Offtopic, but I am "doing something": (1) I took the time, six months ago, to write and submit the feature request, and (2) now I'm trying to gather support for it. I'm sorry if my suggestion rubbed you the wrong way--though I don't see why it would--but seeing as I personally have no programming skills and no desire to spend a few days learning perl just to fix an inconvenience in an entertaining, but ultimately recreational, website I happen to browse occasionally, what you call my "complaining" is really the best way I can think of to contribute to this project. You've got your skills and I've got mine.
Please visit Slashcode bug #981137, which concerns automatically hyperlinking URLs in "Plain Old Text" mode, and add a comment to show your support for a speedy resolution. No progress has been made on this trivial feature request for longer than six months.
Thanks, I didn't know that. It's always nice to hear there's still laws on the books meant to protect us consumers.
Kingston's got a page with a little more on the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, including the Supreme Court's interpretation of a relevant piece of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
It's mentioned in the article, but it probably bears repeating here: "Apple states that as long as you do not BREAK your Mac Mini while working on the inside, it is still covered under warranty."
Left unanswered is the obvious question: well then, if any hardware problems arise, how will Apple know I'm not to blame? Based on my experience getting Macs serviced (4 years in university), I'd say there's really not much to worry about. If you break the RAM slot, then tough luck. But if, say, the CPU dies through no fault of yours, Apple's not the sort of company to refuse to service your Mac on a technicality. There aren't a lot of assholes working for Apple customer service.
Nevertheless, I do wonder if there's some sort of sticker or seal on the inside to let Apple know you've opened the case.
Google may have the same "make it work" ethic as Apple, but I've found Google's user interfaces to be on the mediocre side. Compare Gmail to Mail.app, for example, or Google Desktop Search to Tiger's Spotlight.
Did you ever find a suitable replacement for iPhoto on your Mac? I've read great things about iView Media, but it costs $50.
"There's nothing wrong with it that can't be cured by allowing destitute senior citizens to starve to death on the streets. It would, after all, be their own fault, for failing to save properly for old age."
This, folks, illustrates the failings of libertarian ideology. To the original poster: can you say, with a straight face, that you'd prefer to live in such a society rather than the society we have today? And even if you can, most people couldn't.
Re:Yeah, an we feed the beast that will bite our h
on
In the Year 2020
·
· Score: 1
People were saying the exact same thing about Japan in the '80s. Sorry, but I don't see it happening.
Re:Gloomy 15 year forecast
on
In the Year 2020
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
For the sake of the Democratic party, I hope Hillary doesn't win the nomination. No one else has the power to rile up angry red-staters quite like she does, something that people on the coasts, strangely, don't seem to realize. Even Screamin' Dean would be a better pick.
My hopes for '08 are on Ed Rendell or Bill Richardson.
Wasn't 2046 produced (if not filmed) in Hong Kong? Wong Kar Wai's not from mainland China. I suppose you could technically call "Hong Kong" China nowadays, but it still doesn't sound right.
It was from before the American election, and it's pretty much what you'd expect. Still makes a fascinating read, however.
----
Political vocabulary
There's a word for that
Nov 4th 2004 From The Economist print edition
And we want it back
ALL through this election campaign, George Bush has flung the vilest term of abuse he knows at John Kerry. You name the policy--Mr Kerry's support for punitive taxes and reckless public spending, as Mr Bush put it; his preference for stifling government and overweening bureaucracy; his failure to stand up for, oh, expensive new weapons systems, microscopic embryos and the sanctity of marriage--and the president's verdict in each case was the same. "There's a word for that," he said, again and again. "It's called liberalism."
What more need one say? And Mr Kerry was not just any sort of liberal: he had actually been the most liberal member of the Senate. When told this, appalled Republicans jeered more loudly than if Mr Bush had accused his challenger of eating babies. (That man dared to run for president! Did he think he would not be found out?) Understandably, Mr Kerry was sometimes wrong-footed by this egregious defamation. Occasionally, smiling nervously, he said he was not ashamed to be liberal. (Audacious, but perhaps unwise.) At other times he tried to deny it. (You see, he protests too much.) In America, that kind of accusation cannot easily be shrugged off.
