eliminate corruption, push for the rule of law. If there was a way to invest in these things, it would go a long way toward helping the third world.
I struggle between frustration (why do they take up arms instead of working politically) and pity (how can we expect political solutions, when the daily necessities are lacking). Africa is in a world of hurt, with AIDS, civil wars, famine, tyranny, and a seemingly endless list of ills, none of which is easily solvable. I have a friend who is involved in a project rescuing street children in Zimbabwe, and I can tell you that the situation is heart-wrenching if you think of it on a personal level (rather than just relegating the whole contentent to the category of "screwed-up Africa"). Sometimes it feels like the little we can do (or give) is a drop in the bucket against everything that's happening.
My take is that investing in entrepreneurial projects (micro loans and other local-level projects to encourage business ownership) is a good start. The rise of the middle class in Europe (and eventually in America) is one basis for our focus on things like the rule of law and property ownership that have helped foster a higher standard of living and a more stable society. However, it took us several hundred years to go from serfdom to democracy (and longer than that to get from the Magna Carta to the Constitution)... I'm afraid the "dark continent" is in for a long, painful slog.
The first one: The Magical World Inside the Abandoned Refigerator
Others I liked:
Eggs, Toilet Paper, and Your School Hammers, Screwdrivers And Scissors: An I Can Do It All Book Strangers Have The Best Candy You're Different, and That's Bad! Daddy Drinks Because You Cry
I first found the Baen free library poking around the 'net looking for free books to read on my Palm Treo (gotta do something while the wife is shopping) and I was amazed--authors I'd actually heard of, books in series I'd actually started reading in paper, and for free... sweet!
I've read through all the free offerings (and bought some paper books based on things that interested me) and recently purchased a Webscription. It's a pretty good deal--five books for $15, in plain-vanilla HTML (so I can back them up and read them on any device I want), and three of the five were books I would have probably been tempted to buy as paperbacks. Baen passes a portion of the savings from not having to produce paper books along to the authors, saves on printing an distribution, and everybody wins.
I'm not sure about the digital ink stuff--my biggest concern would be display lifespan. I read at least a hundred books a year either as paper or eBooks (yes, seriously) and the reason my Palm works is that it's my phone so I take it everywhere and charge it up each night, and I'll replace it in a couple of years.
Overall, I'd love to see more publishers doing what Baen is doing. I definitely look for Baen books when browsing brick and mortar bookstores, and would patronize other publishers who would 1) provide compelling content 2) at a reasonable price, 3) in an open format
to ensure a nuclear reaction, it is quite easy to "break" a nuclear bomb, and extremely difficult to make one. Merely deforming the conventional explosives would be enough, since the "squeeze" required to initiate the chain reaction relies on precise timing and force.
Here on Slashdot, it's popular to tout the wonder that is Wikipedia, to revel in the wild-west democracy of it all, and break into rapturous platitudes about what a terrific source of high-quality information it is. Unfortunately, the reality (which none of the Wiki-boosters is likely to admit) is that Wikipedia is broken... fundamentally flawed, and can't be fixed.
Here's a tidbit for you concerning the food crisis in the Horn of Africa: drought is caused by high prices, overpopulation, and conflict. From the Horn of Africa Food Crisis article on Wikipedia: "This shortage, along with other factors including high cereal prices, overpopulation in the region, and conflict, have led to severe drought conditions." (1/11/06)
This is another example of why you can't rely on Wikipedia-the online encyclopedia written and edited by people with a limited grasp of the English language and (frequently) an even more limited knowledge of the subject matter. If you think that things written by committee are the epitome of bad writing, wait until you read articles that were both written AND edited by committee. And not just any committee, this a committee composed of your average basement-dwelling Net geeks, know-nothing Web noobs, and agenda-driven politicos.
Drought is a condition created by a shortage of water. That's the definition of the word. But here we have a Wikipedia article that plainly states that 'high cereal prices' are causal. Hmmmm... Explain to me again, oh geniuses, how high prices for cereals have 'led to severe drought conditions'? Apparently high prices are drying up the water supply. Clearly the author of this one is confused, either in their understanding of causality, or their understanding of the definition of the word 'drought.' Yet they felt competent to write (or edit) an article about the issue. Welcome to the world of the encyclopedia written by the ignorant.
