price was what the Mac Mini was all about anyway. According to the article:
"The Pentium M and Windows XP are pretty expensive components. It would be hard to hit the Mac mini's $499 price point with that combo," wrote IDC's Kay.
At $499 minus $129 for OS X and another $79 for iLife (Apple's digital software suite), the Mac Mini's hardware is only $291. I suspect, instead, that Apple is practically giving their software away instead of losing money on hardware. It's not impossible to compete with them on pricepoint there, but not profitable unless the software bundled with the AOpen machine is compelling enough to offset the box's non-upgradability - something that the Mac Mini takes a lot of flak for.
You've nailed the two largest problems with podcasts right on the head. Many people will tell you to submit your podcast to a podcast listing, but how does somebody find your podcast then? Unless they are specifically looking for you, or the type of content you provide, they won't find you. I know somebody who listed his podcast on half a dozen sites and saw only a slight increase in subscriptions and no increase in hits to his website. Word of mouth is the only way to get others to hear your podcast. And viral marketing is most often a very slow process.
The other problem is that podcasts tend to be performance art or geeky. Their audience is already technologically savvy, but the mainstream podcasts won't make inroads until the mainstream audience can easily access the content. Telling somebody to use a podcast aggregator to subscribe to a RSS XML feed is tantamount to speaking a foreign language. Look at the word "aggregator"!! That's not something Joe Sixpack is even going to be able to pronounce, nevermind understand. LOL
I hope Apple does this right. I haven't been pleased with their implementation of internet radio. It fell short of the mark. Their index is not updated enough or expansive enough. They also haven't emphasized enough that MP3 streams are playable on itunes. Visit any mainstream site that offers a radio feed and you will find Real streams, WMP streams, MP3 streams and sometimes Quicktime streams. iTunes is never mentioned on the page as being able to play MP3 streams. I don't think most people know that it can. If Apple implements podcast support the way they implemented internet radio support only the Mac geeks will be excited about it.
But if you want to see how completely the public misunderstands just what the heck a podcast is check out Bill Gate's first podcast as an example. The MEDC site refers to it as a "Video Podcast", but on film they just call it a podcast, so if you are new to podcasting then this is what you are going to think a podcast is: a video broadcast via WMV. Obviously there's a slight problem here in that podcasts are audio enclosures via RSS and vlogs are video enclosures via RSS. One could argue that this is a simply an exercize in semantics, or one could argure that Bill & Co. are once again trying to embrace and extend a technology/term for their own purposes. But the main result is that the common guy isn't going to have a clue about any of this. He only knows what he is told.
So, IMO, iTunes adding podcast support is a really good thing. This will help solidify the meaning of the word "podcast" before more confusion sets in. (Of course, if Steve & Co. are also embracing and extending...)
I know that tech podcasts get covered here a lot. Maybe some of you might enjoy these music podcasts:
As an aside, it is IMPOSSIBLE to find the Phantom Edit anywhere. I spent an hour searching every torrent site I could find with no results. I found Phantom of the Opera, Star Wars Ep. III, the original Phantom Menace, and Elvis specials (not sure how those came up with "phantom edit" as the search string. lol), but no Phantom Edit. Google only shared with me year old links and news articles dating back to 2001 when the Phantom Edit originally shook things up. I can assume one of two things: That Lucas has dutifully removed the Phantom Edit from online existance or that nobody cared enough about even an edited version of Episode I to bother keeping it around.
What's odd to me is that the last paragraph you quoted wasn't in the article when I read it the first time from the other link supplied above. I must have missed that, too. ;) However, the USAToday data you list isn't the same as the data listed in the MSNBC article I linked to. I didn't miss that discrepency.
And thus we see that the media can't even get facts from a survey the same and so I believe polls aren't worth the paper they're printed on (especially if the paper is made of electrons) when the numbers differ from source to source. That's what makes me so skeptical. In addition, surveys often have an objective and the results are skewed to support that objective.
