I was using cdnow.com to kick ass in the afternoon "name that song title and artist" call in contests, often I'd have a song title fragment and cdnow would fill in the blank for me before the radio station answered the call...
I've got an older one, but I still like it fine. I don't need anything too fancy. Used to have it hardwired, now I have a wifi adapter. Works great for what I want to do with it.
Because reading a normal desktop's output from 15 feet away on the couch is hard. The nice thing about these is that the UI is designed for easy reading and navigation with a remote.
http://xbmc.org/ addresses your concern, though in practice I mostly just use VLC instead.
I've been reasonably happy with the WDTV, even though my generation didn't get Netflix, it feels adequately maintained and even upgraded on the feature front.
If I wanted to type a 10,000 word document or play a complex RPG I'd take that 1995 PC over a smartphone anyday. Sure , the smartphone has much better hardware but from a usability point of view it leaves a lot to be desired compared to PC or any era.
Those usability features from 1995 were compensating for lack of processing power;-) Oh, and real keyboards cost real money.
As one of the affected users, I'd much prefer it if they stabilized their ever-growing bloatware feature set (that has translated into no visible gain for users) and took some time to optimize their code.
I've been thinking this about Windows' cold boot times forever. How many lifetimes have been wasted waiting for the login prompt?
In 1991 I joined a team that was just finishing up a 64K Z80 all assembly project. Efficient and maintainable are not words that applied... it was as efficient as it had to be where it had to be, and otherwise bloated to fill the available memory. Oh, and the home grown floating point library was a bad idea, never could get the same results on the non Z80 side from the same input data. By 1995, the code was frozen, solid, and the product was basically un-upgradable.
This has made certain things practical--such as...
Such as using unsuitable or bad algorithms, wasting enormous amounts of memory, disk space and bandwidth on trivial tasks, using layer upon layer of badly structured APIs and on top of that a browser with an interpreted language running software we use daily (like gmail). Who would have thought it possible back then?
Yes! and, in 1905 you had to carry a competent mechanic and navigator with you if you intended to drive cross country in an automobile, they also helped with the hand powered fuel pump. Now any idiot can do it by themselves, and many do it less efficiently than a pro would, they don't even plan a route before starting!
The label "Autism" is about as descriptive of an individual as the label "Caucasian."
My sons (2, both diagnosed with Autism) are both well aware that they are different - neither of them has yet showed any desire to be normal, or to get normal people to like them.
The future is impossible to predict, we're just trying to equip them the best we can for the 40-ish years of life they're likely to have after we're gone.
In 2003, they would not even attempt a diagnosis of Autism before age 3, even though all the research was pointing toward early intervention with socialization therapy as highly effective at mitigating the worst of the debilitating effects of ASD.
Getting this diagnosis at 6 months can kick off a course of ABA and socialization focus at a time when it matters most to the child's future.
I just spoke with a surgeon this morning, married to another surgeon, who have a 16 year old son with straight As and no concept of what a friend is - if they had noticed earlier and done something about it, he might (according to the literature) have more of a social life at this point. Maybe he's happy the way he is, but at some point, social withdrawal has a negative impact on the ability to pro-create, and even though children have a negative correlation to happiness, it is sad to not be able to have them if you really want to.
Sure as hell I'd abort the fetus if they knew it was autistic. Not only are they not productive members of society, they cost the taxpayers millions in entitlements. There are already too many humans we don't need more broken ones.
When my 2 year old was showing signs of ASD, we mentioned it to our pediatrician. She pointed out her window to the Johnson Space Center (Houston) and said "don't be too concerned, half the guys over there are autistic, too."
I've had 8 years to philosophize about it, and I still stand by my initial position that, if there were a magic cure that would make my son "normal," meaning just like the middle of the pack people I knew in High School, I wouldn't want it for him. There are already enough "normal" people in the world.
Oh, I agree, the big downside of a flat earth is that rich people are in contact with poor people. I see that, now. If only we could get back to a system in which there could be no interaction. Those systems are generally the best for humanity.
