When I'm trying to get up to speed on a particular system, I'll often read/skim the manuals from front to back. You simply can't do that with on-line docs, for two reasons:
1) Reading off a monitor sucks for long periods of time.
2) The organization of on-line docs sucks. You get the added benefit of hyperlinking, but you get the negative aspect that usually people don't put the time into organizing the docs into a linear way that can be read cover to cover.
Other than that, it's also way easier to use a manual that I can keep open to relevent pages while I'm programming on the system. I guess a two-monitor set-up might work, but... it's just not the same.
Interesting. The problem is that there are so many variables that go into the process; the quality of the lenses, the film, the developing and of course, the scanner.
When I compared scanning a 4x6 print from an SLR camera at 300 dpi and at 600 dpi, I couldn't see any more detail. I'm sure using pro equipment and pro film you can get considerably higher detail than my stuff.
Dude, a negative is like 1 inch wide. I'm scanning a 4x6 inch print, which at 300 dpi corresponds to 1200x1800. Allowing that a bit of resolution is lost by transfering to a print, we're saying the same thing: 2000dpi * 1 inch ~= 300 dpi * 6 inches.
Try scanning some 35mm prints sometime. You run out of resolution at about 300 dpi. They are not as high as you think they are. I've been doing some experiments, and I was surprised by how low resolution 35mm is, even with a high-quality SLR camera with low-speed film.
Read it again... the exact quote is "He said transactions at that registry--which includes people looking up names to see if they are still available, as well as changes made to domain-name registrations--jumped from 1.5 million a day to 25 million a day in the first 12 weeks of the year. In other words, that number includes look-ups and changes to existing domains.
Cut the guy some slack. Do you think he needs every bonehead in the world e-mailing the chief librarian of the Library of Congress? Personally, I hope he has better things to do. I'm sure he has a private e-mail address he uses.
I also could point out that you don't give out your e-mail address, either.
TechWeb has a review of Netscape 6, preview 1. It's not very flattering. Some quotes:
"Netscape 6 PR1 is far from ready for prime time, however. It's not even close-- yet."
"If things remain the same, AOL might succeed at doing to Netscape Navigator and the ever-popular Lizard (Mozilla) what Microsoft (stock: MSFT) and its Internet Explorer were never able to do -- kill it."
Harsh words -- but in line with many people's experiences that have posted here on Slashdot in the past.
It will be interesting to see if they can get the problems worked out and make it a competitive browser.
I can turn it around just as easily: "People like Katz are so set in their ways that very little can be done to change their mindset. It's unfortunate, but true."
I'm not saying whether I agree or disagree with Pinkerton's initiative. What I am saying is that Katz is just as close minded as they are, and it behooves everyone to understand that reasonable people can disagree on things. We only have Katz' point of view on what their intentions are.
Look, you and others keep asking for "references", and I resist this for a simple reason: I can't win. If I name some resident wacko, then it'll simply get dismissed as "well, yeah, that women's a wacko, but she is not representative of feminists". This said...
I'm talking about the Susan Faludis and Patricia Ireland's of the world, whom the media holds up as leaders of the movement. Why do you think that in surveys most women don't identify themselves as feminists? It's because the definition has been conscripted by the wacko extremists. "Gay" used to be a really useful word, but it was conscripted by the homosexual population and now the definition has changed.
Again, don't blame me for the actions of the extremists who corrupted the word.
You want an example? I'll give you one. Why is abortion a feminist issue? It should not be. The issue is split almost exactly down the middle among women whether abortion should be legal, yet the feminist "leadership" thinks it's a core "obvious" issue. Where is the intellectual freedom among feminists that allow a pro-life stance? How many pro-life speakers are invited to feminist rallys? That would be a big, fat zero.
Of course, I could bring up NOW's support of Clinton's sexual predatory practices. I guess sexual harrassment is OK, as long as it's done by someone NOW likes. [Ted Kennedy, anyone?]
