It's not as much about the love of paper...
on
Why Nobody Likes E-Books
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've been working primarily on computers for the last 12 years and I'm just done with reading from the monitor. I find that I'm more likely now to print off my email, PDF files or other things requiring lots of reading. It's not about the love of paper, but more that my eyes get blurry and tired after looking at the screen for too long. So what would tempt me to get an eBook? I thought Stephen King's idea of the eBook-only release was pretty compelling, but I don't want to read every page off the monitor.
Maybe I'm different from most people...but we've got a ways to go before staring at the piece of glass beats the old tried and true.
Besides, doesn't it bother anyone else that we've got a ray-gun pointing at our heads all day?
...how many times I laughed, thinking this was a joke. What the fcuk is this name? What the fcuk have I been waiting for since I WAS TWELVE?!?
Embarrassed? Shit, guys...I'm downright offended. I live in Marin and tonight I'm going for a bit of a drive over to the 'Ranch to tell George to shove this title back up his ass where it came from.
I cannot believe its this bad. I also cannot believe I'm 32 and care this much:)
The not-quite-earthshattering line sums it all up:
"This has nothing to do with the quality of the desktop environment, but has everything to do with how PCs are actually used: end users don't use the environment, they use applications."
I absolutely agree. I've used KDE quite a bit and I think it's a really nice piece of software. But the user interaction model is ENTIRELY predicated on the notion that I understand the Un*x structure. It basically augments what I already know. But I can easily just drop out to the shell and go from there. My wife? Um. No, that's not going to happen--she's still afraid of her iBook.
The operating system, as a viewable, tangible and interactable device, is dying as well. The original author is dead-on -- users use applications. The other stuff is just getting in the way. What I ultimately want is to have my computer know what I want to do (through a completely abstracted interface) and provide Photoshop when I need it, or Word, or Telnet -- and let me ignore the rest. File structures need to be more liquid than they are now, and users shouldn't have to worry about all of the details of file naming schemes and modifications dates (let alone file extensions - bah!).
Linux on the desktop will succeed only when it stops trying to be "Linux" on the desktop. Instead, it should be a simplified user interface on the desktop, powered by a great OS. Stitch in WINE and maybe some Mac emulators/runtimes (all in hopes of easing the lives of the users) and make it clear and understandable -- then you'll succeed. Until then, it's looking like either a bad ripoff of Windows or a glorious upgrade to GEM.
Is there somewhere where you list what hardware/software mix you're using for./ ? It looks like Slash supports a mix of dbs but what works for this kind of traffic level?
Since the fine print on Oracle's million dollar offer DOESN'T include any of the OODBCs -- can we just assume that they recognize it's faster and more effecient, too?
I've been reading through a lot of these articles, and I seem to agree with the basic notion: a good business plan is a necessary but not sufficient requirement to be profitable. And, yes, the business plan needs to entail the sale of some sort of good, product or service to someone else in exchange for money. That's how this all works. But what about this whole "information wants to be free" mentality that (like it or not) is at the root of the 'net?
I did some studying at Cal on the economics of technology, which had a rather robust section on the economic properties of information. A lot of this was later used to justify the phenomenal performance of the economy at the time -- information is perfectly replicable and sharable leading to unparalleled workforce efficiencies, yadda yadda ya. But this leads me back to the other side of studying economics...those who get paid survive, the rest fall to the wayside. So, in fact HOW DO YOU SURVIVE as a business??? Without the construct of artificial price supports or tarrifs, or some sort of new technology that eliminates the economic advantage of information...what's there to do? Find something that makes your business unique (truly unique, not "one-clickable") and build brand value. Amazon.com never became Coca-cola, and may never get the chance to. In some cases, your businesses positioning is all that will set you apart for your competitors. Be unique, offer value. If you want to play the commodity game (like selling a book) then I think you're fucked.
At some point in our near future, information will dominate our lives in ways that we can't even understand yet. It will reshape global economies--not terribly unlike the bullshit the MarchFirst and Razorfish fed us for years except for the fact that *they* won't get paid. Maybe this is Marxism after all
A LOT of complaining going on...I thought I'd throw out an opinion...
