As a Seatllite and Mac fanatic, I would love an obj-c/cocoa class at the University of Washington. Are you sure there isn't one already? If anyone knows, speak up!
I've been looking for university level courses in Mac programming for over a decade. I'd just about given up when I read this announcement.
I laugh at this submission. It reminds me of how my parents took my Macintosh away because I used it 'too much'. I went into their room and removed the guts of the computer and reassembled it on plywood...then I hid it under a piece of furniture in my room. I would shut the door and use the computer after they went to bed. I taught myself everything I could about computers with descenting parents around. All the homework I didnt do hasnt had an impact on me. The posh private schooling was a waste of time and money. I ended up not going to college and starting a dot.com. I've been retired for a couple of years and spend much of my free time teaching my family and friends how to use computers.
Sure, I spent time looking at naked women online. I spent time pirating software. I spent time playing video games. All of these 'bad things' are very educational about society, technology, and the future of computers. To shield your children from this is merely delaying the inevitable. Since I more or less had free reign of my computer (my parents would often say, "What's the internet again?") I soon found these activities unfullfilling and I became more interested in Photoshop, digital imaging, software programming, hardware programming, web design, etc.
Instead of shielding our children from the negative aspects of society, we need to change US society itself. I often think of how my European friends are shocked by the violence in our media and the juveneille treatment of sex, nudity, women, and gays. The US is a very conservative and repressed nation. A lot of problems would solved if our media were less restricted and if our values were less conservative. How often is the subject matter in the media devoted to themes such as sharing, giving, love, loyalty? Almost never. How about murder/violence, deceit, tabloid news, unhealthy portrayals of sex/sexual insecurity, theft/dishonesty? Almost always. These themes have a direct impact on society e.g. women getting breast implants, sexually insecure people getting SUVs, the desire to own a gun/weapon, the desire to hunt and kill, the desire for a career/golden hand cuffs, consumerism, etc.
After I got a Macintosh, I stopped watching TV entirely except for The Simpsons. The internet really opened my eyes in ways that TV never could. I havent watched TV for ten years, nor have I owned one for 6 years.
Go ahead, restrict the use of the computer, you are just perpetuating U.S. society's problems.
Ever since installing Panther, I haven't been notified of any incoming calls while I am online. The feature is turned on in the System Preferences>Network>Modem Tab... but incoming calls to my v.92 PowerBook modem aren't triggering the proper "answer, ignore" dialog box.
The 10.3.1 update did not fix this bug either.
Anyone else having problems with this flakey feature?
The only negative consequence is a possible speed hit, though.
Isn't the point of keeping your drive defrag'ed to increase the performance of reading and writing?
With 200+ gig hard drive capacities becoming more ubiquitous, the performance hit of on the fly defragging is worthwhile. Over the long run, it improves performance of a machine to keep it defragged, right?
MS Office for th mac is made in Califonia, not redmond WA. I dont think any MS mac apps are made in Redmond. The Microsoft Mac Business Unit is in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Hence the 18 G5 Powermacs are being used for something else...
Microsoft is presently working on making an iLife clone...so far all I've heard about is that theyve been working on an iPhoto knock off for about 7 months.
Ive seen a few MS employees working on the iLife clone going around with iPods.
What I dont like about the article is that they suggeest that being tall is not advantageous and that it is unfair that tall people are paid more.
Being tall has many, many advantages... tall people are percieved differently...perhaps as more intimidating to an enemy, more capable of defending young, able to see over high objects (and crowds), reach things from high places, climb trees even when the lowest limb is out of reach for others. And many other primal benefits.
There is a whole branch of ergonomic design called Human Factors that, for example, indicates that tall people have longer arms and are able to reach controls on a dashboard that short people cannot. (in contrast there are a lot places a tall person simply wont fit...handing the advantage to smaller people)
Tall genes are advantageous. This translates into sexual attraction. Sure, Ive been attracted to many many short women, but I'd kinda prefer a tall one as a mate. In my priorities, this is more important to me than breast size. Sexual attraction helps to sell products.
