In spite of the fact that I don't like Apple products, mostly due to the proprietary nature of their designs and the inflated prices, I'm very excited to see if this pans out, and I'll tell you why.
I've long been keeping an eye on the tablet PC. In theory, it seems like the perfect interface. Everyone knows how to use a pen and paper, and a tablet emulates that to a T. In theory, anyway. But sadly, a lack on interest from manufacturers has left this type of machine a niche mainly coveted by graphic designers due to the lack of simple, polished utilities for the input method.
Simple, polished, user-friendly. Those are the things a tablet needs to hit the big time. And who's the reigning king of all three of these design elements? Apple Computer.
If Apple decides to build a product, they do it right. They brought the PC into the mainstream, the MP3 Player, the touch screen. If they bless the tablet with their sheer force of consumer exposure that anything Apple decides to build, the tablet won't just be a well-oiled machine, it'll be downright fashionable. And it'll usher in a whole new kind of user-friendly in the world of computer interfaces, even in the ones that aren't built by Apple.
You are being a bit paranoid here. Making software that tells you how to use it does not a Big Brother make. In this regard they aren't even as bad as Apple, IMO. Googling becoming a legitimate verb isn't that big of a deal either. It's no more ominous than when I say I'm 'ssh'ing or 'pirate'ing.
I will, however, grant you this: Google is becoming a monolith, a consolidated power base in the digital world, and that's just as dangerous as consolidated power in the physical world. Any person or organization given enough power will restrict freedom in order to preserve the former, and corporations are nothing if not the modern incarnation of the empires of old. I never forget that Google is a corporation and therefore inherently dangerous even if I am very grateful to it for it's philanthropic contributions to the open source community and the greater internet community as a whole.
No, really, who cares at this point? Is there anyone here who isn't aware that the news that comes from News Corp is utterly skewed by the reigning powers in politics and industry? This wouldn't be a loss, it would be a gain, people would get news results from independent journalists instead of a media conglomerate. I can promise you that the losses to Google's engine use by a move like this would be negligible at worst.
I, as an avid Linux user, am bemused by how hard everyone in the discussion the parent started is trying to find SOME reason to look at this as a BAD thing. =) Sometimes you have to know when to let go, kids. Microsoft did a good thing today.
I don't think this is really relevant in an OSS-based platform. Most apps you get for Linux that aren't distributed through your package manager are in source, allowing you to run it through the compiler for whatever architecture you happen to be using, which makes having multi-architecture binaries a moot point. Which is not to say that multi-architecture support is a BAD thing, of course, just that putting it all in one binary is the wrong approach to take.
I don't know if the average repository stores packages in a particularly wide variety of architectures, but it seems logical to me that that's the place where you put in universal support if it isn't that way already.
I think it's interesting to note that once this claim is made, no matter what this doc does he'll still look bad.
His decision was to cut the program immediately. This implies either the claims are true and he wants to bury the whole thing before it erupts, or he just wants to save face. But the same conclusions would be drawn even if he hadn't cut it straight off, and no matter whether he was guilty or innocent.
Which is not to say I'm scolding the reporters for covering it, it's just something to think about.
It's a fool who hold a soldier responsible for his entire military's crimes. It's like holding a secretary responsible for a CEO cooking the books, or a help desk staffer being accountable for a senior admin breaking a whole rack of essential servers. It accomplishes nothing.
What's so frightening about a mind-machine interface? I've dreamed of breakthroughs like this most of my life!
To be able to replace parts of my body just as easily as I can swap out a part on a car or a computer, the power to build a better human... Just imagine if they could develop this effectively enough that you could literally link your mind to another, or to a machine, to the net! Both the practical applications and the philosophical implications are staggering.
As it happens, I've actually done exactly what you're asking for. I will freely admit it took some digging to figure it out, but the solution is actually quite brilliantly simple.
Presuming you're using a Gnome-based desktop, simply log into root, run gconftool, and click a simple gui button that locks all the environmental variables for the other user's desktops. This includes things like wallpapers, themes, menu entries, launchers, widgets, you name it
You're right, you can use a GUI tool with far less training. But we're talking about the ease of managing systems in Windows vs. Linux.
Someone put in charge of administration a production system should damn well know how to use the system they've been tasked with maintaining, that's just common sense. If using CLI, reading man pages, checking changelogs and running the occasional google search to learn something new are huge hassle, you really shouldn't be administrating anything.
Sure it is. All you need is to google "(insert task here) linux" which will spew the right command at you right off the top, then plug that command into 'man' in the terminal and it'll tell you everything you need to know.
