What could easily change is eliminate the middle man and the musicians can deal with the public directly or maybe through a more reasonable consortium that actually represents them using the reality of technology available.
...and I feel inclined to believe that future developments will make CDs even more obsolete
CDs will not become obsolete while there are still people around who don't have ears made of clay, and who still appreciate a quality recording.
Not that I am particularly knocking MP3s; I have an iPod with many gigabytes of MP3 recordings on it, but the simple fact is that I don't use it at home where I have access to a decent stereo system and where I don't have to put up with the compression algorithm grinding off the more interesting edges of the content.
iPods are an excellent invention, but MP3-compressed tracks are best suited to situations with high levels of ambient noise or the kind of music that least suffers from that kind of processing.
Empirical evidence appears to show that Firefox is not always the fastest browser around. However, it offers a comprehensive and mature set of add-ons or extensions that make it almost indispensable for people like me. Not that I use so many (Zotero, Adblock, Flashblock, Better Privacy, Page Saver), but just enough to make me reluctant to change.
In the past, my choice of browser used to revolve around whether my bookmarks were easily importable. But over the last few years, I have tended to go straight to Google, and I no longer have any idea how useful my bookmarks file really is.
Simply because you prefer one medium of art over another doesn't mean that it is inherently better.
You seem to be missing the point. I wasn't claiming that either medium was necessarily better. However, it must surely be undeniable that where a movie is spun off from from a novel of any substance, it will inevitably be shorn of much of the richness of its content in order to fit within the constraints that the format imposes.
I never said that movies or any other art form couldn't be profound. I was simply commenting on an increasingly common inability or unwillingness to concentrate enough to process anything that is not pre-digested into easy bites.
Most motherboards come with some sort of on-board GPU. Since this situation is a server machine, there's no reason to run an X server, so there's no reason to install any more sophisticated graphics card. Even the crappiest on-board GPU I have come across on PC hardware (which incidentally happens to be a SiS unit back in 1996) can cope with text-mode I/O in a TTY.
But if the server is to run headless, all you need is a good syslog system (which should be set up by default) and ssh.
Text messages are brief and quickly digestible, unlike email.
I agree about the HDX asynchronicity of SMS, but that applies equally to email, and there is no reason why email cannot also be brief and to the point.
There's no indication that any of this is making anyone substantially stupider.
This is true. But (anecdotally) a large number of people I know (no matter how intelligent) seem to have acquired an ever-decreasing attention span: people who 15 or 20 years ago used to read through 500-page texts will balk at short articles:
"tl;dr"
Likewise, those who will not read a novel if a film has been made of it - a potted version, denuded of all subtlety, is all their mentality is equipped to cope with.
I'm beginning to doubt the value of instant access to all content; it seems to me that it has a tendency to result in a smaller amount of time allocated to thought.
As a matter of perspective... in my late teens I would send on average one snail-mail letter a week, written with a fountain-pen, dipper or occasionally a quill (but never sent by owl). Email wasn't an option for me (bearing in mind that this was in the '70s) and neither was SMS. It was customary for real gas-bags like my little sister to yak away on the phone for hours, but for most of us it was easier to wander over to wherever our friends hung out.
In the '90s I sent bucketloads of emails circulating whatever I found amusing du jour, along with a small number of more informative posts (including USENET, for those who remember it).
But in what remains of the "noughties", I send on average about 2.5 SMSs per day and about 8 non-work-related emails per day. And zero snail-mail letters.
Maybe it's just that some of us have less to say as we get older, or maybe there's something else in it. Most of the blather one sees in text messages (or presumably Twitter) tends to remind me of Shakespeare's Dogberry: "But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass."
XP is a good OS, but its time has passed. Time to move on.
I personally don't care for XP (or Windows in any form), but it is at least mature enough now to make a solid platform. When XP first came out, the consensus was pretty similar to what we saw when Vista came out. Microsoft made some attempt to address (most of) the issues as time went by. So if XP fulfils the user's requirements, then why change? Not everybody needs shiny things on their latest OS.
One thing I've always taken for granted with Linux is that you *never* see blingy stuff when you upgrade your operating system. Sure, you can upgrade X11/compiz/whatever if you get bored and need some new eye-candy (and lots of this is very good indeed), but you don't have to. (I use Arch Linux, which operates on a rolling-release basis rather than the more usual release/upgrade cycle.)