To say that the benefits of being tall never come up in your typical sales job is ludicrous. Thats a silly assumption on the part of these researchers. Go on a business trip and watch who is able to see over the Mardi Gras revelers, or see the sign over crowds in the NYC subway, stare down the competition at a convention. The tall guy is always being asked to do random stuff "hey can you get my bag in the overhead bin?", "Do you see an allen wrench on top of the server rack?"...and I think its worth an extra thousand bucks a year.
I think they should do a study on who is more confident, tall or short people. Intangable as confidence is...a confident employee is a better employee for a variety of reasons.
Short people have their place too, and in those places they should be paid more...and they usually make sure of it. e.g. Bill Gates, Napoleon, Tom Cruise, et. al.
First, if the age of aesthetics is here, why does Seattle look like a shithole?
We tear down the nice old buildings to build eastern european block houses err...condos.
Whomever is dreaming of the age of aesthetics is 100 years too late (see San Francisco, 1908). Not to be cynical, but Apple Computers and good web design are some of the only stand out aesthetic things in my U.S. world.
I think the age of consumerism and materialism is here in the U.S.... not the age of aethetics. May I emphasize the lack of urban planning, use of crappy contruction materials (in very unaesthetic ways), the lack of zoning on the US west coast; look how bad everyone looks at your average ball game...the fashion du jour is to cover your lard ass with baggy pants that expose your undies. We dont plant trees, we cut them down. We dont ride bikes, we fatten ourselves in military grade vehicles. We suck toxins into our lungs then throw the butt into the street.
Everytown in America is a strip of fast food joints... our most popular store, Wal*Mart, is a windowless cynder-block cell, lit with low contrast floodlights. That sure beats the old Greek agora, Parisian street market, or Middle Eastern souk! Ahhh, but I can pick up a Britney Spears poster and a community-sized package of Cool Wip anytime I want!
The pop music we listen to, the crap we put in our bodies, the sludge that pours from the TV set... you call that aesthetic?
I'm being serious here... I can't tell which OS you are bashing... because all of the OSes in question have literally thousands of apps. But, I see that you stipulate worthwhile apps.
On this, David Pogue of The New York Times said, "In time, iSync may even become yet another siren, singing out a question to Windows users who already look longingly at iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD: Who cares if 30,000 programs are available for Windows, if the five you want most are available only on the Mac?".
Now we are at the dawn of a new juncture... Apple apps on Windows. Only hours from now, Windows users around the world will be running iTunes. And they will really really really like it....hmmm. But where will they have to go for another fix?
I dont think you read the article... because he was testing with uncompressed audio...AIFF files. So the difference between types of compression and bitrates is not relavant here.
The article falsely states that the OS was designed by Portal Player. The OS was actually created by Pixo, by several former Apple engineers. Early iPods even had the Pixo logo in the about box. Further, the human interface was likely designed in cooperation with Apple. So ease of use credit should go to Apple just as much as Pixo. Sun Microsystems recently acquired Pixo.
Here is the sic portion of the article.
One item that's invisible but indispensable is the iPod's operating system, which, I've been informed, is not of Apple design. PortalPlayer, a company that specializes in developing OSes for cellular phones, PDAs, and other streaming and wireless applications, designed the iPod's human interface. The iPod is so easy to use that it's obvious Apple chose the right company for the job.
When you reset the PMU/CUDA, be sure to only press the button once. Apparently, if you press it twice, you have to wait several hours before the machine will start.
Also, it sounds like this guy may have a well known problem with his power switch. The small PC board behind the powerswitch in some G4 towers was defective and needs replacement. Its covered under warranty from apple.
You are completely wrong. Apple does not have %40 marketshare of laptops. What they said was that %42 of the computers that Apples sells are laptops. Dell and IBM sell more laptops than Apple by a long shot.
If 2 out of every 5 laptops sold were Apples we would be tripping over them. Thats a nice dream isnt it?
PS. This was submitted from a 15" Titanium PowerBook.
Apple has %7 of the laptop market with a trend towards strong growth in this area. The new G4 and speculative G5 PowerBooks, coupled with the release of MacOS X Panther 10.3 could bolster Apple's laptop markethshare to %10. This would place Apple as the number one supplier of laptops in the world.
The obvious ways this thing [the G5] should be different are huge memory moves: [snip]...the processor should be able to have multiple floating point commands being processed at once (in addition to altivec).
