I've heard you say, more than once, teaching religion to children is akin to child-abuse. I'm in agreement; however, having two young children who've had to deal with the death of their grandparents and some older relatives. I'll admit, that after their grandmother passed, I told my children that she was in heaven, as it seemed to ease their pain and the emotional sadness of her passing. As a father, an atheist and scientist, I often have conflicting opinions as to what I should tell my children about our mortality and that of their relatives. I want to tell them the truth, but the truth is, life is harsh and death is the end. What would you tell a young child about their recently deceased grandmother, and if you were to tell them that she is not in heaven, would you consider that less emotionally abusive to the child than lying to them?
I'll probably get modded down for this, but here goes...
People are trying hard to hang on to their old Win95 style workflow. Nothing wrong with that; however, for me, the old workflow with the start button and horizontal panels at the top and bottom of the screen worked better on the older 4:3 monitors. With today's 16:9 flat-panel displays being ubiquitous, having panels taking up vertical real-estate doesn't seem like such a great idea.
I personally like the way Unity and Gnome-Shell are doing things. Since today's flat panels have more horizontal real-estate, I'd prefer a DE that makes better use of it. This is what the panel in Unity and Gnome-Shell do. They get rid of the old top/bottom horizontal panel, and replace it with a vertical panel on the left. Sure, it can mess up people's work-flow, especially if they are used to the top/bottom panels from Gnome2, as I was; however, after using Gnome-Shell for a few months, I've re-worked my workflow, and actually feel more comfortable with the additional screen real estate afforded by ditching the old panels. Sure there are still issues. But I think people should try it out for themselves before complaining. Of course, it would have been nice for Gnome-Shell to at least give the option to users of having the old panel, even though, I now would never use such an option.
Phoronix ran benchmarks of all the popular Window Manager and Desktop Environments, that included: Kwin (KDE), Mutter (Gnome-Shell), XFCE and Unity. Guess who came out on top, in terms of performance?
XFCE won, with Mutter (Gnome-Shell) a very close second. The conclusion was, XFCE and Gnome 3 performed best across a wide variety of graphic drivers.
It's a valid point, but it's also not particularly difficult to avoid those consequences. Simply apply a carbon tax to imported goods as well. Get it right and not only would a carbon tax work to reduce emissions, it would also work to increase domestic manufacturing.
I think you're missing Linus's point. The point is that you don't HAVE to upgrade the kernel for any particular reason. This is not Windows world with patch Tuesdays. Linux systems can run for years without upgrades, and you CAN run new software on old kernels and vice versa. Windows revolves around different philosophy - mostly around the statement that Microsoft, with 90% of desktop under the belt can simply force all 3rd party manufactures to play ball, so they go ahead and do break the interface, force vendors to do the work, and have no qualms about breaking backwards compatibility on applications and tools. To be fair to MS they do put in a lot of effort to add compatibility modes and support legacy stuff, but with the amount of changes they do there is no way everything will work forever. It's always at most one OS generation back. Stuff that used to run on 95 or 98 now usually requires quite a bit of work to get it running again on Win7.
And talking about Mac in this context is laughable - Apple's been forcing people to BUY updated hardware and software for decades now.
Sure, you never have to upgrade the kernel, if you never change your system, or if you don't care about fixing critical vulnerabilities.
However, since most drivers ship with the kernel, if you want to get the latest versions of hardware drivers, or if you add new hardware to your system, you'll need to upgrade the kernel.
Not to mention, that almost every distro upgrades the kernel on each new distro release. Sure you could stay with Ubuntu 10.04; however, you are then stuck with old versions of OpenOffice, Gimp, and all major software. At least on windows, if you stay on WindowsXP, you can upgrade your software to newer versions. With most distros, you are at the mercy of the distro and their package management.
I'll probably get modded down for this, but here goes...
I agree, at least partly, with De Icaza's assertion that ABI breakage (binary compatibility) in each kernel release is a problem for vendors, and likely helped push hardware vendors away from supporting Linux. While in the ideal world, every vendor will release their drivers as open-source, this is the real world. There are numerous reasons (legal and others) why companies cannot or will not release their drivers as open-source (ie. Nvidia). With each new kernel release breaking binary compatibility with prior releases, this forces the companies to release a new driver every time the kernel gets updated. This might not be a problem for a big company with resources such as Nvidia; however, for smaller companies, this is likely a big reason they do not support Linux in the first place.
