The cuteness overload is steganographically encoding vital information needed for freedom fighters. You didn't think that was just a guy and his pet did you? That was morse code!/I am Kittening.
You're funny, but I'm no FanBoy, it was a quietly reasoned decision.
My previous phone was a Win Mobile 6 HTC, which I really didn't care for at all, and given the (later true) rumors that Win Mobile 6 was about to be toasted, the only other choice was the iPhone. I spent a little extra care waiting for the 3GS version, so it could now run iOS 4, and there it will sit.
Android is definitely the NEW game to play, but I'm going to sit and wait out the fragmentation wars.
Heh Sorry, let me first opine that your suggested article, despite you meaning well, is off the mark.
((Summarized - Fiddling with apn slots and... uh...))
I have an iPhone 3GS, so maybe all bets are off with an iPhone 4, but so be it. I had a previous standard phone contract.
I just went to an AT&T store and said "Hi. I'd like to cancel this contract and turn this into a GoPhone." So I paid the cancel fee, then the AT&T rep fiddled with stuff, did something on the service records in their computer, and I was done.
Almost no issues. An "issue" (in quotes) is that I have no more phone-based web, but for my usage style, there's nothing that can't really wait until I get home or,... wait for it,... any place with Wifi! So yes, McDonalds is a key player here!
And I specifically buy the $100 chunks of phone minutes. They last a year, not X months. So the last potential issue, that "pressure" to keep dealing with things, goes away. On my quietest months, I can squeeze a 5th month out of that $100, but then it's just time to buy more, so what. Add a little splurging and that's $250 per year rather than $1100 per year!
Don't quote me on this last part but I think the account "just sits there" empty if you run out of minutes, so the last benefit is that generally you don't have the Credit Rating risk of slipping off the treadmill of Pay the Phone Company Or Else.
Sure it is, last I recall there was a lot of useful spinoff tech from the space research.
Unfortunately we wasted a decade and a trillion dollars on a nonsensical war which almost literally did nothing. So now, yeah, the response to all kinds of holistic endeavors is "can't afford it".
Also, tech-wise, can't Smartphones do all the computing that the mainframes of the 60's did? So shouldn't it be a snap to build "cheap" space tech? Why is space the only industry where we're not applying Moore's Law?
I have an iPhone - wait for it - without a contract. It's on AT&T's GoPhone style pay as you go service.
So once you get past the initial hardware, which then comes down to a typical hardware decision, I get all the fun of a smartphone in places with wifi (work and McDonalds!) but all the low expenses of a prepaid-as-you-go plan.
Basically any decently powerful medication goes all batty on side effects because of the body's irritating habit of requiring some 5-70 interactions to get anything done. So it's only 3rd generation medicines etc that get the job done right because of 20 years of practice. My own minor hobby is studying stomach acid preventers. (Not cheap calcium rolaids etc, the other pills that are supposed to prevent your stomach from overproducing the acid in the first place.)
The first gen ones did work, but over-targeted related biochem targets, so they didn't play nice with a whole slew of important prescription meds. Only later by switching around the component molecule rings did the newer ones mostly behave.
Here we go. I'll join this sentiment and elaborate.
"Old School High Fantasy" (and yes the Camel Caps are indicative!) makes me go berserk. Why? Because the Magicians are MORONS!
The good ones are supposed to be both well read in obscure lore and able to do nifty things. But maybe the Dark Lord cast some spell over their minds to make them feeble or something. Magic! Doesn't need a reason to do anything! Yet they can't invent a wristwatch. "The hour grows late, m'lord." "No silly, it's only Four O'Clock." "How do you know that?" "Poof! Look! Here's a 12 foot Sundial in the sand accurate to within ten minutes. Okay, while we have been talking, it is now about ten past four."
(Later)
"M'Lord, how will we get all those supplies over to Grandmother's house?" "Hmm. We could take twenty of our finest horses and carts." "Or you could magically put wheels under the barn and magically roll it all in one shot." (Primitive Uhaul).
And so on. That's why the only fantasy I read is Modern, where the magic works in with real learning.
Aka people can't be people anymore, brilliant but volatile, solid and steady, mercurial with no patience for the mundane. Nah, those words are too hard to understand! Let's just label them Hyperactive and sedate them so they sit quietly in class like good little lumps of playdoh.