You are absolutely correct. Look at the benchmarks in this guys Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics caclulations... The 1.8 ghz G5 is more than 3 times faster than a G4 at small memory calculations and the G4 isnt even capable of being tested in the large memory calculations...
And he isnt even testing multiprocessors...or even the faster 2 Ghz G5.
Basically, the G5 and the motherboard its on solve all of the major problems the G4 had.
True biking is dangerous... but so is getting in a car... A lot more people die or get injured in cars than on bikes each year. Im not sure how the percentages compare though.(that is, the percentage of drivers hurt vs. the percentage of bicyclists hurt). The dept. of transportation has statistics on the web for anyone that cares to look it up.
I would say that people have an air of complacency...even safety when entering a car, whereas there is dramatically increased alertness when getting on a bicycle. You arent going to be using your cell phone on your bike or eating a cheesburger on your bike. So a lot of the common distractions that cause car accidents wont apply to you directly. Of course, a driver on a cell phone could hit you on your bike.
Really, the danger of riding a bicycle is local. Seattle and the US in general has really bad support for bicyclists. Bike lanes are narrow or non-existant... If you go to The Netherlands, the bike lanes are wider than the car lanes. The net result is that millions of people in The Netherlands get around by bike.
The one time I crashed my bike (in 20 years of riding), I hit my forehead on the ground. I was wearing a helmet and walked away without injury. I count myself lucky. It sounds like you may not have been wearing a helmet in 1977...or a 1977 helmet may not have been adequate. Technology has improved in the last 26 years.
To say that "you will be hurt badly" is certainly jumping to conclusions. I have friends in wheelchairs as a result of driving a car, sober, during the day, avoiding a squirrel.
Cars are substantially more dangerous than most people realize. I've gone on many long highway trips and encountered near fatal situations with regularity. Some real life examples include...having an insane old man drive at me head-on in a divided highway (presumably he was suicidal). Driving a small VW over an entire queen size bed at 65 mph on I-5 with no option to change lanes. Nearly hitting a cow crossing a highway just last week on the way to Black Rock City, NV.
Those were the close calls. Then there was the time my cab driver in New Orleans broadsided a pickup truck (that was crossing the road for who knows what reason). Or the time I was on a school bus that crashed into a suddenly stopped school bus on the highway. Or the time my dad crashed into some womans brand new car. Or the time the microsoft executive was speeding downtown in his SUV and changed lanes into me because he was too high off the ground to see my 'normal' sized car (which I had borrowed).
Hows that sound compared to "I fell off my bike once and got scraped up."?
The truth is, cars and cars dont work together. Cars and people dont work together, cars and bikes dont work together.
I am also interested in hearing about other alternative, yet practical, forms of transportation that I may have missed.
I have never owned a car in my entire life.
I ride my bike everywhere I go. I save thousands of dollars on gas, insurance, maintenance, parking, tickets, registration, etc. I stay fit, so I save time and money on medical bills/healthcare. Since Im totally in shape, I definitely have more success getting girlfriends too.
I live in Seattle where the climate is fairly mild but it rains half the year. Biking in the rain sounds horribly unpleasant, biking uphill sounds horribly unpleasant. Biking in traffic sounds horribly unpleasant. You get used to all of these things when you have no other means of transport...and they quickly become non-issues. I find myself biking up the steepest hills in the city multiple times a day without thought, without exhaustion.
In Seattle, bikes can be put on the front of buses on a very well designed bike rack. So you can ride the bus uphill to a location (usually faster than biking) and bike back down (which is faster than bussing back downhill). If its pouring and Gore-Tex isn't good enough (which is rare in Seattle, believe it or not) you can always put your bike on the bus. Another reason it's nice to put your bike on the bus is if you don't want to arrive at your destination all sweaty...but you can still zip home really fast.
Bikes has been a very practical method of transportion, and its better for the environment and for the general health of the population. It's even better than driving an electric car.
There are times however when I wish I could escape the city altogether... I usually find girls with cars to take me out of the city. There are times when I wish I could hall a large object, like a computer monitor, or appliance. I can usually arrange to borrow cars from friends although I have been known to bring large objects onto the bus.