The usual response of Wikipedia-philes is to answer any concern about the quality or accuracy of articles with 'anyone can edit it.' Which leads us to the immediate response (mine when I saw the above error): Why would I? Why would anyone waste their time? The person or persons who wrote this incorrect article will either a) change it back, or b) edit it further to destroy whatever correction I make. Where's the value proposition in this editing task? Am I supposed to feel satisfaction if I can see that it's corrected for 20 minutes before being reverted or overwritten? How am I supposed to feel tomorrow when I come back and see my efforts undone? Why would anyone with writing or editing ability or subject matter knowledge go to the effort of changing something that will almost immediately be screwed up again by someone without any.
No one is willing to address this issue. In forums, anyone who questions the problems of articles being written by people lacking essential subject-matter expertise is immediately shouted down. Long Live Wikipedia! Nothing possibly can be wrong! You just don't like the egalitarian nature of a "people's encyclopedia"... and on and on. Hello, McFly! If Wikipedia worked, it would be a wonderful resource. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, as the old saying goes.
In a community where everyone is 'equal' in power, despite inequalities in knowledge and ability, those with the later will, eventually -- inevitably, decline to participate. This particular type of communism (and that's not a pejorative) leads inexorably to a devaluing of the best in favor of not just the good, but the bad. In the case of Wiki articles, this means that a physics article is as likely to be written by a 12-year-old as a physicist. Or that 'drought' is as likely to mean 'famine' as 'water shortage.'
Wikipedia is an amusing read, but I wouldn't look to it for accuracy or anything resembling an even-handed explanation of a topic. The most that can be said for it is that it's an interesting social experiment. Nothing more.
and my first portable computer was a TRS-80 Pocket Computer 2 with (gasp!) 8K RAM. Did anyone else have one of these?
Ah those were the days--writing BASIC programs in the back of math class. I still remember some of the games I wrote using ASCII characters as the spaceships and how "cool" all my nerdy friends thought it was.
This (people not being in doubt) is one point of the study (users thought they were right 80% of the time) and it's at the root of a lot of disagreements, both IRL and online.
One of the reasons I don't read the "politics" section of slashdot is that people on both sides of any issue are so damn sure they're right. Generally they don't bother to think about (or perhaps even read) the responses from the other side. I can't understand how anyone can be as certain as people seem to be when discussing things online: are you really omniscient and infallable? Is there _no_ chance that you might be mistaken, or that the truth of a given matter might be something in the middle, between the poles?
IMO it's impossible to have a rational discussion with anyone who is sure they're right. Unless both sides can admit at least the possibility that the truth might lie between the extremes, they're just wasting time and bandwidth.
One thing that seems to be overlooked is that with productivity rises, it takes fewer employees to do the same amount of work. The same is true after a merger, where it's redundant (no pun intended) to have two shipping departments or two sales forces.
I've been laid off several times in the last six years (once on Christmas Eve), and it's never been a big deal. I'm not saying it's been "fun" but if you have a rational savings plan to build a contingency fund, you should be able make it during the times you're laod off. I have sympathy for folks who are losing their jobs, having been there myself, but I also know this isn't the end of the world. I hope they do, too.
You can look at a layoff as a crisis or as an opportunity. Your choice.
Books--physical paper & ink--are the best thing... ever.
I love having my Treo with eBooks from Project Gutenberg on it, because it's one device with multiple uses (and it doesn't look too odd carrying it around while my wife is shopping) but I would be very unhappy if that's all there was. I still spend several hundred dollars a year on "old-fashioned" books, and they're still the number one item on my Christmas and birthday wish lists.
There's a quote (I forget the exact content and author) that goes something like: If books had never been invented and someone told you you could take 3000 years of human knowledge and imagination in your pocket, you would say that was the greatest invention ever."
I've been involved with computers since the 80's when I got my first TRS-80 model I, and I currently work in the software industry, though I'm not writing code. For a lot of that time, I've used Windows. When it first came out, I thought it was interesting to fiddle around with, and later when it became that "standard" OS, I pretty much just went along, since I was most interested in using the computer for programming, graphic design, etc. I knew there were some flaws, but inertia is a powerful force. Even the anti-trust case didn't phase me too much because frankly, at that point, Netscape sucked. I wasn't "happy" with Windows, mind you, it's just that the irritation hadn't risen to a level where it was worth switching.
