POSTED NOTIFICATION: This Internet Forum Comment is being flagged for possible violation of the Federal Anti-Terrorism and Dissent Act (FATDA) 3A, 4. Forum moderators, website owners, and/or other responsible parties must take immediate action to remove this comment within 24 hours of this notice or face possible prosecution by applicable Federal authorities. This Act guards our country against inflammatory discourse and ensures a peaceful, tranquil environment for orderly and sensible discussion. For more information on FATDA and your rights under the Act, please call (toll free) 800-FATDA-GV or visit http://fatda.gov/info).
Dear RIAA, I am hereby confessing that I make "mixtapes" of my legally owned music and play them at work or in the car where they might be heard by people other than myself. I have also traded mixtapes (mixCDs?) with friends and have given mixtapes to my family members without destroying the originals. I understand that I have committed an act of perjury and am willing to plead guilty in a Court of Law. Please come raid my office and my house and arrest me. My contact information is as follows:
Perhaps if the degree was in Software Engineering, I'd say maybe. But with CS or CPIS it is much more important to learn structured and OO programming skills and best practices, some mathematics, UNIX, pattern matching, database and basic SQL, and so on. This needs to be the primary focus because *every job is different* and you may not know what to expect upon graduation. Besides, the software development cycle is quite different from job to job, as is practices for version management (some shops use CVS, some ClearCase, for example). That kind of stuff you learn on the job and is relatively easy.
what I think should be taught are the basics of good software DESIGN (as opposed to development), which was something that was sorely lacking in my college. Stuff like learning to make class, sequence, and activity diagrams, as well as writing good Unit and Integration test plans are essential. But then again, I'd say these are more Software Engineering practices that I am not sure have much place in a traditional CS degree, especially since CS is supposed to be more mathematically inclined.
While being still quite far from an adaptive Star Trek-style universal translator, it is conceivable that one day with the help of portable devices (like Palm/cell phones/iPod) that we could indeed have an on-demand personal translator that would work anywhere. I think this is the beginning of such a capability.
Heh, sorry for saying "Symantic" - meant Semantic of course. I think Web 2.0 would be a better refernece to what I am trying to express.
I am not sure why I was moderated as "funny", or why I was not understood. I am simply stating that Ajax is a viable combination of technologies that works well and that attempts to solve the *reloading page* eye sore that occurs with typcical web applications. As a web applications developer myself, I very much like what this paradigm can do - making a more conventional application that can be accessed from anywhere. Ajax is also relatively easy to implement and uses existing web technologies and does not require the end-user to download ior install any plug-ins. As long as JavaScript is enabled, it just works.
Flash is great, but it is eye candy and not easy to maintain unless you've got a bunch of Flash geeks. It is also not mature as a an application platform. Same thing with applets. As to those who say that the web is a buggy and unstable pltform, I would say you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. It's as stable as you make it. If you suck as an applications designer or programmer, don't blame the web.
Ajax is definitely at the forefront of what we think of as "Web 2.0" or Symantec Web technologies. The whole point of pushing web applications forward is to make them more like desktop applications that run natively (and I am not talking about Flash, Java applets, or stuff that requires 3rd-party software or requires stuff to run on the client machine except for JavaScript). In my mind, that is when the Symentec Web will finally arrive, and Google is already making it happen.
Just as antibodies in human/animal bodies can be harmful (too many histamines fighting against pollen, for example), AV software can be just as bad. My computer was having the equivelant of a runny nose because of the invasive AV software. In my opinion, my Symantec AV was the most irritating, resource-hogging, nag-me-to-update, piece of shit I have EVER installed on my PC. Ever. I could not run Netbeans or any other IDE without shutting it down anyway, so I completely removed all AV/AS/whatever from my PC and I am please to say it's it runs faster, better, and cleaner than the day I bought it.
Let's face it, Symantec and others like them are out there to make money, and they do so by preying on the fears of the ignorant. And they keep on coming up with new ways to "protect" you against unlikely or non-existent threats, which of couse, end up costing the consumer mucho dinero for their false sense of security. My advice, DITCH THE FRIGGIN SHIT and be careful of what you download, and you'll be fine. My AV software has *never* and I repeat *never* caught a valid virus or trojan. It is the equivelant of taking expensive medecine when all you had to do was drink clean water, exercise, and eat right in the first place.
