Already been done with a urinal by Marcel Duchamp.
You have, perhaps inadvertently, revealed what is wrong with much of what gets called "art" today. SuperBanana argues that taking something from the dump and hanging it on the wall of an art gallery is not creating art. You point out that Marcel Duchamp famously did just that with a urinal, which suggests that as long as you're the first one to take a particular object from the dump and hang it on the wall, then you have created art. Originality alone is believed to be a sufficient effort.
Michelangelo laid on his back for months, painstakingly painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, using natural talents that few humans possess. Contrast this to the urinal on the wall -- almost entirely just an idea, and a weak one at that, on the part of Duchamp. Mere originality is a poor substitute for creativity.
Unfortunately, the pursuit of originality over artistry, creativity, and beauty has left the art world overflowing with urinals, and bereft of Sistine Chapels.
Is that surprising? Don't forget about Clinton's Clipper Chip.
Are Democrats more interested in personal freedom than Republicans, or does it just seem that way since the media harps endlessly on the Republicans and gives the Democrats a free ride?
Can anyone enlighten me on the advantages of always having to mouse to the upper left-hand corner to go to the previous page?
It could be historical, because contextual menus are relatively new to Macs. Historically, Mac applications are optimized for two types of users, beginner and advanced. The beginner uses the menus to do everything, and once familiar with an application, makes note of the keyboard shortcuts listed next to the most common menu commands. As the user becomes advanced, he/she uses more and more keyboard shortcuts.
Contextual menus occupy a strange sort of middle ground, catering to perhaps a different sort of user: lazy-beginner, or inefficient-advanced. This type of user interface is on a par with the classic Windows way of handling keyboard shortcuts, which is to use the keys to pull down and navigate menus. I always thought that was weird too.
That said, I still miss the Finder contextual menu item which arranges files by name, which was first implemented in Mac OS 8.
The very first MP3 I ever downloaded was the theme song from the 1960s Spider-Man cartoon. (Apparently, the lyrics were written by Stan Lee.) I have a fairly extensive CD collection -- basically every CD I ever wanted -- so the only value of Napster to me was something I couldn't buy.
I would love to see someone do a decent cover of the theme song. The Ramones version is awful. My ideal choice would be to have The Shuffle Demons cover it.
From the article: The company will be working with Apple to add support for Microsoft's superior Windows Media Audio (WMA) format to the iPod by mid-year.
I don't get it. Are they adding support for WMA, or for a superior format?
I think this moves the Expocity feature from 'copycat' to 'homage' status, and that means it's cool with me. After all, how could I criticize Amazon for patenting one-click, and simultaneously criticize someone else for copying Apple's Expose feature?
I believe that CDs are the last of their kind, and will not be replaced by anything similar. Rather, the wave of the future is network distribution of the music files, either as AAC, Ogg Vorbis, MP3 or whatever you like. Once CDs are done, no one will ever go to a store to buy music on storage media.
A little over two years ago, I bought a satellite receiver with a built-in PVR. At the time, I had plans to buy a DVD player, but never got around to doing so. I don't have a DVD player, (well, my computer has a DVD burner, but I've never watched a movie on it,) and don't miss it. Why? Because I find that the electronic distribution of movies and TV shows directly to my PVR's hard drive is superior to renting DVDs.
There are restrictions, of course. My aging PVR only holds 30 hours of video, which rules out long-term archives. I have to program what I want recorded ahead of time, etc. However, as technology advances, these restrictions will go away. All that is needed is increased storage space, faster transfers, and some sort of ability to network PVRs together. All of those things can be accomplished today by enthusiastic home-brewers, and can be reasonably expected to show up at Costco before the decades out.
In my picture of the home of the future, there will be a large raid array of hard drives somewhere in the basement between the furnace and the hot water heater. It will be wirelessly accessed by various devices throughout the house, such as audio players, televisions, cameras, scanners, etc.
The important part is that no one will have to make two trips to BlockBuster for every movie they want to watch!
When you say that people aren't wearing enough red hats, do you mean that they do not own enough, or that they are simply not wearing the ones they own?
