MySpace shouldn't have allowed their users to modify the pages so heavily. They shouldn't have allowed people to have music that plays when you visit the page. They shouldn't have made a system that can't talk to other stuff (like del.icio.us tags or RSS readers). They shouldn't have made it so freaking hard to use. (It takes three times as many clicks to do on something on MySpace than what it should take.)
I write web apps for a living. I know what a good app looks like. I could write a better MySpace clone in the space of a weekend. However, nobody would use it. Why? Because it's not "MySpace." For chrissakes: IT CAN'T REMEMBER THAT YOU WANT TO STAY LOGGED IN! That checkbox on the login page, as far as I can tell, DOES. NOTHING.
It's no wonder they had so much trouble keeping the system up and running, because they're obviously not professionals.
I exchange Word documents with people all the time using NeoOffice/J, which is the Mac OS X version of OpenOffice.org. The new open, XML based document format will make this even easier.
The only thing that the new version of Word will bring is productivity enhancements and, frankly, most of those aren't things I use normally.
RSS readers are ubiquitous. Generating custom RSS feeds from content is trivial on the server side. Building an RSS reader to pull tag information from another site into tagging software is trivial. The only thing that people need to do is to build it into their tagging engines so that their customers can easily find related information.
The last thing I want to do, however, is to have things "suggested" to me. Why should del.icio.us and Technorati automatically be integrated? Leave that to the user.
any DRM system that allows me to format shift for playback on that device is going to leak like a sieve, so content providers aren't going to want to use it. Not with high-quality versions of the content, anyway.
Funny thing is: And video providers have been giving away low-quality versions of their content for years now. It's called TV and Radio. If I want to watch a movie, all I have to do is turn on my TV. Heck, I can even record it if I want. But it's not going to be the same quality as a
So I say content providers should continue to give away low-quality versions of their content, either for a monthly fee or supported by advertising. Then, if you really want to get the high quality version, you pay money, and deal with the DRM.
Now compare that to the cable card: you buy a set top box. You take it home and call the cable company. They come out and make sure the signal is OK (at least they should), install a PCMCIA-like card in the back, show you what channels you get, and if it doesn't work, well, that's your problem. Or, if you are feeling adventurous, you stop by the cable company office on the way home with your new box and pick up a cable card.
I made a similar argument with some folks about Internet access. I was arguing that all broadband should be is a hole in the wall that bits come out of, or I can dump bits into. Other folks, who were less technologically savvy than me, said that they needed the free virus and spyware stuff, the spam blocking, and the web space and email addresses, even though they're not as good as what you can get for free or cheap somewhere else.
So while I think there are significant number of people who, like you and I, want service providers to get out of our faces, quite a few people want want devices that simply function without any effort on their part.
What would serve both groups would be demonopolization of the cable and phone companies. This would allow some companies to provide cable and internet access to folks like us (Speakeasy, for example, which isn't available in my area) and other companies who can provide the level of simplicity that many other people need.
I, for one, would pay for a good HD transfer of certain movies of that era, like "For the Love of Pleasure" or "The Devil in Ms. Jones" or "Behind the Green Door"
The only problem I forsee in this scheme is the tangle that the copyrights is now, with long gone companies being acquired by others time and again, and resellers in other countries geting non-clear rights.
I think the problem with those titles is a tangle of something else...
I did it with an album my wife purchased (using her account but my credit card, and before I realized you can authorize a Mac for multiple iTunes accounts). As long as it's a full album, everything gets reimported correctly, and I can't detect any degradation of the data.
However, I've since authorized both of our computers on both of our accounts. (And switched her account to her credit card!)
I'm a PHP developer, too and I'm with you on the namespaces complaint. Not only does it make upgrading harder, but it also doesn't provide logical grouping for the functions. Every MySQL function should be in a MySQL library. mysql_connect() should be MySQL::connect().
But still, I'm sure the fault lies more with the developers than with the language. I've seen some horrible, horrible code in my day. Stuff like this is not uncommon in my current job:
<?php $user = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = '$_POST[username]' AND $_POST[password]"); ?>
Not to mention that I spent yesterday implementing encryption for credit card numbers we were storing in the database. They had been stored in plain text for at least two years.
Is it any wonder I've started interviewing somewhere else?
They'll be web apps. If you've got a full featured browser, there's almost nothing you can't do these days. I imagine there will be a profusion of applications written specifically for full-featured browsers on small screens.
