Easy. The BBC was thrown out of Zimbabwe by Mugabe's government. Anyone who is publicly linked to the BBC is denied access to Zimbabwe. So the BBC uses other sources of information from inside Zimbabwe, including people who aren't officially BBC journalists or even journalists.
Clearly they don't want Mugabe's government to find out who these people are so they remain anonymous. The "official" BBC journalist collates this information, cross checks it, verifies it and reports on it from the safety of Johannesburg.
The user interface is probably about as hostile as it gets. I can't help but feel that whoever designed the thing actually wanted the students to feel like they've been trapped with the typical web design of the mid-90s.
I suffered through various version of Blackboard for years. The version numbers went up 4,5,6 etc but it really was just the same old crap. Blackboard's interface was/is just awful and it never got better with new versions. This was all made worse by the fact that I was supposed to be, at the time, making course materials for Blackboard.
I came to the conclusion that the makers of Blackboard just didn't care about the user experience and the educational value for the users. Mainly 'cos the users didn't write the cheques to pay for it. The customers for Blackboard are university management types who don't teach and have nothing to lose by foisting useless teaching tools upon everyone else.
"Surgeons, for example, absolutely HATE operating on fat people. I've heard all sorts of insults from a surgeon friend toward the morbidly obese."
Can't say I blame them. Surgery and anaesthetics are more complicated and more risky for the obese than those of normal weight. So being a fat bastard just make their job harder.
I have seen a wonderful demonstration of just how good the iMovie interface is. Like four and five year olds editing video, that they have shot, with iMovie. Since the average 4 or 5 five year old' reading ability isn't that great they obviously weren't just reading the menu items. They were just doing it. I wish I had iMovie when I was five!
After being a regular reader of Slashdot for a number of years I have come to the conclusion that it just trolling. There a certain things on Slashdot that regularly attract a flood of commnets that can easily be shown to be completely untrue. A couple of other regulars that spring to mind are: Apple stole the GUI from Xerox (they didn't) and Microsoft bailed Apple out and saved them from bankruptcy (they didn't either).
Given that the writers clearly have the intelligence to use a computer, a web browser and get an account on Slashdot, lack of brainpower can not be the cause of these demonstrably false statements. Perhaps it is just laziness? But given the regularity that they come that doesn't seem likey. So I conclude that they are just trolls. Maybe they just want to believe that they are true? If they say it often enough does it make it true in their universe?
I think it was very savvy of Jobs to buy the computer graphics division of LucasFilm to create Pixar, but it's John Lasseter who made Pixar what it is today.
One could argue that a large part of Pixar's success has been Job's willingness to stay out of day-to-day operations and concentrate on the business side.
Job's sinking another 50 million in Pixar, to keep the whole operation afloat, while it wasn't making any money helped a bit as well.
It seems to me that the lenses should be portable to DSLRs. Why are they dropping the lenses?
They aren't dropping all of their lenses only large format/ enlarger and many of manual focus 35mm ones. Some (of the more specialised ) MF ones will still be made and it will be businessas usual for the rest of the auto focus range.
Premiere deserved to be killed. Anyone who remembers when DV was just starting will also remember that you had to use version 5.1c (which was still rather beta) just to hook up your DV camera to Premiere. I know I tried using it and well it wasn't that good. Premiere was an ok editor but I remember thinking at the time that there must be a better way. Turns out that there was and it was called Final Cut Pro. Version 1 of FCP suppored DV straight up and Premiere is just a distant memory for me.
Adobe arrived at the DV party late (they should have seen that one coming) with a video editing program that dreams of making wedding movies while Apple arrived early with a program that dreams of making cinema.
I'm surprised and impressed that Apple don't license FairPlay to companies that make crippled CD
I'm not suprised at all. Steve Jobs has pointed out the pointlessness of the whole idea of DRM. Whatever DRM scheme you come up with someone else will find a method to break it. Apple doesn't actually like DRM. Fairplay is a more of a bolted-on-the-side, last-minute, scheme just to keep the content providers happy. So why would they want to inflict that on the rest of the world by licensing it?
But back in reality, their shareholders wouldn't let them run a month without making a single dime without a clear explanation of how they're going to change that RIGHT NOW
Exactly no money in and the Microsoft share price value would plummet. All those nice shareholders would turn nasty and demand that Microsoft hand over that big 'ol pile of cash now! Unless the remaining members of the company with large shareholdings, such as Gates etc, keep shareprice up by buying back outstanding shares at inflated prices. Either way that nice big "war chest" will be nothing in no time.
I keep reading much the same thing. Various websites always have staments like product x has better audio than the ipod with absolutely no idication of why or how. Is this just an opinion, is the comparison done with the same headphones, or better quality headphones. Was it done with a blind testing of a group of 'golden ears' or by two half-deaf-glue-sniffers during a Metallica concert?
