The trouble is, the iPad (for all its slick design) is pretty much an enlarged (even embiggened) iPod Touch. It will appeal to those who are content to live in Apple's little garden of approved applications (so long as we use them one at a time) , but those of us who really want a functional and versatile mobile computer with a small form-factor will remain frustrated.
These devices both boast superior form factor over options like laptops and cellphones when it comes to reading, especially the Kindle.
I could have made use of a *good* e-reader if any decent options had become available even last year, while I was still engaged with studies in molecular biology and biochemistry. It would have been great to be able to carry around the content of my huge (and seriously fucking expensive) textbooks for those fields on a convenient device, but the display needs to be in colour and have to have good resolution to be useful. None of the devices I've seen come close.
From my point of view, the case is closed. I'm not planning on going back to formal studies again any time soon, so my (mostly recreational) reading material can remain on paper, which has a much more congenial feel and smell.
As a matter of interest, how has the Air been for reliability? They look sexy and all that, but my oldish 2nd-hand MacBook 2.16GHz Intel machine outperforms the highest-spec Air, and I've seen some horror stories where USB ports have been broken out of the housing of the skinny machine.
I use the laptop simply for convenience most of the time; I have a big Linux-based desktop machine to do the heavy lifting (or to provide me with some) when I need it, but now that I have left university it doesn't get so much use any more.
Wouldn't the iPad buyers be more like johns than hookers?
Quite probably, but for once, it might just be remotely possible that they'll be beneficial to public health. Adobe Flash is an infection I'd quite happily live without, and if it becomes unprofitable for developers to use it, then it's not outside the realms of possibility that might contribute to its demise.
However, I'm not holding my breath. Either Adobe will step forward and come up with a solution, or Apple will come up with some sort of App that they'll try to shoe-horn everyone into. Whatever happens, the fanboys will be happy, while people like me who don't care for the walled-garden approach will look to other devices.
Up-shifting too. Nothing to do with "less strain", though. If the RPM of your engine doesn't match that of the gearshaft, it quite simply will not go into gear. Commonly expressed as "if you can't find 'em, grind 'em".
Wow. I haven't read the Indian Constitution, but that sounds pretty impressive. Certainly sounds like something the so-called "free world" would do well to emulate. Yeah, I know, fat chance.
The rest of the time they do what's called floating--shifting gears without using the clutch.
That can be fine on a gearbox with a lot of mileage on it, but it can cause a lot of wear and tear on a newer box where the tolerances are finer, and you do NOT want to fuck up a piece of machinery like that, The manufacturers fits a clutch for a reason, and it's stupid not to use it. It does, however, only need the barest touch of it to match the revs to let it "fall" into gear.
Of course, truckers can still look up contacts, dial their phones...
He would never find time in my truck. You need both hands, feet and plenty of concentration to double-declutch through the ratios on an 18-speed Eaton Fuller gearbox while keeping the rig moving in the right direction.
It takes a criminal mind to want to be a tyrant. And anybody who says such things as this moron, in their secret heart, wants to BE the absolute tyrant...
A 90-year-old man doesn't have time to be a tyrant. If you take the trouble to read the article, Lovelock isn't advocating the suspension of democracy as a Good Thing(TM), be is making the point that people are too fucking stupid and inert to put aside their petty little squabbles for long enough do anything about bigger issues.
Cluttering up the road and removing sight-lines reduces speed? Wow. Brilliant. As a motorcyclist that's just what I need - more obstacles to dodge.
An interesting aspect of this is that really heavy trucks can have a positive effect on getting traffic moving. I often drive a 160-tonne road-train, and if my bull-bar appears in the mirror of some idiot Sunday-driver (if necessary with a bit of announcement from my air-horns), they have plenty of incentive to either get a move on or pull over.
A motorcycle has no trouble from me: I'll signal to him when it's safe for him to pass, since I have a better view of the road.
Yes, but we're getting away from the point. Road designers are assuming excessive speed as the primary criterion as cause of accidents, where more realistic factors are lack of knowledge of the road rules, and lack of attention. Cars have become so easy to drive, they lull their occupants into a false sense of security, so drivers no longer focus on the job.
On the Autobahns in Germany, where there is no speed limit, we do not see a proportionate increase in accidents. To drive at high speed, you have to have your mind on the job.
Sure, there are extreme cases where drivers gasbag on the phone while applying makeup, or (this is for real) drive with their knees on the wheel while playing a fucking trumpet, but the simple fact is that drivers have to know ALL of the road rules (not just a percentage required to pass the test), and they have to pay attention to what they are doing.
I suspect that will only come when Kevin Rudd recognises him for the political liability that he is. His Senate seat is unfortunately safe, so he can only be kicked out from above. He certainly doesn't pay attention to submissions from the public. I have sent several, which have all elicited a premasticated PDF "fluff piece" response from his office.
I understand he (or his office) is probably too busy to respond properly, in which case it is better to say nothing at all than to insult the intelligence of someone who has taken the trouble to write to him.
I don't think you can claim to have transparency while having a Minister of Censorship.