Echoing others here, I don't plan on moving on to Vista. Too little too late guys. Besides, if I ever really need to run XP/Vista-compatible software, I'll run it in an emulator on my Mac.
I design and code web GUIs - mostly in Perl/CGI, until last year, when our beloved tech lead decided to go with the bleeding edge in technology - JSF.
The problem is that none of use knew JSF. A few of knew JSP and had experience writing beans and whatever, but JSF turned out to be a nightmare. Had I known the technology and how it worked, I would have designed the GUI differently. Having a working knowledge of the implementation tools helps you to design a more appropriate application from the beginning. It turns out that we had to make some changes to make JSF "fit" my design, and in other cases we simply had to re-think some of the functionality.
I will give credit to my tech lead for making me code my design and actaully write a few of the backing beans (we had four developers, so most of the beans were written by expreienced Java folk).
My point: a designer must also wear the developer hat, and I might add, the tester's hat. I think many dev shops are splitting up roles too much. Working in a vacuum is, as I have discovered, counterproductive.
At the risk of going off-topic, I personally do not have iTunes, but I do have URGE, and interestingly enough, it turns out that it allows me to listen to stuff I have never heard before, which has caused me to significantly increase my purchases of CDs. For example, I can go year-by-year and see what what was popular (I started in 1965 and worked my way up to 1983 so far). There is a wealth of GREAT music out there, it is just a matter of sifting through the hype and the junk. Thanks, URGE, for turning me on to such a plethora of undiscovered music!
The kicker is that I have not paid a single PENNY. I just keep getting new trial sevices. If I ever want to dowload a track, I suppose I *could* rip the DRM from it with FairUse4wm, but honestly it just sounds like crap (128 kbps never sounded 'CD Quality' to me).
In the end, I am opened up to new musical possibilities, from which I can simply buy a CD if I really like it - which I have done! No DRM, superb quality, and the flexibility to play it in my car, iPod, home or work PC, bring it to a friend's house, sell it in a yard sale, whatever....IT'S MINE MOTHERFUCKAHH!
I totally agree. I learned IBM assembly language in college and we had to figure out our errors by reading a friggin CORE DUMP. Talk about nerve-racking!! But this taught us the fundamentals of computer theory, not to mention stuff like hexadecimal and octal base numbering systems.
This helps even today, where I still have to point out my integration testers that 1 gb = 1024 mb, 1 mb = 1024 kb, etc. You would be surprised at how many people are simply not aware of these simple things, people who work in IT. That is why our company imports so many software engineers from India or China. They seem to have learned more of the basic concepts.
Although I would never allow such malware to run on my PC, it is concievable that such programs may be necessary from time to time. If you were really concerned about a service calling home all the time, I would write a script that monitors active network connections and shuts down any connection that matches a certain network address. You can do this on the command line with netstat/o/b and then kill the process of the program using that connection with tskill. I do it all the time. Hell, you could even write a script that checks network connections every N seconds and kills the connections automatically.
Now that's alot of work for trying to close down persistent connections, and it really only is a bandaid. If you have software or "services" that are aggressive enough to keep opening connections like that, I think it is best you re-evaluate the necessity of that software.
1. They have a hideos glare to them
2. The light is *too* white
3. They give some people headaches because of the nature of the emitted light - it is like staring at a 60hz refresh rate screen - ANNOYING!
4. The are bulky and look ugly
5. Their spiral or long tube shapes do not permit elegant styles in most cases
People will never flock to these things if they are not attractive. I had a few in my house and after a few weeks replaced them with halogen or 'normal' light bulbs just to save my sanity.
Other than that, they're great.
