"Vastly different" is not the same as "a complete rewrite". If it's like the ribbon in MS Office, being vastly different could actually be a disadvantage.
I couldn't resist. But with all the work and effort and resources going into this, how is it that operations a tiny fraction of this can generate fast, reliable and standards complaint browsers better than MSIE?
Microsoft, the problem isn't that you're not spending enough money. It's that you're not doing it right.
I'm not familiar with IE 8 and 9, but in the past the issue was many years and revisions of code reuse and accumulation of cruft, an insane amount of backwards compatibility and some poor initial design choices combined to make each new version bigger, slower and buggier. I imagine this combines to make developing and especially testing any new release a massive undertaking.
To be fair, I would argue that Firefox is starting that downward spiral now. Each new version is slower and has a bigger footprint. Personally, I've switched to Chrome, but when Chrome inevitably starts lagging, I'll be on the lookout for the next completely new browser. Not merely because it's new, but because it's less likely to have years of bad decisions weighing it down.
The problem in Microsoft's case is that they seem incapable of dumping what they have and doing a complete rewrite. There may be marketing reasons for this, granted, but if they made a clean break it'd be better for them in the long run.
I don't disagree. I ran into a perception in my daughter's grade school amongst the staff that Ritalin made the class quieter and easier to control. (I'm not sure that was true, but it was the perception.) The same woman would say daughter had a discipline problem and in almost the same breath say I should drug her. I asked her what a discipline problem and drugs have in common, and she responded (not really answering the question) that her own son was on Ritalin and he was doing so much better. (Which may even be true, but past performance is no indication of future results.)
But oddly, her fourth grade teacher, who was actually engaged with his students and could keep their attention, did fine with her. One of his techniques was to take them all outside and run them in a circle for a few minutes before giving a lesson. Somewhat along the lines of what you were saying. It worked really well.
I observed that the general activity on the playground was much less than I remembered from school. "Tag", and any game that involved someone chasing someone else, was absolutely forbidden. There was no game equipment, frisbees, balls, no organized games, only a couple of crowded play structures on overpadded ground. Kids wandered around or sat under one of the trees. There wasn't a lot of opportunity to burn off energy.
I do not believe this grade school was unique. What it takes in the discovery process is (a) the school diagnoses your kid with ADD, (b) you don't blindly go along with it, (c) you confirm your suspicions with independent testing, and (d) you are determined enough and intelligent enough to dig into why the school is so hell bent on medicating your child. The results you get are like something out of Portlandia.
By "graphics overkill" I mean digitally inserting elements that were unnecessary and detracted from the story. Example 1 (of many): All the new little cute squeaky things in Star Wars (the original movie) when it was revamped were profoundly irritating. Example 2: Contrast the space battle in the original film, which was coherent enough that you could understand tactics, with the overly busy, incomprehensible space battle scenes in the prequels.
So, it's not specifically the use of special effects, but the use of unnecessary and distracting elements, that really chapped my ass. Just sayin'.
Absolutely. She went to regular vision therapy for two summers, enjoyed most of it (she most enjoyed the exercise of jumping on a trampoline while reading off a blackboard) and it really did help. The doctors initially said she would never read better than third grade, and although at 17 she still doesn't read anything close to average, she's done much better than predicted.
Sounds like the child does not have AD/HD but rather the influence of the parent(s) is causing problems.
Single parent, which probably doesn't help. But even though she is my sister, may I say... BINGO!!
Test by, he went through a really bad time when he finally moved out, but eventually learned some amount of responsibility, and now in his late twenties has a family and is apparently doing well. Without drugs.
I do know. Boy, do I know. In the late nineties I took out a substantial personal loan and paid off her store, gas, and high interest personal credit cards -- a stack almost an inch high -- on condition she destroy all of them except the one tied to her checking account, and never ever get another credit card. She complained bitterly about it for years afterwards -- how I was a controlling misogynistic bastard who didn't want her to have any financial freedom -- but it stopped the hemorrhaging. I follow up on this periodically, and check our mutual credit report for new entries.
The good news is that it's ultimately self-leveling -- her credit score dropped so low after a huge number of late payments, that it limited what new credit she could qualify for. The bad news is, it's my credit score too.
