Marvelling at the iPod nano, this makes me wonder about the usability of a nano-thin laptop. I mean, at some point, you need the actual keyboard depth for tactile reasons, don't you?
I'm all for a 2-pound 17" widescreen aluminum Powerbook that's under an inch thick (is it even thick then?) -- as long as I have a decent keyboard so I can launch all my attacks with confidence in World of Warcraft.
I started WoW in January. Dropped in May, due to horrendous performance on the server I was on (Stormrage). There was just so much annoying lag when they released the PvP system with the Battlegrounds, and I was trapped in an area of the game and couldn't even stay logged in long enough to move my character to a less-crowded location in the world.
But... I jonesed for the game. Badly. And I signed back on about two weeks ago, much happier with the server performance, quickly leveling my main up another six levels in that time -- which is great for a casual gamer such as myself.
The game is addictive. It does require a solid time investment. If you're single, I can see where you can be a casual gamer on WoW and still have time for all sorts of games (as well as other activities).
But not if you want to rule in PvP. Certainly not if you want to hit level 60 and then experience all the end-game content, since the game DEMANDS that you collaborate with other real players and team to accomplish some nigh-impossible bosses. And forget about any other game if you have a job, wife, kids, dog, off-line life.
My XBox gaming is non-existant. I bought a PSP, and so far because there's been no games released since Lumines, so the PSP has been nothing short of a waste -- a filler on airplanes while I wait to log-in at the hotel to play more WoW.
When there's a shinier object than WoW, I may divert my attention to it. Until then -- FOR THE HORDE!!!!!
A WiFi equipped iPod? It exists. It's called the PlayStation Portable. It has WiFi built in, with a browser, plays mp3s, mp4s, m4as and video games.
I can play all the media I can play in iTunes (save my purchased music pre-Jhymn). And, I can play multiplayer Lumines.
That said, as an owner of three iPods, a PowerBook, a DP PowerMac, an iBook and a lifelong Apple nerd -- I'll probably bite on whatever new product Apple comes out with. I'm Apple's whore.
I'm kinda curious after the whole ThinkSecret leak earlier this year... is it possible that the rumor about the widescreen iBook was actually a spread internally by Apple, in the hopes of starting to identify the source of their leaks?
(Just because I'm paranoid, it doesn't mean there aren't forces aligning against me.)
Remove federal and state government UBER-sight from local communities, allowing public schools to serve their ORIGINAL purpose -- which is to educate the future workforce to keep the community going.
Throughout the history of our public schools, going back to the origins of our nation, pursuit of a college degree was pretty low on the priority list. More important was training our local kids how to live on their own with a core set of skills to do the jobs that would continue economic growth in the community. Farming communities had schools that turned out, as you'd expect, a lot of decent future farmers.
The times have changed, but what's clearly evident is that the top-down "managment" of public education is clearly not up to the challenges of a rapidly (and ever-) changing global marketplace. So we need to approach the problem with a variety of solutions, each contextually relevant to the communities our schools serve.
We're teaching our kids to tests that are created, maintained and constantly changed by politicians -- not by the teachers who are in the know. I'm not saying we have all-stars teaching in our schools, but I'd also point out that there's little point in stretching our resolve to achieve if the only employment we can offer our kids is, at best, a barista position at Starbucks.
If you really want to solve the problems of schools in the US, you're going to have to bite the bullet of actual socioeconomic change in our communities. Yes, it takes time, commitment and the involvement of ALL the stakeholders, but historically we've proven it has far more impact on the quality of a kid's education than any combination of school reforms. School reformists are all about changing the curriculum, or the teachers, or standards (enter an educational political buzzword).
It's easier to put a better stereo in the car than to fix the reason why the engine makes so much noise.
First off, it goes without saying that like many of you, my wife and I were talking about the attacks in London all day yesterday, and it sickens us greatly. The agility with which the attacks were carried out is pretty scary, so it's not surprising that cities like New York, Chicago, Boston, Paris -- they're watching what's going on.
But, not without some humor, when I got home from work last night, as I turned on the TV a commercial for the news came on:
"Local Transit on High Alert - More at 11."
