It may be that children are paying more attention to the large TV at the front of the room (what these things really are) than they were to the teacher, but my take is that much like the 5-second cuts in current TV shows, bright flashy colors and animation isn't "improving" anyone's attention span. For non-animated, non-colored, non-audio presentation of information (you know, those things called "books" or most of the "real" content on the Internet) this is likely to have an adverse affect. As television clearly shows, it is quite possible to increase attention (what you meant to say) while shortening attention spans (what is happening with TV and things like interactive presentations in the classroom).
I'm a former teacher and was the "technology mentor" at my school. During my time teaching one of my greatest frustrations was watching elementary school teachers use PowerPoint to deaden both the interest in computers and the interest in subject matter. A good teacher can help kids have fun learning with a chalkboard. A bad one can kill a child's interest no matter what wonderful tool you provide.
Having the attention span of a two-year-old after three bowls of chocolate-frosted sugar bombs is what politicians really want from the electorate. War not going too well? Oh, look! Brittany sans undergarments! Socialized medicine a terrible idea? Wow! Look at the snow in the Northeast. Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain.
I think that $3 for a movie "rental" is way too expensive, which is the very reason I dropped Blockbuster for Netflix in the first place. I don't care if it is a new release, recent T.V. episode, or whatever--three dollars is half the cost of a matinée on the big screen.
We don't have cable or satellite T.V. and I can't see spending money on the antenna we'd need for broadcast digital--five hundred channels of nothing is still nothing. So we have Netflix. While I don't watch much, my wife watches about one episode of a T.V. series each day. Perhaps every other week we get a movie, and occasionally we'll watch episodes some old series together. So we run through maybe 10-15 DVDs worth of content each month. That type of viewing pattern would be significantly more than the $18 a month we currently pay Netflix, say around $45 if you had to get all the TV episodes as individual "rentals"
It will be interesting to see if Apple can do to video viewing what it did to music (make the music player ubiquitous, or nearly so). The main issues I see are cost (per video) and cost (for a device to play the content).
However, your final sentence is (essentially) nonsensical.
"Modern" soldiers enlist for a period of "active duty" with a length of two to four years. Let's assume the average length of an active duty period is three years (though when I was in, I think four year enlistments were the norm, since all the "goodies"--enlistment bonus, max college money--went with a four year hitch). For the simplest job in the Army, an infantry rifleman, basic training lasts 14 weeks, or approximately four months (you likely have a "zero week" at the beginning and leave at the end of the 14 weeks of training). So you've already used up a quarter of the first year just learning a limited set of skills (BRM, a bit of hand-to-hand, etc.)
To get a functional/useful to a soldier grip on a new language is the study of at least a year. By "useful" I mean that the soldier must have the ability to both ask questions and understand the answers given in the second language, something far more complex than being able to ask for directions to the bathroom or give a polite greeting.
I spent three years stationed in Italy with the 82nd, during which I spent almost all my free time off base exploring the country. I also spent a lot of time at the houses of two good friends who were married to Italian girls. On top of this, I'd had two years of Spanish in high school (a related romance language) as a background. Despite all that, I only made enough progress in the language to ask for a drink and understand basic directions. When some Italian started talking fast about something outside the two topics I had a basic understanding of, I was lost. No amount of "parli lentimente, per favore" was going to help that.
Expecting the military to pay for a non-specialist soldier to learn an new language for a year is unrealistic, to say the least.
There's more than movement, too
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Modeling Urban Panic
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Those people on the outside are pressing against the folks in the middle and people at the back are pressing forward. The nice stream shown doesn't appear to account for this, especially as none of the sims are crushed, trampled, or otherwise flattened in the mad rush to the door.
IRL, people on the outsides frantically push their way toward the exit, creating pressure on those in the center that frequently results in a crush of bodies that this model doesn't seem to model very well. If you've ever been in a situation where the crowd pressure to pass through a bottleneck is so strong that you can't move backward, hold still, or even effectively resist the rush, you know what I'm talking about.
This model seems to be a "in a perfect world, where the panicked crowd moves cooperatively and generally in an orderly fashion towards the exits" kind of model. It's hard to see how that's very useful in the context suggested (panic response).
