I agree with most of what you just wrote, though as far as "capitalist culture" and its benevolence, well, I've heard enough Americans say publicly "bomb them back to the stone age" in reference to different contexts, that I still don't see that much difference between these extremes and the extremes evident in some islamic societies. And yes, while I am aware of the difference between terrorists and nation-states, the end result is that nation-states kill many more innocent civilians in their quest for dominance, and the USA ranks first in this respect. But then this:
you appear to be from somewhere other than the US, which means that your opinion is completely meaningless to me.
Woah. What kind of cranium-rectal yoga position is that? Funny, that's a stereotype of Americans that I often try to squash, and here you are confirming it. And, perhaps therein lies the answer to your question of Why.
No doubt, after all, you aren't subjected to or influenced by any propaganda or censorship are you?
culture fostered by religious zealotry
Ah. I see, you imply the influence of christian fundamentalism [and capitalist fundamentalism, as identified by Time magazine] on the political culture of the USA is not significant. Hmm.
This same culture that still thinks it's ok to stone people to death, and cut off body parts
Ummm, can you say electric chair? Years of death row? Solitary confinement, chain gangs, nasty nasty prison demographics driven by race and personal drug use? Drug use ennabled by USA semi-covert geopolitics. That's not backwards, barbaric, and oppressive, it's justice, right?
we aren't like them, so we MUST be evil
Actually, in my somewhat removed yet close enough point of view, I think that key elements in the dominant USA political culture are very much like the more bizarre cultural aspects of your avowed enemies. Sexual repression and an obsession with hooters, however, to me, are opposite sides of the same coin.
terrorists never tried to explain WHY they did what they did
Fair enough. Though perhaps it has something to do with all those weapons of mass destruction you stockpile and use occasionaly [and continue to develop, to stay on topic]. Could you please explain to me just why water and sanitation facilities were targeted during the war? Or the Highway of Death during the previous invasion of Iraq? Is al-Qaeda's death toll anywhere near the 6 million plus (estimated by Philip Agee and many others) dead by '87 thanks to American covert wars? Oh, and are you SURE they never tried? Did the USA provide an accurate explanation in Arabic of why you were actually invading? Maybe to those who are virulently opposed to the USA's foreign policy it's either self evident, or you just aren't going to get it.
Hey, OpenDoc never really had a chance to develop a tie-in with existing Mac gui metaphors. But it had lots of promise.
The idea wasn't so much 'task-centred' as it was 'document-centred' -- which could involve a number of disparate tasks coming together in an end product. The document stayed, the applications to work on it came and went as needed.
Frankly, I'm sad things didn't go that way. Sometimes I want an application for just two of its eight hundred and eighty eight feaures, and I wish I just had a module-like app that did only that, and worked seamlessly with others. Sometimes I'm importing, converting, and exporting documents promiscuously. Sometimes I find myself opening five or six REALLY big -- no, bloated -- apps to work on getting a simple pdf or webpage or video clip out the door, and hooray for that gig of RAM.
Then I realize that I'm using a suite (adoobie or necromedia etc.) by these big monolithic corps and that they have me buying the monster swiss-army apps in an opendoc like configuration, and the only way to get that document-centred approach is to buy ONLY their suite. Sweet for their investors, havoc for me.
War is more expensive than peace, but it drives a wartime economy. And when was the last time the US was not engaged somewhere on the planet (including covert ops)?
$600 billion for the invasion, sacking, and reconstruction of Iraq. Now imagine a scenario where half that money is instead spent on fomenting a democratic grassroots uprising by the Iraqi people (health care, education, organizational resources, media tools, safe houses, etc).
Which one causes more terrorism, as it is currently defined?
Which one will create an opportunity for lasting democracy?
Which one makes the landmine manufacturers wealthy and destabilizes the region?
There will always be some form of sociopathy. But how it's expressed will vary depending upon conditions.
Thought experiment: you kill my sister, starve my family, take my land. I'm kind of unbalanced anyway from growing up in refugee camps, but this puts me over and I vow bloody revenge (something that many Americans would likely agree with in principle).
