Your argument appears to be that all written English should be made accessible to people for whom English is a third language.
Assuming I haven't just constructed a straw man, I think your argument is falacious (and my apologies for using 'straw man' and falacious').
English is an elegant and powerful language capabale of expressing many nuances, largely because it nicks so many words from other languages.
It certainly makes sense to simplify the language or reduce loca referenes when the primary audience is not going to be a native English speaker, but where the intended audience is English, I say let it rip.
First off, someone is confusing "section headings" and "headlines". Second you are conflating misleading, confusing headlines with ones that use language imaginatively.
I've written some headlines in my time; getting something to fit to the page, convey the meaning and (hopefully) be elegant is an art. The occasional pun is no bad thing.
I remember the story of a UK national newspaper sub-seditor who had a headline all made up in hot metal which sat above his head for on a wall for years on the off-chance that the suitable event occurred. It never did.
The event? He wanted Michael Foot (labour party leader) to be put in charge of the organisation monitoring IRA decommissioning.
You could just as well have a system where the attributed author has no monopoly rights, but still gets paid by levies off the duplication channel (the ones who make money creating the copies), and gets partial payments for derivative works, etc.
Yeh, that'll work. I'll go and make a feature film of my favourite book tomorrow. Don't worry, I'll give the author a bit of cash, despite the fact he doesn't want me making a film of it, and is in the middle of making a film himself. I've got a great Beatles soundtrack I'm going to use.
Because any smart business knows that the key to success is giving the customer what they want. In this case, Apple knows that a proportion of their customer base and potential customer base would like to be able to boot into Windows. Letting them do so easily has the potential to sell more boxes, full stop.
The only reason for Apple not allowing XP booting would be if Apple were truly scared. If it thought that OS X wasn't up to snuff and the OS X applications (iLife, iWork et al) were lame, then it should shy away from Windows booting. Instead it is trusting its technology and giving its users more options.
People who like OS X will continue to buy Macs. People who like Windows *may* now buy a Mac, and learn about OS X
The only real potential downside I see is that app writers get one more excuse not to write Mac apps, but to be honest, I don't see a substantial shift in that from today; views are already well entrenched.
Note, he is not saying that he doesn't know what Skype is he is saying that he doesn't know what it does. That's fair enough; I've read a fair number of accounts by people who have attempted to work out exactly what Skype is up to on their networks, and very few people outside of skype know exactly what Skype does.
It uses a proprietary closed protocol, nicely encypted; is adept at getting through firewalls and most important can turn office PCs into high-traffic relays without warning and without the ability to stop the relaying behaviour from the client.
In related news, the submitter conflates the Internet and the Web. Which is pretty annoying.
No. I bought an iPod because of the way it integrates with iTunes, which I use as a jukebox/music repository. The automatic syncing works nicely, the podcasting support is nice a quick and simple to set up.
The UI is also, despite your apparent dismissal of aethetics, very nifty and easy to use. I've spent some time fighting the UI from Creative for a friend and yes, UIs are important to me. Oh, and I have the mini, not the nano, so scratching wasn't really an issue.
In summary: am I tool? probably not, though I do like small well-designed toys and yes; this is a toy.
I think you're trying to use the iPod/iTunes combo as a portable disk drive/File Manager combo. It's not surprising you'll be fighting the technology a bit. It can be done, by switching off auto-sync and putting the iPod into disk mode, but...
Depends a bit on what type of facilities you want beyond Apple works. TextWrangler is pretty good if you are after grep-type text jiggering. If it is formatting you are after, well Pages 2 ain't half bad.
That doesn't sound quite normal; I have an 800MHz G4 iMac with a mere 512Mb running 10.4 and Word launches in 11 bounces (splash screen in 7)
Camino launches in 4 bounces (13 the first time after a reboot). Neither takes more than a couple of seconds.
It might be worth giving your Mac a good old house clean (delete caches, repair permissions, check the disks - all the usual stuff).
And no, your comment isn't flamebait, as far as I can see.... Of course it could be you are trying to launch NeoOffice (the native Mac Open Office port) in which case, yes you can make a cup of tea in the time it takes to load.