So, then, the scammers will be forced to scam the poor? Like my babysitter who, in 1970, got taken for about $100 in a check cashing scheme in the grocery store parking lot.
Sorry to not feed your Troll directly, please look elsewhere for sympathy for your overtly bleeding heart - even if I might agree in principle with the underlying tone of your comment.
The bureaucrat wasn't indifferent, they were an airline employee, incentivized to screw the family over thereby gaining additional income for their failing industry.
Terraforming will take too long and possibly unethical.
Oh, c'mon, with what the Europeans did to the Native Americans, the Chinese to the Tibetans, the Australians to the Aborigines, the whole damn world to the Hawaiians, the human race is running out of indigenous cultures / life forms to abuse, it's time we moved on to new horizons.
Seriously, didn't the Chinese set off some shotgun shells as a satellite killer experiment?
It doesn't take much, if you can put yourself in retrograde orbit, maneuver for near collision and then throw a rock out the window, you'll do pretty well at killing any manmade object in orbit.
Use the language your developers know. If they say the problem is too hard in the language they have been using, maybe you need new developers?
Seriously, C++ is pretty awesome, for me, I use it for lots of rapid gui design - mostly with Qt, but it sounds like you'll be crunching some of your own 3D...
Slashdot Mirror
advocates a move to all-digital payment/transfers by pointing out both forms are only representations of value
Sure, we should plug the paper hole, but who here believes that wire transfers are never faked?
I was using cdnow.com to kick ass in the afternoon "name that song title and artist" call in contests, often I'd have a song title fragment and cdnow would fill in the blank for me before the radio station answered the call...
An Apple TV by itself is almost useless. It's a good Netflix box but other then that : meh.
Funny, I feel the same way about our PS3.
I've got an older one, but I still like it fine. I don't need anything too fancy. Used to have it hardwired, now I have a wifi adapter. Works great for what I want to do with it.
x2
Because reading a normal desktop's output from 15 feet away on the couch is hard. The nice thing about these is that the UI is designed for easy reading and navigation with a remote.
http://xbmc.org/ addresses your concern, though in practice I mostly just use VLC instead.
So far it has played everything that I've thrown at it.
I read this about most every streaming media player, probably because they all use FFmpeg at their core.
I've been reasonably happy with the WDTV, even though my generation didn't get Netflix, it feels adequately maintained and even upgraded on the feature front.
If I wanted to type a 10,000 word document or play a complex RPG I'd take that 1995 PC over a smartphone anyday. Sure , the smartphone has much better hardware but from a usability point of view it leaves a lot to be desired compared to PC or any era.
Those usability features from 1995 were compensating for lack of processing power ;-) Oh, and real keyboards cost real money.
As one of the affected users, I'd much prefer it if they stabilized their ever-growing bloatware feature set (that has translated into no visible gain for users) and took some time to optimize their code.
I've been thinking this about Windows' cold boot times forever. How many lifetimes have been wasted waiting for the login prompt?
In 1991 I joined a team that was just finishing up a 64K Z80 all assembly project. Efficient and maintainable are not words that applied... it was as efficient as it had to be where it had to be, and otherwise bloated to fill the available memory. Oh, and the home grown floating point library was a bad idea, never could get the same results on the non Z80 side from the same input data. By 1995, the code was frozen, solid, and the product was basically un-upgradable.
This has made certain things practical--such as ...
Such as using unsuitable or bad algorithms, wasting enormous amounts of memory, disk space and bandwidth on trivial tasks, using layer upon layer of badly structured APIs and on top of that a browser with an interpreted language running software we use daily (like gmail). Who would have thought it possible back then?
Yes! and, in 1905 you had to carry a competent mechanic and navigator with you if you intended to drive cross country in an automobile, they also helped with the hand powered fuel pump. Now any idiot can do it by themselves, and many do it less efficiently than a pro would, they don't even plan a route before starting!
hahahaha "1995: ...handling email, web surfing..."
speak for yourself but i think somewhat less than 90% of the people currently using a computer had access to email or the internet in 1995.
My memory of web browsing in 1995 was spending forever to get Mozilla to load a page with three graphic files over dialup.
