There's just something about books on the shelf, all lined up in rows.
[...]
Imagine replacing all of these volumes with a tiny vial on the bookshelf. Sterile, barren shelves. Sure, the world is now at your fingertips, but the whimsy is gone. It's just not the same.
I used to think just like you. Here's the reality, though:
I have a lot of books. I mean, a *lot* of books. I've been a voracious reader since I was in 3rd or 4th grade, now, I've got well over a thousand books (I have no idea how many actually, nearly all sci-fi). My wife is also a big
reader, but doesn't own nearly as many (fiction) books -- say 200-300. The nine-foot tall shelves in the living room are full, with books piled in front of and on top of other books. My home office has the 70-80 computer-related books I've
used most recently, plus, of course, all of the software packages and manuals I've collected in the course of doing my job. My wife's home office has a few of her business books, plus a closet full of shelves filled with more fiction. The plant shelves in the guest room and in our master bedroom have books piled on top of them. We bought a
china cabinet (finished it ourselves) for our breakfast nook just to hold cookbooks.
It's an organizational nightmare. I've bought books at the bookstore that I'd forgotten I owned. It's been a long time since I even _tried_ to put 'em in any kind of order. I've spent half an hour looking for books I *know* I own --
but can't seem to locate the shelf they're on.
Now, although my 300+ videotape collection is in similar shape (mainly because it's a pain to write down the titles to all six "Babylon 5" episodes on the spine of the tape), my 700+ CD collection is in good order, mainly because I can keep 'em
all in one place, and they don't take up walls and walls of room.
If all this was digitized, sure, I'd lose out on some interesting decorating. But I'd rather be able to find what I'm looking for without a lot of hassle, and put up some art in its place.
I admit, my wife and I have more books than anyone else I know. But my wife is a professor at the local university. She's got a few hundred books in her office -- and she needs 'em all (she's a sociologist). So do all of the other
faculty stuffed into their 8x10 offices. It's sad really, seeing these people literally wedged into their offices along with the information they need to do their research.
Sure, physical books are neat. But there are some real disadvantages to having a lot of 'em. I'd rather have the world at my fingertips so I can spend more time using the information instead of trying to manage it.
PowerZone card with your purchase of 5 12-packs of D batteries.
Is this like the old Radio Shack Battery Club Card?
Of course, my other favorite childhood memory of RS was going in and typing this program on the TRS-80 Model 1 (man, I really wanted one of those things...):
Ok this may seem a little extreme but how much spam do you actually get?
Lemme tell you.
On my Hotmail account, I get 8-10 pieces of spam per day, 2-3 of which aren't filtered out by their anti-spam agents. Their anti-spam system sends spam to a "bulk mail" folder.
On my Earthlink account, I was averaging 12-15 pieces of spam per day before they started using the Brightmail spam filtering. Now, it's 3-5 per week (I quit going to the brightmail site to check the spam
count).
The other four accounts I have get maybe 5-7 pieces a week total. I have no idea if any of my web presence providers use anti-spam tools.
It is your problem and your problem alone to deal with.
Quite right. Which is why I was going to dump Earthlink until they added the anti-spam tools.
I should not have to take a stand just because a group of people who don't check their email once every 6 monts complain about getting email.
The reason Earthlink and others have added anti-spam tools, and why things like the RBL are popular, is because their customers requested it. If you like spam, that's great -- sign up with a provider that doesn't filter, or that allows you
(like both Earthlink and Hotmail do) to turn off their anti-spam filters.
Email is not just for personal communication and more of an informational delivery system which actually sees more traffic I would wager from mailinglists and other forms of batch oriented traffic.
E-mail may be just another delivery system to you, but to me, it's how I communicate with friends, family, and my customers. Yes, I subscribe to a couple of mailing lists that send me about 150 messages a day. But there's no forged
headers, the message clearly states who it's from, and I can easily create rules that allow me to send these messages to their appropriate folders in my mail client.
I don't mind commercial e-mail -- I get a few messages each week from vendors whose products I've purchased, and I appreciate hearing from them. But unsolicited commercial e-mail is not wanted. If I (and G*d only knows why, given the
crap that's being peddled by most UCE) wanted these products, I'd hunt for them on the web.
Your arguments about freedom of speech and expression are sadly misplaced. You can get all the spam you want by doing a little research on your "informational delivery system" provider. Just as you state spammers are free to
express themselves by sending out their information, I'm free to use any and all tools at my disposal (including picking an e-mail provider that thinks, as I do, that spam is a blight) to ignore them.
You oughta be thrilled at things like the Colorado anti-spam legislation, after all, if spam was clearly marked, it would be even easier for individuals to make their own personal decision on how to handle UCE, without having to involve their e-mail
provider. My guess is you're just a spammer yourself and hate the idea. After all, if this idea spread, everybody would make the decision to trash the stuff, and you wouldn't be able to make a buck telling all those fools that you can mail to 300
million e-mail address info about their products.
Actually, I think I've been trolled. I mean, come on, 2400baud? Sheet, reply to this with a valid e-mail addy and I'll dig around and see if I've still got a 14.4 laying around I can send you (it's external, not a
winmodem, so it should work on Linux or on any box with a serial port).
[...]some people want a car they can show off to their friends. [... sports cars can't] seat four people in comfort, the bucket seats are small and restrictive, the big engine is a waste of petrol for city driving, and the boot is just too small
Some of us don't want a sports car just to impress people. Some of us actually like driving. We enjoy good acceleration, like sitting close to the road, and don't care if you can't ride along with us. The last thing we want is to drive some genera-sedan.
When I graduated from college, my 10-year-old econobox bit the dust. I didn't have a lot of money to spend, so my choices were another econobox or base level sedan (think Ford Tempo). I can't tell you how depressed I was that I was going to have to pick up another one of these damn things. After a little bit of looking, I found a base Mitsubishi Eclipse (actually, a Plymouth Laser) for about the same price. Snapped it up, and six years later, I still enjoy driving it.
My Palm Pilot 3 is practical and useful. I also think I'd in all honesty prefer a sedan to a sports car.
