An alternative for Linux users is KDEConnect (may work on Mac/Windows with some effort, but not supported). Not quite the same and requires an application installed on the desktop computer rather than working over the web, but offers more functionality and definitely more privacy.
A short features list from the github (https://github.com/KDE/kdeconnect-kde) page:
- Shared clipboard: copy and paste between your phone and your computer (or any other device).
- Notification sync: Read and reply to your Android notifications from the desktop.
- Share files and URLs instantly from one device to another.
- Multimedia remote control: Use your phone as a remote for Linux media players.
- Virtual touchpad: Use your phone screen as your computer's touchpad and keyboard.
This operates over your existing WiFi network using TLS encryption.
The SMS support is still a work in progress, but currently you can receive notifications on your desktop of incoming text messages and reply to them. Can't initiate yet, but that's coming.
Based on your UID (plus I know you've been hanging around these parts for a long while) I would wager you are not a student in a US math class. This story isn't about you, so maybe hover your finger over the submit button before clicking to decide whether you are contributing to the conversation.
If you are a student, or (more precisely, because we pay for these devices) a parent of a student in the school system, this story has some relevance, because it's about what the bureaucracy requires whether you like it or not. This is good news for those people.
You, Mr. Frosty Piss, can use whatever calculator you want. Have fun with that.
Asimov wrote fiction. Autonomous systems that kill are a threat to a small subset of humanity until they run out of ammo/fuel/energy/goals. Maybe if these autonomous systems are self-replicating, self-programming, and can manufacture their own fuel and ammunition, then they might pose a threat. All of humanity? Unlikely. As the most vicious predator on the planet atop the food chain, humanity is pretty good at eliminating threats. There won't even be any ethical constraints to worry about, so I suspect that rogue "advanced robot weapons" would not last very long.
I have music disks that I purchased in the mid 80's near the dawn of the CD era that still play fine. I buy used CDs from Goodwill that aren't quite that old, but I've yet to find one that doesn't play due to deterioration. Same with the public library. The only thing that seems to affect playability is scratches or actual damage to the data layer.
Yes, there are risks to running software from Microsoft (or any other vendor), Microsoft may not have my best interests in mind. However their software meets my needs and I have made the calculation that the value the software provides outweighs the risks.
I think what you're missing is that your calculation is rapidly becoming inaccurate. In the past, Microsoft had to make sure that their software met your (the customer's) needs or they would lose that customer. Their best interest was to prioritize the best interests of their customer base, because they would then keep buying Windows-based computers which is where the revenue came from. Now that the market has shifted, they are placing their interests before that of the customer, and the value of the OS is thus diminished. What people are talking about is not the status quo you refer to that has been true for a few decades, rather it's the status quo that seems to be coming which looks much different. It's one in which you are not the customer to which the software needs to provide value, you are the product. The software will be providing value to the actual customers of Microsoft, which are likely those who want to advertise to you, sell to you and monitor you.
1. It's a "sun roof" so keeping it clear in the winter isn't exactly a common use case.
2. The area covered by the sun roof relative to the rest of the roof is relatively small. Putting heating wires in the glass only won't do much good, since there will still be snow on the rest of the roof. You still have to clear the rest manually, often to comply with local laws about clearing vehicles of snow before driving.
3. You don't really need to see out the top of the vehicle to drive safely, so it's an added expense for dubious benefit.
4. Clearing snow off a vehicle isn't a bad thing to do, so really the problem to be solved is how to do that for the entire top of the car, not just the sun roof. But that's a lot harder and more prone to problems than the back window.
The old media companies are infamous for their inflexibility, so this comes as no surprise. The only way to break them is to actually start taking sizable portions of their market by producing well received content but when you get to that point, you might as well tell them to fuck off because you don't actually need them anymore.
That seems to describe the conclusion that Netflix came to. Amazon as well. Maybe to a lesser degree some of the larger movie channels like HBO, Showtime, AMC. The latter were earlier to produce their own content, I think, but couldn't go very far with it because they still have to rely on the cable companies to deliver the content, so that limits their potential subscriber base and revenue. They can't sink too much into their own programming, because the cable companies still control the purse strings, so the best they can do is negotiate a higher rate for carrying their channels. If subscribership increases, the cable companies still benefit the most. Netflix and Amazon, on the other hand, don't have their hands tied to the same degree - the only real dependency on cable is the network connection. Any increase in subscribership means a real and substantial increase in revenue. Their efforts in producing quality original content has paid off, and seems to have been worth the investment, and if they continue to be successful, they will eventually build up a catalog that includes a large proportion of what people want to watch, and the content from the old media companies will have to compete with the reality that most of the people are on one of these services and won't watch their stuff unless it's available there.
