I get quite confused with these occasionally. But maybe the point is that they have a vision of how things should be done, and do it. I'm not convinced it's so much insisting on being different, rather then just doing things in a way they see best. You mention having to look it up, I bump into that a lot, but the good part is that when you have to look something up you find the answer far easier with Ubuntu then with other distro's.
I would not use ubuntu on a server, rather I'll stick to something more conservative like RHEL, CentOS or Debian. However for the desktop I feel Ubuntu is quite a bit ahead. And again, it's nothing that's easy to pinpoint, maybe even just the fact that when you have to look something up you will find the answer. I've been running Linux on the desktop (on and off) for close to 10 years, but Ubuntu is the first distro I've put on my workstation without having to remove it in a few months. I'm sure this is not only Ubuntu, rather a lot of advances have been made elsewhere too, but they are definitely doing something right too.
A lot of people mentioned Ubuntu being a good candidate for non-technical users. I agree, nothing beats good documentation and a huge community when you are not technical or familiar with what's going on under the hood.
I guess it's inevitable that something like this would pop up sooner or later, but still it just seems absurd. After reading through the document, they are trying to make a kind of an IDS system based on camera feeds... I guess if the camera's are already in place this could make them more useful (if I remember correctly the UK has not found their extensive camera network to be very useful as is?), but still this just feels so wrong.
The N900 does seem nice. I have a few colleagues who got one and seem to feel most of the irritating bugs have been ironed out (I tested one a few months before release and at the time it was still very buggy).
A future Meego device could well be my next phone. The early developer versions seem like they are going closer and closer to the iPhone regarding the gui (which I consider an improvement).
I would expect the first devices to be about as burly as the N8 (the N9?), but I'm sure Nokia will be releasing quite a few phones with that OS if the reception is as warm as it should be.
My guess is that the guy who wrote that pcworld article has not actually programmed for the iPhone. The article makes a big deal of the programmer having to do something about adding multitasking to their applications, but from what I've gathered from a few colleagues who have made some iPhone apps (some very popular) it actually requires an extremely small amount of work. By Wikipedias definition of multitasking the iPhone does multi-task, though I've noticed a lot of people trying to redefine the term lately.:D
I'm not a big fan of the way the iPhone multitasks, but then again I previously only missed multitasking for things like Skype or IRC which are next to useless without the ability to run them in the background, and GPS apps which would shut down when a phone call came. I can say that multitasking on the iPhone is much smoother then it used to be on my previous Nokia phone, because that would just keep silently killing the background apps due to lack of memory (for example opening email and a big web site in the browser would suffice for this effect).
Can someone with a droid report whether this site works fine... or is it also 'shockingly bad'? iphone users don't bother... thanks to Steve you can't actually see most of the site, because the top menu is.. gasp... flash.
I run 64bit ubuntu and the site does not work. It load fine and looks good, but mouse clicks do nothing. Really smart move to make a site like that...
The fact that this argument is still on-going shows that there is still much demand for Flash. Apple can choose to exclude those customers if it wants, you can buy into that if you want, but I for one am very very glad that Android is a viable alternative that gives me the choice of HTML5 and Flash.
A lot of the demand for flash stems from the sites that force you to use it. I'm not saying you are wrong for wanting it, but it feels like a vicious cycle. Before this iPhone / Flash debate it was not rare for sites to base their whole navigation on flash, and if you where using a mobile phone (one of the 99% that does not support flash) you where out of luck. Lately this has become rare, and while flash is probably used more then ever it seems people making sites are considering that everybody might not have it.
Now even sites such as Vimeo encode a lot of the videos to a format that will play even without flash. You talk about choice, but you don't really have the choice unless you have an alternative, and we are luckily getting there.
Maybe the company should then order a set without the patent numbers stamped at the same time. You'd still have to machine the extra one and do the finalising, but at least all the preparation will only be done once.
From what I've picked up working with "cyber crime units" in several countries I would say there are plenty of talented people there, but the departments are severely understaffed. It's a pretty ungrateful and badly payed job compared to what you could get elsewhere with the same level of know how... There's also the problem of what kind of loops they have to jump through to get information. Even if we as a company want them to look into a case (and they want to too) they might still have to go through a lot of legal work until we can provide any proof to base the investigation on. I've been surprised at how badly they are connected with other countries police forces, national CERT organizations seem to be good at connectivity though.
As a smart phone, yes, it's laughable how few apps are available for it
Apple claim something like 20k applications. Think about that for a second, and then... What exactly could they all possibly be?
So you've got what? 500 different fart applications? Or what? No really. How many different word processors (for example) can survive in a market? MS Word. Open Office, which is free, and then?
