As people tend nowadays to leave their house less and less thanks to the news media and their condemned perspective on the world in general. And since there are now less social venues as parks and drive-ins turn into parking lots and shopping malls, online dating has exploded. Now people like Tucker Carlson are going to say that's bad too? What is a person who doesn't want to pick up a mate at a bar supposed to do if they aren't in a friend circle with a bunch of single females? You know, real life isn't like Friends or Seinfeld for everyone. Sometimes people have to venture outside of their social group for a mate. Everyday the choices of activities outside the house get slimmer, and the social ones even more so. It's getting to the point where everyone is a potential online dating candidate because nobody is meeting anyone new anymore.
Just think if the US populace had more intelligent/nerdy people get together and procreate, why, there might be more intelligent people out there. And then who would be left to watch Tucker Carlson?
I was wondering when companies were going to figure out that if you wanted people to buy new computers to browse the web and read e-mail you have to make the web more complicated. Now thanks to Google and Microsoft, the battle of the Internet bloat war will ensue, and finally there will be a use for the average Joe to buy a dual-core processor with 2gb of ram: browsing the Web 2.0 (TM)!
I think for someone learning basic program construction at first, it's distracting to have to take into account GUI elements, and VB gives you the _least_ amount of background knowledge on how everything is working. Which is important stuff, IMO when you are being a programmer.
Now you might say that this would scare away a lot of beginners who want to see instant results of a windows application. I'd say: good. If you are looking to get into programming simply to provide a great looking program with no background knowledge, you probably shouldn't be getting involved at all.
I think it's more important to learn the basic constructs of a computer language: loops, conditionals, functions, recursion, etc. etc. than to impress people in your first five minutes with results. VB allows a lot of these things to be hidden from beginners, making them less knowledgable about computer science in general because they can get by without really knowing what they are doing. And that's why it's a toy language.
Now here is the restrictions:
Must be the easiest to install and use, based on someone who has ZERO experience with Linux, but has experience with Windows. So this probably means it has to be GUI based. Then work with the most amount of applications out there.
I think this is one of the core problems of linux users. The GUI *is* better, I don't know what you people don't get about this. Most users do not want to spend the time to learn hours of commands when a lot of the stuff could be handled better graphically. The ability to use the command line should exist, sure, but it shouldn't serve as the main way of use for most things. Many Windows users don't even know what a command-line is, do you think they want to learn? No they do not. And who can blame them? We have evolved past text now people, it's time we started acting like it. I'm a computer guy and I even realize that this stuff is the way of the past. If you can't perform nearly every function in the GUI itself, then you've lost to other OS choices by default.
I haven't really been following things, but I hear that some people get machines with ghost backups of windows instead of a real install CD.
I hate this insidious approach to limiting users to one windows install per PC. I bought a 1600 dollar computer from best buy and specifically asked the salesperson if there was a windows CD and he straight up lied to my face that there was. Whatever happened to you bought a CD, now use it on your computers, anyway? Home users shouldn't have to deal with licensing in the same way corporations deal with it. All of this makes running a pirated windows copy seem the more appealing.
I remember reading the story in Ishmael about the jellyfish's history of the world. Basically the jellyfish is the highest evolved creature in the story and it ends with "And then, there was the jellyfish!" And at the time I read it (13), it was an eye opener because I believe I had thought like a lot of people think still that we were just the top of the food chain and nothing better would ever come along. I guess from the tag of this article most people haven't read that book or had that thought, that perhaps we aren't the most evolved thing Earth has ever seen, and we'll probably be a more primal species like a monkey is to us in a matter of millions of years. I can't believe anyone actually thought evolution stopped.
Not everywhere, however. In fact I heard of the possibility of genetic AIDs treatment that could possibly originate with prostitutes in Africa I believe it was. The point is, we are still adapting to environmental factors. People in the first world like to pretend like everyone lives a life free from concern and harm. This is simply not the case. Poor people, people on the streets, people in undeveloped countries filled with disease, these factors will continue to make the gene pool strengthen for some time to come. We in the first world with good jobs and nice houses make up the vast minority of the world. Tell a working girl who has managed not to contract AIDs in Africa that we have adapted our environment to ourselves. Simply untrue.
