I read that and it didn't register. I thought, well, why should the make it run on old, obsolete procesors. Then I realized it said P-FOUR, and ATHLON, and I'm scratching my head. Unless I haven't seen any computer ads this week and I missed the next generation of processor, those ARE the current chips.
"Animated GIFs aren't interactive the way his Flash movie is."
The point is, just because someone links something on a website that he thinks is cool, useful, or persuasive, doen't magically make the consumer believe the same. In fact, it could be having a detrimental effect. You've just had it reflected to you by a user, and instead of letting the comment sink in as constructive criticism, you're bargaining. You missed the point.
Is it more important for your content to please you, the designer, or is it more important for it to be persuasive or convey useful information?
If your answer is the former, then that's great. If it's the latter, you might want to think about what you're doing. Maybe you should consider not making the flash application be the main part of the resource.
It's one thing to have a link to a flash movie, indicating, "hey, here's a neat thing that you might dig, if you're into it."
And it's another thing for the index page of your website to immediately load any rich content whatsoever.
Are you trying to communicate information, or are you merely trying to show off that you have a flash movie? If it's reasonable to the social contract with your users, then that's great. But if you're trying to develop broad appeal and spread goodwill amongst your users, it may be more important a consideration than you believe, to make your information as accessible as possible. On end end of a spectrum, there's "accessible", and Flash is at the opposite end of that.
The "minor celebrity pool shark" is certainly a poor example, since his minor fanbase probably enjoys whatever flash game is featured on the website.
But if you did that on a website that was trying to get my business, I guarantee you it will not get two opportunities to get in my way of looking at the catalog or order form or even getting the phone number. You just don't get two chances, it's that simple. It had better not make any noise, either. Same goes for requiring javascript for the forms to work, and definitely my pet peeve, the assumption that certain javascript designs will work -- I've had menus that I couldn't select because you can't pull up the menu AND move the mouse to the item. Think I bought anything from the last site that did that to me? Think I'll ever go back there, or even remember the name of the company for longer than it takes to trashcan the address? Think again.
But a pool shark's vanity site isn't a very good example of where good design is important.
I like this one, for reasons other than grammar. While it is an incorrect usage of an idiomatic expression, it actually feels good to say. I think it's that hard "v" that puts in in the same linguistic category as the F-word. It feels powerful to say aloud, even if it is grammatically incorrect. Do not underestimate the power of language beyond its correctness!
> "dribble" when the author means "drivel"
"Dribble" might be related to as being somewhat more disgusting than mere "drivel."
Again, not that I disagree. I can understand why some idioms enter common usage even though they are incorrect. And if you find that you must argue for correct usage against someone whose common sense argument works for them, you lose. Examples I can think of, would be "begging the question", or "presently" (meaning, "in a little while"), or "momentarily" (meaning, "for a very brief duration").
People *want* to say "begging the question", and I think they actually visualize a little dog when they say it. And because it feels good to say this, it does not matter that the expression use used "incorrectly." If you have to give someone a freshman course in persuasive argument before they understand this, you've lost.
But when someone says they are "presently" doing someting, I still hear "later", even though they mean "now". The dictionary has caved in to this usage, so the game is lost.
And when an operater will be with me "momentarily", I cringe, because I want that operator to stay on the line long enough to get the task done!
Re:so its all bad news for employers?
on
Star Wars Sickout
·
· Score: 1
>.. and they have nothing to gain from happy workers > skipping a couple of hours, that they'll probably >make up again when they get in late? > >why doesnt this get factored in?:)
If the movie's any good, they will spend the rest of the day talking about it. If the movie is not any good, they will spend the rest of the day talking about it.
>This 19" thing is going to be huge. It's just a >desktop with a handle.
I think there's a market for that. I'd like to have seen this Dell have that monitor be a detachable, free standing thing. With a handle, sure. Why not? Compare it to, say, a micro-ATX box and a monitor. What's more portable?
To have a portable computer that is decently powerful and has built-in video sufficient for presentations and/or entertainment?