"Liberal" is a term of contempt in much of Europe as well--even though, strangely enough, it usually denotes the opposite tendency. Rather than being keen on taxes and public spending, European liberals are often derided (notably in France) for seeking minimal government--in fact, for denying that government has any useful role at all, aside from pruning vital regulation and subverting the norms of decency that impede the poor from being ground down. Thus, in continental Europe, as in the United States, liberalism is also regarded as a perversion, a pathology: there is consistency in that respect, even though the sickness takes such different forms. And again, in its most extreme expression, it tests the boundaries of tolerance. Worse than ordinary liberals are Europe's neoliberals: market-worshipping, nihilistic sociopaths to a man. Many are said to believe that "there is no such thing as society."
Yet there ought to be a word--not to mention, here and there, a political party--to stand for what liberalism used to mean. The idea, with its roots in English and Scottish political philosophy of the 18th century, speaks up for individual rights and freedoms, and challenges over-mighty government and other forms of power. In that sense, traditional English liberalism favoured small government--but, crucially, it viewed a government's efforts to legislate religion and personal morality as sceptically as it regarded the attempt to regulate trade (the favoured economic intervention of the age). This, in our view, remains a very appealing, as well as internally consistent, kind of scepticism.
Parted in error
Sadly, modern politics has divorced the two strands, with the left emphasising individual rights in social and civil matters but not in economic life, and the right saying the converse. That separation explains how it can be that the same term is now used in different places to say opposite things. What is harder to explain is why "liberal" has become such a term of abuse. When you understand that the tradition it springs from has changed the world so much for the better in the past two and a half centuries, you might have expected all sides to be claiming the label for their own exclusive use.
However, we are certainly not encouraging that. We do not want Republicans and Democrats, socialists and conservatives all demanding to be recognised as liberals (even though they should want to be). That would be too confusing. Better to hand "liberal" back to its original owner. For the use of the right
For the use of the right, we therefore recommend the following insults: leftist, statist, collectivist, socialist. For the use of the left: conservative, neoconservative, far-right extremist and apologist for capitalism. That will free "liberal" to be used exclusively from now on in its proper sense, as we shall continue to use it regardless. All we need now is the political party.
I wasn't going to respond, but then I became afraid you'd get modded up. Maybe you're right and the whole thing is a PR stunt for Amazon. Maybe not (unless you think only non-billionaires can have "boyhood dreams"). But in the end, who cares? I don't see how the founder's motivations detract from the (very real) accomplishments of Blue Origin's engineers and other employees. Similarly, is Richard Branson funding SpaceShipOne just for the PR, or because he wants to fly, or because he has a vision of affordable space travel within a generation? In a lot of ways, it's irrelevant. And, I might add, it's not like you or I are doing anything to further space colonization, pontificating here from our living rooms.
Your empty rage reminds me of this guy's, who makes a bizarre call for companies to stop soliciting donations for tsunami relief, because the "faceless corporation[s] are only doing it for the PR." Not particularly helpful.
AFTER YEARS OF WORK BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has gone public with a plan to build a suborbital space facility on a sprawling ranch under the wide open skies of West Texas.
Bezos' Seattle-based Blue Origin suborbital space venture is starting the process to build an aerospace testing and operations center on a portion of the Corn Ranch, a 165,000-acre spread that the 41-year-old billionaire purchased north of Van Horn, Texas. Over the next six or seven years, the team would use the facility to test components for a craft that could take off and land vertically, carrying three or more riders to the edge of space.
Blue Origin's team has been laying the groundwork for the hush-hush project from a 53,000-square-foot warehouse in Seattle, but this week's announcement fills out a puzzle that previously could only be guessed on the basis of isolated rumors. Blue Origin has been the most secretive of several space ventures bankrolled by deep-pocketed private backers -- a club that also includes software pioneer Paul Allen (SpaceShipOne), Virgin Group entrepreneur Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic) and video-game genius John Carmack (Armadillo Aerospace).