The nicest surprise is that alt-tab (yeah, yeah, command-tab on Mac) application switching has really matured. It's much, MUCH more like Windows now... with a transparent bar that appears center-screen and true stack-based app switching (to make it just as easy to go two applications back as it is to go one application back).
Since when does mature = Windows? I sincerely hope that you are mistaken, and that the Apple-Tab switching hasn't become more like Windows. On my Mac, one Apple-Tab switches to the application I want about 90% of the time, while on Windows, one Alt-Tab fails to switch to the application I want about 90% of the time. I haven't yet sat down to figure out exactly what algorithm Apple uses, but whatever it is, it's brilliant.
"Video games are never going to be as popular as films or music unless the people who make them concentrate on making them fun, says a leading game expert."
When I read this sentence, my brain translates it into:
"Video games are never going to suck as big as a lot of popular films and music unless the people responsible for "Look Who's Talking Too" start buying up video game companies."
Seriously. I like video games just the way they are. Don't F with them.
With 90+% of the people running PC's, PC's will be where the games are found.
I've seen this argument presented hundreds, if not thousands of times, and it is high-time that someone deconstructs it.
Sometimes, percentages are a good measure, such as in elections. However, in other situations, they make no sense at all. Just because 90% of X is using Platform A, and only 10% of X is using Platform B does not mean that someone producing games for Platform B is going to lose money.
The real question here is: Is there sufficient demand for Mac games? The answer is yes, and there are new titles coming out all the time. Are the games you want to play available for Macs? That's subjective, and you are free to decide for yourself.
Here's another reason why that argument doesn't hold water -- the PC hasn't always been the dominant game platform. In the 70s, PCs didn't exist yet, and all the games were for Apples, Commodores, Ataris, and various other game platforms. (By PCs, I'm referring to what used to be called IBM clones, and are now more accurately called Wintel boxes.)
In the 80s, the PC arrived and soon became the most popular computer platform, but games were still predominantly available only for Commodore Amigas, Atari STs, as well as various Nintendo and Sega platforms. (At the time, PC owners would often smugly contend that their machines were superior business machines, and that games were frivolous and superfluous. Now Mac owners use the same argument.)
It wasn't until the 90s that PCs began to dominate the game industry, and even today PC owners have to wait for ports from dedicated game platforms!
So go G5. There are two vendors of compatible processors, IBM and Motorola, while the only vendor of x86-64 is AMD, and the only vendor of IPF is Intel... not only that, the PowerPC is more efficient and has a technically brighter future.
Plus, it's what all the cool kids use. You want to be cool, right?
I read Isaac Asimov's Realm of Algebra when I was in grade 6, and didn't learn anything beyond it until around grade 10. Actually, I didn't even finish reading Realm of Algebra -- if I did, who knows how many grades worth of math I would have learned in one sitting!
Unfortunately, it is out of print, and has been for some time. I have seen people asking outrageous sums of money for it used, upwards of $300 U.S. This is truly a book that is crying out to be open-sourced/pirated. Maybe someone who owns one would scan it into a tidy little pdf or something. Do the same to Realm of Numbers too.
I know a guy who lived in the Yukon for a while in the 80s. Most people there, according to this guy, had a similar policy. Front doors were left unlocked, and people were welcome to come in, crash in the living room, help themselves to coffee and toast, etc., but were not allowed to go upstairs.
Slashdot Mirror
Already been done with a urinal by Marcel Duchamp.
You have, perhaps inadvertently, revealed what is wrong with much of what gets called "art" today. SuperBanana argues that taking something from the dump and hanging it on the wall of an art gallery is not creating art. You point out that Marcel Duchamp famously did just that with a urinal, which suggests that as long as you're the first one to take a particular object from the dump and hang it on the wall, then you have created art. Originality alone is believed to be a sufficient effort.
Michelangelo laid on his back for months, painstakingly painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, using natural talents that few humans possess. Contrast this to the urinal on the wall -- almost entirely just an idea, and a weak one at that, on the part of Duchamp. Mere originality is a poor substitute for creativity.
