Yeah. I don't live in Australia, but in Europe. But the problem is the same: A lot of media content is not released globally (not just MPAA, also Japan, India, China) but with the Internet the borders between countries no longer exist.
If I could buy what I want and play it on any device I own, then I would.
That doesn't qualify it as an "evacuate NYC"-level of false alarm, however.
The question is, how much worse does it need to be before it should be an "evacuate NYC"? And when the NYC authorities needed to decide on this, about 3 days in advance, were predictions accurate enough to you if it was or wasn't going to reach that level?
You can't wait until an hour before the storm hits to decide, you have to do it several days in advance. And if you look at the predictions several days in advance, there might be a x% chance it's going to be really bad. How high does x need to be before you decide to evacuate? 1%, 5%, 10%, 50%?
In cases like this, it's often better to be safe than sorry, although you're right that if it happens too often people might grow careless.
It wasn't as bad as the worst predictions. I think people should be thankful for that, as still ~44 died and there was a lot of damage. And it's partially because of the preparations that the numbers aren't higher. Had the MTA not shut down and secured a lot of it's material, it would have had much more trouble.
I think that if you really want desktop graphics in a laptop, you need to go Alienware or something like that. Apple puts reasonable GPUs in their systems, but it's not going to be able to keep up with the top desktop cards.
I've did a comparison of the 17" models, because they both carry that. An Alienware 17" with an Nvidia GTX 560 with 1.5GB would be $2350. An Apple 17" with 6750M with 1 GB would be $2699.
The Alienware is faster and cheaper. But the Apple comes in at 2.99kg instead of 4.26kg and has a higher resolution display.
We love new things, and we love improvements; we abhor inefficiency and "stupid pretty things". If we wanted eye candy, we'd get a Mac.
I've moved to Mac in 2007. I'm an enigneer, having used Windows and Linux as my main desktop before. I'm much more productive on the Mac, because it actually has less "stupid pretty things". It has a very clean, minimalistic interface, with a powerful BSD under it. Sure it's a little less customizable, but that also means that things are much more consistent and there is a lot less clutter.
I have a Windows and a Linux machine at home, to tinker with, but as a machine to just get work done, Macs are in my experience the best choice, especially as an engineer.
If you're on Apple, then MS Office quite often isn't compatible with MS Office. I've used Office 2004, 2008 and 2011. Especially 2004 was very bad in compatibility with Office 2003, even though it claimed to use the same format. But even 2008 and 2011 mess up every now and then.
I've used various flavours of Unix and Linux since 1994, but for a lot of tasks I would not use the commandline. Why? My main reason is that on the commandline you can only use the commands you know by heart. For some things the commandline is faster, but if you sit at the prompt and are wondering if there is a command to do X, there is no reliable way to discover it. Sure you can google if you're online, read lot's of man pages (if installed), or randomly try everything in/usr/bin, but that would miss built-in commands of your shell and probably other things. With a lot of commands being 2-4 characters long, there is no clue from the name alone about what it does. Next to that there are subtle differences between the various flavours of Unix, even in basic commands like ls, top, uname. Thirdly, the idea of Unix of having a lot of small tools that each do one small task well is often nice. But I find it breaks down at a certain level. For example I find that using a good IDE is miles ahead of the menagery of tools you need to have work together if you use the GNU commandline tools.
The commandline used to be great for scripting, but I find that nowadays I do most of that in Python. It still is great if you need to pipe things together.
But my main point is that addons are not broken. I'm using the exact same addons I used in Firefox 3 - I should know because I didn't download new ones. All you have to do is open the xpi in e.g. 7zip or winrar, open the install.rdf in a text editor, search for maxVersion, and change it to match your version. Change it to something big, like 10, and you'll be in the clear for a long time.
If you have to use steps like that your addon system is broken. But besides, why do most of the addons I use report that they work with a newer version on Widows, but not on OSX/Linux?
The addons is the key reason that I use Firefox. Break the addons and I have no need for Firefox. Most of my addons are still on 3.6 for at least one of the operating systems I use. And I have no need to become an addon maintainer, apparently a lot of other people have given up being one.
It's not about playing the game. it's about creating the contraption to do it. The focus is on the creative process.
So an analogy in WoW would not be the ability to play an ingame game, but to make it. Remember the chess game from Karazhan? Suppose WoW plugins could make things like that. Suppose plugins could make battleground like concepts, with new types of combat and siege. Or plugins could add dances to the game. Or new model mounts, engineering tools, etc.