"iPod" + "HiFi" = oxymoron
Unless you're playing songs at an incredibly high (preferably lossless) bit rate, it's not worth using an iPod for a "HiFi" listening - this is especially blasphemous to audiophiles (which I am not, but I DO appreciate high-quality sound). For the gym, work, car, etc., it is acceptable. For a home system, it's just not worth the trouble to set it up when uncompressed CDs sound 10x better anyway.
- Seth
I for one welcome this wholeheartedly, especially after my long-standing battle with JSF, with which I have found it very difficult to make even very simple things work, and that with a team of developers! It's enough to make me want to go back to Perl/CGI. It has been a thorn in my side for a year now and I am ready for something new. I realize that Java-related technologies have a steep learning curve, but this is ridiculous! Even if it takes me 6 more months to learn Ruby and Seaside, I'm up for the challenge, so at least I can use more than one damn form on a page.
I don't mean to vent about JSF, but this simply emphasizes the need to for new, easy-to-use, and reliable technologies; It also illustrates a failure in the industry - and I firmly believe that it is JSF.
Television as we know it today is dead to me. It is extremely annoying to everyone who wathes a 30 min program to have to watch half of it on commercials. My inlaws who come to visit from Europse can't fathom how this is possible. Here's how it goes over there: 15 minutes (at least) of program, 2-3 commericals, then the rest. That's it. People actually watch the commercials becuase they're short enough and they don't want to miss the return of the show.
In fact, that would be the perfect solution here. 99% of the time, when I DO watch TV, as soon as the commercials hit, I flip to another station, because I know that for the next 7-10 minutes, I'm gonna be extremely bored, extremely annoyed, or brow-beaten. If programs would be interspersed with short, concise commercials, I might stick around to watch them because (as you might guess) I WOULD BE AFRAID TO MISS THE RETURN OF THE SHOW. There's also far too much spread of the target demographics for these ads. It's like they're taking a buckshot approach. Why the fuck would I care about Maxi with Wings or Gerber baby food if I'm watching Star Trek??? And if my wife is watching Lifetime, why would she give a shit about Gillete's newest Super Double Quintiple razor?
I realize that the networks need (want) to make money, but that is the wrong way to do it, and that is why these devices are coming on to the market. It's getting so that TV isn't worth watching anymore - it's all slashdot for me now baby!
I thought the point of obtaining a liberal arts education was to promote good ethics and work practices, provide a well-rounded academic experience, and ultimately, to prepare you for your career. Excuse me, but HOW The f u ck is this assignment helping the student accomplish any of this? This violates ethics and will not teach the students anything useful about working in the real world. (that is unless you are planning to become a covert computer forencis scientist who is trying to apprehend your latest child predator or terrorist). Is "hacking a network" something you would be proud to put on your resume when applying to, oh let's say, Lockeed Martin? NO. They are looking for people who are able to have good ethics (all those companies give you ethics training) and (more inmportantly) godd work ethics. Believe me, they don't want scipt kiddies and the like.
Actually, it DOES work, unless you've gotten a recent security patch. I did this from a limited account on my work PC (I don NOT have admin priviliges) and it worked. The password is usually just "Password" or simply the name of the user you added.
Just because it didn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work! The fact is that this is/was a security flaw in XP. It has since been patched.
OS-X is pretty damn secure. Now, Windows XP has the biggest security gap ever...this vulnerability has still not been fixed on my work PC!
run the following as a script at the command prompt:
net user letmein password/add net localgroup administrators letmein/add net accounts/maxpwage:unlimited REGEDIT/s autologon.reg EXIT
Reboot, then login as 'letmein' and password of 'letmein'.
I just saw the movie yesterday - LOVED it.
Yeah yeah, the special effects were great, but unlike other movies lately that were driven by special effects that totall bedazzled the viewer but had absolutley no character depth (ehem...SW EP III), this movie had it ALL - interesting, WELL-ACTED characters with depth and believability, beautiful cinematography, and a generallty womderful 'feel'. It goes without saying that the plot and story are classics and have true meaning.
It's not the special effects that made the Narnia books so popular - it was the imagination of C.S. Lewis who gave the story and the characters such meaning and gripped the reader with suspense.