We went through a period where her money was hers and my money was ours, (I hear this is common in dual income households) with the expectation that I was to pay for everything and she could squirrel away her paychecks as mad money. I made the huge mistake of going along with this for awhile to keep the peace, until I realized that she had simply transferred her spending habits to me. So I shut down all nonessential services, reduced eating out to twice a week, (some people think that's still excessive, and I'm inclined to agree) and generally put in place spending limits that allowed me to concentrate on paying off debt instead of acquiring new debt just to keep our lifestyle going.
And I was a bastard for doing this, also. (That's not the exact term she used, but I'm uncomfortable typing the term she did use.)
Now, I keep careful track of spending, and we share nonessential expenses commiserate with our incomes. When it's time for her to pay, if she's unwilling, we wait until she is willing. If that means not going out for two or three weeks, that's ok with me.
There are still issues. Of all utilities, she's only responsible for the electric bill (a compromise, as I couldn't complain about her leaving the lights on if she paid the bill) and that bill is chronically late, which can't be doing our credit score any good. But things are better, in the sense that we are financially sustainable at this time. My only debt is a small amount on one vehicle that will be paid off this year, and the house loan. And yes, I screen the mail and tear up credit card applications. I'm such a bastard.
So yeah, keep your digital presence separate as much as practical.
I'm glad it worked out for you, but I'm not sure I agree. It's powerful medicine and I don't see giving it to my kid just in case it makes her (in her teachers' words) "behave better".
I found early on that sharing digital assets was a mistake, and ended up opting out of all of our shared accounts and creating my own digital presence. I lost some money and resources on the short term (having to abandon accounts that contained money that was mostly mine) but it worked out in the long run. In the unlikely event that we separate, I have sole access to my digital presence and have no interest in hers. (Lawyers might decide differently, but that's always a risk in divorce.)
Maintaining separate identities has the added benefit that it minimizes the damage when one spouse has trouble controlling spending. When it was "our" money, it was my fault when we ran out. But when she only had direct access to her own money, she had to reluctantly learn some self control.
It's not very romantic, but one does what one must to keep a household functioning.
I think that the drugs are *way* overprescribed, but that like any big lie, there is a kernel of truth. Some people really can't function without them. But the number appears to be much smaller than the actual number of prescriptions.
This is slightly off topic, but maybe the solution is to create a second event "little burning man", like "little Sturgis", where people can go who couldn't go to the big event or didn't want to fight the crowds.
Maybe this isn't off topic. I wonder what alternatives, if any, there are to ADHD drugs? (I mean as drugs or supplements, not as coping skills.)
> If you're an adult taking them yourself, make your own judgment. If you're cooperating with a school in dosing your kid though, seriously consider setting a time and place for the kid to go cold turkey. You're doing nobody a real favor by keeping your kid on speed.
I got in a lot of trouble with the Ritalin crowd for saying this, but my nephew would come stay with us during the summer because his mom could not deal with him, and... it was an interesting thing. He was on a heavy dose of ADHD drugs during the school year, but off the medication while with us. What I observed was that he was totally nonfunctional upon arrival, but gradually over the course of the summer became more and more normal. By the time we sent him back in the fall he could actually hold a coherent conversation, remain on-task, and was no longer knocking stuff over with wild gestures. Then he'd go back on the drug in the fall, and next summer he would arrive completely incoherent again.
What did people do before Adderall then, simply not function? It's only been around for around 30 years.
My child is not ADHD, but was diagnosed as such by the school system (long story) and as a result I did quite a bit of research and talked to parents of kids and to adults who had the affliction.
Without drugs there are coping skills but how they work depends on how bad your case is. For instance, a co-worker who has a mild case, has a hard time communicating because he jumps around on topics and gets buried in sub-clauses. His coping skill is to put a finger down on the desk each time he shifts topics to remind himself to go back and complete the original topic.
As to how severe cases dealt with it without drugs, they'd often have a hard time getting good grades or staying employed despite high intelligence, feel ostracized and unappreciated, diagnosed as "discipline problems" and find themselves clients of the justice system. For those who really need the drugs, they really need the drugs.