I don't think OSS contributors are driven by money (the vast majority I would say are not) so I don't see that their having financial troubles would affect whether they're willing to contribute to an OSS project or not. Indeed, I think that if some of them got laid off, in between looking for a new gig (and possibly as a resume enhancing exercise) they might contribute some of that newly-spare time to working on their pet project(s). After all, if you're sitting home trolling for a job, once you've done your daily search/apply/despair thing, don't you have another seven hours to spend "working" on something you care about?
In fact, one reason OSS software is "recession proof" is because it's (mostly) done for love rather than money. If OSS projects relied on the state of the economy, that would be one thing, but a lot of OSS projects are things that people are working on because they want to, rather than have to to put food on the table.
What I really would like (and be willing to pay money for) is a downloading system with a Netflix-queue-like method for queuing movie downloads. I want something other than a torrent site (where the quality, legality, actual content, etc. are unknown) where I can view and queue movies for download, then have 2 or 3 downloaded in the background. Next time I want to watch something from my HTPC, the ones at the top of the queue will be ready for viewing. When I'm done, I want the system to delete the viewed movie and download another.
I don't want streaming, because it's unreliable (bandwidth may be in use by someone else), I don't want a torrent (for reasons stated above), and I don't want the hassle (however minor) of sending and receiving DVDs.
If some company could provide this, with a large library of titles, for something close to what Netflix charges, I would subscribe in a heartbeat. Anyone out there know of something along these lines?
I've wondered about this since they started the streaming deal.
It looks to me like they are adding stuff to the list all the time, but slowly. Does that mean that there's one guy in a back room at the Netflix headquarters who is ripping these DVDs to their format and then uploading them to the server farm, all by hand? I mean, the selection is getting bigger, but it's slow going.
I've also wondered about the choices of what they're offering first. I mean, if my speculation above is correct, maybe the one guy in the back room has to pick DVDs he's sure nobody is going to ask for on the day he's doing the burning? Or the studios have agreed to allow older/less popular stuff as a trial balloon so they can see if it's worth allowing/charging extra for?
I've appreciated Netflix for the last couple of years, but streaming directly to my (non-Windows) HTPC would be nice.
Oh dear. You've got me laughing so hard I had tears. You utopians are always good for a laugh, at least.
Our current economy is regulated by Federal, State, and local governments. And the majority of business activity in the United States isn't from the mega-corporations you're bemoaning, but by small businesses. In 2007, small firms employed over half of the private sector work force and generated well more than half of GDP.
The current solution (a moderately regulated capitalist system) isn't perfect, but it almost certainly is the "least bad" solution currently available. We've got problems on both sides--too much regulation (ever tried jumping through the hoops to start a business?) and too little (the sub-prime mortgage crisis) but I'm not buying either a centrally planned economy (which is what your post seems to advocate) or total anarchy.
Countries with heavily regulated economies: Soviet Russia, Zimbabwe, Myanmar/Burma... No thanks.
The more common usage (as far as I'm aware) is frustration, though American Heritage says "A keen feeling of mental unease, as of annoyance" where Webster's amplifies that it's "...caused by disappointment" and dictionary.com says "French, possibly from dialectal French chagraigner, to distress..."
As cool as it is to use the peltier effect to cool chips, in no way is the "reclaimed heat" going to be enough to generate any significant amount of power.
I don't mind companies spouting marketing drivel, because that's what companies with marketing departments do. But this whole "fake green" thing that's going on recently has got to stop.
I think my Portland to L.A. figure is based on driving distance, not straight-line.
I think the furthest I ever drove in Europe was from Stockholm to Oslo. I've been by train from Milan to Frankfurt, but that's not the same thing, as I slept through most of the trip. I made several car trips the length of Italy (almost) and once went by bus from around Venice to Lourdes in France (a trip that SEEMED interminable). But for some reason Europe never gave me that "vastness" feeling--though the scenery in the Alps and Southern France was beautiful. Maybe it's because the Midwestern states are flat and empty?