Naturally, the distance you travel everyday and your physical condition will dictate the practicality of riding a bike. But if your chief concern is helping the environment... there is no better chioce.
You can probably buy a fantastic bike every single year for same expense as buying/oiperating one used car.
Consider it.
PS. The Seattle bus system has a half-decent online trip planner that facilitates timing your trips.
Now, $8 a month seems a little high for friendster, if it were like $2, or even $5 I might consider paying for the service. Regardless, $8 a month is pretty good way to ensure the friendsters and fakesters who really serve some sort of purpose.
Hey $2 U.S. is a months wages in most of the world. All you are proposing to do is to make an elitest network of americans. And what makes you think a few dollars will prevent someone from creating a fakester?...I'll just put it on the company Visa.
The real solution is to embrace the Fakesters. Fakesters serve a purpose...they are virtual communities and virtual interest groups. They bring people together based on location, interest, sense of humor, turn-ons, or whatever else you can imagine. A section of the site should be made to allow anyone to create these island communities. They help break the ice and make friendster work better. For example, I might be 5 degrees of separation from the girl nextdoor (and therefore we couldnt see each other on Friendster), but if we are both friends of Seattle, we would suddenly be 1 degree away.
So what if the fakesters were highlighted green or marked in some way? And if you so desired, you could turn off fakesters and recalculate the size of your personal network?
Exactly how you go about identifying a fakester to tag it green is hard...I can only think of one way...let friends of the fakester vote friend or fakester. If the majority of your friends vote you are a fakester...
Slashdot Mirror
the iPod of operating systems
Here in lies the irony... He isnt running the iPod's OS. There is a mac simulator for the Pixo OS. Very few people have access to it now.
As a Seatllite and Mac fanatic, I would love an obj-c/cocoa class at the University of Washington. Are you sure there isn't one already? If anyone knows, speak up!
I've been looking for university level courses in Mac programming for over a decade. I'd just about given up when I read this announcement.
Why is this nonsense being published on Slashdot? This is not news for nerds. This is not stuff that matters. I hate TV. You should too.
This looks like an ad placement.
I laugh at this submission. It reminds me of how my parents took my Macintosh away because I used it 'too much'. I went into their room and removed the guts of the computer and reassembled it on plywood...then I hid it under a piece of furniture in my room. I would shut the door and use the computer after they went to bed. I taught myself everything I could about computers with descenting parents around. All the homework I didnt do hasnt had an impact on me. The posh private schooling was a waste of time and money. I ended up not going to college and starting a dot.com. I've been retired for a couple of years and spend much of my free time teaching my family and friends how to use computers.
Sure, I spent time looking at naked women online. I spent time pirating software. I spent time playing video games. All of these 'bad things' are very educational about society, technology, and the future of computers. To shield your children from this is merely delaying the inevitable. Since I more or less had free reign of my computer (my parents would often say, "What's the internet again?") I soon found these activities unfullfilling and I became more interested in Photoshop, digital imaging, software programming, hardware programming, web design, etc.
Instead of shielding our children from the negative aspects of society, we need to change US society itself. I often think of how my European friends are shocked by the violence in our media and the juveneille treatment of sex, nudity, women, and gays. The US is a very conservative and repressed nation. A lot of problems would solved if our media were less restricted and if our values were less conservative. How often is the subject matter in the media devoted to themes such as sharing, giving, love, loyalty? Almost never. How about murder/violence, deceit, tabloid news, unhealthy portrayals of sex/sexual insecurity, theft/dishonesty? Almost always. These themes have a direct impact on society e.g. women getting breast implants, sexually insecure people getting SUVs, the desire to own a gun/weapon, the desire to hunt and kill, the desire for a career/golden hand cuffs, consumerism, etc.
After I got a Macintosh, I stopped watching TV entirely except for The Simpsons. The internet really opened my eyes in ways that TV never could. I havent watched TV for ten years, nor have I owned one for 6 years.
Go ahead, restrict the use of the computer, you are just perpetuating U.S. society's problems.
I was doing this with Perforce and OS 9 years ago...and I know others that did it long before me.
