Very succinct, very correct. People complain that a few cells devoid of sentience may suffer and so we have to put everything on hold? What about the suffering of untold millions of fully sentient humans? If suffering is to be the rallying point for the anti-research crowd, it should be subject to this test: if research-caused-suffering is less than suffering-alleviated-by-research, then do the research.
Yes - I'm a moron, I forgot to click the save icon. All of the word processors I had ever used before automatically did it for me, but somehow I should just know that MSoffice wasn't set up to do that even though I had no experience with it. I so envy your omniscient abilities.
Any system should anticipate that users will forget to do certain things. It happens in times of focus or forgetfulness. For example, when was the last time you parked your HD heads? It's good that HDs do this automatically now - someone somewhere who didn't have your superhuman ability to remember everything while focusing on an unrelated task certainly forgot and suffered the consequences.
Or headlights. I had a Subaru once and the headlights went off when the car was turned off. This is brilliant for us regular folk who have killed our battery by forgetting about the lights.
The design of any system should anticipate user errors because let's face, ordinary people screw up every now and then. I'm an ordinary person. Falible. I like systems that protect me and dislike those which don't.
from the menubar, select "tools" then "options" (it's the last item in the tools menu). A popup opens, click the plus next to the "load/save" category in the left side pane. Select "general" under the load/save category, then check the box next to "AutoSave every" and pick a frequency to suit your preferences. You can select whether you want a box to popup and ask you if you really want to do the save.
Hoping that helps out.
From Grendel by John Gardner: "A small bird lands feet up in my path. With a crabby laugh I let him lie, kind nature's merciful bounty to some poor sick fox." Or thereabouts - who is Grendel Drago? Guess I'll go google...
This is what autosave is for. When you are focused very deeply on something that requires a great deal of mental effort, it is a software flaw if there is no provision to automatically save the work. In a deep focus, those types of things WILL be forgotten.
Agreed - but I hadn't used MSoffice before and I failed to understand that its automatic backup feature was different from autosave. At least w/ autosave, I see soothing evidence every five minutes that it's being saved.
[OpenOffice is] not nearly as functional as Microsoft Office and crashes even more often
My law office runs on Openoffice. Let's see, it prints my pleading paper when I need it. Fills in templates from my database for all kinds of documents. Spell checks. Does outlining. Makes spreadsheets when I need to do some calculations. How is it inadequate compared to MSoffice?
When I worked for the state, we used MSoffice to the exact same things. But there isn't anything I did in my old job on MSoffice that I can't do on OpenOffice. For 1% of the world, MSoffice might offer some crucial feature, but the rest of us can't figure out what that might be... or even care for that matter.
The truth is, MSoffice is fatally flawed for my use. While I haven't had crashing problems with OpenOffice, MSoffice has F****ed me over plenty. For example, I once lost a day's worth of writing at my old job using MSoffice. It's automatic backup feature failed me so all my work was completely gone. When working on a deadline, a loss like that can really piss you off (as in bouncing around your office swearing like peg-legged-pirate). In contrast, Openoffice offers a timed autosave feature - I won't lose more than 5 minutes worth of work unless my entire harddrive bites it. Yessiree - MSoffice is not nearly as functional as Openoffice.
I think the point he made was that the fan slowly spins up and down - if the transition on and off is smooth enough, and the fan quiet enough, you would hardly hear it. If the fan simply goes on hard - the noise is very noticeable.
Every PC in the last 10 years or so works similarly.
Not true. I have a 5 year old Toshiba PIII laptop with a fan in it. When it comes on, it comes on loud and fast. There is no slow and quiet spin up and as a result, it is very noticeable and annoying.
Long term motorcycle riding is probably the best way improve car driving skill. The heightened awareness required to ride while surrounded by distracted cagers can't help but improve driving skills. And like you, I won't even think of having a drink if I'm going riding (nor will I ride tired, sick, or while in a distracting emotional state). I'm sure plenty would just call me a pussy - but I've been riding for 20 years without incident. Not saying I'm an excellent rider - I just know very clearly what my safety limits are and I try not to exceed them.
My personal teory is that it's technology fear combined with the recent introduction of mobile phones that creates all these stories about how dangerous this new driving while talking is.
