I love my MD player, and the only reason that I haven't gotten a portable MP3 player is because there's just not a big enough advantage over MD, either in size or in fancy-pantsness of the technology. So far, it's been a cumbersome process to pipe data out onto MDs.
I guess Sony has realized that MDs are going to die without being reinvented, or at least do more than take out full-page ads in Urb for a decade at a time. Hopefully, this will help. (And it's sure a hell of a lot cheap than flash RAM.)
I imagine that main-stream media outlets are starting to get a little frightened of Slashdot. CmdrTaco & company are making media two-way, which is something that even The Great Wired is not accustomed to.
One one hand, Slashdot can get huge amounts of traffic, and therefore money, to websites. But, on the other hand, they know that they're going to get flak. No matter how intelligently-written the article that's being discussed, there will almost always be more intelligent people on Slashdot to pull it apart and expose the flaws.
We're both a blessing and a curse. Ain't it great what a little brainpower can do?
I took an English course at a local community college last year. The teacher told us that we'd be using some weird book about grammar. I pointed out that it was pretty weird not to use Strunk & White. He said that it was outdated. I said that this would be like teaching a course on Christianity without using the Bible.
That's how I new, from day 1, that I wouldn't like that English course.
Hey, I'm on a real run today, posting off-topic, barely-related, poorly-written replies.:)
When I was in high school a few years back, my school's security plan including locking every other door in the bank of doors that made up the front entrance to the building. This made every morning a guessing game. Everybody had a 50/50 chance of choosing a working door. We tried to get the school to change this, but no. We were told that this would keep us safe.
I prefer Perl for CGI because it's not compiled, and therefore easier to update. Especially because I don't know who will be maintaining a client's site after I'm done with it, or I don't know precisely what environment that it will be run in. (Which may require a re-compile.)
It sounds minor, I know, but it makes a big difference to me and my clients.
Hey, everybody, since Jamie won't say all of this, I will. Our Fair Reviewer is the lead singer for the Hogwaller Ramblers, a Charlottesville, Virginia band that kicks all the ass. They play Americana type bluegrass-meets-rock-meets I dunno what. Very intelligent, fun music. I've been a fan of Jamie's for many years.
Oh, yeah, and they're Dave Matthews favourite band. Or maybe it's the album he's waited the longest for? I don't remember. But, anyhow, there's a plug that should get you guys over to the site.:)
I think that the Germans have a word for it that translates, roughly, to "earworm." If I remember, it's pronounced something like "oir-verm." But it's been years since I lived with that German au pair.:)
I am two things: A long-distance backpacker and a geek. So, in 1996, when I headed to hike from Georgia to Maine, I did what came naturally: I brought a laptop.
And another one. And another one. And so on. Some of them didn't last but a week. The Thinkpad's screen broke, the Compaq Aero's motherboard snapped, several others simply couldn't handle the moisture or the heat/cold.
Finally, in Maine, Texas Micro gave me a Hardbody. This, I was told, was the toughest laptop known to man. It was created to MILSPEC, intended to survive the harshest conditions, including wild swings of temperature, 6-foot drops onto rock, strong vibrations, and lots of moisture.
It lasted just under 2 days.
Am I down on the Toughbook? Kinda.
Obviously, they didn't make this notebook for me or for other unreasonable freaks. They advertise that broken notebooks cause loss of work time and money for corporations. These are created to withstand the rigors, of, say, the Beltway. I think that by most of our standards, this system is nothing special. It sure doesn't look like anything that you or I couldn't do with a Toshiba Satellite, some caulking and a little duct tape.
Anyhow, I found my ideal trail computer. It worked perfectly at all times, ran for days at a time on very few batteries, even with those pesky cell-phone data uploads, was nearly waterproof, didn't give a damn about jolts or drops. The system? A Newton.:)
Some woman e-mailed me once, saying that my domain name was a ploy to get children lured to my site, where I would provide inappropriate content to subvert their minds. She even fired off a letter for the dude that writes "Where's Waldo," encouraging him to sue me.
I get this stuff every few weeks. I'm yet to get sued, but I figure it's only a matter of time.
Out of concern of developing wrist problems, from years of much typing, I learned Dvorak last year. I got up to about 40 wpm on it, where I pretty much peaked. Considering that I type between 100-120wpm on a QWERTY, that's not much of an improvment.