I have also read other webpages, by audio engineers, that found the iPods frequency response to be incredibly flat for such an inexpensive device.
So is this "possess lower audio quality than competing manufacturers" an attempt to tar the iPod name or is it based on some sort of actual reality?
You are wrong. Apple didn't steal anything. They licensed part of the GUI idea from Xerox and added many of their own ideas in the creation of the Mac OS.
As there are probably more Windows iPod users than Mac iPod users the same must apply to Windows users.
So some Windows users aren't exactly known for being the most technically savvy people in tech-land etc etc....
Re:This Article is riddled with inaccuracies.
on
NeXTSTEP To Mac OS X
·
· Score: 1
Macromedia sees it but lets see if they really see it.
In a recent demo of Flash 8 at a Macromedia conference was done using OSX. Many of the new features they demoed seemed rather like the features that Aqua has built in anyway (drop shadows, type rendering etc). So maybe Macromedia does get it.
The other is to seed the South Pacific with a bit of iron compounds so the algae bloom will suck down megatons of CO2 and sequester it in the deep ocean for time measured in kiloyears, and continue with fossil fuel until, say, the necessary fusion breakthroughs occur or the eventual price rises make other alternatives attractive.
Sorry that isn't correct. Recent research has suggested that after iron, growth of the bloom is limited by silicates. For evey ton of iron added you need to add 5000 tons of silicate if you want the bloom to have any effect on CO2 levels.
Downloaded songs from places like iTunes are a few percentage of physical media sales. So expect the album to be exclusive to iTunes for downloading but it will be business as usual for CD retailers.
...And how are monopolies lost? Think about it. Some very good product people invent some very good products, and the company achieves a monopoly.
But after that, the product people aren't the ones that drive the company
forward anymore. It's the marketing guys or the ones who expand the business
into Latin America or whatever. Because what's the point of focusing on making
the product even better when the only company you can take business from is
yourself?
So a different group of people start to move up. And who usually ends up running
the show? The sales guy. John Akers at IBM (IBM ) is the consummate example.
Then one day, the monopoly expires for whatever reason. But by then the best
product people have left, or they're no longer listened to. And so the company
goes through this tumultuous time, and it either survives or it doesn't.
Q: Is this common in the industry?
A: Look at Microsoft (MSFT ) -- who's running Microsoft?
Q: Steve Ballmer.
A: Right, the sales guy. Case closed. And that's what happened at Apple, as
well.
Maybe the Reality Distortion Field has been switched on full but I can help
thinking 'ol Stevie P has a point here.
I disagree. Many business users use spreadsheets to "what-if". Perhaps he has a different idea of "interesting".
And a lot of businesses use spreadsheets to deliberately obscure their actual financial position from shareholders, regulators and the public at large. Business fraud has been around before spreadsheets but is it just me or has there been a dramatic rise in the amount of coprporate bad behaviour since the introduction of the computer spreadsheet?
There is another side to data use that is seldom considered. Take, for example, a telephone directory: an alphabetical listing of customers' phone numbers.
To find out someones phone number you need to know their name and perhaps their address to eliminate duplicates. But if you put the directory info into a searchable database and all of sudden you can do things that are impossible to do with a paper phone directory.
With just an address you can find a phone number and name of an individual. You can find all of the telephone numbers for everyone in a single street etc.
So while it is true that there are no additional details about you in this searchable database, the potential for abuse of this information is much greater.
But if you are using Shake the OS X version is $2999.00 or $2000 dollars cheaper than the Linux version. The OS X version also comes with unlimited render only nodes for free. Each Linux render node costs $1499.
So for say 10 computers:
Cluster node version of Xserver 10 @ $2,999.00 = $29,990*
Shake 1 @ $2,999 = $2,999
Total = $ 32 989
Now the Linux version will cost:
Shake 1 @ $4,999 = $4,999
Render nodes 9 @ = $13 491
Total costs software = $18 490
This leaves you with $14 499 to buy 10 x86 boxes or $1449.90 each.
Those G5's don't seem so expensive after all.
* Yes I know it will need more RAM but so will the Linux boxes.
The one we used for one of our classes was MetaCard which is a cross-platform Hypercard with more features like color.
After coexisting for a few months eventually Runtime Revolution brought the rights and code for the Metacard engine and from Scott Raney of Metacard. So Metacard became Runtime Revolution.
RunRev is not 'buggy' it has bugs but it also as a very active development team working on removing them. Not quite as good as when Scott was The Man when support was second to none but far far better than most of the monolith software companies where bugs turn into features
That's been doable in 3ds Max for almost eight years now. The same for Lightwave, even back to the days when it was Amiga only. The software license for 3ds Max allows you to install it in a render-only mode on an unlimited # of machines. One machine acts as the queue manager and people can submit jobs all day long for submission to the renderfarm. The queue manager can maintain a time/date access list for individual machines and add/remove them from the pool as necessary.
