the biggest thing is educating them to their options then allowing them to freely choose. IE7 won't convert many Firefox users back, it'll just upgrade the IE6 and Vista-buying public who never really know the difference to start with.
You make a good point -- that the vast majority of the public doesn't even know that there are "other browsers". Take it a step further -- a large part of the surfing public doesn't even know what a "browser" is. They click on the big blue "E" to see Google, much like they click on the "W" to type letters.
IMO, the only laymen who would be concerned with "alternative browsers" are those who have something to lose, i.e. those who enter their financial details online. And that just isn't a HUGE proportion of them....
Let's not forget that computers will come with IE7 preinstalled...so notwithstanding that this is slashdot, it's still pretty hard to say that IE7 won't have an impact.
That's kinda like saying the best way to avoid losing your job in the steel mill is to get a degree in medicine.
Not necessarily. Management is a sort of meta-job. There would be no managers if there weren't people to manage (well, then they're consultants). Following your analogy, it would be like telling the steel mill worker that the best way to avoid losing his job would be to learn a little management so that he can float for a little while longer than his buddies.
About TFA, the solution seems more like jumping from a sinking ship to one with termites eating at a wooden hull.
If I want distorted commentary and irrelevant news pieces, I'll just switch on a local news station with its over-zelaous anchors. It's interesting, but other than a cursory "check-out", I don't see much value to this.
Chicago:( Yeah the ones in Styrofoam run up about 69 cents, although with specials you could get them for like 40 cents. I tried Nissin once and they were absolutely terrible. And calling Ramen terrible must REALLY mean something. What's sad is that your post made me realize that I need to buy vitamin D supplements... Oh well, time to crack open a warm Maruchan.
As a previous commentor already said, they're called grad students. The point is to come up with innovative technologies, not industry-strength products. Once you have an innovative idea, you can put it up on SF or hand it to an army of corporate coders who will do their UML modeling, unit testing, and the whole shabang.
At 69 cents for the 'good' Ramen (Maruchian), $50K would buy 72463 grad student meals. That's enough to feed 66 grad students 3 meals a day for a year!!!
SO--YES.
While its true that they might not be realistic, let's not forget that scientists have to learn how to pitch intellectual ideas to them in a way that always promises an end product that they can add to their arsenal and advertise in recruiting commercials.
There's a more obvious boycott on the horizon -- Pat Robertson et al. denounce the game as an assault on the Bible. It teaches kids the wrong things about how life is created. BLASPHEMY!!!! I can see EB Games stores around the country picketed by nice old ladies and zealous preachers in rural Pennsylvania picking up the "cause" for their sunday sermons.
While I agree with the fact that using a home theater is cheaper, you must also consider the fact that not having control over the environment is one reason a lot of people go to the movies. There's no phone ringing, your cell phones (should be) turned off and nobody can come in and disturb you. You're literally "not available" and in a sense, forced to relax. Sure, you can't go the bathroom, but if you can't hold it in for 2 hours then perhaps you should indeed stay at home:) (no offense).
One more thing -- no matter how big your x.1 sound system is, for most people, there is a practical limit to how high they can crank the volume before the neighbors call the cops. I'd still go to the theatres to feel my bones shake without worrying about which asshole next door is getting pissed off. But then again, I live in a city.
not necessarily true. i, for one, am just waiting for ALL the companies to start charging for e-mail. Then WHAM! I'll come up with a new-age Hotmail.com to offer free e-mail accounts to everyone and make a killing. Y'know, before Hotmail, there really were very few "free e-mail" options. This is back in the day, when half of/. was probably still in diapers....
this might seem a little aloof...but why do we, as Slashdot, care if people who mass-mail AOL users are going to be charged a really, really idiotic e-mail tax? AOL has never been known for cutting-edge technology and innovation (unless you want to count free CDs being used as frisbees/mirrors/coasters). Let the AOL spammers pay more to spam their gullible victims...I'm sure no one who reads/. uses AOL, and fewer probably care...
I partially agree with you. I think initially non-geek people are going to be very skeptical about using an online office suite. I can easily hear complaints like "my documents are stored where?" and "what if I'm not connected to the Internet, as in on a plane?". These objections can all easily be overcome, but not without some hacking and patching. The classic app of a laptop on a plane (and lets just ignore the wifi on some airlines for now) would require users to check out online documents to work offline, and I'm pretty sure that there's no way in hell the average business user is going to want to learn an essentially CVS-like system to work on his spreadsheets.
Let's not forget that the average office user barely know a fraction of office suite functionality. They're not going to be jumping with joy to learn the mechanics of a new, possibly complicated (to them) system. Try explaining that you're using the web as a shared hard drive and watch eyebrows lift.