I think Ray *should* know - I presume I'm not the only one who has tried to use that bloated, slow, unreliable but rather complex system known as Groove.
Sounds as if you have something horribly wrong with the machine. It might be hardware, or it might simply be a corrupt system/set of preferences/something else.
Either way, I would scoot off to Apple's support forums and ask there, you'll get some basic troubleshooting advice and it might be that you have to take the machine back.
I love the way you carefully neglected to quote the preceeding two paragraphs:
osoft can't afford to screw up like this. There are free alternatives to everything Microsoft sells, like the Linux operating system and the Open Office application suite. Rivals like Novell (nasdaq: NOVL - news - people ), Red Hat (nasdaq: RHAT - news - people ), Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people ) and, yes, IBM are pushing those programs big time.
Given Microsoft's delays I can't believe open-source stuff still hasn't caught on for desktop computers. It's amazing, but people will wait months and months for products that are so complicated that no ordinary person can figure out how to use them.
I can't see how a libertarian would want to argue with the idea that Internet companies should be able to run their commercial operations in the way they see fit.
Spelling aside, I thought he did a good job of conveying the main points succinctly and clearly. I'm not sure what additional verbiage would have achieved, aside from grammatical elegance.
But you also have to take into account the amount of time they currently - presumably - spend typing out memos on three carbons, placing two in an envelop and placing them in an out-tray for delivery the next day.
Then the time they spend opening post in the morning, and filing it and buying filing cabinets
It's easy to take a crack at e-mail as a productivity killer. But I worked in an office before it came along and there was an entire internal bureaucracy devoted to transporting mail, opening it, filing it, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Your argument appears to be that all written English should be made accessible to people for whom English is a third language.
Assuming I haven't just constructed a straw man, I think your argument is falacious (and my apologies for using 'straw man' and falacious').
English is an elegant and powerful language capabale of expressing many nuances, largely because it nicks so many words from other languages.
It certainly makes sense to simplify the language or reduce loca referenes when the primary audience is not going to be a native English speaker, but where the intended audience is English, I say let it rip.
Agreed, the Economist picture captions are, in particular. often splendidly silly.
If only bicycles would be legalised in the U.S
First off, someone is confusing "section headings" and "headlines". Second you are conflating misleading, confusing headlines with ones that use language imaginatively.
I've written some headlines in my time; getting something to fit to the page, convey the meaning and (hopefully) be elegant is an art. The occasional pun is no bad thing.
I remember the story of a UK national newspaper sub-seditor who had a headline all made up in hot metal which sat above his head for on a wall for years on the off-chance that the suitable event occurred. It never did.
The event? He wanted Michael Foot (labour party leader) to be put in charge of the organisation monitoring IRA decommissioning.
The headline?
Foot Heads Arms Body.
Ah well.
You could just as well have a system where the attributed author has no monopoly rights, but still gets paid by levies off the duplication channel (the ones who make money creating the copies), and gets partial payments for derivative works, etc.
Yeh, that'll work. I'll go and make a feature film of my favourite book tomorrow. Don't worry, I'll give the author a bit of cash, despite the fact he doesn't want me making a film of it, and is in the middle of making a film himself. I've got a great Beatles soundtrack I'm going to use.
Because any smart business knows that the key to success is giving the customer what they want. In this case, Apple knows that a proportion of their customer base and potential customer base would like to be able to boot into Windows. Letting them do so easily has the potential to sell more boxes, full stop.
The only reason for Apple not allowing XP booting would be if Apple were truly scared. If it thought that OS X wasn't up to snuff and the OS X applications (iLife, iWork et al) were lame, then it should shy away from Windows booting. Instead it is trusting its technology and giving its users more options.
People who like OS X will continue to buy Macs. People who like Windows *may* now buy a Mac, and learn about OS X
The only real potential downside I see is that app writers get one more excuse not to write Mac apps, but to be honest, I don't see a substantial shift in that from today; views are already well entrenched.
Note, he is not saying that he doesn't know what Skype is he is saying that he doesn't know what it does. That's fair enough; I've read a fair number of accounts by people who have attempted to work out exactly what Skype is up to on their networks, and very few people outside of skype know exactly what Skype does.
