The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is "Never use a desktop OS, when your device isn't a desktop." (maniacal laughter)
How many situations do you know of where something that was a good solution to one problem has now become the default solution to every problem? It's the old saw about when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
When you choose Windows as your OS, every device works like a desktop. It doesnt' matter that the screen is tiny, you use the "desktop" metaphor and the "Start" menu. It doesn't matter that there's limited memory and a slow processor, you use the Windows applications (lite versions, but still bloatware). This is why I've never seriously considered a WinCE device, even though I've owned a PDA since 2000 and a phone/PDA combo since 2004, and two of the computers in my house run Windows.
I want something that's designed for the use it's being put to -- fit for purpose, we used to call it. If Microsoft's vaunted usability expertise were real, they would have abandoned the "Mini Windows" metaphor on mobile devices long ago.
I rarely if ever see the sys admins here at work... I'm moderately well-informed and handle most of the problems on my Windows, Linux, and ESX systems myself. But I am aware of the work that goes into keeping the network running and everything humming along.
So, from one of those "customers" you never talk to, a sincere thanks for your often unsung efforts.
What part of "...I took the initiative in creating the Internet" can't you parse?
Whether Gore was intentionally claiming a historic role in the "invention" of the net, or just mispoke while trying to cement his "legacy"--the sentence still reads as something said by a politician puffed up with his own importance giving himself sole credit for something he participated in.
The implied message is "I personally took the initiative, all by myself, to create the Internet.
Gore was and is a goof. He may have been right on some issues, but like any politician his main goal was getting re-elected and playing to the folks back home.
In my opinion, this claim of the historic importance of Albert Gore III in the creation of the WWW is fair game and deserves regular mocking.
But I still have to question how useful this will be in the overall scheme of improving conditions in the countries where it's targeted. While the laptops aren't intended for places where there's no running water or a lack of food, I'm not convinced that you can jump-start a country's development by skipping important steps like industrialization and infrastructure.
Understand, I'm not arguing that there's no point in doing this, I'm merely suggesting that 50,000 hand powered laptops might not be the most efficacious method for moving third world countries along on the path to development. Especially as these seem destined to wind up in the hands of children, for whom there will be little computer-related work once they reach adulthood. Unless we're training them to be $100 laptop technicians.
The project won't be a total loss of course (even if it fails it's stated goal) but I have to believe that there are better things that we could be doing with the time, effort, and money that's going into this project.
Will someone please shoot the writers/editors who keep referring to things as "two-dot-oh". Please. It's like a rolled up ball of bad-naming crud.
What we have is an ugly rehash of the late 80's and early 90's when everyone who wanted to add "new hotness" to their product name called it 2000, the dotbomb when everything cool was e or.com, and the recent "Applefication" of products to i.
you vaccinate the non-wild birds (domesticated somehow doesn't fit), because these are the birds that humans are most likely to come in contact with. This reduces the chances of people catching the current virus from infected birds (regular, close contact with an infected bird seems to be a factor in bird/human transmission. In addition, once these birds are vaccinated, you've hopefully created a significant reduction in the bird/human interface where mutation to a more transmissible form is likely to occur.
None of the "lessons" you've pointed out as worth teaching is something that a child gets through some magic incantation that's only learned through "socialization" with their peers. The lessons that you are contrasting (don't be smart, avoid gatherings) are the natural lessons to be drawn from these situations unless there's an adult around to point out the longer view (don't be arrogant, don't be a victim). These lessons help children interact with their peers, but the lessons aren't taught by that interaction.
As a former teacher, I can say with confidence that if you rely on teachers in the current system to teach these types of lessons to your children, you'll be visiting them in Juvenile Detention in a couple of years. The things that teachers are required to do and say and the things that they are prohibited from doing and saying almost completely rule out the ability to teach these types of lessons, especially at the secondary level. As a new (only been parenting for eight-weeks) parent, I can say that I would never rely on someone whose whole outlook is structured by tenure and not rocking the boat to teach my child these important lessons.
In any event, I don't know any homeschoolers who spend their days "sitting at home." Most belong to co-ops where they spend time with peers, interact with younger and older kids, and get "hard" subject teaching (usually math and science) from a qualified teacher. My sister's kids had a college Biology professor teaching them science one year, and an astronomer teaching it the next. Home schooling is like almost everything else: you're going to get good and bad home schooling experiences and a whole range across that spectrum. Funny thing--that's just what you get in public schools.
"It is much harder to make a reliable thin battery"??? Huh?
They've been making reliable, thin batteries for-stinking-ever. For at least seven or eight years cell phones have been using batteries that are thin enough to work in a 1" thick MBP. An inability to make thin batteries that work would be a convenient excuse, but it doesn't fly.
