Re:Master planning vs mixed and public spaces
on
Does Sprawl Make Us Fat?
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
The plans I have seen often look attractive, but on closer examination bear a striking resemblance to malls turned inside out and mixed with housing.
I kid you not: some years ago I was walking through one of the pedestrian areas with shops in the center of Amsterdam and heard a Stupid American Tourist say: "This is like a mall without a roof!". For people with such a frame of reference, probably any new kind of city planning is an improvement.
In any case, Europe is a bit behind and now happily making the same mistakes as you already see in the US. Many housing-only areas are built without providing small centers to hang out or do shopping, and often forgetting to provide public transport or small parks. Even several gated-like communities have been built in the Netherlands (link in dutch).
I have a 4-year old Casio exilim 2.0 megapixel that also plays mp3s. The photos are excellent (for a 4 year old camera), and it is a very basic mp3 player that plays with some hiccups. I can say you that this is much better than the other way around! I use the mp3 player for my car every now and then, and can get pics that are good enough to print. I use the SD card to put any amount of mp3s or photos on the little thing, it's very flexible and I only have to carry around one small device. Shame they don't make this combination anymore.
Ditto for me, except for the emacs part. I did use the now extinct 'programmers file editor' (pfe) for windows for a while, which was neat because it could handle the EOL for both unix and windows systems, which also helped me getting files for the apple (OS 8 or 9) uncorrupted by nasty junk characters. I quickly found out that nano and friends are unusable for serious editing. Someone mentioned that the fact that vi(m) doesn't react to mouse input is a bad thing, but I think it's a good thing. You can copy text with the mouse and click anywhere in your editor, and it will be pasted at the position of your cursor. It saves you a lot of trouble and time aiming your mouse at the exact destination of the text. I got used to it and like it a lot.
The only disadvantage to vi(m) is that at some point you think you learned enough of it to work with it, and you keep working with it with the small list of commands you learned (say 10-20% of all vi(m) commands). I am now at this point, and every now and then realize that there are probably much faster ways to do it in vi(m). The vimtutor doesn't explain these, so it's hard to find them easily.
I understand that that part of the law made sense at the time the law was written, but let me ask now: where will guns help against the current oppression? Should one shoot the postmaster, blow the post office away? And what to do about telephone taps? The right to carry guns is now just an empty instrument to make some people feel 'safe', but it doesn't help anything against the real threats from the current day and age.
At the university here I've already seen several pleas posted on leaflets all over the campus from people whose laptop got stolen at the end of their PhD, which left them with all data lost. You just don't want that to happen. Why you would want to carry around the only copies of all your work in one bag is another question. The group where I'm in luckily specifically forbids you to put your work outside the disks that are in the thorough automated backup mechanism: a snapshot for each of the four last months, for each of the days in the last week, and for several hours of the last day. These backups are in one place I guess, so making even extra copies on cd might also be a good idea.
My prediction, based on personal experience: Social networking sites will come and go and keeping the people busy that like that kind of thing. Popular ones will fade in time because new people will only go to the new site where all their friends are, and the old members will stop using their account in time because their friends by then have better things to do and they get tired of updating their profile which noone reads anyway. Some sites have an advantage that they offer extra value, e.g. myspace offers a simple web-presence for (not only) starting musicians, and youtube ditto for film amateurs, flickr for photo enthusiasts, and all webforums that discuss spare parts for your 80's mercedes benz or who-knows-what:) . I think these will survive because of that, all the rest just have to realize that they'll peak at some point, and then fade into digital history.
My social networking history: I have one friend that I know from a yahoogroup / mailing list (you don't have to have a yahoo profile to participate in the mailinglist, very nice idea is that), who is really into these social networking sites, for an unknown reason, and she sends me invites every now and then.
I think the first one, makeoutclub, I entered voluntarily. That site is very much web 1.0 though, as the profiles are not interactive and there only was a crappy forum to interact, what only 5 people used. Still all the other people seemed to be happy enough with themselves to make a profile there with them looking alternative and listening to all the same alternative music as the rest (hey, me included). I actually got a few online contacts through that site, some of them I still chat with.
Then she sent me a friendster invite, and I joined just for the sake of it. One person sent me a message via it, saying that she had the same name as me, which was funny and all, haha. I forgot my password and didn't know with which e-mail address I registered, so that ended soon.
