I don't have a problem with positive discrimination. I see it as just trying to restore the balance a bit. We can't remove the negative discrimination easily, it's usually out of our control, but you can add some positive discrimination to balance things out a bit.
And I'd personally would like to have more female colleagues.
I think they should have a category for "controversial apps" and put things like the app discussed in there, but also apps that seem to have pornographic content, etc. I think neither should be banned, but just clearly marked. For the same reason, I'm also in favour of the.xxx domain, and would prefer if we could also put all the religious fanatics into something similar..rel maybe? They would probably block each other.
I don't think banning things like this is any good, the only stuff I'd ban is stuff that's meant to hurt people, like a "bomb making instructions app".
It's not just astronomers, although for optical astronomers it's an issue. (we radioastronomers wory more about microwaves, mobile phones, electric fences and such).
It's mainly biologists, ecologists and such, who see the large effect on the plants and wildlife.
Well, this begs the question how to define pollution.
My proposal would be something like: human produced effects and items that are not being used by anyone.
Now what used means and produced, etc. is open to debate, but for me this pretty much covers it.
Your flowers would fail the test, as they are apparently being used to decorate the area. I do think they are a produced item, unlike when you'd encounter flowers in the wild, so it does meet some of the criteria. Now discarded flowers at a market or something like that would be within my definition of pollution.
The big problem with today's media, is that they don't allow the consumers to choose when, where and how to read/listen/watch it. Consumers want this choice.
I'm willing to pay for a lot of media content. It's just often not offered at the time, place and format I want, if at all. When a new TV episode of a series airs in the US, I want to watch it the next evening on my laptop or iPhone. I'm willing to pay for that, but nobody is selling because they're afraid and don't understand what people want. So instead I have to wait for 2 years, buy the DVD, illegally rip it to the right format, and then watch it. And even then I'm not entirely legal because I ripped it to watch it on my iPhone in the train to work. Or I just download it of some illegal site the day after it aired, where the company who created it then has just lost a sale.
The article from the topic yesterday described the process very well in the printed book business, but at the moment it's happening in all corners of the media landscape: Books, newspapers, movies, TV shows, music.
I have no problem paying for writers, acters, artists, editors, directors and such. They need to make a living. I can even see marketing, sales and such, although they should basically earn their pay though increased sales/revenue, not a higher price per product. I don't have the feeling that they would be really hurt by going digital. It's the legacy production and distribution business who are on the line, even though we'll still need some of it. But it's because they think they're in the business of selling books/DVD/CDs/paper, instead of the content, that they don't jump at the new opportunities, and instead it's companies like Apple, Google and Amazon. Currently the NYT, WarnerBros, Disney and EMI of the 21th century are being built, and none of the old media companies seem to want to be a part of it.
Remember Tianmen Square? They already had an uprising like Tunesia in 1989.
It's why Mubarak is gone, Ben Ali is gone, but Khadaffi is still in power. He learned from the Chinese what to do: Send in the tanks!
Now he had expected the Chinese (and Russians) to help him though, and veto the VN resolution. Because if killing your own people in Benghazi can get you a no-fly zone, then killng them in Grozni or Peking could as well. And the Chinese and Russians don't want that. I still find it odd that they only abstained.
I seem to be repeating myself in this topic. The "unix system" in use in that movie is just a normal 1993 SGI workstation running IRIX with the File System Navigator. I used this myself on SGI Indy systems in 1994-97.
It seems that especially for TV series, which are made on tight budgets and schedules, things are often inaccurate, not just for computers. Someone doing a movie scipt might try to do some research. I for example have a friend who's an expert on horses. Even on a subject like that you can get lot's of things wrong apparently.
I just saw a version of the Superman II movie called the "Donner cuts", it's quite nice. It's the director who did Superman I and then had to leave near the end of the production of Superman II due to disagreements. It's well worth watching.
I think he actually knew keyboards, as when told to use it, he replies "how quaint" or something like that.
It's like if I would sit behind a computer and try to use the internet, and then the person normally operating the computer tells me to first dial in using the modem. It's not something I'd normally do, but when told I need to, I know what I'm expected to do.
What puzzles me much more about that scene is how he understands the molecule visualisation tool that seems to be running, without even so much as an example.
All she does is use the SGI visual file browser to basically do the equivalent of: ls ~nedry; cd projects; ls; cd door_control; ls; cd doc; vi passwords
I can confirm using it on a 1993 era SGI Indy. I think it was primarily to show of their 3D hardware acceleration, it wasn't really faster than 'ls' and 'cd', unless it had the information in cache.
