Different kids would be interested in having a portable computer to different extent. Ask your kid. If he wants to get one, it's probably time. If he is ambivalent, let him continue using the home desktop (one of).
As for what to buy, if you can afford it, I'd recommend buying a Tablet PC (convertible). It might make him more popular in class (though it might not), it's very useful for taking notes in the class and it's just plain cool. Not to mention that it will be common in 2-3 years and you would ensure your child stays ahead of the curve.
Ah, now I completely understand. I've met a few other Russians who also say that capitalism ruined everything, and the Soviet form of communism was the greatest thing ever. Yeah, I guess I can understand why you would have that perspective when one day you have bread, and the next, none.
You understand it completely wrong. It is very difficult to understand why communism is better if you are brought up in a capitalist society, because so many assumptions are ingrained in your brain by the time you are an adult. It's not much easier to understand why communism is better even if you grow up in a communist state (that's why most people didn't oppose the destruction of the Soviet Union).
But if you make an effort, you may eventually come to understand at least some of the complexity of the problem and to understand why (and when) planned socialist economies are better than market-based capitalist ones.
It also helps that the facts show this as well. When you adjust the figures available for the inequalities in starting conditions, you can clearly see that Soviet Union the economy of the was much more efficient than even the American economy. The key point here is that Soviet Union and the United States operated in very different conditions, so different that a straightforward indicator such as income per capita per annum is completely useless.
But a free market economy's still the way to go. Capitalist nations are the global spearheads of innovation. I grant you that the USSR had one or two milestones of invention. Unless you are blind (which, thanks to the Soviet science you are not), you should realise that it wasn't just one or two milestones. Soviet Union had achieved enormous success in pretty much every field of science and technology. And it's even more amazing when you compare the metrics such as value of equipment per scientist. Soviet scientists in some fields had as little as 1/100th of the equipment (in dollar value) as their American counterparts, but managed to stay competitive through superior education, better organisation of science, abolishment of intellectual property and other factors.
Today capitalist countries lead the world in innovations, but it's only because the USSR is gone. 20 years ago there was relative parity between the two superpowers.
But because, as you say yourself, the Soviet Union (and China) had zero respect for IP rights, how many of those innovations can they honestly take full credit for without having to thank some hard-working western scientist or engineer or programmer for?
Who cares about full credit? It's not like they had a SCO-like monster looming above and demanding code audits. So what if the average Soviet invention had 5% of foreign science in it? That's the way science and technology work everywhere, even in the US - and it doesn't matter whether certain technology was licenced or "obtained by other means". That doesn't say anything about the effectiveness and efficiency of the system.
Who's more motivated to invent, the guy with the job security and food on the table, or the person with both a fat bonus and a pink slip dangled in front of him at the same time?
Of course, the first one is more motivated. It is widely accepted even in American economic and management science (there have been countless publications in journals such as HBR and others) that money rarely motivates people. And it certainly doesn't motivate relatively affluent engineers and scientists. The best R&D is done by self-motivated specialists in organisations where they are given some stability and creative freedom and are not intimidated with pink slips. Do you think Linus Torwalds was threatened with pink slips? Or do you think that Microsoft OS developers are? Or may be the NASA engineers who put a man on the Moon were constantly harassed by threats of layoffs and lured with fat bonuses? I think not.
Soviet system worked great without "fat bonuses" and without fears of pink slips. If you look
I'm pretty sure that film cameras aren't disappearing anytime soon
This is not saying anything. With more than 6 billion people living on this planet every outdated technology is still used by someone. Heck, these people claim that "cuneiform is still very popular" and urge you to learn it!
as a very popular art form, traditional film photography is here to stay for a long time
I am always interested in long-term predictions from someone, who is "pretty new to the whole photography thing"... not. You don't have a clue. In 20 years almost noone will use film cameras. BTW, your assertions about limitations of digital cameras are laughable as well.
1) It had Grafitti 2 (accuracy sucks) and it's impossible to downgrade back. 2) It is very slow (it turns on in about 400-500 ms). May be it's because of the slower flash memory. 3) It crashes a lot, even though I don't have any hacks or anything installed (new OS?).
Older Palms were of better quality. New models have some cool new features, but the quality of the OS (stability, speed and input accuracy) is lower.
If you want to understand what this Washington Post article really is, you need to watch The Power of Nightmares by BBC (available on the P2P network of your choice).
Search for "Detroit" on this page: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1040 .htm to read about "Four Arab men... arrested on suspicion of being an Al Qaeda sleeper cell." That's just one particularly hilarious example, but there are many others. The story about Tora-Bora underground fortress was also amazing (look up the illustrations in the archives of your favourite media poison site).