Case in point, Dell paid PowerVR to develop a Poulsbo graphics driver for their Dell Mini netbooks (which at the time were on Ubuntu 10.04). PowerVR developed the driver. As Ubuntu released newer versions, the driver stopped working due to the ABI breakage. Users were entirely dependent upon Dell to pay PowerVR to constantly update the driver for new Kernel releases, which they did not.
This type of continual ABI breakage is not seen in both the Mac and Windows worlds
You incorrectly assume that Apple actually cares that Timothy Cook is a cocksucking piece of shit. It actually works out better for them (financially) that he is.
Back in April 2011, Apple's trade dress infringement claims against Samsung went like this:
a rectangular product shape with all four corners uniformly rounded;
the front surface of the product dominated by a screen surface with black borders;
as to the iPhone and iPod touch products, substantial black borders above and below the screen having roughly equal width and narrower black borders on either side of the screen having roughly equal width;
as to the iPad product, substantial black borders on all sides being roughly equal in width;
a metallic surround framing the perimeter of the top surface;
a display of a grid of colorful square icons with uniformly rounded corners; and
a bottom row of square icons (the "Springboard") set off from the other icons and that do not change as the other pages of the user interface are viewed.
That is basically a list of things you aren't allowed to do. Now, individually, those traits aren't worthy of a lawsuit. It's the combination of those things that will send Apple Legal over to kick down your door. The Galaxy SIII was designed from the start to not infringe on any of the above; yet Apple, in their continuing douche-baggery, has now brought up more ridiculous patents to use against the SIII.
Apple SUCKS! I don't care what the fanbois say. I hate that they are able to dictate what is acceptable to be sold in the US. This ridiculous decision (based upon patenting a square brick with rounded edges) only hurts consumer choice.
Correct. US Patent laws suck; however, Apple's behavior, while perhaps technically within the bounds of the law, will not win them any friends or goodwill. Their evil behavior is not only targeted at Samsung, but targeted any any US consumer who does not choose an Apple product. This is because Android, is really the only real competitor to iOS.
Apple is trying to destroy the competition with patent abuse and lawsuits, rather than on the technical merits of their phone (which has already lost to the Galaxy SIII).
Well said. Apple is under no obligation to act evil and behave the way they do. It only hurts us, the consumer. We shouldn't support their behavior. I hope the hipsters are getting the message.
Agreed. Apple's heavy handed tactics and use of patents to stymie simple ideas that are no-brainers only hurts me (and other consumers). I've already been affected by Apple's behavior, in that my Google Nexus has had Local search feature removed (in the US), because Apple won an injunction against Samsung. C'mon, Local Search!? How different is that from "global" search? Google's been offering local search on its search engine for years now.
Apple is EVIL period. I will never support them by purchasing their products, and will do everything I can to undermine their marketshare as well.
According to the article, these women make between $20-25/hr just standing around. The biggest complaints seem to be:
Smiling for several hours
Standing in heels
Some perceived sexism
When I was 20 years old and still in college, I worked retail. I had to stand 8+ hours a day, and always had to smile and greet customers. I made exactly $6.54/hr. Being a man without a college degree, I did not have the same options available to me as many of my good-looking female friends, who almost always made more than me doing less work. These very women who are complaining about sexism could take a job in retail; however, they would certainly have to take a pay cut, and have to do more work.
They should be thankful that they are female, and even have the option to make $25/hr. A 21 year old male w/o a college degree has no chance to make this kind of money. These women could also go get a 4-5 year degree in, say, Computer Science and work an office job; however, I have the feeling if offered this option, many of them would continue to do what they are doing now.
The Via APC might be right for some; however, be aware that the power draw on the Via APC (uses some Chinese ARM close) will be significantly higher than on the PI.
No need to be rude -- I'm only asking what's the draw for Raspberry Pi.
How about 256MB of RAM and an ARM11 processor (many times faster than the arduino) running a full blown Linux OS. With the Raspberry Pi, you have a chance at using things such as OpenCV + cheap webcam for your projects.
The reason to choose 960x640 resolution is purely technical: to overcome their bad 3-year old decision to stick to a single resolution for application development. Quadrupling pixels is the only working solution for all the legacy apps out there.
It wasn't a bad decision. Having a fixed resolution means that apps can be designed to a pixel perfect degree. And given that 3 years later, they have been able to up the resolution in a way that means all those apps remain pixel perfect means that fixing the resolution in the first place wasn't a technological dead end.