Different strokes for different folks. Just as you'd prefer a sedan to a sports car, I'd much rather have a sports car over a sedan. I don't own a PDA, but if I did, I'd rather have one that allows me to play MP3s.
both Tog and the author of the Interface Hall of Shame think the mega-cascading-menu interface you're copying sucks. And they're right. So much for your contribution to the state of the art
Sorry, but I'm not copying the Start menu, but creating an application that hides itself on the edge of the screen -- a Win32 AppBar.
winamp has a good many themes that do not mess with functionality
Winamp, which popularized this whole app theming thing, is an excellent example of an application where themes, while they may not help functionality, certainly don't hurt it. It's a simple app, with a few buttons and an information display area. Most people who cannot program their VCR can use it to play tapes. They also don't have a problem using the CD player, and that's really all Winamp is, so making the buttons look like brushed aluminum doesn't really slow most users down.
Additionally, Winamp is a parasitic application -- meaning that it usually runs alongside other applications, and the user rarely runs Winamp exclusively. The user spends little time working with Winamp itself, they're busy using their main applications, with Winamp playing in the background.
What's needed is to spend more time working on the basic usability of applications and widgets. Go read (as mentioned before) the Interface Hall of Shame. Read AskTog's rant about the differences in how Windows and the Mac handle cascading menus.
Lemme tell you about my little improvement to widget usability. I'm working on an application that works as a Win32 Appbar (like the Start menu). It can be docked to any edge, and can be auto-hidden, staying out of the way until the user moves the mouse over the edge the appbar is docked to.
When I first started testing it, I set the appbar properties to auto-hide and stuck it at the top of the screen (my Start bar, like most people's, is at the bottom). This sounds fine, but turned out to be a major irratant -- every time my mouse pointer hit the top of the screen (like, say, when I was going for a menu), the damn appbar would drop down! I'd then have to move the mouse pointer down, wait for the window to retract, then, slowly, move back up to the menu (without moving too high!), then make my selection.
A simple timer, with a user-defined delay, solves this problem. When the mouse moves to the appbar's edge, a timer is started. If, when the timer expires, the mouse is still on the edge, the appbar will show itself. If the user clicks on the top edge (indicating they want to see the appbar immediately), the appbar will show without waiting for the timer.
That's the kind of work UI designers should be doing.
Alan Cooper once said that the web has set user interface design back 15 years. I agree. Instead of ensuring that your applications can be themed by every 31337 h4x0r with a warez copy of Photoshop, make the interface work better.
From an everday usage point of view, the thing I most hate about Windows is the tendency for new windows to jump to the top and steal the focus. It drives me absoutely crazy, and yet, I have found no way of disabling the feature (if anyone knows of one, please let me know!!)
Upgrade to Windows 2000. When an app tries to bring itself to the foreground, Win2K intercepts the call and flashes the app's Taskbar button instead.
Of course, now there are a bunch of Win32 developers out there whining about this behavior, insisting that their app is so important it must pop up in the foreground, no matter what you, a lowly (l)user might think.
There is a way to code around this, so don't be surprised to see particularly bogus apps forcing their attention on you in the future.
If our justice system is as screwed as you say, what's to prevent a cop from pulling me behind a building and putting a bullet in my head?
Precious little. Nearly all cops are good guys, and even the bad cops see many good people in a day's work. You don't think the cops that attacked Abner Louima (and here) or Amado Diallo ran around attacking random civilians for years, do you? So, it's mainly the odds. Of course, if you're white, that helps a lot.
The people were tried in a court of law and convicted.
Ahh, then, they must have been guilty. Even if they didn't do the specific crime they were convicted of, anyone who gets put on trial must have been doing something worth a trip to the big house for.
But death? Even if they didn't do it?
There's a chance that mistakes may be made in any criminal case. Does that mean we should allow all criminals to go free?
Who said anything about letting people go free? Life in prison removes the criminal from our society just as effectively as the electric chair, with the added advantage that we can fix our mistakes if we accidentally put the wrong guy away.
And I bet their national crime rates are a hell of a lot lower than America's too.
Of course, not everything that's a crime here in the states is a crime in the Arab world. Not much rape over there -- not because men aren't forcing themselves on women, but because, over there, if a woman has sex it's because she wanted to or tempted the men with her evil ways. In some countries, it's legal for the family of a "tainted" woman to kill her. Not a crime.
And, of course, the secret police do a good job of keeping everyone in their place. You'd toe the line, too, if you knew that you could be picked up and tossed in jail without evidence, without trial, at any time. Wanna bet those actions don't show up in any official crime statistics?
Americans have for far too long taken shit from those elements which society has thrown up in the last few decades, and people want harsher measures.
<sarcasm>Yeah, let's get back to the good 'ol days, when we had lynchings, called Jews "Christ-Killers", and real jobs were reserved for real people -- landowning, white (heterosexual, or at least fully in the closet) men.</sarcasm>
Witness the effects of the zero tolerance policy enacted in New York. The people loved it, and crime went down by a large factor.
You're being a little misleading here. The zero-tolerance policy was for crimes already on the books, and specifically targeted minor, "nuisance" crimes. Research indicates that these nuisance crimes lower quality of life in neighborhoods and lead to further crime. There's a big difference between actually ticketing someone for public consumption of alcohol, loitering, misdemeanor drug possession, etc., and jumping on someone because they fit the profile. Also note that this was enforcment of existing penalties, not harsher sentencing.
true policy which would cut crime - more capital punishment. Locking criminals up costs the US a fortune in prison costs, and it would be far cheaper to return to captial punishment for more crimes.
It actually costs more to kill someone than it does to keep them locked up -- think about the costs of lawyers (on both sides), the judge, court police (who get paid a lot more than a jail guard). I know your answer to this: limit the appeals process. That is wrong. It's nice to think that everyone on Death Row is some total slimeball who is getting what they deserve, but we need to make absolutely sure that they're guilty. Do you know who's on Death Row in most states? A bunch of Ted Bundys? No -- it's some poor (usually minority) guy who's up there for some high-profile crime that the DA got pressured to make sure somebody pays.
Do you think cops never fabricate evidence or lie? Do you think all District Attorneys are scrupulously honest and would never bury information? Of course not -- they're as human as the rest of us. Statistics show that the average rate of wrongful conviction in the US stands at about 2%. I've heard (but have no concrete evidence) that the rate of wrongful conviction in death-penalty cases is higher.
Don't believe this is possible? Go rent the documentary The Thin Blue Line. Go to CNN and read some of the articles talking about how the govenor of Illinois (a death-penalty proponent) felt forced to suspend all executions in his state because "We have now freed more people than we have put to death under our system -- 13 people have been exonerated and 12 have been put to death."