It might be cheaper to build batteries from a bank of cylindrical cells, but I don't think there's any unsolvable technical issue that's holding back Apple from making good batteries.
Of course your other point does hold true--you don't need to buy a Mac to have a solid, portable, geek-friendly system. These days, both Ubuntu and Fedora seem to have excellent support for laptop hardware, as well as the usual Linux goodness. Indeed, once my wife decides that she wants to get rid of her Dell laptop, I think I'll take it and turn it into a Ubuntu machine. Maybe she'll take my PowerBook in trade?
Sure MS might kill off Joe Sixpack's Windows box, and Joe isn't going to like that, but what interests me is "how dead" will the Windows install be, and what will Joe do to get his data back?
I know a lot of "non-technical" folks who had boxes built by geeks who probably didn't install a licensed version of Windows. These folks are going to be mighty surprised and unhappy if the "genuine advantage" of Windows turns out to be the inability to access gigabytes of digital images of their kids that they took with that "works for sure" camera. Most of these folks wouldn't be savvy enough to buy a new machine and put their old drive into it to salvage the "lost" images.
I really don't see how this can possibly benefit Microsoft. If you could buy a retail box of Windows and use the key on your "dead" box, then maybe Microsoft would make a few extra sales (along with the millions of enemies they are about to make). But most folks are going to see this as "My Windows broke again" and ask a geek friend to come fix it. My suspicion is that a lot of non-technical folks will at this point get a) a hack to work around the "genuine advantage" software and b) advice that their next PC should be a Mac or Linux box.
With the current state of Linux distros, it seems like we're approaching the point where you could sell non-technical people on Linux, since the disadvantages (UI differences, some application types are harder to find) are starting to weigh less than the advantages (never by AV again, free as in beer, geeks friends are happier to support you)
society and a general lack of rational behavior that seems to be associated with it.
There are several different forces at work here-- Among buyers, you have 1. Impulse buyers: Those folks bid an item up at the last minute because they've decided that they "have to" have the item. 2. "Thrill-of-the-chase"ers: These people bid more than they might otherwise, because "the win" has value to them. 3. Rational snipers: folks who wait until the last minute to bid high to avoid competing with #1 or #2.
If everyone behaved rationally, sniping would be neither necessary or rewarded. But when you have about 90% of the eBay buying population behaving in a completely irrational fashion, there are cases when sniping makes sense. As long as what you bid in your "snipe" is a planned amount and as long as that amount is less than or equal to what you're willing to pay (and by definition it is) then sniping can work.
Possibly there's something eBay could do to make this less true. However, I believe that in most cases the buyers in category 1 and 2 (who are probably the majority of eBay buyers) run up prices, which actually brings eBay more money. So they have a disincentive to "fix" this.
I would think that even if you include over/underpasses (for surface streets to cross the highways) and the multiple-level interchanges that you have in big cities, the ratio seems way off.
The info here (http://interstate50th.org/trivia.shtml) and here (http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/highway.htm) seems to bear this out... but it still sounds funny
If someone can "...think of no other human being who as/is going to change the world in such as positive way as Bill Gates" there are only three possibilities:
1. Insanity 2. Alzheimer's 3. A paid MS shill
Hello, McFly? Ghandi, Clara Barton, Willam Booth, Mother Teresa, Louis Pasteur, Thomas Jefferson,... Sheesh. Bill Gates is the son of a banker got lucky and took advantage of a mistake by IBM and then using illegal business practices increased his wealth exponentially. Later, feeling the typical nouveau rich class guilt, he donated money to a philanthropic foundation. Not enough to personally inconvenience himself, mind you, but enough that the ignorant start yelling "OMG BG is the roxor!"
I've said this to the BG cultists over and over, but it bears repeating: BG's "philanthropy" is meaningless... to BG. Show me some single mom struggling to make it who give $10 to the United Way and I'm impressed. If there's a middle income family donating 10% of what they make to charity, I think that's noteworthy. When a man gives away a portion of his wealth, but it's so little that he never notices (except for the fawning news articles), that's meaningless. Think widow's mite here.
The mistaken hero worship in the parent is so smarmy it's sickening.
it only takes a few selfish people to screw up a system that relies on everyone not looking out for themselves. In much the same was that democratic governments have been hijacked by wealthy and charismatic leaders, most communist governments, no matter how well-intentioned the original revolutionaries were, have quickly fallen into totalitarianism. Read Animal Farm, it's an excellent illustration of this principle.