And yes the effects were quite awesome, but they seemed so transparent in this movie. IMHO, a much better flick about the conflic of good vs. evil than SW EP III ever was.
I *REALLY REALLY REALLY* hope they do The Magician's Nephew next!
Hmmm...it doesn't sound to me as if you actually have kids. I don't usually hear parents talk like that. And I completely disagree with your comments. Specifically:
1. Nudity is not bad. My children see their mother nude, they see eachother nude when they take baths. They are completely used to nudiy. But seeing someone nude in a sexual context is something I'd rather them not see. Besides, I rarely see nudity on TV, even cable.
2. Sex is not bad. I don't intend on making my children think it is, but they're still too young to understand it (they're 7 and 4) and exposing them to sexual ideas, sexual talk, and the soft-porn that we call music videos these days is something I oppose. My wife is a public school teacher and she sees first graders dressing up like whores and talking and acting like bimbos or ghetto girls because of their exposure to stuff like BET, where griding, half-nude hot bitches (which I like, don't get me wrong!) are doing practically everything but licking eachother's pussies. When children see that, they want to immitate it, and without fully understanding what the hell it is they're seeing. You can be SURE those kids will engage in early sexual activity. My kids don't act like 'gagstas' and 'bitches' because I do my best to shield them from that kind of media.
3. Call me old-fashioned, but fould language IS bad because its unclutured and unnecessary. My father cursed alot when I was a kid, and I subsequntly used foul language as an adolescnt. My kids don't NEED to hear it, becasue the more they do, the more they will immitate it.
That said, I never actually argued for or against the FCC bill. I was just commenting on the moral implications cable TV has on our society.
One part of me likes the idea: I can protect my children from seeing lewd stuff on BET/MTV/VH1 or hearning awful language on things as silly as Family Guy (it seems 'sex' is every other word). I enjoy it, but its inappropriate for my young children, who like to flip through the channels while I'm not looking. But hey, I can program my V-Chip to block these programs...even though its an impractical annoyance.
The other part of me hates the idea: I like the variety of programs offered in all of the channels. Sometimes there is a movie on Lifetime that I might watch with my wife, or the Food Channel will have Iron Chef (which I love) or Animal Planet will feature weird stuff like Animal Precinct, which althought not 'mainstream' and 'primetime' is sometimes interesting to watch instead of dumb-ass lame Reality programs on the networks. Or maybe I just want to watch 100 channels at a time and flip through for an hour. Taking away my choices in this manner will reduce the variety and increase the cost of my already ghastly high cable bill.
What we really need is a simple, better way to block inappropriate content by password for all cable media coming into your home, and not have to do it on *each* TV, and perhaps that will be possible with Digital Cable, which I plan to covert to when I finally do end up deciding to buy an HDTV.
but the whole concept of a content-agnostic storage device still seems like a good one
That's essentially what good-old hard drives in computers are. Linear access drives are fine for linear data - like a sinlge stream of audio, but multi-track audio just doesn't fit that model. That's where formats like ADAT failed; the physical limitations of the tape made for a finite number of available tracks (8 maximum, I think), and you couldn't do any non-destrcutive editing because the data had to be re-written in place. Basically they were trying to force a linear data model to be a psuedo-random-access model. I am so thankful for software-based multi-track recording.
It doesn't look as if the device this company is proposing is targeted to recording engineer types - just to casual consumer-level hobbyists. This is a general purpose device, and is not something I'd use for field recording.
Thanks for posting that - I consider myself an audio geek, and I too am surprised that more did not comment on the technical aspects of making high-quality field recordings. You are right about external devices. Some of us (myself incouded) have high-quality mixers w/ phantom power and FireWire output. If a portable device could record the *digital* signal, we would have something there! As of now, for field recording I have to lug around my Vaio laptop and the mixer, plus all the cables, adaptors, and stands. All of the adjustments and tweaking needs to be done on the source device (A/D box, mixer) and not in the unit itself.
Recording a hi-def medicore signal results in a high-def mediocre sound. There's alot more involved in making a good recording - but you already knew that! Plus, what about multitracking? When I want to do on-the-spot multi-track field recordings, you need multi-traking software, the likes of which will not run on a tiny device with an embedded OS.