Hell, just skipping the high-profile stuff for a minute, go read about the latest LAPD scandal.
If you are convicted for fraud, or embezzlement, then you should be flogged in public. Think too many people will risk it after that? I doubt it. If rapists were castrated then they would never offend in this way again - and for paedophiles [sp] the rate of re-offending is something like 90% or more.
The problem with this is it doesn't stop the initial crime. In fact, it doesn't stop repeat crimes. Criminals aren't deterred by hefty sentences -- they think they can get away with it. It doesn't matter if I know someone who was flogged for embezzlement -- they were stupid about it, and anyway, I'm smart enough not to get caught. Again, anyway.
Rape, as I'm sure you've heard many times, is a crime of violence, not of sex. Castrate the rapist, and while he may not go around with his dick hanging out any more, just might decide to bash the next girl's head in. Better, or worse?
FYI, the crime most likely to land you on Death Row, murder, has one of the lowest re-offense rates.
Anyway, capital punishment works. And its only the more liberal elements of society, who generally don't have to see how normal people live, who oppose such measures.
Capital punishment doesn't work. It doesn't deter criminals. With very rare exeptions, it doesn't good a good job of providing society with revenge (which is a crappy reason for killing someone, anyway). It costs more. Innocent people die. Wrongful convictions can never be overturned.
If you want to reduce crime, quit making everyone a criminal. Quit equating smoking a joint with some friends in the privacy of your own house with armed robbery. Quit rigging the traffic laws to provide operating income for police departments. Stop allowing cops to act like highway robbers under the guise of the "war on drugs". Maybe we'll gain a little more respect for the law.
Disclaimer: I am not a criminologist, but I am married to one. Most of the information here on crime and criminal theories can be verified by anyone who passed their Criminology 101 course.
Cordwainer Byrd is the Pen Name that Harlan Ellison uses when someone has done a hatchet job on his writing, and he doesn't want his real name connected with it.
Absolutely correct. But I swear there's a connection between this name and Roddenberry.
No, the part that *really* gave it away was the lawyer's name, Cordwainer Byrd. IIRC, this [with a "Bird" spelling] was a pseudonym of Gene Roddenberry, and the source of his nickname, "Great Bird of the Galaxy".
Besides, it's a ridiculous name. Might as well have been "Mr. Throatwarbler-Mangrove".
Hey, Ice-T isn't just a rap star -- there are those two Body Count albums, too.
EPMD have Atari ST's on the cover of their "Strictly Business" CD. Presumably they are running TOS. I wonder what operating systems other Rap and Hip-Hop artists prefer.
I'd assume they're all running TOS. You can get great deals on old ST equipment (here's a nice one for $110 on ebay), and they often come with what used to be state-of-the-art sequencing and other music software. Gotta love those built-in MIDI ports.
time in a good studio with good engineers can cost as much as 1000$/hr. if you are The Beatles and already famous then you can afford to spend 8 weeks in the studio to cut an album, but if you are joe schmoe band then you may have to save up for a month to get just one hour in the studio
Bunk.
I have a good friend of mine who does solo stuff -- just him and an acoustic guitar. He's got plenty of originals, and wanted to record a CD to share with his friends. He called up a local studio, went down and recorded his entire disk in an hour and a half.
Total cost? About $150, and he got two CD's from them. Now, they did give him the second hour free (mainly because it was a slow day, and the engineers were thrilled to have cut an entire album in this time frame), but still, we're not talking $1000+.
A decent studio -- Deep Purple recorded a couple of albums there in the '80's. Maybe it's not the best, but it's definitely good enough for major-label work.
What's the point of buying a computing device if you can't customize it?
Do you customize your car? Your fridge? Your TV?
Car: First thing I did after I bought my new car was to pull the stupid racing stripes off the sides. Then I went and had a nice CD player installed. Let's not even get started on the people who take modifying their cars seriously. You don't think the "I'd rather push my Ford than drive a Chevy" came about just because of the way people drove the things, do you? Lemme just point you to the JC Whitney catalog.
Fridge: Got crap stuck all over the front of it: funny newspaper items, pictures of all the relatives' kids, even stuck a memo board on it so we can write down what we need to buy at the grocery store.
TV: Ran a splitter off my cable, now I use the box (for HBO) as one input, unfiltered (so I can do picture-in-picture) as another. VCR on Video1, N64 on Video3 (SVHS input).
Hmm, seems like I customize everything I touch. Customization isn't only for computers -- every product's worth is judged partially on how well it can be modified to suit your needs. As someone mentioned above this, this is one of the reasons why desktop computers are so popular. They can (with a bit of work:-)) be customized to meet just about anyone's needs.
#2 Use a fscking spell checker! You're post was beyond atrocious
That's "Your post" not "You're post".
Just a follow-up to Dylan_-'s comment, and a tip for those of you confused by contractions:
When you're using a contraction, do a sanity check by saying out the contracted words in the sentence. If the original poster would've said to himself "You are post", he would've realized his error.
And remember, "it's" is always a contraction (of "it is") -- the possessive is "its", without the apostrophe.
[esr] made the point that most software developers that make a living from programming aren't doing it for something that becomes a resalable product. i.e. most are writing for internal systems
Yikes! So *that's* what we should all do -- spend our days writing internal use purchasing systems for a buck, then go and code "real software" at night? No thanks.
I write shrink-wrapped software for a couple of different markets, and I like it that way. No way do I want to go back to a cubicle and do a 9-5 thing. I like being able to go play golf on a Thursday afternoon, even if I suck at it.
My commercial efforts are a contract between me and my customers. I agree that, to the limits of my and my team's ability, I will make software that does what it says it will, and won't suck doing it. My customers agree to give me a small amount of cash. Does everyone agree to this? No -- I've seen my stuff on the warez sites (and being slammed, too, for not having heavy-duty registration protection built-in). Fortunately, enough people feel like they're getting a good deal to keep me from hanging Dilbert or User-Friendly strips up on my cubicle wall.
Nobody's putting a gun to their heads. Potential customers can view screenshots, browse the online help, and download and use the full product for 30 days (or 30 runs, whichever comes later). I'm not playing "gotcha" -- I just want some compensation for spending nine months in full-time development on a project. As it is, I'm making far less than I would contracting myself out.
