Hard News: The Southern Apps
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Hmmm.
I suppose you could say these forums are an example of an attempt to guarantee the overall experience by making some functionality highly accessible to non-experts -- and locking down the rest.
I'm pretty sure people link more in PA System posts because we give them an easy way to do it. OTOH, no actual HTML works. I think it was a good call by Matt Buchanan to go for that.
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use a microwave to make micro ball lightning
I saw an article that said ball-lightning may be a myth and is just a hallucination due to the overloading of visual brain circuitry by the strong magnetic field of ordinary lightning. re: this article
So maybe you can see it but perhaps it can't be captured on a video camera...
Interesting... may be worth sacrificing a microwave as an experiment...
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I saw an article that said ball-lightning
may be a myth...obviously they have never worn tight
rabbit fur and polyester underwear... -
Ruth didn't get a lunch invite?
Didn't see Ruth!
Also, I spelt Kristine's name wrong. I'd go in and fix it, but the plane I'm sitting in is about to take off.
Anyway, it was the usual worthwhile experience: good course, bright, engaged kids.
Ruth was away otherwise she would've been there with bells on, I'm sure :)
and it's just Kris, not Kristine... but you let me play with your iPad so I don't mind...
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So maybe you can see it but perhaps it can't be captured on a video camera...
Interesting... may be worth sacrificing a microwave as an experiment...
I think what you get with that microwave experiment is a plasma ball. Whether "ball lightning" is the same thing or not, who knows?
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Still haven't found the perfect iPad game
Frisbee?
Sorry, couldn't help it.
And... It does make me consider an argument against copyright, the iPad is a great starting point for a really useful device. It wouldn't take much to add a little more functionality, front camera and a USB port for starters but to turn it into a "Do Everything" device like a Desktop PC would see it crashing and burning like a... well, a desktop PC running Vista. -
iWorks on the desktop is fine for home users making newsletters and writing letters to grandma and light editing documents. But if you are writing papers for university (that's me), you can forgot using Pages.
Seriously, Pages doesn't support layers, no direct selection tool (for Pete's sake, what millenium is this?), you can't have footnotes and endnotes together on a document, the master pages are primitive in the extreme and only exist for WP mode, there are no named colors that you can systematically use in styles and retrospectively change, no spot colors, no crop marks, reflections, shadows and text over bitmaps are rendered at a ridiculous 72dpi. I could go on for ever, but there just isn't room.
/rant off
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I was sold the iWorks package with the reassurance that it did all that iWord did (as well as the Numbers setup - which I never use). It doesnt.
For someone who needs to really be able to properly edit material - and arrange it however I want - it is primitive.Fortunately, I still have my g4 iBook - with iWord...
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<quote>If there is a circle of hell for this heinous crime, I'm sure it's still several rungs farther from the bottom than the one where the designer of PowerPoint is going to be spending eternity.<quote>
Loudest LOL ever at a PAS Post - thanks Giovanni.
I don't think it's the designer of PowerPoint *TM* that is going to hell, so much as whomever designed the default templates.
They're what encouraged people to write speeches on PowerPoint and doomed so many presentations to the onslaught of bullets, and the full death-by-powerpoint experience.
That said, I suspect the use of bullets in general prose and formal writing went up as a result of the commonality of bullets in ppt - my instinct is that we see more now than we would have 20 years ago when "proper sentences" were expected in formal documents (like formal letters/cabinet papers and so forth)
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Happily, the news is that NZ On Screen is joining the O-zone.
That's nice, but there are many other things that I think would be more useful. A discounting of traffic originating over peering links would be nice, and reflective of the actual cost of presenting that traffic to the user. As would an Orcon-based mirror of the Ubuntu and Fedora repositories, and the Windows Update site. Those can be some seriously hefty downloads, and Orcon offers no way to get them without eating into your traffic allocation.
Similarly getting TV3's streaming site onto the O-zone would benefit a lot of people. I'm sure there are many others, such as all the various radio stations that stream from their sites.
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Of course, if you're using Word for academic use, then you're using the wrong software.
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then you're using the wrong software.
Which do you use? I find all the alternatives equally painful.
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Again, sorry, if you can use styles and master documents, and your thesis is in the humanities, Word is just brilliant. What's not to like?
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I don't think it's the designer of PowerPoint *TM* that is going to hell, so much as whomever designed the default templates.
They're what encouraged people to write speeches on PowerPoint and doomed so many presentations to the onslaught of bullets, and the full death-by-powerpoint experience.
That said, I suspect the use of bullets in general prose and formal writing went up as a result of the commonality of bullets in ppt - my instinct is that we see more now than we would have 20 years ago when "proper sentences" were expected in formal documents (like formal letters/cabinet papers and so forth)
• TL
• DNR -
Are there any interesting Android app developers in NZ I should be looking out for?
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That's nice, but there are many other things that I think would be more useful. A discounting of traffic originating over peering links would be nice, and reflective of the actual cost of presenting that traffic to the user.
Oh no. That would be "too complicated for users" ...
As would an Orcon-based mirror of the Ubuntu and Fedora repositories, and the Windows Update site. Those can be some seriously hefty downloads, and Orcon offers no way to get them without eating into your traffic allocation.
Slight diversion here ...