I got several more invites of her for different sites, also myspace, but now I just tell her to forgot it! Really, what's the point! We mail and chat every now and then, why should we ALSO write profiles and talk on the comment pages? In fact, there's not so much personal conversation you can do there, so you don't get closer to someone with it. Therefore it will never be as stable as an IM service in keeping in real contact with your friends.
P.S. Concerning passwords: many sites (also google) now require you to enter a 'password question' for password recovery. Really, this is very bad and does not help at all. The standard questions are so simple (what's the name of your dog) that anyone around you can social-hack into your account. Therefore, I make up my own question, which I then HAVE TO WRITE DOWN because otherwise I forget. This is a security disaster, but there isn't even an option to turn off the password question!
Nononono, sorry, but I have to interrupt you here! I grew up in the 80's and most of the stuff there really was crap. The best thing that happened in the 80's was when the 90's set in, although it even took about 8 years well into the 90's to fully recover. Just look at the haircuts and clothes in movies inbetween 1979 and 1999 and you'll get my point.
The only thing that makes me long to the 80's is the fact that Bono back then had only a few political statements to make (and rightly so) instead of now, where he's trying to save the whole fucking world and showing his stupid sunglassed face at every event that might remotely emphasize his image as the offical world-wide mr. do-good.
I'm a european, and about every european country has their tech blog, for example heise in germany, and tweakers or webwereld in holland. 'Limiting' point is, they're all in the language of the respective country. For the rest they're pretty good, news can be in there faster than it would on slashdot, and they're all moderated, therefore no junk as with digg. So the quality is ok, I just don't have the time to read them all and find the comment moderation system on slashdot the most pleasant and efficient to read.
that feature is reserved for the innovation list in 2007, right after linux-for-the-desktop
(All jokes aside, I'd like to use this point to put some attention on my dismissed submission about the legalized hacking by the german government that has passed voting in one of germany's states.
Instead of having to go through the tedious formalities of requesting access to a suspects house and confiscating any computers there, a law enforcement agency will be able to remotely access and monitor a suspects machine.)
What magic does blu-ray that anything else doesn't do? I don't see any reason to get excited about it. Probably the only media that are available on blu-ray are games for the ps3. If they came on HD-DVD or whatever the format is called, would you be less happy?
In 10 years, cameras will have face recognition systems.
Not so slow! The train station where I live (in germany) is currently running a test with face recognition systems. Huge battery of cameras at the moment, but probably already feasible now, otherwise they wouldn't even try it.
The list of french people on wikipedia is the third most visited page! Who will safeguard us from the new generation that will grow up and know about french people?
Also note the scary interest in the Basic programming language, *shiver*
Slashdot Mirror
I kid you not: some years ago I was walking through one of the pedestrian areas with shops in the center of Amsterdam and heard a Stupid American Tourist say: "This is like a mall without a roof!". For people with such a frame of reference, probably any new kind of city planning is an improvement.
In any case, Europe is a bit behind and now happily making the same mistakes as you already see in the US. Many housing-only areas are built without providing small centers to hang out or do shopping, and often forgetting to provide public transport or small parks. Even several gated-like communities have been built in the Netherlands (link in dutch).
flashback: I doubt Apple would ever switch to intel. They've got too much invested in the Power architecture to abandon it now.
It's a dynamic world, and in the end it all comes down to optimizing sales. Let's just hope for the best for us, the buyers!
Did anyone else also read 'immoral computing'? :)
I have a 4-year old Casio exilim 2.0 megapixel that also plays mp3s. The photos are excellent (for a 4 year old camera), and it is a very basic mp3 player that plays with some hiccups. I can say you that this is much better than the other way around! I use the mp3 player for my car every now and then, and can get pics that are good enough to print. I use the SD card to put any amount of mp3s or photos on the little thing, it's very flexible and I only have to carry around one small device. Shame they don't make this combination anymore.
then it must be made of wood!
Forced water drinking was one of the tortures during the Spanish inquisition. Apparently, no more then eight liters of water were used per session.
I didn't get any of the acronyms, and I'm perfectly happy with that. I just have one question for you: will it hurt?
After 'change' you forgot to include 'for the better' :)
The only disadvantage to vi(m) is that at some point you think you learned enough of it to work with it, and you keep working with it with the small list of commands you learned (say 10-20% of all vi(m) commands). I am now at this point, and every now and then realize that there are probably much faster ways to do it in vi(m). The vimtutor doesn't explain these, so it's hard to find them easily.
thank god for those accurate wikipedia members
I understand that that part of the law made sense at the time the law was written, but let me ask now: where will guns help against the current oppression? Should one shoot the postmaster, blow the post office away? And what to do about telephone taps? The right to carry guns is now just an empty instrument to make some people feel 'safe', but it doesn't help anything against the real threats from the current day and age.