It doesn't matter how much you improve yourself; unless an overwhelming majority follow suit, the people who haven't changed will take advantage of everyone else. Honest merchants still have to install theft deterrent systems, not because they most of their customers aren't moral, but because those who aren't would quickly empty the store of small, pocketable items.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to live a morally upright life (thogh your self-righteous tone doesn't say much for your position)--but I think there's a biblical reference to being "wise as serpents and gentle as doves."
It's very annoying, but it seems like the only way to get problems resolved anymore is to act like a jerk.
I've had a couple of experiences where being reasonable and polite got me nowhere with customer service, but when I got frustrated at the end of the conversation (after being told several times "there's nothing we can do") and basically gave them and their manager hell over the problem, it got resolved ("OK sir, we'll send out a replacement right away").
The most frustrating thing about this (to me) is that I don't want to have to be an ass to get a problem fixed. In fact, I go out of my way to do business with companies that fix the problem the first time when I come and politely ask for assistance. I don't recall this being the case in my younger years, but that may be more a result of my memory than an actual decline in customer service.
utopian dream-world that never existed, where only the best and brightest got into Soviet schools. Leaving aside the fact that this is a first-order fallacy, I think it's important to call people on complete ignorance of the repression that was going on behind the iron curtain during the communist era. Perhaps the parent didn't think through their post (on Slashdot? Never!) but for those of us who experienced first-hand what was happening in Eastern Block countries, this sort of mindless worship of the Soviet system rankles.
And you should read my post again: I didn't say our system was necessarily better -- both political influence and money are poor indicators of scholastic success. I'm just pointing out the parent's naivete on the subject of education under the Soviet system.
was there ever some "guarantee" that people in schools in the USSR were bright. Take off those rose colored glasses (once you do, you can see the 50 million people "Uncle Joe" killed) and you'll realize that children of high government officials, party members, and celebrities were regularly given spots a top-notch Soviet schools. Money might not have played as big a role as it does in the US, but a parent's political connection is no better arbiter of scholastic success than their financial success.
Put your little red book down and come back to reality.
Slashdot Mirror
The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is "Never use a desktop OS, when your device isn't a desktop." (maniacal laughter)
How many situations do you know of where something that was a good solution to one problem has now become the default solution to every problem? It's the old saw about when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
When you choose Windows as your OS, every device works like a desktop. It doesnt' matter that the screen is tiny, you use the "desktop" metaphor and the "Start" menu. It doesn't matter that there's limited memory and a slow processor, you use the Windows applications (lite versions, but still bloatware). This is why I've never seriously considered a WinCE device, even though I've owned a PDA since 2000 and a phone/PDA combo since 2004, and two of the computers in my house run Windows.
I want something that's designed for the use it's being put to -- fit for purpose, we used to call it. If Microsoft's vaunted usability expertise were real, they would have abandoned the "Mini Windows" metaphor on mobile devices long ago.
I rarely if ever see the sys admins here at work... I'm moderately well-informed and handle most of the problems on my Windows, Linux, and ESX systems myself. But I am aware of the work that goes into keeping the network running and everything humming along.
So, from one of those "customers" you never talk to, a sincere thanks for your often unsung efforts.
welcome our new diaper-wearing game coach overlords
What part of "...I took the initiative in creating the Internet" can't you parse?
Whether Gore was intentionally claiming a historic role in the "invention" of the net, or just mispoke while trying to cement his "legacy"--the sentence still reads as something said by a politician puffed up with his own importance giving himself sole credit for something he participated in.
The implied message is "I personally took the initiative, all by myself, to create the Internet.
Gore was and is a goof. He may have been right on some issues, but like any politician his main goal was getting re-elected and playing to the folks back home.
In my opinion, this claim of the historic importance of Albert Gore III in the creation of the WWW is fair game and deserves regular mocking.
But I still have to question how useful this will be in the overall scheme of improving conditions in the countries where it's targeted. While the laptops aren't intended for places where there's no running water or a lack of food, I'm not convinced that you can jump-start a country's development by skipping important steps like industrialization and infrastructure.
Understand, I'm not arguing that there's no point in doing this, I'm merely suggesting that 50,000 hand powered laptops might not be the most efficacious method for moving third world countries along on the path to development. Especially as these seem destined to wind up in the hands of children, for whom there will be little computer-related work once they reach adulthood. Unless we're training them to be $100 laptop technicians.
The project won't be a total loss of course (even if it fails it's stated goal) but I have to believe that there are better things that we could be doing with the time, effort, and money that's going into this project.
Grammar ninjas are the new hotness ;-)
Winners will the consumer be.