All this being said, there's a world of difference between an operating system and its utilities and vertical market apps . If people weren't willing to pay cash for a doctor's office program, or a childcare management program (one of my efforts), they wouldn't exist with the same quality of shrinkwrap apps. Those who could afford it would hire a programmer to write them an internal system, those who couldn't would do without. By selling the product as a commercial application, development cost is spread out through the user base. If there's not enough users willing to pay to cover development costs (which, by the way, are already paid out in full by the time the product ships), then the product (and, often, the company) ceases to exist. Additionally, shrinkwrapped apps are often of higher quality than internal use systems. You tend to be a bit more careful knowing that you just can't walk down the hall to the secretary's desk to see what the problem is.
When you start talking about a user base in the millions, or tens of millions, your development costs per user become so low that you don't think of things the same way. Additionally, if you've got a product that's that far reaching (like an OS), there are other ways to make a buck. Training, certification, ancillary products for subsets of your user base, fee-based support, books, t-shirts, stuffed penguins, web revenue from ads, "stamp of approval"-type concepts, etc. In fact, if you can make enough money off of the other things, you can write off the cost of development as a marketing expense. One example: Powersoft, the makers of PowerBuilder, make more money off of training and consulting than they do from sales of the product. Another example (duh): Linux. Sure, the software, in its base form, is free, but that doesn't stop companies like RHAT from making bucks and having a company valuation of a few billion. O'Reilly's doing okay selling Linux books, too.
Me, I'd love to be able to give my work away. I'd love to have a product that was so far reaching, that impacted so many users, that I wouldn't have to worry about making money from the code. Sigh. Maybe next year...
What keyboard shortcuts does windows have to lower or raise a window besided [sic] the painfully slow alt-tab? Both Windowmaker and Enlightenment have Alt-arrowdown and Alt-arrowup.
Minimize: Alt-Space + n Maximize: Alt-Space + x Restore (non-maximized): Alt-space + r
What keyboard shortcuts does windows have to move around on virtual desktops? Oh wait. windows doesn't even have that most basic GUI feature
Well, it doesn't have virtual desktops built-in, but there are a wide variety or 3rd party virtual desktop programs. In fact, there are probably more virtual desktop apps for windows (especially counting various video card vendor's efforts) than there are window managers for X. I note that you're not complaining about the download-[install|make] cycle for Linux, why complain that it's not built into Winblows?
Do you really have to click on the titlebar to move a window or aim for the four-pixel wide window borders to resize? Both WindowMaker and Enlightenment have alt-mousedrag and alt-mousedrag-leftkey to do that without needing the surgeon's aim.
No, you don't (have to click).
Move: Alt-space + m, then use the arrow keys to move. Hold down the CTRL key to move in 1-pixel increments. Hit to keep the new position, or Esc to cancel.
Size: Similar to move, but use Alt-space + s, then the arrow keys to size.
I can't believe someone who would spend time reading through the man pages and the HOWTOs for [Li|U]nix can't be bothered to check the documentation for Windows. FYI, the Windows interface guidelines call for all window management functions (and menu items) to be accessible through either the mouse or the keyboard.
It's only nuts if you don't realize what's driving this sort of nonsense. Money.
You are so right on with this. A local radio station has started pushing ads for the.cc domain -- the company that owns the station has a partial interest in the company that manages the TLD. The commercials all talk about cybersquatting and how "if you'd gotten business.com 5 years ago, you'd be rich today! Sign up for your.cc domain now and wait for the money to come rolling in!"
And it doesn't help when the noontime crew (it's a talk radio station) starts blabbing it up and saying crap like "I'm telling ya, this.cc thing is gonna be the next big thing!"
Commodore 64 with 300 baud VicModem, surfing the BBS scene in Nanaimo, BC, Canada
Pah. Newby.
In 1979, I was introduced to the BBS scene by a friend who showed me how to use the 110 baud accoustic coupler attached to the (Anderson-Jacobsen?) teletype in the high school computing "room". Man, that thing was loud. We also had some kind of HP box that took punch cards (only for the kids in the computer class), and a TRS-80 Model III -- 16K RAM, *high-speed* cassette drive (is that an oxymoron?).
When I got a 300 baud modem for my home computer a few years later (having tired of the discount 110 I'd purchased), I can remember thinking "Who needs more than 300 baud? I can't read any faster than that!"
I went ahead and spent the $150 for a 1200 baud modem, which let the stuff page to the screen, where I'd catch up with it. I also became a little less annoyed with the ANSI screen graphics.
BBSing was one of my favorite things to do with the computer, so I went a bit ahead of the curve and spent $225 to get the Supra 2400 bps, even before all of the BBSes supported it. I still dropped the connection rate down to 1200, or even 300, when dialing up Compu$erve, 'cause I just couldn't afford the higher prices that went with the faster connection.
I had much less time for BBS surfing when I got out of the service and went to college, so I kept the 2400 well into the 9600 era, picking up a Hayes 9600 clone when the 14.4 standards war was being waged. Sometime around here (1990-ish) I got my school internet connection (at the time, only available to CompSci majors and faculty/staff), so the 9600 is probably the last modem I BBSed with.
14.4, 28.8 -> 33.6, now at 56K. I get a pretty reliable 48K connection. My house is in a new neighborhood, and close to the telco COR. The 56K box I have -- a SupraExpress 56e Sp -- is a cheap, plastic thing with a 25-pin serial cable permanently attached to the back of the unit. It's a far cry from the heavy metal Supra 2400 that I've still got in the closet somewhere.
The 56K will be the last modem I own -- I'll switch to a different technology sooner or later. Certainly, my online experiences now, in one way, are very different from the 80's. OTOH, it all just seems like more of the same to me: like I've got an unlimited Compu$erve account, like FidoNet has 40,000 discussions going on, like the files area has *unlimited* PD files availble (with NO download ratios!), like all of my online wishes came true.
There was a row of ushers (or whatever they call themselves) lining it to make sure none of us wandered off.
Cast members. They're all cast members, from the person playing Mowgli to the one sweeping up the street.
I'm told that no matter what your "normal" job is, your first duty is to see to the park guests. That is, if someone stops to ask a question, you drop what you're doing and help 'em out. Pretty cool, if you ask me, and probably a reason why customer service at Disney is head-and-shoulders above Universal, Sea World, or any of the other Orlando attractions.
Slashdot Mirror
There's just something about books on the shelf, all lined up in rows.
[...]
