It isn't an approved machine on the corporate network. IT not only has the right, but the duty to have it shut down immediately.

You wanna run your calendar from off site? That's fine. But inside the corporate network?

Naughty user. Bad user. Stop. Stop.

Actually, I find most of the syntax stuff either worthless or almost worthless. It's certainly less important than the editor itself. If I have to choose between syntax highlighting/validation or using vi, I'll take vi every time. Maybe not true for everyone, but I can code/edit much, much, faster in vi than in any other editor I've ever used or been forced to use. The includes teco, ed, Word, OO, and any editor supplied with any SDK I've ever used.

Sean.

Personally, I am "crying censorship". I don't think Apple should be in the business of deciding what is or isn't appropriate. I don't need Apple telling me what I can or can't run on my iPhone, and I've told them this. Several times.

Not that it does any good.

However, Apple makes the rules, because it's their platform and their device and their store. I may not like those rules and I have every right to express my dissatisfaction with those rules, but until they open the ability to install an iPhone/iPad app from places other than the app store, everyone who writes or uses apps has to play by their rules. (Jailbreaking is inconsequential. The vast majority of users do not have a phone that's gone through the process. More importantly, they don't want one.) Apple doesn't want to give up the app store -- it's a revenue platform for them. They also have decided they don't want anyone offended, so they police the apps available. I don't like it, but I understand it.

And no, it's censorship no matter which side it's on. I don't like what the Exodus organization does or stands for, but they should be able to express themselves by writing an app to "help" the people they claim to serve. I've been tempted to protest again various apps in the app store -- it doesn't really even matter which, as the idea is to show that people can be offended by stupid things, not just things that are truly offensive. But I doubt it would do any good, nor do I believe anyone at Apple would understand the point of it all.

iPad useful? I think it's a matter of opinion.

I haven't traveled with my laptop since I bought my iPad. Since the laptop -- while traveling -- was used for replying to emails, surfing the 'net, and the occasional game, and the iPad could do all those things, I no longer felt it necessary to carry my 17 inch laptop in a big heavy bag when I could carry something the size of a notepad. The iPad gets used when I want to look something up on the internet while I'm watching TV. It gets used to stream films occasionally, though not often. When my son was in a book club, I took it with me and worked or browsed or whatever until the book club was over. It gets taken to meetings for notes, it housed the app that kept track of my hours for consultant work. It even produced the invoices for that work.

Useful? To me, certainly. Is it necessary? Of course not. It does nothing one of my desktops or my laptop couldn't do. On the other hand, my laptop wouldn't ever be taken to meetings, never sat on the couch beside me just so I could pick it up if I wanted to.

The iPad is more convenient, it goes more places, and what it does, it does extremely well.

I had a netbook. The keyboard was smaller than the keyboard on my iPad. It had less memory, less disk, and never got used. I sold it. Someday soon I'll upgrade to the iPad 2. My old iPad won't get sold -- my son has wanted one since he first saw mine. I'm considering getting my Mom one as well. She has a laptop, but for her needs -- mostly internet and email -- the security of not having to worry about bots and viruses on the machine is a very big plus, especially since I'm the one that gets to fix the problems. (No, while Linux would work, it's not a solution. Long explanation which I won't go into.)

So, just because you don't find a tablet useful doesn't mean it isn't useful or worthwhile to others.

Sean.

You never watch a film a second time?

Some people like film quite a bit, and may watch a film several times. There are films out there that were released on video, then pulled, and are often impossible to see today. There are films where a particular version was released in one format, (laserdisk, for example), but that version is no longer available in any format.

But you know what? I simply enjoy film and watching film. If I want to go back and watch "The Road Warrior", I can, because I purchased it a good many years ago. If I want to see the version of 1776 where the congressional congress spills out into the streets still sings, I can, because I bought it back when it was available. I picked up "The Fall", knowing almost nothing about it, but having heard good reviews. It cost me just a bit more than two tickets to a movie would have cost, and I can show it to friends who will enjoy it but won't have seen it.