Apparently those minivans are really tough on the support rods, I had four techs go over my van and they all said it was fine at the time, so just grinding turns on those things every day out of the parking lot apparently does it.
Re:all those little buttons and switches and dials
on
The Condescending UI
·
· Score: 1
Actually this second part is a fair analogy.
"Where did they move Cruise Control to? Why is that back window wiper on a different control than the front wiper? Why can't I set the clock until I turn the CD player on? My compass is mis-aligned now, how do I get that to work again?"
Nothing mechanically wrong, just user features. That's a lot like what happened when File/Page Setup and Edit/Replace All moved to some ribbon. I finally found the way to turn off document protection last week.
Yes, you have echoed my feelings on the matter well.
UI features are for me to pick and choose among. Users have "Line Item Veto". We shouldn't have to just take the lumps handed to us by Lowest Common Denominator marketers.
My end result wasn't XP - I borrowed some new things XP didn't do. But I certainly turned off a lot of the Aero candy. I found that leaving three out of the 15 some settings gets you 60% of the shiny (so, better than Classic sure!) while turning the other 12 off stops short of the decreasing returns you started to describe.
Oh yes. Last point on the Ribbon. Gang, we need to think beyond these binary yes/no choice. I installed an *entire second set* of menus into Office 2010. So now I have the Ribbon AND the Classic menus. (And guess what? The old code is there! So yes, I don't like the new Print Page - so my plugin taps the existing older code.) I think the art of the AddOn is becoming a lost one soon.
I was part of the crew that recommended against Vista, and we just bought time and kept working. Per my other notes, I just set about customizing my machine and two days later mostly all was well. The core of Win7 seems okay vs XP.
Re:didn't immediately understand the new UI
on
The Condescending UI
·
· Score: 1
The difference is between choosing a UI to learn in the peace of home vs work. IT floated in, checked that data was saved to the server, and said "Hi. We're taking away your old machine with XP to do a fleet upgrade. Here's your new one with Win 7. Bye!"
Meanwhile reports were still due. So yes, I set about making "my" computer do what I needed to get work done.
((Sorry Mods, don't hurt me for the Redundant half, I got the same question that needs the same answer to two different fellows, because I try to be responsive.))
I do know what a proofreader does, and I am remarking that if it comes with a cost "let me do it myself on the raw text". Once the spell check is done, all that's left is Homophones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophone [wikipedia.org]
All the top ten ones we like to pick on at slash dot are Homophones. Lose/Loose, etc.
It turns out that not all Homophones are equal. Your example is funny but rare - that's not the type of mixup a writer would make. (Lately I'm more worried about "You're" coming out "Ur". Dammit, leave Mesopotamian Cities out of this!) Meanwhile the grammar checker is getting better lately, it picks up most of the homophones.
So back to my original point, it's like the Unfinished Furniture model. I'll supply some of my own labor with a couple of custom tools rather than pay an extra X dollars on the price. ----------------
Meanwhile we suffered too long with the "print once and hold your peace" model of books. Sure, they shouldn't be as sloppy as some software we can name, but many books could benefit from new insights the author has a few years later.
I do know what a proofreader does, and I am remarking that if it comes with a cost "let me do it myself on the raw text". Once the spell check is done, all that's left is Homophones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophone
All the top ten ones we like to pick on at slash dot are Homophones. Lose/Loose, etc.
It turns out that not all Homophones are equal. Your example is funny but rare - that's not the type of mixup a writer would make. (Lately I'm more worried about "You're" coming out "Ur". Dammit, leave Mesopotamian Cities out of this!)
So back to my original point, it's like the Unfinished Furniture model. I'll supply some of my own labor with a couple of custom tools rather than pay an extra X dollars on the price.
The odd part is that somehow I don't want to correct my stunning lack of car knowledge. Or a lot of other topics. I call it the "benefit per study". My van only breaks something (wheel rod, shocks, whatever) say twice a year, so I just don't enjoy studying something I would never use. (I'm not about to try to replace a wheel rod!)
Sorta the same thing with the Manly Pursuits - it's just too steep of a curve for me in my tired old age (joking!) to learn how to sail a boat. Or get a hunting license.
Computers are fun to learn on, I got started early enough and quietly kept at it. So here I am.