There are a few careers (art, music, broadcasting) where ADHD isn't a deficit and may actually be an advantage. But it's not a safe bet.
If you need an example that may be easier to understand, for people who really need antidepressants (which are somewhat overprescribed also, in my opinion) really NEED them, because without the drugs, clinically depressed people really can not function. (Even *with* the drugs they may never be normal, but may at least be able to hold down a job.)
Considering how those that are actually being prescribed Aderall and need it to function are the most likely to be affected by this, I do.
I read somewhere that only about two in an hundred need ADHD drugs to function (which is still arguably a significant number in a 300m population) but that it's way overprescribed, to upwards of one in five in US schools. (The report did not say how this statistic translates to the general population, so it could be misleading.)
So, just spitballing here, but maybe the shortage could be at least partially alleviated by prescribing the drugs less casually. For instance, I give you personal permission to take the drugs the school prescribed for my kid, which I declined. (The school looked at her and said she's ADHD and recommended drugs. The doctor agreed to prescribe with no testing, which made me suspicious. I had her formally tested, and she's not ADHD. She's severely dyslexic. I'd like to personally thank the school system and medical community for screwing that up.)
Note, I am not one of those loonies who believe the drugs are unnecessary. You say you need them to function, and I believe you. But clearly at least some are taking them who don't need to, and that has to negatively affect demand to some degree.
> but Apple does not consider them user replaceable for warranty purposes
Color me puzzled. Firstly, a battery's normal lifespan should far exceed the warranty, secondly, no reasonable user would pay $121 (Amazon) for a Macbook battery while the laptop was still in warranty. I can't think of a reason why anyone would do a user replacement while the warranty was in effect. Did you mean something else?
But hey, it's been awhile since I retired the G4 that was my Photoshop machine, maybe Apple culture is different now. (??)
I understand the problem -- my wife can't operate our current tv, relies on our geek daughter to cue up what she wants to watch or choose the right input and navigate to the channel she's interested in. The TV ecosystem has gotten ridiculously complex. Some simplification or automation or integration is long overdue.
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure the answer is not to build all that stuff into a tv. TVs are a long term appliance, not something you buy every two years when an incremental improvement comes out. Remember TVs with VHS VCRs built in? The TV continues to work long after the VCR becomes dead weight. (Somewhat true also for TV/DVD combos, although I notice they're starting to use common laptop DVD drives now.)
I know, if, say, Amazon Instant Video goes away or Netflix changes or some new hot service becomes available, the manufacturer could add new features with a firmware upgrade, right?
Yeah, that worked really well for the cellular market. Why would manufacturers upgrade existing sets when they could use the new feature as leverage to replace the set?
"You said you would like to watch the latest episode of penis brothers. Season 5 episode 3 starting now. According to your preferences, your choice has automatically been posted on Facebook."
They are not user replaceable in that Apple won't sell you a battery unless your an authorized repair center. However, popping off the bottom of the case and swapping them is trivial. The benefits from making them non-replaceable far outweigh any drawbacks.
I'm sorry, I don't understand the answer. A little research shows that macbook batteries are available online from a variety of sources (over 4 million hits) including 22,000 listings on Amazon alone.
Couple this with your own admission that swapping them is trivial, and I'm not sure how this makes it non-replaceable, which is too bad because I wanted to ask you, how does the benefits of making them non-replaceable (never mind they're not for the sake of argument) far outweigh the drawbacks? I mean, to the customer, as one answer might be, it locks the customer into the device-as-consumable mindset and makes it more probable that the customer will simply replace the device instead of maintaining it, which demonstrably works for enough customers for Apple to have more cash on hand than many countries. But I don't think that's what you meant.
They are able to pack a lot more battery into a lot smaller laptop.
I call bullshit. References, please, including how batteries commissioned by Apple made in Chinese factories differ from batteries made for any other electronic device in Chinese factories.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, but back in 2000, I don't think we had the appreciation of accumulated browser cruft that we have today.
I'd argue that Internet Explorer has fallen into the class of "so horribly outdated it's unbelieveable".
"Vastly different" is not the same as "a complete rewrite". If it's like the ribbon in MS Office, being vastly different could actually be a disadvantage.