I don't mean to say that it's not possible to type as fast on a Dvorak as it is on a QWERTY. But I found there to be little advantage to the Dvorak and, to be honest, I found it awkward. This is likely related to the fact that I've been using the standard keyboard layout for 14 years. Still, with all the time that I spent on Dvorak, I'd like to think that I found have found some improvement.
The idea that the most-accessed keys are on the homerow is a cool idea, but it slowed me down. I type with all of my fingers, but I don't always hit the keys with the textbook-correct fingers. As a result, Dvorak makes me use, say, my index finger for the QWERTY-equlivalent ASD and F. Theoretically, this would be faster if I could use all four fingers on my left hand with equal agility. But, because I can't type perfectly, I found that it was slower to use Dvorak.
There are other examples, but they're pretty much the same deal. Essentially, I'm used to QWERTY, and I've let my typing become less-than-perfect to adapt to it. Would be better on Dvorak if I'd started on it? Probably. But for most of us, QWERTY should do nicely.
(Sidenote: Dvorak is the best system security that you can get, especially if you switch your keycaps around. Ain't nobody can use your system.:)
Actually, I'd e-mailed them with some code/graphics advice about 6 months ago, and communicated with the webmaster for a bit. I found that they had pretty good cause, believe it or not, for how they do things.
Even if they do use ads, it's possible to integrate them in a manner that isn't awful. It they're not just tossed up at the top, but integrated into the design. (I'm not trying to be mean, but I think that/. a good example of how *not* to have ads.)
I'd been harbouring a secret desire that Google might be making enough off of licensing their search engine to companies (ie, Netscape) that they wouldn't need to have advertising. That, of course, would be an unwise business move, illogical, etc. But I'd harboured it none the less.:P)
What's amazing to me about this is my failure to be surprised. Microsoft has gotten to the point, at least in my head, where this is barely remarkable. I wonder if the general public feels the same way, or if I'm just an overexposed geek?
I can't help but feel that Roald Dahl (Author of Willy Wonka, BFG, Danny, etc.) is appreciating this moment, even though he's been dead for nearly a decade.
He once wrote a short story entitled "The Great Automatic Grammatizator" that's about this very topic. To summarize:
A programmer, Adoph Knipe, has long wanted to be a writer. He creates a computer, with the financial assistance of his employer, Mr. Bohlen, that can write stories automatically. The computer is a great success, and they set up a publishing company to mass-produce literature. They simply purchase the names of famous authors and produce literature of their style, by simply adjusting settings of the computer.
At the end, the narrator says that over half of all of all stories are created on The Great Automatic Grammatizor. But he, the narrator, refuses to give up on writing, even though nobody wants books written by humans anymore.
Anyhow, this story can be found in the Roald Dahl Omnibus. Good luck finding it -- check a used bookstore. What a great book.
The designers of the site, Medius Interactive, spent 11 minutes on my site yesterday. And it's funny -- they're running IE5 on NT. One would think they'd test their sites.
Look, I appreciate good design as much as the next guy...heck, I own a website design firm. But I can tell you that this site has a pretty serious suck factor.
On my Mac with NS4.6, the fonts are so small as to be entirely unreadable, their Java scrolling thing is actually *layered over* my button bar (Back, Forward, Reload, etc.), their stadium seating map requires Flash, and there's a lot of blank space at the bottom of the front page. And they use frames, which generally sucks.
It might looks nice on IE5 on NT, but, fortunately for the world, not everybody runs IE5 on NT.
I think that most spammers have enough sense not to mess with Slashdotters. If we all simply went to their website (/. effect), they'd be toast. Imagine if 5% of us those that read their post decided to ping flood 'em?
Re:The reason they're not available until October.
on
Apple announces the G4
·
· Score: 1
I'm really amazed that there's not more of a backlash against the pre-order concept. To be fair, the *concept* isn't a problem, but when it's disguised as an available product...that's what gets me.
It seems like a classic Tantalus story: We've got this great new product but you can't have it!
I'd hoped that, since Jobs explicitly said that it was available, that this wouldn't be the case with the G4. Ah, well.
Slashdot Mirror
I love my MD player, and the only reason that I haven't gotten a portable MP3 player is because there's just not a big enough advantage over MD, either in size or in fancy-pantsness of the technology. So far, it's been a cumbersome process to pipe data out onto MDs.