Nah, UI is one of those topics that isn't "objectively right".
But opinion is growing that the fellow I replied to is a commissioned marketer somewhere related to the Microsoft-oriented sphere. Check his posts, he's "on message" a lot.
So I gave him the slightly-snarky tip of the hat, in that sometimes it's fun to banter with a paid marketer.
I remarked that my two Anecdotal Users "liked" that ultra low level understanding of Safari = Internet. I think it's rather disturbing, but I will politely call it the "wide base of learning problem" where any brand new field of information will have a wide swath of extremely confused users in a big circle at the base. These are decent guys who just didn't get the whole Computer Revolution thing, but they're stuck needing to check their email, so that's the best they can do.
Likewise, don't ask me any car questions. Or road navigation. Or hunting/fishing/golf/_____/____/_____ questions. I'd look equally dumb. Not even Command Line ones! (Oops, is my Geek Cred now at risk? Oh well!)
However, once I DO know how to do something, the message for companies is "don't take it away later." It's like the story Harrison Bergeron - "Let's move everything around so much that Everyone Becomes Equal because none of the stuff the old power users liked works anymore."
I got a new Win 7 machine at work a few months ago, and the first thing I had to do to it was to unhook a lot of the annoyances of the Win 7 theme. Grouped Windows was a disaster for me. As for "Dumped" of course you know that in Win 7 you can physically move your related tasks in the task bar next to each other. Moving them also lets you visually see your priorities.
I hate "pinned" apps. If it's not open I don't need it "pretending" to be open on my task bar. It's already got a desktop shortcut.
So yes, sometimes it's possible to have a golden age then begin to slide away from it.
See my "Easy and Advanced" comment below. I don't like the Ribbon, and I don't like corp. gamesmanship forcing me into it. So I installed a plugin to put the old menus back so I could get my real work done.
Slashdot Mirror
The cuteness overload is steganographically encoding vital information needed for freedom fighters. You didn't think that was just a guy and his pet did you? That was morse code! /I am Kittening.
You're funny, but I'm no FanBoy, it was a quietly reasoned decision.
My previous phone was a Win Mobile 6 HTC, which I really didn't care for at all, and given the (later true) rumors that Win Mobile 6 was about to be toasted, the only other choice was the iPhone. I spent a little extra care waiting for the 3GS version, so it could now run iOS 4, and there it will sit.
Android is definitely the NEW game to play, but I'm going to sit and wait out the fragmentation wars.
Heh Sorry, let me first opine that your suggested article, despite you meaning well, is off the mark.
((Summarized - Fiddling with apn slots and... uh...))
I have an iPhone 3GS, so maybe all bets are off with an iPhone 4, but so be it. I had a previous standard phone contract.
I just went to an AT&T store and said "Hi. I'd like to cancel this contract and turn this into a GoPhone." So I paid the cancel fee, then the AT&T rep fiddled with stuff, did something on the service records in their computer, and I was done.
Almost no issues. An "issue" (in quotes) is that I have no more phone-based web, but for my usage style, there's nothing that can't really wait until I get home or, ... wait for it, ... any place with Wifi! So yes, McDonalds is a key player here!
And I specifically buy the $100 chunks of phone minutes. They last a year, not X months. So the last potential issue, that "pressure" to keep dealing with things, goes away. On my quietest months, I can squeeze a 5th month out of that $100, but then it's just time to buy more, so what. Add a little splurging and that's $250 per year rather than $1100 per year!
Don't quote me on this last part but I think the account "just sits there" empty if you run out of minutes, so the last benefit is that generally you don't have the Credit Rating risk of slipping off the treadmill of Pay the Phone Company Or Else.
Naw, pay as you go plans are voice only.
But that's just it, you go to any place with wifi for your web and texting.
So since I worked out the implications of the fact I don't talk on the phone much, I save about $800 a year on my phone.
Sure it is, last I recall there was a lot of useful spinoff tech from the space research.
Unfortunately we wasted a decade and a trillion dollars on a nonsensical war which almost literally did nothing. So now, yeah, the response to all kinds of holistic endeavors is "can't afford it".
Also, tech-wise, can't Smartphones do all the computing that the mainframes of the 60's did? So shouldn't it be a snap to build "cheap" space tech? Why is space the only industry where we're not applying Moore's Law?