It uses a proprietary closed protocol, nicely encypted; is adept at getting through firewalls and most important can turn office PCs into high-traffic relays without warning and without the ability to stop the relaying behaviour from the client.
In related news, the submitter conflates the Internet and the Web. Which is pretty annoying.
No. I bought an iPod because of the way it integrates with iTunes, which I use as a jukebox/music repository. The automatic syncing works nicely, the podcasting support is nice a quick and simple to set up.
The UI is also, despite your apparent dismissal of aethetics, very nifty and easy to use. I've spent some time fighting the UI from Creative for a friend and yes, UIs are important to me. Oh, and I have the mini, not the nano, so scratching wasn't really an issue.
In summary: am I tool? probably not, though I do like small well-designed toys and yes; this is a toy.
You appear to be confusing MP3 players and USB stick drives.
Huh? I have an iPod and I've never bought anything on iTunes.
I think you're trying to use the iPod/iTunes combo as a portable disk drive/File Manager combo. It's not surprising you'll be fighting the technology a bit. It can be done, by switching off auto-sync and putting the iPod into disk mode, but...
Depends a bit on what type of facilities you want beyond Apple works. TextWrangler is pretty good if you are after grep-type text jiggering. If it is formatting you are after, well Pages 2 ain't half bad.
That doesn't sound quite normal; I have an 800MHz G4 iMac with a mere 512Mb running 10.4 and Word launches in 11 bounces (splash screen in 7)
... Of course it could be you are trying to launch NeoOffice (the native Mac Open Office port) in which case, yes you can make a cup of tea in the time it takes to load.
Camino launches in 4 bounces (13 the first time after a reboot). Neither takes more than a couple of seconds.
It might be worth giving your Mac a good old house clean (delete caches, repair permissions, check the disks - all the usual stuff).
And no, your comment isn't flamebait, as far as I can see.
I think Ray *should* know - I presume I'm not the only one who has tried to use that bloated, slow, unreliable but rather complex system known as Groove.
This was true all the through until Tiger (10.4) which slowed things down a bit on my old 800Mhz G4.
...apparently you are from a parallel dimension. Welcome.
Sounds as if you have something horribly wrong with the machine. It might be hardware, or it might simply be a corrupt system/set of preferences/something else.
Either way, I would scoot off to Apple's support forums and ask there, you'll get some basic troubleshooting advice and it might be that you have to take the machine back.
Which part of "Daniel Lyons has an opinion piece up on Forbes.com" Did you fail to understand?
I love the way you carefully neglected to quote the preceeding two paragraphs:
osoft can't afford to screw up like this. There are free alternatives to everything Microsoft sells, like the Linux operating system and the Open Office application suite. Rivals like Novell (nasdaq: NOVL - news - people ), Red Hat (nasdaq: RHAT - news - people ), Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people ) and, yes, IBM are pushing those programs big time.
Given Microsoft's delays I can't believe open-source stuff still hasn't caught on for desktop computers. It's amazing, but people will wait months and months for products that are so complicated that no ordinary person can figure out how to use them.
Yes, clearly an anti-Linux, anti-IBM shill.
I can't see how a libertarian would want to argue with the idea that Internet companies should be able to run their commercial operations in the way they see fit.
Oh, I don't think anyone is suggesting that Prime Minister should be made a hereditary position. Perhaps you meant oligarchy.
Spelling aside, I thought he did a good job of conveying the main points succinctly and clearly. I'm not sure what additional verbiage would have achieved, aside from grammatical elegance.
We're not having you modelling your nukes on our servers thankyouverymuch.
How many hundreds of people do you think currently work in the FBI mailroom dealing with internal memos alone, do you think?
But you also have to take into account the amount of time they currently - presumably - spend typing out memos on three carbons, placing two in an envelop and placing them in an out-tray for delivery the next day.
Then the time they spend opening post in the morning, and filing it and buying filing cabinets
It's easy to take a crack at e-mail as a productivity killer. But I worked in an office before it came along and there was an entire internal bureaucracy devoted to transporting mail, opening it, filing it, etc.