Of course, when people switch providers, they will switch to the lowest-cost (or greatest price-feature) provider, not the one with the best quality of service.
And to be frank, in most areas I'm quite willing to forgoe service for price. Even the best service policies are generally too restrictive and inconvenient to be worth it. If it's cheap enough I can have a third party repair it (or have a backup plan if it's a service-only thing), or just replace as needed and it will still end up being cheaper and less inconvenient. Oh yeah, bring me that cheap Chinese sugary goodness, baby!
With my Panasonic R3 I get that kind of battery life with the regular battery - and the whole machine weighs just less than a kilo. And the machine is capable enough that I use it as my main computer.
I'm frankly a little underwhelmed with the implementation. You could just bring a spare battery with the same capacity, less weight and don't risk any hassle in airports.
What really annoys me is that you can subscribe to caller ID and some numbers still appear as "withheld
You pay to see people that don't mind being seen. People who block do mind, and you were never promised to get around that. If you don't like people who hide their number, just don't answer the phone.
So they learned from the huge row erupting from the Dubai deal, and are doing a real review of any foreign company to avoid another fight. Isn't that what you'd like (if you think controlling access in this manner is a good idea in the first place)?
So, if you're free of stress your brain will grow, on the other hand. And the more you relax, the more it grows. Your head gets heavier, which makes it all the harder to get off the couch, making you relax for even longer, creating a positive feedback loop.
And as the skull is of fixed size, it means the brain gets denser and denser, until, in a paroxysmic cataclysm (or a cataclysmic paroxysm; the data is a bit fuzzy here), the earth is destroyed as ten million couch potatoes all have their brains collapse into black holes after a week-long Tonight Show marathon.
But one thing (as you seem to know a bit about it): what to do when the listening position is not a point, but spread out at three places on the couch (and one at one end, at handrest level for when you're lying down), a separate easy chair and a chair by the desk?
Or to put another way, the normal situation is at least two people (and occasionally several) watching, and those other people will be a bit annoyed if only one person gets good sound while they are stuck with a satellite speaker screming just behind their head. And even when alone, where I want to sit (or lie down) will differ, depending.
I'm having trouble figuring out why so many people in this thread seem to fail to understand this. Two speakers is not going to give you the best sound from six separate channels. It just isn't. Five full-range speakers or five satellites and a sub is going to give you the best sound from six separate channels. I mean, it's just common sense, isn't it?
You misunderstand my post a bit.
What I'm saying is that taking those 5+1 speakers and placing them badly, not connecting all speakers the same way, not mixing it approximately right and so on, is actually going to end up sounding worse in practice than a technically less good two or 2+1 speaker setup. Not because it actually _is_ worse (as you say, you have the sound info), but because you can mess up the installation in so many more ways - and most people will mess it up.
That's what I tried to exemplify with the shock absorber; though it may not be all that illuminating unless you own a bike, I guess.
There's so many ways to make mistakes when setting up sound - and with more stuff, more choices, more tweaking possible, all but the most dedicated sound geeks are simply getting more ways to mess it all up.
The reality is that for most people, setting up two good speakers, or maybe two speakers and a subwoofer in the center, is going to give them the best sound. Add various little satellite speakers and stuff that is really dependent on the room layout, the prescence of sound reflecting and absorbing materials (table surfaces, soft couches etc.), the unpredictability of where people are sitting and chances are they will end up with a soundscape that sounds decidedly worse than they had with a simple 2 speaker or 2+1 speaker setup.
It's like having high-end Öhlins shock absorbers on your bike. For the riders that _are_ (not just think they are) knowledgeable, interested, and ready to spend a week tinkering, they will give superior performance to the factory default shocks. For the rest of us, they're just an expensive invitation to utterly screw up the bike handling beyond all help.
Magnetic bearings already exist and are in use. They're not without problems, though (not quite as stable as mechanical ones, and not able to take high radial loads). Also, good mechanical berings are already very efficient; it's not like you have a lot of efficiency gains to make.