I won't argue that the iPhone is a successful product - clearly it is. The uncritical leap from reasonable statements about its success as a product to the "so much more" and "enabler of change" bugs me a bit. The blatant worship makes me question the entire article and leads me to believe that the reality is somewhat less profound. And that's too bad, because it takes away from the deserved praise that the iPhone and Apple should receive for their success. I've heard of "damning with faint praise". Now I've actually seen "damning with overenthusiastic praise" in action. As always, the middle path is the place to walk.
No. It's irrelevant and doesn't belong. I didn't really notice this until today, but now that I have, I find it quite bothersome. I don't know if it's just being clever or a form of interstitial advertising. I don't know where the/. summaries are re-posted on the net, but I could see these unrelated references being an attempt to draw people to/. by other means if they aren't interested in the topic presented by the main body of the summary.
If I had to articulate why it's bothersome, it's because it violates one of the fundamental principles of clear communication that was taught to me repeatedly during my formative years: every word, sentence, paragraph and punctuation mark should be relevant to the self-contained bit of information you are trying to communicate. If not relevant, it doesn't belong.
That is prominently noted in the second paragraph of Haushofer's CV. He cites a 2010 Nature paper by Melanie I. Stefan as a source of inspiration and provides 4 examples of similar works (see the CV for that - I'm not doing all your work for you - LOL).
Verizon's trying to side step this with their payment plan scheme. You don't pay full price up front, just the sales tax. Then you pay monthly installments with the option to pay off the device at any time (after an initial grace period). The net result is the same as subsidies except the cost of the phone is more transparent.
I haven't looked at the statistics to see if this is working, but given the number of people that lease automobiles and get a new one every few years or so, I can see people doing the same for phones.
Linus was incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
How many men could have been at the same place and time, and simply fail the job? (True for Linus Torvalds, also Bill Gates, etc...)
This.
I used to think the "right place at the right time" argument had some merit. It's probably still true a little bit, but only as an opportunity for Linus. It was when I saw how rapidly git was developed and became reliable and usable that I realized it was no fluke. Either Linus was incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time *twice*, or the "luck" argument is nonsense.
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/li... "This is being written to try to explain why Linux does not have a binary kernel interface, nor does it have a stable kernel interface."
Good God, that's tripe:
Executive Summary ----------------- You think you want a stable kernel interface, but you really do not, and you don't even know it. What you want is a stable running driver, and you get that only if your driver is in the main kernel tree. You also get lots of other good benefits if your driver is in the main kernel tree, all of which has made Linux into such a strong, stable, and mature operating system which is the reason you are using it in the first place.
How fucking arrogant does one have to be to tell me what I want?
How stupid do you have to be to realize that what you want may not be what you need?
I'd rather make a decision that turns out to be wrong later than waffle about possible alternatives for too long
Linux was successful because most of his decisions turned out to be right. The guy is a genius.
QFT, I would actually further argue it is lucky he was right so often as he has shown a complete arrogance and unwillingness to admit when he is wrong despite what he says.
Nope. Linus is perfectly willing to admit he is wrong when proven so. Don't confuse that with backing down out of politeness to appease and avoid confrontation. He doesn't do that, and thank goodness for that.
Here's the thing that many people don't understand: Linus places *technical correctness* above all else.
That is one of the reasons Linux has been successful - he is unwilling to compromise that technical correctness for the sake of politeness, "getting along", appeasement, "business reasons" and the like. That, coupled with the fact that he's a very good engineer and project leader has kept the project on a steady path of constant and *consistent* improvement.
In the early years of the project, that was really important, IMHO, because Linux wasn't perfect and often inferior to an existing technology. But it was good enough, generally rock solid when it got things right and everyone could count on the fact that it would improve rapidly and consistently without much backsliding, if any. In other words, what Linux was good at, you could count on staying good, and what it wasn't good at *yet*, you could count on getting better in the future.