Details of Bezos' plan were first reported in this week's edition of the Van Horn Advocate, the community's newspaper, and confirmed Thursday by Blue Origin spokesman Bruce Hicks.
Contacts with FAA Bezos told the Advocate that Blue Origin already has contacted the Federal Aviation Administration, which plays a lead role in regulating nongovernmental launch facilities. FAA spokesman Hank Price confirmed that Blue Origin was in the midst of the pre-application process for a launch site license.
But Hicks said Blue Origin was just starting to work on getting the necessary clearances. "Obviously a lot of work needs to be done, including the environmental assessment work, the FAA work and so on," he told MSNBC.com.
Hicks said the first elements of the facility, including an operations building, an engine test stand and storage tanks for fuel and water, could be built in the next year or two. The facility, along with all the buffer zones required for safety, would take up "maybe 5 percent" of the Corn Ranch acreage, he said.
Hicks said Bezos and Blue Origin's other principals, program manager Rob Meyerson and launch manager Ed Rutkowski, were not available for comment Thursday.
Bezos' Southwestern roots With an estimated worth of $5.1 billion, Bezos is ranked No. 82 on Forbes magazine's latest list of the world's richest people. Amazon.com, the company he founded in 1994, is one of the world's leading online merchants. Bezos still serves as Amazon's president, chief executive officer and chairman, but in the year 2000 he used millions of dollars from his personal fortune to start up Blue Origin as well, following through on a boyhood dream.
Although Amazon.com and Blue Origin are both headquartered in Seattle, Bezos' roots go back to the American Southwest. He was born in New Mexico and spent childhood summers on his grandfather's ranch in South Texas. Bezos told the Advocate that he learned much from those expe
I agree with you completely, and I'd just like to add to what you wrote about the utility of translucent windows.
Seems like a lot of people bitch about "eye candy" wasting their CPU cycles and their precious time and whatnot--well, they're free to turn it off, but I think the eye candy actually makes many (if not most) people more productive, not less.
Fading menus -- When a menu fades out instead of vanishing immediately, that's feedback that you canceled the menu selection. I didn't even notice this until I started using Firefox's contextual menus, which never fade out, even if you've selected something (very disconcerting).
Translucent menus (and other translucent things like sheets) -- Suggests the menu isn't a permanent feature on your desktop. Subtle yet effective.
Minimizing effect --Much easier to keep tabs on your shit when you can see where it's going. I think this was mentioned already.
Shadows -- Show you which window's on top, and help you keep track of how your desktop is organized three dimensionally.
I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Not everyone needs or wants visual cues like these, but it's wrong to claim that eye candy is useless except for marketing.
You've got a point, but I don't know that Firefox, Thunderbird or Mozilla are particularly good names either. For example, what's "Firefox" supposed to convey? I guess it might just be me, but I don't see the relation to a web browser, or anything Internet-related at all. Could be a car, could be a toaster oven. Could be a database. For its alliteration and daring imagery, "Firefox" is a fairly bland and generic name.
Contrast a name like Apple's "Safari," which just intuitively fits the concept of web browsing (it's a jungle out there, you know?) and alludes to "surfing." Genius.:)
I think the discomfort comes from the idea that they've made "Popularity" an explicit goal. Popular people didn't get popular by trying to be popular. People who try to be cool, aren't. (Just look at Steve Ballmer.)
It sounds ridiculous, but I think the anthropomorphic analogy applies to a lot of things, including software projects. If the Mozilla team focuses on making Firefox lightweight, nimble, secure, sleek and easy to use, it will become popular of its own accord. Numbering "popularity" on that same checklist is unseemly, at best.
"A paint like this could help people to prevent problems with comflicting signals -- in otherwords you keep your signal in, but you can also keep other signals out, thus reducing interference."