In many ways, the Lynx user experience (text based) was superior to Mozilla & autoloading of graphics.
The label "Autism" is about as descriptive of an individual as the label "Caucasian."
My sons (2, both diagnosed with Autism) are both well aware that they are different - neither of them has yet showed any desire to be normal, or to get normal people to like them.
The future is impossible to predict, we're just trying to equip them the best we can for the 40-ish years of life they're likely to have after we're gone.
In 2003, they would not even attempt a diagnosis of Autism before age 3, even though all the research was pointing toward early intervention with socialization therapy as highly effective at mitigating the worst of the debilitating effects of ASD.
Getting this diagnosis at 6 months can kick off a course of ABA and socialization focus at a time when it matters most to the child's future.
I just spoke with a surgeon this morning, married to another surgeon, who have a 16 year old son with straight As and no concept of what a friend is - if they had noticed earlier and done something about it, he might (according to the literature) have more of a social life at this point. Maybe he's happy the way he is, but at some point, social withdrawal has a negative impact on the ability to pro-create, and even though children have a negative correlation to happiness, it is sad to not be able to have them if you really want to.
Sure as hell I'd abort the fetus if they knew it was autistic.
Not only are they not productive members of society, they cost the taxpayers millions in entitlements.
There are already too many humans we don't need more broken ones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_figures_sometimes_considered_autistic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_autism_spectrum_disorders
When my 2 year old was showing signs of ASD, we mentioned it to our pediatrician. She pointed out her window to the Johnson Space Center (Houston) and said "don't be too concerned, half the guys over there are autistic, too."
I've had 8 years to philosophize about it, and I still stand by my initial position that, if there were a magic cure that would make my son "normal," meaning just like the middle of the pack people I knew in High School, I wouldn't want it for him. There are already enough "normal" people in the world.
Oh, I agree, the big downside of a flat earth is that rich people are in contact with poor people. I see that, now. If only we could get back to a system in which there could be no interaction. Those systems are generally the best for humanity.
So, then, the scammers will be forced to scam the poor? Like my babysitter who, in 1970, got taken for about $100 in a check cashing scheme in the grocery store parking lot.
Sorry to not feed your Troll directly, please look elsewhere for sympathy for your overtly bleeding heart - even if I might agree in principle with the underlying tone of your comment.
It's hardly anything new. Anytime you combine poverty, internet access, and police/political corruption--you're going to get fraud.
Internet access is not required, in the early 1990s I received this type of come-on from Nigeria via snail-mail.
The bureaucrat wasn't indifferent, they were an airline employee, incentivized to screw the family over thereby gaining additional income for their failing industry.
Obviously, an individual's eye socket diameter informs their decision on where to live.
Nah, it's all those tropical islanders & jungle dwellers with the beady little eyes....
Have you seen the study that correlates eye socket diameter with latitude? (Spoiler: it's a significant, positive correlation).
I'll be more impressed if they can get someone back from the moon.
Ya, Kennedy was pretty visionary with that "and bring them back safely" thing...
Terraforming will take too long and possibly unethical.
Oh, c'mon, with what the Europeans did to the Native Americans, the Chinese to the Tibetans, the Australians to the Aborigines, the whole damn world to the Hawaiians, the human race is running out of indigenous cultures / life forms to abuse, it's time we moved on to new horizons.
All basic building blocks that work well together and ObjC is far nicer to work with than plain old C and desnt have the gargantuan complexity of C++.
Simon.
(rather surprised that I was modded down to 0....)
Gargantuan complexity is where you make it. If you don't like Object hierarchies, don't write them.
Seriously, didn't the Chinese set off some shotgun shells as a satellite killer experiment?
It doesn't take much, if you can put yourself in retrograde orbit, maneuver for near collision and then throw a rock out the window, you'll do pretty well at killing any manmade object in orbit.
Use the language your developers know. If they say the problem is too hard in the language they have been using, maybe you need new developers?
Seriously, C++ is pretty awesome, for me, I use it for lots of rapid gui design - mostly with Qt, but it sounds like you'll be crunching some of your own 3D...