I read that on a certain day every year in Japan, it is customary (at least in the wealthier areas) to put all of your used (from the last year or so) electronics out on the curb (or in the alley, whichever you have) as an emblem of your prosperity, and as a demonstration of your intent to replace your old Japanese goods with new.
Sigh. A kernel of truth blown up into unrecognizeability.
One week in April there are several one-day holidays that happen to fall in that one week, and the sole remaining workday is often made a holiday as well (or people just take one vacation day). It's called "golden week", and is a major holiday. Other longer holidays, like the new year, and Obon, are traditional and family oriented, but during golden week you're free to do whatever you please.
So it's not so surprising that this is perhaps the foremost travel holiday, but with so many people with free time, many stores also schedule major sales campaigns for that week. So lots of people buy new stuff during that week, and throw away the old. Garbage collecting is done at the curb here, and with all the old stuff being thrown out, and as the garbage collectors are on holiday too, it really piles up.
So yes, there tends to be lots of older electronics sitting by the curb at around the end of Golden Week - along with furniture, refrigerators, household stuff and plain old garbage. But most of it really is old and broken (people do buy new stuff for a reason), and no, nobody cares what people throw out. After all, apartment buildings and single homes both have a common pickup spot nearby so it's not like you can easily figure out whose stuff it is anyhow.
And while you can make the occasional find if you persevere, it's really no different from any dumpster-diving - often fruitless, and in many cases probably not entirely legal (the stuff does belong to either the thrower away or the garbage company, after all).
Um, the requirements _have_ changed. Five years ago, in fact; that's why this five year window is closing now. And all it requires is that reatilers (not individuals) do a check on the high-voltage parts to see that they, indeed, are as safe as required today. They can do it themselves, but they do need to take responsibility for having done the check properly.
This is only retail sales, not individuals. And it isn't a ban, it merely requires the retailer to take responsibility that the device is safe according to the new standard. And it involves only the safety of high-voltage (mains-powered) equipment, not electronics.
HAL is not part of a desktop (not really sure why Gnome is mentioned here, other that that the initial user tools for this is Gnome based). It's a Hardware Abstraction Layer around the kernel to support stuff like hotplugging, file monitoring and so on in a nice, hardware-independent manner. It sounds like just about the right level to me. Isn't HAL used in most recent distros by now, no matter what desktop (if any)?
Jobs, of course. Categorized and cross-indexed in any which way you could think of, so it's straightforward to narrow down to only those posts that actually are of interest. You want job listings for network management in east London, with at least such and such base salary, weekends and nights acceptable, at a small or medium-sized firm at least two years old, then that's what you should get. And it should optionally match your profile to explude listings that are not a fit for you (not enough experience, no bus drivers' licence, etc.).
The trick to a good service is to make the listings reliable and complete. If a company posts hugely inflated requirements (must have 200+ years experience coding Java) in the hope of attracting top people, you're going to miss valid openings since they'd be filtered (you only have 180 years on your resume). Likewise, no employer is happy wading through exaggerated, not-quite-lying resumes to find people that actually are qualified. Figure out how to make it _easy_ to be honest. Make all listings anonymous, would perhaps help? Not sure about that.
Also, make all listing open-ended. Don't have a set of checkboxes for what languages you know (or seek), for example - no matter how many you list, you will miss some, and people will wnat to qualify their answer more than a yes/no check. Let people write in the language, and a one-line comment about their ability (or needed ability). Make it open-ended, then do text searching for matching. Make any graded description, like skill level, very vivid and concrete. An abstract 1-5 scale can and does mean very different things, but if you make each point descriptive, with an example, it's easier to find a common level. Oh, and three levels is almost always sufficient for ability descriptions. Any finer graduation will be a matter for the full-size CV and interviews.
