Messages

1

Living Room / Re: Will you miss newspapers when they're gone?

« on: March 09, 2010, 04:34 PM »

My wife currently gets the newspaper "second-hand" from our neighbor once she's finished with it. She pages through it to find coupons and hands me the comics page.

Every now and then an article will catch my eye and I'll read it, but I probably get my hair cut more often than I read the newspaper.

-Deozaan (March 06, 2010, 02:28 PM)

I'm in  a similar position. I live in a cabin in the woods with no running water and no winter road access, though you can see my priorities, since I do have electricity and high-speed DSL! I'm 67 years old, and have been a somewhat radical teacher in inner city schools, as well as a teacher of adults in Literacy and in English as a Second Language, both in community organizations and in the prisons. I'm passionate about politics and I keep very well informed through such sites as straightgoods.com and thetyee.ca (I am a Canadian), as well as Znet.org (I am a citizen of the international world as well) and all sorts of other sites, including news aggregators such as www.nationalnewswatch.com/.  My local newspaper is somewhat useful for obituaries (at 67, I'm starting to find more and more of my friends in the obits!) and for local news, and to allow me to write letters to the editor, but really, I get my most important news through the various volunteer organizations I'm a part of, and through Facebook and the various local organizations I volunteer in. Besides, in order to pick up a daily paper if I did subscribe to it, I would need to drive (in snowless seasons) or hike (during the four to five months of winter) a mile down my slippery road every day to pick it up at the mailbox on the main road. That was manageable when I was going out to work every day, but not now, since I retired.

I would not like to see the newspapers disappear, but I think they have to accept that in this day and age we need more than the average local newspaper can offer. Some sort of compromise between newspapers and the Internet will have to take place.

2

Living Room / Re: Flattr: New Micropayment System - Gets the Model Right

« on: March 09, 2010, 04:08 PM »

I have given this some thought in the meantime... There might be people who absolutely love the idea of donating a fixed amount each month. My initial skepticism mostly came from my own extremely limited financial resources.

Despite my doubts I want this kind of micropayment system to succeed. Even if only to "show them" it can be done.

-housetier (March 09, 2010, 01:13 PM)

Ah yes, indeed. Me too.

3

Living Room / Re: Flattr: New Micropayment System - Gets the Model Right

« on: March 09, 2010, 04:07 PM »

justice, as far as I understand, there will be no "unused" money by the end of the month: because that is when all the money in the account is divided by all the support clicks you made. And after that you transfer the next batch of money into the account, to be divided by the "amount of support" in the next month.

The only thing that bugs me is that monthly plan. I don't feel like donating every month.

-housetier (February 11, 2010, 05:17 PM)

This one also bothers me. It's not that I don't like donating every month, it's that I can't always afford to, much as I might like to.

4

Living Room / Re: Flattr: New Micropayment System - Gets the Model Right

« on: March 09, 2010, 04:04 PM »

Seems like a good idea, but I'm really getting frustrated with all these sites and services that rely on videos to explain everything.  If you are going to force me to watch a video to understand anything at all about your product, I've already lost all interest.

Also, what happens if you don't click to support anyone in the month? Does your money just go to them then or does your support mean even more the next month?

-TheQwerty (February 10, 2010, 07:00 PM)

I couldn't agree more. I have finally upgraded to high-speed, but had to give up long distance plans in order to afford that--and even on DSL high-speed, half the videos I try to see are incredibly slow, with long buffering periods in between each sentence. I know that's one of the drawbacks of living in the bush, but I still don't see why I have to watch videos to learn anything.

5

Living Room / Re: How would you improve a standard PC keyboard?

« on: December 09, 2009, 09:19 PM »

Not so much improve as go back to something that got changed for no good reason.

1) Reduce the size of the right SHIFT key and go back to giving us a correctly sized (as in vertically bigger) ENTER key.

2) Reduce the size of the BACKSPACE key and put the ESC key back in the 'numbers row' (top-left) where it belongs.

I'd be happy with both these ideas. I disagree with those who want to get rid of CAPS LOCK, however. It has many good uses, especially for writers and teachers. For those who accidentally hit it and find out halfway through  ;Dthat their whole email seems to be a flame, learn to program the Caps Lock key to give a warning sound when pressed. Porblem solved!

-40hz (November 09, 2009, 02:00 PM)

6

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Wordlist Maker for teachers and students and ppl learning English

« on: August 31, 2009, 10:51 AM »

This is a terrific time-saver for all kinds of teachers. I teach Adult Literacy and ESL in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and intend to share this news with other instructors. Thanks!