In the UK (where I live) only 5% of the poulation (18+ at least) are teetotal. I think a sweeping statement such as "don't drink" is a little bit too much of an oversimplification. As for the "don't cheat" bit, pictures out of context can look every bit as bad as a genuine infidelity while being completely innocent.
That being said, I'm sure most complaints from angry spouses would be completely justified.
It depends how much you need to see - if you are just using it as an MP3 server, then you can use a low-res set-up or play with the desktop (e.g. use the settings for the visually impaired with high contrast / big text etc.). You should be able to see as much as you need to get your MP3s chosen, and if it's all aural after that then it doesn't matter.
You can then replace this with a higher definition screen when the opportunity arises.
If on the other hand you want to do other things (e.g. web surfing etc.) on it then you probably need to go for a more complicated setup. The bottom line is that PCs (Linux and yes, even Windows) are very customisable and although 640x480 isn't pretty, it's usable for some things.
If that's not acceptable, then SuSE has very good accessibility features - get yourself a Braille board and learn to use that and then you can just watch whatevers on cable.
One point: in the list of common words, "thou" is quite high up (due to the works selected, including the bible); could the results not have been very different (and hence the layout) if this and similar "obsolescent" words were discounted? i.e. by using only contemporary works: although you could argue that these are large well known literary works etc., I think that works typed in the last 5-20 years (and hence next 5-50 years) may have a different (only slightly, but perhaps significantly) spectrum of words used and therefore the keyboard layout may change? And if this is the case, do we need to re-engineer our keyboards not only between languages but every few decades?
I'm not so sure about the communicator - it's sort of a mini-laptop combined with a phone rather than a PDA (if you're thinking of the same one I am - I'm at work and the site is blocked by the admin). But there are plenty PDA-featured phones in the European and Asian markets at various stages between simplified PDA and stripped down laptop.
Precisely my point about the speech recognition. It is awkward, and pressing a button on a remote would be much easier, and far less error prone. What we need is when the phone hears you say "I'm going to phone Roger now", in normal conversation, and sets itself on hearing "Roger", "now", and "phone" in the right context (which is why actual AI is ideal) to dial the number, perhaps just printing "press [whatever] button to phone Roger" on the screen to make sure you are ready.
There seems to be a lot of "why?" questioning about this whole mod thing. Firstly, Why not? It's arguably a form of art - are you saying why should anyone do art?
Secondly, the issue of aesthetics is a big one - if you think it looks good, then do it. No-one else needs to agree, otherwise we'd all wear the same clothes and part our hair the same. A lot of human existence is about aesthetics, not even going into Darwinism.
Thirdly, individuality. Before skateboard-style (or any other fashion) became mainstream, it was done only by a few people expressing themselves in a new way.
If you still don't understand why people mod then I presume you wear your dad's clothes, don't look at them before or after you put them on, got the car which was the most practical for the cheapest colour, have no wallpaper in your house, have a two-colour graphics card, and your {girlfriend¦boyfriend} is ugly as sin but has a lovely personality.
I've never bought into the whole speech control thing. I'd feel stupid in a room with other people talking to the VCR. It sounds silly enough when people tell their cellphone "Jim... no, Jim, Jim..fuck.."
What we need is Minority Report style controlling, or something that listens to ambient conversation (sort of pseudo-AI, or even better real AI) and decides to play the damn movie when the people in the room agree to, talking amongst themselves, without directing anything at the DVD/TiVo/whatever itself.
I'll have to be honest - my VCR is flashing 12:00. Damn thing keeps resetting everytime my girlfriend unplugs it to hoover (vacuum for those in the USA).
I've started taking a sort of pride in that 12:00 now. But then, I don't wear a watch.
A.. panic over. I'm sure I'll get modded down though.
User friendliness is a bit too subjective a term - it varies so much between users. One of the problems with a lot of modern technology is that people want so many features that extra buttons have to be added in, and extra steps - a large percentage of people never use these. I only use 4 buttons of around 30 on my DVD remote. If we took these off then we'd only have "Play", "Pause", "Stop", "scan" and "FW/ Rewind" (although I had to use "subtitle" for Crouching Tiger...), and then the techies would complain. A lot of it's about having something for everyone, and showing off all their "cool" features, but for the less tech-savvy this extra level of complexity just makes things unusable.
This coupled with the fact that a lot of the manuals are in poorly translated Korean (No joke) can make things intimidating for people - but most users are now more tech savvy. Home computers, VCRs (DVDs) et al have only been around for the last 20-30 years or so - is it any surprise that those outside the generation that grew up with them find them a little daunting?
The user-friendliness will change with the same controls / appliances over the next 50 years as the 'older generation' changes to the relatively 'tech-savvy'
I'm not trolling - (well, I suppose that's always arguable depending on whether you agree with me or not). The cellphone / PDA convergence thing has been going on for a while now - while handspring's visorphone (PDA add-on) and Treo and similar could be argued as you say to be geek only toys with no market penetrance, most high-end cellphones now have PDA capabilities, with extensive address books, very capable note-taking (and dictation taking) and calender abilities, and calculators - the biggest selling point of PDAs (which are really just electronic filofaxes). The thing they don't have is modifiable software but I believe the newer ones have Java. Some even use Palm OS.