I'm not a technophobe, nor am I researcher, all I can offer is my personal anecdotes. Anything - radio, conversation, cell phones - can be dangerously distracting for me. For example, if I am driving on icy roads (and we recently had a storm which made all roads a solid sheet of ice), I turn off the radio. I can sense that it saps some of my concentration. I want to hear the sound of tires, feel the the vibrations in the wheel, and see everything I'm coming to. Music distracts me from that (but then, I tend to be the type who either really listens to music or doesn't listen at all - not a background music person).
I used to have to make a long drive periodically (about 4 hours) and I got in the habit of listening to books on tape. Made the drive pleasant, but when thinking back on the trip, there would be nothing but a blank space in my mind regarding what I had seen on the way - just the story.
When I talk on a phone, I tend to get powerful imagery and sometimes it almost feels like everything before me is black.
I had a period in my life where partying was too much of an element. Driving drunk I would sometimes have the exact same blank spots in my memory of the trip home as I get with books on tape or cell phone conversations. I was just lucky that nothing bad came out of any of these situations.
I ride motorcycles and the most important thing is developing an unhindered highly focused awareness of the surroundings. If too many random thoughts intrude in my mind, I'll quit riding. The thought-free hyper-awareness is actually what makes riding so attractive and soothing. I also notice that when I'm riding, my car driving is better - I watch more attentively. But in the winter, when I stop riding, I start getting sloppy like most car drivers.
In any event, I never underestimate the power of distraction whether by cell phone, thinking, passengers, music, chemicals, snacks, or whatever. This doesn't make me afraid of technology - i just want to keep it from messing with my driving.
All dicatorships fail when the dictator makes a wrong move and his enemies take advantage of the error.
Not saying dictatorships are good - I personally wouldn't want to live under one. But historically, given enough time, all governments fail. The long lived ones of the present simply have not had sufficient time to fail.
Allowing users to listen to music they haven't bought? Without commercials, even? Who is paying MPAA for this? NOBODY?!??
As mentioned above the the company is paying fees right now. I suspect that when they reach a certain user level base, they would move to a subscription format, perhaps by having a free level at a certain bitrate, and a paid level at CD quality. Kind of like Digitallyimported.com did some time ago. I don't really see anything wrong with that - people get a decent free service, or for a modest cost, very high quality.
Sadly misinformed? The iPod shuffle's biggest feature is that it plays songs randomly.... Not to mention the fact that the only reason they're touting this 'feature' is the severe limitation of having no clue what song is coming next, since it has no LCD screen.
With Play in Order mode, you manage the music. If things take a turn for the predictable, never fear. Turn iPod shuffle over, flip the slider to Shuffle and mix on the go.
I have an older MP3 player, a Nomad II mg. I think it was about $250 in 2000. Anyway, the control buttons are lined up in columns on the left and right sides of the device. In the 4 years I've owned it, I have NEVER been able to control it without actually looking at the buttons (way too easy to accidently delete songs). Oh yeah, and the LCD screen is miniscule. I know not all MP3 players are as poorly designed as mine, but the cheap ones seem to be. And the LCDs that come with cheap ones are basically too small to be useable (when you can only see 16 letters across and the name has to slide across the screen, you'll know what song is next by listening faster than reading).
Shallow perhaps, but the mac mice are pretty whereas practically every other mouse in the world is either OK or downright ugly. Sadly, I can't use a crippled mac mouse due to the frustration of two handed operation or excessive moving of the cursor to menus, so I have an ugly all silver cheapy-plastic looking thing. It completely messes up the look.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not all about looks -- I'm typing this out on a beige linux box with the side pulled off because of an overheating issue and it doesn't even remotely bother me. But when I use the iBook, it somehow does bother me that my mouse is ugly. Why can't apple make both single button mice and 3 button scrollers?
I had a laptop long ago (486sx w/ grayscale monitor) that had no built-in pointer. Instead, it had a logitech trackball that clipped to the side and protruded out and at a slight angle upward. The butt of your hand would rest on the table while using the mouse. It was very comfortable. The outside edge of the mouse was rounded, so when you grabbed it, thumb to the sky then curled over the ball, index finger rested easily on the L-mouse button located on the curve, it was very easy to use. I can't remember where the other button was though..... Luckily, I found a picture. It was a comfy laptop mouse but of course, it wasn't permanently attached.