Now, this would make perfect sense if I lived in a big city. But I live in Johnstown, PA. I seriously doubt our transit system consists of more than five buses and a mule.
More to the point: this same news team brought me the urgent news about a rash of lawn ornament robberies. This was a top story around Halloween last year.
Any going to ask why the military is doing this? I can tell you. See when the recruiters show up to career day, staff at schools tends to tell them to get lost.
That's a load of crap. I was a teacher for four years, and while I can certainly rant plenty about the deterioration of localized public schooling, I can tell you that especially in depressed and urban areas, you'd be hard pressed to find a teacher who wouldn't counsel a student considering the military to go for it. The vast majority of teachers I've worked with in the midwest are aredent supporters of our armed forces and the character/career building it provides to young men and women.
Take a look at communities like East Chicago; Gary, IN; Flint, MI; Johnstown, PA; Viroqua, WI. These are public schools, and many students from these school systems graduate and serve in the military.
If you don't like the fact that enlistment is low in mid-to-upper-class suburbia, direct your anger elsewhere. Not every kid needs to grow up to be a soldier. We need civilian leaders, too.
My problem with this program is that as active as the government seems to be in enlisting kids (yes, at 16 or 18, you're still a kid), we as a society seem disinterested in encouraging civil leadership in our poorer communities. It would be nice if the military was an "attractive option" instead of the "only option" for these kids.
There is already some organized activity to counter the provision in the No Child Left Behind Act that requires public high schools to hand over private student information to military recruiters. They counter this by supporting, instead, the Student Privacy Protection Act of 2005, which reverses the current legislation and requires schools to first obtain parental permission before releasing private student information to military recruiters.
I respectfully disagree. I think it is relevant, and that developers will put effort into making use of it.
Think of all the XBoxes running Linux distros currently. The new XBoxes are going to have 3 970 chips in them -- that's a hella-powerful box for $399.
If I'm not mistaken, the code released by IBM will help developers port OSs for the processor. How long until someone uses it to port Windows or (gasp) OS X to the XBox, among other game consoles and devices using the 970 processor?
My guess is that Lucas doesn't want to go forward (post-ROTJ) because when he conceived of the universe back in 1975-76, he didn't think any further than the death of the Emperor. The parts that were fleshed out the most became the most effective movies.
That's why ANH and ESB (and I'll lump ROTS in there, too) are so good. He strayed from the original treatment/vision a little bit with ROTJ, and that's why big Star Wars fanboys were all about hating the Ewoks (until we had Jar Jar).
Episodes I & II were incredibly weak, and my guess is that Lucas didn't flesh much out in his story about how Anakin was this cherubic little tot with amazing powers, who grew up to fall in love with a princess/senator/whatever who all of the sudden turned evil. He probably planned out that Anakin turned to the dark side but had two kids he didn't know about. How he got to that point.... probably wasn't scoped out, hence the movies that explain that part of the story sucked.
But you can tell he had the vision for the final fight that turns Anakin to Vader, where he gets his a$$ handed to him by Obi Wan. Because ROTS, where it's good, is awesome.
So if Lucas wants to go back and regale us with the purge of the Sith, my guess is that it probably is fleshed out to some detail in how he established the Jedi (all those years ago prior to makin ANH).
Based on how awesomely conceived and executed his vision was for ROTS (lovey dialogue not withstanding), I would definitely plunk down more dough for a Purge of the Dark Lords.
[snip] How patronizing. Has it occured to you that perhaps they have thought about that and decided the answer is `yes`?
[/snip]
I have thought about that. I understand how one might think about that idea as "patronizing" if you take it out of context. Please read on.
[snip] Yes, but unless you believe in god they boil down to the usual `Does doing this harm anyone? Is anyone's health or rights being put at risk? Is doing this better than not doing it`. Bit of a no brainer, really.
[/snip]
I don't want to drive this point into the ground, but it really *is* a brainer.
Even if we steer clear of this from the moralistic "Man as God" question, there's still an array of ethical questions that appear. Foremost on my mind is this one: With all the ways in which this advance in technology *can* be used to hurt mankind, to hurt people's health or alienate human rights, "is doing this better than not doing it?"