Who actually reads corporate blogs anyway? The whole point of blogs being interesting, if they are personal blogs, is that the writing is interesting and has intrinsic value. It's not like TV where it is one site of a fixed number, there's millions of blogs out there and if the readers don't want to read it, they won't. I know I wouldn't waste my personal time trying to hunt through a corporate-sponsored blog looking for truth about anything.
Candidates do have differences though. If Gore had won I can almost guarantee we wouldn't be in Iraq. It's a minimal choice, but there is some difference there.
What's funny is I bought an N64 years ago, and I was pretty thoroughly disatisfied with the quality of the games for my age group. At the time I guess I was really into violent games and what have you. I loved Goldeneye and Zelda and Mario 64 but the rest just seemed too kiddish for me. I also didn't like how staying with cartridges seemed to chase out some third parties.
Now I'm a bit older, and as I play most new games I'm starting to realize they are striving for graphics over gameplay, and that the control design isn't even on their mind anymore. A FPS controlled with both thumbs at the same time isn't my idea of fun or interesting design. Consoles have come to be FPS machines as much as computers, except with mouselook it's easier to control. And the day I buy a mouse and keyboard for a console game is the day I stop playing console games.
Nintendo, doesn't seem to be focused on gearing things to adults. Which, at times can make you feel like a stupid man playing a kid's game. However, at least they try to innovate. Sony was more than happy to have everyone controlling 3d games using a d-pad until the N64 came out. Some of the best strategies for controlling 3d on a console were developed by Nintendo.
And now, I find myself looking at a market gone haywire. I skipped the xbox, PS2, and gamecube generation of consoles because I felt I had been burned so badly on having to buy both N64 and playstation to get my fix. And now, the price of consoles has gone up to an exorbant amount and every console maker seems intent on making a living room computer instead of a gaming system that would be fun to play with friends. But I already have a computer. I don't want to spend 500 bucks on something that plays FPS already played better on my computer. I want a console that will be fun, innovative, with games that look and feel different from the last 5 years of gaming. In short, I want a change from this MS/Sony norm, I want revolution.
While the other console makers are busy putting in every last doodad, into what will still simply be a game console to the public, and charging 5000 bucks for it. Nintendo slides in with a unique design, promises innovation and a developer platform for 1000, console at 150, you have to love that.
After all these years I'm thinking of doing what I thought I would never do again. I'm thinking of going back to the land from which classic console games came...Go revolution!
It's a meaningless statistic. With just my two computers alone I've probably downloaded firefox a dozen or more times not counting updates. Even if they take into account unique IP addresses, the same people are probably downloading at different times from different locations. An easier way to tell would be to have Google conduct a study or something. But is there really a need? We know IE takes up more market share than Firefox, by far. I would say that the best way for people to get the word out about firefox would be word of mouth. Personally, any support I do for adware I tell the user to get rid of IE and install Firefox as their default browser (with their permission of course) and nobody really seems to notice the difference, so they go with it anyway.
This gets a bit personal, I know, but I find it amazing how stupid people can get over brands. Apple haters are actually a LOT more pathetic than apple lovers imo.
I find both equally pathetic. I don't hate apple, it just seems that I don't like their products. What I hate is everyone acting like something is the best product ever made, when it clearly isn't.
Then pay $350 for what is, essentially, a set of speakers.
However, I'm pretty sure for $350 you could buy a better set of speakers, that would even be more useful for other applications, such as playing music off of things other than iPods...
But, that's great. There was an article I read from ZDNet or something that said that Apple's new products are going to sell perfectly to the Apple indoctrinated who have more money than brains. Now I think he might just be right.
I've actually already noticed this with media center edition. The computer I got shipped with a tuner card, media center edition and the ability to listen to FM. Obviously the FM is buffered, but for some odd reason you can't record off of it, MCE doesn't provide that capability. Now I'm sure there's other software that could do this that I could get, but I'm just saying: sign of things to come.
Slashdot Mirror
They wouldn't be able to find another place to make millions in the same way if we held all companies to the same standards.
...I only read the best webpages generated by algorithms which suggest what I might find interesting...
...now where am I gonna hide when the robots attack...