Ever since installing Panther, I haven't been notified of any incoming calls while I am online. The feature is turned on in the System Preferences>Network>Modem Tab... but incoming calls to my v.92 PowerBook modem aren't triggering the proper "answer, ignore" dialog box.
The 10.3.1 update did not fix this bug either.
Anyone else having problems with this flakey feature?
It used to work for me in Jaguar reasonably well.
The only negative consequence is a possible speed hit, though.
Isn't the point of keeping your drive defrag'ed to increase the performance of reading and writing?
With 200+ gig hard drive capacities becoming more ubiquitous, the performance hit of on the fly defragging is worthwhile. Over the long run, it improves performance of a machine to keep it defragged, right?
MS Office for th mac is made in Califonia, not redmond WA. I dont think any MS mac apps are made in Redmond. The Microsoft Mac Business Unit is in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Hence the 18 G5 Powermacs are being used for something else...
Microsoft is presently working on making an iLife clone...so far all I've heard about is that theyve been working on an iPhoto knock off for about 7 months.
Ive seen a few MS employees working on the iLife clone going around with iPods.
What I dont like about the article is that they suggeest that being tall is not advantageous and that it is unfair that tall people are paid more.
Being tall has many, many advantages... tall people are percieved differently...perhaps as more intimidating to an enemy, more capable of defending young, able to see over high objects (and crowds), reach things from high places, climb trees even when the lowest limb is out of reach for others. And many other primal benefits.
There is a whole branch of ergonomic design called Human Factors that, for example, indicates that tall people have longer arms and are able to reach controls on a dashboard that short people cannot. (in contrast there are a lot places a tall person simply wont fit...handing the advantage to smaller people)
Tall genes are advantageous. This translates into sexual attraction. Sure, Ive been attracted to many many short women, but I'd kinda prefer a tall one as a mate. In my priorities, this is more important to me than breast size. Sexual attraction helps to sell products.
To say that the benefits of being tall never come up in your typical sales job is ludicrous. Thats a silly assumption on the part of these researchers. Go on a business trip and watch who is able to see over the Mardi Gras revelers, or see the sign over crowds in the NYC subway, stare down the competition at a convention. The tall guy is always being asked to do random stuff "hey can you get my bag in the overhead bin?", "Do you see an allen wrench on top of the server rack?"...and I think its worth an extra thousand bucks a year.
I think they should do a study on who is more confident, tall or short people. Intangable as confidence is...a confident employee is a better employee for a variety of reasons.
Short people have their place too, and in those places they should be paid more...and they usually make sure of it. e.g. Bill Gates, Napoleon, Tom Cruise, et. al.
And how many olympic-sized swimming pools it would fit in.
First, if the age of aesthetics is here, why does Seattle look like a shithole?
We tear down the nice old buildings to build eastern european block houses err...condos.
Whomever is dreaming of the age of aesthetics is 100 years too late (see San Francisco, 1908). Not to be cynical, but Apple Computers and good web design are some of the only stand out aesthetic things in my U.S. world.
I think the age of consumerism and materialism is here in the U.S.... not the age of aethetics. May I emphasize the lack of urban planning, use of crappy contruction materials (in very unaesthetic ways), the lack of zoning on the US west coast; look how bad everyone looks at your average ball game...the fashion du jour is to cover your lard ass with baggy pants that expose your undies. We dont plant trees, we cut them down. We dont ride bikes, we fatten ourselves in military grade vehicles. We suck toxins into our lungs then throw the butt into the street.
Everytown in America is a strip of fast food joints... our most popular store, Wal*Mart, is a windowless cynder-block cell, lit with low contrast floodlights. That sure beats the old Greek agora, Parisian street market, or Middle Eastern souk! Ahhh, but I can pick up a Britney Spears poster and a community-sized package of Cool Wip anytime I want!
The pop music we listen to, the crap we put in our bodies, the sludge that pours from the TV set... you call that aesthetic?
I could rant on... but Ill let others step in.
I'm being serious here... I can't tell which OS you are bashing... because all of the OSes in question have literally thousands of apps. But, I see that you stipulate worthwhile apps.
