My mother is a professor of education at a college in California and this is something that educators have been talking about for a long while. Google for "multiple intelligences" for a lot more information, but basically there's a theory that says that "intelligence" can be divided up into a number of categories and that people tend to excell in one or two of these areas, but few are outstanding in all of them.
The standard breakdown is something like:
Linguistic intelligence
Logical-mathematical intelligence
Spatial intelligence
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence
Musical intelligence
Interpersonal intelligence
Intrapersonal intelligence
Naturalist intelligence
Atheletes tend to excell at Spatial and Kinesthetic, while the stereotypical geek is strongest in Logical-mathematical and weakest in Interpersonal.
I'm not sure I completely agree that this is the end-all-be-all for understanding intelligence, but it does provide an interesting look into ways to classify people who might not be "book smart." For instance, a terrific ballerina might not have excellent Interpersonal or Linguistic intelligence, but she certainly has some special "intelligence" that allows her to excell in an area where I would certainly be an abject failure.
I encourage anyone interested in this idea of multiple intelligences to poke around and do some research. Again, it may not be the final answer, but it provides an interesting framework for thinking about the topic.
and to those of us with a Windows machine, it still matters. Every time (every stinking time) I open an Explorer window to the "machine" level, I have to wait 5 seconds while Windows dutifully checks the floppy drive so it can see what to display for A: Never mind the fact that there is not now nor has their ever been a disk in the drive, never mind the fact that the last time anyone used a floppy was two versions of Windows back, the PC manufacturer still installed the drive and Windows still wastes time checking for a floppy.
It wasn't morally offensive, it was just a nusaince. I too am glad to see the death of them.
You are buying the music in Russia. Russian law applies.
Once you bring your purchase into the US, US law applies. For instance, it might be perfectly legal to buy a fully automatic AK-47 in Russia (I suspect not, but it makes a simple example) , but importing such a weapon into the US would require jumping through numerous hoops. Indeed, unless you're a registered firearms collector or have the appropriate license, owning such a firearm would be against the law and you could expect the government to take action against you. The fact that you bought the item in Russia doesn't necessarily mean that Russian law applies.
I'm not a lawyer, but I believe that the AllOfMp3 site violates the spirit, if not the letter, of international copyright law. However, I agree that the law seems to say that distribution, not use, is the problem. That being the case, you're correct that the user isn't breaking the law. It's just a convenient way for AllOfMp3 to shift the blame: "We told them not to download music if they are in a country where this is illegal. We can't be responsible if US or EU users are downloading content that they shouldn't."
I didn't know it was hurt. It's good to know that they're doing better now. I suppose this is due to that vaunted Russian healthcare system, which is not only healing citizens who can afford to pay, but is now healing companies that are suffering persecution in the West.
I'm so glad this didn't come on the heels of some other bad news.
"Personalized" menus was/is the biggest outrage against usability ever foisted on an unsuspecting public. I know you can "turn it off" but with all the research showing that users memorize the interface by the position of buttons/menus (rather than their appearance or label) it boggles that a company that pretends to care about usability would tout this as a feature. It is, rather, the very definition of an anti-feature.
comes not from punitive awards (at least not as the root cause) but from the ability of lawyers to take a "cut" of the cash. If lawyers were required to charge a set fee, you'd never see class action suits where the lawyers ask for $1 billion dollars and each plaintif gets $0.38 while each lawyer gets $1 million.
I don't know what the solution is, as all the proposed remedies have downsides (loser pays, etc). But the current system sucks.
What happens what you try and watch an HDCP encrypted movie on a display without HDCP? I hooked up a bog standard 17in, 1,280 x 1,024 display and tried to play a movie. The supplied InterVideo WinDVD BD software started to play and then stopped - and that was that. So there you go - the disc won't even play
So a paid-for movie on BlueRay, combined with a Sony "root-kit-o-matic" Vaio, and a non-HDCP display (which is most displays in homes... heck most displays on the market right now) is going to fail to play. Apparently without an error message. Just craps out.
I hope that this "wired DRM" will seriously backfire on all the cretins supporting it: Sony, Microsoft, the studios, etc. I don't understand how they expect to get people to switch over to their new DRM scheme when the massive downside is that for most consumers, right now, anything they buy that uses this scheme is going to fail to play. It's either going to fail because they don't know which movie format to buy, or fail to play because their media is now tied to their player, or fail to play because the player will refuse to send data to a non-DRM'd display.