I was 12 when I first tried to read the books. I don't know if any of you had this same experience, but I'd get 25 pages or so into the book and be completely lost. I put it down twice, but the third time was definitely the charm. I got through all of the books (the real ones, not the crappy ones by Herbert's son...skip that) and find myself entranced by the whole series. That being said, why do we continue to point out that the storyline isn't so easy to follow? That seems absurd that ANY director (even Lynch...) can make FH's presentation of a totally alien culture something easily understood. Isn't part of the fun the exploration of things that don't quite make sense? Aren't we just feeding into the MTV culture by spoon-feeding plotlines and characters?
I think the mini-series is pretty cool. A bit slow at times, but that's the editor's fault. Right now it feels like we could either get by with 2 episodes or put back some of the subplots.
Reminds me of a time when we tested some simple scripting -- like a CGI printing a three word sentence to the screen. Hand-coded in C, then compiled...I think it came to 63 bytes as the final file. We then did the same thing in M$ Visual C++...I think the file ended up being over a megabyte and did the same thing.
Of course, we didn't optimize and yadda yadda ya, but YOU GET MY POINT.
I work for a major ad agency that produces the full spectrum of work, online banners and applications, broadcast and print spots, etc., so really from our perspective its about comparable measurability. We deal is a world where the media mix can contain any number of mediums, and right now the online space is the most difficult to measure and justify to our clients. This isn't so much about what
I come from a good (read: more than five years:) ) background in the interactive territory, and I've gotten pretty used to the issues of measurability on the internet. The reality is that, for those of us creating work online, we've gotten overly accustomed to the nuances of online and forget too often to explain it all over again. There's also no major player that will admit that measurability across sites and users is nothing more than a statistical crap-shoot. I don't know why none of them will admit this -- certainly the polling that's done by Nielson and the like is nothing more than statistical projections, and really it's a lot better to have something imperfect rather than nothing at all.
In reality, our clients still really don't understand why these numbers are so different and then question our recommendations based on what they read. It challenges our reputation and affects the trust the clients typically feel in our creative or media teams. Broadcast and print, as well as the other "offline" mediums, really then have one big advantage: those mediums have been in use long enough that our clients no longer ask the questions of "how can we justify those reach numbers" or "sure I see what you're saying, but my other consultant says that you're only reaching half that audience with that commercial."
So, maybe the challenge really lies with each of these "measurement" firms not admitting that they could be wrong. Maybe its that the sites that are polled are financially incented to inflate their numbers to justify acquisition or second-round financing. Maybe its that the technology exists to perfectly track a user's path anywhere, anytime but one of the first "features" in the browser was anonymity. Maybe it's the convergence of all of these different pieces at the same time (which is most likely the case).
Sad. The interactive space has such opportunity to get around lofty advertising and blink-tag style direct marketing. But unless we can justify the funds, apportioned largely based on reach to the market, we won't end up with the type of experience marketing that actually ads value to those of us online.
Play nice. Not all Mac users are newbies. Sheesh -- it's hard enough finding a good Python editor for the Mac (not to mention ssh!), but do we have to attack each other, too??
Don't make me do Windows. And until they get Photoshop & Director running smoothly on Linux (and make it easy for the dozen or so production artists on my team to use every day) then I stay where I'm at.
I've spent about eight years total in the health care industry, with about four of the last being specifically online. The company I was with recently was looking into this very possibility (as is likely every health care player). What we finally came up against was a bill in Congress (may be out by now...but I haven't heard) that extends the security provisions of the HIPPA Act of 1996. The "digital transmission of patient-specific information" likely will require use of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). The problem there is pure cost. PKI certificates can run from $15-85 per year per user. After much searching, though, EDS seemed to be the right player to support this type of implementation.