This blog post (and especially the comments) discusses pinging yahoo.com, the switch to pinging google and what else do other people ping.
Incidentally, this is the 2nd result when searching for "ping yahoo" on Yahoo! and only the 9th result when searching on Google (the first 8 are much less relevant).
This is typical example of real-life "ping yahoo.com to check if you're online" suggestion.
P.S. And personally I do ping yahoo.com. The are the Internet and compared to them Google is insignificant.:)
Apparently, most countries in the world, most governments and most power companies are just parts of a huge conspiracy intended to make you feel groggy for a few days every year... or there are actually significant benefits. Which one is more likely?
whatever point you were trying to make with this handy little factoid totally escapes me.
The point that whatever advantages a capitalist model might have, eliminating poverty isn't one of them.
I ask you why China is bar none the world's biggest violator of copyright and intellictual property law if they're so capable of an economy full of technological innovation.
Because no sane country should respect foreign copyrights and patents. The only country interesting in strict global enforcement of IP laws is the US, because Hollywood and Microsoft (out of 50 largest software companies 48 are wholly or partially US-owned) would lose billions otherwise.
BTW, Soviet Union didn't respect international copyrights either (it wasn't even a signatory to the respective treaties) and you wouldn't claim that it wasn't capable of technological innovation, would you?
Again, I'd like to know your source for the "real story."
It's not a source, it's a variety of sources in the historical science. There is a lot of bullshit in the Western "research", they are serving the capitalist masters all right, but when you look at the facts and not guesstimates, you find approximately the numbers that I provided.
I doubt you're considering the source of your information and the fact that most of the BS to come out of communist nations is propaganda.
I doubt that you are considering that real bullshit came from the US and US-sponsored propaganda. Even the unreliability of the Soviet data is itself US propaganda.
The figures re number of deaths in Gulag camps do not come from the KGP public announcements, they came from decades of studies by professional (Soviet, Russian and foreign), checking and cross-referencing the sources, checking the results with indirect estimates, working until the information is bulletproof. Do you honestly believe that historical knowledge in Russia is stuck at the level of "100 million victims"? No fucking way. For example, the number of resettled (not killed, BTW:) ) kulaks (1803392 people) is known with precision of 147 families, because someone went through all the records, demographic data, local birth records, transportation records, etc., etc. It isn't possible to know everything with such precision, but the real factual data available is much better than the garbage that US-paid (or voluntary) shills spout all the time.
Yes, actually, it probably is news to him Well, I've seen a figure of 800,000 (source). And you should also consider that Americans also supplied arms to Pol Pot since 1979 to support his attacks on Vietnam. But I admit that I exaggerated a bit.
Let's put aside the fact that you claim you actually enjoyed living in nations where the thought police not only exist, but thrive, and human rights are non-existant. Well, we actually had more humans rights in my country (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), such as right to food, right to shelter, right to job, right to education, right to health care, right to unlimited personal development, right to creative expressions, right to political activity, right to public speech, rights to this and that, all supported by the resources of our socialist state.
And I am curious about thought police - never met anything like that outside of Orwell novels. In real Soviet Union you were free to think what you wanted, you were free to criticise the socio-economic order, etc. What you weren't free to do was to distribute anti-Soviet propaganda and attempt to undermine the Soviet order. But many people easily found ways around and, sadly, the enforcement wasn't strong enough.:(
In what capitalist nation have you lived where 50% of the people are poor and 25% are starving? I'm curious. Why, the glorious capitalist country of Russia. Official statistics, BTW (starving meaning not receiving sufficient nutrition according to the WHO standards).
What do you think it is to be a businessman or executive or investor? There are many definitions of work besides turning wrenches and serving coffee.
Puh-lease. I worked in the financial sector (investment banking) and I also did some physical labour. The former is NOT real work. Everyone who tried both "investing" and working would probably agree.
Capatalism, while having some warts, is by far and away the greatest engine of human progress the world has ever known. Since the industrial revolution, a scant 200 years ago, the quality of life for virtually the entire planet has risen dramatically...
All this resulted from the scientific and technological revolution, not from capitalism. Soviet people enjoyed the same benefits of the progress while living in a just socialist society (before you start the tired lie of socialism's ineffciency, note that 1) Soviet Union had horrible client (so it could never be as rich as Italy or the USA) 2) Russia or Soviet Union never had colonies to exploit (while Americans get at least half of their wealth from exploiting Third World today) 3) eliminating poverty had a priority over increasing wealth for the lucky few and 4) half of the country was destroyed by Hitler and tens of millions were killed by Nazi).
Today the average welfare recipient lives better than the kings of Europe did 250 years ago. Our poor people are fat sitting in air conditioned trailors watching color TV instead of dying in the gutters.