Question your assumptions, sir. I do know what I'm talking about. I do not obviously think no one knows what I'm talking about. I fail to even fully understand your post.
Wet dream or not, a device claiming to be audiophile quality because of features doesn't make it so. I think the majority of the audiophile world is BULLSHIT, and is all about marketing and social status. However, there *are* some excellent non-BS audio products out there that truly are of superb quality and make a world of difference in the listening experience. It make even more difference on the recording side of the equation. Those awesonme recordings you listen to come from lots of hard sound engineering work and lots of expensive equipment, not tiny hand-held devices.
Slashdot Mirror
POSTED NOTIFICATION: This Internet Forum Comment is being flagged for possible violation of the Federal Anti-Terrorism and Dissent Act (FATDA) 3A, 4. Forum moderators, website owners, and/or other responsible parties must take immediate action to remove this comment within 24 hours of this notice or face possible prosecution by applicable Federal authorities. This Act guards our country against inflammatory discourse and ensures a peaceful, tranquil environment for orderly and sensible discussion. For more information on FATDA and your rights under the Act, please call (toll free) 800-FATDA-GV or visit http://fatda.gov/info).
Dear RIAA,
I am hereby confessing that I make "mixtapes" of my legally owned music and play them at work or in the car where they might be heard by people other than myself. I have also traded mixtapes (mixCDs?) with friends and have given mixtapes to my family members without destroying the originals. I understand that I have committed an act of perjury and am willing to plead guilty in a Court of Law. Please come raid my office and my house and arrest me. My contact information is as follows:
Seth Easton
1620 McCormick Drive
Landover, MD 20774
I am home usually after 8pm on weekdays.
Sincerely,
Seth Easton
Perhaps if the degree was in Software Engineering, I'd say maybe. But with CS or CPIS it is much more important to learn structured and OO programming skills and best practices, some mathematics, UNIX, pattern matching, database and basic SQL, and so on. This needs to be the primary focus because *every job is different* and you may not know what to expect upon graduation. Besides, the software development cycle is quite different from job to job, as is practices for version management (some shops use CVS, some ClearCase, for example). That kind of stuff you learn on the job and is relatively easy. what I think should be taught are the basics of good software DESIGN (as opposed to development), which was something that was sorely lacking in my college. Stuff like learning to make class, sequence, and activity diagrams, as well as writing good Unit and Integration test plans are essential. But then again, I'd say these are more Software Engineering practices that I am not sure have much place in a traditional CS degree, especially since CS is supposed to be more mathematically inclined.
While being still quite far from an adaptive Star Trek-style universal translator, it is conceivable that one day with the help of portable devices (like Palm/cell phones/iPod) that we could indeed have an on-demand personal translator that would work anywhere. I think this is the beginning of such a capability.
This movie was DOOMed from the begining!
Heh, sorry for saying "Symantic" - meant Semantic of course. I think Web 2.0 would be a better refernece to what I am trying to express.
I am not sure why I was moderated as "funny", or why I was not understood. I am simply stating that Ajax is a viable combination of technologies that works well and that attempts to solve the *reloading page* eye sore that occurs with typcical web applications. As a web applications developer myself, I very much like what this paradigm can do - making a more conventional application that can be accessed from anywhere. Ajax is also relatively easy to implement and uses existing web technologies and does not require the end-user to download ior install any plug-ins. As long as JavaScript is enabled, it just works.
Flash is great, but it is eye candy and not easy to maintain unless you've got a bunch of Flash geeks. It is also not mature as a an application platform. Same thing with applets. As to those who say that the web is a buggy and unstable pltform, I would say you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. It's as stable as you make it. If you suck as an applications designer or programmer, don't blame the web.
Ajax is definitely at the forefront of what we think of as "Web 2.0" or Symantec Web technologies. The whole point of pushing web applications forward is to make them more like desktop applications that run natively (and I am not talking about Flash, Java applets, or stuff that requires 3rd-party software or requires stuff to run on the client machine except for JavaScript). In my mind, that is when the Symentec Web will finally arrive, and Google is already making it happen.