HOWEVER, if a startup finds a way to quickly and easily integrate existing office suites with some sort of online tool (something more intuitive and seamless than the current Sharepoint, you M$ lovers), I could easily see a small startup make a killing. The group, not necessarily the largest one, that streamlines the process and flattens the learning curve will be the winner in this game.
Perhaps many business won't need it, but I know a lot people who will. The combination of a web interface with easy and intuitive (read: not MS Office's reviewing features) multi-user functionality could help, for example, a manager easily collect numbers from multiple people on a team. For the manager, all the data is in one location as it comes in and accessible when he wants it, not as emails with separate Excel attachments which he has to paste together. Or if I'm collecting data in my lab but want to review it at home, then I can just use an online spreadsheet and don't have to do the usual transfer via network/ftp/usb/email/cvs. Believe me, the applications for online tools ARE out there -- there's a reason Microsoft is releasing their uncharacteristic Windows Live nonsense.
while thats definitely true (i too hope google doesn't resort to search sweepstakes), i think the most potentially disturbing part of this scheme is that it might just work. when you leave the slashdot world, what people see are "ooo shiny prize". although a marketing campaign that says "we put $1 million into research" would DEFINITELY buy me, most people just wouldn't give a damn.
Without bringing out the crazy right wing, did anyone see the Fahrenheit 9/11 footage of troops in combat in Iraq? They were literally a bunch of kids who went around using real weapons like they were in a video game, complete with heavy metal music in the background. Perhaps this is what the Pentagon wants, but to me it seems slightly disturbing that 18 year old kids are trained to rack up frags so casually (perhaps not carelessly) in real life.
The average 18 year old is barely smart enough not to get (somebody) pregnant at prom. The last thing they need is to get desensitized to killing game-style and then released into regular society a few years later.
it all depends on the context, and the level you're generalizing to, as always:
article: "If you study the main international practices in this regard you will find that China is basically in compliance with the international norm," he [the official] said. "The main purposes and methods of implementing our laws are basically the same."
purpose: to censor "harmful" parts of the Internet, no definition of "harmful" method: firewalls and Internet minders, not necessarily censorship itself
Seems like you could come up a pretty nice comparision between the Chinese government and AOL blocking porn sites with a kid filter under such broad terms of discussion.
From the article: Dennis P. Sullivan, City University of New York Graduate Center and State University of New York at Stony Brook, for his work in mathematics, including the creation of entirely new fields of mathematics, and uncovering unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated fields.
Seems that they're REALLY filtering the science news for the masses these days...
...was a giant black stone monolith that let out a loud buzzing noise when researchers uncovered it, possibly explaining how it evolved to T.Rex as we know it.
Yes, yes -- this is truly an important debate. However, what is also important is should we fund ESA/NASA/etc. or private enterprise? Shall we wait for Bush to reach a 3rd grade proficiency in science and finally allocate some $$ to NASA, or should we start promising Mars in a feeble attempt to mimic JFK? I'm sorry, but we haven't been back to the moon in a quite a while, and until we have rockets being built, tenders being floated, accountants furiously scribbling in their books and robots being trained, we can safely put off this debate. Also, it's nice to know that NASA is commissioning a report like this instead of trying to save their asses from going into bankruptcy, or actually inspiring the American public to get off the couch and give a damn.
Oh, and by the way, thanks for the "day pass" Verizon...
With cannibalism (in some parts), administration problems (to put it mildly) and rampant missionaries trying to save souls, I'm pretty sure tourism is PRETTY low on their list right now.
I know that here on slashdot and in the geek community in general, we wear our colors proudly. But does anyone else think that this naming convention is a tad juvenile?
For the same reason the masses perfectly enjoy their MP3s as opposed to listening to digital CD rips in WAV format. The whole point of JPEG (and mpeg for that matter) was to eliminate information that was not in the average human's perceptual range.
Plus, I think people might be pissed if you told them that their 40GB iPods would only hold about 50 CDs worth of music. Then again, maybe not.
Slashdot Mirror
IMO, the only laymen who would be concerned with "alternative browsers" are those who have something to lose, i.e. those who enter their financial details online. And that just isn't a HUGE proportion of them....
Let's not forget that computers will come with IE7 preinstalled...so notwithstanding that this is slashdot, it's still pretty hard to say that IE7 won't have an impact.
About TFA, the solution seems more like jumping from a sinking ship to one with termites eating at a wooden hull.
how sad is it that you're not the only one? it draws us in like flies, i tell you...
If I want distorted commentary and irrelevant news pieces, I'll just switch on a local news station with its over-zelaous anchors. It's interesting, but other than a cursory "check-out", I don't see much value to this.