Candles?? "Firestarters" are not matches or lighters. They are made of sawdust and paraffin wax - they catch fire easily and burn hotly for a short time thus making it easy to start a wood fire in a stove, fireplace, or camp-like fire pit.
Well, I did burn the Joanna Newsom to CD so I could listen to it in the car - her music is like some kind of mind poison - I can still hear her singing in my head even when listening to something else. That aside, I hate having CDs as backups. I figure having the songs on 3 HDs in 3 locations (10 miles between any two, 20 between the two most distant point) makes them pretty safe from everything except earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or nuclear explosions. That's good enough protection for me.
Exactly! As if I don't have enough coasters as it is! Plus, copy to disk, move it to another computer -- that's so "sneaker net". Why bother with a LAN if you're just going to copy-walk-copy. And last of all, I can't play actual cds on my computers because for at least the last several years, I've been too lazy to connect the cd player to the sound card - just more effort than it's worth.
Isn't it retarded that we have to crack DRM anyway?
This isn't flamebait - it's true. DRM costs money - removing it generates revenue. Counterintuitive? Case in point:
An iBook came into my household this christmas. I had heard about iTunes for years, but not being on Windows or Mac, had never seen more than a screenshot. So anyway, I try it out and buy an album I once had but lost to a departing girlfriend. It was cool, but I also knew it was DRMed - and indeed, when trying the file on my linux box - no joy. I didn't buy any more music after that. No way would I pay for music I can only listen to on one computer (I want it to work at home (linux/new mac), work (linux), studio (linux)). So I didn't buy any more music - then I heard about Jhymn - installed it, stripped the DRM off my files, txr over to my linux box, and voila - lot's of joy.
That was about a week ago - I've spent over $30 on iTunes in short time since then (it's frighteningly addictive and easy to click "buy" - especially when sleepy late late at night). Without DRM stripping I would have spent a big fat ZERO.
Moral of the story:I only buy from iTunes BECAUSE I'm able to strip the DRM and play the files on my linux boxes... a fair use I believe because I can only listen to music on one computer at a time.
Slashdot Mirror
Very succinct, very correct. People complain that a few cells devoid of sentience may suffer and so we have to put everything on hold? What about the suffering of untold millions of fully sentient humans? If suffering is to be the rallying point for the anti-research crowd, it should be subject to this test: if research-caused-suffering is less than suffering-alleviated-by-research, then do the research.
Yes - I'm a moron, I forgot to click the save icon. All of the word processors I had ever used before automatically did it for me, but somehow I should just know that MSoffice wasn't set up to do that even though I had no experience with it. I so envy your omniscient abilities.
Any system should anticipate that users will forget to do certain things. It happens in times of focus or forgetfulness. For example, when was the last time you parked your HD heads? It's good that HDs do this automatically now - someone somewhere who didn't have your superhuman ability to remember everything while focusing on an unrelated task certainly forgot and suffered the consequences.
Or headlights. I had a Subaru once and the headlights went off when the car was turned off. This is brilliant for us regular folk who have killed our battery by forgetting about the lights.
The design of any system should anticipate user errors because let's face, ordinary people screw up every now and then. I'm an ordinary person. Falible. I like systems that protect me and dislike those which don't.
from the menubar, select "tools" then "options" (it's the last item in the tools menu). A popup opens, click the plus next to the "load/save" category in the left side pane. Select "general" under the load/save category, then check the box next to "AutoSave every" and pick a frequency to suit your preferences. You can select whether you want a box to popup and ask you if you really want to do the save.
Hoping that helps out.
From Grendel by John Gardner: "A small bird lands feet up in my path. With a crabby laugh I let him lie, kind nature's merciful bounty to some poor sick fox." Or thereabouts - who is Grendel Drago? Guess I'll go google...
This is what autosave is for. When you are focused very deeply on something that requires a great deal of mental effort, it is a software flaw if there is no provision to automatically save the work. In a deep focus, those types of things WILL be forgotten.