The good thing is that the minister himself obviously doesn't believe in the effectiveness of his undisclosed blacklist. If the filter is any good, it shouldn't matter whether the contents of that list were made public or not, since the sites are supposed to be inaccessible in any case.
Bring on a minister who understands his portfolio...
...but things can fall apart amazingly fast once you start heading down a certain road.
They sure do, but it is still by no means certain this legislation will pass. The Australian Government needs the support of the Senate to get its legislation through Parliament, and it has already had several setbacks in that regard, hence the likelihood of a double dissolution election this year.
Conroy himself is an arrogant little shit, and apparently Kevin Rudd is being equally so by leaving the asswipe in that portfolio. But we can hope that the Opposition's taste for obstructionism might yet be put to some worthwhile use.
sitting infuriatingly still becomes a requirement for your computer to continue doing what it was doing.
Well, it should be possible to ignore extraneous gestures in the same way as you can tell your interface to ignore accidental trackpad input on a laptop.
This aside, I would welcome a no-touch screen as an alternative to having to clean greasy pizza smears amd other unnecessary paw-prints off my screens, if I were required to use such an interface. Personally, I don't believe touch/non-touch screens offer any useful advantage over a mouse.
they just frickin' work. You don't need to know about timing belts and spark plugs and carburetors vs fuel injection. You just have to have some common sense.
Unfortunately, modern cars seem to make these conditions mutually exclusive. They are designed for people who have no common sense, and discourage its use.
In the days when we had to double-declutch through every gear and make allowances for iffy brakes or steering, no-one had any expectation that talking on the phone while playing a bouzouki were compatible with driving safely.
All software needs a "leave me the fuck alone" button to disable all the "helpful" features...
Amen to that. And just to be fair, OpenOffice.org is just as guilty as MSOffice. That stupid Help Agent (lightbulb icon) that crops up by default is seriously irritating. Yes, I know I can disable it (and I have) but I shouldn't have to.
For once I'm grateful for the "extinguish" part of Microsoft's philosophy.
I'll drink to that. For much of 1995 I was coding COBOL at a site with a number of Data Ganeral machines running AOS/VS2. At the time I thought this was purgatory (the COBOL part, anyway - Data General was actually OK) but screenshots I saw of Bob later made me want to puke.
Slashdot Mirror
That image is of a knitted wool and felt prop from The Clangers.
The trouble is, the iPad (for all its slick design) is pretty much an enlarged (even embiggened) iPod Touch. It will appeal to those who are content to live in Apple's little garden of approved applications (so long as we use them one at a time) , but those of us who really want a functional and versatile mobile computer with a small form-factor will remain frustrated.
These devices both boast superior form factor over options like laptops and cellphones when it comes to reading, especially the Kindle.
I could have made use of a *good* e-reader if any decent options had become available even last year, while I was still engaged with studies in molecular biology and biochemistry. It would have been great to be able to carry around the content of my huge (and seriously fucking expensive) textbooks for those fields on a convenient device, but the display needs to be in colour and have to have good resolution to be useful. None of the devices I've seen come close.
From my point of view, the case is closed. I'm not planning on going back to formal studies again any time soon, so my (mostly recreational) reading material can remain on paper, which has a much more congenial feel and smell.
As a matter of interest, how has the Air been for reliability? They look sexy and all that, but my oldish 2nd-hand MacBook 2.16GHz Intel machine outperforms the highest-spec Air, and I've seen some horror stories where USB ports have been broken out of the housing of the skinny machine.
I use the laptop simply for convenience most of the time; I have a big Linux-based desktop machine to do the heavy lifting (or to provide me with some) when I need it, but now that I have left university it doesn't get so much use any more.
Wouldn't the iPad buyers be more like johns than hookers?
Quite probably, but for once, it might just be remotely possible that they'll be beneficial to public health. Adobe Flash is an infection I'd quite happily live without, and if it becomes unprofitable for developers to use it, then it's not outside the realms of possibility that might contribute to its demise.
However, I'm not holding my breath. Either Adobe will step forward and come up with a solution, or Apple will come up with some sort of App that they'll try to shoe-horn everyone into. Whatever happens, the fanboys will be happy, while people like me who don't care for the walled-garden approach will look to other devices.
Up-shifting too. Nothing to do with "less strain", though. If the RPM of your engine doesn't match that of the gearshaft, it quite simply will not go into gear. Commonly expressed as "if you can't find 'em, grind 'em".
$ man woman
No manual entry for woman
$
Just for curiosity's sake, I tried
whoami
and got
You are Richard Stallman.
And "pwd" yields
You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
Wow. I haven't read the Indian Constitution, but that sounds pretty impressive. Certainly sounds like something the so-called "free world" would do well to emulate. Yeah, I know, fat chance.
what genetic data is to be collected? a fingerprint??
The article does not mention any kind of genetic data collection at all.
The rest of the time they do what's called floating--shifting gears without using the clutch.
That can be fine on a gearbox with a lot of mileage on it, but it can cause a lot of wear and tear on a newer box where the tolerances are finer, and you do NOT want to fuck up a piece of machinery like that, The manufacturers fits a clutch for a reason, and it's stupid not to use it. It does, however, only need the barest touch of it to match the revs to let it "fall" into gear.