Chicago :( Yeah the ones in Styrofoam run up about 69 cents, although with specials you could get them for like 40 cents. I tried Nissin once and they were absolutely terrible. And calling Ramen terrible must REALLY mean something. What's sad is that your post made me realize that I need to buy vitamin D supplements... Oh well, time to crack open a warm Maruchan.
At 69 cents for the 'good' Ramen (Maruchian), $50K would buy 72463 grad student meals. That's enough to feed 66 grad students 3 meals a day for a year!!! SO--YES.
While its true that they might not be realistic, let's not forget that scientists have to learn how to pitch intellectual ideas to them in a way that always promises an end product that they can add to their arsenal and advertise in recruiting commercials.
There's a more obvious boycott on the horizon -- Pat Robertson et al. denounce the game as an assault on the Bible. It teaches kids the wrong things about how life is created. BLASPHEMY!!!! I can see EB Games stores around the country picketed by nice old ladies and zealous preachers in rural Pennsylvania picking up the "cause" for their sunday sermons.
One more thing -- no matter how big your x.1 sound system is, for most people, there is a practical limit to how high they can crank the volume before the neighbors call the cops. I'd still go to the theatres to feel my bones shake without worrying about which asshole next door is getting pissed off. But then again, I live in a city.
if ORACLE's TCO is 48% lower than SAP, just how many small countries' budgets does SAP charge for a small installation?
not necessarily true. i, for one, am just waiting for ALL the companies to start charging for e-mail. Then WHAM! I'll come up with a new-age Hotmail.com to offer free e-mail accounts to everyone and make a killing. Y'know, before Hotmail, there really were very few "free e-mail" options. This is back in the day, when half of /. was probably still in diapers....
haha...please dial 1-900-i-luv-aol to cancel. calls are billed at slightly more than phone sex lines.
this might seem a little aloof...but why do we, as Slashdot, care if people who mass-mail AOL users are going to be charged a really, really idiotic e-mail tax? AOL has never been known for cutting-edge technology and innovation (unless you want to count free CDs being used as frisbees/mirrors/coasters). Let the AOL spammers pay more to spam their gullible victims...I'm sure no one who reads /. uses AOL, and fewer probably care...
Let's not forget that the average office user barely know a fraction of office suite functionality. They're not going to be jumping with joy to learn the mechanics of a new, possibly complicated (to them) system. Try explaining that you're using the web as a shared hard drive and watch eyebrows lift.
HOWEVER, if a startup finds a way to quickly and easily integrate existing office suites with some sort of online tool (something more intuitive and seamless than the current Sharepoint, you M$ lovers), I could easily see a small startup make a killing. The group, not necessarily the largest one, that streamlines the process and flattens the learning curve will be the winner in this game.
Perhaps many business won't need it, but I know a lot people who will. The combination of a web interface with easy and intuitive (read: not MS Office's reviewing features) multi-user functionality could help, for example, a manager easily collect numbers from multiple people on a team. For the manager, all the data is in one location as it comes in and accessible when he wants it, not as emails with separate Excel attachments which he has to paste together. Or if I'm collecting data in my lab but want to review it at home, then I can just use an online spreadsheet and don't have to do the usual transfer via network/ftp/usb/email/cvs. Believe me, the applications for online tools ARE out there -- there's a reason Microsoft is releasing their uncharacteristic Windows Live nonsense.
while thats definitely true (i too hope google doesn't resort to search sweepstakes), i think the most potentially disturbing part of this scheme is that it might just work. when you leave the slashdot world, what people see are "ooo shiny prize". although a marketing campaign that says "we put $1 million into research" would DEFINITELY buy me, most people just wouldn't give a damn.
The average 18 year old is barely smart enough not to get (somebody) pregnant at prom. The last thing they need is to get desensitized to killing game-style and then released into regular society a few years later.
article: "If you study the main international practices in this regard you will find that China is basically in compliance with the international norm," he [the official] said. "The main purposes and methods of implementing our laws are basically the same."
purpose: to censor "harmful" parts of the Internet, no definition of "harmful"
method: firewalls and Internet minders, not necessarily censorship itself
Seems like you could come up a pretty nice comparision between the Chinese government and AOL blocking porn sites with a kid filter under such broad terms of discussion.
Seems that they're REALLY filtering the science news for the masses these days...
...was a giant black stone monolith that let out a loud buzzing noise when researchers uncovered it, possibly explaining how it evolved to T.Rex as we know it.
Oh, and by the way, thanks for the "day pass" Verizon...
With cannibalism (in some parts), administration problems (to put it mildly) and rampant missionaries trying to save souls, I'm pretty sure tourism is PRETTY low on their list right now.
I know that here on slashdot and in the geek community in general, we wear our colors proudly. But does anyone else think that this naming convention is a tad juvenile?
Plus, I think people might be pissed if you told them that their 40GB iPods would only hold about 50 CDs worth of music. Then again, maybe not.