12% of Americans live below the poverty line. As opposed to 10% in China, BTW.
For those who wax poetically about the evils of capatalism, yes, we're impressed you've adopted the prose of Karl. And we see where his "collective" approach to structuring society has wrought; 100 million deaths last century Sometimes I wonder if there is a limit to how much this figure can be exaggerated. Real story: several millions died because of very bad harvest (remember, climate sucks in Russia) and destruction of economy by the Civil War. A few more millions died directly in Civil War. Several tens of millions were killed by Nazis. Three hundred thousands were executed according to the 58th Article (political crimes). Most of those were not executed for their views, but for actual crimes (sabotage, espionage, etc.) - remember, a World War was coming or underway during the repressions. The death rate in the Gulag camps was actually slightly lower than the country average. So the real facts do not support your exaggerated claims of 100 million deaths. BTW, if you meant other countries, such as Cambogia, it would have been nice of you to mention that carpet bombing by US Air Forces killed more Cambogians than Pol Pot did (news to you?). And don't forget that the World Wars were instigated and started not without some influence of the capitalists (imperialism isn't called the last stage of capitalism for nothing).
and total misery for the poor bastards forced to live under communist rule.
I dunno, I rather enjoyed it. Certainly was better than having half the population living in poverty and a quarter of the population starving.
Take heart! Only in a capatalistic society could someone do something as mundane and inconsequential as developing role playing games and not starve to death.
I don't really see why someone couldn't do it in a socialist society? Games were being designed for children and adults, and in many socialist countries you could have ran your own small personal business doing just that.
This is mostly about marginal efficiency gains. It's not profitable for small shops to stay open at night, it's profitable for Tesco. So if small shops choose to work 24h, they lose some margin or need to increase prices.:(
Where I live, however, there is plenty of small 24h stores, because the labour is cheap and many people became accustomed to the convenience before the large chains arrived.
Me too. The problem is that the Economist's target audience does not consist solely of retail professionals and the author should have known that most readers are not familiar with the meaning of "buyer" in this context.
Because, as surprising as it may sound to you, the meaning of life isn't to have a smoother shopping experience. Because of the fundamental market deficiencies, the companies that provide marginally better product survive and the rest goes out of business. This forces companies to strive for perfection, which isn't a good thing at all. It isn't a good thing because there is simply no time to think about the important stuff, with all that smooth shopping experiences and everything.
Life in a country doesn't improve when Wegmans or Walmart comes to them. People do not become happier, their lives do not suddently acquire meaning. It's just that they buy more shit, cheaper and smoother, that's all.
So some people enjoy making a statement of opposition to our focus on consumerism and marginal gains of efficiency. These people enjoy screwing up a pointless database that is not doing society any good.
Yes, but this is a hypothetical slipper slope fallacy. What if a person forgets his wallet/purse/keychain or bracelet/dogtags? Guess what - we won't be any worse off than we are today, when almost no one is carrying these. BTW, I am sure that people with important medical conditions pay a tiny bit more attention to these matters.
But the point is - we should only be discussing those hypothetical risks only after we've already done something, not now. Why do you think nothing was done yet (on a large scale) to integrate medical histories, provide to doctors universal access to it using a patient ID or a magnetic card or a bar code or something? Why do certain groups insist on jumping straight to the implantable chips? It's very suspicious, don't you think so?
I always wondered how many people would actually resist when confronted with a carefully crafted scenario where their peers accept any ridiculous measure. I remember there were psychological experiements on peer pressure, where individual participants had a very high likelyhood of agreeing with a clearly wrong statement, provided that their peers (who were actors) agree with it first.
How cool would it be to run an experiement like that in an airport and ask random people to submit to an cavity search behind a translucent curtain after a few tens of other people (all actors) had to endure the same? I bet a surprising number of people wouldn't do anything if they are under the impression that everyone else has accepted the new measure.
At any rate, you are probably right that these things won't ever become mandatory-- in the United States.
Just like biometric pasports, right? I'd say that unless some radical (should I say revolutionary) changes happen in the US there is no way these things won't become mandatory. As soon as the technology is sufficiently mature (somewhere between 2005 and 2010) it will be gradually forced upon the citizenry. Yes, it may go the SSN way, without explicitly requiring everyone to carry one of those, but eventually more and more people will be forced to carry those.
It's simple. First you make all sex offenders (who are all dangerous and scary pedophiles) to get one. Then all felons. Then all pirates and copyright violators. Then all foreign tourists (the chips are sufficiently small, temporary and the injection is painless and quick). Then all criminal suspects, then all government employees... At that stage corporations are likely to have already forced everyone else to get a chip as well. It's a matter of perception. So far there is no irrational public outcry over this, so when the time comes the opposition will be weak.