Are you so angry and bitter that you have to resort to quoting out of context? I guess it's easier for you to be a sexist that way.
Just for the record, I made a distinction between "feminist literature" and literature written by women. The standard, as I pointed out, is whether it's good literature.
Like it or not, your "leaders" have defined modern feminism exactly as I stated it. Take issue with them, not me.
I suppose that depends on how you define "feminist". There is a difference between philosophy that happens to be written by a woman, and feminist philosophy. I define feminist literature as "glorification of women at the expense of men."
How else can it be defined? You mention "masculinist" literature, but that's nonsense. Philosophy or literature does not have gender; it's either good and thought-provoking or it's not.
Why do you think that only a small minority of women in surveys identify themselves as feminists? It's because the radicals have taken over what was once a legitimate movement. Now it's all about a bunch of angry, bitter women who still think a woman choosing to raise her children full-time is shameful and a betrayal of women everywhere.
That's not to say that all reasonable women who happen to call themselves "feminists" are that way. But that's what the so-called leaders are.
No, I have that luxury because I am a thinking human being.
You've obviously bought deeply into the victimology of women created by the self-appointed leaders of the feminist movement. I've got news for you: Their only purpose is to enhance their power at your expense.
Is it more difficult for woman to succeed? Yes, but not even CLOSE to as difficult to what it was in the 60s. The feminist movement is, for the most part, obsolete. That's why the writing get shriller and shriller every year, because they need to generate as much hatred of men as possible in order keep the power base intact.
You say this as if it were funny. It is not.
I said it because I know a lot more about the victim mindset than you think. When you realize that it really is funny, and why, you will be able to go a lot farther in life, and be a lot happier besides.
I posted the link because you obviously didn't know what it meant, and I figured I would save you the time of looking it up for yourself.
Dyson is a woman, she fails to meet the narrow standards demanded of women, therefore she cannot be treated as a human being. We, the New York Times, reserve the right to take one look at her and then dismiss her as "funny" because she is a woman. I think that counts as "hatred of women", don't you?
Er, I think it's time to stop reading radical feminist literature, where any criticism of a woman is seen as hatred.
Or do you think that woman are above criticism? It would seem so, based on your overreaction to this article.
By the way, the article was written by a woman. I guess she's just been corrupted by the male-dominated world, and she feels she has to attack her "sistahs" in order to break through.
What many people don't realize is that a talent for politics is not automatically a bad thing. Politics is the art/science of administration and control of a governing entity.
There is no question that the most efficient form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. However, it's also the most unstable because it has the tendency to lose the "benevolent" part.
Many "geeks" are attracted to the idea of a dictatorship when an acknowledged trusted, smart person is in charge. It feels right; "just let them get some work done, and keep the idiots out of the way!"
However, if we're interested in a long-term stable organization, then it's necessary to sacrifice efficiency for stability. The stability comes from balancing power with smart people (with honest, different views), and the idiots (with different views, but also with power), and the people in middle are what we call politicians. They strive to balance the opposite forces, find consensus, and move things forward. There is a certain personality that is required to do this, and for the most part, geeks are rarely this type.
Before everyone has a knee-jerk reaction that says, "be thankful we have a smart person in charge, and get all the other idiots out of the way," consider that this is fine in the short run, but is NOT desirable and not stable in the long run.
I will resist the urge to use the FSF as an example of an organization damaged by too much dictatorship, and too little politics.:)
Most articles comment on Stallman's disregard for personal grooming. And Torvalds gets no comment, because his dress is not unusual.
Her dress and mannerisms are commented upon because they are unusual for this political position, not unlike a lot of stories in the early days of dot-com companies about the notoriously informal dress of management. This story is specifically about her possibly being not the right candidate for the position, so of course her presentation is going to be fair-game.
Your oversensitivity is the only problem here.
And by the way, misogynistic means "Of or characterized by a hatred of women." Even if we grant that the NYT was mocking Dyson unfairly, that hardly qualifies as "hatred of women".