I've got a Mac Mini at home that's set up as a fax server, a fileserver with an external USB 2.0 hard drive, a print server, a web server, and an ssh portal. Setting it up was ridiculously easy:
- One click to enable printer sharing.
- One click to enable file sharing
- A few clicks and keystrokes to make non-admin accounts and home folders for my wife and I
Then I did a couple slightly geeky things like partition the external drive and write a cron job to rsync to my web host nightly that most people wouldn't be doing, but the Mac Mini, even without a special "server" OS, is a great way to get a cheap, reliable, Unix-based server. Heck, I've even got mine running as a development server with PHP/MySQL and RoR (thanks to Locomotive). And to make me feel less guilty about having a computer running 24/7, it's running the ClimatePrediction.net BOINC project.
In the future, when I get an iTV, I'm definitely going to be having iTunes running in both of our separate user accounts so that we can stream our stuff to our TV. Lately I've been hooking my Powerbook up to our TV using S-Video and the headphone jack. The only problem I can see using iTV is videos I acquire through, *ahem*, alternative distribution methods will require some conversion before they're viewable. However, season passes to shows through the iTunes music store means I can finally, FINALLY, tell Comcast where they can put their $70/month internet access.
From what I've read about the Windows Home Server, it doesn't give me much more capability than my Mini, other than it can be installed in tower enclosures
Difference: *I* don't have to make sure the software patches work. They'll find the problem and offer to fix it for free. With Windows, I'd have to download and install the patch.
Oh, and I don't have to worry about an airbag recall making my after-market stereo inoperable.
Tang existed prior to NASA. NASA liked it because it was lightweight, easy to mix in space, and tasted like orange juice. And the astronauts made it really popular.
We invaded a host of Central American countries in the early 1900s to deal with "uprisings." In reality, we pacified the country so large fruit growers could operate without threats from the local populous. Then we set up puppet governments loyal to the United States *and* the fruit companies.
So, no, we didn't "take ground," in the sense we took over government. But we did make sure there were no more threats to the US interests.
Another case in point: Iran. In 1948 we overthrew a democratically elected prime minister because he wanted to socialize the oil industry, and installed the despot Shah. We never used military force, but we did use the CIA to provide support for the Shah that didn't exist in Iran. (Interestingly, G. H. W. Bush *and* Schwarzkopf had a hand in putting the Shah in power.)
We're living in a pre-fascist state right now. That is, a state where industry and government are linked. It's not public, yet, but soon may be. We ignore things like human rights so that corporations can continue to have access to cheap resources, including raw materials, which is why we have permanent most-favored-nation trading status with China and a very close relation with Saudi Arabia, both of which have horrible human rights records.
If we truly valued human rights and freedom over profit, we would withdraw support for China and Saudi Arabia, as well as any other nation with such bad human rights violations.
Now there's a question I'd like to ask both candidates.
Difference: I don't have to make sure software patches in my car work for my airbag to deploy. And when it doesn't deploy I or my beneficiaries can sue the hell out of the car company.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but computers are totally different from factory machines or cars.
But, really, you're arguing semantics. Idiots isn't the best word to use to describe users. Unknowledgable is better. They don't know about the system they're using, and they shouldn't have to. We trust car designers and vacuum cleaner designers and toaster designers to make a system that's easy to use, and that protects us as much as possible from danger. We also trust business models, like banks, to keep things secure. (Probably a better analogy.)
Example: There's a process you have to go through to withdraw money from your bank: Fill out a slip, walk to the cashier, show her ID, and then have her verify it and give you the money. People do this because it's the system that's in place for getting your money out, and it's pretty much secure.
However, there are no systems for computer programs, at least that people can see. So instead of letting someone else verify your identity and give you the cash, you have to have an intimate knowledge of how to work the bank vault or you have an insecure transaction.
So, no, users aren't idiots. But the systems in place don't allow for much human error, or protect users from it. Maybe UL should start certifying operating systems?
I don't think Ms. Rand had a very good command of the english language. You don't "gain a new freedom," you simply gain safety at the expense of freedom.
Traffic Light Example: If you aren't an idiot, and can manage to time it right, you can get across the street without a light. I do it all the time. However, the light frees a bit of your brain from thinking about crossing the street, but you lose autonomy.
People don't just use Office because they are forced into it.
And then...
People use MSFT because they are already locked in.
Preview button, people!
As a web developer, I would prefer the XML document format to Word's format particularly because I can use different XSLT to display the data, meaning our clients would have greater control over their web sites without having to contact us for a lot of the changes. Just FTP the document to a specific directory and PHP can parse it out into a live page in a few minutes.