I think it's time to start spreading some FUD. For example, "by getting a chip implant you are 1000 times as likely to get AIDS", "terrorists can make them explode", "child pornographers can download child pornography on them", "they have those in communist China". If we could engineer some good FUD memes out of these and [im]plant them well, we may stand a chance.
I think you may be interested in La Femme Objet, a film about a remote-controlled goofy non-japanese cutey. Incidentally, besides being interesting the movie can also serve another function - namely to facilitate masturbation, which might be extremely useful to you, given that in the foreseeable future you are unlikely to find sexual satisfaction with either a real woman or a remote controlled cutey from Sony......
Some people have problems with watching stereo images, may be you are one of them. Consult your physician. But please don't extrapolate your personal medical problems on everyone else. The vast majority of people can comfortably watch 3D video using either polarised or shutter glasses. This is a fact.
Also, polarised glasses do not have crossover if you keep your head straight. Your guess is wrong. Your point is wrong too - this isn't an extra burdon (sic!), this is something to be taken care of by the theatre staff. As for what movies are best suited for 3D, you don't need to be a genius (and you aren't) to tell that it's action films. These would be filmed in 3D (or converted) first, and once everyone is comfortable with glasses (and technology improves a bit) other genres will gradually switch to 3D.
P.S. Replying to yourself as an AC and asking your post to be modded up is retarded.
There are few 3D movies, because few directors were comfortable enough with the medium, because they weren't making 3D movies before. There are few 3D-enabled theatres, so there is no reason to make movies in 3D, and there few 3D movies so there is no reason to build new 3D theatres. Typical "chicken and egg" problems.
People like going to IMAX, their theatres are always packed. But for a number of reasons the industry moved in a different direction. Until now. Nothing has changed technically, but eventually many big name directors (Lucas, Speilberg, Jackson, etc.) realised that 3D is good and declared their support for the new medium.
The problem was never with technology and it isn't now.
That said, the problem is easily solved by clicking and dragging a link to whereever you want to copy it to, even less steps than a context menu. You can do it in many Windows browsers as well, but what your target application is not visible? Context menu is a very simple solution that works efficiently - much better than the alternatives that you describe.
Pray tell, how does one copy 10 links with a single context menu?
Right-click, C, Alt+Tab, Ctrl+V, Alt+Tab. Rinse, repeat 9 times. Now imagine yourself doing it the hard^H^H^H^HMac way.
And how many applications have you used where the online documentation (or hell even the supplied documentation) was useful for discovering new features? I don't know... most of them.
No, the assumption is that the top menu is the primary logical location, and that a context menu is a logical secondary and learned location which is a true assumption.
But it's a different matter entirely. Yes, top menu may be more logical to a first-time computer user, but it's 2005 already, it's time to stop designing software for newbies only. The context menu is a learned location, but once it's learned, it's more logical for certain kinds of functionality (basically for everything related to the active object). For a somewhat experienced computer user the context menu is the first place to look for such functionality.
Again, I am not saying that context menus should not be used. I am saying that a context menu should not be the ONLY way to access functionality. This is a strawman attack. No one has ever said that it should be the only way. What many people, including myself, said repeatedly is that in many cases the context menus is the best way of accessing some functionality and should be declared the primary way (with other alternatives still present).
No it's not enough, because it isn't natural untill you know that a particular action is associated with such an object.
Not true. Once you are familiar with using computers in general and with a particular type of applications, you have some expectations about what kinds of actions are available for which objects in what contexts. If the program is well designed, you usually find these actions in the context menus for the objects. Even before using a download application I know that the context menu for each file being downloaded contains commands to pause the download, resume it, cancel it, view/edit the file properties, copy the URL/file information, change priority, etc., etc. Same is true for all other types of applications.
Also, when I already know the functionality (assuming I found it in the top menu, read about it in the manual, heard on TV, etc.), there is no need to go to the top menu each time. In this case context menus become a preferable choice even for the user, who needed other interface options in the beginning.
But even before I know, I have certain expectations based on using other software. And so it's natural. It's also quick, which you can't deny. So based on these two criteria, context menus are indeed a good interface choise.
Furthermore, you should read some of the other posts detailing where context menus are nearly useless such as any assisted computing device. Why should I read those posts? I am not arguing that context menus are useful for assisted computing devices. I am just saying that for desktop computing they are great.
Slashdot Mirror
Different kids would be interested in having a portable computer to different extent. Ask your kid. If he wants to get one, it's probably time. If he is ambivalent, let him continue using the home desktop (one of).
As for what to buy, if you can afford it, I'd recommend buying a Tablet PC (convertible). It might make him more popular in class (though it might not), it's very useful for taking notes in the class and it's just plain cool. Not to mention that it will be common in 2-3 years and you would ensure your child stays ahead of the curve.