About three years ago, I was working for an AV company when I first heard that MS would be getting into the anti-virus business. There was some question about how that would work, but the very idea made me uncomfortable--when you're selling a defective product and then providing the "solution" that's a Bad Thing. As I've posted here before, you don't set the wolf to gaurd the sheep, and how could you trust someone to "solve" a problem that they were unable to correct in production. But it still wasn't enough to get me to switch, as I have a big "investment" in Windows software (unlike 90% of slashdotters, I actually own licenses for DreamWeaver, Flash, Acrobat, Illustrator, etc.).
A while back, I heard that this MS anti-virus software was going to be a pay service, and that was the tipping point for me. It's just too much like extortion.
In December when I left the AV company I worked for, I had to give up my corporate laptop (a rather nice ThinkPad). I had been wondering what to replace it with. Last week, I bought a Powerbook, and for my birthday later this month I am getting a Mac Mini to replace my desktop machine at home. At that point, my Windows XP box (an Alienware gaming rig that I bought about 18 months ago) will be relegated to the "game room", disconnected from the Internet, and used only for games I can't get for Mac. The PC in my garage is already running Ubuntu, and my MAME cabinet will be moved over to some other Linux distro as soon as I can figure out what to do with my front end. (Any recommendations?)
The era of Microsoft is over at my place, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.
they teach you a bit about the mechanics of shooting (zeroing the rifle, holding steady, leading a moving target, estimating bullet drop, etc.) but a lot of what you learn is how to gauge distance and wind. There are a number of ways to gauge each (in the desert, the wind affects the "heat shimmers" you see in the air; in open field terrain, grass etc. moves in the breeze). This is the most difficult part of shooting well at extreme distances, because across long distances the wind may differ between the shooter and target.
The Army's standard-issue sniper rifles aren't the.50 caliber jobs you need for really long-range shooting, anyway. The classes were intense and very interesting in an abstract fashion. Fortunately, I was never called on to put any of this knowledge to practical applciation.
And as the parent says, close combat in cities (MOUT--Military Operations in Urban Terrain) moots most extreme long distance shooting. There's just too much maneuver for a sniper to be effective from a fixed postion with a long view.
I remember seeing an ad a few years back about how you would be able to push your loaded cart through the check-out and all the groceries would be scanned and totaled and you could just pay and go without the need unload the cart and wait for the checker to scan and reload everything. The closest I've seen is the "self checkouts" at the grocery stores (anyone else have these?) where you scan and bag the items yourself. (I'm still wondering how they would handle items that are sold by weight)
Like any technology this could have its uses (as the above example) and I really think a lot of the concerns are exaggerated (I have a hard time getting my RFID badge to trigger the door locks here, even when it's practically touching the reader). The tinfoil hat crowd and their "the black helicopters will read these as they fly over your house" don't make a lot of sense to me. But maybe the joy of the thing is in conspiracy, not the logic? My read on this is that in order to generate enough power to be read at any great distance (like from outside your house) you'd have to paint the tags with enough radio to fry the occupants.
Anyway, so far it's all talk and nothing much else of practical value. Maybe the packaging of the next Duke Nukem will have RFID?:o)
I really enjoy RTS games (C&C, etc.) and even some turn-based strategy games, and I find a keyboard/mouse much more convenient than a game pad. For one thing, selecting multiple units with drag using a mouse is easy and intuitive. Also, I appreciate the ability to group units and assign them to a key... so for instance I can select all my air units with Ctrl+1 or all my ships with Ctrl+2.
However, for a lot of other games (FPS, puzzle games) that I play on my GameCube, I do appreciate the game controller. I think it's more a matter of what works best for different formats than whether one or the other is "better"
Now that Macs are on Intel, it seems fully possible to install one as a virtual machine... if Mac OS is installable on "generic" x86 hardware. The virtualization layer fully emulates the x86 architecture, so it seems pretty doable.
The issues would be 1) Will Mac OS be supported on non-"trusted" hardware? and 2) Is there money in it? It seems only fair that someone else should offer a VirtualPC software to compete with Microsoft's Mac OS VPC product.