Has anyone tried the performance of the latest version? Early reports of Mozilla was that it was still pretty slow.
If this browser is not at least as fast as IE5 (or faster), they shouldn't bother. I should be able to resize the window and have a very complex page with lots of tables continuously resize to follow the borders of the Window like IE5 does.
Because it takes no effort to send an e-mail. It makes much more of an impression if someone cares about an issue enough to actually take the time to travel and physically show up somewhere to protest.
No matter how wired we get, I know I'd be more impressed by someone using up a whole day to travel somewhere than spending 10 seconds cutting/pasting an e-mail that they probably don't even know why they're doing it.
Not to mention that e-mails can be forged extremely easily. How do I know as a representative that 1,000 e-mails aren't coming from the same person?
I know I'm probably going to get slaughtered for this, but I think a good example is the first edition of the Perl camel book. It was trying to be way, WAY, too cute. I like Larry Wall, and it wasn't all bad, but it seemed like he was trying too hard to be funny, and trying not hard enough to be well organized, clear and concise. Sometimes I found it really tiresome to wade through some if it when I was just looking for a nugget of information. Also, I think it made some of the examples harder to understand because he was more concerned with fitting an example into a joke rather than giving me a useful, practical example.
I've noted that the newest edition has toned down the "stand-up" quite a bit, while still preserving a sense of personality.
Your confusing bad writing with lack of humor. Well-written documentation makes the subject interesting without having to add a 1-inch layer of sugar. Note that I did not say that we shouldn't have relevent anecdotes, or any attempt to "personalize" the information. What I said was that I don't want cutesy off-topic garbage that makes it harder to find what I'm looking for.
If you can't process knowledge and puns at the same time, you should be in another field...
Perhaps if programming is not interesting enough for you to be able to process information without cutesy entertainment, you should be in a field other than programming.
Besides the translation issues, I hope a lot of doc writers will take to heart to just "stick to the facts" and not try to get cute in documentation. I detest having my time wasted with cutesiness in documentation.
If I want a good laugh, I'll read some OSS source code.:) (ha ha only serious)
People are not paid on the rarity of their talent, they are paid whatever they can get on the marketplace and the two are quite different things.
Actually, what I should have said was that they are paid based on the rarity of the talent, and the demand for the talent.
Bill Gates made billions more in the 90 than he did in the 80s, his talent wasn't any more rare, he was just making money on rising stock prices. He certainly wasn't any more talented or working any harder.
Bill Gates is possibly the most talented CEO in the world. Say what you want about Gates, but it is not easy to not only put a company on top, but to keep it there. The graveyard is littered with the bodies of less successful CEOs who got fat and lazy with success (Wordperfect, anyone?) Example: The famous "internet" memo. How many CEOs would have just continued to ignore the Internet and hope the Windows paradigm would continue? But Gates restructured the entire company in an amazingly short period of time. It is not easy to change the direction of an behemoth like Microsoft.
Let's face what the market pays people for is total bullshit. A hockey player makes millions while an over-worked nurse struggles to get by? I don't know why you feel the need to justify such a grossly flawed system?
It's very simple. It's a lot rarer of a talent to be a hockey player than it is to be a nurse. Are nurses important? Of course. But there are 10s of thousands of nurses, and it only takes a few years to become one. The number of people who can play pro-level hockey is unbelievably small. The other side of that equation (that I left out the first time) is the demand. There is a huge demand for hockey players due to the television revenues, while only a relatively small demand for nurses.
To use my original example, sewage workers are incredibly important. Without sewage workers, the sewers would back up and we would have huge pestilence and death. So why don't we pay sewage workers 100s of thousands a year when their worth to society is so huge? Because almost anyone can do the job.
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Oh man, this really bums my day. Your posts rock.
At least put up a web site somewhere of "The Best of Trollmastah" so that future generations can experience the trolling magic.