Unfortunately, the pursuit of originality over artistry, creativity, and beauty has left the art world overflowing with urinals, and bereft of Sistine Chapels.
What happens when ... unique, verifiable online identifiers are adopted for users?
What happens when privacy goes down the toilet? Lots of bad stuff.
which would cast your vote online for you on election day
You realize that's a crazy idea, right?
Palladium/DRM from a Democrat?
Is that surprising? Don't forget about Clinton's Clipper Chip.
Are Democrats more interested in personal freedom than Republicans, or does it just seem that way since the media harps endlessly on the Republicans and gives the Democrats a free ride?
In any case, the question of productization in politics is a very real one, and should be discussed.
I disagree. However, I do think that people who use nonsense words like 'productization' should be bludgeonized.
I smell a Political Science major!
Once people land on Mars, it will definitely be contaminated, and in a big way.
To me, the obvious question is "So?"
Maybe instead of sending probes to Mars, we should send a couple buckets full of the hardiest bacteria we can find.
Can anyone enlighten me on the advantages of always having to mouse to the upper left-hand corner to go to the previous page?
It could be historical, because contextual menus are relatively new to Macs. Historically, Mac applications are optimized for two types of users, beginner and advanced. The beginner uses the menus to do everything, and once familiar with an application, makes note of the keyboard shortcuts listed next to the most common menu commands. As the user becomes advanced, he/she uses more and more keyboard shortcuts.
Contextual menus occupy a strange sort of middle ground, catering to perhaps a different sort of user: lazy-beginner, or inefficient-advanced. This type of user interface is on a par with the classic Windows way of handling keyboard shortcuts, which is to use the keys to pull down and navigate menus. I always thought that was weird too.
That said, I still miss the Finder contextual menu item which arranges files by name, which was first implemented in Mac OS 8.
Why?
The very first MP3 I ever downloaded was the theme song from the 1960s Spider-Man cartoon. (Apparently, the lyrics were written by Stan Lee.) I have a fairly extensive CD collection -- basically every CD I ever wanted -- so the only value of Napster to me was something I couldn't buy.
I would love to see someone do a decent cover of the theme song. The Ramones version is awful. My ideal choice would be to have The Shuffle Demons cover it.
From the article:
The company will be working with Apple to add support for Microsoft's superior Windows Media Audio (WMA) format to the iPod by mid-year.
I don't get it. Are they adding support for WMA, or for a superior format?
Note that it's not "Garage Band" but "GarageBand". (Straight from Apple's InterCapitalizationNounFactory.)
In order for Al Gore to become President, he would have to first take the initiative in freezing hell over.
No, I hadn't noticed that. Good eye!
I think this moves the Expocity feature from 'copycat' to 'homage' status, and that means it's cool with me. After all, how could I criticize Amazon for patenting one-click, and simultaneously criticize someone else for copying Apple's Expose feature?
I believe that CDs are the last of their kind, and will not be replaced by anything similar. Rather, the wave of the future is network distribution of the music files, either as AAC, Ogg Vorbis, MP3 or whatever you like. Once CDs are done, no one will ever go to a store to buy music on storage media.
A little over two years ago, I bought a satellite receiver with a built-in PVR. At the time, I had plans to buy a DVD player, but never got around to doing so. I don't have a DVD player, (well, my computer has a DVD burner, but I've never watched a movie on it,) and don't miss it. Why? Because I find that the electronic distribution of movies and TV shows directly to my PVR's hard drive is superior to renting DVDs.
There are restrictions, of course. My aging PVR only holds 30 hours of video, which rules out long-term archives. I have to program what I want recorded ahead of time, etc. However, as technology advances, these restrictions will go away. All that is needed is increased storage space, faster transfers, and some sort of ability to network PVRs together. All of those things can be accomplished today by enthusiastic home-brewers, and can be reasonably expected to show up at Costco before the decades out.
In my picture of the home of the future, there will be a large raid array of hard drives somewhere in the basement between the furnace and the hot water heater. It will be wirelessly accessed by various devices throughout the house, such as audio players, televisions, cameras, scanners, etc.
The important part is that no one will have to make two trips to BlockBuster for every movie they want to watch!
