I think there's a midpoint between getting them "whatever" and buying hundreds of dollars of stuff in the hopes of forcing them to be little engineers. I'm discouraged (but not surprised) I haven't seen ANYONE mention paint, (really nice) clay or colored pencils/markers, or ANY art supplies, a cheap-o guitar or keyboard, or any athletic gear.
As for me, I enjoyed getting a woodworking kit (they're pretty cheap and fun! You even get a gun thing that burns stuff!) and a chemistry set, but stopped using them when neither of my parents cared enough to use them with me - so be sure that whatever you get, if it's meant to be educational, can be backed up with parenting, either by you or by the actual parents.
All kids will have some sort of interest in something besides the TV - you just need to find it and pounce on it.
I haven't read all of them (or any of them) from beginning to end, but I picked one up while waiting at someone's house for an hour or so. No, it's not Tolstoy, but it's decent for preteens or early teens, and I'd say the vocabulary is a little more expansive than you'd find in most other books meant for kids. I'd rather have a kid that knows a lot of words than one that knows about the horrors of dangling participles.
I thought it was geek-politically correct to admit that IE for Mac was actually pretty decent, especially compared to the pre-Safari, pre-Firefox competition (in 1997)? Or has that changed?
The last time I used the yellow pages was probably three years ago.
The last time I used the white pages, I was probably nine or ten. I can't think of a time where I needed to call someone's residence where the number was not personally given to me.
What happens if basic domestic services no longer exist for a significant period of time? I'm worrying about shit more important than the fact that I'm out of Doritos!
Agreed. And these things are dense. You may as well drop off a block of wood on everyone's porch.
Multiply that by the fact that they seem to drop off a copy for each person in an unmarried household around here, and there are multiple companies that make these (well, that's more about the yellow pages, I guess), and we're talking about a decent-sized stand of trees each year.
Haha, I wonder if that is legally true. If so, then yeah, this patent is probably invalid. Auntie pays for the gift, but is she ever legally the owner of the gift? Does she technically own it while it is in transit? While it's paid for but still just sitting on a shelf in an Amazon warehouse?
I actually have no idea - any lawyers or wannabe lawyers who are good at this sort of thing out there?
What's cool about a database containing information I voluntarily input into it? Nothing, I suppose. The database better do that.
The patent is for some sort of function that uses the information in the database.
It shouldn't be necessary to make something like this. My aunt Nellie should know I don't want a bunch of "Mad About You" DVDs. But, gosh darn it, some people don't listen and this keeps people from a Christmastime shouting match about crappy presents.
If it's not a useful idea, then I'm sure Amazon will scrap the project because it isn't making them any money.
But nobody has been able to dig up prior art, and the rebuttal for this being an actual invention seems to be "yeah, but instead of the automatic step this would perform, you could just do the manual steps instead, DUH!!" which ignores the reason any invention is invented, ever.
People are just wary because of Amazon's history of pretty awful patent abuse. People should be wary of any patent, and any big company. But on this one here, I don't see the big deal (again, if we allow for software patents at all, which I'm not really a big fan of).
Yeah, you just described the novel creation. It allows the customer to predefine "fuck that" checkpoints and replace the gifts, on the fly, with something better. That's awesome for families who use Amazon (mine doesn't, at least not as a group activity).
Not (really) obvious, no prior art, kind of a cool idea. I kind of think patents for things that aren't physical objects are BS, but if we're going to allow them at all, then this seems like one we should allow.
No shit. I just tried this on a crappy library computer from 2006 (Windows XP, Firefox). CPU usage skyrocketed from 3% to 8%. Won't somebody think of the children?
Gotta agree with the downmodded comment. When I first heard of Google Instant, I thought it was going to be a pain in the ass, and it did annoy me...the first two or three times I used it. It's actually useful in that it provides instant feedback about the quality of my search terms.
I just went and checked out the instant previews. Not obtrusive at all, and I can see this being very handy for when I want to find something I saw but didn't bookmark a month ago, but I know there was a green ribbon on the left-hand side of the page, etc without actually going to a dozen sites to find the one. You click on a magnifying glass if you want apreview; previews continue to appear when you hover over other search results, and you can stop this if you press an X.
Granted, it isn't a massive change, but that's kind of my point. Technologically cool, a minor benefit, and in no way a hindrance. Stop whining.
I guess my original point still stands - what's the point of demonstrating something that's known, and has existed in some viable form for decades?
I think if the military wanted to scare China they'd be a little more transparent about it (while still not giving anything away that puts us in violation of treaties).
Also, as far as I can tell, nobody knows where the damn thing landed - it's not much of a display if the missile landed fifteen miles from the launch site.
It's possible, but it seems kind of weird. ICBMs aren't exactly new. Launching them from a sub might be new, but I'm not sure what tactical advantage that would provide. I guess it'd be harder to destroy a mobile, underground ICBM launchpad?
OpenOffice is arguably better than Office 2010? I suppose that statement is technically true - a lot of people will argue with you whenever you say it.
