Forget the cost per core hour. How much did it cost you to render your project in 5 hours instead of 5 days? Was it worth it? Was there a reason why 5 days would have been too long?
Absolutely. The problem is, people make it sound like it's going to let talented Joe Blow in his basement create the next Toy Story or cure cancer. It's not. "Cloud computing" is just servers for rent instead of purchase. For a lot of the suggested projects (not rendering, but anything scientific) you could have gotten access to a large cluster by submitting a worthy proposal. Now you can just fork over cash for your project, worthy or not.
"Verizon has also blocked the transfer of most data over USB, such as ringtones." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_RAZR)
It doesn't specifically mention pictures, but they certainly did fall under "most data," at least for part of the RAZR's life cycle. But ringtones will do just fine. You don't suppose Verizon blocked transferring ringtones because they were giving them away free, do you? And yet Apple, champion of the walled garden, not only lets you put your own ringtones on iPhones but provides several different ways of creating them.
I'd definitely be interested in hearing which phone you were using in 2000 that supported a music market where you could download a good selection of decent quality full songs for $0.99 or less though.
I have used tablet PCs. And I own a Wacom tablet, which is an actual digitizer, if you want to go with a strict definition, and which makes the resistive touch screens on tablet PCs look like crap. Either a resistive touchscreen or a capacitive one with a decent stylus is fine for textbook reading.
Yes, you most certainly can copy and paste images between any two apps that support it. I do it all the time between my PDF reader and Pages or e-mail.
Questioning is fine. Teaching something as a viable scientific alternative that is not supported by the evidence (or isn't science) is another.
Yes, there are a lot of anti-climate-change-deniers who are just as crazy (and antiscientific) as the climate change deniers. But that doesn't mean there isn't a reasonable, scientifically based position under all the politics.
Work on developing your concentration (you might also want to be a little more careful about your spelling). Lots of ebook apps have very nice mechanisms for switching between books. I've got a PDF reader on my iPad that uses tabs. MUCH easier than juggling multiple physical textbooks.
Yes, the layout tool isn't the biggest problem. What's missing is a "publisher" with a motive for making electronic textbooks cheap and easy.
Wikibooks is having trouble not because it doesn't have experts but because it doesn't have any quality control. Who wants to spend time writing a textbook that's going to get lost amongst a sea of crap? MIT open courseware is fine, but small. Scientific papers are in no way an acceptable replacement for textbooks.
What's needed is a company that will put a small amount of effort into checking the credentials of the editors/authors of their textbooks, and do all the distribution. If that company happens to make lots of money whenever someone buys a device to read those textbooks on, the books themselves are likely to be cheap and un-DRMed.
One or more professors get together and say "hey, how about making a textbook about this?" Quite often this is because they have to teach a class on that topic and don't like any of the existing textbooks. These are the editors.
The editors pitch their idea to a publisher. If the publisher likes it, they say, sure, go for it. Now the editors ask their colleagues to contribute to the textbook. Chapters get written.
Finally, when the book is all put together (and I do mean all put together - the last chapter I wrote for a textbook had to be formatted just so, by me) it goes off to the publisher. Oh, and by the way, if anybody in that chain gets paid (other than the publisher), it's the editors, and it's not very much. But everybody gets to put it on their CV, which for an academic is supposed to be MUCH better than money. Or so we tell ourselves.
Now, I'm sure the publisher does more than just print off the book and market it, but it's not a whole lot more, and it's certainly not something that a big company like Apple couldn't do.
Why in the world would paper be better for reading slowly than an ereader? I've got a few textbooks on my iPad. Whenever I find I need another one, the first thing I do is look to see if it's available in an electronic form. Searching, bookmarking, annotating (with annotations you can erase or edit) and not having to carry around (and hold) several pounds of dead tree are all killer features.
"there are currently zero readers on the market that support epub 3+mathml."
Fixing that would take a simple software update for the iPad or any other tablet manufacturer who wanted to get into the textbook business.
"let's be realistic about what all this means. These books will have DRM, just like all commercial ebooks have already. The books will be priced just as exploitatively as current textbooks are, because the publishers know that that's what college students are currently paying."
Remember the music business before Apple and Amazon got involved? You bought your CD with the song you wanted usually some other crappy songs you didn't want, and you thought you were getting a great deal if you got it for $10-$15. Now we can buy individual tracks most for under a dollar. Oh, and no DRM.
If Apple (or someone else) gets serious about electronic textbooks, that industry is MUCH easier to overturn than music was. Textbooks aren't written by famous artists who are all locked into long term contracts with existing publishers.