Take the recent differences between the gay and straight sense of smell highly covered recently. From the article:
So from the sample of 24 armpits we have a study that purports to define the differences between all sexual orientations by using only 82 humans to get the results. They may be on to something, but that sort of sampling is simply too small. So the results are suspect.This is why I didn't just accept the numbers the first poster tossed out. Even if he had quoted an article as you two have done I still would have been suspicious, but more inclined to take the numbers seriously.
Anyway, thanks for your post. I appreciate the links and quotes.
Still, after reading the article I still don't know who conducted the poll, or how they worded the questions. I still don't know how wide their sampling of students was. One school district? One town? One state? A better article that answers those questions can be found here
As large as the survey as being touted, it still sounds like it was done locally in Conn. So one could say that Conn. or New England students have a serious lack of understanding of the First Amendment, but compared to nationwide it is still a small sample. That's the inherent problem with surveys. I remain skeptical. The students I know aren't that ignorant. YMMV
Great username, btw. Must be popular with the chicks... ;)
Until last Fall, I used my PDAs for everything. I have been in love with the silly things since the early Palm days. I find my current Zire72 indispensible.
However, last Fall I purchased an iBook. It was my first laptop. My PDA use has changed. I no longer develop story ideas on my PDA. I no longer think I need WiFi on a PDA. Bluetooth hotsyncing has not proven to be as useful as I had hoped (it's so dang slow. Easier to just go to the computer and hotsync that way. Besides, my bedroom is too far away from the desktop to reach via Bluetooth) Because I sync my iBook and PDA addressbooks I often refer to my iBook first instead of the PDA when I need a number. I don't jot down as many notes as I used to on my PDA. I have stickies for that on my iBook.
What I do use my PDA for is voice memos and alarms. Both of those features are vital to my daily productivity, especially the alarms. I have ADD, so if that stupid PDA didn't beep at me all day long, I'd never remember what I was supposed to be doing! LOL My iBook doesn't turn back on and let me know when I have an appointment. However, my iPod *does* now that I sync my calendar with it. I sync my address book with my iPod as well, but don't use it to access people's data very often.
If there was a lores screen built into the lid of my iBook that stayed on when the iBook was asleep that gave me access to voice memos and calendars (basically a PDA that hotsynced with the iBook data whenever the iBook was running) I wouldn't need my PDA much anymore. But that sounds impractical.
I don't envy Palm's position. PDAs are still very useful to those that live and breath by them, but so much of the PDAs old functionality is being replaced with other devices like phones, laptops, iPods, etc. With the PDA market shrinking I worry what I'll do when businesses like Palm decide they can't afford to make PDAs anymore.
BTW, using marketspeak to call the Lifedrive a "Mobile Manager" instead of a PDA is just stupid. I am entirely skeptical that anybody will honestly think the Lifedrive isn't a PDA just because it plays movies and such. Sony's Clié's offered all these same features (minus the hard drive but with decent camera lenses) for years before Palm started updating their product line. At least the Lifedrive is priced more reasonably than the Clié's...
Who are you quoting? And if you can name a source for your "statistic" who funded the poll and for what purpose? I am skeptical of most polls because their objective isn't always stated up front, their samples of the population are too small, and the questions can sometimes be misleading.
For example, how often have we laughed here when one study (funded by the RIAA) proclaims filesharing down and then another study claims that filesharing is up? Who do you believe? Often, people side with the poll numbers that back up their own opinion and ignore the other poll numbers that are contrary. That's been my experience, anyway...
You make that sound like it's a bad thing!
Are you serious!?! Where is your sense of humor? Don't you realize the Register article is the satire!?! For crying out loud! They are mocking Huffinton's entire website by stating that Rosen's article is so obviously funny it must be written as a joke.
Rosen's article is so obviously a commercial for Microsoft's DRM that I couldn't bring myself to read anything else Huffinton's site offered. More shills no doubt.
Try rereading the Reg's article with a tongue planted firmly in your cheek. (^_-)
Convenience and ease of use are two large factors that account for why I use my Macs more than my PC. So I agree with you that the "open safe files" feature is very handy. Usually, this merely opens up files that I clicked on to download, be they zipped archives, PDFs, or disk images. But since Safari can be forced to autodownload files via the meta refresh tag and then autoinstall them if they are dashboard widgets, this convenient feature just became a liability.
