You know there was a sequel called 'secret of the sixth magic'... I loved that too.
Always kinda reminded me of 'A Saturday Life', not sci-fi but fairly obscure I'd think.
Anyway, Patrick Rothfuss probably read Master of the Five Magics, I think I can see a little coming through in his books.
There is a place for commercial community stations. It's viable to support a small local radio station with commercials, and not too bad to listen to, since, at least the content is local.
I remember when I was first interested in computers, I was happy just to have old BASIC programming manuals and such. Magazines, articles in New Scientist. Kids have a lot of energy. Let him harness some of that energy reading.
If I could have seeded myself with some books, I would have left copies of SICP, K&R, a Turbo Pascal or Turbo C manual... What I did have was a copy of the DEC 2020 BASIC manual, Personal Computer World magazine, and Byte when I could afford it.
Anyway, don't underestimate books as a vehicle for getting kids going down the right path with computers. I guess this extends to programming blogs too, but that's another post.
I believe the original driver behind the AJAX features was a web-based Outlook mail client.
Little did they know that they had opened the door to all the cool things we have today like Google Mail, Google Docs, Google News, Google Labs Search, Google Notebook, Google Base, MS Live Mesh... err;-)
I think we owe MS a huge debt of gratitude for making the web browser-based clients possible, and for most practical purposes, freeing us from monolithic PC-based software.
Never underestimate the addictiveness of immediate gratification.
It happened a couple of times that I've been browsing the 'App Store' and just thought "I need that!" and bought it.
Combining TV watching, aspiration to own 'stuff on TV', with credit card information (on Amazon), and the ability to buy on a whim, we should see this take off.
Yes, but luckily, as many people have pointed out, the cost of fuel, and the rising middle-class and freedom to communicate in China will squeeze the cost of Chinese produced goods by both inflating the wages cost to produce, and the cost to transport.
It's also interesting that $4 gas has done something that politicians have been to feeble and cowardly to do, and that's start to force Americans out of their stupidly large, environment-destroying, gas-guzzling idiot-mobiles.
As an ex-inhabitant of the UK, $10 gas over there has done quite a bit of good in making people use public transport, and drive smaller car for shorter journeys.
People love companies that give them what they want. Simple as that.
Back in the 90's, MS gave us great development tools, opportunity, a series of great Office suites and other excellent software.
Sadly however, software seemed to stagnate somewhat, and Microsoft have become increasingly dependent on their core set of products / cash cows, of Office and Windows.
In contrast, Apple in the 90's had a cruddy product line, stagnating software, and people were migrating away from Mac OS in droves, so the shiny new Windows 95.
However, now, the boot is on the other foot,as Apple is giving people what they want in both software and hardware terms. iPods, great Macs (thanks to Intel, and great industrial design), and great software.
If it's expensive, and not nailed down, it *will* walk, if someone gain access and feels that they can take it without serious consequences.
Just use a cable-lock like everyone else, and your laptop will be fine, barring specially equipped thieves, who you probably wouldn't want to tangle with anyway.
Yes, and the most interesting thing about JavaScript is that it is arguably the most successful and widely deployed Lisp ever. Before you laugh, it has procedures as first class objects, can eval code, has lexical closures... it's an absolutely rocking language if you want to do functional things. I love it for prototyping up algorithms.
I've had very good results from Marvell and Intel cards.
I'm really sick of the tired old trolls that plague these pages, and I'm sure the coming plethora of low-end GNU/Linux boxes such as the OLPC, EeePC etc., will finally sweep this crap away.
The exact type of data that the article talks about is available Houston TranStar.
Click on a segment of Beltway 8 and you get a Roadway speed and travel time popup.
Within that box is a link to a live speed chart that shows current speed versus yearly average.
I recently tried to turn off the ringer on my father in-law's Blackberry. As soon as I failed, then my father in law failed, then my wife eventually worked it out, I knew that it sucked even worse than the Razr software, and that Win Mobile, great as it might be for embedded apps, is not the right solution for a phone.
I think that if Google can make the Android stuff run crisply on phone hardware, then the ease of Java programming and nice GUIs will give Apple a run for their money.
I'm not sure, though, that I want to hand over *yet another* part of my life to Google. We all probably will though.
I upgraded a couple of laptops from Tiger to Leopard, and both of them have wireless issues. Typically, they take much longer to reconnect after waking, maybe 30 secs, and obviously if they do ever drop the connection, then it is much easier to notice the problem.
On the other hand, my MacBook, with a fresh install of Leopard has been spotless when using the wireless.
It's looking like there may be issues with the upgrades, and I'll be doing a complete reinstall on my wife's MacBook, once Dave Nanian gets Super Duper backup running properly on Leopard again.
I upgraded my MBP and my wife's MB to Leper (as I call it!), and both machines have mild wireless issues.
OTOH, my brand-new MB is working much like my (stolen) PB G4. Instant wake-up, and straight onto the network, without a mysterious 10 - 15 sec pause whilst 'searching'.
On this datum, I'd recommend a reformat and reinstall, rather than an upgrade, if you want to move from Tiger to Leopard.
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Surely, this is a brilliant post, and should be modded heavenwards. I haven't laughed so much all day.
You know there was a sequel called 'secret of the sixth magic'... I loved that too. Always kinda reminded me of 'A Saturday Life', not sci-fi but fairly obscure I'd think. Anyway, Patrick Rothfuss probably read Master of the Five Magics, I think I can see a little coming through in his books.
You ever mentioned to someone that CVS couldn't fill their Ambien prescription? Try it and see, I'll wait.
Hee hee. I thought your sig was ATOM BASIC at first, but alas, Intercal right?
I wonder if this is related to the suspected fusion that occurs during ultrasound induced cavitation.