Ideally, there should be a comments section on each and every company, and each and every job seeker a'la Amazon, so you can evaluate the general desireability asa workplace or workmate. But of course, job seekers and small firms will not get enough comments to constitute a valid sample, and I'd imagine there'd be more than a few legal headaches providing a comments section as well.
Non-criminals won't walk into your home without permission.
Um, yes, they will, when their sense of friendship and community spirit overwhelms their understanding of propriety. Or, in other words, friendly but nosy neighbours with no sense of social nuances whatsoever. They're your friend, they would never mind you walking right into their home, so why should you mind them walking into yours?
You may not have met these kind of people but believe me, they very much exist. Mind you, they can be good people, great fun, and a definite asset whenever a party or dinner is to be organized, but they do need somewhat more, ah, physical limits to their behavior than a meek verbal "I would appreciate if...". (Think "Hyacinth Bucket", in case you've seen that BBC show.)
Another situation is if you have older children or teenagers living at home; not infrequently they will be freer with invitations and social protocol than their parents. Just wandering in - and then concientiously knocking on the bedroom door of their friend - can be a regular occurrence unless you put a natural restraint on it.
Of course, this whole screen door thing in my original comment was just an analogy...
But as soon as you see that "Safari" is a web browser, particularly in conjunction with the icon, you go "Yeah, that makes sense!" and the knowledge sticks. (Or don't you?)
No, I do not. Really - I'm not trying to be facetious or anything. And either applications icon is also about equally descriptive - ie. it helps, but they're trying to illustrate a fundamentally abstract concept and you can only do so much.
Just to be clear, neither name is bad either. The names are both memorable, which is arguably more important than the initial discoverability - you're only a non-user once, after all, but you need to remember the name of the app every day for years afterwards.
Re:The Linux desktop is finally coming into it's o
on
A Look at GNOME 2.14
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Um, "In Russia, people are being polite to you". No.
"I for one welcome our.. polite..." nah.
"All your politeness belongs " - argh, no.
This outburst of civility is killing slashdot, I tell you!
Then send it out as a ternary attachment;-) Seriously, for every filter there is a tunnel, even if it consists of pasting some uuencode variant into the body text instead of using MIME.
Of course there is. Or you can hide an mp3 player in a bodily orifice. Or a concealed keylogger to grab your coworkers' passwords. Or break in from the roof, lowering yourself down a ventilation shaft, subduing the guarddogs with sleeping darts and finding the laser beams with cigar smoke.
But once you do any of these things, you are willingly and deliberately breaking your company's security policies. And a malicious employee is a different kettle of fish from someone not excercizing their judgement in what data to bring home for overtime work, or not thinking through that while their uncle sure would get a chuckle out of the boneheaded design of next years' model, perhaps taking the data out of the building to show him isn't a good idea.
A wordy, fuzzy data security policy can be misunderstood, its main points forgotten and its admonishments mentally filed under "it doesn't really apply to this case". A clear, unambigious, 'All devices need preapproval' and 'No attachements. No, not even of your newborn. No, no even if he really is the cutest thing anybody in the building has ever seen.' is clearer and easier to follow.
It's all a matter of what kind of thing you want to stop. A locked screendoor will not stop a burglar - but it will stop your nosy neighbour just walking into your kitchen or your children to walk outside. And chances are, you usually have far more problems with the latter kinds than the former.
People like yourself are going to get all our music players, phones and every other damn thing confiscated by some personnel drone when we enter any corporate building.
If the security management has determined that something like a portable harddrive is not an acceptable thing to bring inside, then neither should any other such item. How is pointing that out bad?
If you want to attack something, then attack the reasoning behind forbidding such items in the first place. And yes, such regulations are sometimes wildly overused, but in other places (company R&D or design departments, for instance) perfectly reasonable. And if you want to make a point like "but you could just send the data out as an e-mail attachement!", then I hope information security is already filtering outgoing email and stopping binary attachements.