I am going to try and start an internal campaign to stir this idea up at my employer... a vm company of whose name you are aware.:-)
That the shuffle is a "loss leader" in some ways? I personally know a couple of people who bought shuffles and liked them enough that they then later went out and "upgraded" to either full-size iPods or Nanos. Once your average punter has that investment in iTunes DRMed music, they don't have another (easy) option. (What, you expect them to search out and use a tool like iOpener? Too "geeky") Because of DRM and other issues, it seems fairly cost-effective to catch people who are just getting interested in digital music players and hooking them on Apple's software and services.
Selling shuffles at a price competitive with "low end" makes sense for Apple, I think. They prevent people from getting started in digital music with another player, drive traffic to iTunes (which is something of a "lock in" for non-technical users) and are a good entry-level player.
But I guess Apple's marketing department will have the ultimate say in whether these are cost effective or not.
but a large portion of what Apple sells is the "total experience" for want of a better word. The first Apple product I bought was an Airport Express. You can't believe the design that went into the packaging--it was a thing of beauty. The experience of opening up the well-designed box and finding all the bits and pieces nealy laid out was something that really made a big impression on me.
While I agree that Apple's OS has a lovely interface (and I just bought my first Mac, a powerbook, this week) I don't think that the company can afford to focus exclusively on software. Industrial design (the sleek hardware) is an important part of the Apple experience and that snazzy hardware sells. Indeed, with iPods now the company's profit center, the focus will continue to be on hardware.
Which is too bad, because there's always the chance that people would be willing to pay for OSX on beige boxes.
because of the similarity (in size, color, and the scored edges) to a quarter. When they were more common (close to when they were first issued) I was the recipient of Susan B's instead of quarters as change on several occasions. If I didn't look closely, I didn't notice and someone's cash drawer was down $.75 at the end of the day. No one wanted to deal with them, because they weren't easy to distinguish from quarters and in a fast-pased retail environment, could easily be mistaken for them.
When the Sacajawea dollars were designed, they were made larger, a different color, and the edges were smoothed precisely to help avoid this confusion. This helped, some.
However, in the long run, would you rather have nine 3x6 folded sheets of paper in your pocket, or nine large coins? Most people prefer the weight and flexibility of paper.
This is why I bought my Treo & later sold an i
on
iCell in the Works?
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· Score: 1
Back in the day, I used to carry around a PDA (starting with a Palm III) and cellphone (my first was a Motorolla StarTac) and I really hated having two devices. I don't know how common this is, but I HATE having things in my pockets. In fact, I only have three keys (car, house, mailbox) on my keyring and I carry my driver's license and credit card in my shirt pocket. I'm one of those guys where the first thing I do when I come home is to dump the contents of my pockets. My wife teases me that I only married her so that when we go out I'll have someone to take my change (she has a coin pouch in her purse). For me, the convergence of a phone and PDA was a Godsend.
A year or two ago the company I worked for gave me an iPod as a "reward" for hard work on a project. I was very impressed (if you haven't purchased anything from Apple, let me say that even the packaging shows impressive design--as odd as that may sound) with the iPod. Having some knowledge and experience in usability, I was pleased with the clean interface and the way that it seemlessly integrated with iTunes (which we were already using to buy music). The sound quality seemed decent (I'm not an audiophile, I just like music) and the device seemed pretty cool overall. But after a month or two, I sold it.
Why? Because I didn't want to go back to having two devices.
My Treo is an adequate phone (with the headphone, it's more than adequate) and a pretty good PDA. It plays MP3s through my car stereo well enough--when you're in a convertable with the top down, sound quality isn't as noticable. It's also a fairly good eBook reader (my primary use when waiting for meetings or out shopping), game device (Palm MAME), and Web browser (slow and a smallish screen, but good enough for getting directions when I'm lost or checking Web mail).
I understand that there are folks out there who aren't interested in convergence, and probably a lot of others who are interested only if the quality of all the converged devices is as high as separate ones. But if you are interested in having just one device, check out the Treo 650.
Slashdot Mirror
eliminate corruption, push for the rule of law. If there was a way to invest in these things, it would go a long way toward helping the third world.