I couldn't resist. But with all the work and effort and resources going into this, how is it that operations a tiny fraction of this can generate fast, reliable and standards complaint browsers better than MSIE?
Microsoft, the problem isn't that you're not spending enough money. It's that you're not doing it right.
I'm not familiar with IE 8 and 9, but in the past the issue was many years and revisions of code reuse and accumulation of cruft, an insane amount of backwards compatibility and some poor initial design choices combined to make each new version bigger, slower and buggier. I imagine this combines to make developing and especially testing any new release a massive undertaking.
To be fair, I would argue that Firefox is starting that downward spiral now. Each new version is slower and has a bigger footprint. Personally, I've switched to Chrome, but when Chrome inevitably starts lagging, I'll be on the lookout for the next completely new browser. Not merely because it's new, but because it's less likely to have years of bad decisions weighing it down.
The problem in Microsoft's case is that they seem incapable of dumping what they have and doing a complete rewrite. There may be marketing reasons for this, granted, but if they made a clean break it'd be better for them in the long run.
Chrome, yes. Firefox, only in usability.
I don't disagree. I ran into a perception in my daughter's grade school amongst the staff that Ritalin made the class quieter and easier to control. (I'm not sure that was true, but it was the perception.) The same woman would say daughter had a discipline problem and in almost the same breath say I should drug her. I asked her what a discipline problem and drugs have in common, and she responded (not really answering the question) that her own son was on Ritalin and he was doing so much better. (Which may even be true, but past performance is no indication of future results.)
But oddly, her fourth grade teacher, who was actually engaged with his students and could keep their attention, did fine with her. One of his techniques was to take them all outside and run them in a circle for a few minutes before giving a lesson. Somewhat along the lines of what you were saying. It worked really well.
I observed that the general activity on the playground was much less than I remembered from school. "Tag", and any game that involved someone chasing someone else, was absolutely forbidden. There was no game equipment, frisbees, balls, no organized games, only a couple of crowded play structures on overpadded ground. Kids wandered around or sat under one of the trees. There wasn't a lot of opportunity to burn off energy.
I do not believe this grade school was unique. What it takes in the discovery process is (a) the school diagnoses your kid with ADD, (b) you don't blindly go along with it, (c) you confirm your suspicions with independent testing, and (d) you are determined enough and intelligent enough to dig into why the school is so hell bent on medicating your child. The results you get are like something out of Portlandia.
I'm guessing you were home the day they covered "orders of magnitude".
By "graphics overkill" I mean digitally inserting elements that were unnecessary and detracted from the story. Example 1 (of many): All the new little cute squeaky things in Star Wars (the original movie) when it was revamped were profoundly irritating. Example 2: Contrast the space battle in the original film, which was coherent enough that you could understand tactics, with the overly busy, incomprehensible space battle scenes in the prequels.
So, it's not specifically the use of special effects, but the use of unnecessary and distracting elements, that really chapped my ass. Just sayin'.
Absolutely. She went to regular vision therapy for two summers, enjoyed most of it (she most enjoyed the exercise of jumping on a trampoline while reading off a blackboard) and it really did help. The doctors initially said she would never read better than third grade, and although at 17 she still doesn't read anything close to average, she's done much better than predicted.
I second your wife's recommendation.
Sounds like the child does not have AD/HD but rather the influence of the parent(s) is causing problems.
Single parent, which probably doesn't help. But even though she is my sister, may I say... BINGO!!
Test by, he went through a really bad time when he finally moved out, but eventually learned some amount of responsibility, and now in his late twenties has a family and is apparently doing well. Without drugs.
I do know. Boy, do I know. In the late nineties I took out a substantial personal loan and paid off her store, gas, and high interest personal credit cards -- a stack almost an inch high -- on condition she destroy all of them except the one tied to her checking account, and never ever get another credit card. She complained bitterly about it for years afterwards -- how I was a controlling misogynistic bastard who didn't want her to have any financial freedom -- but it stopped the hemorrhaging. I follow up on this periodically, and check our mutual credit report for new entries.
The good news is that it's ultimately self-leveling -- her credit score dropped so low after a huge number of late payments, that it limited what new credit she could qualify for. The bad news is, it's my credit score too.