For a desktop windowing OS, variable resolution combined with resolution independence is a good thing. Apps run in windows that can be of any size, and the generous screen space allows plenty of flexibility for apps to rearrange themselves to suit. For a screen as small as a smartphone that just doesn't work. Designers have to design very carefully to fit the app UI on the screen in a good way.
Meanwhile, Android phones have been resolution independent since v1.5 (somewhere around 2008).
I know I'll get modded down for this, but here goes...
Almost everything that Jobs will announce has already been revealed. Like the OP states, Apple fanboi's will likely hoop and hollar over anything Job's announces; however, its going to be hard for the average techie to get excited about some of the new "features" of the iphone, such as pseudo-multitasking, when the competitors such as Android and WebOS have had almost all of these features since day one.
Now with the recent release of Froyo (Android 2.2) at Google I/O, and the significant improvements brought with the upgrade, even pro-Apple sites such as Gizmodo feel that Android has Leapfrogged iPhone.
Dump the "slushbox" (the conventional automatic transmission with torque converter). There are so many ways to get the efficiency of the manual with the convenience of the automatic that it's criminal that we aren't doing it. Next, manufacturers choose gear ratios that are good for jack rabbit starts and passing while going uphill and using the air conditioning, but which are terrible for fuel economy. High gear isn't nearly high enough.
Another big one is weight reduction. We use steel because it's cheap, not because it's all that great. We can replace many steel parts with lighter ones that are just as strong or stronger. We could also revamp the safety regulations to keep things just as safe without having to weigh down the car with super strong B pillars and such. Why is it we can ride motorcycles, which are far more dangerous, but we can't bring a car from Mexico to the US because it isn't "safe" enough? We dumped the 5 mph bumper of the 1970s. We need to trim the regulations again.
Take a look at this crash test of the new Chinese Brilliance Sedan done over in Europe, and then ask yourself if you want cars made in China and Mexico on our roads. Every year, there are more and more safety regulations, thus causing vehicles to become heavier and heavier. The only car I can think of that is actually light and safe is the Smart Car.
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard you say, more than once, teaching religion to children is akin to child-abuse. I'm in agreement; however, having two young children who've had to deal with the death of their grandparents and some older relatives. I'll admit, that after their grandmother passed, I told my children that she was in heaven, as it seemed to ease their pain and the emotional sadness of her passing. As a father, an atheist and scientist, I often have conflicting opinions as to what I should tell my children about our mortality and that of their relatives. I want to tell them the truth, but the truth is, life is harsh and death is the end. What would you tell a young child about their recently deceased grandmother, and if you were to tell them that she is not in heaven, would you consider that less emotionally abusive to the child than lying to them?
I'll probably get modded down for this, but here goes...
People are trying hard to hang on to their old Win95 style workflow. Nothing wrong with that; however, for me, the old workflow with the start button and horizontal panels at the top and bottom of the screen worked better on the older 4:3 monitors. With today's 16:9 flat-panel displays being ubiquitous, having panels taking up vertical real-estate doesn't seem like such a great idea.
I personally like the way Unity and Gnome-Shell are doing things. Since today's flat panels have more horizontal real-estate, I'd prefer a DE that makes better use of it. This is what the panel in Unity and Gnome-Shell do. They get rid of the old top/bottom horizontal panel, and replace it with a vertical panel on the left. Sure, it can mess up people's work-flow, especially if they are used to the top/bottom panels from Gnome2, as I was; however, after using Gnome-Shell for a few months, I've re-worked my workflow, and actually feel more comfortable with the additional screen real estate afforded by ditching the old panels. Sure there are still issues. But I think people should try it out for themselves before complaining. Of course, it would have been nice for Gnome-Shell to at least give the option to users of having the old panel, even though, I now would never use such an option.
Phoronix ran benchmarks of all the popular Window Manager and Desktop Environments, that included: Kwin (KDE), Mutter (Gnome-Shell), XFCE and Unity. Guess who came out on top, in terms of performance?
XFCE won, with Mutter (Gnome-Shell) a very close second. The conclusion was, XFCE and Gnome 3 performed best across a wide variety of graphic drivers.
It's a valid point, but it's also not particularly difficult to avoid those consequences. Simply apply a carbon tax to imported goods as well. Get it right and not only would a carbon tax work to reduce emissions, it would also work to increase domestic manufacturing.
When has the government gotten anything right?