Or, you merely beam derogatory television images into my home, and maybe pepper my neighbourhood with fast-food chains. Hey, maybe I'll write an editorial, or even throw a brick, but will I be as likely to go postal as in the previous example?
The reason the American public is so bewildered by what they call terrorism is that they refuse to accept that they have caused the suffering of the enemy.
Even if mounted servers don't show on the desktop (one of my user configs obsoletes the desktop anyway, so I personally can understand where you're coming from), they still don't show in the Finder window sidepanel that lists drives and favorites etc. if you've connected using the Network icon. That means no feedback about mounted shares, and no eject button, and even worse behaviour like Finder locking up when you unplug.
I'd say having to ask someone or look up, then type in ip addresses and protocols is more Old School than (cmd-K, let's see, oh there it is, arrow-right arrow-down-down-down, return key), don't you think? I have more important things to think about than
smb://obscure-27.someadmincruft.weird-9.domain.con and the like.
Axiom: Discovery is better done in the interface than in meatspace.
Now go and describe how to use this setup to someone who reads Habermas and McLuhan all day and night, and just wants to get to their damn files, or who thinks that Windows was always called XP and Britney is cool. [/rant]
"i went to the finder, hit cmd-K, typed in smb://myserver/share, and it instantly mounted on my desktop. i clicked the eject button in the finder's new sidebar and it unmounted just fine."
RTFP. That's exactly what I'm talking about. You have to type in the smb address, presuming you know it (OK for me, not my newbie interns or tweedy colleagues). Then you'll get the icon showing a mounted share, and an eject button. But that isn't browsing, is it? It's a command line approach with a simple entry form, why not just use Terminal.app?
Now try that using the Finder's GUI sidepanel... click on the Network icon, drill down to an SMB share that you want, connect, then... just try it, you'll see. Try to disconnect that smb share, if it works, you're one of the lucky ones.
Panther breaks the networking GUI that was pretty good in Jaguar. Now, servers you've connected to through browsing in the Finder don't show up on the desktop, and if they're an SMB share, can't be ejected without throwing your powerbook through a window, er, restarting. To get an icon on your desktop that represents a mounted server, you have to know and type in its IP address and protocol, or its precise network name --browsing doesn't work.
The Apple Discussion boards are buzzing with this one. The GUI implementation is horribly confusing to newbies especially, but bad enough for those of us who know what smb:// or afp:// or DHCP actually is. They must be getting a ton of feedback from us aggravated types.
Until this is fixed, no-one I know here at the university will be advised to upgrade to 10.3, despite the many juicy new features and optimization.
"So, where does the energy that drives this biomass come from? If it grows by consuming living or dead biological matter, that's not self-sustaining."
Silly human, you think that your puny surface landforms are all that matter. The earth's heat, if I recall high school physics correctly, is thought to be generated by radioactive decay in the core etc. That means there is convection of molten rock, which brings all kinds of wonderful chemicals and elements up to the crust. THAT is what is driving* life down at the vents in the deep trenches: a chemical and thermal soup entirely derived from Mother Earth.
As far as the bacteria deep in the crust: biologists currently think they're living off of hydrogen and chemicals released from rocks, of which there is an inexhaustible supply.
You also miss the point that life forms in geothermal and crustal ecosystems can feed off of each other.
So what was that about self-sustaining? This planet is abundant with energy and nutrients.
*IANABiologist, and don't know to what degree the deep trench ecosystems use nutrients precipitating from above. Anyone care to elucidate?
"You know... that bright stuff without which 99.9% of this ecosystem could not exist?"
Point of Correction: Current evidence and resulting theories suggest that the bulk of biological mass on the planet is in the form of bacteria and archaea -- much of which does not rely on the photosynthesis cycle. A significant amount of microbes may dwell in the crust, out of the direct influence of the sun.
"Why would Apple's iTunes for Windows software disable competing software if they didn't make money off the iTunes service anyway?"
There are two parts to this: 1) it has to (windows architecture etc.) and 2) Quicktime.
The iTunes part of the equation is really all about making sure the Quicktime media layer stays put on all platforms, and continues to expand its domination in its niches.