Imagine that kind of freedom. There would be an amazing new WoW addon each month, that would end up as a Slashdot topic. Suppose someone made an addon that would allow parties and raids to meld into a combined form, like Voltron or Megazord. Suppose you had total freedom in how to defeat a raid boss: You could build a wall around it and drown it in lava, or build a cannon and shoot your plate wearing players at it (especially dwarves), fight it as a big human pyramid, so only a few people can move everyone around. Wow can't do that, because it would be totally unbalanced. It would be a lot of fun and give addon developer a whole new meaning.
That is what Minecraft does: It gives you basic building blocks (literally), and a lot of creative freedom to mould the world.
It means that the creativity is no longer limited to what the designer of the game could come up with, but the players can add their own creativity. The sky is the limit (literally, as it's only 128 blocks high).
Thanks for making that post, although it's a little hard to read.
Are you aware that one of the reasons kids like to use these "bad words" is because of the reaction they get from adults? The more you crack down on it, the more enticing it becomes to try and use them. You also don't learn them when it is and when it isn't appropriate to use them.
Trying to filter these words out is like a challenge to the students to use those words without the filter catching them. As soon as they figure out the filter exists, they'll try to figure out what's on the list. I assume that with enough time on their hands, trial-and-error will get them there. That list will then be known to most students very quickly.
Once they know how to work around the filter, then what have you gained?
I'm sad you decided you needed to post that as an Anonymous Coward.
I think a system where bullies can be brought to the attention of the staff are a much better idea than this blanket snooping. I can see students being a lot more comfortable if they can pick which staff member to trust, instead of the system listening in on all their conversations and forwarding parts to unknown staff members. Especially because people who end up with the task of going though such messages would often be those with an axe to grind or small minded people who often get assigned such menial tasks.
If I look back at my school years, I'm not even sure if I would have trusted any of the staff at my primary school. I grew up in a different country for the first 8 years of my life, and I met a lot of misunderstanding when I went back home.
In general this seems to be an attempt to solve with technology what is essentially a sociological problem. If technology could solve these things, we would not have spam.
But what do you do if your politicians are anti-scientific?
It doesn't matter to them that you have confirmed anything. They don't believe in science, especially if it contradicts their holy texts or dogmas. Not that you can with 100% certainty ever do that. Science is not a religion that caters in absolute truths.
You could wait until your predictions come true, but they seem to be so dire that we don't want them too. Now there also lies a dillema. If you do change policies, and the predictions don't come to pass, people could even argue that if we had done nothing, we would have been ok as well.
You can never conclusively prove a theory, you can only make it more likely, if you can't find ways to falsify it.
It's a real difference in the state of mind between the US and my country, the Netherlands.
We have very thorough natural disaster protection, even against the once in 10.000 years events. Especially flooding.
Because in most countries, the water goes away after a couple of hours/days. In the Netherlands most of the country is below sea level, and you need to be well prepared and have large scale measures in play to deal with the aftermath and get the water out again.
It's what went wrong in New Orleans: It's below sea level as well, and therefore what usually worked in most other hurricane prone areas didn't work.
It needs a very different mindset, where prevention is much more important, instead of repairing and rebuilding after an event.
Tablets aren't supposed to replace desktops, which are mainly devices to enter data. Tablets are media consumption devices, they replace printed media and TV.
traditional desktops and laptops aren't going to be replaced by tablets, except those that were only used to consume media already. It's the books, newspapers and magazines that are in the cross-hairs. Possibly even services like Netflix.
I think Amazon sees this as well, and is going to be the main contender with Apple. Google isn't fighting Apple, but mostly has taken what would have been Microsoft's slice of the pie.
I think the iPad is trying to replace printed/paper media. In the past you would have shown grandpa a photoalbum.
The iPad is a device that has access to digital content, but is as easy to use as most paper content.
It's a media consumption device that's as easy to use as a book. We've had e-readers, but Apple is envisaging something that goes beyond books, to all printed media and even TV.
I think they might buy Netflix or a move like that.It's where iTunes missed the boat.
I think Apple is becoming the media distribution company of the next decade. After music, it is now moving to replace printed media, and is starting to move on the TV & movie front. If they succeed, it will fundamentally change how we consume a lot of media.