It's nice to know we can save some money when crashing jet liners into tall buildings!
Or did you mean economic terrorists?
There impossible to sea until
Will someone please shoot the writers/editors who keep referring to things as "two-dot-oh". Please. It's like a rolled up ball of bad-naming crud.
.com, and the recent "Applefication" of products to i.
What we have is an ugly rehash of the late 80's and early 90's when everyone who wanted to add "new hotness" to their product name called it 2000, the dotbomb when everything cool was e or
Get over the 2.0 already.
40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanos... the dead rising from the grave... human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together...
mass hysteria!
you vaccinate the non-wild birds (domesticated somehow doesn't fit), because these are the birds that humans are most likely to come in contact with. This reduces the chances of people catching the current virus from infected birds (regular, close contact with an infected bird seems to be a factor in bird/human transmission. In addition, once these birds are vaccinated, you've hopefully created a significant reduction in the bird/human interface where mutation to a more transmissible form is likely to occur.
Wouldn't you say?
is the parent.
None of the "lessons" you've pointed out as worth teaching is something that a child gets through some magic incantation that's only learned through "socialization" with their peers. The lessons that you are contrasting (don't be smart, avoid gatherings) are the natural lessons to be drawn from these situations unless there's an adult around to point out the longer view (don't be arrogant, don't be a victim). These lessons help children interact with their peers, but the lessons aren't taught by that interaction.
As a former teacher, I can say with confidence that if you rely on teachers in the current system to teach these types of lessons to your children, you'll be visiting them in Juvenile Detention in a couple of years. The things that teachers are required to do and say and the things that they are prohibited from doing and saying almost completely rule out the ability to teach these types of lessons, especially at the secondary level. As a new (only been parenting for eight-weeks) parent, I can say that I would never rely on someone whose whole outlook is structured by tenure and not rocking the boat to teach my child these important lessons.
In any event, I don't know any homeschoolers who spend their days "sitting at home." Most belong to co-ops where they spend time with peers, interact with younger and older kids, and get "hard" subject teaching (usually math and science) from a qualified teacher. My sister's kids had a college Biology professor teaching them science one year, and an astronomer teaching it the next. Home schooling is like almost everything else: you're going to get good and bad home schooling experiences and a whole range across that spectrum. Funny thing--that's just what you get in public schools.
"It is much harder to make a reliable thin battery"??? Huh?
They've been making reliable, thin batteries for-stinking-ever. For at least seven or eight years cell phones have been using batteries that are thin enough to work in a 1" thick MBP. An inability to make thin batteries that work would be a convenient excuse, but it doesn't fly.
It might be cheaper to build batteries from a bank of cylindrical cells, but I don't think there's any unsolvable technical issue that's holding back Apple from making good batteries.
Of course your other point does hold true--you don't need to buy a Mac to have a solid, portable, geek-friendly system. These days, both Ubuntu and Fedora seem to have excellent support for laptop hardware, as well as the usual Linux goodness. Indeed, once my wife decides that she wants to get rid of her Dell laptop, I think I'll take it and turn it into a Ubuntu machine. Maybe she'll take my PowerBook in trade?
Sure MS might kill off Joe Sixpack's Windows box, and Joe isn't going to like that, but what interests me is "how dead" will the Windows install be, and what will Joe do to get his data back?
I know a lot of "non-technical" folks who had boxes built by geeks who probably didn't install a licensed version of Windows. These folks are going to be mighty surprised and unhappy if the "genuine advantage" of Windows turns out to be the inability to access gigabytes of digital images of their kids that they took with that "works for sure" camera. Most of these folks wouldn't be savvy enough to buy a new machine and put their old drive into it to salvage the "lost" images.
I really don't see how this can possibly benefit Microsoft. If you could buy a retail box of Windows and use the key on your "dead" box, then maybe Microsoft would make a few extra sales (along with the millions of enemies they are about to make). But most folks are going to see this as "My Windows broke again" and ask a geek friend to come fix it. My suspicion is that a lot of non-technical folks will at this point get a) a hack to work around the "genuine advantage" software and b) advice that their next PC should be a Mac or Linux box.
With the current state of Linux distros, it seems like we're approaching the point where you could sell non-technical people on Linux, since the disadvantages (UI differences, some application types are harder to find) are starting to weigh less than the advantages (never by AV again, free as in beer, geeks friends are happier to support you)
society and a general lack of rational behavior that seems to be associated with it.
There are several different forces at work here--
Among buyers, you have
1. Impulse buyers: Those folks bid an item up at the last minute because they've decided that they "have to" have the item.
2. "Thrill-of-the-chase"ers: These people bid more than they might otherwise, because "the win" has value to them.