The good (reliable and with XLR inputs that won't break in a month) portable DAT decks are around $1.5K. Plus everything you plug into it is costing at pro prices, the tapes are costly and can be fussy, and all the moving parts means the things can be maintenance-heavy. And have you ever seen a DAT deck with a firewire connection? Then there's the really annoying version of DRM that basically aborted DAT on the low end.
What we (iPod recording wannabes) want is the ability to plug a 1/8" minijack line-in (mic input w/ useable preamp wd be nice too) into the darn thing and record lossless to AIFF. If that means paying another $150 for a small add-on with inputs and preamps, bring it on, it's still cheaper than DAT and it's an iPod.
Until that time, I'm not trading my 24-bit ATRAC minidisc for an iPod. (Well, there's the 11-hours on 2 AA batteries issue too.)
The biggest conspiracy theorists, are, of course, the spies: after all, that's what we pay them to do. That's why they spy on protesters at student anti-war rallies as well as run moles into foreign embassies: they're looking for conspiracy. Of course, not all conspiracies are equal, and some conspire to bring about democracy, while others conspire to bring it down. Like the word terrorist, to conspire is a plastic concept in the hands of those who can set public agendas.
This is a real problem, because it means that people will live in denial of real-world conspiracies that are taking place (e.g. Monsanto's conspiracy to dump toxic waste into the rural groundwater of the deep American south in the 1990s
Of perhaps more direct concern to nerds is Monsanto's ongoing collusion with other Life Sciences conglomerates to sow genetically modified crops throughout the food chain, in an attempt to end run around public concerns like labelling, organic certification, seed savers, and the whole notion of germ lines as a public trust.
...conspired to stage a "terrorist" act against the Reichstag as a prelude to a coup... Staging or allowing an attack on oneself as a way to build a pretense for Noble Agression is an old, old strategy. The USA possibly employed it in Pearl Harbor, Tonkin, Kuwait, and certainly planned staged terrorism so that they could invade Cuba.
Yes, there are many conspiracy theorists out there in left and right field. Yes, some are right, and some are looking for reptiles under the bed. Strangely, though, some conspiracies happen in public right under the noses of naysayers, people bray about it in the newspapers, but little is done (e.g. the implementation of Free Speech Zones).
The big question: Why aren't there more viruses and worms rising out of conspiracies? Where are the claims of victory for [__insert cause x__] after one of these viral plagues?
The whole smug approach of the bicycling advocates ignores the huge infrastructural change that increased bicycle use would require, as well as the staggering cost of it all. "Just ride your bike to work," ignores the fact that for most of the people working in your office building
When people get a stick up their bum about an issue like this it is a sign that they "doth protest too much." No one is seriously suggesting that everyone should ride 25Km to work (or if they are they're fringe loonies, shrugged off by the bulk of alternative transportation activists). Downtown is an urban area that is easily serviced by public transport, since it's usually a hub. However, you overemphasize downtown life. Not all of us are starbucks addicted office drones... some work in the 'burbs and some in industrial parks, etc. and many of those places are easily biked to -- all people like me ask is that when you can, do. Otherwise, carpool or mass transit, don't be an SOV SOB!
If next week 50% of the people driving started to bike, then there would be a bike jam on the roads and bikeways.
This ludicrous claim is a failure of experience and imagination. Consider the area used by a bike vs. an automobile or truck... not just the area of the vehicle itself, but the area used when driving (tailgating aside) and parking. There's plenty of room, especially at the lower speeds involved. Never ridden in a crowd, eh?
I agree that the public transit system in most cities would break under heavier usage--many of them are broken already.
I remember '89 in Vancouver... The aurora appeared to be directly overhead, like looking up into curtains, and in full colour array, reds, whites, shades of blue and green and various indescribables. Quite awe-inspiring, we crawled out on the roof and lay there drug-free but tripping.
I have an MD (Sharp, 24bit ATRAC) that I use instead of a portable DAT, because for field recording (no, really, recording ambience in a quiet field), interviews, and non-synch video sound it sounds excellent when coupled with a good mic.
While I drool over the possibilities of an iPod with an attachment providing mic and line inputs along with a low-or-no compression method of recording to the HD, it seems a long way off. For flexibility, you can't beat an MD in that respect, despite the nasty nasty copy prevention tech built in to the consumer units.