Office productivity software lives and dies by compatibility. It doesn't matter how good the software itself does unless you're a one-person business with yourself as the only customer. OpenOffice & Thunderbird doesn't have compatibility until I can create a meeting request, have it open something completely compatible with LiveMeeting, and have a recording of the videoconference automatically uploaded to a SharePoint site when I'm done. And until it can be ready to handle the next version of Office the day it's released.
Or when it can reliably open a five-page document containing a table.
Sort of. I think the issue is that Android is very powerful, very good, and Google thinks making the OS was good enough. They need to step up and either:
1) Begin writing a LOT more apps themselves (either in-house or by contracting with serious full-time developers), and push them in the Android market in some special way. I'm not just talking about Google Maps or Goggles or anything, I mean a flashlight app, a fart app, advanced camera app, whatever. If they're going to put out the OS and make money off of this, they need to take the extra effort to create applications that just work, because to me, the quality of applications is the only place where iPhone still has a clear advantage. 2) Start being dicks about who can call a phone an Android phone, or fork the OS into dumphone and smartphone. The "Optimized for Windows XP" stickers were pretty much bullshit, but they DID have mandated minimum standards. You couldn't sell something with six-year old specs and say it'd run XP just fine. There are some Android phones out there that are just plain awful, and I can't imagine trying to load a website or write an email on them.
I'm less technical than most people on this site, but people writing software for computers don't care much about each person's screen resolution or monitor size. It seems that Google could be doing a lot more to allow similar ignorance (and I mean that word in the good way) among smartphone developers.
I was happy with Apple's support for Exchange (though I suppose I wasn't really asking for much more than bidirectional interfacing with my calendar, mail, and contacts). Android hasn't been as good - I was never able to get my address books sync'ed - but I don't really know whose fault that was.
Although, since WP7 is supposed to be more "consumer-focused", it looks like Microsoft might be partially ignoring one of their potential strengths in this market. We'll see. I don't doubt their ability to screw this up - or to do well here.
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I think there's a midpoint between getting them "whatever" and buying hundreds of dollars of stuff in the hopes of forcing them to be little engineers. I'm discouraged (but not surprised) I haven't seen ANYONE mention paint, (really nice) clay or colored pencils/markers, or ANY art supplies, a cheap-o guitar or keyboard, or any athletic gear.
As for me, I enjoyed getting a woodworking kit (they're pretty cheap and fun! You even get a gun thing that burns stuff!) and a chemistry set, but stopped using them when neither of my parents cared enough to use them with me - so be sure that whatever you get, if it's meant to be educational, can be backed up with parenting, either by you or by the actual parents.
All kids will have some sort of interest in something besides the TV - you just need to find it and pounce on it.
I haven't read all of them (or any of them) from beginning to end, but I picked one up while waiting at someone's house for an hour or so. No, it's not Tolstoy, but it's decent for preteens or early teens, and I'd say the vocabulary is a little more expansive than you'd find in most other books meant for kids. I'd rather have a kid that knows a lot of words than one that knows about the horrors of dangling participles.
That's a pretty awesome list of books for a 10-12 year old. I'd add Hatchet to it, too (though I think guys like that one more than girls).
"'a 6-year-old could do the same thing with Photoshop... It's probably a few weeks' modification of the program.'"
There are six-year olds who can undertake a multi-week programming project?
I can't believe my parents were wasting my time making me read Dr. Seuss when I could have been doing this shit!
What if that trusted engineer told some reporter about the shortcomings, instead of you?
I thought it was geek-politically correct to admit that IE for Mac was actually pretty decent, especially compared to the pre-Safari, pre-Firefox competition (in 1997)? Or has that changed?
The last time I used the yellow pages was probably three years ago.
The last time I used the white pages, I was probably nine or ten. I can't think of a time where I needed to call someone's residence where the number was not personally given to me.
What happens if basic domestic services no longer exist for a significant period of time? I'm worrying about shit more important than the fact that I'm out of Doritos!
Agreed. And these things are dense. You may as well drop off a block of wood on everyone's porch.
Multiply that by the fact that they seem to drop off a copy for each person in an unmarried household around here, and there are multiple companies that make these (well, that's more about the yellow pages, I guess), and we're talking about a decent-sized stand of trees each year.
Haha, I wonder if that is legally true. If so, then yeah, this patent is probably invalid. Auntie pays for the gift, but is she ever legally the owner of the gift? Does she technically own it while it is in transit? While it's paid for but still just sitting on a shelf in an Amazon warehouse?
I actually have no idea - any lawyers or wannabe lawyers who are good at this sort of thing out there?
What's cool about a database containing information I voluntarily input into it? Nothing, I suppose. The database better do that.
The patent is for some sort of function that uses the information in the database.
It shouldn't be necessary to make something like this. My aunt Nellie should know I don't want a bunch of "Mad About You" DVDs. But, gosh darn it, some people don't listen and this keeps people from a Christmastime shouting match about crappy presents.