I struggle between frustration (why do they take up arms instead of working politically) and pity (how can we expect political solutions, when the daily necessities are lacking). Africa is in a world of hurt, with AIDS, civil wars, famine, tyranny, and a seemingly endless list of ills, none of which is easily solvable. I have a friend who is involved in a project rescuing street children in Zimbabwe, and I can tell you that the situation is heart-wrenching if you think of it on a personal level (rather than just relegating the whole contentent to the category of "screwed-up Africa"). Sometimes it feels like the little we can do (or give) is a drop in the bucket against everything that's happening.
My take is that investing in entrepreneurial projects (micro loans and other local-level projects to encourage business ownership) is a good start. The rise of the middle class in Europe (and eventually in America) is one basis for our focus on things like the rule of law and property ownership that have helped foster a higher standard of living and a more stable society. However, it took us several hundred years to go from serfdom to democracy (and longer than that to get from the Magna Carta to the Constitution)... I'm afraid the "dark continent" is in for a long, painful slog.
I have MAME on my 650, and the D-pad is fine for controlling the classics (centipede, frogger, dig-dug).
Real geeks run Z scale... :o)
for books that didn't make it:
The first one: The Magical World Inside the Abandoned Refigerator
Others I liked:
Eggs, Toilet Paper, and Your School
Hammers, Screwdrivers And Scissors: An I Can Do It All Book
Strangers Have The Best Candy
You're Different, and That's Bad!
Daddy Drinks Because You Cry
Chicken?
I first found the Baen free library poking around the 'net looking for free books to read on my Palm Treo (gotta do something while the wife is shopping) and I was amazed--authors I'd actually heard of, books in series I'd actually started reading in paper, and for free... sweet!
I've read through all the free offerings (and bought some paper books based on things that interested me) and recently purchased a Webscription. It's a pretty good deal--five books for $15, in plain-vanilla HTML (so I can back them up and read them on any device I want), and three of the five were books I would have probably been tempted to buy as paperbacks. Baen passes a portion of the savings from not having to produce paper books along to the authors, saves on printing an distribution, and everybody wins.
I'm not sure about the digital ink stuff--my biggest concern would be display lifespan. I read at least a hundred books a year either as paper or eBooks (yes, seriously) and the reason my Palm works is that it's my phone so I take it everywhere and charge it up each night, and I'll replace it in a couple of years.
Overall, I'd love to see more publishers doing what Baen is doing. I definitely look for Baen books when browsing brick and mortar bookstores, and would patronize other publishers who would 1) provide compelling content 2) at a reasonable price, 3) in an open format
to ensure a nuclear reaction, it is quite easy to "break" a nuclear bomb, and extremely difficult to make one. Merely deforming the conventional explosives would be enough, since the "squeeze" required to initiate the chain reaction relies on precise timing and force.
That's the funniest thing on /. in years.
or, The Emperor's New Clothes
I have karma to burn, so here goes...
Here on Slashdot, it's popular to tout the wonder that is Wikipedia, to revel in the wild-west democracy of it all, and break into rapturous platitudes about what a terrific source of high-quality information it is. Unfortunately, the reality (which none of the Wiki-boosters is likely to admit) is that Wikipedia is broken... fundamentally flawed, and can't be fixed.
Here's a tidbit for you concerning the food crisis in the Horn of Africa: drought is caused by high prices, overpopulation, and conflict. From the Horn of Africa Food Crisis article on Wikipedia: "This shortage, along with other factors including high cereal prices, overpopulation in the region, and conflict, have led to severe drought conditions." (1/11/06)
This is another example of why you can't rely on Wikipedia-the online encyclopedia written and edited by people with a limited grasp of the English language and (frequently) an even more limited knowledge of the subject matter. If you think that things written by committee are the epitome of bad writing, wait until you read articles that were both written AND edited by committee. And not just any committee, this a committee composed of your average basement-dwelling Net geeks, know-nothing Web noobs, and agenda-driven politicos.
Drought is a condition created by a shortage of water. That's the definition of the word. But here we have a Wikipedia article that plainly states that 'high cereal prices' are causal. Hmmmm... Explain to me again, oh geniuses, how high prices for cereals have 'led to severe drought conditions'? Apparently high prices are drying up the water supply. Clearly the author of this one is confused, either in their understanding of causality, or their understanding of the definition of the word 'drought.' Yet they felt competent to write (or edit) an article about the issue. Welcome to the world of the encyclopedia written by the ignorant.