Imagine replacing all of these volumes with a tiny vial on the bookshelf. Sterile, barren shelves. Sure, the world is now at your fingertips, but the whimsy is gone. It's just not the same.
I used to think just like you. Here's the reality, though:
I have a lot of books. I mean, a *lot* of books. I've been a voracious reader since I was in 3rd or 4th grade, now, I've got well over a thousand books (I have no idea how many actually, nearly all sci-fi). My wife is also a big reader, but doesn't own nearly as many (fiction) books -- say 200-300. The nine-foot tall shelves in the living room are full, with books piled in front of and on top of other books. My home office has the 70-80 computer-related books I've used most recently, plus, of course, all of the software packages and manuals I've collected in the course of doing my job. My wife's home office has a few of her business books, plus a closet full of shelves filled with more fiction. The plant shelves in the guest room and in our master bedroom have books piled on top of them. We bought a china cabinet (finished it ourselves) for our breakfast nook just to hold cookbooks.
It's an organizational nightmare. I've bought books at the bookstore that I'd forgotten I owned. It's been a long time since I even _tried_ to put 'em in any kind of order. I've spent half an hour looking for books I *know* I own -- but can't seem to locate the shelf they're on.
Now, although my 300+ videotape collection is in similar shape (mainly because it's a pain to write down the titles to all six "Babylon 5" episodes on the spine of the tape), my 700+ CD collection is in good order, mainly because I can keep 'em all in one place, and they don't take up walls and walls of room.
If all this was digitized, sure, I'd lose out on some interesting decorating. But I'd rather be able to find what I'm looking for without a lot of hassle, and put up some art in its place.
I admit, my wife and I have more books than anyone else I know. But my wife is a professor at the local university. She's got a few hundred books in her office -- and she needs 'em all (she's a sociologist). So do all of the other faculty stuffed into their 8x10 offices. It's sad really, seeing these people literally wedged into their offices along with the information they need to do their research.
Sure, physical books are neat. But there are some real disadvantages to having a lot of 'em. I'd rather have the world at my fingertips so I can spend more time using the information instead of trying to manage it.
PowerZone card with your purchase of 5 12-packs of D batteries.
Is this like the old Radio Shack Battery Club Card?
Of course, my other favorite childhood memory of RS was going in and typing this program on the TRS-80 Model 1 (man, I really wanted one of those things...):
Probably the first program I ever wrote.
Dad? Is that you?
americans have trouble spelling "ecstasy" so they use "xtasy".
Coming from someone at "phatchicks.com"?
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Lemme tell you.
On my Hotmail account, I get 8-10 pieces of spam per day, 2-3 of which aren't filtered out by their anti-spam agents. Their anti-spam system sends spam to a "bulk mail" folder.
On my Earthlink account, I was averaging 12-15 pieces of spam per day before they started using the Brightmail spam filtering. Now, it's 3-5 per week (I quit going to the brightmail site to check the spam count).
The other four accounts I have get maybe 5-7 pieces a week total. I have no idea if any of my web presence providers use anti-spam tools.
Quite right. Which is why I was going to dump Earthlink until they added the anti-spam tools.
The reason Earthlink and others have added anti-spam tools, and why things like the RBL are popular, is because their customers requested it. If you like spam, that's great -- sign up with a provider that doesn't filter, or that allows you (like both Earthlink and Hotmail do) to turn off their anti-spam filters.
E-mail may be just another delivery system to you, but to me, it's how I communicate with friends, family, and my customers. Yes, I subscribe to a couple of mailing lists that send me about 150 messages a day. But there's no forged headers, the message clearly states who it's from, and I can easily create rules that allow me to send these messages to their appropriate folders in my mail client.
I don't mind commercial e-mail -- I get a few messages each week from vendors whose products I've purchased, and I appreciate hearing from them. But unsolicited commercial e-mail is not wanted. If I (and G*d only knows why, given the crap that's being peddled by most UCE) wanted these products, I'd hunt for them on the web.
Your arguments about freedom of speech and expression are sadly misplaced. You can get all the spam you want by doing a little research on your "informational delivery system" provider. Just as you state spammers are free to express themselves by sending out their information, I'm free to use any and all tools at my disposal (including picking an e-mail provider that thinks, as I do, that spam is a blight) to ignore them.
You oughta be thrilled at things like the Colorado anti-spam legislation, after all, if spam was clearly marked, it would be even easier for individuals to make their own personal decision on how to handle UCE, without having to involve their e-mail provider. My guess is you're just a spammer yourself and hate the idea. After all, if this idea spread, everybody would make the decision to trash the stuff, and you wouldn't be able to make a buck telling all those fools that you can mail to 300 million e-mail address info about their products.
Actually, I think I've been trolled. I mean, come on, 2400baud? Sheet, reply to this with a valid e-mail addy and I'll dig around and see if I've still got a 14.4 laying around I can send you (it's external, not a winmodem, so it should work on Linux or on any box with a serial port).
know where i can get one of those?
Actually, I'd like to get a whole bunch of them. With wireless communication so I can set 'em up as a Beowolf cluster. :-)
Spontaneous Palm-size distributed computing. The mind boggles at the possibilities.
I think I'll make that my new .sig
Funniest fsckin' thing I've read on /. for quite a while. And an excellent summary, too.
I have *never* said this before, but...
MODERATE THIS UP!
This is the inevitable car analogy
[...]some people want a car they can show off to their friends. [... sports cars can't] seat four people in comfort, the bucket seats are small and restrictive, the big engine is a waste of petrol for city driving, and the boot is just too small
Some of us don't want a sports car just to impress people. Some of us actually like driving. We enjoy good acceleration, like sitting close to the road, and don't care if you can't ride along with us. The last thing we want is to drive some genera-sedan.
When I graduated from college, my 10-year-old econobox bit the dust. I didn't have a lot of money to spend, so my choices were another econobox or base level sedan (think Ford Tempo). I can't tell you how depressed I was that I was going to have to pick up another one of these damn things. After a little bit of looking, I found a base Mitsubishi Eclipse (actually, a Plymouth Laser) for about the same price. Snapped it up, and six years later, I still enjoy driving it.
My Palm Pilot 3 is practical and useful. I also think I'd in all honesty prefer a sedan to a sports car.