Maybe I'm mistaken, but can't you just switch to a different frequency if you're getting too much interference? I know on my Linksys 802.11g router, you can pick from any of 11 channels. It's a setting on the front page of the router administration page, so it's not terribly hard to discover, either.
Is it really that common for the entire band, all eleven channels, to be saturated to the point where you need to paint a Faraday cage around your apartment to get a decent signal? I live in a converted tenement building in Manhattan--now full of 200 s.f. studios--and even with eight wireless networks currently in range, I still get full signal and full speed on mine.
Your other arguments are very compelling. Thanks for the thought-provoking post.
Offtopic, but isn't Apple's reason for axing the broadcast pretty obvious? Whatever Steve's unveiling at the keynote, it's not going to live up to the expectations the rumor mill's been churning up.
If they were concerned about bandwidth, you'd think they could at least broadcast to Apple stores.
"Things in the wikipedia are usually either right, or just way off from right that anyone could tell the difference."
Well, that's true for vandalism ("Lance Bass is MY FUTURE HUSBAND!!!"). But I've read hundreds of articles with subtle (but significant!) mistakes that probably weren't intentional on the part of the author. If I hadn't already known anything about the subject matter, I would never have been the wiser.
Believe me, I corrected a lot of errors on Wikipedia before the futility of the entire effort dawned on me. Even nowadays I'll still correct the occasional subtle flaw I happen to stumble upon.
Like you say, it's a good idea to use as many sources as you can. And Wikipedia's great for getting a general idea of what a topic's about. It just pains me to see it proclaim itself an "encyclopedia" on its masthead; I think it cheapens the word.
Well, of course. No one's saying Wikipedia's the only source you should consult. But it would certainly help things if articles there weren't so commonly flat-out wrong or, worse, subtly mistaken.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, what would you suggest I do?
Offtopic, but I am "doing something": (1) I took the time, six months ago, to write and submit the feature request, and (2) now I'm trying to gather support for it. I'm sorry if my suggestion rubbed you the wrong way--though I don't see why it would--but seeing as I personally have no programming skills and no desire to spend a few days learning perl just to fix an inconvenience in an entertaining, but ultimately recreational, website I happen to browse occasionally, what you call my "complaining" is really the best way I can think of to contribute to this project. You've got your skills and I've got mine.
Please visit Slashcode bug #981137, which concerns automatically hyperlinking URLs in "Plain Old Text" mode, and add a comment to show your support for a speedy resolution. No progress has been made on this trivial feature request for longer than six months.
Thanks, I didn't know that. It's always nice to hear there's still laws on the books meant to protect us consumers.
Kingston's got a page with a little more on the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, including the Supreme Court's interpretation of a relevant piece of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Help me out with my sig and I'll promise to take pictures. :)
It's mentioned in the article, but it probably bears repeating here: "Apple states that as long as you do not BREAK your Mac Mini while working on the inside, it is still covered under warranty."
Left unanswered is the obvious question: well then, if any hardware problems arise, how will Apple know I'm not to blame? Based on my experience getting Macs serviced (4 years in university), I'd say there's really not much to worry about. If you break the RAM slot, then tough luck. But if, say, the CPU dies through no fault of yours, Apple's not the sort of company to refuse to service your Mac on a technicality. There aren't a lot of assholes working for Apple customer service.
Nevertheless, I do wonder if there's some sort of sticker or seal on the inside to let Apple know you've opened the case.
Google may have the same "make it work" ethic as Apple, but I've found Google's user interfaces to be on the mediocre side. Compare Gmail to Mail.app, for example, or Google Desktop Search to Tiger's Spotlight.
Did you ever find a suitable replacement for iPhoto on your Mac? I've read great things about iView Media, but it costs $50.
Gandhi, not "Ghandi." G - A - N - D - H - I.
"There's nothing wrong with it that can't be cured by allowing destitute senior citizens to starve to death on the streets. It would, after all, be their own fault, for failing to save properly for old age."