It is interesting that the north-south of extent of Europe is so close to the east-west extent of the U.S. Thanks for the informative tidbit:-)
My day job requires me to work with Linux. In fact, my Windows box is for email (corporate uses Exchange) and my doc tool (Adobe let FrameMaker on Linux languish and die). A lot of what I do involves installing, testing, and documenting software that runs on Linux. I even write man pages.
When I was new to Linux, I tried asking some noob questions on various forums (after unsuccessfully searching for answers--which I noted in my posts) and was surprised by the "stoopid noob!" responses I got. I mean, I understand that people tend to be less polite in anonymous on-line communication, and that a lot of early-Linux-adopter-geeks are lack practice with social skills, but I was still surprised. It's like my not knowing the answer was a personal affront to some of the folks responding.
From the outside, it's not a friendly place. I think it has gotten better, and continues to improve, but there's still a long way to go.
My dad, is an example of this. Despite my repeated warnings (and refusal to "fix" his machine if it gets hosed) my dad downloads random stuff from the Internet. He runs McAfee (I think) and hasn't had many "big" problems, so he continues to do it.
I could recommend that he switch to Linux, but he'd be frustrated (and he doesn't care about "more secure" since he hasn't seen any negative effects yet) every time he downloaded "freeware <insert utility name here>" and it wouldn't run on his Ubuntu box.
It'd be more like talking about the United States and meaning "contiguous United States" ignoring Alaska (which is roughly 1.7M sq. km.) and other assorted states and territories.
Most Americans (this is anecdotal) seem to live in a 50's world where "Europe" means the western portion of Europe that was never part of the communist block. Basically, England, France, Germany, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and Scandinavia. We generally don't consider Poland, Ukraine, or other Slavic/Eastern Block countries part of "Europe" even though I'm sure most Europeans do. And probably most Europeans who talk about "America" are talking about the contiguous U.S, forgetting Alaska, etc.
Anyway, leaving aside what exactly we think about when we're thinking about the "other" place, it's pretty hard to get a grip on just how large the contiguous U.S. is without actually driving across it. From Los Angeles California to Portland, Maine is a drive of almost 5,000 km.
None of which makes the U.S. better or less backward in any of the ways we're backward. It's just amazingly vast.
My work is mostly writing and I rarely use the mouse. Indeed, I'm chagrined when programs force me to take my hands off the keyboard, grab the mouse, locate the pointer, move it to a specific location on the screen, click the button, and then move my hand back to the keyboard. It's an interruption in my work-flow and an annoyance. If there were a way to go totally mouse-free, without losing the usefulness of the GUI, I'd be there.
Here's an example: while typing this response, I fat-fingered interruption. Since my browser is Firefox, it helpfully underlined "interrutpion" for me. I could have taken my hand off the keyboard an right-clicked the misspelling to get the correction, but instead I moved the cursor back one word (ctrl + <-) and clicked the menu key to see the list of corrections. I clicked the correction, pressed enter, and was back typing without ever moving my hands from the keyboard. Nice!
Generally, I use keyboard shortcuts for almost everything I do while using a writing tool. Unfortunately, among the programs I'm constrained to use, support for keyboard shortcuts isn't universal. Which means that the menu key is a useful tool for me.
You said "marketing group" and "ashamed" - those almost never go together. Everyone knows that marketing has no shame.
Some tools get it right
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RTF Vs. OOXML
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· Score: 1
Just not Word.
Ask anyone in publishing or anyone who writes for a living what tool they use and there's little chance that they're going to tout the advantages of Word. Word is borked in so many ways, from a writer's point of view, that it's hard to know where the start when cataloging the problems. You can begin with the broken tokening used in lists, move to the Master Documents "feature" and finish up with the fact that what's displayed on the screen not only differs depending on which computer you're viewing it on, but it isn't even the same as what's printed. (Trust me, you never EVER want to have to try and fiddle page breaking in Word, where the breaks shown on screen are seemingly unrelated to the way the pages break when output to the printer.
A "real" writing tool either completely divorces the content and presentation (a la TeX) or presents on-screen an EXACT representation of what will be printed (for example, FrameMaker). Word tries to do the second, but fails. Miserably.