Microsoft makes exactly such a tool and it's available here:f 2.aspx.
http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/Msohtm
You could have saved us all a lot of time if you just searched for it instead of posting an Ask Slashdot question.
There now appears a description of this phenomenon: Ping - Wikipedia. Check it out and fix if necessary.
Ah, now I completely understand. I've met a few other Russians who also say that capitalism ruined everything, and the Soviet form of communism was the greatest thing ever. Yeah, I guess I can understand why you would have that perspective when one day you have bread, and the next, none.
You understand it completely wrong. It is very difficult to understand why communism is better if you are brought up in a capitalist society, because so many assumptions are ingrained in your brain by the time you are an adult. It's not much easier to understand why communism is better even if you grow up in a communist state (that's why most people didn't oppose the destruction of the Soviet Union).
But if you make an effort, you may eventually come to understand at least some of the complexity of the problem and to understand why (and when) planned socialist economies are better than market-based capitalist ones.
It also helps that the facts show this as well. When you adjust the figures available for the inequalities in starting conditions, you can clearly see that Soviet Union
the economy of the was much more efficient than even the American economy. The key point here is that Soviet Union and the United States operated in very different conditions, so different that a straightforward indicator such as income per capita per annum is completely useless.
But a free market economy's still the way to go. Capitalist nations are the global spearheads of innovation. I grant you that the USSR had one or two milestones of invention.
Unless you are blind (which, thanks to the Soviet science you are not), you should realise that it wasn't just one or two milestones. Soviet Union had achieved enormous success in pretty much every field of science and technology. And it's even more amazing when you compare the metrics such as value of equipment per scientist. Soviet scientists in some fields had as little as 1/100th of the equipment (in dollar value) as their American counterparts, but managed to stay competitive through superior education, better organisation of science, abolishment of intellectual property and other factors.
Today capitalist countries lead the world in innovations, but it's only because the USSR is gone. 20 years ago there was relative parity between the two superpowers.
But because, as you say yourself, the Soviet Union (and China) had zero respect for IP rights, how many of those innovations can they honestly take full credit for without having to thank some hard-working western scientist or engineer or programmer for?
Who cares about full credit? It's not like they had a SCO-like monster looming above and demanding code audits. So what if the average Soviet invention had 5% of foreign science in it? That's the way science and technology work everywhere, even in the US - and it doesn't matter whether certain technology was licenced or "obtained by other means". That doesn't say anything about the effectiveness and efficiency of the system.
Who's more motivated to invent, the guy with the job security and food on the table, or the person with both a fat bonus and a pink slip dangled in front of him at the same time?
Of course, the first one is more motivated. It is widely accepted even in American economic and management science (there have been countless publications in journals such as HBR and others) that money rarely motivates people. And it certainly doesn't motivate relatively affluent engineers and scientists. The best R&D is done by self-motivated specialists in organisations where they are given some stability and creative freedom and are not intimidated with pink slips. Do you think Linus Torwalds was threatened with pink slips? Or do you think that Microsoft OS developers are? Or may be the NASA engineers who put a man on the Moon were constantly harassed by threats of layoffs and lured with fat bonuses? I think not.
Soviet system worked great without "fat bonuses" and without fears of pink slips. If you look
I'm pretty sure that film cameras aren't disappearing anytime soon
This is not saying anything. With more than 6 billion people living on this planet every outdated technology is still used by someone. Heck, these people claim that "cuneiform is still very popular" and urge you to learn it!
as a very popular art form, traditional film photography is here to stay for a long time
I am always interested in long-term predictions from someone, who is "pretty new to the whole photography thing"... not. You don't have a clue. In 20 years almost noone will use film cameras. BTW, your assertions about limitations of digital cameras are laughable as well.
I don't think a blank DVD ROM is a very useful thing... A DVD-R or a DVD-ROM with music, on the other hand...
I have a Tungsten E2 on my desk.
1) It had Grafitti 2 (accuracy sucks) and it's impossible to downgrade back.
2) It is very slow (it turns on in about 400-500 ms). May be it's because of the slower flash memory.
3) It crashes a lot, even though I don't have any hacks or anything installed (new OS?).
Older Palms were of better quality. New models have some cool new features, but the quality of the OS (stability, speed and input accuracy) is lower.
If you want to understand what this Washington Post article really is, you need to watch The Power of Nightmares by BBC (available on the P2P network of your choice).
0 .htm to read about "Four Arab men... arrested on suspicion of being an Al Qaeda sleeper cell." That's just one particularly hilarious example, but there are many others. The story about Tora-Bora underground fortress was also amazing (look up the illustrations in the archives of your favourite media poison site).