So if the alternative is lugging around a 20" LCD in a road case together with a smaller laptop, this might look like a pretty good deal.
I know lots of people who carry projectors and so on. Why not a 20" portable? When you call it a "lap top" you frame it to sound unreasonable. You don't really operate it on your lap. If lightweight portability, and a form factor that works well when sitting at airport terminals and so on, is important, then there are plenty of other products to fit those requirements.
But if you really want a big integrated screen, here's something for you.
"Now, if you go out and sell said song at ANY price - there is the violation of the download. "
The violation is in the distribution, not in the acquisition. But the direction you're going (copyright for music is effectively the same idiom as copyright under the GPL). Works better than cars and beers analogies.
>Maybe if our elected leaders remembered that's how >our founding fathers wanted it, we wouldn't have >these ridiculous intrusions upon our freedoms.
Our elected leaders are being elected by people whose opinions about a great many things, differ substantially from those of the founding fathers.
The sooner you realize this is not a fluke or an aberration, but rather, an expression of the affirmed will of the people, you will have a better understanding of the amount of work that is really necessary to counter it.
People who believe that "individual freedom" and not "security" is the ultimate national ideal, are not the ones taking action to shape the future. They aren't the ones running for office, and they aren't the ones voting.
The intentions of the founding fathers are irrelevant. And the people you are up against politically, aren't moved by such arguments.
Your scheme seems to hold an assumption that "publishing" of a creative work is always simple or free or convenient or even possible.
I write music. I hold copyright on the music I write. Publication is irrelevant, and I would not support a change in the system that takes my rights away, only to protect the rights of those who can publish their work while punishing those who cannot.
On thing that often hits my nerves, is when a device locks me out of my own work. For instance, if I record a song on a Sony, that device puts copy protection on my work, and I don't think "it" has the right to do that. It's certainly not doing it for MY protection, and is in fact, causing an abridgement of my rights as an author.
That's the big problem with DRM as I see it. DRM systems operate on the assumption that you are consuming someone else's content, not your own.
"Writing an article like that about anyone is an invitation for a lawsuit."
And publishing it without reading it, is what?
If they *did* read this article before printing it, well, shame on them. I'd like to believe it got slipped in somehow, unbeknownst to the people resposible for the magazine's content.
Because if they *did* read this before printing it, they don't really have a finger to point.
I'm vaguely familiar with the name, and I recognize her as someone with something to do with the SCO story, but it was frustrating to read the article and still not really understand what the problem was. I mean, I *know* in a general sense, that she wrote articles that were favorable to SCO's position, and I'm sure that this development follows from that, but there's not much in the article that would bring someone up to speed, which makes it poor journalism.
"For instance, some items on Amazon won't show you the price until you add them to your cart."
They'd really like to make it so you have to call and speak to a salesperson, but they know that won't work anymore, so this is their compromise. Stupid, I know, but it's a vestige of old-school marketing that hasn't died yet.
Tell me the bottom line price. Don't play games with me, or offer rebates, or anything else. If a vendor does a consistently good job of having the items I want in stock, and delivering it to me, he will get my business. That's most of the equation, and as for price, it's mainly important to not have the highest price. I'll pay more at Newegg or B&H or Zzounds than I would with a vendor that hasn't proven his reliability to me.
GPL is a grant of rights that the author has under Copyright Law.
To somehow deny to GPL requires first abridging individual rights that are held under copyright law, and if you manage to do *that*, you'll set a precedent that can also be used to divest many others of their intellectual property.
>Nice computer science, but poor pure mathematics.
I thought the point of the article is a warning against the assumption that because pi is known to be irrational, then it follows that it is a good source for a random seed. There may be applications that use this assumption, and it may not be yielding sufficiently random results.
> How is one able to say something is or isn't > "random".
It's not distributed in such a way as to be useful in specific domains, apparently.
Pi is proven not to have patterns. But that doesn't mean the distribution among any range of selected digits is going to yeild a better random series than a given machine implementation.