Textbooks are generally written by volunteers from the academic community and edited by volunteers or poorly paid near-volunteers from the academic community. Textbook publishing isn't like fiction publishing.
You don't have an iPad, do you? The whole thing is a digitizer, and you can copy and paste images or text very easily between applications. So basically your whole post is an argument FOR electronic textbooks on an iPad.
I've read a lot of eBooks on my iPad. I always get tired of reading before it gets tired of displaying.
Seriously, an iPad battery on a full charge goes for well over eight hours if it's just displaying an ebook. If you've been reading that long it's probably time to take a break, and plug in your iPad while you're at it. if you insist on slogging through, just plug the thing in. It's not very likely you're that far away from an electrical outlet.
$500 isn't much at all for the usual textbook buying audience. When I was an undergrad texts frequently cost more than that per semester, and I haven't been an undergrad for quite a while. If Apple seriously gets into textbook publishing they could cut the price of an individual book down to 10%, sell a LOT of iPads and STILL make a profit on each and every book sold.
The vast majority of cell phones (including all the popular ones) before the iPhone and Android were the ultimate in walled gardens. Remember paying your carrier if you wanted to get your pictures off your RAZR?
No, cyberwar, if it's to mean anything, is regular old war using computers as a weapon. Just like mechanized war is still killing people, but using machines. Mounted warfare is on horses. Trench warfare is from trenches.
Yes, if you destroy data that actually has real world consequences, in terms of real property or real lives, as I described, then you're engaging in war. Taking down someone's web page does not, and is not.
No? Name some exceptions. And when I say conquering, I don't necessarily mean occupying their country and enslaving them. Conquering includes making helpless.
Taking down someone's web page is a cyberwar now? When two countries (not companies vs script kiddies) start destroying actual (not virtual, potential or imagined) property within each other's borders and killing actual people, with the goal of conquering or annihilating each other, then maybe it'll be a cyberwar.
That's great. Installing any other OS on new or changed hardware a) doesn't involve a phone, b) doesn't involve talking to an Indian man or a computer and c) doesn't involve getting scolded.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, we could impose sanctions. Or invade.
If you've quoted someone and haven't put in a sic then you HAVE made an error and SHOULD be blamed. It's just not the error you're being blamed for.
Forget the cost per core hour. How much did it cost you to render your project in 5 hours instead of 5 days? Was it worth it? Was there a reason why 5 days would have been too long?
The overwhelming popularity of low budget, grainy, handheld independent films testifies to this effect.
Unfortunately the guy in the article conveniently left out the GPs point #1 (which is the important one). You still need money.
Absolutely. The problem is, people make it sound like it's going to let talented Joe Blow in his basement create the next Toy Story or cure cancer. It's not. "Cloud computing" is just servers for rent instead of purchase. For a lot of the suggested projects (not rendering, but anything scientific) you could have gotten access to a large cluster by submitting a worthy proposal. Now you can just fork over cash for your project, worthy or not.
"Verizon has also blocked the transfer of most data over USB, such as ringtones." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_RAZR)
It doesn't specifically mention pictures, but they certainly did fall under "most data," at least for part of the RAZR's life cycle. But ringtones will do just fine. You don't suppose Verizon blocked transferring ringtones because they were giving them away free, do you? And yet Apple, champion of the walled garden, not only lets you put your own ringtones on iPhones but provides several different ways of creating them.
I'd definitely be interested in hearing which phone you were using in 2000 that supported a music market where you could download a good selection of decent quality full songs for $0.99 or less though.
I have used tablet PCs. And I own a Wacom tablet, which is an actual digitizer, if you want to go with a strict definition, and which makes the resistive touch screens on tablet PCs look like crap. Either a resistive touchscreen or a capacitive one with a decent stylus is fine for textbook reading.
Yes, you most certainly can copy and paste images between any two apps that support it. I do it all the time between my PDF reader and Pages or e-mail.
Those were physicians. Big difference.
Questioning is fine. Teaching something as a viable scientific alternative that is not supported by the evidence (or isn't science) is another.
Yes, there are a lot of anti-climate-change-deniers who are just as crazy (and antiscientific) as the climate change deniers. But that doesn't mean there isn't a reasonable, scientifically based position under all the politics.
Work on developing your concentration (you might also want to be a little more careful about your spelling). Lots of ebook apps have very nice mechanisms for switching between books. I've got a PDF reader on my iPad that uses tabs. MUCH easier than juggling multiple physical textbooks.
Yes, the layout tool isn't the biggest problem. What's missing is a "publisher" with a motive for making electronic textbooks cheap and easy.