Again, I'm not saying humanity shouldn't go forward in this direction, but even clear of the moral arguments, there's a lot more to this than saving existing and future "natural birth" human lives from disease and crappy genetics. And most of it is because we're moving into engineering humanity "hands-on" vs. the engineering humanity through mating.
"I think that the cut off date is something like 4 days after the clone is created."
It sounds an awful lot like Blade Runner to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for advancing the health of the living, and I'm all for stem-cell research. But you have to admit, it's kinda freaky to be talking about putting expiration dates on what can conceivably be considered a "human" lifeform.
Another echo from the movie quote database in my head is from Jurassic Park, where Ian says something like, "You were so concerned about whether you could, you never stopped to think about whether you should."
Like I said, I'm all for stem-cell research, and I recognize that cloning is a natural progression, but that doesn't mean there aren't some tough ethical questions to address.
Well, I think a lot depends on the battery, doesn't it?
Since the Mac Mini uses mostly iBook parts, I tend to think that the Airport Extreme (802.11g) and Bluetooth functionality is already somewhat energy conscious.
I would apply this solution for a host of demonstration and training purposes -- anywhere where I need to demonstrate any kind of client-server network interaction and I need to control all the enviromental variables. If I can't rely on Internet connectivity (and trust me -- I've been screwed on this a couple of times in the last few weeks), I could just bring a couple of laptops that work with the mac mini as my application/db server for demo purposes.
Would the battery life last 8 hours? Certainly not. But it might last 4 depending on the battery, and for $500 + change, that's a heck of a nice little server to take on the road with you.
"Now, are you sure you want to have a fight? Because I'm only gonna use my thumb... My right thumb. My left one is too powerful for you." (Sean Connery, 1988)
Slashdot Mirror
Marvelling at the iPod nano, this makes me wonder about the usability of a nano-thin laptop. I mean, at some point, you need the actual keyboard depth for tactile reasons, don't you?
I'm all for a 2-pound 17" widescreen aluminum Powerbook that's under an inch thick (is it even thick then?) -- as long as I have a decent keyboard so I can launch all my attacks with confidence in World of Warcraft.
I long for some new games...
I started WoW in January. Dropped in May, due to horrendous performance on the server I was on (Stormrage). There was just so much annoying lag when they released the PvP system with the Battlegrounds, and I was trapped in an area of the game and couldn't even stay logged in long enough to move my character to a less-crowded location in the world.
But... I jonesed for the game. Badly. And I signed back on about two weeks ago, much happier with the server performance, quickly leveling my main up another six levels in that time -- which is great for a casual gamer such as myself.
The game is addictive. It does require a solid time investment. If you're single, I can see where you can be a casual gamer on WoW and still have time for all sorts of games (as well as other activities).
But not if you want to rule in PvP. Certainly not if you want to hit level 60 and then experience all the end-game content, since the game DEMANDS that you collaborate with other real players and team to accomplish some nigh-impossible bosses.
And forget about any other game if you have a job, wife, kids, dog, off-line life.
My XBox gaming is non-existant. I bought a PSP, and so far because there's been no games released since Lumines, so the PSP has been nothing short of a waste -- a filler on airplanes while I wait to log-in at the hotel to play more WoW.
When there's a shinier object than WoW, I may divert my attention to it. Until then -- FOR THE HORDE!!!!!
(Grimloch, lvl 30, Stormrage)
A WiFi equipped iPod? It exists. It's called the PlayStation Portable. It has WiFi built in, with a browser, plays mp3s, mp4s, m4as and video games.
I can play all the media I can play in iTunes (save my purchased music pre-Jhymn). And, I can play multiplayer Lumines.
That said, as an owner of three iPods, a PowerBook, a DP PowerMac, an iBook and a lifelong Apple nerd -- I'll probably bite on whatever new product Apple comes out with. I'm Apple's whore.
If you tip a cow, and it gets up and charges you.. chances are it's mad.
</dumb joke>
It'll be cool to hack my click sound on my mouse.
Just think of the possibilities when using the tactile scrolling feature while viewing pr0n.
I'm kinda curious after the whole ThinkSecret leak earlier this year... is it possible that the rumor about the widescreen iBook was actually a spread internally by Apple, in the hopes of starting to identify the source of their leaks?