>We are really one large city with no physical >borders
You don't think of the Rio Saldo as a physical border? Or South Mountain? Or Shaw Butte, Camelback, or Squaw Peak? Excuse me, Piestawhatever Peak? Mummy Mountain just a foothill to you? Superstitions? Gila River?
Okay, I'm being silly, but Tucson really is locked in by mountains, and I think it's funny that people refer to Tempe as being "Landlocked". I used to ride my bike to Scottsdale, or to Fry's on the 10, or around the airport, and never had to take any helicopters or ferries:-)
>Tempe is one of the best-run cities in the valley
You just love Sherriff Joe, don't you?
> As one of the only land-locked cities
I heard this a lot, and never understood what was meant by it. It's locked in by municipal boundaries, not by geological ones. The 202 and the 10 and Mesa do not make it some kind of island.
Manhattan is landlocked. Kauai is landlocked. Tempe could annex Mesa or Guadalupe or Chandler, it has a long way to go before it hits any mountain ranges or oceans.
Tucson, on the other hand, *is* surrounded by mountains.
Tempe is a pretty small town, even as college towns go. It has exactly one eclectic coffee shop, exactly one music venue for jam bands, and just a couple of decent neighborhoods.
Now, if you were talking about "Tempe AND Scottsdale AND Mesa" you might be getting into "major metropolitan area" territory.
"Major metropolitan area" would be, Baltimore, or Denver.
Tempe Arizona is a smallish college town. Oh, and nightclubs close promptly at midnight and shut off the band and kick out the clientele. And there's no smoking. And all that stuff you heard about weed being legal there? That was only for about a month, and now any possession is a felony.
Slashdot Mirror
I read that and it didn't register. I thought, well, why should the make it run on old, obsolete procesors. Then I realized it said P-FOUR, and ATHLON, and I'm scratching my head. Unless I haven't seen any computer ads this week and I missed the next generation of processor, those ARE the current chips.
"Animated GIFs aren't interactive the way his Flash movie is."
The point is, just because someone links something on a website that he thinks is cool, useful, or persuasive, doen't magically make the consumer believe the same. In fact, it could be having a detrimental effect. You've just had it reflected to you by a user, and instead of letting the comment sink in as constructive criticism, you're bargaining. You missed the point.
Is it more important for your content to please you, the designer, or is it more important for it to be persuasive or convey useful information?
If your answer is the former, then that's great. If it's the latter, you might want to think about what you're doing. Maybe you should consider not making the flash application be the main part of the resource.
It's one thing to have a link to a flash movie, indicating, "hey, here's a neat thing that you might dig, if you're into it."
And it's another thing for the index page of your website to immediately load any rich content whatsoever.
Are you trying to communicate information, or are you merely trying to show off that you have a flash movie? If it's reasonable to the social contract with your users, then that's great. But if you're trying to develop broad appeal and spread goodwill amongst your users, it may be more important a consideration than you believe, to make your information as accessible as possible. On end end of a spectrum, there's "accessible", and Flash is at the opposite end of that.
The "minor celebrity pool shark" is certainly a poor example, since his minor fanbase probably enjoys whatever flash game is featured on the website.
But if you did that on a website that was trying to get my business, I guarantee you it will not get two opportunities to get in my way of looking at the catalog or order form or even getting the phone number. You just don't get two chances, it's that simple. It had better not make any noise, either. Same goes for requiring javascript for the forms to work, and definitely my pet peeve, the assumption that certain javascript designs will work -- I've had menus that I couldn't select because you can't pull up the menu AND move the mouse to the item. Think I bought anything from the last site that did that to me? Think I'll ever go back there, or even remember the name of the company for longer than it takes to trashcan the address? Think again.
But a pool shark's vanity site isn't a very good example of where good design is important.
I agree with you, but,
>for all intensive purposes
I like this one, for reasons other than grammar. While it is an incorrect usage of an idiomatic expression, it actually feels good to say. I think it's that hard "v" that puts in in the same linguistic category as the F-word. It feels powerful to say aloud, even if it is grammatically incorrect. Do not underestimate the power of language beyond its correctness!
