Yeah, yeah. But that analysis misses something -- music transfers are much more significant than indicated by their bulk alone. If you counted by file, music would be tops. And anyway you cut it, 12% of P2P music is a major milestone (and extremely suprising).
iMacs are the worst, with no less than three different form factors under the name so far, never mind all the other variations. The closest thing I can see to a meaning for the "iMac" designation is "Apple's current midrange desktop". But even that isn't a constant, since it used to mean "Apple's current low-end desktop"; now eMacs and Minis are the low end -- and the eMac is the true continuation of the original iMac design.
As for "Vaio", I hate to tell you, but the label covers desktops as well as laptops. If it designates anything at all, I haven't figured it out. ("Stylish and overpriced", maybe? But I think that's covered by the label "Sony".)
I like the old TRS-80 model numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4. But then they got inflated: 12, 16, 100, 1000, etc.
How did the accessories differ? My hPod came with earbuds, a USB cable, a FireWire cable, and a charger. Isn't that the same as an Apple iPod? (I don't know; I'm asking.)
Seriously though, I also just tried MSN Virtual Earth for the first time, and -- while each site has its strengths -- I like MSN better, because I can zoom in closer. I mean, on MSN, I can see my car. (I can also tell the age of the picture within a few years by where it's parked, one space over from where I park it now.)
There is no extra hour of daylight, you know. All DST does is take it off one end of the day and stick in on the other. I mean, I don't want to belabor the obvious, but people talk about DST like it was some kind of magic. There's no extra hour, and whatever you "gain", you have to pay for it somewhere else. Personally, I fail to see any advantage. If some people want to change their schedules for the summer, why don't they just do so, instead of screwing with everyone's clocks? Then the "extra hour" crowd would be satisfied, without having to impose their lunacy on the rest of us.
We've had DST in the U.S.A. for decades (you probably got it from us), and it's always sucked. But at least we were getting to the point where anything with a clock (that included the date) was smart enough to update itself... until now. Now, most of that effort will be wasted. Worse than that -- if you want the right time on your VCR, you'll have to manually move it one way on the new changeover day (just like in the bad old days), and THEN manually move it back the other way on the old changeover day to compensate for its hardwired DST adjustment! Mac, Windows, and Linux can update themselves, and need not be affected (though some systems will be anyway); but embedded devices are screwed.
BTW, they tell us that rubbish about smoke detectors here, too. It's a nice gimmick to sell more batteries. Me, I change the batteries when the detectors start beeping their "low battery" beep at me -- which can take two years or more.
The change to Halloween is the worst aspect of this, for me. I've always reckoned on DST ending just in time for Halloween, and it's been nice to know that the "witching hour" falls when it's supposed to (well, within the margin of error created by time zones). Now, it'll really be 11 p.m. What fun is that?
My current system is the first I've built without a 5.25" drive -- the new motherboard only supports one floppy. It still has a 3.5". On the other hand, I also have three new pre-built systems with no floppies at all.
...we used to dream of having floppies. Such luxury! Oh, they were available, but they cost something like $400 for a single drive. So instead, we used tape cassette recorders. We converted the data to sound at around 200 bps (this was on a ZX81 -- others were slightly better), recorded it onto tape, and prayed that it would read back OK -- which it did, as often as half the time!
Unlike the pottery comment, the foregoing is actually true. (Plus, RAM cost about 32,000 times what it does today -- $50 for a 16 KB RAM pack in '81 or '82 vs. the $50 I just paid for a 512 MB SODIMM. And the processor clock is now almost 1000 times what it was then, while the real performance difference is even higher.) I'd say "and we liked it!", but really, cassette tape storage always sucked the big one.
Now, in the post-floppy era, we're back to recording data mainly on another medium designed for sound, the compact disc. In a way, we've come full circle.
Re:The annoyances of Mozilla products (Windows)
on
Firefox 1.05 Released
·
· Score: 1
3 (weird paths) is IMHO mainly because of 2 (multiple profiles per user).
I am not sure the purpose of 2... I'd call it a relic from userless systems like Win 9x, but in fact even that can be set up with (weakly separated) users; so I dunno. I've never used the feature myself.
4. Perhaps allowing roaming (for bookmarks, etc.) is exactly why Application Data was chosen over Local Settings.
To elaborate on this, the IPv6 thing isn't a problem in all distros, but it was (for me) in Ubuntu -- the first distro I've used where IPv6 was enabled by default. I disabled it and everything works better.
Disabling it just in Firefox was good enough for the browser, until I got a local DNS running on the same system, at which point it reverted to the slow lookups, until I disabled IPv6 system-wide.
Try PithHelmet for ad-blocking in Safari, although I'm not sure if it's as flexible or capable as Adblock. (I still use Firefox rather than Safari, for other extensions and for a slight advantage in speed on my Mini.)
In fact, the average intelligence (by standard IQ tests) in increasing, and has been doing so steadily for some years. Of course the tests are recalibrated to keep the average near 100 (since that's the definition), which perhaps obscures this result. Google on "increasing IQ" or "the Flynn effect" for more on this.
