What enormous usability improvements did I mention? Vendors are already putting work into thi stuff. And their work has paid off, so far. The EeePC has a very intuitive menu system. So as long as things are being built upon, why not hire out a Singaporean video editing crew and an English voice actor to put together 5-10 videos to be bundled along with? Simple things, cheap things. Big steps.
C'mon, vendors. This is Linux we're talking about. Customize it until there's NO WAY people can't understand how to use it. Include training videos, tutorials, goal- or task-based projects. Do WHAT IT TAKES because this is Linux, and you have *only* yourself to blame if your approach doesn't work. I mean, you (the vendor) can do whatever you want with it, for crying out loud. Make it stand out in ways that Windows or OSX lacks. But no, vendors are too cheap for this crap. They can't see past Linux's lack of a price tag long enough to understand the real opportunity here.
A fast-growing 3D visualization firm offered me a great job, but asked me (surprise surprise) what I was going to do "when" I had to quit working on a certain open source project (the one that got me the interview). Based on that, I decided to sound them out and found that their stance toward software was incredibly proprietary, closed-minded and more likely to lead to abandonware and a quickly sold-off company than I had previously imagined. I didn't take the job. It was flattering that they flew me over for the interview and amazing that they thought I was a perfect match. It was flattering that I would be working with true geniuses and for good money at that. But their terms were ignorant and showed they didn't care about my contributions any longer than it took to make a fast buck. This is NOT the same level of commitment that got me into the interview. I actually cared about the principles I worked with. That's just how I am, I guess. But I'm not about to lose opportunities just because of stubbornness. I went home and redoubled my efforts to look for new work. Surprisingly, I remained in the same position but tripled my income and found I really enjoyed it. Regardless, I'm happy that I stayed true to myself.
"Take Fossett off the grid immediately," he ordered. "We need to wrap this up with a minimum of red tape."
The response was quick. Within a week, Fossett's "corpse" was found in the Nevada Desert, the naked visitors from Titan had their submarine, and the President had yet another embarrassing affair off his plate.
It was still Fossett's move, however. Much as he enjoyed false identities, Brazilian women, and homes built from Cold War nuclear bunkers, the time was right to begin his next project.
It would begin with a small dog, two pairs of socks, and a rolled-up copy of People magazine.
Whence Firefox and ODF then? And why the big struggle on Microsoft's part to take over ODF? Also, I thought Eternal September's significance faded in inverse proportion to the length of time one has been on the net.;-)
Look at WhatWG and W3C. Concepts are important, but the Internet treats censorship (on MS's part) as damage and will, naturally, route around it. People get angry, publicity is gotten, groups are formed. MS is shut out of the new goodness.
(Just for the record, I think that censorship quote is horribly snarky but I'm using it anyway)
It's a good little device. When friends bring their kids over (we don't have kids), I'll queue up some kids' videos on the Roku. When family come over, like to flip through the queue on our TV and spend a lot of time just commenting on what's in the queue, as if that's entertainment enough.:) One funny thing though...I'm not sure if Netflix just realized they have an african-american audience or what, but last night about 30 movies made for that demographic suddenly appeared in the "new additions" RSS feed. "The Hit," "Sinbad," "Kinky Killers," etc. it was sort of humorously frustrating to go through them, not seeing anything I'd watch, like dropping in on a video store on a whim and finding out it's run by former Black Panthers and staffed by members of the neighborhood chinese triad, when you're as white as Cool Whip.
This point of view (not fashionable to know math or work hard) has been manufactured in part by advertising groups. Do a Google search for a combination of the terms "mook" and "midriff" and you'll find out why, and how this happened.
Basically, they present Mooks and Midriffs in the media to make people buy in to their products. Mooks and Midriffs are the type of people who make big corporations rich.
Totally agree. Most of my friends with kids have one email address that the whole family uses. "jonesfamily@blah.com" seems a little uncool to kids, so I've seen the *family stuff replaced with things like "packofwolves" or other creative ideas.
Russians don't smile. The Russian government had to freaking *order* their border guards to smile at tourists. Seriously, if there was a real smiley face someplace in Russia appearing in Google Earth, whoever created it would be in a psychiatric ward the next day.
Save up like a MONTH of your dog's poo. Then go around spooning it into these containers. Get fido's mouth swabbed, and watch as all the alarms at the veterinarian's office go off. Oy vey! We have a winner!
I agree - these upgrades are frustrating. At my law firm, it used to be that you could get away with a post-1985 Lear and a couple of 40" screens, with a personal assistant of any gender. Nowadays it seems like you have to have the latest and greatest of everything - my Lear has been traded up to some fancy european jet copter with bulletproof windows and a bathtub; my 40" screens were donated to the bank down the street in favor of specially-constructed contact lenses, and my personal assistant is an asian female, about 5'10". Why that is all so important is beyond me.