A good point, but let's not forget that under the glitzy GUI Ubuntu is STILL Linux, and you can lock it down just as tight as any other distribution with a bit of elbow grease. Security is hardly one of Linux's black marks.
Not true, you can lock down a GNOME desktop. This is not to say there isn't a learning curve to it, but I have done it for a production system that serves over 80 thin-clients in a K-12 charter school. It's all in the documentation (one of my favorite things about Linux's core systems, I might add).
Right, you're precisely right, and for this reason Android will probably never have the kind of ubiquity in the consumer mind that the word iPhone has. What's really important is that the OSS community, particularly the Linux dev community, rally around Android too. Like with any OSS endeavor, if you don't have a community of volunteers helping to make the software better, it'll just fade into obscurity and obsolescence.
But if the community jumps on it and starts building the apps we want to see for it? Then we'll have our OSS superphone.
Could be, but I'm inclined not to think so. Linux came around long after Windows had already ingrained itself in the market and in the consumer consciousness, and even then after more than fifteen years it's still rougher around the edges than it's proprietary contemporaries as far as user-friendliness goes. Arguably this is just from the difference in design philosophy forcing new users to learn a new way of working with thier computer, but I digress.
The iPhone has only been around a few years, and it's really the first mobile that's truly comparible to a desktop or laptop's functionality (Browser, media players, apps, etc). The great divide between them is that the iPhone places very hard restrictions on not only what software you can get, but what software can be developed. This may be invisible to the user, but once Android builds up momentum I hold out hope that it will have a true explosion of apps available for it, most of them free (true to it's OSS license!).
iPhone isn't an implacable competitor, it's only been in the market a few years. Android, if it's name is given strong presence in the mind of the consumer, has a chance to do very well comparatively, maybe even match it.
Obviously, I may have a bit of a bias here, I'm not exactly a scientific researcher here, but I'm optimistic.
...I saw the Android TV ad last night. I think it's the only time seeing an advertisement for something has make me verbally cheer.
It lampooned the Apple ad format, complete with the black text on white and indie music listing off stuff the iPhone can't do, then making a sharp cut to an android logo with a URL.
I really hope to see more well-coordinated advertising like this for OSS! This is the first, maybe the second time in my memory that any OSS has had any kind of TV spot, and this one was really solid.
Can't argue with you there, it does seem slimy. But hell, it isn't like simpsons viewers weren't perfectly willing to do it themselves, I can name three sites off the top of my head where you could punch in the tag 'Marge Simpson' and get pages on end of fan-made smut. If people didn't want to see it, those pages would be empty.
And actually, now that I stop to think about it, there are several episodes where Marge and her man have at it. It obviously isn't shown, this is fox after all, but in that light all the porn is just the fans without the burden of shame letting their imaginations fill in the blanks.
I suppose it just doesn't phase me due to all the time I've spent trawling the dredges of the 'net. I'm looking at you, 4chan.
Strange, you seem to be speaking as though sexualizing a feminine symbol is unhealthy. Quite the contrary, it's basic human nature. An illustration, in this case a cartoon character, is in a way a symbol. Marge is a symbol, a metaphor, for a woman. If you are attracted to women, and then because the symbol Marge is associated with women, there is grounds for the symbol to carry a sexual connotation. That's just basic psychology.
And if what you're implying is that sexuality itself is unhealthy, well, that discussion is a much larger can of worms, one I can't be arsed to open and deal with right now.
Hyperbole notwithstanding, you do have a point. The powers-that-be and well respected commentators of older media are still blind to the artistry that video games have been displaying for well over a decade.
If you actually read the article, it draws a parallel to the birth of comic books in the shadow of the depression, and how in the decades that followed it had a deep impact on film and literature, even in spite of the fact that in the modern day it's STILL regarded as little more than childish distraction. It's a heavy oversight on the author's part that he misses the fact that comic books, though it took damn near a century, are finally beginning to be seen as an art form. Graphic novels, as their more mature brethren are known, have been trickling in with greater volume since the mid-eighties, and I predict a similar future for video games. Their influence will be in the new generations of filmmakers and authors and artists who grew up with them, and eventually they'll be recognized on their own merits because there will be whole generations of people who look on video games the way generations today look at comic books: THEIR media, THEIR artform.
Slashdot Mirror
A mod point! A mod point! My kingdom for a mod point!
In spite of the fact that I don't like Apple products, mostly due to the proprietary nature of their designs and the inflated prices, I'm very excited to see if this pans out, and I'll tell you why.