(Just because I'm paranoid, it doesn't mean there aren't forces aligning against me.)
Many Bothans died to bring us this information.
Remove federal and state government UBER-sight from local communities, allowing public schools to serve their ORIGINAL purpose -- which is to educate the future workforce to keep the community going.
Throughout the history of our public schools, going back to the origins of our nation, pursuit of a college degree was pretty low on the priority list. More important was training our local kids how to live on their own with a core set of skills to do the jobs that would continue economic growth in the community. Farming communities had schools that turned out, as you'd expect, a lot of decent future farmers.
The times have changed, but what's clearly evident is that the top-down "managment" of public education is clearly not up to the challenges of a rapidly (and ever-) changing global marketplace. So we need to approach the problem with a variety of solutions, each contextually relevant to the communities our schools serve.
We're teaching our kids to tests that are created, maintained and constantly changed by politicians -- not by the teachers who are in the know. I'm not saying we have all-stars teaching in our schools, but I'd also point out that there's little point in stretching our resolve to achieve if the only employment we can offer our kids is, at best, a barista position at Starbucks.
If you really want to solve the problems of schools in the US, you're going to have to bite the bullet of actual socioeconomic change in our communities. Yes, it takes time, commitment and the involvement of ALL the stakeholders, but historically we've proven it has far more impact on the quality of a kid's education than any combination of school reforms. School reformists are all about changing the curriculum, or the teachers, or standards (enter an educational political buzzword).
It's easier to put a better stereo in the car than to fix the reason why the engine makes so much noise.
First off, it goes without saying that like many of you, my wife and I were talking about the attacks in London all day yesterday, and it sickens us greatly. The agility with which the attacks were carried out is pretty scary, so it's not surprising that cities like New York, Chicago, Boston, Paris -- they're watching what's going on.
But, not without some humor, when I got home from work last night, as I turned on the TV a commercial for the news came on:
"Local Transit on High Alert - More at 11."
Now, this would make perfect sense if I lived in a big city. But I live in Johnstown, PA. I seriously doubt our transit system consists of more than five buses and a mule.
More to the point: this same news team brought me the urgent news about a rash of lawn ornament robberies. This was a top story around Halloween last year.
Long story short: A podcast is an audio blog.
The iTunes support for podcasting means that now iTunes will act as your audio blog aggregator/player.
That's a load of crap. I was a teacher for four years, and while I can certainly rant plenty about the deterioration of localized public schooling, I can tell you that especially in depressed and urban areas, you'd be hard pressed to find a teacher who wouldn't counsel a student considering the military to go for it. The vast majority of teachers I've worked with in the midwest are aredent supporters of our armed forces and the character/career building it provides to young men and women.
Take a look at communities like East Chicago; Gary, IN; Flint, MI; Johnstown, PA; Viroqua, WI. These are public schools, and many students from these school systems graduate and serve in the military.
If you don't like the fact that enlistment is low in mid-to-upper-class suburbia, direct your anger elsewhere. Not every kid needs to grow up to be a soldier. We need civilian leaders, too.
My problem with this program is that as active as the government seems to be in enlisting kids (yes, at 16 or 18, you're still a kid), we as a society seem disinterested in encouraging civil leadership in our poorer communities. It would be nice if the military was an "attractive option" instead of the "only option" for these kids.
There is already some organized activity to counter the provision in the No Child Left Behind Act that requires public high schools to hand over private student information to military recruiters. They counter this by supporting, instead, the Student Privacy Protection Act of 2005, which reverses the current legislation and requires schools to first obtain parental permission before releasing private student information to military recruiters.
Here's a link to more information:
http://www.themmob.com/lmca/about.html
Actually, you could run Virtual PC on your Mactel under OS X, and run Windows and Linux at the same time.
Couldn't you?
Actually, I'm pretty sure that if you can tetra-boot, someone will always be able to trash your OS (especially on /.).
"Jocks only think about sports, nerds only think about sex."
I respectfully disagree. I think it is relevant, and that developers will put effort into making use of it.
Think of all the XBoxes running Linux distros currently. The new XBoxes are going to have 3 970 chips in them -- that's a hella-powerful box for $399.