Oh, AND I can listen to music on it; here's betting that ATRAC sounds better than AAC or MP3--plus I can record from CD player to MD with no fuss or computer.
Perhaps there is an always awake chipset somewhere inside that stores the info, but then why did they wait until now to implement it? And if there isn't such a chip, how is it supposed to know when to power up.
It's called Parameter RAM, or P-RAM, and it's kept alive by the motherboard battery or a trickle feed from the wallplug. It keeps settings like time, date, hardware prefs etc. I think it's been on Mac motherboards since the late 80's, or even '84. The wake up / shut down automation has been part of the Energy Saver panel since at least System 8.0 or earlier... I remember setting the damn thing as an alarm clock with a really obnoxious start up sound in 1993, so that would be System 7.1 or so.
The old macs really were amazingly automate-able, and it was easily extended with scripting. Nothing new here.
Whatever, they both sell The Dark Waters of Imperialism, Dental Bane, Pudge Power. At least there's a boycott of Coke being organized [again] due to their [active or passive] tolerance of the death-squad style union busting tactics being deployed at their plants in Columbia.
Not sure how it's going since it was launched last summer since I try to keep that stuff out of my gullet. Not that boycotting an addictive product is easy; people love to defend their addictions. It's scary when you see the list of 60-odd brand names that one would have to avoid to participate. Yay conglomeration and the cloaking device of multiple branding!
Dang, didn't know that site was still active; should be defunct, and now it's going to get a small/.ing... oh well.
My favourite rant/quote from that [H.Bey's Pirate Utopias]:
Captain Bellamy
Daniel Defoe, writing under the pen name Captain Charles Johnson, wrote what became the first standard historical text on pirates, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates. According to Patrick Pringle's Jolly Roger, pirate recruitment was most effective among the unemployed, escaped bondsmen, and transported criminals. The high seas made for an instantaneous levelling of class inequalities. Defoe relates that a pirate named Captain Bellamy made this speech to the captain of a merchant vessel he had taken as a prize. The captain of the merchant vessel had just declined an invitation to join the pirates.
I am sorry they won't let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a mischief, when it is not to my advantage; damn the sloop, we must sink her, and she might be of use to you. Though you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security; for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by knavery; but damn ye altogether: damn them for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls. They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference, they rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. Had you not better make then one of us, than sneak after these villains for employment?
A Mac 512ke (1984/5). Boots into System 1.0 in 17 secs, never crashes, runs off of two 800K floppies: one for system, fonts, and applications, the other for docs. Runs MS Word 3.0 beautifully, if I need things like footnotes, dropcaps, and columns. I gave up the kludgey appletalk network a while ago, reverting to sneakernet for this machine. Mostly, though, I use it to play Daleks, MacDraw, and Kidpix with the toddler.
I think I got my money's worth. I keep wondering when it's going to die, as I contemplate the two-year-old pounding away at it.
For an administration that is pro-defense you'd think they'd start looking at how to protect our critical infrastructure at a fundamental design level (the whole reason behind the 'net to begin with).
They're also pro-corporate-conglomeration, presumably a higher priority than security, public governance, and accountability.
I suggest that an insecure nation has a higher need for military industry, oil usage, international military intervention, and surveillance of citizens. I don't think it's accurate to call this administration pro-DEfense; try pro-offence instead.
Just the other day I got sick of trying to do DTP, FinalCut, and DVD Studio work on a single [beautiful but lonely] 19", so I ran around looking for an abandoned monitor... stuck an old, blue-ing 15" and an adaptor on the other connector on the video card. Ah, relief, a fast place to reach for my proliferating palettes. The fact that the extra monitor is fuzzy and blue is hardly annoying, since its function is to hold things I'm already familiar with, and just want to click on without seeking. It was like getting a CPU overclocking!
Of course, there are gotchas. A mismatched monitor means the resolutions don't match, and there are edges that you have to mouse around... and then the perspective changes when you're over 'there', it's a mental hiccup to adjust to the resolution shift. Especially when you're used to dual Electron Blues, yum... I think a wider display would be far superior to odd sized monitors.
