He doesn't stash or throw rocks in the off season at the zoo. Says something about zoos, or at least the "look at the monkey" idiots who visit them, doesn't it?
I don't disagree with you on any particular point. I was only stating that to dismiss a PhD in the humanities "as a waste" says a lot more about the position from which one makes that dismissal than about the humanities PhD itself.
Exactly. Nintendo changed what the player has in her hands. They did it with the N64 (analogue control) and they have done it more radically with the Wii. I think it is Peter Molyneux who has said if you want to innovate in gaming change what the player has in her hands.
Software is important, but ultimately secondary.
I think this will probably be the case in any big changes we see in personal computing as well. The mouse and keyboard work really well for some things, but as new input systems like multitouch and who-knows-what-else come along real changes will begin to pop up in software; not the other way around. Of course you might argue multitouch is a software innovation...
"grad school is probably a waste, certainly most PhD's in the humanities are."
This rests on the assumption that learning is only valuable insofar as it helps the learner attain greater financial reward. You may define knowledge as a commodity which has value defined by national monetary systems, but those who pursue PhDs in the humanities wager the knowledge they gain in their pursuit of the degree has value in relation to their context greater than the value reflected in its commodification.
I don't understand why Starbucks would release instant coffee at a time when it is being criticized for getting too far away from its core business, namely, good coffee. The title of this post might as well read, "instant coffee: almost always nauseating." This is a huge error on Starbuck's part. It's not going to kill the brand, obviously, but it can't help.
The comments here are interesting. They either breath a sigh of relief and welcome the change in persona with open arms, or they let out a "pfft," uninteresting and wish for the old Zed. Any mediators out there?
That book is so incredibly good. When my kids are the right age I am going to give them that book to read so they will get hooked on science. It should be required reading in high school biology classes. Think about a class centered around that book where students do little experiments related to passages like this one. That would be amazing.
I agree with you. We know that our planet and the qualities that it possesses are appropriate for sustaining life. Who's to say a form of life couldn't arise on a planet incapable of sustaining life as we know it. Would that life, then, view our planet as incapable of sustaining life? If it did bump into us, would an intelligence arising on a planet "incapable" of supporting life even see us as life forms?
I don't agree that Twitter is a threat to Google, but I can see it gaining a foothold as a place for consumers, for example, to get direct user data on a product or company that is not possible through product reviews.
True, I suppose I was thinking too narrowly. I guess you'd have the xbox in there with some games running. And Excel spreadsheets. People could really get a kick out of plugging some numbers into one of those! And Word. Nothing like throwing together a mail merge to liven your trip to the mall.
In all seriousness though, this is to compete with Apple for hearts and minds, is it not? I just don't see what their strategy is or how it is goning to work.
I guess I don't have a lot of confidence in MS. Remember the Jerry Seinfeld ads?
Good luck with that Microsoft. I think the thing that drives traffic into Apple stores is that people want to experience an OS they haven't used before and see what the buzz around Apple is about. I have heard good things about Windows 7, but will the new OS bring people into the shop the way a "foreign" OS like Apple's does?
Give me a break. If you don't want to read 25 things about your friends, don't read them! I'll echo harpastum saying the most ridiculous thing about this is that it made it to the front page of TIME. What will the topic of the author's next article be: the viral narcissism of "about you" email chain letters? That's SO 1998.
As much as I used to hate those chain letters I mentioned above, I surprised myself and took part in the 25 things meme on Facebook. I actually found it pretty edifying. I wrote some things I didn't realize I was going through at the time and learned some things I didn't know about my friends.
Did I need Facebook to do this exercise? No. But the fact that Facebook facilitated it is far from "stupid," as the author suggests it is.
Regarding the mention of Woz's interest in joining the board at Apple. What exactly would his role be there. I know Woz is an engineer, and a well respected one at that, but Woz seems like he just likes to tinker with things on a personal level. Would Woz have that kind of involvement with technology on the Apple board?
I would agree with this. I wouldn't call myself a hacker in the traditional sense of the word. I dabble in HTML and CSS but other than that I'm not much of a programmer. I am here, however, because the articles that come up are interesting and the discourse that happens in the comments section is always high minded and interesting.
Coming to visit Hacker News exclusively over a place like Reddit has been a breath of fresh air. I hope things like this article keep coming up alongside posts about hacking more specifically.
I think in spoken English this is the case. However, using the more formal "one" in writing, even on a blog, is a good way to clear up any misunderstanding a reader might have. Though the use of "you" is more and more accepted in everyday situations, clearly the use of "you" instead of "one" caused some readers of this post some problems. In writing, one should try to be as clear as possible to get one's point across to the widest variety of readers, unless one is trying to obfuscate one's point on purpose.
It's different when I think about the planet as a whole, or even when I am in a crowd or am viewing a crowd on ground level. But the vantage point the pictures in the post give us gives me an uneasy feeling.
Whenever I see images like this I always get a little grossed out when I think that the splotches are people packed together. Dunno what that says about me.