I've long been keeping an eye on the tablet PC. In theory, it seems like the perfect interface. Everyone knows how to use a pen and paper, and a tablet emulates that to a T. In theory, anyway. But sadly, a lack on interest from manufacturers has left this type of machine a niche mainly coveted by graphic designers due to the lack of simple, polished utilities for the input method.
Simple, polished, user-friendly. Those are the things a tablet needs to hit the big time. And who's the reigning king of all three of these design elements? Apple Computer.
If Apple decides to build a product, they do it right. They brought the PC into the mainstream, the MP3 Player, the touch screen. If they bless the tablet with their sheer force of consumer exposure that anything Apple decides to build, the tablet won't just be a well-oiled machine, it'll be downright fashionable. And it'll usher in a whole new kind of user-friendly in the world of computer interfaces, even in the ones that aren't built by Apple.
You are being a bit paranoid here. Making software that tells you how to use it does not a Big Brother make. In this regard they aren't even as bad as Apple, IMO. Googling becoming a legitimate verb isn't that big of a deal either. It's no more ominous than when I say I'm 'ssh'ing or 'pirate'ing.
I will, however, grant you this: Google is becoming a monolith, a consolidated power base in the digital world, and that's just as dangerous as consolidated power in the physical world. Any person or organization given enough power will restrict freedom in order to preserve the former, and corporations are nothing if not the modern incarnation of the empires of old. I never forget that Google is a corporation and therefore inherently dangerous even if I am very grateful to it for it's philanthropic contributions to the open source community and the greater internet community as a whole.
No, really, who cares at this point? Is there anyone here who isn't aware that the news that comes from News Corp is utterly skewed by the reigning powers in politics and industry? This wouldn't be a loss, it would be a gain, people would get news results from independent journalists instead of a media conglomerate. I can promise you that the losses to Google's engine use by a move like this would be negligible at worst.
Whose leg do you have to hump to get a mod point around here?
I, as an avid Linux user, am bemused by how hard everyone in the discussion the parent started is trying to find SOME reason to look at this as a BAD thing. =) Sometimes you have to know when to let go, kids. Microsoft did a good thing today.
Long story short, mods are pricks.
I don't think this is really relevant in an OSS-based platform. Most apps you get for Linux that aren't distributed through your package manager are in source, allowing you to run it through the compiler for whatever architecture you happen to be using, which makes having multi-architecture binaries a moot point. Which is not to say that multi-architecture support is a BAD thing, of course, just that putting it all in one binary is the wrong approach to take.
I don't know if the average repository stores packages in a particularly wide variety of architectures, but it seems logical to me that that's the place where you put in universal support if it isn't that way already.
I think it's interesting to note that once this claim is made, no matter what this doc does he'll still look bad.
His decision was to cut the program immediately. This implies either the claims are true and he wants to bury the whole thing before it erupts, or he just wants to save face. But the same conclusions would be drawn even if he hadn't cut it straight off, and no matter whether he was guilty or innocent.
Which is not to say I'm scolding the reporters for covering it, it's just something to think about.
It's a fool who hold a soldier responsible for his entire military's crimes. It's like holding a secretary responsible for a CEO cooking the books, or a help desk staffer being accountable for a senior admin breaking a whole rack of essential servers. It accomplishes nothing.
Oh, I dunno, maybe the part where surgery and advanced genetic manipulation is required to implant this technology in even a single brain?
What's so frightening about a mind-machine interface? I've dreamed of breakthroughs like this most of my life!
To be able to replace parts of my body just as easily as I can swap out a part on a car or a computer, the power to build a better human... Just imagine if they could develop this effectively enough that you could literally link your mind to another, or to a machine, to the net! Both the practical applications and the philosophical implications are staggering.
As it happens, I've actually done exactly what you're asking for. I will freely admit it took some digging to figure it out, but the solution is actually quite brilliantly simple.
Presuming you're using a Gnome-based desktop, simply log into root, run gconftool, and click a simple gui button that locks all the environmental variables for the other user's desktops. This includes things like wallpapers, themes, menu entries, launchers, widgets, you name it
You're right, you can use a GUI tool with far less training. But we're talking about the ease of managing systems in Windows vs. Linux.
Someone put in charge of administration a production system should damn well know how to use the system they've been tasked with maintaining, that's just common sense. If using CLI, reading man pages, checking changelogs and running the occasional google search to learn something new are huge hassle, you really shouldn't be administrating anything.