I'm particularly annoyed about the height cutoff.
I'd think that a really stocky athlete guy at 6'5 would be able to contribute something in leverage that would prove valuable somewhere.
I have an iPhone - wait for it - without a contract. It's on AT&T's GoPhone style pay as you go service.
So once you get past the initial hardware, which then comes down to a typical hardware decision, I get all the fun of a smartphone in places with wifi (work and McDonalds!) but all the low expenses of a prepaid-as-you-go plan.
$100 in phone service lasts me about 4 months.
No actually you subconsciously slipped into the results of overclocking: something breaks if it's not perfect!
Basically any decently powerful medication goes all batty on side effects because of the body's irritating habit of requiring some 5-70 interactions to get anything done. So it's only 3rd generation medicines etc that get the job done right because of 20 years of practice. My own minor hobby is studying stomach acid preventers. (Not cheap calcium rolaids etc, the other pills that are supposed to prevent your stomach from overproducing the acid in the first place.)
The first gen ones did work, but over-targeted related biochem targets, so they didn't play nice with a whole slew of important prescription meds. Only later by switching around the component molecule rings did the newer ones mostly behave.
Here we go. I'll join this sentiment and elaborate.
"Old School High Fantasy" (and yes the Camel Caps are indicative!) makes me go berserk. Why? Because the Magicians are MORONS!
The good ones are supposed to be both well read in obscure lore and able to do nifty things. But maybe the Dark Lord cast some spell over their minds to make them feeble or something. Magic! Doesn't need a reason to do anything! Yet they can't invent a wristwatch. "The hour grows late, m'lord." "No silly, it's only Four O'Clock." "How do you know that?" "Poof! Look! Here's a 12 foot Sundial in the sand accurate to within ten minutes. Okay, while we have been talking, it is now about ten past four."
(Later)
"M'Lord, how will we get all those supplies over to Grandmother's house?" "Hmm. We could take twenty of our finest horses and carts." "Or you could magically put wheels under the barn and magically roll it all in one shot." (Primitive Uhaul).
And so on. That's why the only fantasy I read is Modern, where the magic works in with real learning.
We're coming up on Harrison Bergeron.
Aka people can't be people anymore, brilliant but volatile, solid and steady, mercurial with no patience for the mundane. Nah, those words are too hard to understand! Let's just label them Hyperactive and sedate them so they sit quietly in class like good little lumps of playdoh.
Et tu, Belgium?
Hi AC,
Taskbar Shuffle (I am on v2.5) lets you shuffle stuff in the order you like.
Apparently those minivans are really tough on the support rods, I had four techs go over my van and they all said it was fine at the time, so just grinding turns on those things every day out of the parking lot apparently does it.
Actually this second part is a fair analogy.
"Where did they move Cruise Control to? Why is that back window wiper on a different control than the front wiper? Why can't I set the clock until I turn the CD player on? My compass is mis-aligned now, how do I get that to work again?"
Nothing mechanically wrong, just user features. That's a lot like what happened when File/Page Setup and Edit/Replace All moved to some ribbon. I finally found the way to turn off document protection last week.
Yes, you have echoed my feelings on the matter well.
UI features are for me to pick and choose among. Users have "Line Item Veto". We shouldn't have to just take the lumps handed to us by Lowest Common Denominator marketers.
My end result wasn't XP - I borrowed some new things XP didn't do. But I certainly turned off a lot of the Aero candy. I found that leaving three out of the 15 some settings gets you 60% of the shiny (so, better than Classic sure!) while turning the other 12 off stops short of the decreasing returns you started to describe.
Oh yes. Last point on the Ribbon. Gang, we need to think beyond these binary yes/no choice. I installed an *entire second set* of menus into Office 2010. So now I have the Ribbon AND the Classic menus. (And guess what? The old code is there! So yes, I don't like the new Print Page - so my plugin taps the existing older code.) I think the art of the AddOn is becoming a lost one soon.
Heh Vista.
I was part of the crew that recommended against Vista, and we just bought time and kept working. Per my other notes, I just set about customizing my machine and two days later mostly all was well. The core of Win7 seems okay vs XP.
The difference is between choosing a UI to learn in the peace of home vs work. IT floated in, checked that data was saved to the server, and said "Hi. We're taking away your old machine with XP to do a fleet upgrade. Here's your new one with Win 7. Bye!"