That scene is actually quite plausible, this could actually be done on those machines.
The computers in that movie were Macs, Suns, SGIs, and a CM-5. The unix scenes were on unix machines.
Yeah, mostly SGI machines. They even had the 3D filesystem browser that the girl uses. Given that the CGI in that movie was made on SGI machines, it's not so strange to see them appear in the movie as well.
I had the pleasure to use some SGI Indy's in 1994-96. A professor had gotten some for cheap when purchasings a lot of SGI hardware, to have th students fool around with them. Compared to the 386 and 486 Windows 3.1 machines sitting next to them, these were amazing pieces of hardware.
From memory: 64MB RAM 133 MHz CPU (Intel was doing 60 with the first Pentium) 1280x1024 @75 Hz 17 inch CRT 3D hardware accelerator (hey, they invented OpenGL!) 640x480 videocon camera (I actually used that to talk to a friend at another university a couple of times) 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet (Gopher and FTP, later we got Mosaic) Onboard sound, S-Video in, CD-ROM.
There's this guy on the Discovery channel who has done quite a few of those in some "The True Story of the Internet" documentary series. I think it's by John Heileman and has about 4-5 episodes, quite interesting to watch.
Yeah, like how PlayForSure was such a great success.
The problem with Microsoft is that they have failed to deliver on their promises so many times, that nobody believes them any more.
The biggest problem that MS has, is that Google is using their old tactic and is doing a much better job then they can. MS never had a great product*, they would copy someone else's functionality and then flood the market cheaply though their existing monopolies and OEM connections. Google has upstaged them on this by supplying the OEMs with an even cheaper Android. Apple isn't the competition, they do their own specific thing with close integration between hardware and software, and selling it as a high end appliance. The real fight is between Google and Microsoft for the OEMs and MS is loosing heavily.
If you live outside the USA, then you haven't seen anything Zune related, unless on some US website, if you're not blocking the adds.
I haven't seen anything Windows Mobile 7 related yet either. A little iPhone when a new carrier picks it up, and a lot of Android phones get advertised, but I have only seen stupid MS adds with some guys in suits that resemble the IE, Outlook and other icons, talking to each other about something I don't remember. MS used to advertise Windows XP and Vista quite heavily, but after that I have only seen this one add about the talking icons.
There have been to many cases of Microsoft promising something to be in the next release, but then taking ages to deliver on that promise, if at all, that I no longer believe them. I drank the cool aid when they announced Chicago/Windows'95, but stopped believing the fairy tales somewhere around 2000. I still buy their stuff occasionally, but not based on promises, but on actually working hardware/software. And even then you can't be sure that your PlayForSure music will keep playing.
Next to that I have a specific dislike of MS mobile offerings (I've used them since 1999), as they only offer full functionality if you also have Windows, Office, Exchange and such. And if you have an older device, or several from different generations, it becomes a nightmare to find combinations of ActiveSync, Windows, Office, etc. that support all the hardware you have, if it's properly supported at all. With Apple you get updates and support as long as your hardware can run the new version and no need to buy any other product to get full use out of the ones you already have.
To me it's not how closely related it is technologically to the earlier WinCE/PocketPC/WM/WP versions.
What matters to me is how Microsoft handled the mobile OS market for more than a decade. That will not change so easily, as it's deeply part of their culture. I don't trust them to deliver a consistent long term high quality product. They don't innovate on their own, they only put in an effort if they are facing fierce competition and if they think they can deliver a crushing defeat. I've been burned to many times when choosing MS to still go with them. What annoyed me most, is that their products are often useless, unless you have the entire ecosystem, with Office, Exchange, Windows, ActiveSync, etc. I would constantly be frustrated by not having a certain piece of software, or not the right version and in the end several devices became useless to me, while still functioning, because there was just no combination of hardware and software that would be able to function, especially if your device was 2-3 years old or you had multiple devices from different generations.
I don't believe MS can fundamentally offer a better experience there, as it's too tied up with trying to couple it's Office, Windows, back office and mobile products.
Of course, two months later and so far I've run into the "goes flat in three hours while heating your pocket" problem, the "stuttering scroll and ignore single taps" problem, and the "have to jailbreak the phone even just to have a custom sms tone" problem. Sigh, wish my old phone had lasted just another few months...