Just because you don't enjoy something doesn't make it a waste of money to the person involved.

And a quick comment about having bookshelves full of books. I have no idea how many books I own. I've got a twenty foot wall of bookshelves, floor to ceiling, full of books down stairs. I've got at least three bookshelves full of books spread over two bedrooms. I don't do it to show people I'm smart. In fact, the largest collection is in the basement, and it's rare for me to ask people down there, and the other books are, as I said, in two bedrooms, and visitors aren't often in those either. I have those books because I read. I read a lot. While the non-fiction doesn't get much use anymore -- except for the ones sitting on my desk -- the fiction gets looked at and read.

You can complain about my 1000 LPs and my 400 CDs too, if you like.

Sean.

Lines of code isn't really a good measure of productivity, and while I've produced a lot of code in a single day (1000 lines? Not sure.) I don't really worry about the number. On brand spankin' new code, where I'm writing it for the first time and I don't have to worry about how other programmers will write code that interacts with mine, sure, I can write code about as fast as I can type.

It's far more likely that I'm revising existing code, though. And I don't care how good the comments are, it's unlikely you can revise at the same rate you can code new stuff. I've had times when I worked for ninety minutes to figure out exactly which piece of code needed to be changed and then to change it -- and added two lines of code. It was a special case, yes, but one that could happen to any developer.

So, it depends. In some cases producing just a few -- and I mean 20 - 30 -- lines of code may be very productive. On the other hand, pushing out 1000 lines of code may be worthless.

If we can learn to understand what gravity is -- not just measure it, but understand and create it, that opens a whole class of objects and effects that don't exist now. As for ships traveling faster than light, again, there are classes of study that might make that possible.

(We aren't given any possible technology for a "light" saber, so supposing that it's built on light is just that, supposition. It might be called a light saber because of the way it looks, not the way it works, after all.)

I did mean to say that I was excluding anything to do with the "force", as that is obviously magic and shouldn't be classed as anything but. Then again, it isn't claimed to *be* science in the original film, so maybe it should be excluded automatically.

But even if I classed everything that's done in SW as "magic" and not science, it's still a lot easier for me to set aside disbelief in that film than in either Tron film. Tron shows something I *know* doesn't and can't exist, rather than show something that in all probability doesn't exist. For me, it isn't science, it isn't magic, it isn't even fantasy. It's just a dumb idea and I can't suspend disbelief long enough to make it work for me.

The original Tron was okay. At best. But while I could enjoy the film -- it had an okay plot, at least -- I never really was able to get past the fact that computers simply weren't like that on the inside. It always bugged me.

This new version has the same issues as the first film, but bored me.

It isn't that I don't have enough imagination, it's just that if you're going to show me a talking rock and call it science, you'd better give me a very good scientific explanation about where it got its mind and ability to talk, else it isn't really science fiction. And if you're going to show me the inner workings of a computer, with programs moving around some landscape supposedly inside that computer, there'd better be a good reason -- and there isn't one in either Tron film.

So, I disagree. Plausability is essential to good science fiction.

Even Star Wars, which stretches the plausability quite a bit in parts, I can handle. I can think of potential ways light sabers might work that depend upon understanding of concepts we don't yet understand, and if you can do light sabers, anything else in the film is easy.

I didn't like the first Tron much, liked this one even less. It was purty, that I admit, but it was also boring.

What use was it in our evolutionary development to be able to multiply two three digit numbers? That hasn't been something important to humans on a whole for, at most, two or three thousand years, and we could probably make an argument that it has really been important for more than a few hundred years.

On the other hand, how important has it been to be able to recognize faces in a crowd? Extremely so, at least since we start running around in groups. Gotta know who's friendly and who's not, right?

So the brain evolved to solve the problems that actually helped survival, and arithmetic was kinda low on the list.

On the other hand, anyone with reasonable intelligence can train themselves to do arithmetic problems in their head. There are relatively easy techniques, some of which have already been mentioned in the discussion. Mostly it's a matter of learning how to break problems down into easily manageable pieces.

Sean.

Please don't give MADD any more bad ideas...