The usual response of Wikipedia-philes is to answer any concern about the quality or accuracy of articles with 'anyone can edit it.' Which leads us to the immediate response (mine when I saw the above error): Why would I? Why would anyone waste their time? The person or persons who wrote this incorrect article will either a) change it back, or b) edit it further to destroy whatever correction I make. Where's the value proposition in this editing task? Am I supposed to feel satisfaction if I can see that it's corrected for 20 minutes before being reverted or overwritten? How am I supposed to feel tomorrow when I come back and see my efforts undone? Why would anyone with writing or editing ability or subject matter knowledge go to the effort of changing something that will almost immediately be screwed up again by someone without any.
No one is willing to address this issue. In forums, anyone who questions the problems of articles being written by people lacking essential subject-matter expertise is immediately shouted down. Long Live Wikipedia! Nothing possibly can be wrong! You just don't like the egalitarian nature of a "people's encyclopedia"... and on and on. Hello, McFly! If Wikipedia worked, it would be a wonderful resource. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, as the old saying goes.
In a community where everyone is 'equal' in power, despite inequalities in knowledge and ability, those with the later will, eventually -- inevitably, decline to participate. This particular type of communism (and that's not a pejorative) leads inexorably to a devaluing of the best in favor of not just the good, but the bad. In the case of Wiki articles, this means that a physics article is as likely to be written by a 12-year-old as a physicist. Or that 'drought' is as likely to mean 'famine' as 'water shortage.'
Wikipedia is an amusing read, but I wouldn't look to it for accuracy or anything resembling an even-handed explanation of a topic. The most that can be said for it is that it's an interesting social experiment. Nothing more.
and my first portable computer was a TRS-80 Pocket Computer 2 with (gasp!) 8K RAM. Did anyone else have one of these?
Ah those were the days--writing BASIC programs in the back of math class. I still remember some of the games I wrote using ASCII characters as the spaceships and how "cool" all my nerdy friends thought it was.
This (people not being in doubt) is one point of the study (users thought they were right 80% of the time) and it's at the root of a lot of disagreements, both IRL and online.
:o)
One of the reasons I don't read the "politics" section of slashdot is that people on both sides of any issue are so damn sure they're right. Generally they don't bother to think about (or perhaps even read) the responses from the other side. I can't understand how anyone can be as certain as people seem to be when discussing things online: are you really omniscient and infallable? Is there _no_ chance that you might be mistaken, or that the truth of a given matter might be something in the middle, between the poles?
IMO it's impossible to have a rational discussion with anyone who is sure they're right. Unless both sides can admit at least the possibility that the truth might lie between the extremes, they're just wasting time and bandwidth.
Don't let that stop you, though
Wah wah "evil corporations" "poor workers" "outsourcing" blah blah blah.
One thing that seems to be overlooked is that with productivity rises, it takes fewer employees to do the same amount of work. The same is true after a merger, where it's redundant (no pun intended) to have two shipping departments or two sales forces.
I've been laid off several times in the last six years (once on Christmas Eve), and it's never been a big deal. I'm not saying it's been "fun" but if you have a rational savings plan to build a contingency fund, you should be able make it during the times you're laod off. I have sympathy for folks who are losing their jobs, having been there myself, but I also know this isn't the end of the world. I hope they do, too.
You can look at a layoff as a crisis or as an opportunity. Your choice.
Books--physical paper & ink--are the best thing... ever.
I love having my Treo with eBooks from Project Gutenberg on it, because it's one device with multiple uses (and it doesn't look too odd carrying it around while my wife is shopping) but I would be very unhappy if that's all there was. I still spend several hundred dollars a year on "old-fashioned" books, and they're still the number one item on my Christmas and birthday wish lists.
There's a quote (I forget the exact content and author) that goes something like: If books had never been invented and someone told you you could take 3000 years of human knowledge and imagination in your pocket, you would say that was the greatest invention ever."
And so they are.