I guess Sony has realized that MDs are going to die without being reinvented, or at least do more than take out full-page ads in Urb for a decade at a time. Hopefully, this will help. (And it's sure a hell of a lot cheap than flash RAM.)
I imagine that main-stream media outlets are starting to get a little frightened of Slashdot. CmdrTaco & company are making media two-way, which is something that even The Great Wired is not accustomed to.
One one hand, Slashdot can get huge amounts of traffic, and therefore money, to websites. But, on the other hand, they know that they're going to get flak. No matter how intelligently-written the article that's being discussed, there will almost always be more intelligent people on Slashdot to pull it apart and expose the flaws.
We're both a blessing and a curse. Ain't it great what a little brainpower can do?
I took an English course at a local community college last year. The teacher told us that we'd be using some weird book about grammar. I pointed out that it was pretty weird not to use Strunk & White. He said that it was outdated. I said that this would be like teaching a course on Christianity without using the Bible.
:)
That's how I new, from day 1, that I wouldn't like that English course.
Hey, I'm on a real run today, posting off-topic, barely-related, poorly-written replies.
When I was in high school a few years back, my school's security plan including locking every other door in the bank of doors that made up the front entrance to the building. This made every morning a guessing game. Everybody had a 50/50 chance of choosing a working door. We tried to get the school to change this, but no. We were told that this would keep us safe.
I prefer Perl for CGI because it's not compiled, and therefore easier to update. Especially because I don't know who will be maintaining a client's site after I'm done with it, or I don't know precisely what environment that it will be run in. (Which may require a re-compile.)
It sounds minor, I know, but it makes a big difference to me and my clients.
Emmanuel is a hacker in the same way that Roger Maris was a baseball player. Respect your elders, whippersnapper.
Naw, I read this months ago.
Or, alternately, you could run iCab. :)
http://www.icab.de
I think I'll patent two-click shopping. You know, since things will get more complicated over time.
Charlottesville boy makes good.
:)
Hey, everybody, since Jamie won't say all of this, I will. Our Fair Reviewer is the lead singer for the Hogwaller Ramblers, a Charlottesville, Virginia band that kicks all the ass. They play Americana type bluegrass-meets-rock-meets I dunno what. Very intelligent, fun music. I've been a fan of Jamie's for many years.
They've been featured on Whaddya Know. Hear some of their music. You can buy their eponymous album on their website.
Oh, yeah, and they're Dave Matthews favourite band. Or maybe it's the album he's waited the longest for? I don't remember. But, anyhow, there's a plug that should get you guys over to the site.
Actually, I've been seriously considering patenting the Patent Office. It was my business partner's idea. I bet we could do it, too.
I think that the Germans have a word for it that translates, roughly, to "earworm." If I remember, it's pronounced something like "oir-verm." But it's been years since I lived with that German au pair. :)
I am two things: A long-distance backpacker and a geek. So, in 1996, when I headed to hike from Georgia to Maine, I did what came naturally: I brought a laptop.
:)
And another one. And another one. And so on. Some of them didn't last but a week. The Thinkpad's screen broke, the Compaq Aero's motherboard snapped, several others simply couldn't handle the moisture or the heat/cold.
Finally, in Maine, Texas Micro gave me a Hardbody. This, I was told, was the toughest laptop known to man. It was created to MILSPEC, intended to survive the harshest conditions, including wild swings of temperature, 6-foot drops onto rock, strong vibrations, and lots of moisture.
It lasted just under 2 days.
Am I down on the Toughbook? Kinda.
Obviously, they didn't make this notebook for me or for other unreasonable freaks. They advertise that broken notebooks cause loss of work time and money for corporations. These are created to withstand the rigors, of, say, the Beltway. I think that by most of our standards, this system is nothing special. It sure doesn't look like anything that you or I couldn't do with a Toshiba Satellite, some caulking and a little duct tape.
Anyhow, I found my ideal trail computer. It worked perfectly at all times, ran for days at a time on very few batteries, even with those pesky cell-phone data uploads, was nearly waterproof, didn't give a damn about jolts or drops. The system? A Newton.
Some woman e-mailed me once, saying that my domain name was a ploy to get children lured to my site, where I would provide inappropriate content to subvert their minds. She even fired off a letter for the dude that writes "Where's Waldo," encouraging him to sue me.
I get this stuff every few weeks. I'm yet to get sued, but I figure it's only a matter of time.