Search for "Detroit" on this page:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video104
This blog post (and especially the comments) discusses pinging yahoo.com, the switch to pinging google and what else do other people ping.
:)
Incidentally, this is the 2nd result when searching for "ping yahoo" on Yahoo! and only the 9th result when searching on Google (the first 8 are much less relevant).
This is typical example of real-life "ping yahoo.com to check if you're online" suggestion.
P.S. And personally I do ping yahoo.com. The are the Internet and compared to them Google is insignificant.
Apparently, most countries in the world, most governments and most power companies are just parts of a huge conspiracy intended to make you feel groggy for a few days every year... or there are actually significant benefits. Which one is more likely?
It was probably a mistake for me to mention Cambodia (or Campuchia) anyway, since it wasn't actually a communist state.
whatever point you were trying to make with this handy little factoid totally escapes me.
:) ) kulaks (1803392 people) is known with precision of 147 families, because someone went through all the records, demographic data, local birth records, transportation records, etc., etc. It isn't possible to know everything with such precision, but the real factual data available is much better than the garbage that US-paid (or voluntary) shills spout all the time.
:(
The point that whatever advantages a capitalist model might have, eliminating poverty isn't one of them.
I ask you why China is bar none the world's biggest violator of copyright and intellictual property law if they're so capable of an economy full of technological innovation.
Because no sane country should respect foreign copyrights and patents. The only country interesting in strict global enforcement of IP laws is the US, because Hollywood and Microsoft (out of 50 largest software companies 48 are wholly or partially US-owned) would lose billions otherwise.
BTW, Soviet Union didn't respect international copyrights either (it wasn't even a signatory to the respective treaties) and you wouldn't claim that it wasn't capable of technological innovation, would you?
Again, I'd like to know your source for the "real story."
It's not a source, it's a variety of sources in the historical science. There is a lot of bullshit in the Western "research", they are serving the capitalist masters all right, but when you look at the facts and not guesstimates, you find approximately the numbers that I provided.
I doubt you're considering the source of your information and the fact that most of the BS to come out of communist nations is propaganda.
I doubt that you are considering that real bullshit came from the US and US-sponsored propaganda. Even the unreliability of the Soviet data is itself US propaganda.
The figures re number of deaths in Gulag camps do not come from the KGP public announcements, they came from decades of studies by professional (Soviet, Russian and foreign), checking and cross-referencing the sources, checking the results with indirect estimates, working until the information is bulletproof. Do you honestly believe that historical knowledge in Russia is stuck at the level of "100 million victims"? No fucking way. For example, the number of resettled (not killed, BTW
Yes, actually, it probably is news to him
Well, I've seen a figure of 800,000 (source). And you should also consider that Americans also supplied arms to Pol Pot since 1979 to support his attacks on Vietnam. But I admit that I exaggerated a bit.
Let's put aside the fact that you claim you actually enjoyed living in nations where the thought police not only exist, but thrive, and human rights are non-existant.
Well, we actually had more humans rights in my country (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), such as right to food, right to shelter, right to job, right to education, right to health care, right to unlimited personal development, right to creative expressions, right to political activity, right to public speech, rights to this and that, all supported by the resources of our socialist state.
And I am curious about thought police - never met anything like that outside of Orwell novels. In real Soviet Union you were free to think what you wanted, you were free to criticise the socio-economic order, etc. What you weren't free to do was to distribute anti-Soviet propaganda and attempt to undermine the Soviet order. But many people easily found ways around and, sadly, the enforcement wasn't strong enough.
In what capitalist nation have you lived where 50% of the people are poor and 25% are starving? I'm curious.
Why, the glorious capitalist country of Russia. Official statistics, BTW (starving meaning not receiving sufficient nutrition according to the WHO standards).
What do you think it is to be a businessman or executive or investor? There are many definitions of work besides turning wrenches and serving coffee.
Puh-lease. I worked in the financial sector (investment banking) and I also did some physical labour. The former is NOT real work. Everyone who tried both "investing" and working would probably agree.
Capatalism, while having some warts, is by far and away the greatest engine of human progress the world has ever known. Since the industrial revolution, a scant 200 years ago, the quality of life for virtually the entire planet has risen dramatically...
All this resulted from the scientific and technological revolution, not from capitalism. Soviet people enjoyed the same benefits of the progress while living in a just socialist society (before you start the tired lie of socialism's ineffciency, note that 1) Soviet Union had horrible client (so it could never be as rich as Italy or the USA) 2) Russia or Soviet Union never had colonies to exploit (while Americans get at least half of their wealth from exploiting Third World today) 3) eliminating poverty had a priority over increasing wealth for the lucky few and 4) half of the country was destroyed by Hitler and tens of millions were killed by Nazi).