There is as yet no clear explanation for the phenomenon. Personally, I believe (but cannot prove) that it's real, and that it reflects more than just an increased ability in test-taking. I think there are several causes, but mainly I suspect it's children's brains being exercised by an ever-more complex world.
Not only do I dismiss the idea of "innovations per billion"; I see a direct correlation between population density and innovation. The more people, the more clever people, of course (and the further the extremes deviate from the average); but also, the more people, the more they build on each others' ideas, the more quickly. Population drives innovation -- and vice versa, since it's improvements in agriculture, medicine, etc. that first enabled the population explosion. As population growth now slows, the rate of growth of innovation (though not the rate of innovation itself) may also slow; but it will never return to pre-explosion levels unless there's a population crash.
Imagine the innovation rate of a civilization that spanned the Solar System, or further...
And yeah, the "easy stuff" seems largely picked clean. Fortunately we have ever-more minds to throw at the hard problems.
I'm not saying that population growth is all good, nor even mostly good. But it's good for innovation... which we'll need, in order to solve the very problems population growth creates.
Mormons are the prototype for "sci-fi religions". They believe that God is an alien.
Re:The irony... MINOR SPOILERS
on
P2P and TV
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· Score: 1
(Disclaimer: I haven't seen Global Frequency yet.)
My inclination would be to throw people right into the middle of the action, with no introduction to the characters, and let the audience figure it out as it goes along. With a lot of fiction, you can drop the first few pages / minutes and lose nothing. In fact, I once heard something like this as a universal principle for writers -- "always cut the first three pages" -- but I can't find the citation now.
In print SF, often you're thrown into not only an unknown situation and characters, but an entire unknown world, right from the get-go. It can take several chapters to understand what you read on page one. I'm used to it, and I like it, but I guess that approach might not work for everyone.
The principle was driven home for me the other day when I started watching "Face/Off" about twenty minutes in. I got lucky, because that seemed to be where the story actually started. If I missed anything, it must've been mostly redundant character setup -- redundant, because I watched the rest of the movie without feeling that I'd missed anything. (I'd actually come in even later on a previous occasion, and that time I did miss a lot. This time, I feel like I have no need to see those first twenty minutes.)
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, yeah. But that analysis misses something -- music transfers are much more significant than indicated by their bulk alone. If you counted by file, music would be tops. And anyway you cut it, 12% of P2P music is a major milestone (and extremely suprising).
To me, "something to think about" doesn't imply worrying, just something that's interesting.
Walmart: Always low wages. Always.
Yeah, but who do you think invented Apple? A couple of HP employees, that's who.
iMacs are the worst, with no less than three different form factors under the name so far, never mind all the other variations. The closest thing I can see to a meaning for the "iMac" designation is "Apple's current midrange desktop". But even that isn't a constant, since it used to mean "Apple's current low-end desktop"; now eMacs and Minis are the low end -- and the eMac is the true continuation of the original iMac design.
As for "Vaio", I hate to tell you, but the label covers desktops as well as laptops. If it designates anything at all, I haven't figured it out. ("Stylish and overpriced", maybe? But I think that's covered by the label "Sony".)
I like the old TRS-80 model numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4. But then they got inflated: 12, 16, 100, 1000, etc.
How did the accessories differ? My hPod came with earbuds, a USB cable, a FireWire cable, and a charger. Isn't that the same as an Apple iPod? (I don't know; I'm asking.)
I have one, but I got it as a gift. (It also came from Costco.) BTW, I've never hooked it up to a Windows machine, much less an HP. It's still HFS+.
MC Hawking is teh r0x0r!
Me too, but ocassionally a square is left blank. I dunno if that has anything to do with the browser, though I doubt it.
Seriously though, I also just tried MSN Virtual Earth for the first time, and -- while each site has its strengths -- I like MSN better, because I can zoom in closer. I mean, on MSN, I can see my car. (I can also tell the age of the picture within a few years by where it's parked, one space over from where I park it now.)
There is no extra hour of daylight, you know. All DST does is take it off one end of the day and stick in on the other. I mean, I don't want to belabor the obvious, but people talk about DST like it was some kind of magic. There's no extra hour, and whatever you "gain", you have to pay for it somewhere else. Personally, I fail to see any advantage. If some people want to change their schedules for the summer, why don't they just do so, instead of screwing with everyone's clocks? Then the "extra hour" crowd would be satisfied, without having to impose their lunacy on the rest of us.
We've had DST in the U.S.A. for decades (you probably got it from us), and it's always sucked. But at least we were getting to the point where anything with a clock (that included the date) was smart enough to update itself... until now. Now, most of that effort will be wasted. Worse than that -- if you want the right time on your VCR, you'll have to manually move it one way on the new changeover day (just like in the bad old days), and THEN manually move it back the other way on the old changeover day to compensate for its hardwired DST adjustment! Mac, Windows, and Linux can update themselves, and need not be affected (though some systems will be anyway); but embedded devices are screwed.