Two or three failures of this sort will be all it takes for most people to give up on the technology. DVDs (and iTunes, and other similar schemes) succeeded because the DRM is mostly transparent. Yes, there's no way to skip through the FBI warning at the beginning of the movie, but most folks don't care because eventually the movie plays and the 10 second wait isn't that frustrating. But when the system won't play a BlueRay disk and they can't figure out why (and it's happened twice before) I think a lot of folks are going to shrug and say "Well, I guess I'll stick with DVDs"
Why bother making up numbers when 20 seconds of research shows that you're... well... making up numbers.
US DOD Budget, fiscal 2006: $406 billion
USSR Defense Budget: $70 billion China Defense Budget: $90.0 billion NATO Combined Defense Budget: $160 billion
You're already over, right there.
In addition, to further refute this ridiculous comment, both Russia and China spend a higher percentage of their GDP on defense. The US spends 3.7% of GDP, while China spends 4.2% and Russia spends a whopping 12% of GDP on defense.
I know slashdot is the home of a high proportion of America-hating basement dwellers, but this post (completely blind to reality and the possibility that someone might actually take 30 seconds to google the numbers) is a new low.
Mac: For people who don't want to know why their computer works Linux: For people who do want to know why their computers works DOS: For people who want to know why their computer doesn't work Windows: For people who don't want to know why their computer doesn't work
It depends on how "usable" Vista is with the typical bottom-of-the-line PC hardware. If even the non-Aero versions require a significantly beefier box, that's going to make a difference in how much new hardware costs. Is a Vista roll out going to mean that the receptionist needs something more than that $300 box she has now? Will the guy in the shipping department need 2GB of RAM to run his spreadsheets in Vista Office?
I don't have those answers (I'm one of those "switchers-to-Mac") as I haven't seen Vista. I'm not even very curious since Vista isn't going to have a big affect on my personal computing expenses (for the same reason)-- Just a thought as to why this might not be FUD.
The Pentagon is by no means the largest department in the federal government in terms of money spent. The DOD budget for 2006 is projected to be $419.3 billion, while the Health and Human Services will spend $642 billion, almost 1/3 more.
Of course, you'll never read about this in the news, since it sells a lot more commercials to talk about how the goverment is spending billions to kill people while millions of children are starving in the streets.
In any case, why carp about one of the things that the constitution says the Feds can spend money on when they're interfering in a hundred other places where powers were supposed to be reserved to that states?
It's not just that brick-and-mortar stores have had longer to learn about security (though that's true)--it's that there's a whole different level of audacity (for want of a better word) involved in standing in line, paying for an item, and then brazening it out when the cashier asks to see ID.
Sitting in your parent's basement hacking databases there are layers of obscurity between you and the "scene" of the crime. For a careful hacker, there can be enough layers of indirection that getting caught borders on the impossible. In order to be apprehended, a long chain of events must occur: the retailer has to figure out they've been hacked, you have to make a mistake that leaves tracks for the authorities to trace, and someone in law enforcement has to have the skills, time, and drive to track you down. On top of that, once arrested, the jury must be able to be convinced that those obscure technical details do indeed mean that you were the one who did the deed.
The perceived danger of remotely hacking a system (and the cost-to-benefit ratio) is lower than standing at the cash register, with the possibility that a security guard, or even a plainclothes police officer, might be nearby. I think this is much like that lack of civility that we seen in online forums; people will write things on Slashdot that they would never dream of saying in the presence of coworkers (I'm thinking here primarily of sexist and racist comments, but some of the more extreme personal insults might fall into this category too).
It's not so much experience that makes the difference. It's the criminal's ability to assess risk.
"put comsumers back in control of their PC" -- it's like a politician who has been told not to stray from the talking points -- just keep repeating that mantra over and over and over
Tell me again guys, just which OS it is that prevented me from having full control of my PC, and which company developed, sold, and provided weekly security patches for that OS? Hmmm... could it be... satan? (jk)
This is the reason that I switched to a Powerbook in February this year, and replaced my second PC with a Mac mini in April. The only Windows machine I own is in my MAME cabinet, and that's because my roll-my-own MAME frontend requires Window's lack of security to work.
I do not think it means what you think it means (at least here at Slashdot, anyway):-)
More like "automated poster of random articles, without the application of any thought whatsoever." Seriously, a well-trained rat could hit the "Publish" button and accomplish pretty much 99% of what/. apparently pays "editors" for. At the least they should change the job title to "button clicker" or something more accurate.
I swear you could write a script to spellcheck article submissions and post some random subset and the result would be better than Zonk + ScuttleMonkey
are we forced to append ".mobi" rather than prepending "mobi."? Leave aside the asinine idea of forming a TLD "for mobiles" that uses "m" and "o" right next to each other. If you could get site publishers to agree to a standard (by some other means than creating a new TLD) it would be trivial for everyone to create a sub-domain for mobile devices. There's no "mobile usability magic" in the ibm.mobi domain that couldn't more easily (and cheaply) be dealt with by a common sub-domain (mobi.ibm.com) for mobile devices.