Likewise, there are no new shiny bits to be found in Snow Leopard. Apple has concentrated on upgrading an already-good OS to one that is even better, without breaking much.
The only speed-bumps I ran over when loading SL on to my MacBook were an issue with the Cisco VPN client and a problem with my cheapie Huawei mobile broadband dongle. Both were resolved by using native preference options instead of the 3rd-party client software, though I did have to hunt for updated hardware drivers for the dongle.
TFA is wrong on the technical aspect, and is pushing a book that promises to teach more stuff that's factually wrong.
Given how light TFA is on detail, I'm not exactly sure where you're coming from on that.
However, there was one remark that stood out when I read it [*quickly dons tinfoil hat*]: "Apple owns the Snow Leopard software that talks to Exchange".
Microsoft's tried-and-tested response in the past with interoperable software is to break it. Samba is one example that comes to mind here, but I'm sure there are others. It will be interesting to see if they try this with Exchange. Though it might be a bit hard to do this without breaking more than they intend.
I'm not sure the same is true if you purchase goods which infringe copyright.
In this case, I'm not sure how copyright comes into it, since the books concerned are clearly derivative works. The original text of both books is now well and truly available in the public domain, and in fact are available in clear text at Project Gutenberg here and here.
All you would be paying for is someone else's annotations.
By now, they've likely noticed their numbers are not recovering and are trying another round of the damage control thing.
It's too late. It only takes one very conspicuously nasty action on their part to sour customers' attitudes. People who already have Kindles are pretty much stuck with them, but attracting new customers will be harder.
The fact that Amazon CAN swipe content off your device after you've bought it in good faith is damaging enough. The fact that Amazon has demonstrated that they WILL do so makes it worse.
This also brings up the inadequacy of their "cloud" model for storage of annotations etc.: if you have any content you want to keep, you had better handle storage yourself, because nobody else can be trusted. This principle, of course, goes beyond Amazon, but is brought into focus here. This means, of course, that although Amazon was an early starter with e-book readers, I would not be surprised if they were surpassed at some stage by some other (hopefully open-source?) product with more robust storage/backup options.
Why Obama? I would have thought he would have better things to do with his time. You might not like Obama, but none of us care, and a large proportion of us are in no position to vote in US elections.
I like your mention of Royal Enfield. I used to have a 1928 "thumper" many years ago (among many other British classics), and I would still take one over a Harley any day. Lucky they're still being manufactured (in India now) - I guess they must have pretty much the longest pedigree (almost 120 years) of any motorcycle by now...
That's right. And don't forget the drop-bears that hang from lamp-posts at night and drop on you if you haven't taken the precaution of rubbing Vegemite behind your ears.
You don't need to be a scientist to realize which side is correct.
And you don't need to be a scientist to recognise that the biggest support for the GWisascam doctrine comes from the industries responsible for the heaviest CO2 emissions and buildup: the petroleum and coal industries, in combination with the forestry industry. You can hardly say they're impartial, and that they have no vested interest in keeping things exactly as they are.
If you insist on sticking your fingers in your ears and going "la-la-la-la" as you appear to, then sure you can be selective about your "experts", but you cannot possibly deny that the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is in agreement that climate change is the result of mankind's activities.
True but would still have to include the E.U. which isn't known for it's[sic] pro Microsoft stance!
...and anyway, (from the summary) "if everyone could enjoy the same patent system we use in the USA", pigs might fly. From where I'm sitting, the people who are "enjoying" the system the most are parasitic patent trolls.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess disgruntled lovers wouldn't even have to know the password
:-)
... a good reason to keep your lover gruntled.
What could easily change is eliminate the middle man and the musicians can deal with the public directly or maybe through a more reasonable consortium that actually represents them using the reality of technology available.
Check out Magnatune for a good example of this.
...and I feel inclined to believe that future developments will make CDs even more obsolete
CDs will not become obsolete while there are still people around who don't have ears made of clay, and who still appreciate a quality recording.