From time to time, Scott will do something interesting and write it up on his blog. I subscribed to his blog for a while, but I ended up unsubscribing because of the over-the-top sarcasm and overall negative tone. It just didn't feel healthy to *read* it.
The fact that Adams has attached himself to a medium through which he distributes mockery as social commentary is really not surprising to me at all. I know smart people who are trying to make the world a better place by making positive things happen, so it frustrates me that Adams won't just drop all the grudges and stop acting so defensively. We need more smart people on the offense, starting awesome new projects and using their creativity to lift people up.
Is there a better way to make your corporate slump more obvious? Seriously, aligning yourself with Cray is like putting an "I am obsolete" sticker on your lapel.
First we get Seinfeld, then Cray...I think Microsoft would like us all to go back to the '90s and play nicely together again.
There's an amazing thing done by HP in the article. It seems their advertising department contacted Gerry Anderson about providing digital supermarionation effects for their online ads. You can see what can only be described as one of the Thunderbirds plugging energy-efficient desktops.
Continuent? Continuent? Who thinks up this stuff? All I can think of is some suit explaining it. "We harness the synergistic energy of the word 'Continue' while simultaneously fulfilling our carnal, earthy ambitions by joining in sympathy with the Ents who will, perhaps in some future time or far-away land, form our products' user base."
Reading the article, I thought Berners-Lee's idea came across as a kneejerk response to the LHC-destroying-the-earth stuff. It's important to remember that while Berners-Lee is behind the technology we use, he's not the *only* one behind it. I liked this quote from the author of the article:
There are plenty of arguments online already about whether Scientology is a cult. I find it unlikely anyone will be keen to step in and label sites on either side as not to be trusted. Others might reasonably argue that all religions - whether established or not - should come with a warning message.
As for wading in to put a stop to conspiracy theories, I can't image anything their proponents could benefit from more.
Too true - people say that the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. I'm guessing a corollary for this situation would be "the Internet treats a single definition of the truth as a matter for concern and develops a redundant array of competing theories."
Or even, "the Internet detects Berners-Lee coming toward it with some new ideas and reroutes snarky bloggers and/. posters to stand in his path.";-)
Slashdot Mirror
What enormous usability improvements did I mention? Vendors are already putting work into thi stuff. And their work has paid off, so far. The EeePC has a very intuitive menu system. So as long as things are being built upon, why not hire out a Singaporean video editing crew and an English voice actor to put together 5-10 videos to be bundled along with? Simple things, cheap things. Big steps.
C'mon, vendors. This is Linux we're talking about. Customize it until there's NO WAY people can't understand how to use it. Include training videos, tutorials, goal- or task-based projects. Do WHAT IT TAKES because this is Linux, and you have *only* yourself to blame if your approach doesn't work. I mean, you (the vendor) can do whatever you want with it, for crying out loud. Make it stand out in ways that Windows or OSX lacks. But no, vendors are too cheap for this crap. They can't see past Linux's lack of a price tag long enough to understand the real opportunity here.
A fast-growing 3D visualization firm offered me a great job, but asked me (surprise surprise) what I was going to do "when" I had to quit working on a certain open source project (the one that got me the interview). Based on that, I decided to sound them out and found that their stance toward software was incredibly proprietary, closed-minded and more likely to lead to abandonware and a quickly sold-off company than I had previously imagined.
I didn't take the job. It was flattering that they flew me over for the interview and amazing that they thought I was a perfect match. It was flattering that I would be working with true geniuses and for good money at that. But their terms were ignorant and showed they didn't care about my contributions any longer than it took to make a fast buck. This is NOT the same level of commitment that got me into the interview. I actually cared about the principles I worked with. That's just how I am, I guess.
But I'm not about to lose opportunities just because of stubbornness. I went home and redoubled my efforts to look for new work. Surprisingly, I remained in the same position but tripled my income and found I really enjoyed it. Regardless, I'm happy that I stayed true to myself.
Dude, if anybody mods me interesting, ALL the blame is going in your lap.
"Take Fossett off the grid immediately," he ordered. "We need to wrap this up with a minimum of red tape." The response was quick. Within a week, Fossett's "corpse" was found in the Nevada Desert, the naked visitors from Titan had their submarine, and the President had yet another embarrassing affair off his plate.
It was still Fossett's move, however. Much as he enjoyed false identities, Brazilian women, and homes built from Cold War nuclear bunkers, the time was right to begin his next project.
It would begin with a small dog, two pairs of socks, and a rolled-up copy of People magazine.