So to be short - they are now being produced and starting to reach high-end mass market - which will be tomorrow's low-end mass market. Which was my original point.
So could there not be legislation that numbers have to be checked by the telemarketer? I just thought that if it wasn't clear then you could use it to your advantage.
I don't see the point. If I was a terrorist and posted a USENET / slashdot / other pre-arranged forum message with "big day on Sept 11, flying into NY with a few buddies on flight XXX", there is no way that any FBI / CIA / other agency guy would know what it meant if he saw it on Sept 10, even assuming he looked at it.
There are just too many ways of sending unencrypted / unhidden messages; adding more work just seems like a big hassle for the sender and recipient - as was said after 11/9/01, the reason that messages were not intercepted was because they were low-tech / plain text / whatever. It is quicker and easier to make it innocent-sounding except to those who know already. Any agency screening emails / web pages / whatever would have a lot LESS work to do if it just had an image scanner that decided if there was any potential code, then concentrating on those. As another poster said, checking if a pic does or doesn't have steganography involved is easy (though you then have to decode it) - would it not then be easier to have an image of unencoded text which would be easily readable only if you look at it, on an obscurely titled web page? No automated searcher would be able to read it, no human would ever know where to look unless they alredy knew where it was.
With email, text messaging, instant messaging, unlimited internet forums, the internet pages themselves, snail mail, telephone, telegraph, morse, hundreds of languages, and god-knows what other methods, there are just too may ways to transmit info to plough through these and find hidden messages.
I just don't see the point.
On another note - could terrorist emails be easily intercepted if the volume of traffic was reduced significantly? i.e. if spam was banned?
I am from the UK, and am glad we do not suffer this idiocy in Europe. However, if in the US there is no distinction between landlines and cellphones, and by telling the marketer that you are on a cellphone then they will take you off their list, couldn't you just tell them than you were on a cellphone when they called your landline as well and this would stop the number of cold calls to your home?
They shouldn't be able to tell that you were lying from the number if they genuinely don't know when they are calling a cellphone or a landline.
And to spend your time as you want, which is fairly broad reaching; Even then, I didn't say they were our only freedoms, just said that if you couldn't spend your own time and money as you wanted then that was a big restraint; nit-picking the exact grammar and words or what I write doesn't change the actual meaning behind it, and doing so without actually reading it just shows your ignorance.
The whole trademark thing is getting stupid. On the one hand, the companies have to defend their trademarks or they lose them (compare to Bayer Aspirin (original German brand) which is now generic in the rest of the world. In Germany, you still get Bayer Aspirin if you ask for 'aspirin' rather than the cheaper generic brand (I saw this on/., can't remember where)).
Similarly Microsoft now don't have the Windows thing (cf. Lindows) as they didn't pursue the thing until it was threatened with a rival product rather than a 'friendly' one.
On the other hand, it's got out of control. Everytihng has TM or R or Copyright or whatever. During a recent visit the the US, I was appalled to see so many. Much worse than here in the UK. Amongst the other things which had been trademarked, copyrighted and registered were a number of common phrases and words like "Smile" (I shit you not).
Clearly whatever legislation exists is either flawed or not working. I can respect the point of view of the company (I am sure if they'd sent a letter (not through a lawyer) saying "sorry about this, but we have to ask that you change your site to keep our lawyers happy, here are our reasons, we may have to take it further if you don't change it within a reasonable time" rather than being heavy handed this would never have been such an issue). But respecting their position doesn't make me think that the situation is any more ridiculous.
Is there a way that these things could be settled without litigation? Couldn't a 'common sense' law be written in as well, so that companies don't have to pursue their trademarks if they think that they are being used in a way they approve?
Anyway, something needs to be done about US companies trademarking everything, whether they came up with it or not. If I say "Smile" to someone then the last thing I want is to be hit with a lawsuit because some prick says that as his names writen next to it on a legal pad somewhere, it's his.
Do something worthy? Really, you may want to spend your time donig what you consider worthy, but it's not fair to impose your beliefs on others. He may or may not give to the needy but it's his money - he earned it however (whether or not he really 'earned' it) and so he can spend it however. If we don't have the freedom to spend our money (and our time) as we wish, then what freedom do we have?
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That being said, I'm sure most complaints from angry spouses would be completely justified.
You can then replace this with a higher definition screen when the opportunity arises.
If on the other hand you want to do other things (e.g. web surfing etc.) on it then you probably need to go for a more complicated setup. The bottom line is that PCs (Linux and yes, even Windows) are very customisable and although 640x480 isn't pretty, it's usable for some things.
If that's not acceptable, then SuSE has very good accessibility features - get yourself a Braille board and learn to use that and then you can just watch whatevers on cable.
If none of these are suitable, watch MTV
not too sure when that might happen though...
