That's a good point you bring up. You can't really learn conversation from a book (except maybe from the conversations in it, depending on the writing style), but I do think they're a great way to learn grammar and new words though, as well as increasing reading speed, which is pretty important to me. I'm not trying to say reading articles isn't a great idea too.
This is good advice, but it leaves out one thing. You need to read books in your chosen language too. It's especially important to do so if you don't have anyone available to converse with. Translating articles is good, but there's a difference between translating short texts and just reading through a book. You need to get books appropriate to your vocabulary level, which means starting with children's books, and work up from there. The ideal book is one in which you know enough of the words to follow the story without a dictionary at hand, but there are still plenty of new words to figure out from context. If you try to use a dictionary while reading you'll just slow yourself down, so you need to be able to just read, skipping anything you can't make sense of. Most likely it will become clear from context.
I sure hope you're wrong about those 3d interfaces -- I'd much rather have a simpler interface in the future than the complicated one you describe.
Hopefully the interface of the future will be able to manifest itself without clunky helmets or goggles or lenses. What I want is something more akin to a portable holodeck. Rather than flying through some mazelike virtual world I'll just ask my computer for the document I want and it will be there, right in my hand. Not floating in my hud, and not in a 3d room, but right there in front of me. I can set it down and refer back to it, and I can hand it to a friend, and that friend's computer will fetch it from mine so he can keep it. I'll be able spread papers out on my desk and control my media player with actual buttons, or simply by asking for what I want -- whichever suits my mood. Email will arrive in a manila folder i my desk. I won't put on my helmet to make a phone call; I'll just talk to a bust of my contact which is sitting on my desk. Whenever possible the information I'm accessing will be manifested without a noticeable interface.
That all sounds pretty far-fetched, I know. Holodecks are far away, and one could argue that goggles and datagloves are the logical intermediate step. That's not the case though. While it will be many years before I can go out the door with nothing but my phone, ask for a map, and find myself holding it, the time when I can walk out the door with a nice leather folder, ask for a map, and take it out of my folder is just a couple years away -- theoretically. Time to market and the pace of innovation are obviously big factors. Recent advances in foldable circuitry are making it very possible to create a piece of paper that can change to show whatever I want. That, coupled with small portable computers, will put my data in my hand. The link between today's computers and the portable holodeck is gadgets to put data in our world, and not gadgets to put us in its.
3d worlds and goggles do have their place. Games, naturally, will take advantage of whatever 3d technology comes about. I'm not convinced that 3d worlds are such a wonderful idea. Visual interaction with people over the web is one thing, but I don't see any advantage to wandering through mazes, even (especially!) in the context of the Internet. It makes more sense to me to use the computer to filter information, and to make it happen instantly. 3d interfaces take the inefficiency of motion and clutter and combine it with the gigabytes of data most of us have. That's not a winning combo in my book!
Eventually, the concept of an interface will be more like choosing a filing system or designing the controls for a gadget, because we'll be able to sidestep clunky displays and mice and datagloves and put real informatin in our real hands. We won't come up with more clever ways to get into our computers: we'll come up with clever ways to get our data out of them.
Hell, KDE confuses me! All those cluttered dialogs and over-filled menus bug me so much. Why in the world would I want a menu that full when I've got a few terminals floating right in front of me?
If so (and at this point I have to imagine that in spite of the organizational problems inherent to company, development on IE 7 is going at a rapid pace...), does that mean Firefox's purpose would be fulfilled?
This is a strange thought... are you suggesting that FF's purpose is to convince MSFT to put more work into IE?
Now that you mention it, I did see something about that a few months back. That's okay though, jokes don't need to be in accord with reality. Stereotypes are the foundation of standup comedy, after all.
No, but if you write as many natural science articles as Wikipedia has and 42 randomly picked ones are as accurate as Britannica's then you're as thorough and accurate as they are.
I don't think that was parent's point. I think he just wondered if they had fixed them after finding them or not, and wasn't talking about what fixing them would mean to the study.
Newspapers are often three feet wide. They use columns, just like people do when they have multiple programs open side by side in a computer's display.
But there's a bigger problem. If you specify font sizes in points (and if they were respected), you'd have to be able to specify all of the other parts of your website in inches. You know, pictures, backgrounds, applets of all sorts, et cetera. Having to do half the site in one system and half in the other, then mixing randomly for each user, really sucks. That's why people size fonts in pixels for some sites.