There's plenty of places where running around with an external harddive would seem very suspicious (or an outright violation), but a music player is, well, just a music player, right? There's many people out there that don't have the interest in technology to really reach the conclusions that seem obvious here.
With something like this, I'd expect to see quite a bit more attention being given not only to mp3-players, but things like cameras and mobile phones as well. "Wake-up call" is a trite, overused term, but perfectly apt.
Neat idea - except for the ink part. Lefthanded people will smear that ink all over the page. Let people use pencils and erasers; that's what they'll use in normal writing in any case.
And you'll need to seriously check for people with disabilities that could penalize them in this, especially if typing will be the normal and satisfactory means of entering text at work in any case.
So what, you know exactly what I meant anyway. Maybe you want flowery writing with lots of big words just because big words look good? Ads nothing to the conversation and you still know just what I mean.
I understand what you meant. We all understand almost everything written in a language we are fluent in. But there is a huge and growing amount of text out there; even within narrow subspecialities, new material is generated far faster than anyone's ability to digest it. We need to filter.
And one early, surprisingly good, filter is language use. Writers with atrocious spelling, elementary grammar mistakes and a muddled train of thought might be writing something brilliant. But chances are they aren't. They seemingly do not care enough about their own ideas - or of their readers - to go to the trouble of spellchecking or editing, and if they don't care, chances are I won't either. Also, if it's a good idea, it's a pretty good bet that somebody else with better grasp of language will write up the same idea anyway.
With so much to read, ignoring the crappy writers is no loss for anyone but the writers themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, when people switch providers, they will switch to the lowest-cost (or greatest price-feature) provider, not the one with the best quality of service.
And to be frank, in most areas I'm quite willing to forgoe service for price. Even the best service policies are generally too restrictive and inconvenient to be worth it. If it's cheap enough I can have a third party repair it (or have a backup plan if it's a service-only thing), or just replace as needed and it will still end up being cheaper and less inconvenient. Oh yeah, bring me that cheap Chinese sugary goodness, baby!
With my Panasonic R3 I get that kind of battery life with the regular battery - and the whole machine weighs just less than a kilo. And the machine is capable enough that I use it as my main computer.
I'm frankly a little underwhelmed with the implementation. You could just bring a spare battery with the same capacity, less weight and don't risk any hassle in airports.
What really annoys me is that you can subscribe to caller ID and some numbers still appear as "withheld
You pay to see people that don't mind being seen. People who block do mind, and you were never promised to get around that. If you don't like people who hide their number, just don't answer the phone.
So they learned from the huge row erupting from the Dubai deal, and are doing a real review of any foreign company to avoid another fight. Isn't that what you'd like (if you think controlling access in this manner is a good idea in the first place)?
Is that really a good idea?
They only have 3 to spare:
Well, they only promised launches, not landings. Three launches, three shuttles. Sounds like a good fit to me.
So, if you're free of stress your brain will grow, on the other hand. And the more you relax, the more it grows. Your head gets heavier, which makes it all the harder to get off the couch, making you relax for even longer, creating a positive feedback loop.
And as the skull is of fixed size, it means the brain gets denser and denser, until, in a paroxysmic cataclysm (or a cataclysmic paroxysm; the data is a bit fuzzy here), the earth is destroyed as ten million couch potatoes all have their brains collapse into black holes after a week-long Tonight Show marathon.
Dangerous stuff, this science thing.
Good tip.
But one thing (as you seem to know a bit about it): what to do when the listening position is not a point, but spread out at three places on the couch (and one at one end, at handrest level for when you're lying down), a separate easy chair and a chair by the desk?
Or to put another way, the normal situation is at least two people (and occasionally several) watching, and those other people will be a bit annoyed if only one person gets good sound while they are stuck with a satellite speaker screming just behind their head. And even when alone, where I want to sit (or lie down) will differ, depending.