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When I'm trying to get up to speed on a particular system, I'll often read/skim the manuals from front to back. You simply can't do that with on-line docs, for two reasons:
1) Reading off a monitor sucks for long periods of time.
2) The organization of on-line docs sucks. You get the added benefit of hyperlinking, but you get the negative aspect that usually people don't put the time into organizing the docs into a linear way that can be read cover to cover.
Other than that, it's also way easier to use a manual that I can keep open to relevent pages while I'm programming on the system. I guess a two-monitor set-up might work, but... it's just not the same.
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Interesting. The problem is that there are so many variables that go into the process; the quality of the lenses, the film, the developing and of course, the scanner.
When I compared scanning a 4x6 print from an SLR camera at 300 dpi and at 600 dpi, I couldn't see any more detail. I'm sure using pro equipment and pro film you can get considerably higher detail than my stuff.
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Dude, a negative is like 1 inch wide. I'm scanning a 4x6 inch print, which at 300 dpi corresponds to 1200x1800. Allowing that a bit of resolution is lost by transfering to a print, we're saying the same thing: 2000dpi * 1 inch ~= 300 dpi * 6 inches.
The point is that 35mm is not 16000 dots across.
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Try scanning some 35mm prints sometime. You run out of resolution at about 300 dpi. They are not as high as you think they are. I've been doing some experiments, and I was surprised by how low resolution 35mm is, even with a high-quality SLR camera with low-speed film.
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Cut the guy some slack. Do you think he needs every bonehead in the world e-mailing the chief librarian of the Library of Congress? Personally, I hope he has better things to do. I'm sure he has a private e-mail address he uses.
I also could point out that you don't give out your e-mail address, either.
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TechWeb has a review of Netscape 6, preview 1. It's not very flattering. Some quotes:
"Netscape 6 PR1 is far from ready for prime time, however. It's not even close-- yet."
"If things remain the same, AOL might succeed at doing to Netscape Navigator and the ever-popular Lizard (Mozilla) what Microsoft (stock: MSFT) and its Internet Explorer were never able to do -- kill it."
Harsh words -- but in line with many people's experiences that have posted here on Slashdot in the past.
It will be interesting to see if they can get the problems worked out and make it a competitive browser.
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How do you have a history of the pre-historic era?
Never mind.
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And Katz is interested in changing his mind?
I can turn it around just as easily: "People like Katz are so set in their ways that very little can be done to change their mindset. It's unfortunate, but true."
I'm not saying whether I agree or disagree with Pinkerton's initiative. What I am saying is that Katz is just as close minded as they are, and it behooves everyone to understand that reasonable people can disagree on things. We only have Katz' point of view on what their intentions are.
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See this post.
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Look, you and others keep asking for "references", and I resist this for a simple reason: I can't win. If I name some resident wacko, then it'll simply get dismissed as "well, yeah, that women's a wacko, but she is not representative of feminists". This said...
I'm talking about the Susan Faludis and Patricia Ireland's of the world, whom the media holds up as leaders of the movement. Why do you think that in surveys most women don't identify themselves as feminists? It's because the definition has been conscripted by the wacko extremists. "Gay" used to be a really useful word, but it was conscripted by the homosexual population and now the definition has changed.
Again, don't blame me for the actions of the extremists who corrupted the word.
You want an example? I'll give you one. Why is abortion a feminist issue? It should not be. The issue is split almost exactly down the middle among women whether abortion should be legal, yet the feminist "leadership" thinks it's a core "obvious" issue. Where is the intellectual freedom among feminists that allow a pro-life stance? How many pro-life speakers are invited to feminist rallys? That would be a big, fat zero.
Of course, I could bring up NOW's support of Clinton's sexual predatory practices. I guess sexual harrassment is OK, as long as it's done by someone NOW likes. [Ted Kennedy, anyone?]
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Once again, the point is missed, and the Anonymous Coward (apt, that) must resort to insults.