> "dribble" when the author means "drivel"
"Dribble" might be related to as being somewhat more disgusting than mere "drivel."
Again, not that I disagree. I can understand why some idioms enter common usage even though they are incorrect. And if you find that you must argue for correct usage against someone whose common sense argument works for them, you lose.
Examples I can think of, would be "begging the question", or "presently" (meaning, "in a little while"), or "momentarily" (meaning, "for a very brief duration").
People *want* to say "begging the question", and I think they actually visualize a little dog when they say it. And because it feels good to say this, it does not matter that the expression use used "incorrectly." If you have to give someone a freshman course in persuasive argument before they understand this, you've lost.
But when someone says they are "presently" doing someting, I still hear "later", even though they mean "now". The dictionary has caved in to this usage, so the game is lost.
And when an operater will be with me "momentarily", I cringe, because I want that operator to stay on the line long enough to get the task done!
>.. and they have nothing to gain from happy workers :)
> skipping a couple of hours, that they'll probably
>make up again when they get in late?
>
>why doesnt this get factored in?
If the movie's any good, they will spend the rest of the day talking about it. If the movie is not any good, they will spend the rest of the day talking about it.
>This 19" thing is going to be huge. It's just a
>desktop with a handle.
I think there's a market for that.
I'd like to have seen this Dell have that monitor be a detachable, free standing thing. With a handle, sure. Why not? Compare it to, say, a micro-ATX box and a monitor. What's more portable?
> What is the point of a lap top this big?
To have a portable computer that is decently powerful and has built-in video sufficient for presentations and/or entertainment?
So if the alternative is lugging around a 20" LCD in a road case together with a smaller laptop, this might look like a pretty good deal.
I know lots of people who carry projectors and so on. Why not a 20" portable? When you call it a "lap top" you frame it to sound unreasonable. You don't really operate it on your lap. If lightweight portability, and a form factor that works well when sitting at airport terminals and so on, is important, then there are plenty of other products to fit those requirements.
But if you really want a big integrated screen, here's something for you.
"Now, if you go out and sell said song at ANY price - there is the violation of the download.
"
The violation is in the distribution, not in the acquisition. But the direction you're going (copyright for music is effectively the same idiom as copyright under the GPL). Works better than cars and beers analogies.
>Maybe if our elected leaders remembered that's how
>our founding fathers wanted it, we wouldn't have
>these ridiculous intrusions upon our freedoms.
Our elected leaders are being elected by people whose opinions about a great many things, differ substantially from those of the founding fathers.
The sooner you realize this is not a fluke or an aberration, but rather, an expression of the affirmed will of the people, you will have a better understanding of the amount of work that is really necessary to counter it.
People who believe that "individual freedom" and not "security" is the ultimate national ideal, are not the ones taking action to shape the future. They aren't the ones running for office, and they aren't the ones voting.
The intentions of the founding fathers are irrelevant. And the people you are up against politically, aren't moved by such arguments.
> If you do not publish your work, no protection.
Your scheme seems to hold an assumption that "publishing" of a creative work is always simple or free or convenient or even possible.
I write music. I hold copyright on the music I write. Publication is irrelevant, and I would not support a change in the system that takes my rights away, only to protect the rights of those who can publish their work while punishing those who cannot.
On thing that often hits my nerves, is when a device locks me out of my own work. For instance, if I record a song on a Sony, that device puts copy protection on my work, and I don't think "it" has the right to do that. It's certainly not doing it for MY protection, and is in fact, causing an abridgement of my rights as an author.
That's the big problem with DRM as I see it. DRM systems operate on the assumption that you are consuming someone else's content, not your own.
That puts an unreasonable burden on any artist in a prolific period.
And what of copyright on works that *aren't* published?
"Writing an article like that about anyone is an invitation for a lawsuit."
And publishing it without reading it, is what?