Just as antibodies in human/animal bodies can be harmful (too many histamines fighting against pollen, for example), AV software can be just as bad. My computer was having the equivelant of a runny nose because of the invasive AV software. In my opinion, my Symantec AV was the most irritating, resource-hogging, nag-me-to-update, piece of shit I have EVER installed on my PC. Ever. I could not run Netbeans or any other IDE without shutting it down anyway, so I completely removed all AV/AS/whatever from my PC and I am please to say it's it runs faster, better, and cleaner than the day I bought it.
Let's face it, Symantec and others like them are out there to make money, and they do so by preying on the fears of the ignorant. And they keep on coming up with new ways to "protect" you against unlikely or non-existent threats, which of couse, end up costing the consumer mucho dinero for their false sense of security. My advice, DITCH THE FRIGGIN SHIT and be careful of what you download, and you'll be fine. My AV software has *never* and I repeat *never* caught a valid virus or trojan. It is the equivelant of taking expensive medecine when all you had to do was drink clean water, exercise, and eat right in the first place.
Echoing others here, I don't plan on moving on to Vista. Too little too late guys. Besides, if I ever really need to run XP/Vista-compatible software, I'll run it in an emulator on my Mac.
Goodbye Microsoft, it was nice knowing you!
- Seth
The problem is that none of use knew JSF. A few of knew JSP and had experience writing beans and whatever, but JSF turned out to be a nightmare. Had I known the technology and how it worked, I would have designed the GUI differently. Having a working knowledge of the implementation tools helps you to design a more appropriate application from the beginning. It turns out that we had to make some changes to make JSF "fit" my design, and in other cases we simply had to re-think some of the functionality.
I will give credit to my tech lead for making me code my design and actaully write a few of the backing beans (we had four developers, so most of the beans were written by expreienced Java folk).
My point: a designer must also wear the developer hat, and I might add, the tester's hat. I think many dev shops are splitting up roles too much. Working in a vacuum is, as I have discovered, counterproductive.
At the risk of going off-topic, I personally do not have iTunes, but I do have URGE, and interestingly enough, it turns out that it allows me to listen to stuff I have never heard before, which has caused me to significantly increase my purchases of CDs. For example, I can go year-by-year and see what what was popular (I started in 1965 and worked my way up to 1983 so far). There is a wealth of GREAT music out there, it is just a matter of sifting through the hype and the junk. Thanks, URGE, for turning me on to such a plethora of undiscovered music!
The kicker is that I have not paid a single PENNY. I just keep getting new trial sevices. If I ever want to dowload a track, I suppose I *could* rip the DRM from it with FairUse4wm, but honestly it just sounds like crap (128 kbps never sounded 'CD Quality' to me).
In the end, I am opened up to new musical possibilities, from which I can simply buy a CD if I really like it - which I have done! No DRM, superb quality, and the flexibility to play it in my car, iPod, home or work PC, bring it to a friend's house, sell it in a yard sale, whatever....IT'S MINE MOTHERFUCKAHH!
I totally agree. I learned IBM assembly language in college and we had to figure out our errors by reading a friggin CORE DUMP. Talk about nerve-racking!! But this taught us the fundamentals of computer theory, not to mention stuff like hexadecimal and octal base numbering systems.
This helps even today, where I still have to point out my integration testers that 1 gb = 1024 mb, 1 mb = 1024 kb, etc. You would be surprised at how many people are simply not aware of these simple things, people who work in IT. That is why our company imports so many software engineers from India or China. They seem to have learned more of the basic concepts.
Although I would never allow such malware to run on my PC, it is concievable that such programs may be necessary from time to time. If you were really concerned about a service calling home all the time, I would write a script that monitors active network connections and shuts down any connection that matches a certain network address. You can do this on the command line with netstat /o /b and then kill the process of the program using that connection with tskill. I do it all the time. Hell, you could even write a script that checks network connections every N seconds and kills the connections automatically.