Of course, truckers can still look up contacts, dial their phones...
He would never find time in my truck. You need both hands, feet and plenty of concentration to double-declutch through the ratios on an 18-speed Eaton Fuller gearbox while keeping the rig moving in the right direction.
It takes a criminal mind to want to be a tyrant. And anybody who says such things as this moron, in their secret heart, wants to BE the absolute tyrant...
A 90-year-old man doesn't have time to be a tyrant. If you take the trouble to read the article, Lovelock isn't advocating the suspension of democracy as a Good Thing(TM), be is making the point that people are too fucking stupid and inert to put aside their petty little squabbles for long enough do anything about bigger issues.
Same set of people who think that people aren't fit to bear arms.
I'll defend to the death my right to arm bears.
Well, How do you play your trumpet while driving, then? :-)
Cluttering up the road and removing sight-lines reduces speed? Wow. Brilliant. As a motorcyclist that's just what I need - more obstacles to dodge.
An interesting aspect of this is that really heavy trucks can have a positive effect on getting traffic moving. I often drive a 160-tonne road-train, and if my bull-bar appears in the mirror of some idiot Sunday-driver (if necessary with a bit of announcement from my air-horns), they have plenty of incentive to either get a move on or pull over.
A motorcycle has no trouble from me: I'll signal to him when it's safe for him to pass, since I have a better view of the road.
Yes, but we're getting away from the point. Road designers are assuming excessive speed as the primary criterion as cause of accidents, where more realistic factors are lack of knowledge of the road rules, and lack of attention. Cars have become so easy to drive, they lull their occupants into a false sense of security, so drivers no longer focus on the job.
On the Autobahns in Germany, where there is no speed limit, we do not see a proportionate increase in accidents. To drive at high speed, you have to have your mind on the job.
Sure, there are extreme cases where drivers gasbag on the phone while applying makeup, or (this is for real) drive with their knees on the wheel while playing a fucking trumpet, but the simple fact is that drivers have to know ALL of the road rules (not just a percentage required to pass the test), and they have to pay attention to what they are doing.
Let's hope that his "McCarthy" moment comes soon.
I suspect that will only come when Kevin Rudd recognises him for the political liability that he is. His Senate seat is unfortunately safe, so he can only be kicked out from above. He certainly doesn't pay attention to submissions from the public. I have sent several, which have all elicited a premasticated PDF "fluff piece" response from his office.
I understand he (or his office) is probably too busy to respond properly, in which case it is better to say nothing at all than to insult the intelligence of someone who has taken the trouble to write to him.
I don't think you can claim to have transparency while having a Minister of Censorship.
The good thing is that the minister himself obviously doesn't believe in the effectiveness of his undisclosed blacklist. If the filter is any good, it shouldn't matter whether the contents of that list were made public or not, since the sites are supposed to be inaccessible in any case.
Bring on a minister who understands his portfolio...
[sigh]
...but things can fall apart amazingly fast once you start heading down a certain road.
They sure do, but it is still by no means certain this legislation will pass. The Australian Government needs the support of the Senate to get its legislation through Parliament, and it has already had several setbacks in that regard, hence the likelihood of a double dissolution election this year.
Conroy himself is an arrogant little shit, and apparently Kevin Rudd is being equally so by leaving the asswipe in that portfolio. But we can hope that the Opposition's taste for obstructionism might yet be put to some worthwhile use.
sitting infuriatingly still becomes a requirement for your computer to continue doing what it was doing.
Well, it should be possible to ignore extraneous gestures in the same way as you can tell your interface to ignore accidental trackpad input on a laptop.
This aside, I would welcome a no-touch screen as an alternative to having to clean greasy pizza smears amd other unnecessary paw-prints off my screens, if I were required to use such an interface. Personally, I don't believe touch/non-touch screens offer any useful advantage over a mouse.
they just frickin' work. You don't need to know about timing belts and spark plugs and carburetors vs fuel injection. You just have to have some common sense.
Unfortunately, modern cars seem to make these conditions mutually exclusive. They are designed for people who have no common sense, and discourage its use.
In the days when we had to double-declutch through every gear and make allowances for iffy brakes or steering, no-one had any expectation that talking on the phone while playing a bouzouki were compatible with driving safely.
All software needs a "leave me the fuck alone" button to disable all the "helpful" features...
Amen to that. And just to be fair, OpenOffice.org is just as guilty as MSOffice. That stupid Help Agent (lightbulb icon) that crops up by default is seriously irritating. Yes, I know I can disable it (and I have) but I shouldn't have to.
For once I'm grateful for the "extinguish" part of Microsoft's philosophy.
I'll drink to that. For much of 1995 I was coding COBOL at a site with a number of Data Ganeral machines running AOS/VS2. At the time I thought this was purgatory (the COBOL part, anyway - Data General was actually OK) but screenshots I saw of Bob later made me want to puke.
Since this thread is "Idle":
The correct spelling is "minuscule".