Agreed - but I hadn't used MSoffice before and I failed to understand that its automatic backup feature was different from autosave. At least w/ autosave, I see soothing evidence every five minutes that it's being saved.
My law office runs on Openoffice. Let's see, it prints my pleading paper when I need it. Fills in templates from my database for all kinds of documents. Spell checks. Does outlining. Makes spreadsheets when I need to do some calculations. How is it inadequate compared to MSoffice?
When I worked for the state, we used MSoffice to the exact same things. But there isn't anything I did in my old job on MSoffice that I can't do on OpenOffice. For 1% of the world, MSoffice might offer some crucial feature, but the rest of us can't figure out what that might be
The truth is, MSoffice is fatally flawed for my use. While I haven't had crashing problems with OpenOffice, MSoffice has F****ed me over plenty. For example, I once lost a day's worth of writing at my old job using MSoffice. It's automatic backup feature failed me so all my work was completely gone. When working on a deadline, a loss like that can really piss you off (as in bouncing around your office swearing like peg-legged-pirate). In contrast, Openoffice offers a timed autosave feature - I won't lose more than 5 minutes worth of work unless my entire harddrive bites it. Yessiree - MSoffice is not nearly as functional as Openoffice.
It's been a while, I could use a whole article devoted to generating a KDE v Gnome flamewar. It's the weekend - entertain me!
Not true. I have a 5 year old Toshiba PIII laptop with a fan in it. When it comes on, it comes on loud and fast. There is no slow and quiet spin up and as a result, it is very noticeable and annoying.
nice one. ;-)
No. It is "quick". Remember all the apple stories recently? Slashdot has learrned to "think different".
Long term motorcycle riding is probably the best way improve car driving skill. The heightened awareness required to ride while surrounded by distracted cagers can't help but improve driving skills. And like you, I won't even think of having a drink if I'm going riding (nor will I ride tired, sick, or while in a distracting emotional state). I'm sure plenty would just call me a pussy - but I've been riding for 20 years without incident. Not saying I'm an excellent rider - I just know very clearly what my safety limits are and I try not to exceed them.
I'm not a technophobe, nor am I researcher, all I can offer is my personal anecdotes. Anything - radio, conversation, cell phones - can be dangerously distracting for me. For example, if I am driving on icy roads (and we recently had a storm which made all roads a solid sheet of ice), I turn off the radio. I can sense that it saps some of my concentration. I want to hear the sound of tires, feel the the vibrations in the wheel, and see everything I'm coming to. Music distracts me from that (but then, I tend to be the type who either really listens to music or doesn't listen at all - not a background music person).
I used to have to make a long drive periodically (about 4 hours) and I got in the habit of listening to books on tape. Made the drive pleasant, but when thinking back on the trip, there would be nothing but a blank space in my mind regarding what I had seen on the way - just the story.
When I talk on a phone, I tend to get powerful imagery and sometimes it almost feels like everything before me is black.
I had a period in my life where partying was too much of an element. Driving drunk I would sometimes have the exact same blank spots in my memory of the trip home as I get with books on tape or cell phone conversations. I was just lucky that nothing bad came out of any of these situations.
I ride motorcycles and the most important thing is developing an unhindered highly focused awareness of the surroundings. If too many random thoughts intrude in my mind, I'll quit riding. The thought-free hyper-awareness is actually what makes riding so attractive and soothing. I also notice that when I'm riding, my car driving is better - I watch more attentively. But in the winter, when I stop riding, I start getting sloppy like most car drivers.
In any event, I never underestimate the power of distraction whether by cell phone, thinking, passengers, music, chemicals, snacks, or whatever. This doesn't make me afraid of technology - i just want to keep it from messing with my driving.
Right on. Examples are a good thing ... sadly lacking in too many man pages.
Fire is way cooler than poison gas.
Not saying dictatorships are good - I personally wouldn't want to live under one. But historically, given enough time, all governments fail. The long lived ones of the present simply have not had sufficient time to fail.
Allowing users to listen to music they haven't bought? Without commercials, even? Who is paying MPAA for this? NOBODY?!??