True many 3D apps do allow you to do this. Cinema4d is one of them and After Effects also lets you "share" computers in this way. But the problem with this way of doing things is that you need to install the software on each of your client machines.
In many working environments this just isn't practical because various users won't let you or their machines don't have enough RAM, diskspace get turned off at night etc etc. In the place I work there are lots of computers but only a handful are capable of running Cinema4D Net (Cinema 4D distribution program) at the level I need it at and those machines often have other tasks to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Easy. The BBC was thrown out of Zimbabwe by Mugabe's government. Anyone who is publicly linked to the BBC is denied access to Zimbabwe. So the BBC uses other sources of information from inside Zimbabwe, including people who aren't officially BBC journalists or even journalists. Clearly they don't want Mugabe's government to find out who these people are so they remain anonymous. The "official" BBC journalist collates this information, cross checks it, verifies it and reports on it from the safety of Johannesburg.
I suffered through various version of Blackboard for years. The version numbers went up 4,5,6 etc but it really was just the same old crap. Blackboard's interface was/is just awful and it never got better with new versions. This was all made worse by the fact that I was supposed to be, at the time, making course materials for Blackboard.
I came to the conclusion that the makers of Blackboard just didn't care about the user experience and the educational value for the users. Mainly 'cos the users didn't write the cheques to pay for it. The customers for Blackboard are university management types who don't teach and have nothing to lose by foisting useless teaching tools upon everyone else.
"Surgeons, for example, absolutely HATE operating on fat people. I've heard all sorts of insults from a surgeon friend toward the morbidly obese."
Can't say I blame them. Surgery and anaesthetics are more complicated and more risky for the obese than those of normal weight. So being a fat bastard just make their job harder.
I have seen a wonderful demonstration of just how good the iMovie interface is. Like four and five year olds editing video, that they have shot, with iMovie. Since the average 4 or 5 five year old' reading ability isn't that great they obviously weren't just reading the menu items. They were just doing it. I wish I had iMovie when I was five!
Why does this keep coming up in this discussion?
After being a regular reader of Slashdot for a number of years I have come to the conclusion that it just trolling. There a certain things on Slashdot that regularly attract a flood of commnets that can easily be shown to be completely untrue. A couple of other regulars that spring to mind are: Apple stole the GUI from Xerox (they didn't) and Microsoft bailed Apple out and saved them from bankruptcy (they didn't either).
Given that the writers clearly have the intelligence to use a computer, a web browser and get an account on Slashdot, lack of brainpower can not be the cause of these demonstrably false statements. Perhaps it is just laziness? But given the regularity that they come that doesn't seem likey. So I conclude that they are just trolls. Maybe they just want to believe that they are true? If they say it often enough does it make it true in their universe?
What to do about this I don't know.
I think it was very savvy of Jobs to buy the computer graphics division of LucasFilm to create Pixar, but it's John Lasseter who made Pixar what it is today.
One could argue that a large part of Pixar's success has been Job's willingness to stay out of day-to-day operations and concentrate on the business side.
Job's sinking another 50 million in Pixar, to keep the whole operation afloat, while it wasn't making any money helped a bit as well.
They aren't dropping all of their lenses only large format/ enlarger and many of manual focus 35mm ones. Some (of the more specialised ) MF ones will still be made and it will be businessas usual for the rest of the auto focus range.
Premiere deserved to be killed. Anyone who remembers when DV was just starting will also remember that you had to use version 5.1c (which was still rather beta) just to hook up your DV camera to Premiere. I know I tried using it and well it wasn't that good. Premiere was an ok editor but I remember thinking at the time that there must be a better way. Turns out that there was and it was called Final Cut Pro. Version 1 of FCP suppored DV straight up and Premiere is just a distant memory for me.
Adobe arrived at the DV party late (they should have seen that one coming) with a video editing program that dreams of making wedding movies while Apple arrived early with a program that dreams of making cinema.
I'm surprised and impressed that Apple don't license FairPlay to companies that make crippled CD
I'm not suprised at all. Steve Jobs has pointed out the pointlessness of the whole idea of DRM. Whatever DRM scheme you come up with someone else will find a method to break it. Apple doesn't actually like DRM. Fairplay is a more of a bolted-on-the-side, last-minute, scheme just to keep the content providers happy. So why would they want to inflict that on the rest of the world by licensing it?