Big companies also like things like cost-plus accounting. Why demand efficiency *and* risk money when the government will pay you 10% more than you say you need?
A true geek car would be able to be assembled in a weekend from low-cost parts to accomplish a specific task.
For example, I like the lightweight frame of Ariel's Atom, but I need an FM radio w/ line in (for my iPod), a high-efficiency engine with cruise control for my 40 mile commute, and a roof and heater system. A full hybrid system would be great, but a punchy little diesel would probably be better.
A true geek car company would let me put all those parts together to make the perfect car for my situation.
Why would I want an Atom? It's got an extra seat in it!
I doubt that flying cars will be piloted in the conventional sense. Modern airliners are able to take off, fly to their destinations and land with little to no human intervention.
Flying cars will be much more like this than like current automobiles. I'd imagine there would be skyways between population centers, seperated by about 1000 feet for each direction. Harrisburg-Lancaster would be 500 feet AGL, while Lancaster-Harrisburg would be 1500 feet AGL. Longer distances would be higher than short distances because of cruise benefits
SS1 and White Knight are part of what Scaled Composites calls "Tier One." According to some intarweb sources Rutan has said that there will be a Tier Two or Tier Three. Orbital? Highly probable, mostly due to the fact that Scaled Composites owns the designs to the Roton *and* (my personal favorite) the Delta Clipper.
I was skeptical of Rutan's true goal (ooo, black sky), but after hearing rumors, I think he and others are going to do what NASA couldn't; bring cheap space access to the masses.
Slashdot Mirror
MySpace shouldn't have allowed their users to modify the pages so heavily. They shouldn't have allowed people to have music that plays when you visit the page. They shouldn't have made a system that can't talk to other stuff (like del.icio.us tags or RSS readers). They shouldn't have made it so freaking hard to use. (It takes three times as many clicks to do on something on MySpace than what it should take.)
I write web apps for a living. I know what a good app looks like. I could write a better MySpace clone in the space of a weekend. However, nobody would use it. Why? Because it's not "MySpace." For chrissakes: IT CAN'T REMEMBER THAT YOU WANT TO STAY LOGGED IN! That checkbox on the login page, as far as I can tell, DOES. NOTHING.
It's no wonder they had so much trouble keeping the system up and running, because they're obviously not professionals.
Hell, the firepaste and 1313 paste all look like perfect shuttle heat tile replacements.
I exchange Word documents with people all the time using NeoOffice/J, which is the Mac OS X version of OpenOffice.org. The new open, XML based document format will make this even easier. The only thing that the new version of Word will bring is productivity enhancements and, frankly, most of those aren't things I use normally.
RSS readers are ubiquitous. Generating custom RSS feeds from content is trivial on the server side. Building an RSS reader to pull tag information from another site into tagging software is trivial. The only thing that people need to do is to build it into their tagging engines so that their customers can easily find related information. The last thing I want to do, however, is to have things "suggested" to me. Why should del.icio.us and Technorati automatically be integrated? Leave that to the user.
I did it with an album my wife purchased (using her account but my credit card, and before I realized you can authorize a Mac for multiple iTunes accounts). As long as it's a full album, everything gets reimported correctly, and I can't detect any degradation of the data. However, I've since authorized both of our computers on both of our accounts. (And switched her account to her credit card!)
They'll be web apps. If you've got a full featured browser, there's almost nothing you can't do these days. I imagine there will be a profusion of applications written specifically for full-featured browsers on small screens.
I'd never spend more than $400 for a phone. Thankfully, the iPhone is a heck of a lot more than just a phone.
I've got a Mac Mini at home that's set up as a fax server, a fileserver with an external USB 2.0 hard drive, a print server, a web server, and an ssh portal. Setting it up was ridiculously easy: - One click to enable printer sharing. - One click to enable file sharing - A few clicks and keystrokes to make non-admin accounts and home folders for my wife and I Then I did a couple slightly geeky things like partition the external drive and write a cron job to rsync to my web host nightly that most people wouldn't be doing, but the Mac Mini, even without a special "server" OS, is a great way to get a cheap, reliable, Unix-based server. Heck, I've even got mine running as a development server with PHP/MySQL and RoR (thanks to Locomotive). And to make me feel less guilty about having a computer running 24/7, it's running the ClimatePrediction.net BOINC project. In the future, when I get an iTV, I'm definitely going to be having iTunes running in both of our separate user accounts so that we can stream our stuff to our TV. Lately I've been hooking my Powerbook up to our TV using S-Video and the headphone jack. The only problem I can see using iTV is videos I acquire through, *ahem*, alternative distribution methods will require some conversion before they're viewable. However, season passes to shows through the iTunes music store means I can finally, FINALLY, tell Comcast where they can put their $70/month internet access. From what I've read about the Windows Home Server, it doesn't give me much more capability than my Mini, other than it can be installed in tower enclosures
Oh, and I don't have to worry about an airbag recall making my after-market stereo inoperable.
