cesare

You're talking about the average user?

It's simple: because they can pirate proprietary software and they always perceive something which has a price tag as more valuable than something which is offered for free. Something which has more (perceived) value but which you can obtain for free will always win against something which is offered for free (and thus is perceived as probably worthless).

Sad but true.

There are some exceptions, though. A lot of people use Vlc, for instance, because it can play every single (probably pirated) video you'll throw at it. And there isn't a market for commercial video players. Something like Firefox wouldn't have reached such penetration without a lot of marketing (most people doesn't even know what a browser is, go figure).

I'm constantly baffled by the number of articles about these subjects coming out every day from authors who don't understand (or completely ignore) basic human psychology.

> It teaches people how to draw realistically using techniques like contour drawing among other stuff.

A great book. One of the exercises is to copy a picture turned 180 degrees, so that you're drawing exactly what you're seeing without the interference of your mind's prior knowledge of the subject.

Have you tried Anki? (it's open source, see GiraffeNecktie comment). I've just downloaded it. There are also some decks shared by people (mostly for natural languages) that you can download from the app itself.

Thanks. I was just wondering if there was a similar open source project.

Anki: http://ichi2.net/anki/

Wikipedia entry about this technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition

Once you've finished the article, there's a lot of reading material on the SuperMemo website:

http://www.supermemo.com/english/contents.htm#Articles

Really interesting stuff. The website and the software user interface (at least judging from the screenshots) are terrible, though.

Are you familiar with Edward Bernays? Have you watched Adam Curtis documentary 'The century of the self'?

From http://www.perceptric.com/blog/_archives/2008/8/14/3837144.h...:

Edward Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. His family emigrated to the US from Germany by way of England before World War 1. Bernays was the father of the modern public relations business. He used some of the ideas that were the brainchild of his uncle and was able to convince clients of the ways that people thought and how their thoughts could be turned to the benefit of the clients’ needs.

One of the clients that Bernays worked for was Sarah Lee. They had a problem. They had created a cake mix that just needed water added to it and then could be popped in the oven. The problem was that housewives were not buying it.

Bernays did some studies and came up with the conclusion that the housewives that the product was targeting felt that they had not personal involvement in the success of the baking of the cake. He proposed that the company change the formula for the product to require the user to have to break an egg and mix that with the water into the cake mix before baking the cake.

The rest is history. The new cake mix took off like wildfire and still today in every supermarket that you go to you will find cake mixes that require the user to break an egg into a bowl and then mix it with the powdered ingredients in the packet.

'Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind' by Shunryu Suzuki.

It's one of the first book I've read about zen (the first was '101 Zen Stories', which I recommend as well). Didn't know it was a classic when I bought it fifteen years ago. I've reread it many, many times.

Edit: I forgot 'Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness' by the same author.

Right.

On the other hand, in this case it was a search keyword, not a word in the description.

They could add a disclaimer to reserve the right to remove inappropriate keywords.

Asking the developer to do so and resubmit the app is a waste of time for both parties.

Why didn't they just approve the app and remove the incriminated keyword?

Thanks to the author and to the submitter.

Some of these are really works of art.

I especially love TinyScheme (BTW, did you know that it is embedded in the iPhoneOS?).

Here's the app author blog post about this (where he also says that it took four months before the app got rejected):

http://www.cloudgoessocial.net/2009/05/19/µmonitor-rejected/

Thanks for this.

Is there a way to make the window open at the center of the screen?

Slackware is still my favorite distro (even though I also use Ubuntu a lot nowadays).

It's the best choice IMO for learning Linux, for power users and for developers.

I still prefer to compile most of the software I need by myself, to get the latest releases and to compile with the options I want. And there's nothing I can't get running on Slackware. This is mostly because Slackware uses unpatched/non customized versions of each software, compiled with default settings.

I also love that fact that it doesn't even have its own visual branding. KDE is just KDE (with the default theme and its own wallpapers) and everything else comes as if you would have got the source and compiled yourself.

\\//, live long and prosper, Slackware.

Did you read the article?

You got it backwards. They made the change to cut costs.

The fuss is because Verdana is intended to be used on screen, and it's ugly when printed.

The title (of the submission) is wrong. The logo hasn't changed.

They just changed the font used in catalogues, switching from a customized version of Futura (used for 40 years) to Verdana.

The Amiga was really ahead of its times. It came out in 1995 (just a year after the first Mac) and it already had preemptive multitasking, custom audio and video coprocessors (with 16m colors, stereo sound) etc.

I still have my Amiga 1200 (although my first one was an A500).

You're comparing a simple 2d traditional (cel) animation software with a full blown 3d modeling/rendering/video editing/game engine suite.

From a comment on the page:

>Although I am rather upset with Apple for not approving applications that would allow for visuals with music — rather upset! — this is where the market is at currently.

Is it true? Does somebody know of such an app which has been rejected?

Same here.

Still, it's a pity that it doesn't have multitouch.

This is a great idea.

To keep a standard subset for lightweight implementations (which are better suited for embedded systems, or for being embedded as a scripting language). How cool is this?

Edit: not to mention that a greater portability among the full featured implementations would be even more cool.

I'm so happy to see Scheme alive and kicking.

How is this noteworthy?

If he paid off the remainder of the contract, he paid the full price of the phone. Every carrier lets you unlock your phone at that point, AFAIK.

I bought my iPhone 3G in Italy (where I live) last year in october already unlocked (legally) and bundled with a rechargeable Vodafone sim card.

Edit: Furthermore, since the 3gs came out, you can also buy them at the Apple Stores.

2nd edit: here in Italy, subsidized phones are locked for the duration of the contract (usually two years). Once the contract is over you can unlock the phone. Or you can buy any phone unlocked for the full price.

This also apply to the iPhone.

Usually the difference in price of a contract with a subsidized phone and the same contract without any phone is almost exactly the difference between the full price of the phone and the subsidized price (split in the 24 months of the contract).

Isn't the same as in the US?

> “Imagine what he’d be like,” said a reporter after emerging from a Jobs drubbing, “if he hadn’t studied Zen.”

Ok, that was funny.

Developers started flocking to the App Store because they saw a great opportunity, a gold rush (fueled like never before by media).

If a consistent part of them would leave now (and I believe they won't), it would be even more appealing for other to join since there would be less competition.

Wow! Really?

Downloading music is greener than buying CDs?

You've got to be joking!

Two other links you might like:

- http://www.rickard.gunee.com/projects/video/pic/gamesys.php (tetris and pong on a pic 16f84)

- http://www.quinapalus.com/picsi.html (space invaders with just a 16f628).

They both use a single microcontroller also for sending the video signal (like the submitted project).

I hate when people do this. And I'm surprised by how many people don't understand the problem.

It's not necessary to touch the screen even if you're pointing something. Grab the mouse (or use the touchpad) or just point without touching. Is it so difficult?

It's obviously a habit acquired by interacting with paper and less fragile (and expensive) media. But for me it is a sign of ignorance.

I hate this so much that I avoid to bring my laptop at meetings unless it is strictly necessary.

That was my first thought too.

Probably if it wasn't for spam, we wouldn't need a lot of the services we use nowadays (mainly as filters).

I can already imagine the kind of comments that this article (and even more her TED talk) will trigger here.

Which will, ironically, prove her point.

EDIT: What I mean is that we are (myself included) mostly left brain people. Otherwise we probably wouldn't be here.

It's hard for us to relate to this kind of experiences. It's easier to dismiss them and go back to our own so very important projects and our endless elucubrations.