I'm sure it would have a thousand useful applications but this with alcohol could end civilisation as we know it.
Secondly, the issue of aesthetics is a big one - if you think it looks good, then do it. No-one else needs to agree, otherwise we'd all wear the same clothes and part our hair the same. A lot of human existence is about aesthetics, not even going into Darwinism.
Thirdly, individuality. Before skateboard-style (or any other fashion) became mainstream, it was done only by a few people expressing themselves in a new way.
If you still don't understand why people mod then I presume you wear your dad's clothes, don't look at them before or after you put them on, got the car which was the most practical for the cheapest colour, have no wallpaper in your house, have a two-colour graphics card, and your {girlfriend¦boyfriend} is ugly as sin but has a lovely personality.
What we need is Minority Report style controlling, or something that listens to ambient conversation (sort of pseudo-AI, or even better real AI) and decides to play the damn movie when the people in the room agree to, talking amongst themselves, without directing anything at the DVD/TiVo/whatever itself.
I've started taking a sort of pride in that 12:00 now. But then, I don't wear a watch.
User friendliness is a bit too subjective a term - it varies so much between users. One of the problems with a lot of modern technology is that people want so many features that extra buttons have to be added in, and extra steps - a large percentage of people never use these. I only use 4 buttons of around 30 on my DVD remote. If we took these off then we'd only have "Play", "Pause", "Stop", "scan" and "FW/ Rewind" (although I had to use "subtitle" for Crouching Tiger...), and then the techies would complain. A lot of it's about having something for everyone, and showing off all their "cool" features, but for the less tech-savvy this extra level of complexity just makes things unusable.
This coupled with the fact that a lot of the manuals are in poorly translated Korean (No joke) can make things intimidating for people - but most users are now more tech savvy. Home computers, VCRs (DVDs) et al have only been around for the last 20-30 years or so - is it any surprise that those outside the generation that grew up with them find them a little daunting?
The user-friendliness will change with the same controls / appliances over the next 50 years as the 'older generation' changes to the relatively 'tech-savvy'
I haven't even read the title yet - just trying to get the first post...
So to be short - they are now being produced and starting to reach high-end mass market - which will be tomorrow's low-end mass market. Which was my original point.
Bluetooth? But then it's release would be delayed too long. And it wouldn't work anyway.
There are just too many ways of sending unencrypted / unhidden messages; adding more work just seems like a big hassle for the sender and recipient - as was said after 11/9/01, the reason that messages were not intercepted was because they were low-tech / plain text / whatever. It is quicker and easier to make it innocent-sounding except to those who know already. Any agency screening emails / web pages / whatever would have a lot LESS work to do if it just had an image scanner that decided if there was any potential code, then concentrating on those. As another poster said, checking if a pic does or doesn't have steganography involved is easy (though you then have to decode it) - would it not then be easier to have an image of unencoded text which would be easily readable only if you look at it, on an obscurely titled web page? No automated searcher would be able to read it, no human would ever know where to look unless they alredy knew where it was.
With email, text messaging, instant messaging, unlimited internet forums, the internet pages themselves, snail mail, telephone, telegraph, morse, hundreds of languages, and god-knows what other methods, there are just too may ways to transmit info to plough through these and find hidden messages.
I just don't see the point.
On another note - could terrorist emails be easily intercepted if the volume of traffic was reduced significantly? i.e. if spam was banned?
They shouldn't be able to tell that you were lying from the number if they genuinely don't know when they are calling a cellphone or a landline.
Similarly Microsoft now don't have the Windows thing (cf. Lindows) as they didn't pursue the thing until it was threatened with a rival product rather than a 'friendly' one.
On the other hand, it's got out of control. Everytihng has TM or R or Copyright or whatever. During a recent visit the the US, I was appalled to see so many. Much worse than here in the UK. Amongst the other things which had been trademarked, copyrighted and registered were a number of common phrases and words like "Smile" (I shit you not).
Clearly whatever legislation exists is either flawed or not working. I can respect the point of view of the company (I am sure if they'd sent a letter (not through a lawyer) saying "sorry about this, but we have to ask that you change your site to keep our lawyers happy, here are our reasons, we may have to take it further if you don't change it within a reasonable time" rather than being heavy handed this would never have been such an issue). But respecting their position doesn't make me think that the situation is any more ridiculous.
Is there a way that these things could be settled without litigation? Couldn't a 'common sense' law be written in as well, so that companies don't have to pursue their trademarks if they think that they are being used in a way they approve?
Anyway, something needs to be done about US companies trademarking everything, whether they came up with it or not. If I say "Smile" to someone then the last thing I want is to be hit with a lawsuit because some prick says that as his names writen next to it on a legal pad somewhere, it's his.
Do something worthy? Really, you may want to spend your time donig what you consider worthy, but it's not fair to impose your beliefs on others. He may or may not give to the needy but it's his money - he earned it however (whether or not he really 'earned' it) and so he can spend it however. If we don't have the freedom to spend our money (and our time) as we wish, then what freedom do we have?