Excuse the fact that I don't know much about dark matter theory, but I have a different take. Wouldn't gravity affect dark matter? If so, wouldn't that necessitate potentially LESS "dark matter" around a star than far from it? Think of it in terms of a fine layer of small iron particles evenly distributed across a flat surface. Set several magnetized balls on the table (representing the stars). What happens? Most of the iron particles near the balls clump right around the ball, and the rest of the particles stay fairly static. In the case of a star, though, the dark matter could very well be swallowed as fuel or spun back out intermixed with gases and debris to form either jovian or terrestrial bodies. Therefore, it's no longer interpreted as "dark matter" but instead as components of the solar system.
Isn't it safe to say that the spacecraft could be merely encountering turbulence (or an extremely subtle difference in the composition of space) at that distance? It's seems much less complicated than dealing with flaws in the fundamental theory of gravity, time or redshift theory.
Terminator?? The Matrix?? C'mon now, you know the truth. Bill Gates came from the future where Linux drives behemouth machines towards cleansing the Earth. He's come back to the past to release Windows...a technology CERTAIN to always be less than its creator.
Techno-militia: "Shit, he's got a gun! We should..." Blue screen takes over cyborg...
Didn't Yahoo write their web server from scratch using Python because it was so effective for handling the load? I've seen a lot of comments about Python's "use in the real world" and it doesn't get much more real than what www.yahoo.com faces.
Actually, in my country people assume you're smart enough to learn several languages, and then be adept enough to transfer to new languages based on project requirements. The point is that Python is the right choice to convey the fundamental aspects of programming. It won't (and shouldn't) replace C, C++ or Java (or Pascal, TCL, or, unfortunately, Visual*). However, C is a lot easier to pick up after getting through Python first.
-- started with Lingo, went to Javascript, through Python and now on C. Much like traffic, the reverse commute seemed quicker.
On the back of the monitor are two small ports, which look like USB. I can't confirm this, and I got lost in all of the other neat stuff there before asking someone. You might want to poke around the tech specs if this interests you.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't worry -- the FBI will automatically filter out complete matches of "bomb", "flame" and "geek".
Bah, Voyager. If someone says Enterprise sucks in comparison to that--hoo-boy we're in trouble...
Butter doesn't conduct static electricity, so all hotsync'ing problems should go away :)
This is why I love slashdot :)
I've been working primarily on computers for the last 12 years and I'm just done with reading from the monitor. I find that I'm more likely now to print off my email, PDF files or other things requiring lots of reading. It's not about the love of paper, but more that my eyes get blurry and tired after looking at the screen for too long. So what would tempt me to get an eBook? I thought Stephen King's idea of the eBook-only release was pretty compelling, but I don't want to read every page off the monitor.
Maybe I'm different from most people...but we've got a ways to go before staring at the piece of glass beats the old tried and true.
Besides, doesn't it bother anyone else that we've got a ray-gun pointing at our heads all day?
Tinfoil, bubblegum wrappers, some copper wire and a late-night fix of MacGuyver episodes ISN'T enough to make your own home-made cradle...
...how many times I laughed, thinking this was a joke. What the fcuk is this name? What the fcuk have I been waiting for since I WAS TWELVE?!?
:)
Embarrassed? Shit, guys...I'm downright offended. I live in Marin and tonight I'm going for a bit of a drive over to the 'Ranch to tell George to shove this title back up his ass where it came from.
I cannot believe its this bad. I also cannot believe I'm 32 and care this much
The not-quite-earthshattering line sums it all up:
"This has nothing to do with the quality of the desktop environment, but has everything to do with how PCs are actually used: end users don't use the environment, they use applications."
I absolutely agree. I've used KDE quite a bit and I think it's a really nice piece of software. But the user interaction model is ENTIRELY predicated on the notion that I understand the Un*x structure. It basically augments what I already know. But I can easily just drop out to the shell and go from there. My wife? Um. No, that's not going to happen--she's still afraid of her iBook.
The operating system, as a viewable, tangible and interactable device, is dying as well. The original author is dead-on -- users use applications. The other stuff is just getting in the way. What I ultimately want is to have my computer know what I want to do (through a completely abstracted interface) and provide Photoshop when I need it, or Word, or Telnet -- and let me ignore the rest. File structures need to be more liquid than they are now, and users shouldn't have to worry about all of the details of file naming schemes and modifications dates (let alone file extensions - bah!).