We went through a period where her money was hers and my money was ours, (I hear this is common in dual income households) with the expectation that I was to pay for everything and she could squirrel away her paychecks as mad money. I made the huge mistake of going along with this for awhile to keep the peace, until I realized that she had simply transferred her spending habits to me. So I shut down all nonessential services, reduced eating out to twice a week, (some people think that's still excessive, and I'm inclined to agree) and generally put in place spending limits that allowed me to concentrate on paying off debt instead of acquiring new debt just to keep our lifestyle going.
And I was a bastard for doing this, also. (That's not the exact term she used, but I'm uncomfortable typing the term she did use.)
Now, I keep careful track of spending, and we share nonessential expenses commiserate with our incomes. When it's time for her to pay, if she's unwilling, we wait until she is willing. If that means not going out for two or three weeks, that's ok with me.
There are still issues. Of all utilities, she's only responsible for the electric bill (a compromise, as I couldn't complain about her leaving the lights on if she paid the bill) and that bill is chronically late, which can't be doing our credit score any good. But things are better, in the sense that we are financially sustainable at this time. My only debt is a small amount on one vehicle that will be paid off this year, and the house loan. And yes, I screen the mail and tear up credit card applications. I'm such a bastard.
So yeah, keep your digital presence separate as much as practical.
Yeah, I'm not cynical or anything.
Right, because blaming your audience is always a good idea.
I'm glad it worked out for you, but I'm not sure I agree. It's powerful medicine and I don't see giving it to my kid just in case it makes her (in her teachers' words) "behave better".
I found early on that sharing digital assets was a mistake, and ended up opting out of all of our shared accounts and creating my own digital presence. I lost some money and resources on the short term (having to abandon accounts that contained money that was mostly mine) but it worked out in the long run. In the unlikely event that we separate, I have sole access to my digital presence and have no interest in hers. (Lawyers might decide differently, but that's always a risk in divorce.)
Maintaining separate identities has the added benefit that it minimizes the damage when one spouse has trouble controlling spending. When it was "our" money, it was my fault when we ran out. But when she only had direct access to her own money, she had to reluctantly learn some self control.
It's not very romantic, but one does what one must to keep a household functioning.
Must have forgotten to take their pills. Or conversely, four contributors might be too easily amused.
I think that the drugs are *way* overprescribed, but that like any big lie, there is a kernel of truth. Some people really can't function without them. But the number appears to be much smaller than the actual number of prescriptions.
This is slightly off topic, but maybe the solution is to create a second event "little burning man", like "little Sturgis", where people can go who couldn't go to the big event or didn't want to fight the crowds.
Maybe this isn't off topic. I wonder what alternatives, if any, there are to ADHD drugs? (I mean as drugs or supplements, not as coping skills.)
> If you're an adult taking them yourself, make your own judgment. If you're cooperating with a school in dosing your kid though, seriously consider setting a time and place for the kid to go cold turkey. You're doing nobody a real favor by keeping your kid on speed.
I got in a lot of trouble with the Ritalin crowd for saying this, but my nephew would come stay with us during the summer because his mom could not deal with him, and... it was an interesting thing. He was on a heavy dose of ADHD drugs during the school year, but off the medication while with us. What I observed was that he was totally nonfunctional upon arrival, but gradually over the course of the summer became more and more normal. By the time we sent him back in the fall he could actually hold a coherent conversation, remain on-task, and was no longer knocking stuff over with wild gestures. Then he'd go back on the drug in the fall, and next summer he would arrive completely incoherent again.
Just a data point.
Two observations: (a) It ruins the joke if you have to explain it. (b) If you have to explain it, it probably wasn't very funny.
What did people do before Adderall then, simply not function? It's only been around for around 30 years.
My child is not ADHD, but was diagnosed as such by the school system (long story) and as a result I did quite a bit of research and talked to parents of kids and to adults who had the affliction.
Without drugs there are coping skills but how they work depends on how bad your case is. For instance, a co-worker who has a mild case, has a hard time communicating because he jumps around on topics and gets buried in sub-clauses. His coping skill is to put a finger down on the desk each time he shifts topics to remind himself to go back and complete the original topic.