I think you're missing Linus's point. The point is that you don't HAVE to upgrade the kernel for any particular reason. This is not Windows world with patch Tuesdays. Linux systems can run for years without upgrades, and you CAN run new software on old kernels and vice versa. Windows revolves around different philosophy - mostly around the statement that Microsoft, with 90% of desktop under the belt can simply force all 3rd party manufactures to play ball, so they go ahead and do break the interface, force vendors to do the work, and have no qualms about breaking backwards compatibility on applications and tools. To be fair to MS they do put in a lot of effort to add compatibility modes and support legacy stuff, but with the amount of changes they do there is no way everything will work forever. It's always at most one OS generation back. Stuff that used to run on 95 or 98 now usually requires quite a bit of work to get it running again on Win7.
And talking about Mac in this context is laughable - Apple's been forcing people to BUY updated hardware and software for decades now.
Sure, you never have to upgrade the kernel, if you never change your system, or if you don't care about fixing critical vulnerabilities. However, since most drivers ship with the kernel, if you want to get the latest versions of hardware drivers, or if you add new hardware to your system, you'll need to upgrade the kernel. Not to mention, that almost every distro upgrades the kernel on each new distro release. Sure you could stay with Ubuntu 10.04; however, you are then stuck with old versions of OpenOffice, Gimp, and all major software. At least on windows, if you stay on WindowsXP, you can upgrade your software to newer versions. With most distros, you are at the mercy of the distro and their package management.
I agree, at least partly, with De Icaza's assertion that ABI breakage (binary compatibility) in each kernel release is a problem for vendors, and likely helped push hardware vendors away from supporting Linux. While in the ideal world, every vendor will release their drivers as open-source, this is the real world. There are numerous reasons (legal and others) why companies cannot or will not release their drivers as open-source (ie. Nvidia). With each new kernel release breaking binary compatibility with prior releases, this forces the companies to release a new driver every time the kernel gets updated. This might not be a problem for a big company with resources such as Nvidia; however, for smaller companies, this is likely a big reason they do not support Linux in the first place.
Case in point, Dell paid PowerVR to develop a Poulsbo graphics driver for their Dell Mini netbooks (which at the time were on Ubuntu 10.04). PowerVR developed the driver. As Ubuntu released newer versions, the driver stopped working due to the ABI breakage. Users were entirely dependent upon Dell to pay PowerVR to constantly update the driver for new Kernel releases, which they did not.
This type of continual ABI breakage is not seen in both the Mac and Windows worlds
Demand that Apple fire this motherfucker.
You incorrectly assume that Apple actually cares that Timothy Cook is a cocksucking piece of shit. It actually works out better for them (financially) that he is.
That is basically a list of things you aren't allowed to do. Now, individually, those traits aren't worthy of a lawsuit. It's the combination of those things that will send Apple Legal over to kick down your door. The Galaxy SIII was designed from the start to not infringe on any of the above; yet Apple, in their continuing douche-baggery, has now brought up more ridiculous patents to use against the SIII.
Fuck You Apple!
Apple SUCKS! I don't care what the fanbois say. I hate that they are able to dictate what is acceptable to be sold in the US. This ridiculous decision (based upon patenting a square brick with rounded edges) only hurts consumer choice.
Correct. US Patent laws suck; however, Apple's behavior, while perhaps technically within the bounds of the law, will not win them any friends or goodwill. Their evil behavior is not only targeted at Samsung, but targeted any any US consumer who does not choose an Apple product. This is because Android, is really the only real competitor to iOS. Apple is trying to destroy the competition with patent abuse and lawsuits, rather than on the technical merits of their phone (which has already lost to the Galaxy SIII).
Samsung should sue Apple when the iPhone 5 comes out with a 4" screen. Now who's copying who?
Well said. Apple is under no obligation to act evil and behave the way they do. It only hurts us, the consumer. We shouldn't support their behavior. I hope the hipsters are getting the message.
Agreed. Apple's heavy handed tactics and use of patents to stymie simple ideas that are no-brainers only hurts me (and other consumers). I've already been affected by Apple's behavior, in that my Google Nexus has had Local search feature removed (in the US), because Apple won an injunction against Samsung. C'mon, Local Search!? How different is that from "global" search? Google's been offering local search on its search engine for years now. Apple is EVIL period. I will never support them by purchasing their products, and will do everything I can to undermine their marketshare as well.