The whole ".mobi will make it easier on mobile users" is a crock. This is a straight-up money play.
I use OSS both at home and at work (and I don't currently own a Windows computer), but I hate it when the OSS bigots do this (and it's an almost constant refrain these days): pick some obscure situation with unusual parameters and say "That's why OSS... it's for the children" or "just run this undocumented command with these eighteen switches and it's teh roxor!"
The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of users are familiar with "standardized" GUi-driven applications as seen in Windows. Ignoring the fact that OSS applications tend to defy standard software design conventions (or even take delight in breaking them) is missing one of the important reasons that people familiar with Windows are concerned about switching to something else. When you've invested a lot of time and effort into memorizing keyboard shortcuts, menu locations, and icons, there's a significant cognitive dissonance associated with switching platforms/applications. Add to that the fact that apparently no two OSS applications use the same interface elements (sometimes even within product screens) and you're looking at a painful learning curve.
That doesn't mean that you shouldn't encourage people to switch (in my opinion, you should) but it's important to understand the reasons that people are reluctant to change. There's inertia involved beyond the mere "it's different and I don't like it because it's different." Understanding this lets you work to help reduce the difficulties a new user might encounter and to offer explanations (not excuses) as to why things are different.
But using name-calling against users and the software they are familiar with isn't the type of rational discussion this issue needs.
When your average person is buying a new PC, there's an "obligation" to pay the basic MS tax for Windows. Unless you're talking about the extremely price-conscious, a lot of these folks see the extra $100 for bundled Office as just another routine cost of buying a PC, since they "can't do homework/write a letter/view the spreadsheet from their CPA" without it.
I know my dad, who is not an extremely savvy computer buyer, always pays for bundled Office, even if he still has the CDs for an older version. Basically, he's conditioned to think that Office is what you need to do documents/spreadsheets and there's no convincing him otherwise. And with technology, of course, the newer version is always "better." On top of that, he'd be reluctant to switch to OpenOffice or another free/cheap suite now, because he "knows" Office.
Slashdot Mirror
I can see it now:
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all!!
My mother is a professor of education at a college in California and this is something that educators have been talking about for a long while. Google for "multiple intelligences" for a lot more information, but basically there's a theory that says that "intelligence" can be divided up into a number of categories and that people tend to excell in one or two of these areas, but few are outstanding in all of them.
The standard breakdown is something like:
Atheletes tend to excell at Spatial and Kinesthetic, while the stereotypical geek is strongest in Logical-mathematical and weakest in Interpersonal.
I'm not sure I completely agree that this is the end-all-be-all for understanding intelligence, but it does provide an interesting look into ways to classify people who might not be "book smart." For instance, a terrific ballerina might not have excellent Interpersonal or Linguistic intelligence, but she certainly has some special "intelligence" that allows her to excell in an area where I would certainly be an abject failure.I encourage anyone interested in this idea of multiple intelligences to poke around and do some research. Again, it may not be the final answer, but it provides an interesting framework for thinking about the topic.
and to those of us with a Windows machine, it still matters. Every time (every stinking time) I open an Explorer window to the "machine" level, I have to wait 5 seconds while Windows dutifully checks the floppy drive so it can see what to display for A: Never mind the fact that there is not now nor has their ever been a disk in the drive, never mind the fact that the last time anyone used a floppy was two versions of Windows back, the PC manufacturer still installed the drive and Windows still wastes time checking for a floppy.
It wasn't morally offensive, it was just a nusaince. I too am glad to see the death of them.
Once you bring your purchase into the US, US law applies. For instance, it might be perfectly legal to buy a fully automatic AK-47 in Russia (I suspect not, but it makes a simple example) , but importing such a weapon into the US would require jumping through numerous hoops. Indeed, unless you're a registered firearms collector or have the appropriate license, owning such a firearm would be against the law and you could expect the government to take action against you. The fact that you bought the item in Russia doesn't necessarily mean that Russian law applies.
I'm not a lawyer, but I believe that the AllOfMp3 site violates the spirit, if not the letter, of international copyright law. However, I agree that the law seems to say that distribution, not use, is the problem. That being the case, you're correct that the user isn't breaking the law. It's just a convenient way for AllOfMp3 to shift the blame: "We told them not to download music if they are in a country where this is illegal. We can't be responsible if US or EU users are downloading content that they shouldn't."