Now that I think about it, that sense of future reliability was probably a very important factor in the success of Linux, because it allowed people to lay the foundations for projects and businesses that relied on Linux, and by they time they were ready to go into production, the kernel was solid enough handle the job, usually at a fraction of the cost of existing commercial solutions. In other words, Linux turned out to be a safe bet. So Linux adoption was quite rapid (as soon as it was ready to take on a task, if not slightly before) and steadily increasing. I attribute that in no small part to Linus and the rest of the kernel developers, both because of the 'willingness to be wrong' (which kept the project moving steadily) and the complete unwillingness to let things stay wrong when it was clear they were.
Why pay expensive fees for "Robo-Advice" when you can just as well run your own. Maybe the advice isn't quite as good, but if you do just about as well within a range, the savings on fees is still a net gain. I wonder if something like Mycroft (https://mycroft.ai/) driving an appropriate engine with input from a wide community with the right expertise could produce a 'good-enough' robo advisor to deal with the same situations the RBS ones do.
Yep. Plenty of people were mighty suspicious of user accounts, in part due to privacy concerns and didn't actually sign up for quite awhile. I held out quite a bit longer than you, though we were probably around for about the same time (pretty much from the start). And when they did sign up, they usually used a nick, not their own name.
At one point in the last couple of years, I was on the verge of bringing up the change password dialog, typing a bunch of random characters, NOT recording it and logging out. So I would not be able to log in again even if tempted.
After some consideration, rather than just give up on the site, I moved/. to the bottom of my daily links list and started focusing my time and attention elsewhere, while checking back only occasionally.
I'm beginning to be glad I didn't. Thanks for the positive changes.
The real challenge will be to get those who did give up to return and give/. another try (and then stick around).
What's that strange feeling? Why, I believe it's hope. How unusual.
Wanting to be able to scan a document wireless from a multi-function printer?
It's not FOSS, but VueScan (scanning software) does an excellent job of this, and is excellent in general. It's very actively maintained and seems to support just about every device out there. I bought a license many years ago and have been happy with it since.
Slashdot Mirror
An alternative for Linux users is KDEConnect (may work on Mac/Windows with some effort, but not supported). Not quite the same and requires an application installed on the desktop computer rather than working over the web, but offers more functionality and definitely more privacy.
A short features list from the github (https://github.com/KDE/kdeconnect-kde) page:
- Shared clipboard: copy and paste between your phone and your computer (or any other device).
- Notification sync: Read and reply to your Android notifications from the desktop.
- Share files and URLs instantly from one device to another.
- Multimedia remote control: Use your phone as a remote for Linux media players.
- Virtual touchpad: Use your phone screen as your computer's touchpad and keyboard.
This operates over your existing WiFi network using TLS encryption.
The SMS support is still a work in progress, but currently you can receive notifications on your desktop of incoming text messages and reply to them. Can't initiate yet, but that's coming.
https://community.kde.org/KDEC...
Based on your UID (plus I know you've been hanging around these parts for a long while) I would wager you are not a student in a US math class. This story isn't about you, so maybe hover your finger over the submit button before clicking to decide whether you are contributing to the conversation.
If you are a student, or (more precisely, because we pay for these devices) a parent of a student in the school system, this story has some relevance, because it's about what the bureaucracy requires whether you like it or not. This is good news for those people.
You, Mr. Frosty Piss, can use whatever calculator you want. Have fun with that.
> The human body is the most complex organism in the known universe ...
Found the anthropocentrist.
LOL. Post of the day. Thanks!
Asimov wrote fiction. Autonomous systems that kill are a threat to a small subset of humanity until they run out of ammo/fuel/energy/goals. Maybe if these autonomous systems are self-replicating, self-programming, and can manufacture their own fuel and ammunition, then they might pose a threat. All of humanity? Unlikely. As the most vicious predator on the planet atop the food chain, humanity is pretty good at eliminating threats. There won't even be any ethical constraints to worry about, so I suspect that rogue "advanced robot weapons" would not last very long.
I have music disks that I purchased in the mid 80's near the dawn of the CD era that still play fine. I buy used CDs from Goodwill that aren't quite that old, but I've yet to find one that doesn't play due to deterioration. Same with the public library. The only thing that seems to affect playability is scratches or actual damage to the data layer.
I'd call that pretty durable.
Bravo. Your post is "post of the day" for me. Well said.
Yes, there are risks to running software from Microsoft (or any other vendor), Microsoft may not have my best interests in mind. However their software meets my needs and I have made the calculation that the value the software provides outweighs the risks.