As mentioned above the the company is paying fees right now. I suspect that when they reach a certain user level base, they would move to a subscription format, perhaps by having a free level at a certain bitrate, and a paid level at CD quality. Kind of like Digitallyimported.com did some time ago. I don't really see anything wrong with that - people get a decent free service, or for a modest cost, very high quality.
I do believe it will play songs in the playlist order.
I have an older MP3 player, a Nomad II mg. I think it was about $250 in 2000. Anyway, the control buttons are lined up in columns on the left and right sides of the device. In the 4 years I've owned it, I have NEVER been able to control it without actually looking at the buttons (way too easy to accidently delete songs). Oh yeah, and the LCD screen is miniscule. I know not all MP3 players are as poorly designed as mine, but the cheap ones seem to be. And the LCDs that come with cheap ones are basically too small to be useable (when you can only see 16 letters across and the name has to slide across the screen, you'll know what song is next by listening faster than reading).
Shallow perhaps, but the mac mice are pretty whereas practically every other mouse in the world is either OK or downright ugly. Sadly, I can't use a crippled mac mouse due to the frustration of two handed operation or excessive moving of the cursor to menus, so I have an ugly all silver cheapy-plastic looking thing. It completely messes up the look.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not all about looks -- I'm typing this out on a beige linux box with the side pulled off because of an overheating issue and it doesn't even remotely bother me. But when I use the iBook, it somehow does bother me that my mouse is ugly. Why can't apple make both single button mice and 3 button scrollers?
I had a laptop long ago (486sx w/ grayscale monitor) that had no built-in pointer. Instead, it had a logitech trackball that clipped to the side and protruded out and at a slight angle upward. The butt of your hand would rest on the table while using the mouse. It was very comfortable. The outside edge of the mouse was rounded, so when you grabbed it, thumb to the sky then curled over the ball, index finger rested easily on the L-mouse button located on the curve, it was very easy to use. I can't remember where the other button was though ..... Luckily, I found a picture. It was a comfy laptop mouse but of course, it wasn't permanently attached.
If I had 'em, I'd throw you an insightful mod. That's beautiful.
Candles?? "Firestarters" are not matches or lighters. They are made of sawdust and paraffin wax - they catch fire easily and burn hotly for a short time thus making it easy to start a wood fire in a stove, fireplace, or camp-like fire pit.
comercial -- make your own (scroll down to item 6)
Well, I did burn the Joanna Newsom to CD so I could listen to it in the car - her music is like some kind of mind poison - I can still hear her singing in my head even when listening to something else. That aside, I hate having CDs as backups. I figure having the songs on 3 HDs in 3 locations (10 miles between any two, 20 between the two most distant point) makes them pretty safe from everything except earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or nuclear explosions. That's good enough protection for me.
Exactly! As if I don't have enough coasters as it is! Plus, copy to disk, move it to another computer -- that's so "sneaker net". Why bother with a LAN if you're just going to copy-walk-copy. And last of all, I can't play actual cds on my computers because for at least the last several years, I've been too lazy to connect the cd player to the sound card - just more effort than it's worth.
An exceptionally valid point.
This isn't flamebait - it's true. DRM costs money - removing it generates revenue. Counterintuitive? Case in point:
An iBook came into my household this christmas. I had heard about iTunes for years, but not being on Windows or Mac, had never seen more than a screenshot. So anyway, I try it out and buy an album I once had but lost to a departing girlfriend. It was cool, but I also knew it was DRMed - and indeed, when trying the file on my linux box - no joy. I didn't buy any more music after that. No way would I pay for music I can only listen to on one computer (I want it to work at home (linux/new mac), work (linux), studio (linux)). So I didn't buy any more music - then I heard about Jhymn - installed it, stripped the DRM off my files, txr over to my linux box, and voila - lot's of joy.
That was about a week ago - I've spent over $30 on iTunes in short time since then (it's frighteningly addictive and easy to click "buy" - especially when sleepy late late at night). Without DRM stripping I would have spent a big fat ZERO.
Moral of the story:I only buy from iTunes BECAUSE I'm able to strip the DRM and play the files on my linux boxes