Linux on the desktop will succeed only when it stops trying to be "Linux" on the desktop. Instead, it should be a simplified user interface on the desktop, powered by a great OS. Stitch in WINE and maybe some Mac emulators/runtimes (all in hopes of easing the lives of the users) and make it clear and understandable -- then you'll succeed. Until then, it's looking like either a bad ripoff of Windows or a glorious upgrade to GEM.
Is there somewhere where you list what hardware/software mix you're using for ./ ? It looks like Slash supports a mix of dbs but what works for this kind of traffic level?
Since the fine print on Oracle's million dollar offer DOESN'T include any of the OODBCs -- can we just assume that they recognize it's faster and more effecient, too?
I've been reading through a lot of these articles, and I seem to agree with the basic notion: a good business plan is a necessary but not sufficient requirement to be profitable. And, yes, the business plan needs to entail the sale of some sort of good, product or service to someone else in exchange for money. That's how this all works. But what about this whole "information wants to be free" mentality that (like it or not) is at the root of the 'net?
I did some studying at Cal on the economics of technology, which had a rather robust section on the economic properties of information. A lot of this was later used to justify the phenomenal performance of the economy at the time -- information is perfectly replicable and sharable leading to unparalleled workforce efficiencies, yadda yadda ya. But this leads me back to the other side of studying economics...those who get paid survive, the rest fall to the wayside. So, in fact HOW DO YOU SURVIVE as a business??? Without the construct of artificial price supports or tarrifs, or some sort of new technology that eliminates the economic advantage of information...what's there to do? Find something that makes your business unique (truly unique, not "one-clickable") and build brand value. Amazon.com never became Coca-cola, and may never get the chance to. In some cases, your businesses positioning is all that will set you apart for your competitors. Be unique, offer value. If you want to play the commodity game (like selling a book) then I think you're fucked.
At some point in our near future, information will dominate our lives in ways that we can't even understand yet. It will reshape global economies--not terribly unlike the bullshit the MarchFirst and Razorfish fed us for years except for the fact that *they* won't get paid. Maybe this is Marxism after all
...he'll have to get over his "are my thighs too big" complex?
Whatta disaster!
A LOT of complaining going on...I thought I'd throw out an opinion...
I was 12 when I first tried to read the books. I don't know if any of you had this same experience, but I'd get 25 pages or so into the book and be completely lost. I put it down twice, but the third time was definitely the charm. I got through all of the books (the real ones, not the crappy ones by Herbert's son...skip that) and find myself entranced by the whole series. That being said, why do we continue to point out that the storyline isn't so easy to follow? That seems absurd that ANY director (even Lynch...) can make FH's presentation of a totally alien culture something easily understood. Isn't part of the fun the exploration of things that don't quite make sense? Aren't we just feeding into the MTV culture by spoon-feeding plotlines and characters?
I think the mini-series is pretty cool. A bit slow at times, but that's the editor's fault. Right now it feels like we could either get by with 2 episodes or put back some of the subplots.
There ya have it. 2 cents even.
Reminds me of a time when we tested some simple scripting -- like a CGI printing a three word sentence to the screen. Hand-coded in C, then compiled...I think it came to 63 bytes as the final file. We then did the same thing in M$ Visual C++...I think the file ended up being over a megabyte and did the same thing.
Of course, we didn't optimize and yadda yadda ya, but YOU GET MY POINT.
:)
I work for a major ad agency that produces the full spectrum of work, online banners and applications, broadcast and print spots, etc., so really from our perspective its about comparable measurability. We deal is a world where the media mix can contain any number of mediums, and right now the online space is the most difficult to measure and justify to our clients. This isn't so much about what
:) ) background in the interactive territory, and I've gotten pretty used to the issues of measurability on the internet. The reality is that, for those of us creating work online, we've gotten overly accustomed to the nuances of online and forget too often to explain it all over again. There's also no major player that will admit that measurability across sites and users is nothing more than a statistical crap-shoot. I don't know why none of them will admit this -- certainly the polling that's done by Nielson and the like is nothing more than statistical projections, and really it's a lot better to have something imperfect rather than nothing at all.
