In fact, if you bothered to check, paper has been in use for less than 2000 years, actually, and for less than 1000 years in the West.
Perhaps you haven't noticed that it's kind of laborious to back up data that exists only on paper. This is why so many texts from antiquity have been lost. The survival of texts in manuscript form is the exception, not the norm. People have never, until the last hundred years, devoted a very large or widespread effort to technology for preserving data: the lack and the need are obvious if you take a moment to think. Paper is an awful medium for preserving data.
It's unlikely that the use of "Middle English" will shift: names like that tend to stick. Consider for example how modernism flourished in the early 20th century. Nowadays we still call it modernism; its "successor" has to be called postmodernism. I agree, though, that eventually someone's going to think up a new name, one that'll actually stick, for the brand of English that has flourished from about 1400 to the present. I have a nasty feeling you're on the mark about "post-Middle English". Blech.
On the whole I agree, but one of the things that I reckon is going to have to change is HDD size. The new Minis still have only an 80 GB HDD, which is simply not enough for an all-in-one solution. Even cheap, generic TV recorders have 80 GB HDDs or more, and that's just for recording TV - never mind music plus movies. I think there's a wee way to go yet.
It's pretty easy to find players that support all of mp3/vorbis/flac/wav/wma. But you're right, ac3/mp4 support is rare outside iPods - or was the last time I checked, a few months ago.
Oddly enough, I find the way you put your analogy still works today in some quarters. I have colleagues who still routinely use Netscape as their browser and refer to IE as "the other one" -- they can't remember its name -- because that's just how far in the past they're living.
They're lifelong Mac users, by the way: I've tried pointing out that Safari and Opera are superior to either, but no dice so far. I suppose it doesn't help that some databases we use require IE to access them.
That I disagree with. Lots of non-anglophone universities have "uni-" in their URLs (e.g. www.uni-koeln.de) which I certainly wouldn't want to exclude.
... But they don't have the free reign to do so. Prices are not determined by the seller, they are determined by with input from BOTH the sellers and the buyers. Sure, you can slap a $500 price tag on that bottle of Ripple, but no one will buy it.
What you are describing is a free market. Like communism, a free market is a very nice idea in theory, but doesn't exist in practice. The US, for example, has a market almost entirely run by teamsters and monopolists. Your suggestions are very well-tailored to a free market model, but in real life I don't see any reason to suppose your suggestions can ever work. The telcos, for example, run anything but a free market.
Shorter response: when a situation arises that one hasn't prepared for, one has to take ad hoc measures that may be dissimilar from normal practice.
Small, yes, but that's actually one of the reasons: our size makes us a very very good testing ground for some purposes. Kinda similar to how the entire IT world is keeping its eyes on Massachusetts to see what happens with the OpenDocument thing.
As an example, the press release about this document specifically points to the tax department's deployment of SUSE and the SSC's own deployment of Plone.
Whoops, boy was I wrong. Should have read the/. story instead of TFA... of course the law firm Chapman Tripp prepared the document for the SSC, contrary to what the document itself says.
I think it's a real shame that whoever wrote their guidelines was more interested in spreading FUD than in giving unbiased information. But it's pretty clear to me that that person is a minority.
It's possible, but I doubt it: I'm in NZ, and AFAIK MS doesn't seem particularly worried about the government suddenly upping and switching to FOSS. I suspect a really grumpy manager with several large axes to grind; heaven knows I've met a few closed-source axe-grinders in my own organisation. Though I suppose it's more than likely that this manager might have chatted with a few business representatives over cocktails and had the fear of, not Redmond, but the collapse of the economy, put into him/her...
This isn't a law firm. The New Zealand State Services Commission is a government department, which basically carries out government policy and advises other government departments.