Meanwhile reports were still due. So yes, I set about making "my" computer do what I needed to get work done.
((Sorry Mods, don't hurt me for the Redundant half, I got the same question that needs the same answer to two different fellows, because I try to be responsive.))
I do know what a proofreader does, and I am remarking that if it comes with a cost "let me do it myself on the raw text". Once the spell check is done, all that's left is Homophones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophone [wikipedia.org]
All the top ten ones we like to pick on at slash dot are Homophones. Lose/Loose, etc.
It turns out that not all Homophones are equal. Your example is funny but rare - that's not the type of mixup a writer would make. (Lately I'm more worried about "You're" coming out "Ur". Dammit, leave Mesopotamian Cities out of this!) Meanwhile the grammar checker is getting better lately, it picks up most of the homophones.
So back to my original point, it's like the Unfinished Furniture model. I'll supply some of my own labor with a couple of custom tools rather than pay an extra X dollars on the price.
----------------
Meanwhile we suffered too long with the "print once and hold your peace" model of books. Sure, they shouldn't be as sloppy as some software we can name, but many books could benefit from new insights the author has a few years later.
I do know what a proofreader does, and I am remarking that if it comes with a cost "let me do it myself on the raw text". Once the spell check is done, all that's left is Homophones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophone
All the top ten ones we like to pick on at slash dot are Homophones. Lose/Loose, etc.
It turns out that not all Homophones are equal. Your example is funny but rare - that's not the type of mixup a writer would make. (Lately I'm more worried about "You're" coming out "Ur". Dammit, leave Mesopotamian Cities out of this!)
So back to my original point, it's like the Unfinished Furniture model. I'll supply some of my own labor with a couple of custom tools rather than pay an extra X dollars on the price.
Hi AC!
The odd part is that somehow I don't want to correct my stunning lack of car knowledge. Or a lot of other topics. I call it the "benefit per study". My van only breaks something (wheel rod, shocks, whatever) say twice a year, so I just don't enjoy studying something I would never use. (I'm not about to try to replace a wheel rod!)
Sorta the same thing with the Manly Pursuits - it's just too steep of a curve for me in my tired old age (joking!) to learn how to sail a boat. Or get a hunting license.
Computers are fun to learn on, I got started early enough and quietly kept at it. So here I am.
Nah, UI is one of those topics that isn't "objectively right".
But opinion is growing that the fellow I replied to is a commissioned marketer somewhere related to the Microsoft-oriented sphere. Check his posts, he's "on message" a lot.
So I gave him the slightly-snarky tip of the hat, in that sometimes it's fun to banter with a paid marketer.
It's a difficult problem!
I remarked that my two Anecdotal Users "liked" that ultra low level understanding of Safari = Internet. I think it's rather disturbing, but I will politely call it the "wide base of learning problem" where any brand new field of information will have a wide swath of extremely confused users in a big circle at the base. These are decent guys who just didn't get the whole Computer Revolution thing, but they're stuck needing to check their email, so that's the best they can do.
Likewise, don't ask me any car questions. Or road navigation. Or hunting/fishing/golf/_____/____/_____ questions. I'd look equally dumb. Not even Command Line ones! (Oops, is my Geek Cred now at risk? Oh well!)
However, once I DO know how to do something, the message for companies is "don't take it away later." It's like the story Harrison Bergeron - "Let's move everything around so much that Everyone Becomes Equal because none of the stuff the old power users liked works anymore."
You're fun. Who's paying you?
I got a new Win 7 machine at work a few months ago, and the first thing I had to do to it was to unhook a lot of the annoyances of the Win 7 theme. Grouped Windows was a disaster for me. As for "Dumped" of course you know that in Win 7 you can physically move your related tasks in the task bar next to each other. Moving them also lets you visually see your priorities.
I hate "pinned" apps. If it's not open I don't need it "pretending" to be open on my task bar. It's already got a desktop shortcut.
So yes, sometimes it's possible to have a golden age then begin to slide away from it.
Oh, it's you again. Nice astroturf.
See my "Easy and Advanced" comment below. I don't like the Ribbon, and I don't like corp. gamesmanship forcing me into it. So I installed a plugin to put the old menus back so I could get my real work done.