I didn't know it was hurt. It's good to know that they're doing better now. I suppose this is due to that vaunted Russian healthcare system, which is not only healing citizens who can afford to pay, but is now healing companies that are suffering persecution in the West.
I'm so glad this didn't come on the heels of some other bad news.
so it shows up like this:
:-)
Windows I...
Windows C...
More Wind...
"Personalized" menus was/is the biggest outrage against usability ever foisted on an unsuspecting public. I know you can "turn it off" but with all the research showing that users memorize the interface by the position of buttons/menus (rather than their appearance or label) it boggles that a company that pretends to care about usability would tout this as a feature. It is, rather, the very definition of an anti-feature.
comes not from punitive awards (at least not as the root cause) but from the ability of lawyers to take a "cut" of the cash. If lawyers were required to charge a set fee, you'd never see class action suits where the lawyers ask for $1 billion dollars and each plaintif gets $0.38 while each lawyer gets $1 million.
I don't know what the solution is, as all the proposed remedies have downsides (loser pays, etc). But the current system sucks.
From TFA:
So a paid-for movie on BlueRay, combined with a Sony "root-kit-o-matic" Vaio, and a non-HDCP display (which is most displays in homes... heck most displays on the market right now) is going to fail to play. Apparently without an error message. Just craps out.
I hope that this "wired DRM" will seriously backfire on all the cretins supporting it: Sony, Microsoft, the studios, etc. I don't understand how they expect to get people to switch over to their new DRM scheme when the massive downside is that for most consumers, right now, anything they buy that uses this scheme is going to fail to play. It's either going to fail because they don't know which movie format to buy, or fail to play because their media is now tied to their player, or fail to play because the player will refuse to send data to a non-DRM'd display.
Two or three failures of this sort will be all it takes for most people to give up on the technology. DVDs (and iTunes, and other similar schemes) succeeded because the DRM is mostly transparent. Yes, there's no way to skip through the FBI warning at the beginning of the movie, but most folks don't care because eventually the movie plays and the 10 second wait isn't that frustrating. But when the system won't play a BlueRay disk and they can't figure out why (and it's happened twice before) I think a lot of folks are going to shrug and say "Well, I guess I'll stick with DVDs"
They need someone to come along and give them the stick. The whole carrot thing is overrated.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Why bother making up numbers when 20 seconds of research shows that you're... well... making up numbers.
US DOD Budget, fiscal 2006: $406 billion
USSR Defense Budget: $70 billion
China Defense Budget: $90.0 billion
NATO Combined Defense Budget: $160 billion
You're already over, right there.
In addition, to further refute this ridiculous comment, both Russia and China spend a higher percentage of their GDP on defense. The US spends 3.7% of GDP, while China spends 4.2% and Russia spends a whopping 12% of GDP on defense.
I know slashdot is the home of a high proportion of America-hating basement dwellers, but this post (completely blind to reality and the possibility that someone might actually take 30 seconds to google the numbers) is a new low.
Mac: For people who don't want to know why their computer works
Linux: For people who do want to know why their computers works
DOS: For people who want to know why their computer doesn't work
Windows: For people who don't want to know why their computer doesn't work
We all now know it was smashed by a Transformer :-)
It depends on how "usable" Vista is with the typical bottom-of-the-line PC hardware. If even the non-Aero versions require a significantly beefier box, that's going to make a difference in how much new hardware costs. Is a Vista roll out going to mean that the receptionist needs something more than that $300 box she has now? Will the guy in the shipping department need 2GB of RAM to run his spreadsheets in Vista Office?
I don't have those answers (I'm one of those "switchers-to-Mac") as I haven't seen Vista. I'm not even very curious since Vista isn't going to have a big affect on my personal computing expenses (for the same reason)-- Just a thought as to why this might not be FUD.
The Pentagon is by no means the largest department in the federal government in terms of money spent. The DOD budget for 2006 is projected to be $419.3 billion, while the
Health and Human Services will spend $642 billion, almost 1/3 more.
Of course, you'll never read about this in the news, since it sells a lot more commercials to talk about how the goverment is spending billions to kill people while millions of children are starving in the streets.
In any case, why carp about one of the things that the constitution says the Feds can spend money on when they're interfering in a hundred other places where powers were supposed to be reserved to that states?
It's not just that brick-and-mortar stores have had longer to learn about security (though that's true)--it's that there's a whole different level of audacity (for want of a better word) involved in standing in line, paying for an item, and then brazening it out when the cashier asks to see ID.