The FCC rule says TVs 13" and bigger have to have CC capability. That makes good sense to me (more than I'd usually expect from a government agency). Why would anyone want closed captioning on a 12" TV? It would almost certainly be too small to read at any distance. Actually, why would anyone want a set that small even without closed captioning? Do they even sell sets that small?
And you're right--I'm sure there was a massive amount of hand-wringing and whining when the rule was passed.
It's OK (a little like Safari on the iPhone--a browser was never intended to share scree real estate with a virtual keyboard) but the Flash player isn't the latest and greatest and there doesn't seem to be a way to get a newer version on there. My wife and I were going to watch the Rose parade on our TV (we don't have cable, the TV is connected to the Wii and a Mac Mini which serves as our DVD player) but when we went to the KTLA site, the streaming video wasn't supported. So I started looking around (based on my incorrect assumption the KTLA was streaming using Flash) and some Flash games played while others didn't. YouTube seemed to work OK.
Anyway, it would be cool if there was a separate "channel" for video, I think. But the browser's Flash support doesn't seem to be 100%.
My "DVD Player" is my Mac mini. It's remote has exactly six buttons -- play/pause, forward, reverse, up, down, and menu. With these I can play, stop, forward and reverse through the content, select and click menu items, and control the volume. Pretty much all I need.
Maybe I'm not getting the most out of the DVDs I watch (I usually just want to see the movie/episode and the extras) but I think a 100-button remoter would really be overkill. Heck, the 20-30 button remote that came with my TV is hardly ever used and I can't imagine trying to keep straight the functions controlled by all those buttons with obscure labels. Guess I'm of the "less is more" crowd:-)!
If you believe that "civilization" means laws/customs against killing unwanted infants and the elderly, then "civilization" protects the weak and poor.
If you believe that "civilization" means the rule of law, where the wealthy, influential and well-connected cannot run rough-shod over the common man, then "civilization" protects the weak and poor.
If you believe that "civilization" means public safety is seen to (to some extent) by the government, rather than a "might makes right" society, then "civilization" protects the weak and poor.
Yes, civilizations do go against these principles. Generally, the real does not live up to the ideal, as shown by the abusive behavior of nobles in the Middle Ages, he poorhouses in 19th Century England, and slavery in America. But a "Lord of the Flies" situation is neither civilization, nor protective of the weak and poor.
There are definitely some folks out there who claim to be "conservative" who have scruples only when it suits them. Unfortunately, there are also plenty who seem to be irrational in the other direction. Funny how the right-wing goofs are absolutely convinced that Bill/Hillary Clinton is the Antichrist and all the left-wing goofs are certain that the Bush is Satan incarnate. For my money, all the fringe types are loony.
The important thing, in my opinion, is to have principles and stick to them. Libby, like Reynolds, should never have been pardoned. Ruby Ridge and Waco shouldn't have happened, no matter who was at the helm. Indeed, both Reno and Potts should have been held accountable--neither was. Rational people can hold to a position regardless of whether "their guy" is for or against it.
Assuming that the 3.2 million incidents are from unique users, around one percent of the U.S population isn't able to avoid being victimized by a phishing scam.
The news here isn't "OMG scamming is teh huge!" but that the numbers are so low. My everyday experience would lead me to believe that the number would be significantly higher than 1%. I mean, I run across people every day where I wind up wondering "How does someone that stupid remember to breathe?"
I work in publishing, and the format that we generally use is PDF, for just the reason you state. The typeface, page sizes, etc. are all contained in the PDF file, so there's no problem with footnotes moving pages, because the contents of the pages are fixed in the file.
I wish PDF were completely open and that we could convince everyone who distributes documents to use PDF for that purpose. All the problems you mention are just as troublesome when opening a Word file on two different machines (which is why "real" writers/publishers don't use Word). I can't tell you the time wasted on some of the rinky-dink (non-paper-published) projects I've seen where two people opening the same Word file saw different things because Word displays pages based on any number of different parameters that are not the same between machines. Heck, it doesn't even PRINT the same as it displays.