There is a difference between feminist literature, and literature written by women.
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Are you so angry and bitter that you have to resort to quoting out of context? I guess it's easier for you to be a sexist that way.
Just for the record, I made a distinction between "feminist literature" and literature written by women. The standard, as I pointed out, is whether it's good literature.
Like it or not, your "leaders" have defined modern feminism exactly as I stated it. Take issue with them, not me.
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Little, if any, feminist works are man hating.
I suppose that depends on how you define "feminist". There is a difference between philosophy that happens to be written by a woman, and feminist philosophy. I define feminist literature as "glorification of women at the expense of men."
How else can it be defined? You mention "masculinist" literature, but that's nonsense. Philosophy or literature does not have gender; it's either good and thought-provoking or it's not.
Why do you think that only a small minority of women in surveys identify themselves as feminists? It's because the radicals have taken over what was once a legitimate movement. Now it's all about a bunch of angry, bitter women who still think a woman choosing to raise her children full-time is shameful and a betrayal of women everywhere.
That's not to say that all reasonable women who happen to call themselves "feminists" are that way. But that's what the so-called leaders are.
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But you have that luxuiry, not being a woman.
No, I have that luxury because I am a thinking human being.
You've obviously bought deeply into the victimology of women created by the self-appointed leaders of the feminist movement. I've got news for you: Their only purpose is to enhance their power at your expense.
Is it more difficult for woman to succeed? Yes, but not even CLOSE to as difficult to what it was in the 60s. The feminist movement is, for the most part, obsolete. That's why the writing get shriller and shriller every year, because they need to generate as much hatred of men as possible in order keep the power base intact.
You say this as if it were funny. It is not.
I said it because I know a lot more about the victim mindset than you think. When you realize that it really is funny, and why, you will be able to go a lot farther in life, and be a lot happier besides.
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I posted the link because you obviously didn't know what it meant, and I figured I would save you the time of looking it up for yourself.
Dyson is a woman, she fails to meet the narrow standards demanded of women, therefore she cannot be treated as a human being. We, the New York Times, reserve the right to take one look at her and then dismiss her as "funny" because she is a woman. I think that counts as "hatred of women", don't you?
Er, I think it's time to stop reading radical feminist literature, where any criticism of a woman is seen as hatred.
Or do you think that woman are above criticism? It would seem so, based on your overreaction to this article.
By the way, the article was written by a woman. I guess she's just been corrupted by the male-dominated world, and she feels she has to attack her "sistahs" in order to break through.
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What many people don't realize is that a talent for politics is not automatically a bad thing. Politics is the art/science of administration and control of a governing entity.
There is no question that the most efficient form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. However, it's also the most unstable because it has the tendency to lose the "benevolent" part.
Many "geeks" are attracted to the idea of a dictatorship when an acknowledged trusted, smart person is in charge. It feels right; "just let them get some work done, and keep the idiots out of the way!"
However, if we're interested in a long-term stable organization, then it's necessary to sacrifice efficiency for stability. The stability comes from balancing power with smart people (with honest, different views), and the idiots (with different views, but also with power), and the people in middle are what we call politicians. They strive to balance the opposite forces, find consensus, and move things forward. There is a certain personality that is required to do this, and for the most part, geeks are rarely this type.
Before everyone has a knee-jerk reaction that says, "be thankful we have a smart person in charge, and get all the other idiots out of the way," consider that this is fine in the short run, but is NOT desirable and not stable in the long run.
I will resist the urge to use the FSF as an example of an organization damaged by too much dictatorship, and too little politics. :)
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Most articles comment on Stallman's disregard for personal grooming. And Torvalds gets no comment, because his dress is not unusual.
Her dress and mannerisms are commented upon because they are unusual for this political position, not unlike a lot of stories in the early days of dot-com companies about the notoriously informal dress of management. This story is specifically about her possibly being not the right candidate for the position, so of course her presentation is going to be fair-game.