Sitting in your parent's basement hacking databases there are layers of obscurity between you and the "scene" of the crime. For a careful hacker, there can be enough layers of indirection that getting caught borders on the impossible. In order to be apprehended, a long chain of events must occur: the retailer has to figure out they've been hacked, you have to make a mistake that leaves tracks for the authorities to trace, and someone in law enforcement has to have the skills, time, and drive to track you down. On top of that, once arrested, the jury must be able to be convinced that those obscure technical details do indeed mean that you were the one who did the deed.
The perceived danger of remotely hacking a system (and the cost-to-benefit ratio) is lower than standing at the cash register, with the possibility that a security guard, or even a plainclothes police officer, might be nearby. I think this is much like that lack of civility that we seen in online forums; people will write things on Slashdot that they would never dream of saying in the presence of coworkers (I'm thinking here primarily of sexist and racist comments, but some of the more extreme personal insults might fall into this category too).
It's not so much experience that makes the difference. It's the criminal's ability to assess risk.
Overall, I find the iTunes interface to be generally in-line with other Apple apps.
I think what you meant to say is Either version looks and feels totally non-Windows-standard
Whether Apple should have changed the Windows version of their application's interface to match other Windows apps is a different question
"put comsumers back in control of their PC" -- it's like a politician who has been told not to stray from the talking points -- just keep repeating that mantra over and over and over
Tell me again guys, just which OS it is that prevented me from having full control of my PC, and which company developed, sold, and provided weekly security patches for that OS? Hmmm... could it be... satan? (jk)
This is the reason that I switched to a Powerbook in February this year, and replaced my second PC with a Mac mini in April. The only Windows machine I own is in my MAME cabinet, and that's because my roll-my-own MAME frontend requires Window's lack of security to work.
I do not think it means what you think it means (at least here at Slashdot, anyway) :-)
/. apparently pays "editors" for. At the least they should change the job title to "button clicker" or something more accurate.
More like "automated poster of random articles, without the application of any thought whatsoever." Seriously, a well-trained rat could hit the "Publish" button and accomplish pretty much 99% of what
I swear you could write a script to spellcheck article submissions and post some random subset and the result would be better than Zonk + ScuttleMonkey
are we forced to append ".mobi" rather than prepending "mobi."? Leave aside the asinine idea of forming a TLD "for mobiles" that uses "m" and "o" right next to each other. If you could get site publishers to agree to a standard (by some other means than creating a new TLD) it would be trivial for everyone to create a sub-domain for mobile devices. There's no "mobile usability magic" in the ibm.mobi domain that couldn't more easily (and cheaply) be dealt with by a common sub-domain (mobi.ibm.com) for mobile devices.
The whole ".mobi will make it easier on mobile users" is a crock. This is a straight-up money play.
I use OSS both at home and at work (and I don't currently own a Windows computer), but I hate it when the OSS bigots do this (and it's an almost constant refrain these days): pick some obscure situation with unusual parameters and say "That's why OSS... it's for the children" or "just run this undocumented command with these eighteen switches and it's teh roxor!"
The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of users are familiar with "standardized" GUi-driven applications as seen in Windows. Ignoring the fact that OSS applications tend to defy standard software design conventions (or even take delight in breaking them) is missing one of the important reasons that people familiar with Windows are concerned about switching to something else. When you've invested a lot of time and effort into memorizing keyboard shortcuts, menu locations, and icons, there's a significant cognitive dissonance associated with switching platforms/applications. Add to that the fact that apparently no two OSS applications use the same interface elements (sometimes even within product screens) and you're looking at a painful learning curve.
That doesn't mean that you shouldn't encourage people to switch (in my opinion, you should) but it's important to understand the reasons that people are reluctant to change. There's inertia involved beyond the mere "it's different and I don't like it because it's different." Understanding this lets you work to help reduce the difficulties a new user might encounter and to offer explanations (not excuses) as to why things are different.
But using name-calling against users and the software they are familiar with isn't the type of rational discussion this issue needs.
When your average person is buying a new PC, there's an "obligation" to pay the basic MS tax for Windows. Unless you're talking about the extremely price-conscious, a lot of these folks see the extra $100 for bundled Office as just another routine cost of buying a PC, since they "can't do homework/write a letter/view the spreadsheet from their CPA" without it.
I know my dad, who is not an extremely savvy computer buyer, always pays for bundled Office, even if he still has the CDs for an older version. Basically, he's conditioned to think that Office is what you need to do documents/spreadsheets and there's no convincing him otherwise. And with technology, of course, the newer version is always "better." On top of that, he'd be reluctant to switch to OpenOffice or another free/cheap suite now, because he "knows" Office.
Do you want help with that?
I thought it was foxes...
You insensitive clod!