Or the fact that, currently, Writely doesn't even have the most basic functionality like utilizing the INSERT key on the keyboard?
Sorry, but it's not going to replace any Microsoft Office product until the program works like *every other* word process on the most basic level. I'm pretty sure that feature won't be a deal breaker anywhere. Most people regard that as more of an annoyance, because insert is too close to delete. For that matter, no feature that small will ever be a deal breaker when there is this much cash at stake. Such a feature is too easy to add if it becomes a big issue. And if you think every other word processor works the same way on a low level, you must have a very narrow definition of "word processor". Besides, any company that is open to the idea of an online collaborative productivity suite should also be open to the idea of improving the user interface.
And you can't forget all the changes Microsoft has been making and trying to make with recent Office versions. The ribbon is a pretty big change, and puts Office halfway between the old toolbar style and the Mac palette system. And even Google Docs doesn't stick with the traditional toolbar paradigm. It uses something akin to the ribbon.
Code for driving a nuclear reactor has to be absolutely correct. It is a hard realtime system, and the implementor must be able to show that, in the event of a problem, the code will react in a maximum of x clock cycles - where x is quite low. Regardless of what else the system is doing. Now, the load for a reactor control system is pretty predictable, but the code must be able to properly react even when it is flooded with warnings. Writing code that will always react within a set deadline is a challenge, and really adds to the complexity of the software design.
These days, there is no reason to use PAE. I was just pointing out that it has been an option for almost more than 11 years. The 4Gb barrier has not been an architectural problem. It has been a problem of poor windows support and expensive RAM.
Almost all intel processors, starting with the pentium pro, support PAE, which allows up to 64Gb of RAM. This was supported only by the Advanced and Datacenter server editions of Win2k, and by the enterprise version of Win2k3. Unix operating systems, however, have very good support for PAE. For a single application to be able to use more that 4Gb of RAM, though, it needs to be properly written to be PAE aware. Without using PAE, the maximum memory available for a single app is 3Gb on Windows.
I'm pretty sure modern medicine is not having as big an effect on natural selection as modern law. Just look at how many Darwin-Award activities are illegal. By outlawing things that are obviously stupid and dangerous (driving w/o seatbelt, letting kids play with loaded guns, mucking about with radioactive isotopes, etc.) we significantly decrease the chance that imbeciles will kill themselves before they can breed. The same goes for all the silly warning labels. We should just make a law stating that the manufacturer of a device is not at all liable when somebody dumber than average does something that an average person is smart enough to refrain from.
Sure, it makes things safer for the rest of us, but is it really good for the species in the long run?
It seems to me that the whole 95% argument stems from the fact that a user can readily identify what he considers to be the rough edges, and how he thinks they could be improved. With software like gnome, a small tweak to the UI behavior is usually very easy to implement once it is precisely described by the complainant.
The only real barrier to 100% satisfaction is the configuration UI. Given enough time, users will identify all behaviors that they want changed in their UI. For somebody who considers gnome 95% right, the remaining 5% cannot be fundamental changes, pretty much by definition.
The Planets Suite is really good, so why does the video have such a bad recording? I can't tell who put it together, but I know there are better recordings of Jupiter availible on the web for free, legally. Why did they have to use a recording that sounds like a middle school orchestra?
You certainly don't own the work, but you definitely own the DVD on which your licensed copy resides. That seems to imply ownership of a copy of the software (along with ownership of a license for said software).
Anytime buying a product directly results in you obtaining a copy of the software on a physical medium, you become the owner of that copy of the software.
My point exactly. It seems like Walmart is targeting Windows users who are willing to buy music online, but have not heard of iPods and iTunes. A very small market for Walmart's tastes. It seems like there has to be something more to this than just a silly "mee too" effort.
Once your software can take advantage of about 8 cores, it is probably scalable enough to take advantage of core increases almost as well as clock speed increases.
Extortion really isn't that bad in a situation like this (and this is far from extortion). If I were a freelance programmer with a reasonable amount of business, I would do this. Anybody who tells me to write bad code would find their prices increasing rapidly. Anybody who insults my expertise will see an even faster increase in prices. Just par for the course when you are in control of your job and pricing.
No. This is Walmart's competitor to the iTunes Store. And Mac users are not welcome. It's almost as if Walmart doesnt't want to actually succeed. They've up and launched a competing solution, and then told a very large chunk of potential switchers that there will be no easy migration. This goes way beyond stupid and in to the territory of not working in stockholder's interests.
We all know that there are no technical reasons for Walmart's store to be IE only. Either Walmart does not want the store to be successful, or they are being bribed to make it IE-only, or their studio-approved DRM is Windows-only. No matter what, there is something underhanded going on here.
Teaching teenagers how to be responsible is very very hard. Neurologically speaking, it is always an uphill battle, and frequently only time can impart wisdom. When you consider that most parents don't have the time or willpower to be tough when they should, it is hardly surprising that teen pregnancies are so common.