Different strokes for different folks. Just as you'd prefer a sedan to a sports car, I'd much rather have a sports car over a sedan. I don't own a PDA, but if I did, I'd rather have one that allows me to play MP3s.
both Tog and the author of the Interface Hall of Shame think the mega-cascading-menu interface you're copying sucks. And they're right. So much for your contribution to the state of the art
Sorry, but I'm not copying the Start menu, but creating an application that hides itself on the edge of the screen -- a Win32 AppBar.
Thanks for playing.
winamp has a good many themes that do not mess with functionality
Winamp, which popularized this whole app theming thing, is an excellent example of an application where themes, while they may not help functionality, certainly don't hurt it. It's a simple app, with a few buttons and an information display area. Most people who cannot program their VCR can use it to play tapes. They also don't have a problem using the CD player, and that's really all Winamp is, so making the buttons look like brushed aluminum doesn't really slow most users down.
Additionally, Winamp is a parasitic application -- meaning that it usually runs alongside other applications, and the user rarely runs Winamp exclusively. The user spends little time working with Winamp itself, they're busy using their main applications, with Winamp playing in the background.
What's needed is to spend more time working on the basic usability of applications and widgets. Go read (as mentioned before) the Interface Hall of Shame. Read AskTog's rant about the differences in how Windows and the Mac handle cascading menus.
Lemme tell you about my little improvement to widget usability. I'm working on an application that works as a Win32 Appbar (like the Start menu). It can be docked to any edge, and can be auto-hidden, staying out of the way until the user moves the mouse over the edge the appbar is docked to.
When I first started testing it, I set the appbar properties to auto-hide and stuck it at the top of the screen (my Start bar, like most people's, is at the bottom). This sounds fine, but turned out to be a major irratant -- every time my mouse pointer hit the top of the screen (like, say, when I was going for a menu), the damn appbar would drop down! I'd then have to move the mouse pointer down, wait for the window to retract, then, slowly, move back up to the menu (without moving too high!), then make my selection.
A simple timer, with a user-defined delay, solves this problem. When the mouse moves to the appbar's edge, a timer is started. If, when the timer expires, the mouse is still on the edge, the appbar will show itself. If the user clicks on the top edge (indicating they want to see the appbar immediately), the appbar will show without waiting for the timer.
That's the kind of work UI designers should be doing.
Alan Cooper once said that the web has set user interface design back 15 years. I agree. Instead of ensuring that your applications can be themed by every 31337 h4x0r with a warez copy of Photoshop, make the interface work better.
From an everday usage point of view, the thing I most hate about Windows is the tendency for new windows to jump to the top and steal the focus. It drives me absoutely crazy, and yet, I have found no way of disabling the feature (if anyone knows of one, please let me know!!)
Upgrade to Windows 2000. When an app tries to bring itself to the foreground, Win2K intercepts the call and flashes the app's Taskbar button instead.
Of course, now there are a bunch of Win32 developers out there whining about this behavior, insisting that their app is so important it must pop up in the foreground, no matter what you, a lowly (l)user might think.
There is a way to code around this, so don't be surprised to see particularly bogus apps forcing their attention on you in the future.
If our justice system is as screwed as you say, what's to prevent a cop from pulling me behind a building and putting a bullet in my head?
Precious little. Nearly all cops are good guys, and even the bad cops see many good people in a day's work. You don't think the cops that attacked Abner Louima (and here) or Amado Diallo ran around attacking random civilians for years, do you? So, it's mainly the odds. Of course, if you're white, that helps a lot.
The people were tried in a court of law and convicted.
Ahh, then, they must have been guilty. Even if they didn't do the specific crime they were convicted of, anyone who gets put on trial must have been doing something worth a trip to the big house for.
But death? Even if they didn't do it?
There's a chance that mistakes may be made in any criminal case. Does that mean we should allow all criminals to go free?
Who said anything about letting people go free? Life in prison removes the criminal from our society just as effectively as the electric chair, with the added advantage that we can fix our mistakes if we accidentally put the wrong guy away.
And I bet their national crime rates are a hell of a lot lower than America's too.
Of course, not everything that's a crime here in the states is a crime in the Arab world. Not much rape over there -- not because men aren't forcing themselves on women, but because, over there, if a woman has sex it's because she wanted to or tempted the men with her evil ways. In some countries, it's legal for the family of a "tainted" woman to kill her. Not a crime.
And, of course, the secret police do a good job of keeping everyone in their place. You'd toe the line, too, if you knew that you could be picked up and tossed in jail without evidence, without trial, at any time. Wanna bet those actions don't show up in any official crime statistics?
Americans have for far too long taken shit from those elements which society has thrown up in the last few decades, and people want harsher measures.
<sarcasm>Yeah, let's get back to the good 'ol days, when we had lynchings, called Jews "Christ-Killers", and real jobs were reserved for real people -- landowning, white (heterosexual, or at least fully in the closet) men.</sarcasm>
Witness the effects of the zero tolerance policy enacted in New York. The people loved it, and crime went down by a large factor.
You're being a little misleading here. The zero-tolerance policy was for crimes already on the books, and specifically targeted minor, "nuisance" crimes. Research indicates that these nuisance crimes lower quality of life in neighborhoods and lead to further crime. There's a big difference between actually ticketing someone for public consumption of alcohol, loitering, misdemeanor drug possession, etc., and jumping on someone because they fit the profile. Also note that this was enforcment of existing penalties, not harsher sentencing.true policy which would cut crime - more capital punishment. Locking criminals up costs the US a fortune in prison costs, and it would be far cheaper to return to captial punishment for more crimes.
It actually costs more to kill someone than it does to keep them locked up -- think about the costs of lawyers (on both sides), the judge, court police (who get paid a lot more than a jail guard). I know your answer to this: limit the appeals process. That is wrong. It's nice to think that everyone on Death Row is some total slimeball who is getting what they deserve, but we need to make absolutely sure that they're guilty. Do you know who's on Death Row in most states? A bunch of Ted Bundys? No -- it's some poor (usually minority) guy who's up there for some high-profile crime that the DA got pressured to make sure somebody pays.
Do you think cops never fabricate evidence or lie? Do you think all District Attorneys are scrupulously honest and would never bury information? Of course not -- they're as human as the rest of us. Statistics show that the average rate of wrongful conviction in the US stands at about 2%. I've heard (but have no concrete evidence) that the rate of wrongful conviction in death-penalty cases is higher.