Your point about the wider display speeding things up is important in the context of the other users complaining about maximizing windows on a wide display, especially since you're supporting creative users. Mac users take something for granted, it's like air, and it's called "snap to content"--that zoom box on the window is your reliable friend in the Mac OS. Many windows (of course, not all, console logs e.g.) will just zoom to a comfortable width.
Expose looks likely to make creative work on my iBook possible, palettification, GUI indulgence, overtasking and all.
Slashdot Mirror
you appear to be from somewhere other than the US, which means that your opinion is completely meaningless to me.
Woah. What kind of cranium-rectal yoga position is that? Funny, that's a stereotype of Americans that I often try to squash, and here you are confirming it. And, perhaps therein lies the answer to your question of Why.
No doubt, after all, you aren't subjected to or influenced by any propaganda or censorship are you?
culture fostered by religious zealotry
Ah. I see, you imply the influence of christian fundamentalism [and capitalist fundamentalism, as identified by Time magazine] on the political culture of the USA is not significant. Hmm.
This same culture that still thinks it's ok to stone people to death, and cut off body parts
Ummm, can you say electric chair? Years of death row? Solitary confinement, chain gangs, nasty nasty prison demographics driven by race and personal drug use? Drug use ennabled by USA semi-covert geopolitics. That's not backwards, barbaric, and oppressive, it's justice, right?
we aren't like them, so we MUST be evil
Actually, in my somewhat removed yet close enough point of view, I think that key elements in the dominant USA political culture are very much like the more bizarre cultural aspects of your avowed enemies. Sexual repression and an obsession with hooters, however, to me, are opposite sides of the same coin.
terrorists never tried to explain WHY they did what they did
Fair enough. Though perhaps it has something to do with all those weapons of mass destruction you stockpile and use occasionaly [and continue to develop, to stay on topic]. Could you please explain to me just why water and sanitation facilities were targeted during the war? Or the Highway of Death during the previous invasion of Iraq? Is al-Qaeda's death toll anywhere near the 6 million plus (estimated by Philip Agee and many others) dead by '87 thanks to American covert wars? Oh, and are you SURE they never tried? Did the USA provide an accurate explanation in Arabic of why you were actually invading? Maybe to those who are virulently opposed to the USA's foreign policy it's either self evident, or you just aren't going to get it.
Hey, OpenDoc never really had a chance to develop a tie-in with existing Mac gui metaphors. But it had lots of promise.
The idea wasn't so much 'task-centred' as it was 'document-centred' -- which could involve a number of disparate tasks coming together in an end product. The document stayed, the applications to work on it came and went as needed.
Frankly, I'm sad things didn't go that way. Sometimes I want an application for just two of its eight hundred and eighty eight feaures, and I wish I just had a module-like app that did only that, and worked seamlessly with others. Sometimes I'm importing, converting, and exporting documents promiscuously. Sometimes I find myself opening five or six REALLY big -- no, bloated -- apps to work on getting a simple pdf or webpage or video clip out the door, and hooray for that gig of RAM.
Then I realize that I'm using a suite (adoobie or necromedia etc.) by these big monolithic corps and that they have me buying the monster swiss-army apps in an opendoc like configuration, and the only way to get that document-centred approach is to buy ONLY their suite. Sweet for their investors, havoc for me.
War is more expensive than peace, but it drives a wartime economy. And when was the last time the US was not engaged somewhere on the planet (including covert ops)?
$600 billion for the invasion, sacking, and reconstruction of Iraq. Now imagine a scenario where half that money is instead spent on fomenting a democratic grassroots uprising by the Iraqi people (health care, education, organizational resources, media tools, safe houses, etc).
Which one causes more terrorism, as it is currently defined?
Which one will create an opportunity for lasting democracy?
Which one makes the landmine manufacturers wealthy and destabilizes the region?
Which one respects life and liberty for all?
There will always be some form of sociopathy. But how it's expressed will vary depending upon conditions.
Thought experiment: you kill my sister, starve my family, take my land. I'm kind of unbalanced anyway from growing up in refugee camps, but this puts me over and I vow bloody revenge (something that many Americans would likely agree with in principle).