Your oversensitivity is the only problem here.
And by the way, misogynistic means "Of or characterized by a hatred of women." Even if we grant that the NYT was mocking Dyson unfairly, that hardly qualifies as "hatred of women".
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Has anyone tried the performance of the latest version? Early reports of Mozilla was that it was still pretty slow.
If this browser is not at least as fast as IE5 (or faster), they shouldn't bother. I should be able to resize the window and have a very complex page with lots of tables continuously resize to follow the borders of the Window like IE5 does.
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Because it takes no effort to send an e-mail. It makes much more of an impression if someone cares about an issue enough to actually take the time to travel and physically show up somewhere to protest.
No matter how wired we get, I know I'd be more impressed by someone using up a whole day to travel somewhere than spending 10 seconds cutting/pasting an e-mail that they probably don't even know why they're doing it.
Not to mention that e-mails can be forged extremely easily. How do I know as a representative that 1,000 e-mails aren't coming from the same person?
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I know I'm probably going to get slaughtered for this, but I think a good example is the first edition of the Perl camel book. It was trying to be way, WAY, too cute. I like Larry Wall, and it wasn't all bad, but it seemed like he was trying too hard to be funny, and trying not hard enough to be well organized, clear and concise. Sometimes I found it really tiresome to wade through some if it when I was just looking for a nugget of information. Also, I think it made some of the examples harder to understand because he was more concerned with fitting an example into a joke rather than giving me a useful, practical example.
I've noted that the newest edition has toned down the "stand-up" quite a bit, while still preserving a sense of personality.
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Your confusing bad writing with lack of humor. Well-written documentation makes the subject interesting without having to add a 1-inch layer of sugar. Note that I did not say that we shouldn't have relevent anecdotes, or any attempt to "personalize" the information. What I said was that I don't want cutesy off-topic garbage that makes it harder to find what I'm looking for.
If you can't process knowledge and puns at the same time, you should be in another field...
Perhaps if programming is not interesting enough for you to be able to process information without cutesy entertainment, you should be in a field other than programming.
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Besides the translation issues, I hope a lot of doc writers will take to heart to just "stick to the facts" and not try to get cute in documentation. I detest having my time wasted with cutesiness in documentation.
If I want a good laugh, I'll read some OSS source code. :) (ha ha only serious)
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People are not paid on the rarity of their talent, they are paid whatever they can get on the marketplace and the two are quite different things.
Actually, what I should have said was that they are paid based on the rarity of the talent, and the demand for the talent.
Bill Gates made billions more in the 90 than he did in the 80s, his talent wasn't any more rare, he was just making money on rising stock prices. He certainly wasn't any more talented or working any harder.
Bill Gates is possibly the most talented CEO in the world. Say what you want about Gates, but it is not easy to not only put a company on top, but to keep it there. The graveyard is littered with the bodies of less successful CEOs who got fat and lazy with success (Wordperfect, anyone?) Example: The famous "internet" memo. How many CEOs would have just continued to ignore the Internet and hope the Windows paradigm would continue? But Gates restructured the entire company in an amazingly short period of time. It is not easy to change the direction of an behemoth like Microsoft.
Let's face what the market pays people for is total bullshit. A hockey player makes millions while an over-worked nurse struggles to get by? I don't know why you feel the need to justify such a grossly flawed system?
It's very simple. It's a lot rarer of a talent to be a hockey player than it is to be a nurse. Are nurses important? Of course. But there are 10s of thousands of nurses, and it only takes a few years to become one. The number of people who can play pro-level hockey is unbelievably small. The other side of that equation (that I left out the first time) is the demand. There is a huge demand for hockey players due to the television revenues, while only a relatively small demand for nurses.
To use my original example, sewage workers are incredibly important. Without sewage workers, the sewers would back up and we would have huge pestilence and death. So why don't we pay sewage workers 100s of thousands a year when their worth to society is so huge? Because almost anyone can do the job.
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