If they *did* read this article before printing it, well, shame on them. I'd like to believe it got slipped in somehow, unbeknownst to the people resposible for the magazine's content.
Because if they *did* read this before printing it, they don't really have a finger to point.
I'm vaguely familiar with the name, and I recognize her as someone with something to do with the SCO story, but it was frustrating to read the article and still not really understand what the problem was. I mean, I *know* in a general sense, that she wrote articles that were favorable to SCO's position, and I'm sure that this development follows from that, but there's not much in the article that would bring someone up to speed, which makes it poor journalism.
Oh, wait, that's right. There's not a court in the nation that will hear this case. Story's a non-starter.
"For instance, some items on Amazon won't show you the price until you add them to your cart."
They'd really like to make it so you have to call and speak to a salesperson, but they know that won't work anymore, so this is their compromise. Stupid, I know, but it's a vestige of old-school marketing that hasn't died yet.
Tell me the bottom line price. Don't play games with me, or offer rebates, or anything else. If a vendor does a consistently good job of having the items I want in stock, and delivering it to me, he will get my business. That's most of the equation, and as for price, it's mainly important to not have the highest price. I'll pay more at Newegg or B&H or Zzounds than I would with a vendor that hasn't proven his reliability to me.
GPL is a grant of rights that the author has under Copyright Law.
To somehow deny to GPL requires first abridging individual rights that are held under copyright law, and if you manage to do *that*, you'll set a precedent that can also be used to divest many others of their intellectual property.
>Nice computer science, but poor pure mathematics.
I thought the point of the article is a warning against the assumption that because pi is known to be irrational, then it follows that it is a good source for a random seed. There may be applications that use this assumption, and it may not be yielding sufficiently random results.
> How is one able to say something is or isn't
> "random".
It's not distributed in such a way as to be useful in specific domains, apparently.
Pi is proven not to have patterns. But that doesn't mean the distribution among any range of selected digits is going to yeild a better random series than a given machine implementation.
Forget John Titor. Invite Wisest Human Dr. Gene Ray, and admit that Time Cube proves You Educated Stupid.
"First, I think other cities in AZ should do it to. Preferrably bordering cities like Chandler, Scottsdale and Mesa and even Phoenix Metro"
I notice you don't mention Guadalupe.
>We are really one large city with no physical
:-)
>borders
You don't think of the Rio Saldo as a physical border? Or South Mountain? Or Shaw Butte, Camelback, or Squaw Peak? Excuse me, Piestawhatever Peak? Mummy Mountain just a foothill to you?
Superstitions? Gila River?
Okay, I'm being silly, but Tucson really is locked in by mountains, and I think it's funny that people refer to Tempe as being "Landlocked". I used to ride my bike to Scottsdale, or to Fry's on the 10, or around the airport, and never had to take any helicopters or ferries
>Tempe is one of the best-run cities in the valley
You just love Sherriff Joe, don't you?
> As one of the only land-locked cities
I heard this a lot, and never understood what was meant by it. It's locked in by municipal boundaries, not by geological ones. The 202 and the 10 and Mesa do not make it some kind of island.
Manhattan is landlocked. Kauai is landlocked. Tempe could annex Mesa or Guadalupe or Chandler, it has a long way to go before it hits any mountain ranges or oceans.
Tucson, on the other hand, *is* surrounded by mountains.
I moved to Tucson after Tempe, and couldn't be happier.
Tempe is a pretty small town, even as college towns go. It has exactly one eclectic coffee shop, exactly one music venue for jam bands, and just a couple of decent neighborhoods.
Now, if you were talking about "Tempe AND Scottsdale AND Mesa" you might be getting into "major metropolitan area" territory.
"Major metropolitan area" would be, Baltimore, or Denver.
Tempe Arizona is a smallish college town. Oh, and nightclubs close promptly at midnight and shut off the band and kick out the clientele. And there's no smoking. And all that stuff you heard about weed being legal there? That was only for about a month, and now any possession is a felony.
I'm guessing the first man on Mars will be someone from a culture that has no taboo against making a one-way trip.