There is a place for commercial community stations. It's viable to support a small local radio station with commercials, and not too bad to listen to, since, at least the content is local.
National commercial radio is rubbish though.
What about WinMobile?
It's carrying on the portable tradition. Maybe 'Windows' laptops could start running WinMobile...
Try using the bathroom after a curry, in a tiny Japanese apartment[1] with paper thin walls. Or any flat/apartment constructed in the last 10 years.
Cut out a laptop screen sized area of matte/frosted shower curtain and epoxy it to your laptop.
Problem solved.
You'll be very pleased to know that AAPL has dropped somewhat further to $89 then!
Dude, you're wasted on this crowd.
Great post!
I'll take your point on books and run with it.
I remember when I was first interested in computers, I was happy just to have old BASIC programming manuals and such. Magazines, articles in New Scientist. Kids have a lot of energy. Let him harness some of that energy reading.
If I could have seeded myself with some books, I would have left copies of SICP, K&R, a Turbo Pascal or Turbo C manual... What I did have was a copy of the DEC 2020 BASIC manual, Personal Computer World magazine, and Byte when I could afford it.
Anyway, don't underestimate books as a vehicle for getting kids going down the right path with computers. I guess this extends to programming blogs too, but that's another post.
I believe the original driver behind the AJAX features was a web-based Outlook mail client.
Little did they know that they had opened the door to all the cool things we have today like Google Mail, Google Docs, Google News, Google Labs Search, Google Notebook, Google Base, MS Live Mesh ... err ;-)
I think we owe MS a huge debt of gratitude for making the web browser-based clients possible, and for most practical purposes, freeing us from monolithic PC-based software.
Never underestimate the addictiveness of immediate gratification.
It happened a couple of times that I've been browsing the 'App Store' and just thought "I need that!" and bought it.
Combining TV watching, aspiration to own 'stuff on TV', with credit card information (on Amazon), and the ability to buy on a whim, we should see this take off.
Yes, but luckily, as many people have pointed out, the cost of fuel, and the rising middle-class and freedom to communicate in China will squeeze the cost of Chinese produced goods by both inflating the wages cost to produce, and the cost to transport.
It's also interesting that $4 gas has done something that politicians have been to feeble and cowardly to do, and that's start to force Americans out of their stupidly large, environment-destroying, gas-guzzling idiot-mobiles.
As an ex-inhabitant of the UK, $10 gas over there has done quite a bit of good in making people use public transport, and drive smaller car for shorter journeys.
Yes, bad RAM on a Mini has been the only thing that has made OS X fall over for me.
All my Macs have been rock solid, though my MacBook is showing some corruption in WoW. Not sure about that.
Heh! Go ahead and stick with your RAZR. It's a great phone!!
People love companies that give them what they want. Simple as that.
Back in the 90's, MS gave us great development tools, opportunity, a series of great Office suites and other excellent software.
Sadly however, software seemed to stagnate somewhat, and Microsoft have become increasingly dependent on their core set of products / cash cows, of Office and Windows.
In contrast, Apple in the 90's had a cruddy product line, stagnating software, and people were migrating away from Mac OS in droves, so the shiny new Windows 95.
However, now, the boot is on the other foot,as Apple is giving people what they want in both software and hardware terms. iPods, great Macs (thanks to Intel, and great industrial design), and great software.
If it's expensive, and not nailed down, it *will* walk, if someone gain access and feels that they can take it without serious consequences.
Just use a cable-lock like everyone else, and your laptop will be fine, barring specially equipped thieves, who you probably wouldn't want to tangle with anyway.
Yes, and the most interesting thing about JavaScript is that it is arguably the most successful and widely deployed Lisp ever. Before you laugh, it has procedures as first class objects, can eval code, has lexical closures ... it's an absolutely rocking language if you want to do functional things. I love it for prototyping up algorithms.
Take a look at Functional JavaScript. Extensions for functional programming.
Or the great PrototypeLibrary. Note the functions like 'reduce' that can apply to array.
I've had very good results from Marvell and Intel cards.
I'm really sick of the tired old trolls that plague these pages, and I'm sure the coming plethora of low-end GNU/Linux boxes such as the OLPC, EeePC etc., will finally sweep this crap away.
The exact type of data that the article talks about is available Houston TranStar.
Click on a segment of Beltway 8 and you get a Roadway speed and travel time popup.
Within that box is a link to a live speed chart that shows current speed versus yearly average.
I recently tried to turn off the ringer on my father in-law's Blackberry. As soon as I failed, then my father in law failed, then my wife eventually worked it out, I knew that it sucked even worse than the Razr software, and that Win Mobile, great as it might be for embedded apps, is not the right solution for a phone.
I think that if Google can make the Android stuff run crisply on phone hardware, then the ease of Java programming and nice GUIs will give Apple a run for their money.
I'm not sure, though, that I want to hand over *yet another* part of my life to Google. We all probably will though.
I upgraded a couple of laptops from Tiger to Leopard, and both of them have wireless issues. Typically, they take much longer to reconnect after waking, maybe 30 secs, and obviously if they do ever drop the connection, then it is much easier to notice the problem.
On the other hand, my MacBook, with a fresh install of Leopard has been spotless when using the wireless.
It's looking like there may be issues with the upgrades, and I'll be doing a complete reinstall on my wife's MacBook, once Dave Nanian gets Super Duper backup running properly on Leopard again.
I upgraded my MBP and my wife's MB to Leper (as I call it!), and both machines have mild wireless issues.
OTOH, my brand-new MB is working much like my (stolen) PB G4. Instant wake-up, and straight onto the network, without a mysterious 10 - 15 sec pause whilst 'searching'.
On this datum, I'd recommend a reformat and reinstall, rather than an upgrade, if you want to move from Tiger to Leopard.