Not that I am particularly knocking MP3s; I have an iPod with many gigabytes of MP3 recordings on it, but the simple fact is that I don't use it at home where I have access to a decent stereo system and where I don't have to put up with the compression algorithm grinding off the more interesting edges of the content.
iPods are an excellent invention, but MP3-compressed tracks are best suited to situations with high levels of ambient noise or the kind of music that least suffers from that kind of processing.
Speed isn't the only important criterion.
Empirical evidence appears to show that Firefox is not always the fastest browser around. However, it offers a comprehensive and mature set of add-ons or extensions that make it almost indispensable for people like me. Not that I use so many (Zotero, Adblock, Flashblock, Better Privacy, Page Saver), but just enough to make me reluctant to change.
In the past, my choice of browser used to revolve around whether my bookmarks were easily importable. But over the last few years, I have tended to go straight to Google, and I no longer have any idea how useful my bookmarks file really is.
Simply because you prefer one medium of art over another doesn't mean that it is inherently better.
You seem to be missing the point. I wasn't claiming that either medium was necessarily better. However, it must surely be undeniable that where a movie is spun off from from a novel of any substance, it will inevitably be shorn of much of the richness of its content in order to fit within the constraints that the format imposes.
I never said that movies or any other art form couldn't be profound. I was simply commenting on an increasingly common inability or unwillingness to concentrate enough to process anything that is not pre-digested into easy bites.
Most motherboards come with some sort of on-board GPU. Since this situation is a server machine, there's no reason to run an X server, so there's no reason to install any more sophisticated graphics card. Even the crappiest on-board GPU I have come across on PC hardware (which incidentally happens to be a SiS unit back in 1996) can cope with text-mode I/O in a TTY.
But if the server is to run headless, all you need is a good syslog system (which should be set up by default) and ssh.
Text messages are brief and quickly digestible, unlike email.
I agree about the HDX asynchronicity of SMS, but that applies equally to email, and there is no reason why email cannot also be brief and to the point.
There's no indication that any of this is making anyone substantially stupider.
This is true. But (anecdotally) a large number of people I know (no matter how intelligent) seem to have acquired an ever-decreasing attention span: people who 15 or 20 years ago used to read through 500-page texts will balk at short articles:
"tl;dr"
Likewise, those who will not read a novel if a film has been made of it - a potted version, denuded of all subtlety, is all their mentality is equipped to cope with.
I'm beginning to doubt the value of instant access to all content; it seems to me that it has a tendency to result in a smaller amount of time allocated to thought.
As a matter of perspective... in my late teens I would send on average one snail-mail letter a week, written with a fountain-pen, dipper or occasionally a quill (but never sent by owl). Email wasn't an option for me (bearing in mind that this was in the '70s) and neither was SMS. It was customary for real gas-bags like my little sister to yak away on the phone for hours, but for most of us it was easier to wander over to wherever our friends hung out.
In the '90s I sent bucketloads of emails circulating whatever I found amusing du jour, along with a small number of more informative posts (including USENET, for those who remember it).
But in what remains of the "noughties", I send on average about 2.5 SMSs per day and about 8 non-work-related emails per day. And zero snail-mail letters.
Maybe it's just that some of us have less to say as we get older, or maybe there's something else in it. Most of the blather one sees in text messages (or presumably Twitter) tends to remind me of Shakespeare's Dogberry:
"But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass."
XP is a good OS, but its time has passed. Time to move on.
I personally don't care for XP (or Windows in any form), but it is at least mature enough now to make a solid platform. When XP first came out, the consensus was pretty similar to what we saw when Vista came out. Microsoft made some attempt to address (most of) the issues as time went by. So if XP fulfils the user's requirements, then why change? Not everybody needs shiny things on their latest OS.
One thing I've always taken for granted with Linux is that you *never* see blingy stuff when you upgrade your operating system. Sure, you can upgrade X11/compiz/whatever if you get bored and need some new eye-candy (and lots of this is very good indeed), but you don't have to. (I use Arch Linux, which operates on a rolling-release basis rather than the more usual release/upgrade cycle.)
Likewise, there are no new shiny bits to be found in Snow Leopard. Apple has concentrated on upgrading an already-good OS to one that is even better, without breaking much.