The next fight is between Apple and Amazon.com unless they team up.
That's where I see the next decade. I half and half expect Apple to buy Netflix or something like that.
The iPad isn't competing with the laptop or desktop. It's mainly competing with printed media. It's supposed to consume information, maybe annotate it a little, but no serious editing or data generation. 99% of the time the keyboard should not be visible.
Compare it to a stack of books, newspapers, magazines, reports managers need to carry to meetings. That kind of stuff.
It has a secondary function as a photoalbum, portable DVD player and gaming device.
But it's mainly supposed to replace printed media, not the portable computer or desktop.
The iPad isn't meant to produce information, only to consume it. Most people don't produce significant amounts of information. For a twitter message the onscreen keyboard is sufficient.
It see it being used a lot by managers who need to be in meetings all day, because the battery lasts and it's less weight to carry around. They have secretaries who do most of the writing.
I also see it being used a lot to consume media while travelling. The numbers of iPads in airports, planes and trains is huge. Again the battery life and weight is crucial there. It last long enough for a trip from New York to Stockholm or Berlin. Including the rides to and from the airport.
It's not replacing laptops. It's replacing books, magazines, newspapers, printed meeting minutes and reports, noteblocks, portable DVD players, restaurant and hotel guides, handheld games, etc.
After taking on the music industry with iPod and iTunes, the iPad is taking on the printed industry. It aims to replace printed media.
It can finally herald in the era of the paperless office, that has been predicted for so long now.
If you create something that ends up becoming part of the language, then you have done something great. Being Slashdotted might not be as widely used as Cleenex of Googling, but it's a clear mark of your impact on the world.
I've been frequenting this site for a long time now, thanks for those years.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. I don't live in Australia, but in Europe. But the problem is the same: A lot of media content is not released globally (not just MPAA, also Japan, India, China) but with the Internet the borders between countries no longer exist.
If I could buy what I want and play it on any device I own, then I would.
Isn't this already the case not just for iOS, but for a lot of games (Steam) and most Linux software (repositories)?
That doesn't qualify it as an "evacuate NYC"-level of false alarm, however.
The question is, how much worse does it need to be before it should be an "evacuate NYC"? And when the NYC authorities needed to decide on this, about 3 days in advance, were predictions accurate enough to you if it was or wasn't going to reach that level?
You can't wait until an hour before the storm hits to decide, you have to do it several days in advance. And if you look at the predictions several days in advance, there might be a x% chance it's going to be really bad. How high does x need to be before you decide to evacuate? 1%, 5%, 10%, 50%?
In cases like this, it's often better to be safe than sorry, although you're right that if it happens too often people might grow careless.
It wasn't as bad as the worst predictions. I think people should be thankful for that, as still ~44 died and there was a lot of damage. And it's partially because of the preparations that the numbers aren't higher. Had the MTA not shut down and secured a lot of it's material, it would have had much more trouble.
I think that if you really want desktop graphics in a laptop, you need to go Alienware or something like that. Apple puts reasonable GPUs in their systems, but it's not going to be able to keep up with the top desktop cards.
I've did a comparison of the 17" models, because they both carry that.
An Alienware 17" with an Nvidia GTX 560 with 1.5GB would be $2350.
An Apple 17" with 6750M with 1 GB would be $2699.
The Alienware is faster and cheaper. But the Apple comes in at 2.99kg instead of 4.26kg and has a higher resolution display.
We love new things, and we love improvements; we abhor inefficiency and "stupid pretty things". If we wanted eye candy, we'd get a Mac.
I've moved to Mac in 2007. I'm an enigneer, having used Windows and Linux as my main desktop before. I'm much more productive on the Mac, because it actually has less "stupid pretty things". It has a very clean, minimalistic interface, with a powerful BSD under it. Sure it's a little less customizable, but that also means that things are much more consistent and there is a lot less clutter.
I have a Windows and a Linux machine at home, to tinker with, but as a machine to just get work done, Macs are in my experience the best choice, especially as an engineer.
If you're on Apple, then MS Office quite often isn't compatible with MS Office. I've used Office 2004, 2008 and 2011. Especially 2004 was very bad in compatibility with Office 2003, even though it claimed to use the same format. But even 2008 and 2011 mess up every now and then.