At the university here I've already seen several pleas posted on leaflets all over the campus from people whose laptop got stolen at the end of their PhD, which left them with all data lost. You just don't want that to happen. Why you would want to carry around the only copies of all your work in one bag is another question. The group where I'm in luckily specifically forbids you to put your work outside the disks that are in the thorough automated backup mechanism: a snapshot for each of the four last months, for each of the days in the last week, and for several hours of the last day. These backups are in one place I guess, so making even extra copies on cd might also be a good idea.
Asking money for content you freely obtained=scam.
My social networking history: I have one friend that I know from a yahoogroup / mailing list (you don't have to have a yahoo profile to participate in the mailinglist, very nice idea is that), who is really into these social networking sites, for an unknown reason, and she sends me invites every now and then.
I think the first one, makeoutclub, I entered voluntarily. That site is very much web 1.0 though, as the profiles are not interactive and there only was a crappy forum to interact, what only 5 people used. Still all the other people seemed to be happy enough with themselves to make a profile there with them looking alternative and listening to all the same alternative music as the rest (hey, me included). I actually got a few online contacts through that site, some of them I still chat with.
Then she sent me a friendster invite, and I joined just for the sake of it. One person sent me a message via it, saying that she had the same name as me, which was funny and all, haha. I forgot my password and didn't know with which e-mail address I registered, so that ended soon.
I got several more invites of her for different sites, also myspace, but now I just tell her to forgot it! Really, what's the point! We mail and chat every now and then, why should we ALSO write profiles and talk on the comment pages? In fact, there's not so much personal conversation you can do there, so you don't get closer to someone with it. Therefore it will never be as stable as an IM service in keeping in real contact with your friends.
P.S. Concerning passwords: many sites (also google) now require you to enter a 'password question' for password recovery. Really, this is very bad and does not help at all. The standard questions are so simple (what's the name of your dog) that anyone around you can social-hack into your account. Therefore, I make up my own question, which I then HAVE TO WRITE DOWN because otherwise I forget. This is a security disaster, but there isn't even an option to turn off the password question!
How will the movie be called, Indiana Jones Forever? :)
The only thing that makes me long to the 80's is the fact that Bono back then had only a few political statements to make (and rightly so) instead of now, where he's trying to save the whole fucking world and showing his stupid sunglassed face at every event that might remotely emphasize his image as the offical world-wide mr. do-good.
http://www.nice-tits.org/
Welcome to the official site of the Royal Tit-Watching (Ornithological) Society of Britain. We hope you enjoy viewing our splendid collection of tits.
Remember the famous quote: Jesus Not Only Saves, He also Makes Backups Frequently!
You'll call everyone an idiot who switches a company of 70 people over to a month-old operating system. Be it linux or not.
Furthermore: Anyone that can install linux without a problem is rather suspect, mostly suspect to not have a girlfriend :)
I'm a european, and about every european country has their tech blog, for example heise in germany, and tweakers or webwereld in holland. 'Limiting' point is, they're all in the language of the respective country. For the rest they're pretty good, news can be in there faster than it would on slashdot, and they're all moderated, therefore no junk as with digg. So the quality is ok, I just don't have the time to read them all and find the comment moderation system on slashdot the most pleasant and efficient to read.
Apparently, at least that one blogger bought an apple laptop and actually wrote an open letter to microsoft on it.
Thanks to the parent poster for actually giving the real background to this story so I could do this googling!
(All jokes aside, I'd like to use this point to put some attention on my dismissed submission about the legalized hacking by the german government that has passed voting in one of germany's states.
Instead of having to go through the tedious formalities of requesting access to a suspects house and confiscating any computers there, a law enforcement agency will be able to remotely access and monitor a suspects machine.)
What magic does blu-ray that anything else doesn't do? I don't see any reason to get excited about it. Probably the only media that are available on blu-ray are games for the ps3. If they came on HD-DVD or whatever the format is called, would you be less happy?
Not so slow! The train station where I live (in germany) is currently running a test with face recognition systems. Huge battery of cameras at the moment, but probably already feasible now, otherwise they wouldn't even try it.
The list of french people on wikipedia is the third most visited page! Who will safeguard us from the new generation that will grow up and know about french people?
Also note the scary interest in the Basic programming language, *shiver*