The only speed-bumps I ran over when loading SL on to my MacBook were an issue with the Cisco VPN client and a problem with my cheapie Huawei mobile broadband dongle. Both were resolved by using native preference options instead of the 3rd-party client software, though I did have to hunt for updated hardware drivers for the dongle.
TFA is wrong on the technical aspect, and is pushing a book that promises to teach more stuff that's factually wrong.
Given how light TFA is on detail, I'm not exactly sure where you're coming from on that.
However, there was one remark that stood out when I read it [*quickly dons tinfoil hat*]:
"Apple owns the Snow Leopard software that talks to Exchange".
Microsoft's tried-and-tested response in the past with interoperable software is to break it. Samba is one example that comes to mind here, but I'm sure there are others. It will be interesting to see if they try this with Exchange. Though it might be a bit hard to do this without breaking more than they intend.
For example, the OS X version of Powerpoint will not let me create animations where objects move along a path...
OpenOffice (or NeoOffice) Impress does this free of charge. And the version of Mail included with 10.6 supports Exchange out of the box.
That's the second time you've posted that off-topic link here. Just so you don't think nobody noticed.
I'm not sure the same is true if you purchase goods which infringe copyright.
In this case, I'm not sure how copyright comes into it, since the books concerned are clearly derivative works. The original text of both books is now well and truly available in the public domain, and in fact are available in clear text at Project Gutenberg here and here.
All you would be paying for is someone else's annotations.
By now, they've likely noticed their numbers are not recovering and are trying another round of the damage control thing.
It's too late. It only takes one very conspicuously nasty action on their part to sour customers' attitudes. People who already have Kindles are pretty much stuck with them, but attracting new customers will be harder.
The fact that Amazon CAN swipe content off your device after you've bought it in good faith is damaging enough. The fact that Amazon has demonstrated that they WILL do so makes it worse.
This also brings up the inadequacy of their "cloud" model for storage of annotations etc.: if you have any content you want to keep, you had better handle storage yourself, because nobody else can be trusted. This principle, of course, goes beyond Amazon, but is brought into focus here. This means, of course, that although Amazon was an early starter with e-book readers, I would not be surprised if they were surpassed at some stage by some other (hopefully open-source?) product with more robust storage/backup options.
Why Obama? I would have thought he would have better things to do with his time. You might not like Obama, but none of us care, and a large proportion of us are in no position to vote in US elections.
You could just say "built for comfort, not for speed".
A lot less than for an app which makes me look like Brad Pitt in front of attractive women.
Yes, but you could argue that he's pretty stupid too. After all, remember that he called his daughter Shiloh.
Shiloh Pitt. Well, hello? (headsmack)
Alas, he married her instead, sold his bikes and now works a job he hates to pay for her.
;-)
Shit, I hate these sad stories, they always make me cry.
I like your mention of Royal Enfield. I used to have a 1928 "thumper" many years ago (among many other British classics), and I would still take one over a Harley any day. Lucky they're still being manufactured (in India now) - I guess they must have pretty much the longest pedigree (almost 120 years) of any motorcycle by now...
That's right. And don't forget the drop-bears that hang from lamp-posts at night and drop on you if you haven't taken the precaution of rubbing Vegemite behind your ears.
;-D
Do mourning doves' wings whistle dirges?
Now I don't see how the nationality of birds could possibly influence their behaviour towards people, but has anyone else even noticed this?
It might have something to do with the fact that (lots of) French people will kill and eat anything that moves. Evolution at work.
You don't need to be a scientist to realize which side is correct.
And you don't need to be a scientist to recognise that the biggest support for the GWisascam doctrine comes from the industries responsible for the heaviest CO2 emissions and buildup: the petroleum and coal industries, in combination with the forestry industry. You can hardly say they're impartial, and that they have no vested interest in keeping things exactly as they are.
If you insist on sticking your fingers in your ears and going "la-la-la-la" as you appear to, then sure you can be selective about your "experts", but you cannot possibly deny that the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is in agreement that climate change is the result of mankind's activities.
True but would still have to include the E.U. which isn't known for it's[sic] pro Microsoft stance!
...and anyway, (from the summary) "if everyone could enjoy the same patent system we use in the USA", pigs might fly. From where I'm sitting, the people who are "enjoying" the system the most are parasitic patent trolls.