According to this, Microsoft's Azure content delivery network doesn't have a node in New Zealand.
It seems wildly underpowered in comparison to Akamai (which has had Apple as a customer for a long time) and Google, whose cacheing servers are located with most ISPs. Akamai says it has 65,000 servers in 1000 different networks globally. Azure has 20 nodes worldwide.
What gives? Do they rely on ISP cacheing? Are there Windows Update caches that aren't part of Azure?
Apple's content delivery via Akamai is spectacular. There are two things that will reliably saturate my 10 mbit/s (from the cabinet) DSL connection -- really bangin' torrents, and Apple software updates. Do you see the same with Windows Update?
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I've seen too many people in the last few months of their PhD try to work out why Word is skipping footnotes or refusing to paginate their document properly; it's just not designed for long-form work. The proprietary file format it uses is also a minus.
(I also dislike the constant UI changes Word goes through, but that is another matter.)
I must admit that I use a different kind of painful; I use LaTeX. It's primary advantage is that you don't need to worry about how a document looks; you just focus on the content. It requires learning a certain amount of mark-up, but it's remarkably stable, was made for academics, produces great looking output (LaTeX is a fontographer's dream, given it's impressive kerning system and its understanding of ligatures) and...
Well, no one uses its because WYSIWYG is all the rage.
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Again, sorry, if you can use styles and master documents, and your thesis is in the humanities, Word is just brilliant. What's not to like?
I must agree - it may be made by the Great Satan or whatever, but I think it's a really great programme for humanities writing. I tried using OpenOffice for a while and I don't think there's much of a comparison.
ETA:
It requires learning a certain amount of mark-up
I'm an *arts* graduate. You know we're not capable of that. ;)
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And... It does make me consider an argument against copyright, the iPad is a great starting point for a really useful device. It wouldn't take much to add a little more functionality, front camera and a USB port for starters
My understanding is that Apple did try a front-facing camera in user-testing, but people didn't like the world seeing up their nostrils, which is the view you'd get in a typical position.
I wouldn't hold my breath for the USB port though. What's more likely is an opening of the Apple camera connection kit, which turns the standard iPad/Pod/Phone connector into a USB interface -- and offers undocumented support for a few other devices too.
As Ted Laundau pointed out, the implementation of file-sharing on the iPad is a mess. Apple developed a shared directory that would mount like a drive on the user's computer when the iPad was connected, but decided not to implement it in the initial release. For now, I can transfer files via iTunes or use something like Dropbox to get a shared directory.
You only need look at the rise of Android malware to understand why Apple went for the lockdown, but I think they're going to have to make it work better in the near future.
but to turn it into a "Do Everything" device like a Desktop PC would see it crashing and burning like a... well, a desktop PC running Vista.
And it is seriously the opposite of that. Apps launch very, very fast -- especially if you're returning to one that's cached, when it's effectively instant. That's tremendously appealing as a user.
I also really want to see third-party music apps be able to use the iTunes library, the way they can on a Mac. There are a number of hands-on DJ apps already, but they require tracks to be uploaded separately for the app in question, which is annoying.
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the full death-by-powerpoint experience
Anytime it gets too much for me I re-read the Gettysburg Address as PowerPoint.
Forgive me if you have had this before from me.
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CIO rounds up potentional iPad killers, which will start appearing later in the year, and reports iSuppli's prediction that none of the competitors will dent Apple's market until 2012.
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Microwave hacks, in order of try-at-homeness:
You missed the all important determining the speed of light
And since people are having the argument. I spend most of my time on Linux, but I'm writing my thesis in Word. If you were to start writing from top and type to thet bottom it would be horrible. But if you take a while to learn about styles, master documents, breaks and the rest; and you combine it with a good reference manager; it's fine. Tools like the document map (called something else in Mac I think) actually make writing the thing easier.
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I've seen too many people in the last few months of their PhD try to work out why Word is skipping footnotes or refusing to paginate their document properly; it's just not designed for long-form work. The proprietary file format it uses is also a minus.
I started a thesis on Open Office, moved to Word 2003 with Zotero as my reference manager, and then spent part of the last month making minor corrections on Open Office. Russell notes that things like instant response matter. In my case, what really bugged me was the scrolling - in Word it is clean and smooth, in OO you can never use it to find the page you want. And since OO paginated the document differently that was a major headache too. Since I'm poor I use the free product on my home computer, but if I had to do a lot of work I'd very happily shell out for the superior product.
As others have said, it will take a little learning styles and pagination, things that should be learned well before a final deadline. It took me two days to build an autopaginated table of contents - that would have killed me had I only two days left. I've heard that Word 2010 supports a variety of TeX-like features, but I haven't used it
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Having watched every episode so far of "This is not my life" (jeeze, is it slow or what?) I think I'll wait for one of those nifty credit card sized "do everything pad" things, they are the Jizz.
Until then, say after me "Apple is Evil, Apple is Evil" cos the Bibble , a poem by John Milton, says so.
Would you Adam 'n' Eve it?. -
I have the dubious distinction of having submitting the first ever thesis that had not been hand typed at Otago Uni (25 years ago now) - took a lot of hassle to get them to accept it in a different format .....
Even more of a hassle was helping someone else debug their page layout language at the same time ....
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