Yes, that too. FWIW Eco wrote an essay called "Reflections on The Name of the Rose" or something like that, which I've seen published as a separate book - I think it's different from the postscript in newer editions of the novel, and it's quite informative about a lot of the ideas that fed into the book. In hunting for an ISBN number for it (I failed) I did find another book called The key to The Name of the Rose: including translations of all non-English passages (ISBN 0472086219), but that sounds way excessive. I have to admit the Latin passages have never bothered me... I'm a Latin teacher, among other things:-) But I know from talking to others that it's almost as much fun without understanding the Latin.
Come to think of it, there's a book of essays by Eco, Serendipities, which contains an essay on "The force of falsity" which is informative about some of the material used in Foucault's Pendulum. I gather he was also involved in Will Eisner's graphic novel The plot: the secret story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which also has a lot of common ground with Foucault.
Try WhoLockMe. Don't be put off by the hideous website and the poor English, it's a great little Explorer extension and I can't remember how I survived without it.
I'm with you on that. I'm keeping XP around for PC games for the foreseeable future, but as soon as it ceases to be useful for that purpose it's Linux or BSD for me.
What's more, I'm gradually persuading my colleagues in my university department -- humanities subject, no less -- to agree with that, too. Most of them have Macs at the moment but the university won't let that last much longer; most of them would rather anything than be forced to use Windows (especially as some software that's necessary in my field isn't available on Windows except at $2000 a seat, or by using Cygwin, which is a bit beyond them).
The take-up rate for OpenOffice.org among my students is pretty low, though. Mostly it's the exchange students from continental Europe that are willing to give it a go.
It's good that you make such a robust argument, backed by strong evidence and trustworthy sources. Otherwise, we might doubt your words. Silly idea, I know.
Your point is a good one, but I think what the gpp was getting at -- or at least this is the point I would want to make -- is not that these stories are annoying, but rather that posting them at all is feeding the troll. On the whole, I agree with that: I reckon any publicity for these nuts is undesirable publicity.
The only reason anything seems new to you is because you're living it.
Well, I'd say that pretty emphatically demolishes the point you thought you were trying to make in your previous post. I completely agree: there's nothing new under the sun, and I want some of what the people who wrote your history books were smoking.
That I'll agree with. For me, The Da Vinci Code had an intriguing opening, but rapidly lost momentum and the ending was drivel disguised as more drivel.
In the case of Foucault's Pendulum, it takes a bit of willpower to get past the first 50 pages but ultimately it beats the crap out of Da Vinci. It's a fine read, it's got a lot more depth, and the ending is a good, protracted, thriller-type sequence.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you haven't noticed that it's kind of laborious to back up data that exists only on paper. This is why so many texts from antiquity have been lost. The survival of texts in manuscript form is the exception, not the norm. People have never, until the last hundred years, devoted a very large or widespread effort to technology for preserving data: the lack and the need are obvious if you take a moment to think. Paper is an awful medium for preserving data.
It's unlikely that the use of "Middle English" will shift: names like that tend to stick. Consider for example how modernism flourished in the early 20th century. Nowadays we still call it modernism; its "successor" has to be called postmodernism. I agree, though, that eventually someone's going to think up a new name, one that'll actually stick, for the brand of English that has flourished from about 1400 to the present. I have a nasty feeling you're on the mark about "post-Middle English". Blech.
On the whole I agree, but one of the things that I reckon is going to have to change is HDD size. The new Minis still have only an 80 GB HDD, which is simply not enough for an all-in-one solution. Even cheap, generic TV recorders have 80 GB HDDs or more, and that's just for recording TV - never mind music plus movies. I think there's a wee way to go yet.
It's pretty easy to find players that support all of mp3/vorbis/flac/wav/wma. But you're right, ac3/mp4 support is rare outside iPods - or was the last time I checked, a few months ago.
They're lifelong Mac users, by the way: I've tried pointing out that Safari and Opera are superior to either, but no dice so far. I suppose it doesn't help that some databases we use require IE to access them.
That I disagree with. Lots of non-anglophone universities have "uni-" in their URLs (e.g. www.uni-koeln.de) which I certainly wouldn't want to exclude.