Eliot Van Buskirk comes to praise the iPod, not to bury it!
When you say that people aren't wearing enough red hats, do you mean that they do not own enough, or that they are simply not wearing the ones they own?
The nicest surprise is that alt-tab (yeah, yeah, command-tab on Mac) application switching has really matured. It's much, MUCH more like Windows now... with a transparent bar that appears center-screen and true stack-based app switching (to make it just as easy to go two applications back as it is to go one application back).
Since when does mature = Windows? I sincerely hope that you are mistaken, and that the Apple-Tab switching hasn't become more like Windows. On my Mac, one Apple-Tab switches to the application I want about 90% of the time, while on Windows, one Alt-Tab fails to switch to the application I want about 90% of the time. I haven't yet sat down to figure out exactly what algorithm Apple uses, but whatever it is, it's brilliant.
Forbes has an article about the puretracks.com launch, but also mentions that iTunes is expected to launch for Windows this week!
What about Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly and Nomeansno? That's all you really need anyway.
In Soviet Russia, blackouts cause FREE MARKETS!
It's funny because it's true!
Free markets cause power blackouts?
You ask that like Loonies on the Left don't believe it.
Don't forget your critical reading skills, kids!
"Video games are never going to be as popular as films or music unless the people who make them concentrate on making them fun, says a leading game expert."
When I read this sentence, my brain translates it into:
"Video games are never going to suck as big as a lot of popular films and music unless the people responsible for "Look Who's Talking Too" start buying up video game companies."
Seriously. I like video games just the way they are. Don't F with them.
With 90+% of the people running PC's, PC's will be where the games are found.
I've seen this argument presented hundreds, if not thousands of times, and it is high-time that someone deconstructs it.
Sometimes, percentages are a good measure, such as in elections. However, in other situations, they make no sense at all. Just because 90% of X is using Platform A, and only 10% of X is using Platform B does not mean that someone producing games for Platform B is going to lose money.
The real question here is: Is there sufficient demand for Mac games? The answer is yes, and there are new titles coming out all the time. Are the games you want to play available for Macs? That's subjective, and you are free to decide for yourself.
Here's another reason why that argument doesn't hold water -- the PC hasn't always been the dominant game platform. In the 70s, PCs didn't exist yet, and all the games were for Apples, Commodores, Ataris, and various other game platforms. (By PCs, I'm referring to what used to be called IBM clones, and are now more accurately called Wintel boxes.)
In the 80s, the PC arrived and soon became the most popular computer platform, but games were still predominantly available only for Commodore Amigas, Atari STs, as well as various Nintendo and Sega platforms. (At the time, PC owners would often smugly contend that their machines were superior business machines, and that games were frivolous and superfluous. Now Mac owners use the same argument.)
It wasn't until the 90s that PCs began to dominate the game industry, and even today PC owners have to wait for ports from dedicated game platforms!
It will be weird to keep the same cpu for 2 years...
Then this will blow your mind -- I have averaged 4.5 years for my last 3 Macs.
So go G5. There are two vendors of compatible processors, IBM and Motorola, while the only vendor of x86-64 is AMD, and the only vendor of IPF is Intel... not only that, the PowerPC is more efficient and has a technically brighter future.
Plus, it's what all the cool kids use. You want to be cool, right?
I read Isaac Asimov's Realm of Algebra when I was in grade 6, and didn't learn anything beyond it until around grade 10. Actually, I didn't even finish reading Realm of Algebra -- if I did, who knows how many grades worth of math I would have learned in one sitting!
Unfortunately, it is out of print, and has been for some time. I have seen people asking outrageous sums of money for it used, upwards of $300 U.S. This is truly a book that is crying out to be open-sourced/pirated. Maybe someone who owns one would scan it into a tidy little pdf or something. Do the same to Realm of Numbers too.
I know a guy who lived in the Yukon for a while in the 80s. Most people there, according to this guy, had a similar policy. Front doors were left unlocked, and people were welcome to come in, crash in the living room, help themselves to coffee and toast, etc., but were not allowed to go upstairs.
/. from the Yukon care to comment?
Anyone reading