As to how severe cases dealt with it without drugs, they'd often have a hard time getting good grades or staying employed despite high intelligence, feel ostracized and unappreciated, diagnosed as "discipline problems" and find themselves clients of the justice system. For those who really need the drugs, they really need the drugs.
There are a few careers (art, music, broadcasting) where ADHD isn't a deficit and may actually be an advantage. But it's not a safe bet.
If you need an example that may be easier to understand, for people who really need antidepressants (which are somewhat overprescribed also, in my opinion) really NEED them, because without the drugs, clinically depressed people really can not function. (Even *with* the drugs they may never be normal, but may at least be able to hold down a job.)
Considering how those that are actually being prescribed Aderall and need it to function are the most likely to be affected by this, I do.
I read somewhere that only about two in an hundred need ADHD drugs to function (which is still arguably a significant number in a 300m population) but that it's way overprescribed, to upwards of one in five in US schools. (The report did not say how this statistic translates to the general population, so it could be misleading.)
So, just spitballing here, but maybe the shortage could be at least partially alleviated by prescribing the drugs less casually. For instance, I give you personal permission to take the drugs the school prescribed for my kid, which I declined. (The school looked at her and said she's ADHD and recommended drugs. The doctor agreed to prescribe with no testing, which made me suspicious. I had her formally tested, and she's not ADHD. She's severely dyslexic. I'd like to personally thank the school system and medical community for screwing that up.)
Note, I am not one of those loonies who believe the drugs are unnecessary. You say you need them to function, and I believe you. But clearly at least some are taking them who don't need to, and that has to negatively affect demand to some degree.
I'll get to the rest later, but quickly:
> but Apple does not consider them user replaceable for warranty purposes
Color me puzzled. Firstly, a battery's normal lifespan should far exceed the warranty, secondly, no reasonable user would pay $121 (Amazon) for a Macbook battery while the laptop was still in warranty. I can't think of a reason why anyone would do a user replacement while the warranty was in effect. Did you mean something else?
But hey, it's been awhile since I retired the G4 that was my Photoshop machine, maybe Apple culture is different now. (??)
I understand the problem -- my wife can't operate our current tv, relies on our geek daughter to cue up what she wants to watch or choose the right input and navigate to the channel she's interested in. The TV ecosystem has gotten ridiculously complex. Some simplification or automation or integration is long overdue.
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure the answer is not to build all that stuff into a tv. TVs are a long term appliance, not something you buy every two years when an incremental improvement comes out. Remember TVs with VHS VCRs built in? The TV continues to work long after the VCR becomes dead weight. (Somewhat true also for TV/DVD combos, although I notice they're starting to use common laptop DVD drives now.)
I know, if, say, Amazon Instant Video goes away or Netflix changes or some new hot service becomes available, the manufacturer could add new features with a firmware upgrade, right?
Yeah, that worked really well for the cellular market. Why would manufacturers upgrade existing sets when they could use the new feature as leverage to replace the set?
"You said you would like to watch the latest episode of penis brothers. Season 5 episode 3 starting now. According to your preferences, your choice has automatically been posted on Facebook."
They are not user replaceable in that Apple won't sell you a battery unless your an authorized repair center. However, popping off the bottom of the case and swapping them is trivial. The benefits from making them non-replaceable far outweigh any drawbacks.
I'm sorry, I don't understand the answer. A little research shows that macbook batteries are available online from a variety of sources (over 4 million hits) including 22,000 listings on Amazon alone.
Couple this with your own admission that swapping them is trivial, and I'm not sure how this makes it non-replaceable, which is too bad because I wanted to ask you, how does the benefits of making them non-replaceable (never mind they're not for the sake of argument) far outweigh the drawbacks? I mean, to the customer, as one answer might be, it locks the customer into the device-as-consumable mindset and makes it more probable that the customer will simply replace the device instead of maintaining it, which demonstrably works for enough customers for Apple to have more cash on hand than many countries. But I don't think that's what you meant.
They are able to pack a lot more battery into a lot smaller laptop.
I call bullshit. References, please, including how batteries commissioned by Apple made in Chinese factories differ from batteries made for any other electronic device in Chinese factories.
Unfortunately China owns a great deal of the US debt, which gives them leverage in all sorts of matters.