I'm having trouble figuring out why so many people in this thread seem to fail to understand this. Two speakers is not going to give you the best sound from six separate channels. It just isn't. Five full-range speakers or five satellites and a sub is going to give you the best sound from six separate channels. I mean, it's just common sense, isn't it?
You misunderstand my post a bit.
What I'm saying is that taking those 5+1 speakers and placing them badly, not connecting all speakers the same way, not mixing it approximately right and so on, is actually going to end up sounding worse in practice than a technically less good two or 2+1 speaker setup. Not because it actually _is_ worse (as you say, you have the sound info), but because you can mess up the installation in so many more ways - and most people will mess it up.
That's what I tried to exemplify with the shock absorber; though it may not be all that illuminating unless you own a bike, I guess.
There's so many ways to make mistakes when setting up sound - and with more stuff, more choices, more tweaking possible, all but the most dedicated sound geeks are simply getting more ways to mess it all up.
The reality is that for most people, setting up two good speakers, or maybe two speakers and a subwoofer in the center, is going to give them the best sound. Add various little satellite speakers and stuff that is really dependent on the room layout, the prescence of sound reflecting and absorbing materials (table surfaces, soft couches etc.), the unpredictability of where people are sitting and chances are they will end up with a soundscape that sounds decidedly worse than they had with a simple 2 speaker or 2+1 speaker setup.
It's like having high-end Öhlins shock absorbers on your bike. For the riders that _are_ (not just think they are) knowledgeable, interested, and ready to spend a week tinkering, they will give superior performance to the factory default shocks. For the rest of us, they're just an expensive invitation to utterly screw up the bike handling beyond all help.
Why would you want to design a near silent ship when future American wars are being fought against terrorists?
So you can hear your iPod without cranking it up and ruining your battery life?
Magnetic bearings already exist and are in use. They're not without problems, though (not quite as stable as mechanical ones, and not able to take high radial loads). Also, good mechanical berings are already very efficient; it's not like you have a lot of efficiency gains to make.
I read that on a certain day every year in Japan, it is customary (at least in the wealthier areas) to put all of your used (from the last year or so) electronics out on the curb (or in the alley, whichever you have) as an emblem of your prosperity, and as a demonstration of your intent to replace your old Japanese goods with new.
Sigh. A kernel of truth blown up into unrecognizeability.
One week in April there are several one-day holidays that happen to fall in that one week, and the sole remaining workday is often made a holiday as well (or people just take one vacation day). It's called "golden week", and is a major holiday. Other longer holidays, like the new year, and Obon, are traditional and family oriented, but during golden week you're free to do whatever you please.
So it's not so surprising that this is perhaps the foremost travel holiday, but with so many people with free time, many stores also schedule major sales campaigns for that week. So lots of people buy new stuff during that week, and throw away the old. Garbage collecting is done at the curb here, and with all the old stuff being thrown out, and as the garbage collectors are on holiday too, it really piles up.
So yes, there tends to be lots of older electronics sitting by the curb at around the end of Golden Week - along with furniture, refrigerators, household stuff and plain old garbage. But most of it really is old and broken (people do buy new stuff for a reason), and no, nobody cares what people throw out. After all, apartment buildings and single homes both have a common pickup spot nearby so it's not like you can easily figure out whose stuff it is anyhow.
And while you can make the occasional find if you persevere, it's really no different from any dumpster-diving - often fruitless, and in many cases probably not entirely legal (the stuff does belong to either the thrower away or the garbage company, after all).
The requirements haven't changed.
Um, the requirements _have_ changed. Five years ago, in fact; that's why this five year window is closing now. And all it requires is that reatilers (not individuals) do a check on the high-voltage parts to see that they, indeed, are as safe as required today. They can do it themselves, but they do need to take responsibility for having done the check properly.