I've been involved with computers since the 80's when I got my first TRS-80 model I, and I currently work in the software industry, though I'm not writing code. For a lot of that time, I've used Windows. When it first came out, I thought it was interesting to fiddle around with, and later when it became that "standard" OS, I pretty much just went along, since I was most interested in using the computer for programming, graphic design, etc. I knew there were some flaws, but inertia is a powerful force. Even the anti-trust case didn't phase me too much because frankly, at that point, Netscape sucked. I wasn't "happy" with Windows, mind you, it's just that the irritation hadn't risen to a level where it was worth switching.
About three years ago, I was working for an AV company when I first heard that MS would be getting into the anti-virus business. There was some question about how that would work, but the very idea made me uncomfortable--when you're selling a defective product and then providing the "solution" that's a Bad Thing. As I've posted here before, you don't set the wolf to gaurd the sheep, and how could you trust someone to "solve" a problem that they were unable to correct in production. But it still wasn't enough to get me to switch, as I have a big "investment" in Windows software (unlike 90% of slashdotters, I actually own licenses for DreamWeaver, Flash, Acrobat, Illustrator, etc.).
A while back, I heard that this MS anti-virus software was going to be a pay service, and that was the tipping point for me. It's just too much like extortion.
In December when I left the AV company I worked for, I had to give up my corporate laptop (a rather nice ThinkPad). I had been wondering what to replace it with. Last week, I bought a Powerbook, and for my birthday later this month I am getting a Mac Mini to replace my desktop machine at home. At that point, my Windows XP box (an Alienware gaming rig that I bought about 18 months ago) will be relegated to the "game room", disconnected from the Internet, and used only for games I can't get for Mac. The PC in my garage is already running Ubuntu, and my MAME cabinet will be moved over to some other Linux distro as soon as I can figure out what to do with my front end. (Any recommendations?)
The era of Microsoft is over at my place, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.
they teach you a bit about the mechanics of shooting (zeroing the rifle, holding steady, leading a moving target, estimating bullet drop, etc.) but a lot of what you learn is how to gauge distance and wind. There are a number of ways to gauge each (in the desert, the wind affects the "heat shimmers" you see in the air; in open field terrain, grass etc. moves in the breeze). This is the most difficult part of shooting well at extreme distances, because across long distances the wind may differ between the shooter and target.
.50 caliber jobs you need for really long-range shooting, anyway. The classes were intense and very interesting in an abstract fashion. Fortunately, I was never called on to put any of this knowledge to practical applciation.
The Army's standard-issue sniper rifles aren't the
And as the parent says, close combat in cities (MOUT--Military Operations in Urban Terrain) moots most extreme long distance shooting. There's just too much maneuver for a sniper to be effective from a fixed postion with a long view.
I remember seeing an ad a few years back about how you would be able to push your loaded cart through the check-out and all the groceries would be scanned and totaled and you could just pay and go without the need unload the cart and wait for the checker to scan and reload everything. The closest I've seen is the "self checkouts" at the grocery stores (anyone else have these?) where you scan and bag the items yourself. (I'm still wondering how they would handle items that are sold by weight)
:o)
Like any technology this could have its uses (as the above example) and I really think a lot of the concerns are exaggerated (I have a hard time getting my RFID badge to trigger the door locks here, even when it's practically touching the reader). The tinfoil hat crowd and their "the black helicopters will read these as they fly over your house" don't make a lot of sense to me. But maybe the joy of the thing is in conspiracy, not the logic? My read on this is that in order to generate enough power to be read at any great distance (like from outside your house) you'd have to paint the tags with enough radio to fry the occupants.
Anyway, so far it's all talk and nothing much else of practical value. Maybe the packaging of the next Duke Nukem will have RFID?
I really enjoy RTS games (C&C, etc.) and even some turn-based strategy games, and I find a keyboard/mouse much more convenient than a game pad. For one thing, selecting multiple units with drag using a mouse is easy and intuitive. Also, I appreciate the ability to group units and assign them to a key... so for instance I can select all my air units with Ctrl+1 or all my ships with Ctrl+2.
However, for a lot of other games (FPS, puzzle games) that I play on my GameCube, I do appreciate the game controller. I think it's more a matter of what works best for different formats than whether one or the other is "better"
Now that Macs are on Intel, it seems fully possible to install one as a virtual machine... if Mac OS is installable on "generic" x86 hardware. The virtualization layer fully emulates the x86 architecture, so it seems pretty doable.