/me daydreams about 300KBps downloads over an unclogged dormNet
Tang existed prior to NASA. NASA liked it because it was lightweight, easy to mix in space, and tasted like orange juice. And the astronauts made it really popular.
We invaded a host of Central American countries in the early 1900s to deal with "uprisings." In reality, we pacified the country so large fruit growers could operate without threats from the local populous. Then we set up puppet governments loyal to the United States *and* the fruit companies.
So, no, we didn't "take ground," in the sense we took over government. But we did make sure there were no more threats to the US interests.
Another case in point: Iran. In 1948 we overthrew a democratically elected prime minister because he wanted to socialize the oil industry, and installed the despot Shah. We never used military force, but we did use the CIA to provide support for the Shah that didn't exist in Iran. (Interestingly, G. H. W. Bush *and* Schwarzkopf had a hand in putting the Shah in power.)
We're living in a pre-fascist state right now. That is, a state where industry and government are linked. It's not public, yet, but soon may be. We ignore things like human rights so that corporations can continue to have access to cheap resources, including raw materials, which is why we have permanent most-favored-nation trading status with China and a very close relation with Saudi Arabia, both of which have horrible human rights records.
If we truly valued human rights and freedom over profit, we would withdraw support for China and Saudi Arabia, as well as any other nation with such bad human rights violations.
Now there's a question I'd like to ask both candidates.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but computers are totally different from factory machines or cars.
But, really, you're arguing semantics. Idiots isn't the best word to use to describe users. Unknowledgable is better. They don't know about the system they're using, and they shouldn't have to. We trust car designers and vacuum cleaner designers and toaster designers to make a system that's easy to use, and that protects us as much as possible from danger. We also trust business models, like banks, to keep things secure. (Probably a better analogy.)
Example: There's a process you have to go through to withdraw money from your bank: Fill out a slip, walk to the cashier, show her ID, and then have her verify it and give you the money. People do this because it's the system that's in place for getting your money out, and it's pretty much secure.
However, there are no systems for computer programs, at least that people can see. So instead of letting someone else verify your identity and give you the cash, you have to have an intimate knowledge of how to work the bank vault or you have an insecure transaction.
So, no, users aren't idiots. But the systems in place don't allow for much human error, or protect users from it. Maybe UL should start certifying operating systems?
Traffic Light Example: If you aren't an idiot, and can manage to time it right, you can get across the street without a light. I do it all the time. However, the light frees a bit of your brain from thinking about crossing the street, but you lose autonomy.
Viva Cochabamba!
People don't just use Office because they are forced into it.
And then...
People use MSFT because they are already locked in.
Preview button, people!
As a web developer, I would prefer the XML document format to Word's format particularly because I can use different XSLT to display the data, meaning our clients would have greater control over their web sites without having to contact us for a lot of the changes. Just FTP the document to a specific directory and PHP can parse it out into a live page in a few minutes.
It would really suck if we have highly radioactive lava spewing out of a volcano a few thousand years after we put this stuff in the ground.
Big companies also like things like cost-plus accounting. Why demand efficiency *and* risk money when the government will pay you 10% more than you say you need?
A true geek car would be able to be assembled in a weekend from low-cost parts to accomplish a specific task.
For example, I like the lightweight frame of Ariel's Atom, but I need an FM radio w/ line in (for my iPod), a high-efficiency engine with cruise control for my 40 mile commute, and a roof and heater system. A full hybrid system would be great, but a punchy little diesel would probably be better.
A true geek car company would let me put all those parts together to make the perfect car for my situation.
Why would I want an Atom? It's got an extra seat in it!
Flying cars will be much more like this than like current automobiles. I'd imagine there would be skyways between population centers, seperated by about 1000 feet for each direction. Harrisburg-Lancaster would be 500 feet AGL, while Lancaster-Harrisburg would be 1500 feet AGL. Longer distances would be higher than short distances because of cruise benefits
I was skeptical of Rutan's true goal (ooo, black sky), but after hearing rumors, I think he and others are going to do what NASA couldn't; bring cheap space access to the masses.