BTW, they tell us that rubbish about smoke detectors here, too. It's a nice gimmick to sell more batteries. Me, I change the batteries when the detectors start beeping their "low battery" beep at me -- which can take two years or more.
The change to Halloween is the worst aspect of this, for me. I've always reckoned on DST ending just in time for Halloween, and it's been nice to know that the "witching hour" falls when it's supposed to (well, within the margin of error created by time zones). Now, it'll really be 11 p.m. What fun is that?
Gmail doesn't use Java, only JavaSCRIPT. Totally different entities, despite the names.
Urg, I misread, it hasn't won anything yet (and I seriously doubt that it will). Mea culpa.
Or better yet, "how the hell did it win"?
My current system is the first I've built without a 5.25" drive -- the new motherboard only supports one floppy. It still has a 3.5". On the other hand, I also have three new pre-built systems with no floppies at all.
Yeah, I got the reference. It's just that I'm pretty sure CmdrTaco wasn't really around back then.
...we used to dream of having floppies. Such luxury! Oh, they were available, but they cost something like $400 for a single drive. So instead, we used tape cassette recorders. We converted the data to sound at around 200 bps (this was on a ZX81 -- others were slightly better), recorded it onto tape, and prayed that it would read back OK -- which it did, as often as half the time!
Unlike the pottery comment, the foregoing is actually true. (Plus, RAM cost about 32,000 times what it does today -- $50 for a 16 KB RAM pack in '81 or '82 vs. the $50 I just paid for a 512 MB SODIMM. And the processor clock is now almost 1000 times what it was then, while the real performance difference is even higher.) I'd say "and we liked it!", but really, cassette tape storage always sucked the big one.
Now, in the post-floppy era, we're back to recording data mainly on another medium designed for sound, the compact disc. In a way, we've come full circle.
3 (weird paths) is IMHO mainly because of 2 (multiple profiles per user).
I am not sure the purpose of 2... I'd call it a relic from userless systems like Win 9x, but in fact even that can be set up with (weakly separated) users; so I dunno. I've never used the feature myself.
4. Perhaps allowing roaming (for bookmarks, etc.) is exactly why Application Data was chosen over Local Settings.
To elaborate on this, the IPv6 thing isn't a problem in all distros, but it was (for me) in Ubuntu -- the first distro I've used where IPv6 was enabled by default. I disabled it and everything works better.
Disabling it just in Firefox was good enough for the browser, until I got a local DNS running on the same system, at which point it reverted to the slow lookups, until I disabled IPv6 system-wide.
Try PithHelmet for ad-blocking in Safari, although I'm not sure if it's as flexible or capable as Adblock. (I still use Firefox rather than Safari, for other extensions and for a slight advantage in speed on my Mini.)
In fact, the average intelligence (by standard IQ tests) in increasing, and has been doing so steadily for some years. Of course the tests are recalibrated to keep the average near 100 (since that's the definition), which perhaps obscures this result. Google on "increasing IQ" or "the Flynn effect" for more on this.
There is as yet no clear explanation for the phenomenon. Personally, I believe (but cannot prove) that it's real, and that it reflects more than just an increased ability in test-taking. I think there are several causes, but mainly I suspect it's children's brains being exercised by an ever-more complex world.
Not only do I dismiss the idea of "innovations per billion"; I see a direct correlation between population density and innovation. The more people, the more clever people, of course (and the further the extremes deviate from the average); but also, the more people, the more they build on each others' ideas, the more quickly. Population drives innovation -- and vice versa, since it's improvements in agriculture, medicine, etc. that first enabled the population explosion. As population growth now slows, the rate of growth of innovation (though not the rate of innovation itself) may also slow; but it will never return to pre-explosion levels unless there's a population crash.
Imagine the innovation rate of a civilization that spanned the Solar System, or further...
And yeah, the "easy stuff" seems largely picked clean. Fortunately we have ever-more minds to throw at the hard problems.
I'm not saying that population growth is all good, nor even mostly good. But it's good for innovation... which we'll need, in order to solve the very problems population growth creates.
Mormons are the prototype for "sci-fi religions". They believe that God is an alien.
(Disclaimer: I haven't seen Global Frequency yet.)
My inclination would be to throw people right into the middle of the action, with no introduction to the characters, and let the audience figure it out as it goes along. With a lot of fiction, you can drop the first few pages / minutes and lose nothing. In fact, I once heard something like this as a universal principle for writers -- "always cut the first three pages" -- but I can't find the citation now.
In print SF, often you're thrown into not only an unknown situation and characters, but an entire unknown world, right from the get-go. It can take several chapters to understand what you read on page one. I'm used to it, and I like it, but I guess that approach might not work for everyone.
The principle was driven home for me the other day when I started watching "Face/Off" about twenty minutes in. I got lucky, because that seemed to be where the story actually started. If I missed anything, it must've been mostly redundant character setup -- redundant, because I watched the rest of the movie without feeling that I'd missed anything. (I'd actually come in even later on a previous occasion, and that time I did miss a lot. This time, I feel like I have no need to see those first twenty minutes.)