Don't believe this is possible? Go rent the documentary The Thin Blue Line. Go to CNN and read some of the articles talking about how the govenor of Illinois (a death-penalty proponent) felt forced to suspend all executions in his state because "We have now freed more people than we have put to death under our system -- 13 people have been exonerated and 12 have been put to death."
Hell, just skipping the high-profile stuff for a minute, go read about the latest LAPD scandal.
If you are convicted for fraud, or embezzlement, then you should be flogged in public. Think too many people will risk it after that? I doubt it. If rapists were castrated then they would never offend in this way again - and for paedophiles [sp] the rate of re-offending is something like 90% or more.
The problem with this is it doesn't stop the initial crime. In fact, it doesn't stop repeat crimes. Criminals aren't deterred by hefty sentences -- they think they can get away with it. It doesn't matter if I know someone who was flogged for embezzlement -- they were stupid about it, and anyway, I'm smart enough not to get caught. Again, anyway.
Rape, as I'm sure you've heard many times, is a crime of violence, not of sex. Castrate the rapist, and while he may not go around with his dick hanging out any more, just might decide to bash the next girl's head in. Better, or worse?
FYI, the crime most likely to land you on Death Row, murder, has one of the lowest re-offense rates.
Anyway, capital punishment works. And its only the more liberal elements of society, who generally don't have to see how normal people live, who oppose such measures.
Capital punishment doesn't work. It doesn't deter criminals. With very rare exeptions, it doesn't good a good job of providing society with revenge (which is a crappy reason for killing someone, anyway). It costs more. Innocent people die. Wrongful convictions can never be overturned.
If you want to reduce crime, quit making everyone a criminal. Quit equating smoking a joint with some friends in the privacy of your own house with armed robbery. Quit rigging the traffic laws to provide operating income for police departments. Stop allowing cops to act like highway robbers under the guise of the "war on drugs". Maybe we'll gain a little more respect for the law.
Disclaimer: I am not a criminologist, but I am married to one. Most of the information here on crime and criminal theories can be verified by anyone who passed their Criminology 101 course.
Cordwainer Byrd is the Pen Name that Harlan Ellison uses when someone has done a hatchet job on his writing, and he doesn't want his real name connected with it.
Absolutely correct. But I swear there's a connection between this name and Roddenberry.
Ahh, well.
No, the part that *really* gave it away was the lawyer's name, Cordwainer Byrd. IIRC, this [with a "Bird" spelling] was a pseudonym of Gene Roddenberry, and the source of his nickname, "Great Bird of the Galaxy".
Besides, it's a ridiculous name. Might as well have been "Mr. Throatwarbler-Mangrove".
Do any other has-been rap stars read Slashdot
Hey, Ice-T isn't just a rap star -- there are those two Body Count albums, too.
EPMD have Atari ST's on the cover of their "Strictly Business" CD. Presumably they are running TOS. I wonder what operating systems other Rap and Hip-Hop artists prefer.
I'd assume they're all running TOS. You can get great deals on old ST equipment (here's a nice one for $110 on ebay), and they often come with what used to be state-of-the-art sequencing and other music software. Gotta love those built-in MIDI ports.
time in a good studio with good engineers can cost as much as 1000$/hr. if you are The Beatles and already famous then you can afford to spend 8 weeks in the studio to cut an album, but if you are joe schmoe band then you may have to save up for a month to get just one hour in the studio
Bunk.
I have a good friend of mine who does solo stuff -- just him and an acoustic guitar. He's got plenty of originals, and wanted to record a CD to share with his friends. He called up a local studio, went down and recorded his entire disk in an hour and a half.
Total cost? About $150, and he got two CD's from them. Now, they did give him the second hour free (mainly because it was a slow day, and the engineers were thrilled to have cut an entire album in this time frame), but still, we're not talking $1000+.
A decent studio -- Deep Purple recorded a couple of albums there in the '80's. Maybe it's not the best, but it's definitely good enough for major-label work.
What's the point of buying a computing device if you can't customize it?
Do you customize your car? Your fridge? Your TV?
Car: First thing I did after I bought my new car was to pull the stupid racing stripes off the sides. Then I went and had a nice CD player installed. Let's not even get started on the people who take modifying their cars seriously. You don't think the "I'd rather push my Ford than drive a Chevy" came about just because of the way people drove the things, do you? Lemme just point you to the JC Whitney catalog.
Fridge: Got crap stuck all over the front of it: funny newspaper items, pictures of all the relatives' kids, even stuck a memo board on it so we can write down what we need to buy at the grocery store.
TV: Ran a splitter off my cable, now I use the box (for HBO) as one input, unfiltered (so I can do picture-in-picture) as another. VCR on Video1, N64 on Video3 (SVHS input).
Hmm, seems like I customize everything I touch. Customization isn't only for computers -- every product's worth is judged partially on how well it can be modified to suit your needs. As someone mentioned above this, this is one of the reasons why desktop computers are so popular. They can (with a bit of work :-)) be customized to meet just about anyone's needs.
That's "Your post" not "You're post".
Just a follow-up to Dylan_-'s comment, and a tip for those of you confused by contractions:
When you're using a contraction, do a sanity check by saying out the contracted words in the sentence. If the original poster would've said to himself "You are post", he would've realized his error.
And remember, "it's" is always a contraction (of "it is") -- the possessive is "its", without the apostrophe.
[esr] made the point that most software developers that make a living from programming aren't doing it for something that becomes a resalable product. i.e. most are writing for internal systems
Yikes! So *that's* what we should all do -- spend our days writing internal use purchasing systems for a buck, then go and code "real software" at night? No thanks.
I write shrink-wrapped software for a couple of different markets, and I like it that way. No way do I want to go back to a cubicle and do a 9-5 thing. I like being able to go play golf on a Thursday afternoon, even if I suck at it.
My commercial efforts are a contract between me and my customers. I agree that, to the limits of my and my team's ability, I will make software that does what it says it will, and won't suck doing it. My customers agree to give me a small amount of cash. Does everyone agree to this? No -- I've seen my stuff on the warez sites (and being slammed, too, for not having heavy-duty registration protection built-in). Fortunately, enough people feel like they're getting a good deal to keep me from hanging Dilbert or User-Friendly strips up on my cubicle wall.
Nobody's putting a gun to their heads. Potential customers can view screenshots, browse the online help, and download and use the full product for 30 days (or 30 runs, whichever comes later). I'm not playing "gotcha" -- I just want some compensation for spending nine months in full-time development on a project. As it is, I'm making far less than I would contracting myself out.