I've used various flavours of Unix and Linux since 1994, but for a lot of tasks I would not use the commandline. Why? My main reason is that on the commandline you can only use the commands you know by heart. For some things the commandline is faster, but if you sit at the prompt and are wondering if there is a command to do X, there is no reliable way to discover it. Sure you can google if you're online, read lot's of man pages (if installed), or randomly try everything in /usr/bin, but that would miss built-in commands of your shell and probably other things. With a lot of commands being 2-4 characters long, there is no clue from the name alone about what it does.
Next to that there are subtle differences between the various flavours of Unix, even in basic commands like ls, top, uname.
Thirdly, the idea of Unix of having a lot of small tools that each do one small task well is often nice. But I find it breaks down at a certain level. For example I find that using a good IDE is miles ahead of the menagery of tools you need to have work together if you use the GNU commandline tools.
The commandline used to be great for scripting, but I find that nowadays I do most of that in Python. It still is great if you need to pipe things together.
But my main point is that addons are not broken. I'm using the exact same addons I used in Firefox 3 - I should know because I didn't download new ones. All you have to do is open the xpi in e.g. 7zip or winrar, open the install.rdf in a text editor, search for maxVersion, and change it to match your version. Change it to something big, like 10, and you'll be in the clear for a long time.
If you have to use steps like that your addon system is broken. But besides, why do most of the addons I use report that they work with a newer version on Widows, but not on OSX/Linux?
The addons is the key reason that I use Firefox. Break the addons and I have no need for Firefox. Most of my addons are still on 3.6 for at least one of the operating systems I use. And I have no need to become an addon maintainer, apparently a lot of other people have given up being one.
I think it just means that they have no clue how Apple is doing it.
I think HP as a company has been focussing too much on cost reduction and too little on innovation.
And now they have lost their touch and it will be very hard to regain footing.
It's not about playing the game. it's about creating the contraption to do it. The focus is on the creative process.
So an analogy in WoW would not be the ability to play an ingame game, but to make it. Remember the chess game from Karazhan? Suppose WoW plugins could make things like that. Suppose plugins could make battleground like concepts, with new types of combat and siege. Or plugins could add dances to the game. Or new model mounts, engineering tools, etc.
Imagine that kind of freedom. There would be an amazing new WoW addon each month, that would end up as a Slashdot topic. Suppose someone made an addon that would allow parties and raids to meld into a combined form, like Voltron or Megazord. Suppose you had total freedom in how to defeat a raid boss: You could build a wall around it and drown it in lava, or build a cannon and shoot your plate wearing players at it (especially dwarves), fight it as a big human pyramid, so only a few people can move everyone around. Wow can't do that, because it would be totally unbalanced. It would be a lot of fun and give addon developer a whole new meaning.
That is what Minecraft does: It gives you basic building blocks (literally), and a lot of creative freedom to mould the world.
It means that the creativity is no longer limited to what the designer of the game could come up with, but the players can add their own creativity. The sky is the limit (literally, as it's only 128 blocks high).
Thanks for making that post, although it's a little hard to read.
Are you aware that one of the reasons kids like to use these "bad words" is because of the reaction they get from adults? The more you crack down on it, the more enticing it becomes to try and use them. You also don't learn them when it is and when it isn't appropriate to use them.
Trying to filter these words out is like a challenge to the students to use those words without the filter catching them. As soon as they figure out the filter exists, they'll try to figure out what's on the list. I assume that with enough time on their hands, trial-and-error will get them there. That list will then be known to most students very quickly.
Once they know how to work around the filter, then what have you gained?
I'm sad you decided you needed to post that as an Anonymous Coward.
I think a system where bullies can be brought to the attention of the staff are a much better idea than this blanket snooping.
I can see students being a lot more comfortable if they can pick which staff member to trust, instead of the system listening in on all their conversations and forwarding parts to unknown staff members. Especially because people who end up with the task of going though such messages would often be those with an axe to grind or small minded people who often get assigned such menial tasks.
If I look back at my school years, I'm not even sure if I would have trusted any of the staff at my primary school. I grew up in a different country for the first 8 years of my life, and I met a lot of misunderstanding when I went back home.
In general this seems to be an attempt to solve with technology what is essentially a sociological problem. If technology could solve these things, we would not have spam.
But what do you do if your politicians are anti-scientific?
It doesn't matter to them that you have confirmed anything. They don't believe in science, especially if it contradicts their holy texts or dogmas. Not that you can with 100% certainty ever do that. Science is not a religion that caters in absolute truths.