This, folks, illustrates the failings of libertarian ideology. To the original poster: can you say, with a straight face, that you'd prefer to live in such a society rather than the society we have today? And even if you can, most people couldn't.
People were saying the exact same thing about Japan in the '80s. Sorry, but I don't see it happening.
For the sake of the Democratic party, I hope Hillary doesn't win the nomination. No one else has the power to rile up angry red-staters quite like she does, something that people on the coasts, strangely, don't seem to realize. Even Screamin' Dean would be a better pick.
My hopes for '08 are on Ed Rendell or Bill Richardson.
Wasn't 2046 produced (if not filmed) in Hong Kong? Wong Kar Wai's not from mainland China. I suppose you could technically call "Hong Kong" China nowadays, but it still doesn't sound right.
It was from before the American election, and it's pretty much what you'd expect. Still makes a fascinating read, however.
----
Political vocabulary
There's a word for that
Nov 4th 2004
From The Economist print edition
And we want it back
ALL through this election campaign, George Bush has flung the vilest term of abuse he knows at John Kerry. You name the policy--Mr Kerry's support for punitive taxes and reckless public spending, as Mr Bush put it; his preference for stifling government and overweening bureaucracy; his failure to stand up for, oh, expensive new weapons systems, microscopic embryos and the sanctity of marriage--and the president's verdict in each case was the same. "There's a word for that," he said, again and again. "It's called liberalism."
What more need one say? And Mr Kerry was not just any sort of liberal: he had actually been the most liberal member of the Senate. When told this, appalled Republicans jeered more loudly than if Mr Bush had accused his challenger of eating babies. (That man dared to run for president! Did he think he would not be found out?) Understandably, Mr Kerry was sometimes wrong-footed by this egregious defamation. Occasionally, smiling nervously, he said he was not ashamed to be liberal. (Audacious, but perhaps unwise.) At other times he tried to deny it. (You see, he protests too much.) In America, that kind of accusation cannot easily be shrugged off.
"Liberal" is a term of contempt in much of Europe as well--even though, strangely enough, it usually denotes the opposite tendency. Rather than being keen on taxes and public spending, European liberals are often derided (notably in France) for seeking minimal government--in fact, for denying that government has any useful role at all, aside from pruning vital regulation and subverting the norms of decency that impede the poor from being ground down. Thus, in continental Europe, as in the United States, liberalism is also regarded as a perversion, a pathology: there is consistency in that respect, even though the sickness takes such different forms. And again, in its most extreme expression, it tests the boundaries of tolerance. Worse than ordinary liberals are Europe's neoliberals: market-worshipping, nihilistic sociopaths to a man. Many are said to believe that "there is no such thing as society."
Yet there ought to be a word--not to mention, here and there, a political party--to stand for what liberalism used to mean. The idea, with its roots in English and Scottish political philosophy of the 18th century, speaks up for individual rights and freedoms, and challenges over-mighty government and other forms of power. In that sense, traditional English liberalism favoured small government--but, crucially, it viewed a government's efforts to legislate religion and personal morality as sceptically as it regarded the attempt to regulate trade (the favoured economic intervention of the age). This, in our view, remains a very appealing, as well as internally consistent, kind of scepticism.
Parted in error
Sadly, modern politics has divorced the two strands, with the left emphasising individual rights in social and civil matters but not in economic life, and the right saying the converse. That separation explains how it can be that the same term is now used in different places to say opposite things. What is harder to explain is why "liberal" has become such a term of abuse. When you understand that the tradition it springs from has changed the world so much for the better in the past two and a half centuries, you might have expected all sides to be claiming the label for their own exclusive use.
However, we are certainly not encouraging that. We do not want Republicans and Democrats, socialists and conservatives all demanding to be recognised as liberals (even though they should want to be). That would be too confusing. Better to hand "liberal" back to its original owner. For the use of the right
Best part of the article:
Heh heh heh. Cheeky Brits.
Did you happen to read this Economist article mourning the same loss?
Like a red-blooded American.
Knock up the prom queen,
And rejoin the paper then.