Whence Firefox and ODF then? And why the big struggle on Microsoft's part to take over ODF? Also, I thought Eternal September's significance faded in inverse proportion to the length of time one has been on the net. ;-)
Look at WhatWG and W3C. Concepts are important, but the Internet treats censorship (on MS's part) as damage and will, naturally, route around it. People get angry, publicity is gotten, groups are formed. MS is shut out of the new goodness.
(Just for the record, I think that censorship quote is horribly snarky but I'm using it anyway)
It's a good little device. When friends bring their kids over (we don't have kids), I'll queue up some kids' videos on the Roku. When family come over, like to flip through the queue on our TV and spend a lot of time just commenting on what's in the queue, as if that's entertainment enough. :) One funny thing though...I'm not sure if Netflix just realized they have an african-american audience or what, but last night about 30 movies made for that demographic suddenly appeared in the "new additions" RSS feed. "The Hit," "Sinbad," "Kinky Killers," etc. it was sort of humorously frustrating to go through them, not seeing anything I'd watch, like dropping in on a video store on a whim and finding out it's run by former Black Panthers and staffed by members of the neighborhood chinese triad, when you're as white as Cool Whip.
...that a 12 year old invented it. And that this new solar cell stores like fifteen times the energy of the sun.
You can quote me on that.
...your local Walmart.
I will be fighting this bill by identifying areas where I can release works or encourage others to release works with open, liberal licenses.
I will do everything I can to help the average citizen compete with the selfish corporations behind this.
That's one area where I have some influence, so I hope everyone else will turn up the heat in their own way too.
This point of view (not fashionable to know math or work hard) has been manufactured in part by advertising groups. Do a Google search for a combination of the terms "mook" and "midriff" and you'll find out why, and how this happened.
Basically, they present Mooks and Midriffs in the media to make people buy in to their products. Mooks and Midriffs are the type of people who make big corporations rich.
Gattaca.
Totally agree. Most of my friends with kids have one email address that the whole family uses. "jonesfamily@blah.com" seems a little uncool to kids, so I've seen the *family stuff replaced with things like "packofwolves" or other creative ideas.
Russians don't smile. The Russian government had to freaking *order* their border guards to smile at tourists. Seriously, if there was a real smiley face someplace in Russia appearing in Google Earth, whoever created it would be in a psychiatric ward the next day.
Save up like a MONTH of your dog's poo. Then go around spooning it into these containers. Get fido's mouth swabbed, and watch as all the alarms at the veterinarian's office go off. Oy vey! We have a winner!
I agree - these upgrades are frustrating. At my law firm, it used to be that you could get away with a post-1985 Lear and a couple of 40" screens, with a personal assistant of any gender. Nowadays it seems like you have to have the latest and greatest of everything - my Lear has been traded up to some fancy european jet copter with bulletproof windows and a bathtub; my 40" screens were donated to the bank down the street in favor of specially-constructed contact lenses, and my personal assistant is an asian female, about 5'10". Why that is all so important is beyond me.
People seriously suck? I came up with that philosophy while writing in my friend's yearbook in 10th grade. ;)
From time to time, Scott will do something interesting and write it up on his blog. I subscribed to his blog for a while, but I ended up unsubscribing because of the over-the-top sarcasm and overall negative tone. It just didn't feel healthy to *read* it.
The fact that Adams has attached himself to a medium through which he distributes mockery as social commentary is really not surprising to me at all. I know smart people who are trying to make the world a better place by making positive things happen, so it frustrates me that Adams won't just drop all the grudges and stop acting so defensively. We need more smart people on the offense, starting awesome new projects and using their creativity to lift people up.
Is there a better way to make your corporate slump more obvious? Seriously, aligning yourself with Cray is like putting an "I am obsolete" sticker on your lapel.
First we get Seinfeld, then Cray...I think Microsoft would like us all to go back to the '90s and play nicely together again.
There's an amazing thing done by HP in the article. It seems their advertising department contacted Gerry Anderson about providing digital supermarionation effects for their online ads. You can see what can only be described as one of the Thunderbirds plugging energy-efficient desktops.
Continuent? Continuent? Who thinks up this stuff? All I can think of is some suit explaining it. "We harness the synergistic energy of the word 'Continue' while simultaneously fulfilling our carnal, earthy ambitions by joining in sympathy with the Ents who will, perhaps in some future time or far-away land, form our products' user base."
Too true - people say that the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. I'm guessing a corollary for this situation would be "the Internet treats a single definition of the truth as a matter for concern and develops a redundant array of competing theories."
/. posters to stand in his path." ;-)
Or even, "the Internet detects Berners-Lee coming toward it with some new ideas and reroutes snarky bloggers and
...and I'm taking an "atlas." Anyone else? Who wants to play?
Hello, non-Windows world! We greet you with our awkwardly modified code that NONETHELESS runs on your systems!
BTW, we don't care about your hippy licensing schemes yet. Try back in 10 years.