But back in reality, their shareholders wouldn't let them run a month without making a single dime without a clear explanation of how they're going to change that RIGHT NOW
Exactly no money in and the Microsoft share price value would plummet. All those nice shareholders would turn nasty and demand that Microsoft hand over that big 'ol pile of cash now! Unless the remaining members of the company with large shareholdings, such as Gates etc, keep shareprice up by buying back outstanding shares at inflated prices. Either way that nice big "war chest" will be nothing in no time.
I keep reading much the same thing. Various websites always have staments like product x has better audio than the ipod with absolutely no idication of why or how. Is this just an opinion, is the comparison done with the same headphones, or better quality headphones. Was it done with a blind testing of a group of 'golden ears' or by two half-deaf-glue-sniffers during a Metallica concert?
I have also read other webpages, by audio engineers, that found the iPods frequency response to be incredibly flat for such an inexpensive device.
So is this "possess lower audio quality than competing manufacturers" an attempt to tar the iPod name or is it based on some sort of actual reality?
You are wrong. Apple didn't steal anything. They licensed part of the GUI idea from Xerox and added many of their own ideas in the creation of the Mac OS.
See: http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.html
It does come with a manual. Just not a printed version:
See: http://www.apple.com/support/macosxserver/
... and you need to sell a kidney for this one. Two kidneys if you want the Linux version.
So some Windows users aren't exactly known for being the most technically savvy people in tech-land etc etc ....
Macromedia sees it but lets see if they really see it.
In a recent demo of Flash 8 at a Macromedia conference was done using OSX. Many of the new features they demoed seemed rather like the features that Aqua has built in anyway (drop shadows, type rendering etc). So maybe Macromedia does get it.
See here: http://www.moock.org/blog/archives/000146.htmlfor the demo
Sorry that isn't correct. Recent research has suggested that after iron, growth of the bloom is limited by silicates. For evey ton of iron added you need to add 5000 tons of silicate if you want the bloom to have any effect on CO2 levels.
See here:e ss_release.html for more details.
http://www.otago.ac.nz/news/news/2004/19-03-04_pr
Downloaded songs from places like iTunes are a few percentage of physical media sales. So expect the album to be exclusive to iTunes for downloading but it will be business as usual for CD retailers.
Maybe the Reality Distortion Field has been switched on full but I can help thinking 'ol Stevie P has a point here.
(See: www.businessweek.com for the full interview)
D) Steve found out what the profit margin per Palm sold was.
And a lot of businesses use spreadsheets to deliberately obscure their actual financial position from shareholders, regulators and the public at large. Business fraud has been around before spreadsheets but is it just me or has there been a dramatic rise in the amount of coprporate bad behaviour since the introduction of the computer spreadsheet?
That's a different idea of interesting
There is another side to data use that is seldom considered. Take, for example, a telephone directory: an alphabetical listing of customers' phone numbers. To find out someones phone number you need to know their name and perhaps their address to eliminate duplicates. But if you put the directory info into a searchable database and all of sudden you can do things that are impossible to do with a paper phone directory. With just an address you can find a phone number and name of an individual. You can find all of the telephone numbers for everyone in a single street etc. So while it is true that there are no additional details about you in this searchable database, the potential for abuse of this information is much greater.
So for say 10 computers:
Cluster node version of Xserver 10 @ $2,999.00 = $29,990*
Shake 1 @ $2,999 = $2,999
Total = $ 32 989
Now the Linux version will cost:
Shake 1 @ $4,999 = $4,999
Render nodes 9 @ = $13 491
Total costs software = $18 490
This leaves you with $14 499 to buy 10 x86 boxes or $1449.90 each. Those G5's don't seem so expensive after all.
* Yes I know it will need more RAM but so will the Linux boxes.
After coexisting for a few months eventually Runtime Revolution brought the rights and code for the Metacard engine and from Scott Raney of Metacard. So Metacard became Runtime Revolution.
RunRev is not 'buggy' it has bugs but it also as a very active development team working on removing them. Not quite as good as when Scott was The Man when support was second to none but far far better than most of the monolith software companies where bugs turn into features
That's been doable in 3ds Max for almost eight years now. The same for Lightwave, even back to the days when it was Amiga only. The software license for 3ds Max allows you to install it in a render-only mode on an unlimited # of machines. One machine acts as the queue manager and people can submit jobs all day long for submission to the renderfarm. The queue manager can maintain a time/date access list for individual machines and add/remove them from the pool as necessary.
True many 3D apps do allow you to do this. Cinema4d is one of them and After Effects also lets you "share" computers in this way. But the problem with this way of doing things is that you need to install the software on each of your client machines.
In many working environments this just isn't practical because various users won't let you or their machines don't have enough RAM, diskspace get turned off at night etc etc. In the place I work there are lots of computers but only a handful are capable of running Cinema4D Net (Cinema 4D distribution program) at the level I need it at and those machines often have other tasks to do.