Slashdot Mirror
It may be that children are paying more attention to the large TV at the front of the room (what these things really are) than they were to the teacher, but my take is that much like the 5-second cuts in current TV shows, bright flashy colors and animation isn't "improving" anyone's attention span. For non-animated, non-colored, non-audio presentation of information (you know, those things called "books" or most of the "real" content on the Internet) this is likely to have an adverse affect. As television clearly shows, it is quite possible to increase attention (what you meant to say) while shortening attention spans (what is happening with TV and things like interactive presentations in the classroom).
I'm a former teacher and was the "technology mentor" at my school. During my time teaching one of my greatest frustrations was watching elementary school teachers use PowerPoint to deaden both the interest in computers and the interest in subject matter. A good teacher can help kids have fun learning with a chalkboard. A bad one can kill a child's interest no matter what wonderful tool you provide.
Having the attention span of a two-year-old after three bowls of chocolate-frosted sugar bombs is what politicians really want from the electorate. War not going too well? Oh, look! Brittany sans undergarments! Socialized medicine a terrible idea? Wow! Look at the snow in the Northeast. Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain.
I think that $3 for a movie "rental" is way too expensive, which is the very reason I dropped Blockbuster for Netflix in the first place. I don't care if it is a new release, recent T.V. episode, or whatever--three dollars is half the cost of a matinée on the big screen.
We don't have cable or satellite T.V. and I can't see spending money on the antenna we'd need for broadcast digital--five hundred channels of nothing is still nothing. So we have Netflix. While I don't watch much, my wife watches about one episode of a T.V. series each day. Perhaps every other week we get a movie, and occasionally we'll watch episodes some old series together. So we run through maybe 10-15 DVDs worth of content each month. That type of viewing pattern would be significantly more than the $18 a month we currently pay Netflix, say around $45 if you had to get all the TV episodes as individual "rentals"
It will be interesting to see if Apple can do to video viewing what it did to music (make the music player ubiquitous, or nearly so). The main issues I see are cost (per video) and cost (for a device to play the content).
However, your final sentence is (essentially) nonsensical.
"Modern" soldiers enlist for a period of "active duty" with a length of two to four years. Let's assume the average length of an active duty period is three years (though when I was in, I think four year enlistments were the norm, since all the "goodies"--enlistment bonus, max college money--went with a four year hitch). For the simplest job in the Army, an infantry rifleman, basic training lasts 14 weeks, or approximately four months (you likely have a "zero week" at the beginning and leave at the end of the 14 weeks of training). So you've already used up a quarter of the first year just learning a limited set of skills (BRM, a bit of hand-to-hand, etc.)
To get a functional/useful to a soldier grip on a new language is the study of at least a year. By "useful" I mean that the soldier must have the ability to both ask questions and understand the answers given in the second language, something far more complex than being able to ask for directions to the bathroom or give a polite greeting.
I spent three years stationed in Italy with the 82nd, during which I spent almost all my free time off base exploring the country. I also spent a lot of time at the houses of two good friends who were married to Italian girls. On top of this, I'd had two years of Spanish in high school (a related romance language) as a background. Despite all that, I only made enough progress in the language to ask for a drink and understand basic directions. When some Italian started talking fast about something outside the two topics I had a basic understanding of, I was lost. No amount of "parli lentimente, per favore" was going to help that.
Expecting the military to pay for a non-specialist soldier to learn an new language for a year is unrealistic, to say the least.
Those people on the outside are pressing against the folks in the middle and people at the back are pressing forward. The nice stream shown doesn't appear to account for this, especially as none of the sims are crushed, trampled, or otherwise flattened in the mad rush to the door.
IRL, people on the outsides frantically push their way toward the exit, creating pressure on those in the center that frequently results in a crush of bodies that this model doesn't seem to model very well. If you've ever been in a situation where the crowd pressure to pass through a bottleneck is so strong that you can't move backward, hold still, or even effectively resist the rush, you know what I'm talking about.
This model seems to be a "in a perfect world, where the panicked crowd moves cooperatively and generally in an orderly fashion towards the exits" kind of model. It's hard to see how that's very useful in the context suggested (panic response).