You could wait until your predictions come true, but they seem to be so dire that we don't want them too. Now there also lies a dillema. If you do change policies, and the predictions don't come to pass, people could even argue that if we had done nothing, we would have been ok as well.
You can never conclusively prove a theory, you can only make it more likely, if you can't find ways to falsify it.
It's a real difference in the state of mind between the US and my country, the Netherlands.
We have very thorough natural disaster protection, even against the once in 10.000 years events. Especially flooding.
Because in most countries, the water goes away after a couple of hours/days. In the Netherlands most of the country is below sea level, and you need to be well prepared and have large scale measures in play to deal with the aftermath and get the water out again.
It's what went wrong in New Orleans: It's below sea level as well, and therefore what usually worked in most other hurricane prone areas didn't work.
It needs a very different mindset, where prevention is much more important, instead of repairing and rebuilding after an event.
My onsite backups are in a 500 pound safe, my offsite backups are in another country 1000km away.
I have an iPod alarm clock that does this fine for my iPod and iPhone.
I wouldn't be surprised if a similar solution exists for the iPad.
Tablets should not run desktop OS and software.
Tablets aren't supposed to replace desktops, which are mainly devices to enter data. Tablets are media consumption devices, they replace printed media and TV.
traditional desktops and laptops aren't going to be replaced by tablets, except those that were only used to consume media already. It's the books, newspapers and magazines that are in the cross-hairs. Possibly even services like Netflix.
I think Amazon sees this as well, and is going to be the main contender with Apple. Google isn't fighting Apple, but mostly has taken what would have been Microsoft's slice of the pie.
I think the iPad is trying to replace printed/paper media. In the past you would have shown grandpa a photoalbum.
The iPad is a device that has access to digital content, but is as easy to use as most paper content.
It's a media consumption device that's as easy to use as a book. We've had e-readers, but Apple is envisaging something that goes beyond books, to all printed media and even TV.
I think they might buy Netflix or a move like that.It's where iTunes missed the boat.
I think with the iPad, Apple is aiming to replace printed media, casual browsing/reading and TV watching.
I think Amazon.com is the only other company right now who is also seriously trying to corner that market.
I think the fight of the next decade is going to be between Apple and Amazon. Google is too geeky and is mainly competing with Microsoft, not Apple.
I think Apple is becoming the media distribution company of the next decade. After music, it is now moving to replace printed media, and is starting to move on the TV & movie front. If they succeed, it will fundamentally change how we consume a lot of media.
The next fight is between Apple and Amazon.com unless they team up.
That's where I see the next decade. I half and half expect Apple to buy Netflix or something like that.
The iPad isn't competing with the laptop or desktop. It's mainly competing with printed media. It's supposed to consume information, maybe annotate it a little, but no serious editing or data generation. 99% of the time the keyboard should not be visible.
Compare it to a stack of books, newspapers, magazines, reports managers need to carry to meetings. That kind of stuff.
It has a secondary function as a photoalbum, portable DVD player and gaming device.
But it's mainly supposed to replace printed media, not the portable computer or desktop.
The key word here is writing.
The iPad isn't meant to produce information, only to consume it. Most people don't produce significant amounts of information. For a twitter message the onscreen keyboard is sufficient.
It see it being used a lot by managers who need to be in meetings all day, because the battery lasts and it's less weight to carry around. They have secretaries who do most of the writing.
I also see it being used a lot to consume media while travelling. The numbers of iPads in airports, planes and trains is huge. Again the battery life and weight is crucial there. It last long enough for a trip from New York to Stockholm or Berlin. Including the rides to and from the airport.
It's not replacing laptops. It's replacing books, magazines, newspapers, printed meeting minutes and reports, noteblocks, portable DVD players, restaurant and hotel guides, handheld games, etc.
After taking on the music industry with iPod and iTunes, the iPad is taking on the printed industry. It aims to replace printed media.
It can finally herald in the era of the paperless office, that has been predicted for so long now.
If you create something that ends up becoming part of the language, then you have done something great. Being Slashdotted might not be as widely used as Cleenex of Googling, but it's a clear mark of your impact on the world.
I've been frequenting this site for a long time now, thanks for those years.
Yeah. It really shows that money can't buy you everything.
I do hope Steve gets over this, but with messages like this, it looks bleak even if we don't know the details.
I hope the best for him.