When I was 20 years old and still in college, I worked retail. I had to stand 8+ hours a day, and always had to smile and greet customers. I made exactly $6.54/hr. Being a man without a college degree, I did not have the same options available to me as many of my good-looking female friends, who almost always made more than me doing less work. These very women who are complaining about sexism could take a job in retail; however, they would certainly have to take a pay cut, and have to do more work.
They should be thankful that they are female, and even have the option to make $25/hr. A 21 year old male w/o a college degree has no chance to make this kind of money. These women could also go get a 4-5 year degree in, say, Computer Science and work an office job; however, I have the feeling if offered this option, many of them would continue to do what they are doing now.
The Via APC might be right for some; however, be aware that the power draw on the Via APC (uses some Chinese ARM close) will be significantly higher than on the PI.
No need to be rude -- I'm only asking what's the draw for Raspberry Pi.
How about 256MB of RAM and an ARM11 processor (many times faster than the arduino) running a full blown Linux OS. With the Raspberry Pi, you have a chance at using things such as OpenCV + cheap webcam for your projects.
Great, now instead of paying attention in class, we'll have a generation of young students who are experts at playing Angry Birds.
It wasn't a bad decision. Having a fixed resolution means that apps can be designed to a pixel perfect degree. And given that 3 years later, they have been able to up the resolution in a way that means all those apps remain pixel perfect means that fixing the resolution in the first place wasn't a technological dead end.
For a desktop windowing OS, variable resolution combined with resolution independence is a good thing. Apps run in windows that can be of any size, and the generous screen space allows plenty of flexibility for apps to rearrange themselves to suit. For a screen as small as a smartphone that just doesn't work. Designers have to design very carefully to fit the app UI on the screen in a good way.
Meanwhile, Android phones have been resolution independent since v1.5 (somewhere around 2008).
What would be interesting is Adblock Plus for the iPhone.
Article 3.3.4.1 of the Apple iPhone SDK prevents any software "that disables certain functionality of the core Apple API, including AdBlockers..."
I know I'll get modded down for this, but here goes...
Almost everything that Jobs will announce has already been revealed. Like the OP states, Apple fanboi's will likely hoop and hollar over anything Job's announces; however, its going to be hard for the average techie to get excited about some of the new "features" of the iphone, such as pseudo-multitasking, when the competitors such as Android and WebOS have had almost all of these features since day one.
Now with the recent release of Froyo (Android 2.2) at Google I/O, and the significant improvements brought with the upgrade, even pro-Apple sites such as Gizmodo feel that Android has Leapfrogged iPhone.
They must be banished from the compound and no believer may ever speak with them again.
Father Steve, you have spoken your wish. We shall obey..
Dump the "slushbox" (the conventional automatic transmission with torque converter). There are so many ways to get the efficiency of the manual with the convenience of the automatic that it's criminal that we aren't doing it. Next, manufacturers choose gear ratios that are good for jack rabbit starts and passing while going uphill and using the air conditioning, but which are terrible for fuel economy. High gear isn't nearly high enough.
You mean like the automated 5 speed manual transmission in the Smart Car or the 6-speed dual-clutch DSG automatic transmission in the VW Jetta? Both of which do away with the wasteful torque convertor and gain about 10-15% efficiency over your typical "slush box" auto tranny.
Another big one is weight reduction. We use steel because it's cheap, not because it's all that great. We can replace many steel parts with lighter ones that are just as strong or stronger. We could also revamp the safety regulations to keep things just as safe without having to weigh down the car with super strong B pillars and such. Why is it we can ride motorcycles, which are far more dangerous, but we can't bring a car from Mexico to the US because it isn't "safe" enough? We dumped the 5 mph bumper of the 1970s. We need to trim the regulations again.
Take a look at this crash test of the new Chinese Brilliance Sedan done over in Europe, and then ask yourself if you want cars made in China and Mexico on our roads. Every year, there are more and more safety regulations, thus causing vehicles to become heavier and heavier. The only car I can think of that is actually light and safe is the Smart Car.
Perhaps each should pay a fee to use the name "Linux?"
Linus tried this, and it hasn't gone over very well..
Now anyone can try to detect lies with the GPL Lie Detector for Linux.
There is an ongoing discussion about the possibility of porting Gnome 3 to use the Qt toolkit over at Ubuntu Forums.
There also exists an Ubuntu Brainstorm Idea with several possible solutions, with Solution #4: Change Qt to render using the Gtk widgets my favorite.