Now that's alot of work for trying to close down persistent connections, and it really only is a bandaid. If you have software or "services" that are aggressive enough to keep opening connections like that, I think it is best you re-evaluate the necessity of that software.
1. They have a hideos glare to them 2. The light is *too* white 3. They give some people headaches because of the nature of the emitted light - it is like staring at a 60hz refresh rate screen - ANNOYING! 4. The are bulky and look ugly 5. Their spiral or long tube shapes do not permit elegant styles in most cases People will never flock to these things if they are not attractive. I had a few in my house and after a few weeks replaced them with halogen or 'normal' light bulbs just to save my sanity. Other than that, they're great.
"iPod" + "HiFi" = oxymoron Unless you're playing songs at an incredibly high (preferably lossless) bit rate, it's not worth using an iPod for a "HiFi" listening - this is especially blasphemous to audiophiles (which I am not, but I DO appreciate high-quality sound). For the gym, work, car, etc., it is acceptable. For a home system, it's just not worth the trouble to set it up when uncompressed CDs sound 10x better anyway. - Seth
I for one welcome this wholeheartedly, especially after my long-standing battle with JSF, with which I have found it very difficult to make even very simple things work, and that with a team of developers! It's enough to make me want to go back to Perl/CGI. It has been a thorn in my side for a year now and I am ready for something new. I realize that Java-related technologies have a steep learning curve, but this is ridiculous! Even if it takes me 6 more months to learn Ruby and Seaside, I'm up for the challenge, so at least I can use more than one damn form on a page.
I don't mean to vent about JSF, but this simply emphasizes the need to for new, easy-to-use, and reliable technologies; It also illustrates a failure in the industry - and I firmly believe that it is JSF.
Television as we know it today is dead to me. It is extremely annoying to everyone who wathes a 30 min program to have to watch half of it on commercials. My inlaws who come to visit from Europse can't fathom how this is possible. Here's how it goes over there: 15 minutes (at least) of program, 2-3 commericals, then the rest. That's it. People actually watch the commercials becuase they're short enough and they don't want to miss the return of the show.
In fact, that would be the perfect solution here. 99% of the time, when I DO watch TV, as soon as the commercials hit, I flip to another station, because I know that for the next 7-10 minutes, I'm gonna be extremely bored, extremely annoyed, or brow-beaten. If programs would be interspersed with short, concise commercials, I might stick around to watch them because (as you might guess) I WOULD BE AFRAID TO MISS THE RETURN OF THE SHOW. There's also far too much spread of the target demographics for these ads. It's like they're taking a buckshot approach. Why the fuck would I care about Maxi with Wings or Gerber baby food if I'm watching Star Trek??? And if my wife is watching Lifetime, why would she give a shit about Gillete's newest Super Double Quintiple razor?
I realize that the networks need (want) to make money, but that is the wrong way to do it, and that is why these devices are coming on to the market. It's getting so that TV isn't worth watching anymore - it's all slashdot for me now baby!
I thought the point of obtaining a liberal arts education was to promote good ethics and work practices, provide a well-rounded academic experience, and ultimately, to prepare you for your career. Excuse me, but HOW The f u ck is this assignment helping the student accomplish any of this? This violates ethics and will not teach the students anything useful about working in the real world. (that is unless you are planning to become a covert computer forencis scientist who is trying to apprehend your latest child predator or terrorist). Is "hacking a network" something you would be proud to put on your resume when applying to, oh let's say, Lockeed Martin? NO. They are looking for people who are able to have good ethics (all those companies give you ethics training) and (more inmportantly) godd work ethics. Believe me, they don't want scipt kiddies and the like.
Actually, it DOES work, unless you've gotten a recent security patch. I did this from a limited account on my work PC (I don NOT have admin priviliges) and it worked. The password is usually just "Password" or simply the name of the user you added.
Just because it didn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work! The fact is that this is/was a security flaw in XP. It has since been patched.
It's not the special effects that made the Narnia books so popular - it was the imagination of C.S. Lewis who gave the story and the characters such meaning and gripped the reader with suspense.