Sure it is. All you need is to google "(insert task here) linux" which will spew the right command at you right off the top, then plug that command into 'man' in the terminal and it'll tell you everything you need to know.
The concept of luck is a logical fallacy.
A reminder from your friendly neighborhood skeptic.
A good point, but let's not forget that under the glitzy GUI Ubuntu is STILL Linux, and you can lock it down just as tight as any other distribution with a bit of elbow grease. Security is hardly one of Linux's black marks.
Not true, you can lock down a GNOME desktop. This is not to say there isn't a learning curve to it, but I have done it for a production system that serves over 80 thin-clients in a K-12 charter school. It's all in the documentation (one of my favorite things about Linux's core systems, I might add).
Right, you're precisely right, and for this reason Android will probably never have the kind of ubiquity in the consumer mind that the word iPhone has. What's really important is that the OSS community, particularly the Linux dev community, rally around Android too. Like with any OSS endeavor, if you don't have a community of volunteers helping to make the software better, it'll just fade into obscurity and obsolescence.
But if the community jumps on it and starts building the apps we want to see for it? Then we'll have our OSS superphone.
Could be, but I'm inclined not to think so. Linux came around long after Windows had already ingrained itself in the market and in the consumer consciousness, and even then after more than fifteen years it's still rougher around the edges than it's proprietary contemporaries as far as user-friendliness goes. Arguably this is just from the difference in design philosophy forcing new users to learn a new way of working with thier computer, but I digress.
The iPhone has only been around a few years, and it's really the first mobile that's truly comparible to a desktop or laptop's functionality (Browser, media players, apps, etc). The great divide between them is that the iPhone places very hard restrictions on not only what software you can get, but what software can be developed. This may be invisible to the user, but once Android builds up momentum I hold out hope that it will have a true explosion of apps available for it, most of them free (true to it's OSS license!).
iPhone isn't an implacable competitor, it's only been in the market a few years. Android, if it's name is given strong presence in the mind of the consumer, has a chance to do very well comparatively, maybe even match it.
Obviously, I may have a bit of a bias here, I'm not exactly a scientific researcher here, but I'm optimistic.
...I saw the Android TV ad last night. I think it's the only time seeing an advertisement for something has make me verbally cheer.
It lampooned the Apple ad format, complete with the black text on white and indie music listing off stuff the iPhone can't do, then making a sharp cut to an android logo with a URL.
I really hope to see more well-coordinated advertising like this for OSS! This is the first, maybe the second time in my memory that any OSS has had any kind of TV spot, and this one was really solid.
Shame on the both of you.
Go stand in the corner and think about what you've done.
Can't argue with you there, it does seem slimy. But hell, it isn't like simpsons viewers weren't perfectly willing to do it themselves, I can name three sites off the top of my head where you could punch in the tag 'Marge Simpson' and get pages on end of fan-made smut. If people didn't want to see it, those pages would be empty.
And actually, now that I stop to think about it, there are several episodes where Marge and her man have at it. It obviously isn't shown, this is fox after all, but in that light all the porn is just the fans without the burden of shame letting their imaginations fill in the blanks.
I suppose it just doesn't phase me due to all the time I've spent trawling the dredges of the 'net. I'm looking at you, 4chan.
Strange, you seem to be speaking as though sexualizing a feminine symbol is unhealthy. Quite the contrary, it's basic human nature. An illustration, in this case a cartoon character, is in a way a symbol. Marge is a symbol, a metaphor, for a woman. If you are attracted to women, and then because the symbol Marge is associated with women, there is grounds for the symbol to carry a sexual connotation. That's just basic psychology.
And if what you're implying is that sexuality itself is unhealthy, well, that discussion is a much larger can of worms, one I can't be arsed to open and deal with right now.
Hyperbole notwithstanding, you do have a point. The powers-that-be and well respected commentators of older media are still blind to the artistry that video games have been displaying for well over a decade.
If you actually read the article, it draws a parallel to the birth of comic books in the shadow of the depression, and how in the decades that followed it had a deep impact on film and literature, even in spite of the fact that in the modern day it's STILL regarded as little more than childish distraction. It's a heavy oversight on the author's part that he misses the fact that comic books, though it took damn near a century, are finally beginning to be seen as an art form. Graphic novels, as their more mature brethren are known, have been trickling in with greater volume since the mid-eighties, and I predict a similar future for video games. Their influence will be in the new generations of filmmakers and authors and artists who grew up with them, and eventually they'll be recognized on their own merits because there will be whole generations of people who look on video games the way generations today look at comic books: THEIR media, THEIR artform.