I think what you're missing is that your calculation is rapidly becoming inaccurate. In the past, Microsoft had to make sure that their software met your (the customer's) needs or they would lose that customer. Their best interest was to prioritize the best interests of their customer base, because they would then keep buying Windows-based computers which is where the revenue came from. Now that the market has shifted, they are placing their interests before that of the customer, and the value of the OS is thus diminished. What people are talking about is not the status quo you refer to that has been true for a few decades, rather it's the status quo that seems to be coming which looks much different. It's one in which you are not the customer to which the software needs to provide value, you are the product. The software will be providing value to the actual customers of Microsoft, which are likely those who want to advertise to you, sell to you and monitor you.
Have you considered a career as a fiction writer?
This brings to thought several things:
1. It's a "sun roof" so keeping it clear in the winter isn't exactly a common use case.
2. The area covered by the sun roof relative to the rest of the roof is relatively small. Putting heating wires in the glass only won't do much good, since there will still be snow on the rest of the roof. You still have to clear the rest manually, often to comply with local laws about clearing vehicles of snow before driving.
3. You don't really need to see out the top of the vehicle to drive safely, so it's an added expense for dubious benefit.
4. Clearing snow off a vehicle isn't a bad thing to do, so really the problem to be solved is how to do that for the entire top of the car, not just the sun roof. But that's a lot harder and more prone to problems than the back window.
The old media companies are infamous for their inflexibility, so this comes as no surprise. The only way to break them is to actually start taking sizable portions of their market by producing well received content but when you get to that point, you might as well tell them to fuck off because you don't actually need them anymore.
That seems to describe the conclusion that Netflix came to. Amazon as well. Maybe to a lesser degree some of the larger movie channels like HBO, Showtime, AMC. The latter were earlier to produce their own content, I think, but couldn't go very far with it because they still have to rely on the cable companies to deliver the content, so that limits their potential subscriber base and revenue. They can't sink too much into their own programming, because the cable companies still control the purse strings, so the best they can do is negotiate a higher rate for carrying their channels. If subscribership increases, the cable companies still benefit the most. Netflix and Amazon, on the other hand, don't have their hands tied to the same degree - the only real dependency on cable is the network connection. Any increase in subscribership means a real and substantial increase in revenue. Their efforts in producing quality original content has paid off, and seems to have been worth the investment, and if they continue to be successful, they will eventually build up a catalog that includes a large proportion of what people want to watch, and the content from the old media companies will have to compete with the reality that most of the people are on one of these services and won't watch their stuff unless it's available there.
I won't argue that the iPhone is a successful product - clearly it is. The uncritical leap from reasonable statements about its success as a product to the "so much more" and "enabler of change" bugs me a bit. The blatant worship makes me question the entire article and leads me to believe that the reality is somewhat less profound. And that's too bad, because it takes away from the deserved praise that the iPhone and Apple should receive for their success. I've heard of "damning with faint praise". Now I've actually seen "damning with overenthusiastic praise" in action. As always, the middle path is the place to walk.
No. It's irrelevant and doesn't belong. I didn't really notice this until today, but now that I have, I find it quite bothersome. I don't know if it's just being clever or a form of interstitial advertising. I don't know where the /. summaries are re-posted on the net, but I could see these unrelated references being an attempt to draw people to /. by other means if they aren't interested in the topic presented by the main body of the summary.
If I had to articulate why it's bothersome, it's because it violates one of the fundamental principles of clear communication that was taught to me repeatedly during my formative years: every word, sentence, paragraph and punctuation mark should be relevant to the self-contained bit of information you are trying to communicate. If not relevant, it doesn't belong.
It's called a "shadow CV". Haushofer is hardly the first to post one.
For example, from 2012:
https://dynamicecology.wordpre...
That is prominently noted in the second paragraph of Haushofer's CV. He cites a 2010 Nature paper by Melanie I. Stefan as a source of inspiration and provides 4 examples of similar works (see the CV for that - I'm not doing all your work for you - LOL).
Typo in editorial addendum. Apple's CEO is *Tim* Cook, as it says right in the URL immediately following.
Measure twice, cut once.
Verizon's trying to side step this with their payment plan scheme. You don't pay full price up front, just the sales tax. Then you pay monthly installments with the option to pay off the device at any time (after an initial grace period). The net result is the same as subsidies except the cost of the phone is more transparent.
I haven't looked at the statistics to see if this is working, but given the number of people that lease automobiles and get a new one every few years or so, I can see people doing the same for phones.