I've had an 3GS for almost 2 years now, and I don't experience any of the problems you mention except for the lack of selection in SMS ringtones. Maybe your problem is that you jailbroke the phone?
The only way I could get the battery to run down in 3 hours, is if I'd run TomTom with GPS in the background and Spotify over 3G playing streaming music and watching YouTube videos in the foreground. Usually it lasts me about 3-4 days between recharges.
You don't have to use Apple if you don't like it. Smartphones, mp3 players, online music stores, tablets, laptops and PCs all have a lot of other vendors besides Apple. And unlike MicroSoft in the past, they haven't really used their dominance in some markets to force competition out of other markets. It's not that for Verizon to sell the iPhone that Apple demands they have to stop selling Android phones.
Apple competes in a level playing field purely on price, design, quality and usability.
There is only one thing that Apple is paranoid about: Their brand. If you understand that, then all of a sudden most of the restraints they put in place make sense. They care less about how much they sell then about what they sell. In the end they'd like to instil in people's minds Apple == "insanely great" to quote Steve Jobs.
But if you don't like their products, there are plenty others competing with them.
The want to be the Mercedes or BMW of the tech industry, but if you don't like them, you can but an Audi, or if you think they're to expensive, you can buy a Skoda or Suzuki. Apple has just decided that it's not interested in the low margin cheap stuff, as it tarnishes their brand, so you'll never find them making the tech equivalent of a Chevrolet Aveo or Hyundai Accent.
Quake might have held the record for the number of copies registered. I think the game VGA Planets probably had a much higher percentage of registered users.
Why? You needed a unique key to play it online. Quite a new concept in 1992.
It was a fun game and well worth the $35 I spent on it. I played it a lot between 1994-2001.
It's a play-by-email game with up to 11 players. (I think 14 in version 4, but I stopped playing with version 3.5).
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I don't have a problem with positive discrimination. I see it as just trying to restore the balance a bit. We can't remove the negative discrimination easily, it's usually out of our control, but you can add some positive discrimination to balance things out a bit.
And I'd personally would like to have more female colleagues.
I think they should have a category for "controversial apps" and put things like the app discussed in there, but also apps that seem to have pornographic content, etc. .xxx domain, and would prefer if we could also put all the religious fanatics into something similar. .rel maybe?
I think neither should be banned, but just clearly marked.
For the same reason, I'm also in favour of the
They would probably block each other.
I don't think banning things like this is any good, the only stuff I'd ban is stuff that's meant to hurt people, like a "bomb making instructions app".
It's not just astronomers, although for optical astronomers it's an issue. (we radioastronomers wory more about microwaves, mobile phones, electric fences and such).
It's mainly biologists, ecologists and such, who see the large effect on the plants and wildlife.
Well, this begs the question how to define pollution.
My proposal would be something like: human produced effects and items that are not being used by anyone.
Now what used means and produced, etc. is open to debate, but for me this pretty much covers it.
Your flowers would fail the test, as they are apparently being used to decorate the area. I do think they are a produced item, unlike when you'd encounter flowers in the wild, so it does meet some of the criteria. Now discarded flowers at a market or something like that would be within my definition of pollution.
Just the first couple of hits on Google:
http://www.suite101.com/content/more-evidence-of-light-pollution-harm-to-animals-a89082
http://www.urbanwildlands.org/abstracts.html
http://www.britastro.org/dark-skies/wildlife.html
http://calgary.rasc.ca/lp/animals.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pollution
The big problem with today's media, is that they don't allow the consumers to choose when, where and how to read/listen/watch it. Consumers want this choice.
I'm willing to pay for a lot of media content. It's just often not offered at the time, place and format I want, if at all. When a new TV episode of a series airs in the US, I want to watch it the next evening on my laptop or iPhone. I'm willing to pay for that, but nobody is selling because they're afraid and don't understand what people want. So instead I have to wait for 2 years, buy the DVD, illegally rip it to the right format, and then watch it. And even then I'm not entirely legal because I ripped it to watch it on my iPhone in the train to work. Or I just download it of some illegal site the day after it aired, where the company who created it then has just lost a sale.
The article from the topic yesterday described the process very well in the printed book business, but at the moment it's happening in all corners of the media landscape: Books, newspapers, movies, TV shows, music.
I have no problem paying for writers, acters, artists, editors, directors and such. They need to make a living. I can even see marketing, sales and such, although they should basically earn their pay though increased sales/revenue, not a higher price per product. I don't have the feeling that they would be really hurt by going digital.