On this, David Pogue of The New York Times said, "In time, iSync may even become yet another siren, singing out a question to Windows users who already look longingly at iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD: Who cares if 30,000 programs are available for Windows, if the five you want most are available only on the Mac?".
Now we are at the dawn of a new juncture... Apple apps on Windows. Only hours from now, Windows users around the world will be running iTunes. And they will really really really like it....hmmm. But where will they have to go for another fix?
I dont think you read the article... because he was testing with uncompressed audio...AIFF files. So the difference between types of compression and bitrates is not relavant here.
The article falsely states that the OS was designed by Portal Player. The OS was actually created by Pixo, by several former Apple engineers. Early iPods even had the Pixo logo in the about box. Further, the human interface was likely designed in cooperation with Apple. So ease of use credit should go to Apple just as much as Pixo. Sun Microsystems recently acquired Pixo.
Here is the sic portion of the article.
One item that's invisible but indispensable is the iPod's operating system, which, I've been informed, is not of Apple design. PortalPlayer, a company that specializes in developing OSes for cellular phones, PDAs, and other streaming and wireless applications, designed the iPod's human interface. The iPod is so easy to use that it's obvious Apple chose the right company for the job.
When you reset the PMU/CUDA, be sure to only press the button once. Apparently, if you press it twice, you have to wait several hours before the machine will start.
Also, it sounds like this guy may have a well known problem with his power switch. The small PC board behind the powerswitch in some G4 towers was defective and needs replacement. Its covered under warranty from apple.
The only benchmarks I've seen are from PC Magazine...
Here is a page listing about a dozen different G5 benchmark examples...
http://www.titleofsite.com/archives/000042.html
You are completely wrong. Apple does not have %40 marketshare of laptops. What they said was that %42 of the computers that Apples sells are laptops. Dell and IBM sell more laptops than Apple by a long shot.
If 2 out of every 5 laptops sold were Apples we would be tripping over them. Thats a nice dream isnt it?
PS. This was submitted from a 15" Titanium PowerBook.
Apple is and has been a major shareholder of ARM. Apple worked with ARM to make the Newton.
Apple has %7 of the laptop market with a trend towards strong growth in this area. The new G4 and speculative G5 PowerBooks, coupled with the release of MacOS X Panther 10.3 could bolster Apple's laptop markethshare to %10. This would place Apple as the number one supplier of laptops in the world.
The obvious ways this thing [the G5] should be different are huge memory moves: [snip]...the processor should be able to have multiple floating point commands being processed at once (in addition to altivec).
e nch/G5_fluid_dynamics_bench.html
You are absolutely correct. Look at the benchmarks in this guys Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics caclulations... The 1.8 ghz G5 is more than 3 times faster than a G4 at small memory calculations and the G4 isnt even capable of being tested in the large memory calculations...
And he isnt even testing multiprocessors...or even the faster 2 Ghz G5.
Basically, the G5 and the motherboard its on solve all of the major problems the G4 had.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G5/G5_fluid_dynamics_b
True biking is dangerous... but so is getting in a car... A lot more people die or get injured in cars than on bikes each year. Im not sure how the percentages compare though.(that is, the percentage of drivers hurt vs. the percentage of bicyclists hurt). The dept. of transportation has statistics on the web for anyone that cares to look it up.
I would say that people have an air of complacency...even safety when entering a car, whereas there is dramatically increased alertness when getting on a bicycle. You arent going to be using your cell phone on your bike or eating a cheesburger on your bike. So a lot of the common distractions that cause car accidents wont apply to you directly. Of course, a driver on a cell phone could hit you on your bike.
Really, the danger of riding a bicycle is local. Seattle and the US in general has really bad support for bicyclists. Bike lanes are narrow or non-existant... If you go to The Netherlands, the bike lanes are wider than the car lanes. The net result is that millions of people in The Netherlands get around by bike.
The one time I crashed my bike (in 20 years of riding), I hit my forehead on the ground. I was wearing a helmet and walked away without injury. I count myself lucky. It sounds like you may not have been wearing a helmet in 1977...or a 1977 helmet may not have been adequate. Technology has improved in the last 26 years.
To say that "you will be hurt badly" is certainly jumping to conclusions. I have friends in wheelchairs as a result of driving a car, sober, during the day, avoiding a squirrel.