As people tend nowadays to leave their house less and less thanks to the news media and their condemned perspective on the world in general. And since there are now less social venues as parks and drive-ins turn into parking lots and shopping malls, online dating has exploded. Now people like Tucker Carlson are going to say that's bad too? What is a person who doesn't want to pick up a mate at a bar supposed to do if they aren't in a friend circle with a bunch of single females? You know, real life isn't like Friends or Seinfeld for everyone. Sometimes people have to venture outside of their social group for a mate. Everyday the choices of activities outside the house get slimmer, and the social ones even more so. It's getting to the point where everyone is a potential online dating candidate because nobody is meeting anyone new anymore.
Sweet, you hear that guys, Whoopi Goldberg is a fan...let the wine flow in celebration!
I for one am very aroused!
From the simpsons:
Man walks up to endless pit with a box containing photos.
Man: What was I crazy? Who would ever want naked pictures of Whoopi Goldberg.
Man drops box in hole.
Hole pushes box back out to man.
Just think if the US populace had more intelligent/nerdy people get together and procreate, why, there might be more intelligent people out there. And then who would be left to watch Tucker Carlson?
I was wondering when companies were going to figure out that if you wanted people to buy new computers to browse the web and read e-mail you have to make the web more complicated. Now thanks to Google and Microsoft, the battle of the Internet bloat war will ensue, and finally there will be a use for the average Joe to buy a dual-core processor with 2gb of ram: browsing the Web 2.0 (TM)!
cigarettes not really a good weight loss tactic.
I think for someone learning basic program construction at first, it's distracting to have to take into account GUI elements, and VB gives you the _least_ amount of background knowledge on how everything is working. Which is important stuff, IMO when you are being a programmer.
Now you might say that this would scare away a lot of beginners who want to see instant results of a windows application. I'd say: good. If you are looking to get into programming simply to provide a great looking program with no background knowledge, you probably shouldn't be getting involved at all.
I think it's more important to learn the basic constructs of a computer language: loops, conditionals, functions, recursion, etc. etc. than to impress people in your first five minutes with results. VB allows a lot of these things to be hidden from beginners, making them less knowledgable about computer science in general because they can get by without really knowing what they are doing. And that's why it's a toy language.
I think this is one of the core problems of linux users. The GUI *is* better, I don't know what you people don't get about this. Most users do not want to spend the time to learn hours of commands when a lot of the stuff could be handled better graphically. The ability to use the command line should exist, sure, but it shouldn't serve as the main way of use for most things. Many Windows users don't even know what a command-line is, do you think they want to learn? No they do not. And who can blame them? We have evolved past text now people, it's time we started acting like it. I'm a computer guy and I even realize that this stuff is the way of the past. If you can't perform nearly every function in the GUI itself, then you've lost to other OS choices by default.
I hate this insidious approach to limiting users to one windows install per PC. I bought a 1600 dollar computer from best buy and specifically asked the salesperson if there was a windows CD and he straight up lied to my face that there was. Whatever happened to you bought a CD, now use it on your computers, anyway? Home users shouldn't have to deal with licensing in the same way corporations deal with it. All of this makes running a pirated windows copy seem the more appealing.
I remember reading the story in Ishmael about the jellyfish's history of the world. Basically the jellyfish is the highest evolved creature in the story and it ends with "And then, there was the jellyfish!" And at the time I read it (13), it was an eye opener because I believe I had thought like a lot of people think still that we were just the top of the food chain and nothing better would ever come along. I guess from the tag of this article most people haven't read that book or had that thought, that perhaps we aren't the most evolved thing Earth has ever seen, and we'll probably be a more primal species like a monkey is to us in a matter of millions of years. I can't believe anyone actually thought evolution stopped.
Not everywhere, however. In fact I heard of the possibility of genetic AIDs treatment that could possibly originate with prostitutes in Africa I believe it was. The point is, we are still adapting to environmental factors. People in the first world like to pretend like everyone lives a life free from concern and harm. This is simply not the case. Poor people, people on the streets, people in undeveloped countries filled with disease, these factors will continue to make the gene pool strengthen for some time to come. We in the first world with good jobs and nice houses make up the vast minority of the world. Tell a working girl who has managed not to contract AIDs in Africa that we have adapted our environment to ourselves. Simply untrue.