:-)
The issues would be 1) Will Mac OS be supported on non-"trusted" hardware? and 2) Is there money in it? It seems only fair that someone else should offer a VirtualPC software to compete with Microsoft's Mac OS VPC product.
I am going to try and start an internal campaign to stir this idea up at my employer... a vm company of whose name you are aware.
a great novel? Not!
That the shuffle is a "loss leader" in some ways? I personally know a couple of people who bought shuffles and liked them enough that they then later went out and "upgraded" to either full-size iPods or Nanos. Once your average punter has that investment in iTunes DRMed music, they don't have another (easy) option. (What, you expect them to search out and use a tool like iOpener? Too "geeky") Because of DRM and other issues, it seems fairly cost-effective to catch people who are just getting interested in digital music players and hooking them on Apple's software and services.
Selling shuffles at a price competitive with "low end" makes sense for Apple, I think. They prevent people from getting started in digital music with another player, drive traffic to iTunes (which is something of a "lock in" for non-technical users) and are a good entry-level player.
But I guess Apple's marketing department will have the ultimate say in whether these are cost effective or not.
Blue screen of DEATH--literally!
but a large portion of what Apple sells is the "total experience" for want of a better word. The first Apple product I bought was an Airport Express. You can't believe the design that went into the packaging--it was a thing of beauty. The experience of opening up the well-designed box and finding all the bits and pieces nealy laid out was something that really made a big impression on me.
While I agree that Apple's OS has a lovely interface (and I just bought my first Mac, a powerbook, this week) I don't think that the company can afford to focus exclusively on software. Industrial design (the sleek hardware) is an important part of the Apple experience and that snazzy hardware sells. Indeed, with iPods now the company's profit center, the focus will continue to be on hardware.
Which is too bad, because there's always the chance that people would be willing to pay for OSX on beige boxes.
because of the similarity (in size, color, and the scored edges) to a quarter. When they were more common (close to when they were first issued) I was the recipient of Susan B's instead of quarters as change on several occasions. If I didn't look closely, I didn't notice and someone's cash drawer was down $.75 at the end of the day. No one wanted to deal with them, because they weren't easy to distinguish from quarters and in a fast-pased retail environment, could easily be mistaken for them.
When the Sacajawea dollars were designed, they were made larger, a different color, and the edges were smoothed precisely to help avoid this confusion. This helped, some.
However, in the long run, would you rather have nine 3x6 folded sheets of paper in your pocket, or nine large coins? Most people prefer the weight and flexibility of paper.
Back in the day, I used to carry around a PDA (starting with a Palm III) and cellphone (my first was a Motorolla StarTac) and I really hated having two devices. I don't know how common this is, but I HATE having things in my pockets. In fact, I only have three keys (car, house, mailbox) on my keyring and I carry my driver's license and credit card in my shirt pocket. I'm one of those guys where the first thing I do when I come home is to dump the contents of my pockets. My wife teases me that I only married her so that when we go out I'll have someone to take my change (she has a coin pouch in her purse). For me, the convergence of a phone and PDA was a Godsend.
A year or two ago the company I worked for gave me an iPod as a "reward" for hard work on a project. I was very impressed (if you haven't purchased anything from Apple, let me say that even the packaging shows impressive design--as odd as that may sound) with the iPod. Having some knowledge and experience in usability, I was pleased with the clean interface and the way that it seemlessly integrated with iTunes (which we were already using to buy music). The sound quality seemed decent (I'm not an audiophile, I just like music) and the device seemed pretty cool overall. But after a month or two, I sold it.
Why? Because I didn't want to go back to having two devices.
My Treo is an adequate phone (with the headphone, it's more than adequate) and a pretty good PDA. It plays MP3s through my car stereo well enough--when you're in a convertable with the top down, sound quality isn't as noticable. It's also a fairly good eBook reader (my primary use when waiting for meetings or out shopping), game device (Palm MAME), and Web browser (slow and a smallish screen, but good enough for getting directions when I'm lost or checking Web mail).
I understand that there are folks out there who aren't interested in convergence, and probably a lot of others who are interested only if the quality of all the converged devices is as high as separate ones. But if you are interested in having just one device, check out the Treo 650.
Well, if I teach my cat to drive, I suppose that's "problem solved" :o)