Yes. I'd rather have designers adopt designs with simpler layouts that don't rely on all the page elements fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle than force tiny fonts on me though. Because I often do want large beautiful fonts. Or maybe more scalable graphics, once SVG comes to to browser everyone loves to hate.
I guess this is a troll since it's AC, but I kind of agree. On low resolution monitors serif fonts look awful, but when you have a decent computer and can set the resolution higher serif fonts look much better.
Supports what kind of technology? Changing font sizes? I don't know about where Microsoft and Apple are, but changing my DPI has a pretty big effect on my font size under Linux. Maybe I'm trailing behind wrong. I'll work on that.
In a perfect world that would be true. Unfortunately, we live in a world of clueless web designers who often specify font sizes in pixels. Which is fun for us high-res people.
I have mine set to 119 dpi -- since that's what it is -- and while some sites (talkbass.com) scale just fine, others, like morons, have set a font size in pixels. My screen is 1600 pixels tall! I don't care how much you want me to stare at your 8 pixel tall font (OsViews, I'm looking at you, or would be if I could see you), it's just not appropriate for my monitor. Sure, I can and do zoom in, but it would be nice if it just showed up sanely sized at the first place.
I think they're doing all right. It's not possible to anticipate what we'll want to be doing five years from now. Standards need to be replaced. As long as they don't change too often to keep up with change can be a good thing. Especially on the web. Since the web is a content distribution network pages change a lot. It's not much extra work to stay with current standards when you're updating your page all the time anyway.
Actually I've found that instant messengers have helped my typing, along with just doing a lot of it. Of course, you'll have to use proper language if you're planning on being good at typing real words with all those fancy big letters and little dots rather than bizarre lower case abbreviations.
I guess so. I think there are some decent ext2/3 drivers for Windows XP. I used one (I don't remember which) for a while before going Linux only, and didn't seem to have problems. Still, I didn't any prolonged testing. You might take a look at those.
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That's a good point you bring up. You can't really learn conversation from a book (except maybe from the conversations in it, depending on the writing style), but I do think they're a great way to learn grammar and new words though, as well as increasing reading speed, which is pretty important to me. I'm not trying to say reading articles isn't a great idea too.
This is good advice, but it leaves out one thing. You need to read books in your chosen language too. It's especially important to do so if you don't have anyone available to converse with. Translating articles is good, but there's a difference between translating short texts and just reading through a book. You need to get books appropriate to your vocabulary level, which means starting with children's books, and work up from there. The ideal book is one in which you know enough of the words to follow the story without a dictionary at hand, but there are still plenty of new words to figure out from context. If you try to use a dictionary while reading you'll just slow yourself down, so you need to be able to just read, skipping anything you can't make sense of. Most likely it will become clear from context.
I would like it if my vehicle didn't hurt Mother Earth.
I know I'll be pissed when someone dog-ears my e-book.
I sure hope you're wrong about those 3d interfaces -- I'd much rather have a simpler interface in the future than the complicated one you describe.
Hopefully the interface of the future will be able to manifest itself without clunky helmets or goggles or lenses. What I want is something more akin to a portable holodeck. Rather than flying through some mazelike virtual world I'll just ask my computer for the document I want and it will be there, right in my hand. Not floating in my hud, and not in a 3d room, but right there in front of me. I can set it down and refer back to it, and I can hand it to a friend, and that friend's computer will fetch it from mine so he can keep it. I'll be able spread papers out on my desk and control my media player with actual buttons, or simply by asking for what I want -- whichever suits my mood. Email will arrive in a manila folder i my desk. I won't put on my helmet to make a phone call; I'll just talk to a bust of my contact which is sitting on my desk. Whenever possible the information I'm accessing will be manifested without a noticeable interface.
That all sounds pretty far-fetched, I know. Holodecks are far away, and one could argue that goggles and datagloves are the logical intermediate step. That's not the case though. While it will be many years before I can go out the door with nothing but my phone, ask for a map, and find myself holding it, the time when I can walk out the door with a nice leather folder, ask for a map, and take it out of my folder is just a couple years away -- theoretically. Time to market and the pace of innovation are obviously big factors. Recent advances in foldable circuitry are making it very possible to create a piece of paper that can change to show whatever I want. That, coupled with small portable computers, will put my data in my hand. The link between today's computers and the portable holodeck is gadgets to put data in our world, and not gadgets to put us in its.