I come from a good (read: more than five years
In reality, our clients still really don't understand why these numbers are so different and then question our recommendations based on what they read. It challenges our reputation and affects the trust the clients typically feel in our creative or media teams. Broadcast and print, as well as the other "offline" mediums, really then have one big advantage: those mediums have been in use long enough that our clients no longer ask the questions of "how can we justify those reach numbers" or "sure I see what you're saying, but my other consultant says that you're only reaching half that audience with that commercial."
So, maybe the challenge really lies with each of these "measurement" firms not admitting that they could be wrong. Maybe its that the sites that are polled are financially incented to inflate their numbers to justify acquisition or second-round financing. Maybe its that the technology exists to perfectly track a user's path anywhere, anytime but one of the first "features" in the browser was anonymity. Maybe it's the convergence of all of these different pieces at the same time (which is most likely the case).
Sad. The interactive space has such opportunity to get around lofty advertising and blink-tag style direct marketing. But unless we can justify the funds, apportioned largely based on reach to the market, we won't end up with the type of experience marketing that actually ads value to those of us online.
Just cut to the chase, George...
.
Yes, and a communications disruption can mean only one thing -- invasion.
Play nice. Not all Mac users are newbies. Sheesh -- it's hard enough finding a good Python editor for the Mac (not to mention ssh!), but do we have to attack each other, too??
Don't make me do Windows. And until they get Photoshop & Director running smoothly on Linux (and make it easy for the dozen or so production artists on my team to use every day) then I stay where I'm at.
I've spent about eight years total in the health care industry, with about four of the last being specifically online. The company I was with recently was looking into this very possibility (as is likely every health care player). What we finally came up against was a bill in Congress (may be out by now...but I haven't heard) that extends the security provisions of the HIPPA Act of 1996. The "digital transmission of patient-specific information" likely will require use of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). The problem there is pure cost. PKI certificates can run from $15-85 per year per user. After much searching, though, EDS seemed to be the right player to support this type of implementation.
Hope this helps...
Excuse the fact that I don't know much about dark matter theory, but I have a different take. Wouldn't gravity affect dark matter? If so, wouldn't that necessitate potentially LESS "dark matter" around a star than far from it? Think of it in terms of a fine layer of small iron particles evenly distributed across a flat surface. Set several magnetized balls on the table (representing the stars). What happens? Most of the iron particles near the balls clump right around the ball, and the rest of the particles stay fairly static. In the case of a star, though, the dark matter could very well be swallowed as fuel or spun back out intermixed with gases and debris to form either jovian or terrestrial bodies. Therefore, it's no longer interpreted as "dark matter" but instead as components of the solar system.
Isn't it safe to say that the spacecraft could be merely encountering turbulence (or an extremely subtle difference in the composition of space) at that distance? It's seems much less complicated than dealing with flaws in the fundamental theory of gravity, time or redshift theory.
Then again, I could just be on crack...
"Thank you Seargent...you may put away your tank."
Terminator?? The Matrix?? C'mon now, you know the truth. Bill Gates came from the future where Linux drives behemouth machines towards cleansing the Earth. He's come back to the past to release Windows...a technology CERTAIN to always be less than its creator.
Techno-militia: "Shit, he's got a gun! We should..." Blue screen takes over cyborg...
Didn't Yahoo write their web server from scratch using Python because it was so effective for handling the load? I've seen a lot of comments about Python's "use in the real world" and it doesn't get much more real than what www.yahoo.com faces.
-- started with Lingo, went to Javascript, through Python and now on C. Much like traffic, the reverse commute seemed quicker.
On the back of the monitor are two small ports, which look like USB. I can't confirm this, and I got lost in all of the other neat stuff there before asking someone. You might want to poke around the tech specs if this interests you.