Or, you merely beam derogatory television images into my home, and maybe pepper my neighbourhood with fast-food chains. Hey, maybe I'll write an editorial, or even throw a brick, but will I be as likely to go postal as in the previous example?
The reason the American public is so bewildered by what they call terrorism is that they refuse to accept that they have caused the suffering of the enemy.
Even if mounted servers don't show on the desktop (one of my user configs obsoletes the desktop anyway, so I personally can understand where you're coming from), they still don't show in the Finder window sidepanel that lists drives and favorites etc. if you've connected using the Network icon. That means no feedback about mounted shares, and no eject button, and even worse behaviour like Finder locking up when you unplug.
n
I'd say having to ask someone or look up, then type in ip addresses and protocols is more Old School than (cmd-K, let's see, oh there it is, arrow-right arrow-down-down-down, return key), don't you think? I have more important things to think about than
smb://obscure-27.someadmincruft.weird-9.domain.co
and the like.
Axiom:
Discovery is better done in the interface than in meatspace.
Now go and describe how to use this setup to someone who reads Habermas and McLuhan all day and night, and just wants to get to their damn files, or who thinks that Windows was always called XP and Britney is cool.
[/rant]
"i went to the finder, hit cmd-K, typed in smb://myserver/share, and it instantly mounted on my desktop. i clicked the eject button in the finder's new sidebar and it unmounted just fine."
RTFP. That's exactly what I'm talking about. You have to type in the smb address, presuming you know it (OK for me, not my newbie interns or tweedy colleagues). Then you'll get the icon showing a mounted share, and an eject button. But that isn't browsing, is it? It's a command line approach with a simple entry form, why not just use Terminal.app?
Now try that using the Finder's GUI sidepanel... click on the Network icon, drill down to an SMB share that you want, connect, then... just try it, you'll see. Try to disconnect that smb share, if it works, you're one of the lucky ones.
Panther breaks the networking GUI that was pretty good in Jaguar. Now, servers you've connected to through browsing in the Finder don't show up on the desktop, and if they're an SMB share, can't be ejected without throwing your powerbook through a window, er, restarting. To get an icon on your desktop that represents a mounted server, you have to know and type in its IP address and protocol, or its precise network name --browsing doesn't work.
The Apple Discussion boards are buzzing with this one. The GUI implementation is horribly confusing to newbies especially, but bad enough for those of us who know what smb:// or afp:// or DHCP actually is. They must be getting a ton of feedback from us aggravated types.
Until this is fixed, no-one I know here at the university will be advised to upgrade to 10.3, despite the many juicy new features and optimization.
"So, where does the energy that drives this biomass come from? If it grows by consuming living or dead biological matter, that's not self-sustaining."
Silly human, you think that your puny surface landforms are all that matter. The earth's heat, if I recall high school physics correctly, is thought to be generated by radioactive decay in the core etc. That means there is convection of molten rock, which brings all kinds of wonderful chemicals and elements up to the crust. THAT is what is driving* life down at the vents in the deep trenches: a chemical and thermal soup entirely derived from Mother Earth.
As far as the bacteria deep in the crust: biologists currently think they're living off of hydrogen and chemicals released from rocks, of which there is an inexhaustible supply.
You also miss the point that life forms in geothermal and crustal ecosystems can feed off of each other.
So what was that about self-sustaining? This planet is abundant with energy and nutrients.
*IANABiologist, and don't know to what degree the deep trench ecosystems use nutrients precipitating from above. Anyone care to elucidate?
"You know... that bright stuff without which 99.9% of this ecosystem could not exist?"
Point of Correction: Current evidence and resulting theories suggest that the bulk of biological mass on the planet is in the form of bacteria and archaea -- much of which does not rely on the photosynthesis cycle. A significant amount of microbes may dwell in the crust, out of the direct influence of the sun.
Europa, here we come!
"Why would Apple's iTunes for Windows software disable competing software if they didn't make money off the iTunes service anyway?"
There are two parts to this: 1) it has to (windows architecture etc.) and 2) Quicktime.
The iTunes part of the equation is really all about making sure the Quicktime media layer stays put on all platforms, and continues to expand its domination in its niches.