I don't think OSS contributors are driven by money (the vast majority I would say are not) so I don't see that their having financial troubles would affect whether they're willing to contribute to an OSS project or not. Indeed, I think that if some of them got laid off, in between looking for a new gig (and possibly as a resume enhancing exercise) they might contribute some of that newly-spare time to working on their pet project(s). After all, if you're sitting home trolling for a job, once you've done your daily search/apply/despair thing, don't you have another seven hours to spend "working" on something you care about?
In fact, one reason OSS software is "recession proof" is because it's (mostly) done for love rather than money. If OSS projects relied on the state of the economy, that would be one thing, but a lot of OSS projects are things that people are working on because they want to, rather than have to to put food on the table.
What I really would like (and be willing to pay money for) is a downloading system with a Netflix-queue-like method for queuing movie downloads. I want something other than a torrent site (where the quality, legality, actual content, etc. are unknown) where I can view and queue movies for download, then have 2 or 3 downloaded in the background. Next time I want to watch something from my HTPC, the ones at the top of the queue will be ready for viewing. When I'm done, I want the system to delete the viewed movie and download another.
I don't want streaming, because it's unreliable (bandwidth may be in use by someone else), I don't want a torrent (for reasons stated above), and I don't want the hassle (however minor) of sending and receiving DVDs.
If some company could provide this, with a large library of titles, for something close to what Netflix charges, I would subscribe in a heartbeat. Anyone out there know of something along these lines?
I've wondered about this since they started the streaming deal.
It looks to me like they are adding stuff to the list all the time, but slowly. Does that mean that there's one guy in a back room at the Netflix headquarters who is ripping these DVDs to their format and then uploading them to the server farm, all by hand? I mean, the selection is getting bigger, but it's slow going.
I've also wondered about the choices of what they're offering first. I mean, if my speculation above is correct, maybe the one guy in the back room has to pick DVDs he's sure nobody is going to ask for on the day he's doing the burning? Or the studios have agreed to allow older/less popular stuff as a trial balloon so they can see if it's worth allowing/charging extra for?
I've appreciated Netflix for the last couple of years, but streaming directly to my (non-Windows) HTPC would be nice.
Oh dear. You've got me laughing so hard I had tears. You utopians are always good for a laugh, at least.
Our current economy is regulated by Federal, State, and local governments. And the majority of business activity in the United States isn't from the mega-corporations you're bemoaning, but by small businesses. In 2007, small firms employed over half of the private sector work force and generated well more than half of GDP.
The current solution (a moderately regulated capitalist system) isn't perfect, but it almost certainly is the "least bad" solution currently available. We've got problems on both sides--too much regulation (ever tried jumping through the hoops to start a business?) and too little (the sub-prime mortgage crisis) but I'm not buying either a centrally planned economy (which is what your post seems to advocate) or total anarchy.
Countries with heavily regulated economies: Soviet Russia, Zimbabwe, Myanmar/Burma... No thanks.
The more common usage (as far as I'm aware) is frustration, though American Heritage says "A keen feeling of mental unease, as of annoyance" where Webster's amplifies that it's "...caused by disappointment" and dictionary.com says "French, possibly from dialectal French chagraigner, to distress..."
But I've heard it used in the sense you cite.
As cool as it is to use the peltier effect to cool chips, in no way is the "reclaimed heat" going to be enough to generate any significant amount of power.
I don't mind companies spouting marketing drivel, because that's what companies with marketing departments do. But this whole "fake green" thing that's going on recently has got to stop.
I think my Portland to L.A. figure is based on driving distance, not straight-line.
:-)
I think the furthest I ever drove in Europe was from Stockholm to Oslo. I've been by train from Milan to Frankfurt, but that's not the same thing, as I slept through most of the trip. I made several car trips the length of Italy (almost) and once went by bus from around Venice to Lourdes in France (a trip that SEEMED interminable). But for some reason Europe never gave me that "vastness" feeling--though the scenery in the Alps and Southern France was beautiful. Maybe it's because the Midwestern states are flat and empty?