If I'm not mistaken, the code released by IBM will help developers port OSs for the processor. How long until someone uses it to port Windows or (gasp) OS X to the XBox, among other game consoles and devices using the 970 processor?
My guess is that Lucas doesn't want to go forward (post-ROTJ) because when he conceived of the universe back in 1975-76, he didn't think any further than the death of the Emperor. The parts that were fleshed out the most became the most effective movies.
That's why ANH and ESB (and I'll lump ROTS in there, too) are so good. He strayed from the original treatment/vision a little bit with ROTJ, and that's why big Star Wars fanboys were all about hating the Ewoks (until we had Jar Jar).
Episodes I & II were incredibly weak, and my guess is that Lucas didn't flesh much out in his story about how Anakin was this cherubic little tot with amazing powers, who grew up to fall in love with a princess/senator/whatever who all of the sudden turned evil. He probably planned out that Anakin turned to the dark side but had two kids he didn't know about. How he got to that point.... probably wasn't scoped out, hence the movies that explain that part of the story sucked.
But you can tell he had the vision for the final fight that turns Anakin to Vader, where he gets his a$$ handed to him by Obi Wan. Because ROTS, where it's good, is awesome.
So if Lucas wants to go back and regale us with the purge of the Sith, my guess is that it probably is fleshed out to some detail in how he established the Jedi (all those years ago prior to makin ANH).
Based on how awesomely conceived and executed his vision was for ROTS (lovey dialogue not withstanding), I would definitely plunk down more dough for a Purge of the Dark Lords.
I can boot up Tiger on my craptacular 386.
[snip]
How patronizing. Has it occured to you that perhaps they have thought about that and decided the answer is `yes`?
[/snip]
I have thought about that. I understand how one might think about that idea as "patronizing" if you take it out of context. Please read on.
[snip]
Yes, but unless you believe in god they boil down to the usual `Does doing this harm anyone? Is anyone's health or rights being put at risk? Is doing this better than not doing it`. Bit of a no brainer, really.
[/snip]
I don't want to drive this point into the ground, but it really *is* a brainer.
Even if we steer clear of this from the moralistic "Man as God" question, there's still an array of ethical questions that appear. Foremost on my mind is this one: With all the ways in which this advance in technology *can* be used to hurt mankind, to hurt people's health or alienate human rights, "is doing this better than not doing it?"
Again, I'm not saying humanity shouldn't go forward in this direction, but even clear of the moral arguments, there's a lot more to this than saving existing and future "natural birth" human lives from disease and crappy genetics. And most of it is because we're moving into engineering humanity "hands-on" vs. the engineering humanity through mating.
It sounds an awful lot like Blade Runner to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for advancing the health of the living, and I'm all for stem-cell research. But you have to admit, it's kinda freaky to be talking about putting expiration dates on what can conceivably be considered a "human" lifeform.
Another echo from the movie quote database in my head is from Jurassic Park, where Ian says something like, "You were so concerned about whether you could, you never stopped to think about whether you should."
Like I said, I'm all for stem-cell research, and I recognize that cloning is a natural progression, but that doesn't mean there aren't some tough ethical questions to address.
"The shroud of the Dark Side has fallen. Begun, the Clone Wars has"
Well, I think a lot depends on the battery, doesn't it?
Since the Mac Mini uses mostly iBook parts, I tend to think that the Airport Extreme (802.11g) and Bluetooth functionality is already somewhat energy conscious.
I would apply this solution for a host of demonstration and training purposes -- anywhere where I need to demonstrate any kind of client-server network interaction and I need to control all the enviromental variables. If I can't rely on Internet connectivity (and trust me -- I've been screwed on this a couple of times in the last few weeks), I could just bring a couple of laptops that work with the mac mini as my application/db server for demo purposes.
Would the battery life last 8 hours? Certainly not. But it might last 4 depending on the battery, and for $500 + change, that's a heck of a nice little server to take on the road with you.
Two Words: Wireless Server
"Now, are you sure you want to have a fight? Because I'm only gonna use my thumb... My right thumb. My left one is too powerful for you." (Sean Connery, 1988)