The good (reliable and with XLR inputs that won't break in a month) portable DAT decks are around $1.5K. Plus everything you plug into it is costing at pro prices, the tapes are costly and can be fussy, and all the moving parts means the things can be maintenance-heavy. And have you ever seen a DAT deck with a firewire connection? Then there's the really annoying version of DRM that basically aborted DAT on the low end.
What we (iPod recording wannabes) want is the ability to plug a 1/8" minijack line-in (mic input w/ useable preamp wd be nice too) into the darn thing and record lossless to AIFF. If that means paying another $150 for a small add-on with inputs and preamps, bring it on, it's still cheaper than DAT and it's an iPod.
Until that time, I'm not trading my 24-bit ATRAC minidisc for an iPod. (Well, there's the 11-hours on 2 AA batteries issue too.)
The biggest conspiracy theorists, are, of course, the spies: after all, that's what we pay them to do. That's why they spy on protesters at student anti-war rallies as well as run moles into foreign embassies: they're looking for conspiracy. Of course, not all conspiracies are equal, and some conspire to bring about democracy, while others conspire to bring it down. Like the word terrorist, to conspire is a plastic concept in the hands of those who can set public agendas.
This is a real problem, because it means that people will live in denial of real-world conspiracies that are taking place (e.g. Monsanto's conspiracy to dump toxic waste into the rural groundwater of the deep American south in the 1990s
Of perhaps more direct concern to nerds is Monsanto's ongoing collusion with other Life Sciences conglomerates to sow genetically modified crops throughout the food chain, in an attempt to end run around public concerns like labelling, organic certification, seed savers, and the whole notion of germ lines as a public trust.
Yes, there are many conspiracy theorists out there in left and right field. Yes, some are right, and some are looking for reptiles under the bed. Strangely, though, some conspiracies happen in public right under the noses of naysayers, people bray about it in the newspapers, but little is done (e.g. the implementation of Free Speech Zones).
The big question: Why aren't there more viruses and worms rising out of conspiracies? Where are the claims of victory for [__insert cause x__] after one of these viral plagues?
When people get a stick up their bum about an issue like this it is a sign that they "doth protest too much." No one is seriously suggesting that everyone should ride 25Km to work (or if they are they're fringe loonies, shrugged off by the bulk of alternative transportation activists). Downtown is an urban area that is easily serviced by public transport, since it's usually a hub. However, you overemphasize downtown life. Not all of us are starbucks addicted office drones... some work in the 'burbs and some in industrial parks, etc. and many of those places are easily biked to -- all people like me ask is that when you can, do. Otherwise, carpool or mass transit, don't be an SOV SOB!
This ludicrous claim is a failure of experience and imagination. Consider the area used by a bike vs. an automobile or truck... not just the area of the vehicle itself, but the area used when driving (tailgating aside) and parking. There's plenty of room, especially at the lower speeds involved. Never ridden in a crowd, eh?
I agree that the public transit system in most cities would break under heavier usage--many of them are broken already.
I remember '89 in Vancouver... The aurora appeared to be directly overhead, like looking up into curtains, and in full colour array, reds, whites, shades of blue and green and various indescribables. Quite awe-inspiring, we crawled out on the roof and lay there drug-free but tripping.
I want a compressed air urban vehicle, with air cheaply compressed using wind and passive solar power.
.000001% hard waste producing industrial base (through recovery and efficiency).
...cold fusion? OK, whatever, I'll settle for any of the above, all of which are in the realm of technically feasible.
I want to travel long distances by airship or rail --cheaply.
I want to use biogas instead of mined gas in my stove, with a proper distributed mid-tech industrial infrastructure.
I want gas and diesel power sources (including some vehicles and hydrogen extraction) with 99.997% clean emissions and comparable efficiency.
I want passive geothermal buffering available cheaply for buildings (aka heat pumps).
I want a
I want whole cost accounting and accountability for businesses.
I want bus and other urban transit with medium-small capacity vehicles running very frequently over full regional coverage.
I want an electrical infrastructure based on highly distributed generation from a wide variety of clean sources.
I want food that hasn't travelled an average of 4,000 km, try 200km.