Cars are substantially more dangerous than most people realize. I've gone on many long highway trips and encountered near fatal situations with regularity. Some real life examples include...having an insane old man drive at me head-on in a divided highway (presumably he was suicidal). Driving a small VW over an entire queen size bed at 65 mph on I-5 with no option to change lanes. Nearly hitting a cow crossing a highway just last week on the way to Black Rock City, NV.
Those were the close calls. Then there was the time my cab driver in New Orleans broadsided a pickup truck (that was crossing the road for who knows what reason). Or the time I was on a school bus that crashed into a suddenly stopped school bus on the highway. Or the time my dad crashed into some womans brand new car. Or the time the microsoft executive was speeding downtown in his SUV and changed lanes into me because he was too high off the ground to see my 'normal' sized car (which I had borrowed).
Hows that sound compared to "I fell off my bike once and got scraped up."?
The truth is, cars and cars dont work together. Cars and people dont work together, cars and bikes dont work together.
I am also interested in hearing about other alternative, yet practical, forms of transportation that I may have missed.
p l
I have never owned a car in my entire life.
I ride my bike everywhere I go. I save thousands of dollars on gas, insurance, maintenance, parking, tickets, registration, etc. I stay fit, so I save time and money on medical bills/healthcare. Since Im totally in shape, I definitely have more success getting girlfriends too.
I live in Seattle where the climate is fairly mild but it rains half the year. Biking in the rain sounds horribly unpleasant, biking uphill sounds horribly unpleasant. Biking in traffic sounds horribly unpleasant. You get used to all of these things when you have no other means of transport...and they quickly become non-issues. I find myself biking up the steepest hills in the city multiple times a day without thought, without exhaustion.
In Seattle, bikes can be put on the front of buses on a very well designed bike rack. So you can ride the bus uphill to a location (usually faster than biking) and bike back down (which is faster than bussing back downhill). If its pouring and Gore-Tex isn't good enough (which is rare in Seattle, believe it or not) you can always put your bike on the bus. Another reason it's nice to put your bike on the bus is if you don't want to arrive at your destination all sweaty...but you can still zip home really fast.
Bikes has been a very practical method of transportion, and its better for the environment and for the general health of the population. It's even better than driving an electric car.
There are times however when I wish I could escape the city altogether... I usually find girls with cars to take me out of the city. There are times when I wish I could hall a large object, like a computer monitor, or appliance. I can usually arrange to borrow cars from friends although I have been known to bring large objects onto the bus.
Naturally, the distance you travel everyday and your physical condition will dictate the practicality of riding a bike. But if your chief concern is helping the environment... there is no better chioce.
You can probably buy a fantastic bike every single year for same expense as buying/oiperating one used car.
Consider it.
PS. The Seattle bus system has a half-decent online trip planner that facilitates timing your trips.
http://tripplanner.metrokc.gov/cgi-bin/itin_page.
Crashes - PC
Now, $8 a month seems a little high for friendster, if it were like $2, or even $5 I might consider paying for the service. Regardless, $8 a month is pretty good way to ensure the friendsters and fakesters who really serve some sort of purpose.
Hey $2 U.S. is a months wages in most of the world. All you are proposing to do is to make an elitest network of americans. And what makes you think a few dollars will prevent someone from creating a fakester?...I'll just put it on the company Visa.
The real solution is to embrace the Fakesters. Fakesters serve a purpose...they are virtual communities and virtual interest groups. They bring people together based on location, interest, sense of humor, turn-ons, or whatever else you can imagine. A section of the site should be made to allow anyone to create these island communities. They help break the ice and make friendster work better. For example, I might be 5 degrees of separation from the girl nextdoor (and therefore we couldnt see each other on Friendster), but if we are both friends of Seattle, we would suddenly be 1 degree away.
So what if the fakesters were highlighted green or marked in some way? And if you so desired, you could turn off fakesters and recalculate the size of your personal network?
Exactly how you go about identifying a fakester to tag it green is hard...I can only think of one way...let friends of the fakester vote friend or fakester. If the majority of your friends vote you are a fakester...
Dear Friendster Inc., hire me.
You sure put the coward in Anonymous Coward.