Wikibooks is having trouble not because it doesn't have experts but because it doesn't have any quality control. Who wants to spend time writing a textbook that's going to get lost amongst a sea of crap? MIT open courseware is fine, but small. Scientific papers are in no way an acceptable replacement for textbooks.
What's needed is a company that will put a small amount of effort into checking the credentials of the editors/authors of their textbooks, and do all the distribution. If that company happens to make lots of money whenever someone buys a device to read those textbooks on, the books themselves are likely to be cheap and un-DRMed.
Do you know how most textbooks are written?
One or more professors get together and say "hey, how about making a textbook about this?" Quite often this is because they have to teach a class on that topic and don't like any of the existing textbooks. These are the editors.
The editors pitch their idea to a publisher. If the publisher likes it, they say, sure, go for it. Now the editors ask their colleagues to contribute to the textbook. Chapters get written.
Finally, when the book is all put together (and I do mean all put together - the last chapter I wrote for a textbook had to be formatted just so, by me) it goes off to the publisher. Oh, and by the way, if anybody in that chain gets paid (other than the publisher), it's the editors, and it's not very much. But everybody gets to put it on their CV, which for an academic is supposed to be MUCH better than money. Or so we tell ourselves.
Now, I'm sure the publisher does more than just print off the book and market it, but it's not a whole lot more, and it's certainly not something that a big company like Apple couldn't do.
Why in the world would paper be better for reading slowly than an ereader? I've got a few textbooks on my iPad. Whenever I find I need another one, the first thing I do is look to see if it's available in an electronic form. Searching, bookmarking, annotating (with annotations you can erase or edit) and not having to carry around (and hold) several pounds of dead tree are all killer features.
"there are currently zero readers on the market that support epub 3+mathml."
Fixing that would take a simple software update for the iPad or any other tablet manufacturer who wanted to get into the textbook business.
"let's be realistic about what all this means. These books will have DRM, just like all commercial ebooks have already. The books will be priced just as exploitatively as current textbooks are, because the publishers know that that's what college students are currently paying."
Remember the music business before Apple and Amazon got involved? You bought your CD with the song you wanted usually some other crappy songs you didn't want, and you thought you were getting a great deal if you got it for $10-$15. Now we can buy individual tracks most for under a dollar. Oh, and no DRM.
If Apple (or someone else) gets serious about electronic textbooks, that industry is MUCH easier to overturn than music was. Textbooks aren't written by famous artists who are all locked into long term contracts with existing publishers.
Textbooks are generally written by volunteers from the academic community and edited by volunteers or poorly paid near-volunteers from the academic community. Textbook publishing isn't like fiction publishing.
Schools frown on complaints about transgressions that the GP made up.
You don't have an iPad, do you? The whole thing is a digitizer, and you can copy and paste images or text very easily between applications. So basically your whole post is an argument FOR electronic textbooks on an iPad.
I've read a lot of eBooks on my iPad. I always get tired of reading before it gets tired of displaying.
Seriously, an iPad battery on a full charge goes for well over eight hours if it's just displaying an ebook. If you've been reading that long it's probably time to take a break, and plug in your iPad while you're at it. if you insist on slogging through, just plug the thing in. It's not very likely you're that far away from an electrical outlet.
$500 isn't much at all for the usual textbook buying audience. When I was an undergrad texts frequently cost more than that per semester, and I haven't been an undergrad for quite a while. If Apple seriously gets into textbook publishing they could cut the price of an individual book down to 10%, sell a LOT of iPads and STILL make a profit on each and every book sold.
The vast majority of cell phones (including all the popular ones) before the iPhone and Android were the ultimate in walled gardens. Remember paying your carrier if you wanted to get your pictures off your RAZR?
No, cyberwar, if it's to mean anything, is regular old war using computers as a weapon. Just like mechanized war is still killing people, but using machines. Mounted warfare is on horses. Trench warfare is from trenches.
Yes, if you destroy data that actually has real world consequences, in terms of real property or real lives, as I described, then you're engaging in war. Taking down someone's web page does not, and is not.
They DDOSed the web page. They didn't take down the stock exchange.
No? Name some exceptions. And when I say conquering, I don't necessarily mean occupying their country and enslaving them. Conquering includes making helpless.
Taking down someone's web page is a cyberwar now? When two countries (not companies vs script kiddies) start destroying actual (not virtual, potential or imagined) property within each other's borders and killing actual people, with the goal of conquering or annihilating each other, then maybe it'll be a cyberwar.
That's great. Installing any other OS on new or changed hardware a) doesn't involve a phone, b) doesn't involve talking to an Indian man or a computer and c) doesn't involve getting scolded.