I wasn't going to respond, but then I became afraid you'd get modded up. Maybe you're right and the whole thing is a PR stunt for Amazon. Maybe not (unless you think only non-billionaires can have "boyhood dreams"). But in the end, who cares? I don't see how the founder's motivations detract from the (very real) accomplishments of Blue Origin's engineers and other employees. Similarly, is Richard Branson funding SpaceShipOne just for the PR, or because he wants to fly, or because he has a vision of affordable space travel within a generation? In a lot of ways, it's irrelevant. And, I might add, it's not like you or I are doing anything to further space colonization, pontificating here from our living rooms.
Your empty rage reminds me of this guy's, who makes a bizarre call for companies to stop soliciting donations for tsunami relief, because the "faceless corporation[s] are only doing it for the PR." Not particularly helpful.
Me, I don't care. I buy from Barnes & Noble.
Am I karma whoring? Possibly. :)
Please don't sue me, Microsoft.
----
Amazon founder unveils space center plans
Bezos' Blue Origin venture to build West Texas rocket facility
By Alan Boyle
Science editor, MSNBC
Updated: 4:58 p.m. ET Jan. 13, 2005
[Image: Jeff Bezos, who heads Amazon.com and is bankrolling the Blue Origin space venture, strikes a pose at the Seattle headquarters of Amazon.com. Andy Rogers / AP file]
AFTER YEARS OF WORK BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has gone public with a plan to build a suborbital space facility on a sprawling ranch under the wide open skies of West Texas.
Bezos' Seattle-based Blue Origin suborbital space venture is starting the process to build an aerospace testing and operations center on a portion of the Corn Ranch, a 165,000-acre spread that the 41-year-old billionaire purchased north of Van Horn, Texas. Over the next six or seven years, the team would use the facility to test components for a craft that could take off and land vertically, carrying three or more riders to the edge of space.
Blue Origin's team has been laying the groundwork for the hush-hush project from a 53,000-square-foot warehouse in Seattle, but this week's announcement fills out a puzzle that previously could only be guessed on the basis of isolated rumors. Blue Origin has been the most secretive of several space ventures bankrolled by deep-pocketed private backers -- a club that also includes software pioneer Paul Allen (SpaceShipOne), Virgin Group entrepreneur Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic) and video-game genius John Carmack (Armadillo Aerospace).
Details of Bezos' plan were first reported in this week's edition of the Van Horn Advocate, the community's newspaper, and confirmed Thursday by Blue Origin spokesman Bruce Hicks.
Contacts with FAA
Bezos told the Advocate that Blue Origin already has contacted the Federal Aviation Administration, which plays a lead role in regulating nongovernmental launch facilities. FAA spokesman Hank Price confirmed that Blue Origin was in the midst of the pre-application process for a launch site license.
But Hicks said Blue Origin was just starting to work on getting the necessary clearances. "Obviously a lot of work needs to be done, including the environmental assessment work, the FAA work and so on," he told MSNBC.com.
Hicks said the first elements of the facility, including an operations building, an engine test stand and storage tanks for fuel and water, could be built in the next year or two. The facility, along with all the buffer zones required for safety, would take up "maybe 5 percent" of the Corn Ranch acreage, he said.
Hicks said Bezos and Blue Origin's other principals, program manager Rob Meyerson and launch manager Ed Rutkowski, were not available for comment Thursday.
Bezos' Southwestern roots
With an estimated worth of $5.1 billion, Bezos is ranked No. 82 on Forbes magazine's latest list of the world's richest people. Amazon.com, the company he founded in 1994, is one of the world's leading online merchants. Bezos still serves as Amazon's president, chief executive officer and chairman, but in the year 2000 he used millions of dollars from his personal fortune to start up Blue Origin as well, following through on a boyhood dream.
[Image]
Although Amazon.com and Blue Origin are both headquartered in Seattle, Bezos' roots go back to the American Southwest. He was born in New Mexico and spent childhood summers on his grandfather's ranch in South Texas. Bezos told the Advocate that he learned much from those expe
I agree with you completely, and I'd just like to add to what you wrote about the utility of translucent windows.