Beers must be cheap at your shows...
Who actually reads corporate blogs anyway? The whole point of blogs being interesting, if they are personal blogs, is that the writing is interesting and has intrinsic value. It's not like TV where it is one site of a fixed number, there's millions of blogs out there and if the readers don't want to read it, they won't. I know I wouldn't waste my personal time trying to hunt through a corporate-sponsored blog looking for truth about anything.
Unless this was intended to be some really genius satire, am I missing something, or couldn't we just use old style voting machines or paper ballots?
Candidates do have differences though. If Gore had won I can almost guarantee we wouldn't be in Iraq. It's a minimal choice, but there is some difference there.
What's funny is I bought an N64 years ago, and I was pretty thoroughly disatisfied with the quality of the games for my age group. At the time I guess I was really into violent games and what have you. I loved Goldeneye and Zelda and Mario 64 but the rest just seemed too kiddish for me. I also didn't like how staying with cartridges seemed to chase out some third parties.
Now I'm a bit older, and as I play most new games I'm starting to realize they are striving for graphics over gameplay, and that the control design isn't even on their mind anymore. A FPS controlled with both thumbs at the same time isn't my idea of fun or interesting design. Consoles have come to be FPS machines as much as computers, except with mouselook it's easier to control. And the day I buy a mouse and keyboard for a console game is the day I stop playing console games.
Nintendo, doesn't seem to be focused on gearing things to adults. Which, at times can make you feel like a stupid man playing a kid's game. However, at least they try to innovate. Sony was more than happy to have everyone controlling 3d games using a d-pad until the N64 came out. Some of the best strategies for controlling 3d on a console were developed by Nintendo.
And now, I find myself looking at a market gone haywire. I skipped the xbox, PS2, and gamecube generation of consoles because I felt I had been burned so badly on having to buy both N64 and playstation to get my fix. And now, the price of consoles has gone up to an exorbant amount and every console maker seems intent on making a living room computer instead of a gaming system that would be fun to play with friends. But I already have a computer. I don't want to spend 500 bucks on something that plays FPS already played better on my computer. I want a console that will be fun, innovative, with games that look and feel different from the last 5 years of gaming. In short, I want a change from this MS/Sony norm, I want revolution.
While the other console makers are busy putting in every last doodad, into what will still simply be a game console to the public, and charging 5000 bucks for it. Nintendo slides in with a unique design, promises innovation and a developer platform for 1000, console at 150, you have to love that.
After all these years I'm thinking of doing what I thought I would never do again. I'm thinking of going back to the land from which classic console games came...Go revolution!
It's a meaningless statistic. With just my two computers alone I've probably downloaded firefox a dozen or more times not counting updates. Even if they take into account unique IP addresses, the same people are probably downloading at different times from different locations. An easier way to tell would be to have Google conduct a study or something. But is there really a need? We know IE takes up more market share than Firefox, by far. I would say that the best way for people to get the word out about firefox would be word of mouth. Personally, any support I do for adware I tell the user to get rid of IE and install Firefox as their default browser (with their permission of course) and nobody really seems to notice the difference, so they go with it anyway.
...your posts ID you!
Well, actually gAIM has a few problems. I've noticed direct connect and file transfer seldom work on it. Maybe this will help fix that.
I find both equally pathetic. I don't hate apple, it just seems that I don't like their products. What I hate is everyone acting like something is the best product ever made, when it clearly isn't.
Then pay $350 for what is, essentially, a set of speakers.
However, I'm pretty sure for $350 you could buy a better set of speakers, that would even be more useful for other applications, such as playing music off of things other than iPods...
But, that's great. There was an article I read from ZDNet or something that said that Apple's new products are going to sell perfectly to the Apple indoctrinated who have more money than brains. Now I think he might just be right.
I've actually already noticed this with media center edition. The computer I got shipped with a tuner card, media center edition and the ability to listen to FM. Obviously the FM is buffered, but for some odd reason you can't record off of it, MCE doesn't provide that capability. Now I'm sure there's other software that could do this that I could get, but I'm just saying: sign of things to come.