It's the legacy production and distribution business who are on the line, even though we'll still need some of it. But it's because they think they're in the business of selling books/DVD/CDs/paper, instead of the content, that they don't jump at the new opportunities, and instead it's companies like Apple, Google and Amazon. Currently the NYT, WarnerBros, Disney and EMI of the 21th century are being built, and none of the old media companies seem to want to be a part of it.
Remember Tianmen Square? They already had an uprising like Tunesia in 1989.
It's why Mubarak is gone, Ben Ali is gone, but Khadaffi is still in power. He learned from the Chinese what to do: Send in the tanks!
Now he had expected the Chinese (and Russians) to help him though, and veto the VN resolution. Because if killing your own people in Benghazi can get you a no-fly zone, then killng them in Grozni or Peking could as well. And the Chinese and Russians don't want that. I still find it odd that they only abstained.
jurassic park: the little girl going "it's a unix system, i know this"... and then she's flying over computer files, or something. huh?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFUlAQZB9Ng
I seem to be repeating myself in this topic. The "unix system" in use in that movie is just a normal 1993 SGI workstation running IRIX with the File System Navigator. I used this myself on SGI Indy systems in 1994-97.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaRHU1XxMJQ
Sheesh, if I see more comments like this, I'm going to need to start revoking people's geek licences.
It seems that especially for TV series, which are made on tight budgets and schedules, things are often inaccurate, not just for computers. Someone doing a movie scipt might try to do some research. I for example have a friend who's an expert on horses. Even on a subject like that you can get lot's of things wrong apparently.
Yeah, I have to agree, 2001 is still an amazing movie to watch.
Asimov does a pretty good job in his books as well.
I just saw a version of the Superman II movie called the "Donner cuts", it's quite nice. It's the director who did Superman I and then had to leave near the end of the production of Superman II due to disagreements. It's well worth watching.
I think he actually knew keyboards, as when told to use it, he replies "how quaint" or something like that.
It's like if I would sit behind a computer and try to use the internet, and then the person normally operating the computer tells me to first dial in using the modem.
It's not something I'd normally do, but when told I need to, I know what I'm expected to do.
What puzzles me much more about that scene is how he understands the molecule visualisation tool that seems to be running, without even so much as an example.
What's bad about it?
All she does is use the SGI visual file browser to basically do the equivalent of:
ls ~nedry; cd projects; ls; cd door_control; ls; cd doc; vi passwords
Something like that.
I can confirm using it on a 1993 era SGI Indy. I think it was primarily to show of their 3D hardware acceleration, it wasn't really faster than 'ls' and 'cd', unless it had the information in cache.
That scene is actually quite plausible, this could actually be done on those machines.
The computers in that movie were Macs, Suns, SGIs, and a CM-5. The unix scenes were on unix machines.
Yeah, mostly SGI machines. They even had the 3D filesystem browser that the girl uses. Given that the CGI in that movie was made on SGI machines, it's not so strange to see them appear in the movie as well.
I had the pleasure to use some SGI Indy's in 1994-96. A professor had gotten some for cheap when purchasings a lot of SGI hardware, to have th students fool around with them. Compared to the 386 and 486 Windows 3.1 machines sitting next to them, these were amazing pieces of hardware.
From memory:
64MB RAM
133 MHz CPU (Intel was doing 60 with the first Pentium)
1280x1024 @75 Hz 17 inch CRT
3D hardware accelerator (hey, they invented OpenGL!)
640x480 videocon camera (I actually used that to talk to a friend at another university a couple of times)
10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet (Gopher and FTP, later we got Mosaic)
Onboard sound, S-Video in, CD-ROM.
There's this guy on the Discovery channel who has done quite a few of those in some "The True Story of the Internet" documentary series. I think it's by John Heileman and has about 4-5 episodes, quite interesting to watch.
OK
Yeah, like how PlayForSure was such a great success.
The problem with Microsoft is that they have failed to deliver on their promises so many times, that nobody believes them any more.
The biggest problem that MS has, is that Google is using their old tactic and is doing a much better job then they can. MS never had a great product*, they would copy someone else's functionality and then flood the market cheaply though their existing monopolies and OEM connections. Google has upstaged them on this by supplying the OEMs with an even cheaper Android.
Apple isn't the competition, they do their own specific thing with close integration between hardware and software, and selling it as a high end appliance. The real fight is between Google and Microsoft for the OEMs and MS is loosing heavily.