What you are describing is a free market. Like communism, a free market is a very nice idea in theory, but doesn't exist in practice. The US, for example, has a market almost entirely run by teamsters and monopolists. Your suggestions are very well-tailored to a free market model, but in real life I don't see any reason to suppose your suggestions can ever work. The telcos, for example, run anything but a free market.
Shorter response: when a situation arises that one hasn't prepared for, one has to take ad hoc measures that may be dissimilar from normal practice.
Would you prefer to have someone who knew nothing about IP law advising you about how to use licences that are premised on IP law?
Small, yes, but that's actually one of the reasons: our size makes us a very very good testing ground for some purposes. Kinda similar to how the entire IT world is keeping its eyes on Massachusetts to see what happens with the OpenDocument thing.
As an example, the press release about this document specifically points to the tax department's deployment of SUSE and the SSC's own deployment of Plone.
Whoops, boy was I wrong. Should have read the /. story instead of TFA ... of course the law firm Chapman Tripp prepared the document for the SSC, contrary to what the document itself says.
I think it's a real shame that whoever wrote their guidelines was more interested in spreading FUD than in giving unbiased information. But it's pretty clear to me that that person is a minority.
It's possible, but I doubt it: I'm in NZ, and AFAIK MS doesn't seem particularly worried about the government suddenly upping and switching to FOSS. I suspect a really grumpy manager with several large axes to grind; heaven knows I've met a few closed-source axe-grinders in my own organisation. Though I suppose it's more than likely that this manager might have chatted with a few business representatives over cocktails and had the fear of, not Redmond, but the collapse of the economy, put into him/her ...
This isn't a law firm. The New Zealand State Services Commission is a government department, which basically carries out government policy and advises other government departments.
You have a point. Know thine enemy. Sigh.
Come to think of it, there's a book of essays by Eco, Serendipities, which contains an essay on "The force of falsity" which is informative about some of the material used in Foucault's Pendulum. I gather he was also involved in Will Eisner's graphic novel The plot: the secret story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which also has a lot of common ground with Foucault.
Try WhoLockMe. Don't be put off by the hideous website and the poor English, it's a great little Explorer extension and I can't remember how I survived without it.
I'm with you on that. I'm keeping XP around for PC games for the foreseeable future, but as soon as it ceases to be useful for that purpose it's Linux or BSD for me.
What's more, I'm gradually persuading my colleagues in my university department -- humanities subject, no less -- to agree with that, too. Most of them have Macs at the moment but the university won't let that last much longer; most of them would rather anything than be forced to use Windows (especially as some software that's necessary in my field isn't available on Windows except at $2000 a seat, or by using Cygwin, which is a bit beyond them).
The take-up rate for OpenOffice.org among my students is pretty low, though. Mostly it's the exchange students from continental Europe that are willing to give it a go.
Hmmm. You're no doubt right, but I direct your attention to this post.
Oh come now, without that we wouldn't be able to make jokes like C:\NGRATUL~.VIS (based on the old Apple advert).
It's good that you make such a robust argument, backed by strong evidence and trustworthy sources. Otherwise, we might doubt your words. Silly idea, I know.
Your point is a good one, but I think what the gpp was getting at -- or at least this is the point I would want to make -- is not that these stories are annoying, but rather that posting them at all is feeding the troll. On the whole, I agree with that: I reckon any publicity for these nuts is undesirable publicity.
Well, I'd say that pretty emphatically demolishes the point you thought you were trying to make in your previous post. I completely agree: there's nothing new under the sun, and I want some of what the people who wrote your history books were smoking.
Now there's a good easter egg that I'd missed. I'll have to re-read it now!
That I'll agree with. For me, The Da Vinci Code had an intriguing opening, but rapidly lost momentum and the ending was drivel disguised as more drivel.
In the case of Foucault's Pendulum, it takes a bit of willpower to get past the first 50 pages but ultimately it beats the crap out of Da Vinci. It's a fine read, it's got a lot more depth, and the ending is a good, protracted, thriller-type sequence.