Of course, if Apple plugs up the holes "open safe files" can return to its useful state. I think this is the first time we've seen a security hole like this in OSX. It's Windowsian in its scale and incompetence... I am curious to see how quickly Apple fixes this breech.
Fascinating article. I installed zaptastic_evil and was amused by it. Very annoying indeed. Widgets simply should not do this.
Just a few points of interest.
1) The widget may automatically download and get copied into the widgets folder, but it is not automatically installed onto the active dashboard. Therefor the user would have to manually click on it. Without knowing the widget is there, the user may not ever notice it. Of course, this is still a security risk, but this isn't the best way to propogate malware.
2) Widgets can be deleted manually as pointed out in the article by going into ~/Library/Widgets and removing the unwanted widget
3) The Dashboard can be reinitialized by killing the Dock. Those not familiar with terminal can just fire up Activity Monitor and kill the Dock there. The Dock immediately relaunches, then Dashboard reinitializes when it is launched again and the offending widgets are gone.
4) Apple should allow us to delete widgets from the dashboard, but the behavior when clicking and dragging a widget off of the Dashboard installs the widget instead of bringing up the delete puff of smoke. This behavior is at odds with every other taskbar/dock/menubar in OS X. I would recommend Apple change this.
5) We ARE dealing with Dashboard 1.0 so there are bound to be bugs needing to be squashed. Personally, I enjoy Dashboard but find it difficult to manage when there are too many widgets deployed. I find myself wishing for Exposé for Dashboard! LOL I also wish that widgets would reinitialize without force quiting the dock and that the dashboard would be a bit more dynamic. Sometimes deleted widgets take a while to disappear off the dashboard as well as newly installed widgets. I look forward to the upcoming 10.4.1 release.
Something did occur to me when I read your comments, though. I wonder how much of IT complaints are centered around not being used to the Apple way of doing things? I can't speak for you, but a lot of IT guys I know are trained/conditioned to do things the PC way and get frustrated with Apple not because Apple's solutions don't work but because Apple's solutions aren't familiar to them. Maybe there is a cultural difference involved with their frustration? I hear them complain about Apple as if the Wintel solution has never been without it's bugs, glitches, or pains.
Apple's SMB implementation hasn't been the smoothest process. Lot's of weird glitches and performance differences depending on which flavor of Windows you are using. I can see why you'd be frustrated to have to pay for upgrades just to get a fix. I just wish that software companies as a whole didn't do that to their customers.
You're sipping a bit from the liberal Kool-Aid(TM) if you think that Fox News is the only organization that does this. Try cynicism instead of political idealism - you get to be upset with more people that way! ;)
Not to be cynical.. well, OK, forget that. I'm a full blown cynic. Let me start again...
How is the "entire American government" different from any other government on Earth? There is no utopia. Money makes the world go round...so make the best of where you are. American government has a few strong points going for it. Not all decisions benefit corporate America. Take the "do not call" list as one example. It was put into affect despite corporate resistance and still has supporters in the government despite further attacks on it.
So write your congresscritter and local news agencies. Spread the word about the evils of the broadcast flag. It's a lot of work but we can't let apathy get us down. Cynically speaking, if we don't speak up they'll assume we agree with whatever they decide is best for us.
The pre release review from Ain't It Cool for Episode II was filled with just enough concern to make him sound cautious, and therefor non-objective, but then Harry threw caution to the wind and began to gush. Then I lost all respect for him when he dropped these mature and non-objective statements:
When I saw this, I screamed like a little girl.
And my favorite...
I jumped about 12 feet up in the air and squealed.Ah, yes. Ep. II was just sooo exciting. We had the Sound of Music picnic, the little orphan Ani/Amidala "feel my pain. I just slaughtered an entire village. - ooh, you poor dear" scene, and the bouncing, green CG Yoda fighting machine scene. Why do cool stuff with the force like hold spaceships in place since size doesn't matter when you can mix it up with the boys and let the bad guy get away? No, none of the glowing pre-reviews held up once the movie came out. Everyone still felt raped, unless they were fanboys...
I think I'll pass.