*) Maybe IE4 and some versions of Excel.
If you live outside the USA, then you haven't seen anything Zune related, unless on some US website, if you're not blocking the adds.
I haven't seen anything Windows Mobile 7 related yet either. A little iPhone when a new carrier picks it up, and a lot of Android phones get advertised, but I have only seen stupid MS adds with some guys in suits that resemble the IE, Outlook and other icons, talking to each other about something I don't remember. MS used to advertise Windows XP and Vista quite heavily, but after that I have only seen this one add about the talking icons.
There have been to many cases of Microsoft promising something to be in the next release, but then taking ages to deliver on that promise, if at all, that I no longer believe them. I drank the cool aid when they announced Chicago/Windows'95, but stopped believing the fairy tales somewhere around 2000.
I still buy their stuff occasionally, but not based on promises, but on actually working hardware/software. And even then you can't be sure that your PlayForSure music will keep playing.
Except for Apple. They do update the OS.
It's the main reason I have an iPhone.
Next to that I have a specific dislike of MS mobile offerings (I've used them since 1999), as they only offer full functionality if you also have Windows, Office, Exchange and such. And if you have an older device, or several from different generations, it becomes a nightmare to find combinations of ActiveSync, Windows, Office, etc. that support all the hardware you have, if it's properly supported at all. With Apple you get updates and support as long as your hardware can run the new version and no need to buy any other product to get full use out of the ones you already have.
To me it's not how closely related it is technologically to the earlier WinCE/PocketPC/WM/WP versions.
What matters to me is how Microsoft handled the mobile OS market for more than a decade. That will not change so easily, as it's deeply part of their culture.
I don't trust them to deliver a consistent long term high quality product. They don't innovate on their own, they only put in an effort if they are facing fierce competition and if they think they can deliver a crushing defeat. I've been burned to many times when choosing MS to still go with them. What annoyed me most, is that their products are often useless, unless you have the entire ecosystem, with Office, Exchange, Windows, ActiveSync, etc. I would constantly be frustrated by not having a certain piece of software, or not the right version and in the end several devices became useless to me, while still functioning, because there was just no combination of hardware and software that would be able to function, especially if your device was 2-3 years old or you had multiple devices from different generations.
I don't believe MS can fundamentally offer a better experience there, as it's too tied up with trying to couple it's Office, Windows, back office and mobile products.
Of course, two months later and so far I've run into the "goes flat in three hours while heating your pocket" problem, the "stuttering scroll and ignore single taps" problem, and the "have to jailbreak the phone even just to have a custom sms tone" problem. Sigh, wish my old phone had lasted just another few months...
I've had an 3GS for almost 2 years now, and I don't experience any of the problems you mention except for the lack of selection in SMS ringtones.
Maybe your problem is that you jailbroke the phone?
The only way I could get the battery to run down in 3 hours, is if I'd run TomTom with GPS in the background and Spotify over 3G playing streaming music and watching YouTube videos in the foreground. Usually it lasts me about 3-4 days between recharges.
You don't have to use Apple if you don't like it. Smartphones, mp3 players, online music stores, tablets, laptops and PCs all have a lot of other vendors besides Apple. And unlike MicroSoft in the past, they haven't really used their dominance in some markets to force competition out of other markets. It's not that for Verizon to sell the iPhone that Apple demands they have to stop selling Android phones.
Apple competes in a level playing field purely on price, design, quality and usability.
There is only one thing that Apple is paranoid about: Their brand.
If you understand that, then all of a sudden most of the restraints they put in place make sense. They care less about how much they sell then about what they sell. In the end they'd like to instil in people's minds Apple == "insanely great" to quote Steve Jobs.
But if you don't like their products, there are plenty others competing with them.
The want to be the Mercedes or BMW of the tech industry, but if you don't like them, you can but an Audi, or if you think they're to expensive, you can buy a Skoda or Suzuki. Apple has just decided that it's not interested in the low margin cheap stuff, as it tarnishes their brand, so you'll never find them making the tech equivalent of a Chevrolet Aveo or Hyundai Accent.
Quake might have held the record for the number of copies registered. I think the game VGA Planets probably had a much higher percentage of registered users.
Why? You needed a unique key to play it online. Quite a new concept in 1992.
It was a fun game and well worth the $35 I spent on it. I played it a lot between 1994-2001.
It's a play-by-email game with up to 11 players. (I think 14 in version 4, but I stopped playing with version 3.5).