And yes the effects were quite awesome, but they seemed so transparent in this movie. IMHO, a much better flick about the conflic of good vs. evil than SW EP III ever was. I *REALLY REALLY REALLY* hope they do The Magician's Nephew next!
Hmmm...it doesn't sound to me as if you actually have kids. I don't usually hear parents talk like that. And I completely disagree with your comments. Specifically:
1. Nudity is not bad. My children see their mother nude, they see eachother nude when they take baths. They are completely used to nudiy. But seeing someone nude in a sexual context is something I'd rather them not see. Besides, I rarely see nudity on TV, even cable.
2. Sex is not bad. I don't intend on making my children think it is, but they're still too young to understand it (they're 7 and 4) and exposing them to sexual ideas, sexual talk, and the soft-porn that we call music videos these days is something I oppose. My wife is a public school teacher and she sees first graders dressing up like whores and talking and acting like bimbos or ghetto girls because of their exposure to stuff like BET, where griding, half-nude hot bitches (which I like, don't get me wrong!) are doing practically everything but licking eachother's pussies. When children see that, they want to immitate it, and without fully understanding what the hell it is they're seeing. You can be SURE those kids will engage in early sexual activity. My kids don't act like 'gagstas' and 'bitches' because I do my best to shield them from that kind of media.
3. Call me old-fashioned, but fould language IS bad because its unclutured and unnecessary. My father cursed alot when I was a kid, and I subsequntly used foul language as an adolescnt. My kids don't NEED to hear it, becasue the more they do, the more they will immitate it.
That said, I never actually argued for or against the FCC bill. I was just commenting on the moral implications cable TV has on our society.
I suppose you could consider me "Joe Righteous".
One part of me likes the idea: I can protect my children from seeing lewd stuff on BET/MTV/VH1 or hearning awful language on things as silly as Family Guy (it seems 'sex' is every other word). I enjoy it, but its inappropriate for my young children, who like to flip through the channels while I'm not looking. But hey, I can program my V-Chip to block these programs...even though its an impractical annoyance.
The other part of me hates the idea: I like the variety of programs offered in all of the channels. Sometimes there is a movie on Lifetime that I might watch with my wife, or the Food Channel will have Iron Chef (which I love) or Animal Planet will feature weird stuff like Animal Precinct, which althought not 'mainstream' and 'primetime' is sometimes interesting to watch instead of dumb-ass lame Reality programs on the networks. Or maybe I just want to watch 100 channels at a time and flip through for an hour. Taking away my choices in this manner will reduce the variety and increase the cost of my already ghastly high cable bill.
What we really need is a simple, better way to block inappropriate content by password for all cable media coming into your home, and not have to do it on *each* TV, and perhaps that will be possible with Digital Cable, which I plan to covert to when I finally do end up deciding to buy an HDTV.
Thanks for posting that - I consider myself an audio geek, and I too am surprised that more did not comment on the technical aspects of making high-quality field recordings. You are right about external devices. Some of us (myself incouded) have high-quality mixers w/ phantom power and FireWire output. If a portable device could record the *digital* signal, we would have something there! As of now, for field recording I have to lug around my Vaio laptop and the mixer, plus all the cables, adaptors, and stands. All of the adjustments and tweaking needs to be done on the source device (A/D box, mixer) and not in the unit itself.
Recording a hi-def medicore signal results in a high-def mediocre sound. There's alot more involved in making a good recording - but you already knew that! Plus, what about multitracking? When I want to do on-the-spot multi-track field recordings, you need multi-traking software, the likes of which will not run on a tiny device with an embedded OS.
Question your assumptions, sir. I do know what I'm talking about. I do not obviously think no one knows what I'm talking about. I fail to even fully understand your post.
Wet dream or not, a device claiming to be audiophile quality because of features doesn't make it so. I think the majority of the audiophile world is BULLSHIT, and is all about marketing and social status. However, there *are* some excellent non-BS audio products out there that truly are of superb quality and make a world of difference in the listening experience. It make even more difference on the recording side of the equation. Those awesonme recordings you listen to come from lots of hard sound engineering work and lots of expensive equipment, not tiny hand-held devices.