Seems like a lot of people bitch about "eye candy" wasting their CPU cycles and their precious time and whatnot--well, they're free to turn it off, but I think the eye candy actually makes many (if not most) people more productive, not less.
Fading menus -- When a menu fades out instead of vanishing immediately, that's feedback that you canceled the menu selection. I didn't even notice this until I started using Firefox's contextual menus, which never fade out, even if you've selected something (very disconcerting).
Translucent menus (and other translucent things like sheets) -- Suggests the menu isn't a permanent feature on your desktop. Subtle yet effective.
Minimizing effect --Much easier to keep tabs on your shit when you can see where it's going. I think this was mentioned already.
Shadows -- Show you which window's on top, and help you keep track of how your desktop is organized three dimensionally.
I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Not everyone needs or wants visual cues like these, but it's wrong to claim that eye candy is useless except for marketing.
Eye candy: Not just good lookin', but useful too.
You've got a point, but I don't know that Firefox, Thunderbird or Mozilla are particularly good names either. For example, what's "Firefox" supposed to convey? I guess it might just be me, but I don't see the relation to a web browser, or anything Internet-related at all. Could be a car, could be a toaster oven. Could be a database. For its alliteration and daring imagery, "Firefox" is a fairly bland and generic name.
:)
Contrast a name like Apple's "Safari," which just intuitively fits the concept of web browsing (it's a jungle out there, you know?) and alludes to "surfing." Genius.
</fanboy>
I think the discomfort comes from the idea that they've made "Popularity" an explicit goal. Popular people didn't get popular by trying to be popular. People who try to be cool, aren't. (Just look at Steve Ballmer.)
It sounds ridiculous, but I think the anthropomorphic analogy applies to a lot of things, including software projects. If the Mozilla team focuses on making Firefox lightweight, nimble, secure, sleek and easy to use, it will become popular of its own accord. Numbering "popularity" on that same checklist is unseemly, at best.
"A paint like this could help people to prevent problems with comflicting signals -- in otherwords you keep your signal in, but you can also keep other signals out, thus reducing interference."
Maybe I'm mistaken, but can't you just switch to a different frequency if you're getting too much interference? I know on my Linksys 802.11g router, you can pick from any of 11 channels. It's a setting on the front page of the router administration page, so it's not terribly hard to discover, either.
Is it really that common for the entire band, all eleven channels, to be saturated to the point where you need to paint a Faraday cage around your apartment to get a decent signal? I live in a converted tenement building in Manhattan--now full of 200 s.f. studios--and even with eight wireless networks currently in range, I still get full signal and full speed on mine.
Your other arguments are very compelling. Thanks for the thought-provoking post.
Offtopic, but isn't Apple's reason for axing the broadcast pretty obvious? Whatever Steve's unveiling at the keynote, it's not going to live up to the expectations the rumor mill's been churning up.
If they were concerned about bandwidth, you'd think they could at least broadcast to Apple stores.
"Things in the wikipedia are usually either right, or just way off from right that anyone could tell the difference."
Well, that's true for vandalism ("Lance Bass is MY FUTURE HUSBAND!!!"). But I've read hundreds of articles with subtle (but significant!) mistakes that probably weren't intentional on the part of the author. If I hadn't already known anything about the subject matter, I would never have been the wiser.
Believe me, I corrected a lot of errors on Wikipedia before the futility of the entire effort dawned on me. Even nowadays I'll still correct the occasional subtle flaw I happen to stumble upon.
Like you say, it's a good idea to use as many sources as you can. And Wikipedia's great for getting a general idea of what a topic's about. It just pains me to see it proclaim itself an "encyclopedia" on its masthead; I think it cheapens the word.
Well, of course. No one's saying Wikipedia's the only source you should consult. But it would certainly help things if articles there weren't so commonly flat-out wrong or, worse, subtly mistaken.