I want
I have an MD (Sharp, 24bit ATRAC) that I use instead of a portable DAT, because for field recording (no, really, recording ambience in a quiet field), interviews, and non-synch video sound it sounds excellent when coupled with a good mic.
While I drool over the possibilities of an iPod with an attachment providing mic and line inputs along with a low-or-no compression method of recording to the HD, it seems a long way off. For flexibility, you can't beat an MD in that respect, despite the nasty nasty copy prevention tech built in to the consumer units.
Oh, AND I can listen to music on it; here's betting that ATRAC sounds better than AAC or MP3--plus I can record from CD player to MD with no fuss or computer.
It's called Parameter RAM, or P-RAM, and it's kept alive by the motherboard battery or a trickle feed from the wallplug. It keeps settings like time, date, hardware prefs etc. I think it's been on Mac motherboards since the late 80's, or even '84. The wake up / shut down automation has been part of the Energy Saver panel since at least System 8.0 or earlier... I remember setting the damn thing as an alarm clock with a really obnoxious start up sound in 1993, so that would be System 7.1 or so.
The old macs really were amazingly automate-able, and it was easily extended with scripting. Nothing new here.
Plus, very important for Video Nerds:
iBook = up to 640 MB
Powerbook = up to 1.25GB
Big difference!
Not sure how it's going since it was launched last summer since I try to keep that stuff out of my gullet. Not that boycotting an addictive product is easy; people love to defend their addictions. It's scary when you see the list of 60-odd brand names that one would have to avoid to participate. Yay conglomeration and the cloaking device of multiple branding!
My favourite rant/quote from that [H.Bey's Pirate Utopias]:
Captain Bellamy
Daniel Defoe, writing under the pen name Captain Charles Johnson, wrote what became the first standard historical text on pirates, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates. According to Patrick Pringle's Jolly Roger, pirate recruitment was most effective among the unemployed, escaped bondsmen, and transported criminals. The high seas made for an instantaneous levelling of class inequalities. Defoe relates that a pirate named Captain Bellamy made this speech to the captain of a merchant vessel he had taken as a prize. The captain of the merchant vessel had just declined an invitation to join the pirates.
A Mac 512ke (1984/5). Boots into System 1.0 in 17 secs, never crashes, runs off of two 800K floppies: one for system, fonts, and applications, the other for docs. Runs MS Word 3.0 beautifully, if I need things like footnotes, dropcaps, and columns. I gave up the kludgey appletalk network a while ago, reverting to sneakernet for this machine. Mostly, though, I use it to play Daleks, MacDraw, and Kidpix with the toddler.
I think I got my money's worth. I keep wondering when it's going to die, as I contemplate the two-year-old pounding away at it.
They're also pro-corporate-conglomeration, presumably a higher priority than security, public governance, and accountability.
I suggest that an insecure nation has a higher need for military industry, oil usage, international military intervention, and surveillance of citizens. I don't think it's accurate to call this administration pro-DEfense; try pro-offence instead.
Just the other day I got sick of trying to do DTP, FinalCut, and DVD Studio work on a single [beautiful but lonely] 19", so I ran around looking for an abandoned monitor... stuck an old, blue-ing 15" and an adaptor on the other connector on the video card. Ah, relief, a fast place to reach for my proliferating palettes. The fact that the extra monitor is fuzzy and blue is hardly annoying, since its function is to hold things I'm already familiar with, and just want to click on without seeking. It was like getting a CPU overclocking!
Of course, there are gotchas. A mismatched monitor means the resolutions don't match, and there are edges that you have to mouse around... and then the perspective changes when you're over 'there', it's a mental hiccup to adjust to the resolution shift. Especially when you're used to dual Electron Blues, yum... I think a wider display would be far superior to odd sized monitors.
Your point about the wider display speeding things up is important in the context of the other users complaining about maximizing windows on a wide display, especially since you're supporting creative users. Mac users take something for granted, it's like air, and it's called "snap to content"--that zoom box on the window is your reliable friend in the Mac OS. Many windows (of course, not all, console logs e.g.) will just zoom to a comfortable width.
Expose looks likely to make creative work on my iBook possible, palettification, GUI indulgence, overtasking and all.