3. Rational snipers: folks who wait until the last minute to bid high to avoid competing with #1 or #2.
If everyone behaved rationally, sniping would be neither necessary or rewarded. But when you have about 90% of the eBay buying population behaving in a completely irrational fashion, there are cases when sniping makes sense. As long as what you bid in your "snipe" is a planned amount and as long as that amount is less than or equal to what you're willing to pay (and by definition it is) then sniping can work.
Possibly there's something eBay could do to make this less true. However, I believe that in most cases the buyers in category 1 and 2 (who are probably the majority of eBay buyers) run up prices, which actually brings eBay more money. So they have a disincentive to "fix" this.
I would think that even if you include over/underpasses (for surface streets to cross the highways) and the multiple-level interchanges that you have in big cities, the ratio seems way off.
The info here (http://interstate50th.org/trivia.shtml) and here (http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/highway.htm) seems to bear this out... but it still sounds funny
If someone can "...think of no other human being who as/is going to change the world in such as positive way as Bill Gates" there are only three possibilities:
... Sheesh. Bill Gates is the son of a banker got lucky and took advantage of a mistake by IBM and then using illegal business practices increased his wealth exponentially. Later, feeling the typical nouveau rich class guilt, he donated money to a philanthropic foundation. Not enough to personally inconvenience himself, mind you, but enough that the ignorant start yelling "OMG BG is the roxor!"
1. Insanity
2. Alzheimer's
3. A paid MS shill
Hello, McFly? Ghandi, Clara Barton, Willam Booth, Mother Teresa, Louis Pasteur, Thomas Jefferson,
I've said this to the BG cultists over and over, but it bears repeating: BG's "philanthropy" is meaningless... to BG. Show me some single mom struggling to make it who give $10 to the United Way and I'm impressed. If there's a middle income family donating 10% of what they make to charity, I think that's noteworthy. When a man gives away a portion of his wealth, but it's so little that he never notices (except for the fawning news articles), that's meaningless. Think widow's mite here.
The mistaken hero worship in the parent is so smarmy it's sickening.
it only takes a few selfish people to screw up a system that relies on everyone not looking out for themselves. In much the same was that democratic governments have been hijacked by wealthy and charismatic leaders, most communist governments, no matter how well-intentioned the original revolutionaries were, have quickly fallen into totalitarianism. Read Animal Farm, it's an excellent illustration of this principle.
It doesn't matter how much you improve yourself; unless an overwhelming majority follow suit, the people who haven't changed will take advantage of everyone else. Honest merchants still have to install theft deterrent systems, not because they most of their customers aren't moral, but because those who aren't would quickly empty the store of small, pocketable items.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to live a morally upright life (thogh your self-righteous tone doesn't say much for your position)--but I think there's a biblical reference to being "wise as serpents and gentle as doves."
It's very annoying, but it seems like the only way to get problems resolved anymore is to act like a jerk.
I've had a couple of experiences where being reasonable and polite got me nowhere with customer service, but when I got frustrated at the end of the conversation (after being told several times "there's nothing we can do") and basically gave them and their manager hell over the problem, it got resolved ("OK sir, we'll send out a replacement right away").
The most frustrating thing about this (to me) is that I don't want to have to be an ass to get a problem fixed. In fact, I go out of my way to do business with companies that fix the problem the first time when I come and politely ask for assistance. I don't recall this being the case in my younger years, but that may be more a result of my memory than an actual decline in customer service.
That's why I have my Mac backed up on 3,248 floppies. If anything goes wrong with one, I'll only lose 1.44MB
Would you like to hear a song?
utopian dream-world that never existed, where only the best and brightest got into Soviet schools. Leaving aside the fact that this is a first-order fallacy, I think it's important to call people on complete ignorance of the repression that was going on behind the iron curtain during the communist era. Perhaps the parent didn't think through their post (on Slashdot? Never!) but for those of us who experienced first-hand what was happening in Eastern Block countries, this sort of mindless worship of the Soviet system rankles.
And you should read my post again: I didn't say our system was necessarily better -- both political influence and money are poor indicators of scholastic success. I'm just pointing out the parent's naivete on the subject of education under the Soviet system.
was there ever some "guarantee" that people in schools in the USSR were bright. Take off those rose colored glasses (once you do, you can see the 50 million people "Uncle Joe" killed) and you'll realize that children of high government officials, party members, and celebrities were regularly given spots a top-notch Soviet schools. Money might not have played as big a role as it does in the US, but a parent's political connection is no better arbiter of scholastic success than their financial success.
Put your little red book down and come back to reality.