But back to that kind of teaching being hard: of the several teenage Eagle Scouts I know, only one is currently capable of getting along in life independently, and barely (his cooking is pretty bad). Also related to scouting, it is very interesting watching a very mature 13 year old become a raving pyromaniac for a few years, and then go back to being a respectable young man and often a good leader. In most cases, if you can get a kid through the teenage years without too much legal trouble and no bad car accidents, they will end up fine, and it can be hard to imagine the person as they were during the wild teenage years.
Most LCDs polarize the light in one direction. If you are wearing polarized sunglasses, you can only read the screen when the polarized light coming out of the LCD aligns with the filter in the sunglasses. If the light is polarized at a right angle to the direction of the filter, then the screen will appear pretty much black. Since the user interface involves modes with the screen being rotated by 90 degrees, a regular LCD would only be visible through sunglasses in one of the two modes.
There are ways around this, though. Circular polarizers are becoming more common in devices to be used outdoors. I can't attest to how the iPod screen polarizes light, as I have neither iPod nor sunglasses handy.
While that is an exaggeration (at least for public health spending), it is intimately connected with the fact that it is very hard to secure funding for prevention programs. As for the assertion that non-communicable diseases are the bulk of spending, that is often not the case. It just happpens that it has been a while since there was a major threat like polio. MRSA and bird flu, however, are waiting in the wings to become epidemics on the policy-altering scale.
And on the subject of public health costs: Yes, Medicare pays for a lot of things that are consequenses of people not dying as young as they used to. But look at the spending for a county level public health agency, and you see a lot going to non-disease related programs, such as prenatal care, drug rehab, child vaccinations, and in some areas, mental health and social services (foster parents, child abuse, etc.). Public health is far from geriatric care and epidiemology.
I'm not trying to imply that you don't know any of this, but it doesn't seem like many slashdotters do.
It worked for 3dfx in a simpler era. My Voodoo3 can still do hardware 3d acceleration in Linux.
First and foremost, free and open drivers would be integrated into the operating system far more easily. All linux and bsd distributions would be able to provide out-of-the-box 3d acceleration to better than 95% of the pc userbase. That means a lot when it comes to eye candy. Things like glitz could be brought up to universal compatibility, and XGL and AIGLX would be able to move forward much faster with the larger user and developer base.
The similarities go beyond that - Halo was originally concieved as a massively multiplayer Mac game. It underwent some big changes to become a single player console shooter.
Slashdot Mirror
He called B$, not FUD. Just because it is a bald-faced lie doesn't mean it is FUD.
Sorry, but it's not going to replace any Microsoft Office product until the program works like *every other* word process on the most basic level. I'm pretty sure that feature won't be a deal breaker anywhere. Most people regard that as more of an annoyance, because insert is too close to delete. For that matter, no feature that small will ever be a deal breaker when there is this much cash at stake. Such a feature is too easy to add if it becomes a big issue. And if you think every other word processor works the same way on a low level, you must have a very narrow definition of "word processor". Besides, any company that is open to the idea of an online collaborative productivity suite should also be open to the idea of improving the user interface.
And you can't forget all the changes Microsoft has been making and trying to make with recent Office versions. The ribbon is a pretty big change, and puts Office halfway between the old toolbar style and the Mac palette system. And even Google Docs doesn't stick with the traditional toolbar paradigm. It uses something akin to the ribbon.
People have a way of making poor choices when they are in over their head...
Code for driving a nuclear reactor has to be absolutely correct. It is a hard realtime system, and the implementor must be able to show that, in the event of a problem, the code will react in a maximum of x clock cycles - where x is quite low. Regardless of what else the system is doing. Now, the load for a reactor control system is pretty predictable, but the code must be able to properly react even when it is flooded with warnings. Writing code that will always react within a set deadline is a challenge, and really adds to the complexity of the software design.
These days, there is no reason to use PAE. I was just pointing out that it has been an option for almost more than 11 years. The 4Gb barrier has not been an architectural problem. It has been a problem of poor windows support and expensive RAM.
Almost all intel processors, starting with the pentium pro, support PAE, which allows up to 64Gb of RAM. This was supported only by the Advanced and Datacenter server editions of Win2k, and by the enterprise version of Win2k3. Unix operating systems, however, have very good support for PAE. For a single application to be able to use more that 4Gb of RAM, though, it needs to be properly written to be PAE aware. Without using PAE, the maximum memory available for a single app is 3Gb on Windows.
I'm pretty sure modern medicine is not having as big an effect on natural selection as modern law. Just look at how many Darwin-Award activities are illegal. By outlawing things that are obviously stupid and dangerous (driving w/o seatbelt, letting kids play with loaded guns, mucking about with radioactive isotopes, etc.) we significantly decrease the chance that imbeciles will kill themselves before they can breed. The same goes for all the silly warning labels. We should just make a law stating that the manufacturer of a device is not at all liable when somebody dumber than average does something that an average person is smart enough to refrain from.
Sure, it makes things safer for the rest of us, but is it really good for the species in the long run?
It seems to me that the whole 95% argument stems from the fact that a user can readily identify what he considers to be the rough edges, and how he thinks they could be improved. With software like gnome, a small tweak to the UI behavior is usually very easy to implement once it is precisely described by the complainant.