If it's not a useful idea, then I'm sure Amazon will scrap the project because it isn't making them any money.
But nobody has been able to dig up prior art, and the rebuttal for this being an actual invention seems to be "yeah, but instead of the automatic step this would perform, you could just do the manual steps instead, DUH!!" which ignores the reason any invention is invented, ever.
People are just wary because of Amazon's history of pretty awful patent abuse. People should be wary of any patent, and any big company. But on this one here, I don't see the big deal (again, if we allow for software patents at all, which I'm not really a big fan of).
Yeah, you just described the novel creation. It allows the customer to predefine "fuck that" checkpoints and replace the gifts, on the fly, with something better. That's awesome for families who use Amazon (mine doesn't, at least not as a group activity).
Not (really) obvious, no prior art, kind of a cool idea. I kind of think patents for things that aren't physical objects are BS, but if we're going to allow them at all, then this seems like one we should allow.
No shit. I just tried this on a crappy library computer from 2006 (Windows XP, Firefox). CPU usage skyrocketed from 3% to 8%. Won't somebody think of the children?
Gotta agree with the downmodded comment. When I first heard of Google Instant, I thought it was going to be a pain in the ass, and it did annoy me...the first two or three times I used it. It's actually useful in that it provides instant feedback about the quality of my search terms.
I just went and checked out the instant previews. Not obtrusive at all, and I can see this being very handy for when I want to find something I saw but didn't bookmark a month ago, but I know there was a green ribbon on the left-hand side of the page, etc without actually going to a dozen sites to find the one. You click on a magnifying glass if you want apreview; previews continue to appear when you hover over other search results, and you can stop this if you press an X.
Granted, it isn't a massive change, but that's kind of my point. Technologically cool, a minor benefit, and in no way a hindrance. Stop whining.
I guess my original point still stands - what's the point of demonstrating something that's known, and has existed in some viable form for decades?
I think if the military wanted to scare China they'd be a little more transparent about it (while still not giving anything away that puts us in violation of treaties).
Also, as far as I can tell, nobody knows where the damn thing landed - it's not much of a display if the missile landed fifteen miles from the launch site.
It's possible, but it seems kind of weird. ICBMs aren't exactly new. Launching them from a sub might be new, but I'm not sure what tactical advantage that would provide. I guess it'd be harder to destroy a mobile, underground ICBM launchpad?
Where'd you get one? It was never released.
Wow, I totally forgot about Google Trends for some reason.
Were any other Americans surprised how few people in other countries went on Facebook compared to the US?
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=facebook.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
I figured it was kind of US-centric, but not to this extent.
OpenOffice is arguably better than Office 2010? I suppose that statement is technically true - a lot of people will argue with you whenever you say it.
Office productivity software lives and dies by compatibility. It doesn't matter how good the software itself does unless you're a one-person business with yourself as the only customer. OpenOffice & Thunderbird doesn't have compatibility until I can create a meeting request, have it open something completely compatible with LiveMeeting, and have a recording of the videoconference automatically uploaded to a SharePoint site when I'm done. And until it can be ready to handle the next version of Office the day it's released.
Or when it can reliably open a five-page document containing a table.
Really? Do you refuse to pay doctors and nurses, too?
Maybe. It'd be pretty cool to have the baby's first words to be "ERR-OR! ERR-OR!"
Sort of. I think the issue is that Android is very powerful, very good, and Google thinks making the OS was good enough. They need to step up and either:
1) Begin writing a LOT more apps themselves (either in-house or by contracting with serious full-time developers), and push them in the Android market in some special way. I'm not just talking about Google Maps or Goggles or anything, I mean a flashlight app, a fart app, advanced camera app, whatever. If they're going to put out the OS and make money off of this, they need to take the extra effort to create applications that just work, because to me, the quality of applications is the only place where iPhone still has a clear advantage.
2) Start being dicks about who can call a phone an Android phone, or fork the OS into dumphone and smartphone. The "Optimized for Windows XP" stickers were pretty much bullshit, but they DID have mandated minimum standards. You couldn't sell something with six-year old specs and say it'd run XP just fine. There are some Android phones out there that are just plain awful, and I can't imagine trying to load a website or write an email on them.
I'm less technical than most people on this site, but people writing software for computers don't care much about each person's screen resolution or monitor size. It seems that Google could be doing a lot more to allow similar ignorance (and I mean that word in the good way) among smartphone developers.
Turn on a vacuum cleaner.
If you have to peel the cat out from underneath your bed ten seconds later, then it is not deaf.
I was happy with Apple's support for Exchange (though I suppose I wasn't really asking for much more than bidirectional interfacing with my calendar, mail, and contacts). Android hasn't been as good - I was never able to get my address books sync'ed - but I don't really know whose fault that was. Although, since WP7 is supposed to be more "consumer-focused", it looks like Microsoft might be partially ignoring one of their potential strengths in this market. We'll see. I don't doubt their ability to screw this up - or to do well here.