Linus was incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
How many men could have been at the same place and time, and simply fail the job? (True for Linus Torvalds, also Bill Gates, etc...)
This.
I used to think the "right place at the right time" argument had some merit. It's probably still true a little bit, but only as an opportunity for Linus. It was when I saw how rapidly git was developed and became reliable and usable that I realized it was no fluke. Either Linus was incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time *twice*, or the "luck" argument is nonsense.
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/li...
"This is being written to try to explain why Linux does not have a binary
kernel interface, nor does it have a stable kernel interface."
Good God, that's tripe:
Executive Summary
-----------------
You think you want a stable kernel interface, but you really do not, and
you don't even know it. What you want is a stable running driver, and
you get that only if your driver is in the main kernel tree. You also
get lots of other good benefits if your driver is in the main kernel
tree, all of which has made Linux into such a strong, stable, and mature
operating system which is the reason you are using it in the first
place.
How fucking arrogant does one have to be to tell me what I want?
How stupid do you have to be to realize that what you want may not be what you need?
I'd rather make a decision that turns out to be wrong later than waffle about possible alternatives for too long
Linux was successful because most of his decisions turned out to be right. The guy is a genius.
QFT, I would actually further argue it is lucky he was right so often as he has shown a complete arrogance and unwillingness to admit when he is wrong despite what he says.
Nope. Linus is perfectly willing to admit he is wrong when proven so. Don't confuse that with backing down out of politeness to appease and avoid confrontation. He doesn't do that, and thank goodness for that.
Here's the thing that many people don't understand: Linus places *technical correctness* above all else.
That is one of the reasons Linux has been successful - he is unwilling to compromise that technical correctness for the sake of politeness, "getting along", appeasement, "business reasons" and the like. That, coupled with the fact that he's a very good engineer and project leader has kept the project on a steady path of constant and *consistent* improvement.
In the early years of the project, that was really important, IMHO, because Linux wasn't perfect and often inferior to an existing technology. But it was good enough, generally rock solid when it got things right and everyone could count on the fact that it would improve rapidly and consistently without much backsliding, if any. In other words, what Linux was good at, you could count on staying good, and what it wasn't good at *yet*, you could count on getting better in the future.
Now that I think about it, that sense of future reliability was probably a very important factor in the success of Linux, because it allowed people to lay the foundations for projects and businesses that relied on Linux, and by they time they were ready to go into production, the kernel was solid enough handle the job, usually at a fraction of the cost of existing commercial solutions. In other words, Linux turned out to be a safe bet. So Linux adoption was quite rapid (as soon as it was ready to take on a task, if not slightly before) and steadily increasing. I attribute that in no small part to Linus and the rest of the kernel developers, both because of the 'willingness to be wrong' (which kept the project moving steadily) and the complete unwillingness to let things stay wrong when it was clear they were.
Why pay expensive fees for "Robo-Advice" when you can just as well run your own. Maybe the advice isn't quite as good, but if you do just about as well within a range, the savings on fees is still a net gain. I wonder if something like Mycroft (https://mycroft.ai/) driving an appropriate engine with input from a wide community with the right expertise could produce a 'good-enough' robo advisor to deal with the same situations the RBS ones do.
Wow - it's a reunion. Good times. :-)
Yep. Plenty of people were mighty suspicious of user accounts, in part due to privacy concerns and didn't actually sign up for quite awhile. I held out quite a bit longer than you, though we were probably around for about the same time (pretty much from the start). And when they did sign up, they usually used a nick, not their own name.
At one point in the last couple of years, I was on the verge of bringing up the change password dialog, typing a bunch of random characters, NOT recording it and logging out. So I would not be able to log in again even if tempted.
After some consideration, rather than just give up on the site, I moved /. to the bottom of my daily links list and started focusing my time and attention elsewhere, while checking back only occasionally.
I'm beginning to be glad I didn't. Thanks for the positive changes.
The real challenge will be to get those who did give up to return and give /. another try (and then stick around).
What's that strange feeling? Why, I believe it's hope. How unusual.
And nothing of value was lost.
Wanting to be able to scan a document wireless from a multi-function printer?
It's not FOSS, but VueScan (scanning software) does an excellent job of this, and is excellent in general. It's very actively maintained and seems to support just about every device out there. I bought a license many years ago and have been happy with it since.
https://www.hamrick.com/