The only real barrier to 100% satisfaction is the configuration UI. Given enough time, users will identify all behaviors that they want changed in their UI. For somebody who considers gnome 95% right, the remaining 5% cannot be fundamental changes, pretty much by definition.
Just be warned that the copyright status is in dispute.
The Planets Suite is really good, so why does the video have such a bad recording? I can't tell who put it together, but I know there are better recordings of Jupiter availible on the web for free, legally. Why did they have to use a recording that sounds like a middle school orchestra?
You certainly don't own the work, but you definitely own the DVD on which your licensed copy resides. That seems to imply ownership of a copy of the software (along with ownership of a license for said software).
Anytime buying a product directly results in you obtaining a copy of the software on a physical medium, you become the owner of that copy of the software.
My point exactly. It seems like Walmart is targeting Windows users who are willing to buy music online, but have not heard of iPods and iTunes. A very small market for Walmart's tastes. It seems like there has to be something more to this than just a silly "mee too" effort.
Once your software can take advantage of about 8 cores, it is probably scalable enough to take advantage of core increases almost as well as clock speed increases.
TFA said that this would not be marketed to consumers - only the military. Military technology is a political issue.
Extortion really isn't that bad in a situation like this (and this is far from extortion). If I were a freelance programmer with a reasonable amount of business, I would do this. Anybody who tells me to write bad code would find their prices increasing rapidly. Anybody who insults my expertise will see an even faster increase in prices. Just par for the course when you are in control of your job and pricing.
No. This is Walmart's competitor to the iTunes Store. And Mac users are not welcome. It's almost as if Walmart doesnt't want to actually succeed. They've up and launched a competing solution, and then told a very large chunk of potential switchers that there will be no easy migration. This goes way beyond stupid and in to the territory of not working in stockholder's interests.
We all know that there are no technical reasons for Walmart's store to be IE only. Either Walmart does not want the store to be successful, or they are being bribed to make it IE-only, or their studio-approved DRM is Windows-only. No matter what, there is something underhanded going on here.
Teaching teenagers how to be responsible is very very hard. Neurologically speaking, it is always an uphill battle, and frequently only time can impart wisdom. When you consider that most parents don't have the time or willpower to be tough when they should, it is hardly surprising that teen pregnancies are so common.
But back to that kind of teaching being hard: of the several teenage Eagle Scouts I know, only one is currently capable of getting along in life independently, and barely (his cooking is pretty bad). Also related to scouting, it is very interesting watching a very mature 13 year old become a raving pyromaniac for a few years, and then go back to being a respectable young man and often a good leader. In most cases, if you can get a kid through the teenage years without too much legal trouble and no bad car accidents, they will end up fine, and it can be hard to imagine the person as they were during the wild teenage years.
Interesting. I hadn't heard of those. Too bad it would effectively disable the touch sensitivity.
If Apple really splits Pages into two modes as rumored, Microsoft will surely come up with at least three.
Most LCDs polarize the light in one direction. If you are wearing polarized sunglasses, you can only read the screen when the polarized light coming out of the LCD aligns with the filter in the sunglasses. If the light is polarized at a right angle to the direction of the filter, then the screen will appear pretty much black. Since the user interface involves modes with the screen being rotated by 90 degrees, a regular LCD would only be visible through sunglasses in one of the two modes.
There are ways around this, though. Circular polarizers are becoming more common in devices to be used outdoors. I can't attest to how the iPod screen polarizes light, as I have neither iPod nor sunglasses handy.
Apple will pretty much have to deliver this with the iPhone beause of the portrait/landscape switching.
While that is an exaggeration (at least for public health spending), it is intimately connected with the fact that it is very hard to secure funding for prevention programs. As for the assertion that non-communicable diseases are the bulk of spending, that is often not the case. It just happpens that it has been a while since there was a major threat like polio. MRSA and bird flu, however, are waiting in the wings to become epidemics on the policy-altering scale.
And on the subject of public health costs: Yes, Medicare pays for a lot of things that are consequenses of people not dying as young as they used to. But look at the spending for a county level public health agency, and you see a lot going to non-disease related programs, such as prenatal care, drug rehab, child vaccinations, and in some areas, mental health and social services (foster parents, child abuse, etc.). Public health is far from geriatric care and epidiemology.
I'm not trying to imply that you don't know any of this, but it doesn't seem like many slashdotters do.
It worked for 3dfx in a simpler era. My Voodoo3 can still do hardware 3d acceleration in Linux.
First and foremost, free and open drivers would be integrated into the operating system far more easily. All linux and bsd distributions would be able to provide out-of-the-box 3d acceleration to better than 95% of the pc userbase. That means a lot when it comes to eye candy. Things like glitz could be brought up to universal compatibility, and XGL and AIGLX would be able to move forward much faster with the larger user and developer base.
Let me be the first to say:
Whoosh!
The similarities go beyond that - Halo was originally concieved as a massively multiplayer Mac game. It underwent some big changes to become a single player console shooter.