Today the average welfare recipient lives better than the kings of Europe did 250 years ago. Our poor people are fat sitting in air conditioned trailors watching color TV instead of dying in the gutters.
12% of Americans live below the poverty line. As opposed to 10% in China, BTW.
For those who wax poetically about the evils of capatalism, yes, we're impressed you've adopted the prose of Karl. And we see where his "collective" approach to structuring society has wrought; 100 million deaths last century
Sometimes I wonder if there is a limit to how much this figure can be exaggerated. Real story: several millions died because of very bad harvest (remember, climate sucks in Russia) and destruction of economy by the Civil War. A few more millions died directly in Civil War. Several tens of millions were killed by Nazis. Three hundred thousands were executed according to the 58th Article (political crimes). Most of those were not executed for their views, but for actual crimes (sabotage, espionage, etc.) - remember, a World War was coming or underway during the repressions. The death rate in the Gulag camps was actually slightly lower than the country average. So the real facts do not support your exaggerated claims of 100 million deaths. BTW, if you meant other countries, such as Cambogia, it would have been nice of you to mention that carpet bombing by US Air Forces killed more Cambogians than Pol Pot did (news to you?). And don't forget that the World Wars were instigated and started not without some influence of the capitalists (imperialism isn't called the last stage of capitalism for nothing).
and total misery for the poor bastards forced to live under communist rule.
I dunno, I rather enjoyed it. Certainly was better than having half the population living in poverty and a quarter of the population starving.
Take heart! Only in a capatalistic society could someone do something as mundane and inconsequential as developing role playing games and not starve to death.
I don't really see why someone couldn't do it in a socialist society? Games were being designed for children and adults, and in many socialist countries you could have ran your own small personal business doing just that.
This is mostly about marginal efficiency gains. It's not profitable for small shops to stay open at night, it's profitable for Tesco. So if small shops choose to work 24h, they lose some margin or need to increase prices. :(
Where I live, however, there is plenty of small 24h stores, because the labour is cheap and many people became accustomed to the convenience before the large chains arrived.
Me too. The problem is that the Economist's target audience does not consist solely of retail professionals and the author should have known that most readers are not familiar with the meaning of "buyer" in this context.
Because, as surprising as it may sound to you, the meaning of life isn't to have a smoother shopping experience. Because of the fundamental market deficiencies, the companies that provide marginally better product survive and the rest goes out of business. This forces companies to strive for perfection, which isn't a good thing at all. It isn't a good thing because there is simply no time to think about the important stuff, with all that smooth shopping experiences and everything.
Life in a country doesn't improve when Wegmans or Walmart comes to them. People do not become happier, their lives do not suddently acquire meaning. It's just that they buy more shit, cheaper and smoother, that's all.
So some people enjoy making a statement of opposition to our focus on consumerism and marginal gains of efficiency. These people enjoy screwing up a pointless database that is not doing society any good.
Yes, but this is a hypothetical slipper slope fallacy. What if a person forgets his wallet/purse/keychain or bracelet/dogtags? Guess what - we won't be any worse off than we are today, when almost no one is carrying these. BTW, I am sure that people with important medical conditions pay a tiny bit more attention to these matters.
But the point is - we should only be discussing those hypothetical risks only after we've already done something, not now. Why do you think nothing was done yet (on a large scale) to integrate medical histories, provide to doctors universal access to it using a patient ID or a magnetic card or a bar code or something? Why do certain groups insist on jumping straight to the implantable chips? It's very suspicious, don't you think so?
I always wondered how many people would actually resist when confronted with a carefully crafted scenario where their peers accept any ridiculous measure. I remember there were psychological experiements on peer pressure, where individual participants had a very high likelyhood of agreeing with a clearly wrong statement, provided that their peers (who were actors) agree with it first.
How cool would it be to run an experiement like that in an airport and ask random people to submit to an cavity search behind a translucent curtain after a few tens of other people (all actors) had to endure the same? I bet a surprising number of people wouldn't do anything if they are under the impression that everyone else has accepted the new measure.
At any rate, you are probably right that these things won't ever become mandatory-- in the United States.
Just like biometric pasports, right? I'd say that unless some radical (should I say revolutionary) changes happen in the US there is no way these things won't become mandatory. As soon as the technology is sufficiently mature (somewhere between 2005 and 2010) it will be gradually forced upon the citizenry. Yes, it may go the SSN way, without explicitly requiring everyone to carry one of those, but eventually more and more people will be forced to carry those.