It is interesting that the north-south of extent of Europe is so close to the east-west extent of the U.S. Thanks for the informative tidbit
My day job requires me to work with Linux. In fact, my Windows box is for email (corporate uses Exchange) and my doc tool (Adobe let FrameMaker on Linux languish and die). A lot of what I do involves installing, testing, and documenting software that runs on Linux. I even write man pages.
When I was new to Linux, I tried asking some noob questions on various forums (after unsuccessfully searching for answers--which I noted in my posts) and was surprised by the "stoopid noob!" responses I got. I mean, I understand that people tend to be less polite in anonymous on-line communication, and that a lot of early-Linux-adopter-geeks are lack practice with social skills, but I was still surprised. It's like my not knowing the answer was a personal affront to some of the folks responding.
From the outside, it's not a friendly place. I think it has gotten better, and continues to improve, but there's still a long way to go.
My dad, is an example of this. Despite my repeated warnings (and refusal to "fix" his machine if it gets hosed) my dad downloads random stuff from the Internet. He runs McAfee (I think) and hasn't had many "big" problems, so he continues to do it.
I could recommend that he switch to Linux, but he'd be frustrated (and he doesn't care about "more secure" since he hasn't seen any negative effects yet) every time he downloaded "freeware <insert utility name here>" and it wouldn't run on his Ubuntu box.
There are a lot of people like my dad out there.
It'd be more like talking about the United States and meaning "contiguous United States" ignoring Alaska (which is roughly 1.7M sq. km.) and other assorted states and territories.
Most Americans (this is anecdotal) seem to live in a 50's world where "Europe" means the western portion of Europe that was never part of the communist block. Basically, England, France, Germany, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and Scandinavia. We generally don't consider Poland, Ukraine, or other Slavic/Eastern Block countries part of "Europe" even though I'm sure most Europeans do. And probably most Europeans who talk about "America" are talking about the contiguous U.S, forgetting Alaska, etc.
Anyway, leaving aside what exactly we think about when we're thinking about the "other" place, it's pretty hard to get a grip on just how large the contiguous U.S. is without actually driving across it. From Los Angeles California to Portland, Maine is a drive of almost 5,000 km.
None of which makes the U.S. better or less backward in any of the ways we're backward. It's just amazingly vast.
My work is mostly writing and I rarely use the mouse. Indeed, I'm chagrined when programs force me to take my hands off the keyboard, grab the mouse, locate the pointer, move it to a specific location on the screen, click the button, and then move my hand back to the keyboard. It's an interruption in my work-flow and an annoyance. If there were a way to go totally mouse-free, without losing the usefulness of the GUI, I'd be there.
Here's an example: while typing this response, I fat-fingered interruption. Since my browser is Firefox, it helpfully underlined "interrutpion" for me. I could have taken my hand off the keyboard an right-clicked the misspelling to get the correction, but instead I moved the cursor back one word (ctrl + <-) and clicked the menu key to see the list of corrections. I clicked the correction, pressed enter, and was back typing without ever moving my hands from the keyboard. Nice!
Generally, I use keyboard shortcuts for almost everything I do while using a writing tool. Unfortunately, among the programs I'm constrained to use, support for keyboard shortcuts isn't universal. Which means that the menu key is a useful tool for me.
You said "marketing group" and "ashamed" - those almost never go together. Everyone knows that marketing has no shame.
Just not Word.
Ask anyone in publishing or anyone who writes for a living what tool they use and there's little chance that they're going to tout the advantages of Word. Word is borked in so many ways, from a writer's point of view, that it's hard to know where the start when cataloging the problems. You can begin with the broken tokening used in lists, move to the Master Documents "feature" and finish up with the fact that what's displayed on the screen not only differs depending on which computer you're viewing it on, but it isn't even the same as what's printed. (Trust me, you never EVER want to have to try and fiddle page breaking in Word, where the breaks shown on screen are seemingly unrelated to the way the pages break when output to the printer.
A "real" writing tool either completely divorces the content and presentation (a la TeX) or presents on-screen an EXACT representation of what will be printed (for example, FrameMaker). Word tries to do the second, but fails. Miserably.