Out of concern of developing wrist problems, from years of much typing, I learned Dvorak last year. I got up to about 40 wpm on it, where I pretty much peaked. Considering that I type between 100-120wpm on a QWERTY, that's not much of an improvment.
:)
I don't mean to say that it's not possible to type as fast on a Dvorak as it is on a QWERTY. But I found there to be little advantage to the Dvorak and, to be honest, I found it awkward. This is likely related to the fact that I've been using the standard keyboard layout for 14 years. Still, with all the time that I spent on Dvorak, I'd like to think that I found have found some improvement.
The idea that the most-accessed keys are on the homerow is a cool idea, but it slowed me down. I type with all of my fingers, but I don't always hit the keys with the textbook-correct fingers. As a result, Dvorak makes me use, say, my index finger for the QWERTY-equlivalent ASD and F. Theoretically, this would be faster if I could use all four fingers on my left hand with equal agility. But, because I can't type perfectly, I found that it was slower to use Dvorak.
There are other examples, but they're pretty much the same deal. Essentially, I'm used to QWERTY, and I've let my typing become less-than-perfect to adapt to it. Would be better on Dvorak if I'd started on it? Probably. But for most of us, QWERTY should do nicely.
(Sidenote: Dvorak is the best system security that you can get, especially if you switch your keycaps around. Ain't nobody can use your system.
>Try searching for: So long and thanks for all the fish
I wouldn't exactly call that an Easter Egg. I'd call that a search engine.
Actually, I'd e-mailed them with some code/graphics advice about 6 months ago, and communicated with the webmaster for a bit. I found that they had pretty good cause, believe it or not, for how they do things.
Even if they do use ads, it's possible to integrate them in a manner that isn't awful. It they're not just tossed up at the top, but integrated into the design. (I'm not trying to be mean, but I think that /. a good example of how *not* to have ads.)
:P)
I'd been harbouring a secret desire that Google might be making enough off of licensing their search engine to companies (ie, Netscape) that they wouldn't need to have advertising. That, of course, would be an unwise business move, illogical, etc. But I'd harboured it none the less.
What's amazing to me about this is my failure to be surprised. Microsoft has gotten to the point, at least in my head, where this is barely remarkable. I wonder if the general public feels the same way, or if I'm just an overexposed geek?
I can't help but feel that Roald Dahl (Author of Willy Wonka, BFG, Danny, etc.) is appreciating this moment, even though he's been dead for nearly a decade.
He once wrote a short story entitled "The Great Automatic Grammatizator" that's about this very topic. To summarize:
A programmer, Adoph Knipe, has long wanted to be a writer. He creates a computer, with the financial assistance of his employer, Mr. Bohlen, that can write stories automatically. The computer is a great success, and they set up a publishing company to mass-produce literature. They simply purchase the names of famous authors and produce literature of their style, by simply adjusting settings of the computer.
At the end, the narrator says that over half of all of all stories are created on The Great Automatic Grammatizor. But he, the narrator, refuses to give up on writing, even though nobody wants books written by humans anymore.
Anyhow, this story can be found in the Roald Dahl Omnibus. Good luck finding it -- check a used bookstore. What a great book.
The designers of the site, Medius Interactive, spent 11 minutes on my site yesterday. And it's funny -- they're running IE5 on NT. One would think they'd test their sites.
Then I feel even better. :)
Look, I appreciate good design as much as the next guy...heck, I own a website design firm. But I can tell you that this site has a pretty serious suck factor.
On my Mac with NS4.6, the fonts are so small as to be entirely unreadable, their Java scrolling thing is actually *layered over* my button bar (Back, Forward, Reload, etc.), their stadium seating map requires Flash, and there's a lot of blank space at the bottom of the front page. And they use frames, which generally sucks.
It might looks nice on IE5 on NT, but, fortunately for the world, not everybody runs IE5 on NT.
I think that most spammers have enough sense not to mess with Slashdotters. If we all simply went to their website (/. effect), they'd be toast. Imagine if 5% of us those that read their post decided to ping flood 'em?
I'm really amazed that there's not more of a backlash against the pre-order concept. To be fair, the *concept* isn't a problem, but when it's disguised as an available product...that's what gets me.
It seems like a classic Tantalus story: We've got this great new product but you can't have it!
I'd hoped that, since Jobs explicitly said that it was available, that this wouldn't be the case with the G4. Ah, well.