This is only retail sales, not individuals. And it isn't a ban, it merely requires the retailer to take responsibility that the device is safe according to the new standard. And it involves only the safety of high-voltage (mains-powered) equipment, not electronics.
c tronics-sales-will-not-soon-be-illegal-in-japan/
Here's a link discussing it: http://www.mutantfrog.com/2006/02/22/2nd-hand-ele
HAL is not part of a desktop (not really sure why Gnome is mentioned here, other that that the initial user tools for this is Gnome based). It's a Hardware Abstraction Layer around the kernel to support stuff like hotplugging, file monitoring and so on in a nice, hardware-independent manner. It sounds like just about the right level to me. Isn't HAL used in most recent distros by now, no matter what desktop (if any)?
Jobs, of course. Categorized and cross-indexed in any which way you could think of, so it's straightforward to narrow down to only those posts that actually are of interest. You want job listings for network management in east London, with at least such and such base salary, weekends and nights acceptable, at a small or medium-sized firm at least two years old, then that's what you should get. And it should optionally match your profile to explude listings that are not a fit for you (not enough experience, no bus drivers' licence, etc.).
The trick to a good service is to make the listings reliable and complete. If a company posts hugely inflated requirements (must have 200+ years experience coding Java) in the hope of attracting top people, you're going to miss valid openings since they'd be filtered (you only have 180 years on your resume). Likewise, no employer is happy wading through exaggerated, not-quite-lying resumes to find people that actually are qualified. Figure out how to make it _easy_ to be honest. Make all listings anonymous, would perhaps help? Not sure about that.
Also, make all listing open-ended. Don't have a set of checkboxes for what languages you know (or seek), for example - no matter how many you list, you will miss some, and people will wnat to qualify their answer more than a yes/no check. Let people write in the language, and a one-line comment about their ability (or needed ability). Make it open-ended, then do text searching for matching. Make any graded description, like skill level, very vivid and concrete. An abstract 1-5 scale can and does mean very different things, but if you make each point descriptive, with an example, it's easier to find a common level. Oh, and three levels is almost always sufficient for ability descriptions. Any finer graduation will be a matter for the full-size CV and interviews.
Ideally, there should be a comments section on each and every company, and each and every job seeker a'la Amazon, so you can evaluate the general desireability asa workplace or workmate. But of course, job seekers and small firms will not get enough comments to constitute a valid sample, and I'd imagine there'd be more than a few legal headaches providing a comments section as well.
Non-criminals won't walk into your home without permission.
Um, yes, they will, when their sense of friendship and community spirit overwhelms their understanding of propriety. Or, in other words, friendly but nosy neighbours with no sense of social nuances whatsoever. They're your friend, they would never mind you walking right into their home, so why should you mind them walking into yours?
You may not have met these kind of people but believe me, they very much exist. Mind you, they can be good people, great fun, and a definite asset whenever a party or dinner is to be organized, but they do need somewhat more, ah, physical limits to their behavior than a meek verbal "I would appreciate if...". (Think "Hyacinth Bucket", in case you've seen that BBC show.)
Another situation is if you have older children or teenagers living at home; not infrequently they will be freer with invitations and social protocol than their parents. Just wandering in - and then concientiously knocking on the bedroom door of their friend - can be a regular occurrence unless you put a natural restraint on it.
Of course, this whole screen door thing in my original comment was just an analogy...
But as soon as you see that "Safari" is a web browser, particularly in conjunction with the icon, you go "Yeah, that makes sense!" and the knowledge sticks. (Or don't you?)
No, I do not. Really - I'm not trying to be facetious or anything. And either applications icon is also about equally descriptive - ie. it helps, but they're trying to illustrate a fundamentally abstract concept and you can only do so much.
Just to be clear, neither name is bad either. The names are both memorable, which is arguably more important than the initial discoverability - you're only a non-user once, after all, but you need to remember the name of the app every day for years afterwards.
Um, "In Russia, people are being polite to you". No.