The FCC rule says TVs 13" and bigger have to have CC capability. That makes good sense to me (more than I'd usually expect from a government agency). Why would anyone want closed captioning on a 12" TV? It would almost certainly be too small to read at any distance. Actually, why would anyone want a set that small even without closed captioning? Do they even sell sets that small?
And you're right--I'm sure there was a massive amount of hand-wringing and whining when the rule was passed.
It's OK (a little like Safari on the iPhone--a browser was never intended to share scree real estate with a virtual keyboard) but the Flash player isn't the latest and greatest and there doesn't seem to be a way to get a newer version on there. My wife and I were going to watch the Rose parade on our TV (we don't have cable, the TV is connected to the Wii and a Mac Mini which serves as our DVD player) but when we went to the KTLA site, the streaming video wasn't supported. So I started looking around (based on my incorrect assumption the KTLA was streaming using Flash) and some Flash games played while others didn't. YouTube seemed to work OK.
Anyway, it would be cool if there was a separate "channel" for video, I think. But the browser's Flash support doesn't seem to be 100%.
My "DVD Player" is my Mac mini. It's remote has exactly six buttons -- play/pause, forward, reverse, up, down, and menu. With these I can play, stop, forward and reverse through the content, select and click menu items, and control the volume. Pretty much all I need.
:-)!
Maybe I'm not getting the most out of the DVDs I watch (I usually just want to see the movie/episode and the extras) but I think a 100-button remoter would really be overkill. Heck, the 20-30 button remote that came with my TV is hardly ever used and I can't imagine trying to keep straight the functions controlled by all those buttons with obscure labels. Guess I'm of the "less is more" crowd
If you believe that "civilization" means laws/customs against killing unwanted infants and the elderly, then "civilization" protects the weak and poor.
If you believe that "civilization" means the rule of law, where the wealthy, influential and well-connected cannot run rough-shod over the common man, then "civilization" protects the weak and poor.
If you believe that "civilization" means public safety is seen to (to some extent) by the government, rather than a "might makes right" society, then "civilization" protects the weak and poor.
Yes, civilizations do go against these principles. Generally, the real does not live up to the ideal, as shown by the abusive behavior of nobles in the Middle Ages, he poorhouses in 19th Century England, and slavery in America. But a "Lord of the Flies" situation is neither civilization, nor protective of the weak and poor.
There are definitely some folks out there who claim to be "conservative" who have scruples only when it suits them. Unfortunately, there are also plenty who seem to be irrational in the other direction. Funny how the right-wing goofs are absolutely convinced that Bill/Hillary Clinton is the Antichrist and all the left-wing goofs are certain that the Bush is Satan incarnate. For my money, all the fringe types are loony.
The important thing, in my opinion, is to have principles and stick to them. Libby, like Reynolds, should never have been pardoned. Ruby Ridge and Waco shouldn't have happened, no matter who was at the helm. Indeed, both Reno and Potts should have been held accountable--neither was. Rational people can hold to a position regardless of whether "their guy" is for or against it.
BTW, hypocrisy? Pot, meet kettle.
Assuming that the 3.2 million incidents are from unique users, around one percent of the U.S population isn't able to avoid being victimized by a phishing scam.
The news here isn't "OMG scamming is teh huge!" but that the numbers are so low. My everyday experience would lead me to believe that the number would be significantly higher than 1%. I mean, I run across people every day where I wind up wondering "How does someone that stupid remember to breathe?"
I work in publishing, and the format that we generally use is PDF, for just the reason you state. The typeface, page sizes, etc. are all contained in the PDF file, so there's no problem with footnotes moving pages, because the contents of the pages are fixed in the file.
I wish PDF were completely open and that we could convince everyone who distributes documents to use PDF for that purpose. All the problems you mention are just as troublesome when opening a Word file on two different machines (which is why "real" writers/publishers don't use Word). I can't tell you the time wasted on some of the rinky-dink (non-paper-published) projects I've seen where two people opening the same Word file saw different things because Word displays pages based on any number of different parameters that are not the same between machines. Heck, it doesn't even PRINT the same as it displays.
Internet researchers get hives investigating honey of an optimization tool