It's simple. First you make all sex offenders (who are all dangerous and scary pedophiles) to get one. Then all felons. Then all pirates and copyright violators. Then all foreign tourists (the chips are sufficiently small, temporary and the injection is painless and quick). Then all criminal suspects, then all government employees... At that stage corporations are likely to have already forced everyone else to get a chip as well. It's a matter of perception. So far there is no irrational public outcry over this, so when the time comes the opposition will be weak.
I think it's time to start spreading some FUD. For example, "by getting a chip implant you are 1000 times as likely to get AIDS", "terrorists can make them explode", "child pornographers can download child pornography on them", "they have those in communist China". If we could engineer some good FUD memes out of these and [im]plant them well, we may stand a chance.
I think you may be interested in La Femme Objet, a film about a remote-controlled goofy non-japanese cutey. Incidentally, besides being interesting the movie can also serve another function - namely to facilitate masturbation, which might be extremely useful to you, given that in the foreseeable future you are unlikely to find sexual satisfaction with either a real woman or a remote controlled cutey from Sony......
Makes sense, you know? With the neverending rehashing of the same themes, it's hard to say anything original and insightful.
ha-ha. very funny.
Some people have problems with watching stereo images, may be you are one of them. Consult your physician. But please don't extrapolate your personal medical problems on everyone else. The vast majority of people can comfortably watch 3D video using either polarised or shutter glasses. This is a fact.
Also, polarised glasses do not have crossover if you keep your head straight. Your guess is wrong. Your point is wrong too - this isn't an extra burdon (sic!), this is something to be taken care of by the theatre staff. As for what movies are best suited for 3D, you don't need to be a genius (and you aren't) to tell that it's action films. These would be filmed in 3D (or converted) first, and once everyone is comfortable with glasses (and technology improves a bit) other genres will gradually switch to 3D.
P.S. Replying to yourself as an AC and asking your post to be modded up is retarded.
There are few 3D movies, because few directors were comfortable enough with the medium, because they weren't making 3D movies before. There are few 3D-enabled theatres, so there is no reason to make movies in 3D, and there few 3D movies so there is no reason to build new 3D theatres. Typical "chicken and egg" problems.
People like going to IMAX, their theatres are always packed. But for a number of reasons the industry moved in a different direction. Until now. Nothing has changed technically, but eventually many big name directors (Lucas, Speilberg, Jackson, etc.) realised that 3D is good and declared their support for the new medium.
The problem was never with technology and it isn't now.
That said, the problem is easily solved by clicking and dragging a link to whereever you want to copy it to, even less steps than a context menu.
You can do it in many Windows browsers as well, but what your target application is not visible? Context menu is a very simple solution that works efficiently - much better than the alternatives that you describe.
Pray tell, how does one copy 10 links with a single context menu?
Right-click, C, Alt+Tab, Ctrl+V, Alt+Tab.
Rinse, repeat 9 times. Now imagine yourself doing it the hard^H^H^H^HMac way.
And how many applications have you used where the online documentation (or hell even the supplied documentation) was useful for discovering new features?
I don't know... most of them.
No, the assumption is that the top menu is the primary logical location, and that a context menu is a logical secondary and learned location which is a true assumption.
But it's a different matter entirely. Yes, top menu may be more logical to a first-time computer user, but it's 2005 already, it's time to stop designing software for newbies only. The context menu is a learned location, but once it's learned, it's more logical for certain kinds of functionality (basically for everything related to the active object). For a somewhat experienced computer user the context menu is the first place to look for such functionality.
Again, I am not saying that context menus should not be used. I am saying that a context menu should not be the ONLY way to access functionality.
This is a strawman attack. No one has ever said that it should be the only way. What many people, including myself, said repeatedly is that in many cases the context menus is the best way of accessing some functionality and should be declared the primary way (with other alternatives still present).
No it's not enough, because it isn't natural untill you know that a particular action is associated with such an object.
Not true. Once you are familiar with using computers in general and with a particular type of applications, you have some expectations about what kinds of actions are available for which objects in what contexts. If the program is well designed, you usually find these actions in the context menus for the objects. Even before using a download application I know that the context menu for each file being downloaded contains commands to pause the download, resume it, cancel it, view/edit the file properties, copy the URL/file information, change priority, etc., etc. Same is true for all other types of applications.
Also, when I already know the functionality (assuming I found it in the top menu, read about it in the manual, heard on TV, etc.), there is no need to go to the top menu each time. In this case context menus become a preferable choice even for the user, who needed other interface options in the beginning.
But even before I know, I have certain expectations based on using other software. And so it's natural. It's also quick, which you can't deny. So based on these two criteria, context menus are indeed a good interface choise.
Furthermore, you should read some of the other posts detailing where context menus are nearly useless such as any assisted computing device.
Why should I read those posts? I am not arguing that context menus are useful for assisted computing devices. I am just saying that for desktop computing they are great.