"I for one welcome our.. polite..." nah.
"All your politeness belongs " - argh, no.
This outburst of civility is killing slashdot, I tell you!
You probably think "Firefox" is a better name than "Safari," too, am I right?
Meh, about the same. As in, without having already heard of them, nobody would be able to guess what kind of application they are.
This is the reason Gnome always puts a descriptive name in the menus: "Firefox Web Browser", or "Rhythmbox Music Player".
Then send it out as a ternary attachment ;-) Seriously, for every filter there is a tunnel, even if it consists of pasting some uuencode variant into the body text instead of using MIME.
Of course there is. Or you can hide an mp3 player in a bodily orifice. Or a concealed keylogger to grab your coworkers' passwords. Or break in from the roof, lowering yourself down a ventilation shaft, subduing the guarddogs with sleeping darts and finding the laser beams with cigar smoke.
But once you do any of these things, you are willingly and deliberately breaking your company's security policies. And a malicious employee is a different kettle of fish from someone not excercizing their judgement in what data to bring home for overtime work, or not thinking through that while their uncle sure would get a chuckle out of the boneheaded design of next years' model, perhaps taking the data out of the building to show him isn't a good idea.
A wordy, fuzzy data security policy can be misunderstood, its main points forgotten and its admonishments mentally filed under "it doesn't really apply to this case". A clear, unambigious, 'All devices need preapproval' and 'No attachements. No, not even of your newborn. No, no even if he really is the cutest thing anybody in the building has ever seen.' is clearer and easier to follow.
It's all a matter of what kind of thing you want to stop. A locked screendoor will not stop a burglar - but it will stop your nosy neighbour just walking into your kitchen or your children to walk outside. And chances are, you usually have far more problems with the latter kinds than the former.
People like yourself are going to get all our music players, phones and every other damn thing confiscated by some personnel drone when we enter any corporate building.
If the security management has determined that something like a portable harddrive is not an acceptable thing to bring inside, then neither should any other such item. How is pointing that out bad?
If you want to attack something, then attack the reasoning behind forbidding such items in the first place. And yes, such regulations are sometimes wildly overused, but in other places (company R&D or design departments, for instance) perfectly reasonable. And if you want to make a point like "but you could just send the data out as an e-mail attachement!", then I hope information security is already filtering outgoing email and stopping binary attachements.
What's the big deal that an iPod can do it?
There's plenty of places where running around with an external harddive would seem very suspicious (or an outright violation), but a music player is, well, just a music player, right? There's many people out there that don't have the interest in technology to really reach the conclusions that seem obvious here.
With something like this, I'd expect to see quite a bit more attention being given not only to mp3-players, but things like cameras and mobile phones as well. "Wake-up call" is a trite, overused term, but perfectly apt.
Neat idea - except for the ink part. Lefthanded people will smear that ink all over the page. Let people use pencils and erasers; that's what they'll use in normal writing in any case.
And you'll need to seriously check for people with disabilities that could penalize them in this, especially if typing will be the normal and satisfactory means of entering text at work in any case.
So what, you know exactly what I meant anyway. Maybe you want flowery writing with lots of big words just because big words look good? Ads nothing to the conversation and you still know just what I mean.
I understand what you meant. We all understand almost everything written in a language we are fluent in. But there is a huge and growing amount of text out there; even within narrow subspecialities, new material is generated far faster than anyone's ability to digest it. We need to filter.
And one early, surprisingly good, filter is language use. Writers with atrocious spelling, elementary grammar mistakes and a muddled train of thought might be writing something brilliant. But chances are they aren't. They seemingly do not care enough about their own ideas - or of their readers - to go to the trouble of spellchecking or editing, and if they don't care, chances are I won't either. Also, if it's a good idea, it's a pretty good bet that somebody else with better grasp of language will write up the same idea anyway.
With so much to read, ignoring the crappy writers is no loss for anyone but the writers themselves.