All this being said, there's a world of difference between an operating system and its utilities and vertical market apps . If people weren't willing to pay cash for a doctor's office program, or a childcare management program (one of my efforts), they wouldn't exist with the same quality of shrinkwrap apps. Those who could afford it would hire a programmer to write them an internal system, those who couldn't would do without. By selling the product as a commercial application, development cost is spread out through the user base. If there's not enough users willing to pay to cover development costs (which, by the way, are already paid out in full by the time the product ships), then the product (and, often, the company) ceases to exist. Additionally, shrinkwrapped apps are often of higher quality than internal use systems. You tend to be a bit more careful knowing that you just can't walk down the hall to the secretary's desk to see what the problem is.
When you start talking about a user base in the millions, or tens of millions, your development costs per user become so low that you don't think of things the same way. Additionally, if you've got a product that's that far reaching (like an OS), there are other ways to make a buck. Training, certification, ancillary products for subsets of your user base, fee-based support, books, t-shirts, stuffed penguins, web revenue from ads, "stamp of approval"-type concepts, etc. In fact, if you can make enough money off of the other things, you can write off the cost of development as a marketing expense. One example: Powersoft, the makers of PowerBuilder, make more money off of training and consulting than they do from sales of the product. Another example (duh): Linux. Sure, the software, in its base form, is free, but that doesn't stop companies like RHAT from making bucks and having a company valuation of a few billion. O'Reilly's doing okay selling Linux books, too.
Me, I'd love to be able to give my work away. I'd love to have a product that was so far reaching, that impacted so many users, that I wouldn't have to worry about making money from the code. Sigh. Maybe next year...
What keyboard shortcuts does windows have to lower or raise a window besided [sic] the painfully slow alt-tab? Both Windowmaker and Enlightenment have Alt-arrowdown and Alt-arrowup.
Minimize: Alt-Space + n
Maximize: Alt-Space + x
Restore (non-maximized): Alt-space + r
What keyboard shortcuts does windows have to move around on virtual desktops? Oh wait. windows doesn't even have that most basic GUI feature
Well, it doesn't have virtual desktops built-in, but there are a wide variety or 3rd party virtual desktop programs. In fact, there are probably more virtual desktop apps for windows (especially counting various video card vendor's efforts) than there are window managers for X. I note that you're not complaining about the download-[install|make] cycle for Linux, why complain that it's not built into Winblows?
Do you really have to click on the titlebar to move a window or aim for the four-pixel wide window borders to resize? Both WindowMaker and Enlightenment have alt-mousedrag and alt-mousedrag-leftkey to do that without needing the surgeon's aim.
No, you don't (have to click).
Move: Alt-space + m, then use the arrow keys to move. Hold down the CTRL key to move in 1-pixel increments. Hit to keep the new position, or Esc to cancel.
Size: Similar to move, but use Alt-space + s, then the arrow keys to size.
I can't believe someone who would spend time reading through the man pages and the HOWTOs for [Li|U]nix can't be bothered to check the documentation for Windows. FYI, the Windows interface guidelines call for all window management functions (and menu items) to be accessible through either the mouse or the keyboard.
It's only nuts if you don't realize what's driving this sort of nonsense. Money.
You are so right on with this. A local radio station has started pushing ads for the .cc domain -- the company that owns the station has a partial interest in the company that manages the TLD. The commercials all talk about cybersquatting and how "if you'd gotten business.com 5 years ago, you'd be rich today! Sign up for your .cc domain now and wait for the money to come rolling in!"
And it doesn't help when the noontime crew (it's a talk radio station) starts blabbing it up and saying crap like "I'm telling ya, this .cc thing is gonna be the next big thing!"
Money. It's all about the benjamins.
Commodore 64 with 300 baud VicModem, surfing the BBS scene in Nanaimo, BC, Canada
Pah. Newby.
In 1979, I was introduced to the BBS scene by a friend who showed me how to use the 110 baud accoustic coupler attached to the (Anderson-Jacobsen?) teletype in the high school computing "room". Man, that thing was loud. We also had some kind of HP box that took punch cards (only for the kids in the computer class), and a TRS-80 Model III -- 16K RAM, *high-speed* cassette drive (is that an oxymoron?).
When I got a 300 baud modem for my home computer a few years later (having tired of the discount 110 I'd purchased), I can remember thinking "Who needs more than 300 baud? I can't read any faster than that!"
I went ahead and spent the $150 for a 1200 baud modem, which let the stuff page to the screen, where I'd catch up with it. I also became a little less annoyed with the ANSI screen graphics.
BBSing was one of my favorite things to do with the computer, so I went a bit ahead of the curve and spent $225 to get the Supra 2400 bps, even before all of the BBSes supported it. I still dropped the connection rate down to 1200, or even 300, when dialing up Compu$erve, 'cause I just couldn't afford the higher prices that went with the faster connection.
I had much less time for BBS surfing when I got out of the service and went to college, so I kept the 2400 well into the 9600 era, picking up a Hayes 9600 clone when the 14.4 standards war was being waged. Sometime around here (1990-ish) I got my school internet connection (at the time, only available to CompSci majors and faculty/staff), so the 9600 is probably the last modem I BBSed with.
14.4, 28.8 -> 33.6, now at 56K. I get a pretty reliable 48K connection. My house is in a new neighborhood, and close to the telco COR. The 56K box I have -- a SupraExpress 56e Sp -- is a cheap, plastic thing with a 25-pin serial cable permanently attached to the back of the unit. It's a far cry from the heavy metal Supra 2400 that I've still got in the closet somewhere.
The 56K will be the last modem I own -- I'll switch to a different technology sooner or later. Certainly, my online experiences now, in one way, are very different from the 80's. OTOH, it all just seems like more of the same to me: like I've got an unlimited Compu$erve account, like FidoNet has 40,000 discussions going on, like the files area has *unlimited* PD files availble (with NO download ratios!), like all of my online wishes came true.
The suit was filed the day go.com went live.
Cast members. They're all cast members, from the person playing Mowgli to the one sweeping up the street.
I'm told that no matter what your "normal" job is, your first duty is to see to the park guests. That is, if someone stops to ask a question, you drop what you're doing and help 'em out. Pretty cool, if you ask me, and probably a reason why customer service at Disney is head-and-shoulders above Universal, Sea World, or any of the other Orlando attractions.