3d worlds and goggles do have their place. Games, naturally, will take advantage of whatever 3d technology comes about. I'm not convinced that 3d worlds are such a wonderful idea. Visual interaction with people over the web is one thing, but I don't see any advantage to wandering through mazes, even (especially!) in the context of the Internet. It makes more sense to me to use the computer to filter information, and to make it happen instantly. 3d interfaces take the inefficiency of motion and clutter and combine it with the gigabytes of data most of us have. That's not a winning combo in my book!
Eventually, the concept of an interface will be more like choosing a filing system or designing the controls for a gadget, because we'll be able to sidestep clunky displays and mice and datagloves and put real informatin in our real hands. We won't come up with more clever ways to get into our computers: we'll come up with clever ways to get our data out of them.
Hell, KDE confuses me! All those cluttered dialogs and over-filled menus bug me so much. Why in the world would I want a menu that full when I've got a few terminals floating right in front of me?
If so (and at this point I have to imagine that in spite of the organizational problems inherent to company, development on IE 7 is going at a rapid pace...), does that mean Firefox's purpose would be fulfilled?
This is a strange thought... are you suggesting that FF's purpose is to convince MSFT to put more work into IE?
Now that you mention it, I did see something about that a few months back. That's okay though, jokes don't need to be in accord with reality. Stereotypes are the foundation of standup comedy, after all.
No, but if you write as many natural science articles as Wikipedia has and 42 randomly picked ones are as accurate as Britannica's then you're as thorough and accurate as they are.
Makes you want to strap a gasoline engine to you laptop, doesn't it. And I thought my laptop was too warm now!
I don't think that was parent's point. I think he just wondered if they had fixed them after finding them or not, and wasn't talking about what fixing them would mean to the study.
Newspapers are often three feet wide. They use columns, just like people do when they have multiple programs open side by side in a computer's display.
Hey, I like that analogy.
Hmm... it seems that Firefox doesn't scale SVGs right. So make that maybe once it does, and IE gets SVG support.
But there's a bigger problem. If you specify font sizes in points (and if they were respected), you'd have to be able to specify all of the other parts of your website in inches. You know, pictures, backgrounds, applets of all sorts, et cetera. Having to do half the site in one system and half in the other, then mixing randomly for each user, really sucks. That's why people size fonts in pixels for some sites.
Yes. I'd rather have designers adopt designs with simpler layouts that don't rely on all the page elements fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle than force tiny fonts on me though. Because I often do want large beautiful fonts. Or maybe more scalable graphics, once SVG comes to to browser everyone loves to hate.
I guess this is a troll since it's AC, but I kind of agree. On low resolution monitors serif fonts look awful, but when you have a decent computer and can set the resolution higher serif fonts look much better.
Supports what kind of technology? Changing font sizes? I don't know about where Microsoft and Apple are, but changing my DPI has a pretty big effect on my font size under Linux. Maybe I'm trailing behind wrong. I'll work on that.
In a perfect world that would be true. Unfortunately, we live in a world of clueless web designers who often specify font sizes in pixels. Which is fun for us high-res people.
Maybe yours is broken, since the background isn't black... it's a busy marble picture with too much contrast for easy reading.
I have mine set to 119 dpi -- since that's what it is -- and while some sites (talkbass.com) scale just fine, others, like morons, have set a font size in pixels. My screen is 1600 pixels tall! I don't care how much you want me to stare at your 8 pixel tall font (OsViews, I'm looking at you, or would be if I could see you), it's just not appropriate for my monitor. Sure, I can and do zoom in, but it would be nice if it just showed up sanely sized at the first place.
I think they're doing all right. It's not possible to anticipate what we'll want to be doing five years from now. Standards need to be replaced. As long as they don't change too often to keep up with change can be a good thing. Especially on the web. Since the web is a content distribution network pages change a lot. It's not much extra work to stay with current standards when you're updating your page all the time anyway.
I'm not sure that hanging out on /. is as sophisticated as you think.
I can picture it now... "Why is that man playing with his crotch?" "I'm just typing, honest!"
Actually I've found that instant messengers have helped my typing, along with just doing a lot of it. Of course, you'll have to use proper language if you're planning on being good at typing real words with all those fancy big letters and little dots rather than bizarre lower case abbreviations.
I guess so. I think there are some decent ext2/3 drivers for Windows XP. I used one (I don't remember which) for a while before going Linux only, and didn't seem to have problems. Still, I didn't any prolonged testing. You might take a look at those.
At least I wasn't funny either. And they weren't that funny in the first place. Next to us, you're a comedic gem. :)