Clearly if you want your fart application in a specific shade of brown rather than green, Apple have got you covered. For the slightly less discerning among us, maybe fewer/better apps isn't so bad.
Over 200000 apps actually. The app store works pretty well, it seems fairly easy to find whatever you are looking for. Sure there are a lot of options, just pick the one that has a lot of good ratings. I don't know where this fart app comment comes from since I keep hearing it, but somehow it always takes the credibility away from any Apple appstore critic. There are plenty of good apps, and they cost surprisingly little (the most I payed for an app was about around 8€ (don't remember exactly) and it felt like a lot (Grand Theft Auto). The game is very nice, and works smoothly on my phone.
Copying is a right. Just one that is restricted by law.
Copyright law is a misnomer, it would be more appropriate to call it copy restriction law.
And in some languages it is actually named more appropriately. For example in Finnish the law is called "the right of the creator". In a sense copy restriction would be even more descriptive from a consumers point of view, but the law (at least here) also has a lot of points regarding (for example) transferring your rights and distribution.
If my 3GS wireless bar is anything to go by I find this fairly easy to believe. It shows anything between full to almost empty reception (not affecting speed) in my home. I've never quite figured out what was causing it.
This is exactly the case. And what if you actually have to have one tab execute the shit that the grandparent is blocking (to make things work)? You end up with an unresponsive browser... I'm actually often in this situation, one tab processing something big and Firefox grinding to a halt until it's finished, and no plugins will help as I need to get it processed...
Talk about the death of meaningful search engines.
While I agree with most of what you said, I think the parties suing would rethink their position quite soon if all the meaningful search engines black listed (for example) all artists related to the companies suing them.
Its a scary new idea I guess, if Google does not index a link/site, it does not exist online to most people?
If Google is the only realistic way of finding the material, they see Google as part of the chain between user and uploader.
A very very chilling fishing trip.
Sounds a lot like the case that was filed against the pirate bay.
Yeah, they refused to agree to his timetable, because it's just him trying to hold them hostage.
Or maybe, based on their old track record he wanted to make sure they are committed? I understood he wanted to hear of a reasonable timetable, not force his own.
There are times when you need a fix in a given timeline, and then there are times when the person wanting things fixed is basically extorting you.
Are you saying these are exclusive? I work on a software project, and whatever I feel the motivation of somebody disclosing a critical vulnerability is, you can be sure I will work on getting a patch out first, and figuring out the rest later. What makes you feel this was not a time when you need a fix in a given timeline? For critical vulnerabilities there should be no problem committing to 60 days.
I've had cases where vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild and we've had to reverse engineer the problem out of the exploits. I've also had cases where somebody has just announced they will go public with a vulnerability in X days, you can be sure I prefer the later, and I'm actually grateful that they gave us a week or two in advance.
truly ethical approach to take to protect the consumer;
So let me get this straight... what you're saying is... handing out guns to every random passer-by is a good way to teach gun safety and prevent murder by shooting?
That has to qualify as one of the most ignorant statements I've ever seen.
I've found that if I report somebody with an illegal weapon it's generally taken care of very quickly, so maybe not the best analogy...
Also, worth noting, that these countries, despite their low populations and high standard of living, are not in the list of struggling economies, even during this "European crisis".
Absolutely brilliant.:-)
To be fair, Finland and Sweden have not been doing especially well during this crisis. Both countries are highly dependent on exports that have been doing badly. Finland had a huge drop in both exports and gdp (In Finland GDP was -7.8% last year, a drop of 9% since the previous year) during 2009, and the government took a huge loan just to keep things running. The good part is, that we don't have as much debt as more southern countries, so on the big picture things still look ok.
So what, you are seriously comparing kernel 2.6 (released December 2003), all versions of Os X (server released in 99, desktop 2001) with Windows 7? I guess that could be a fair comparison in some dimension.
The thing here is that most Apple users don't actually realize this.
I think you are quite mistaken. Most Apple users don't care about this, they are just happy it's called something they can pronounce. Most Apple users I know are not very informed about technological advances or acronyms, rather they are happy those are not used as it makes them feel they understand what they are using / buying.
Slashdot Mirror
While Pulse Audio is the default, you can change it by issuing:
gstreamer-properties
From the command line and selecting your preference (for example Alsa). So I would say it's not a requirement.
I get quite confused with these occasionally. But maybe the point is that they have a vision of how things should be done, and do it. I'm not convinced it's so much insisting on being different, rather then just doing things in a way they see best. You mention having to look it up, I bump into that a lot, but the good part is that when you have to look something up you find the answer far easier with Ubuntu then with other distro's.
I would not use ubuntu on a server, rather I'll stick to something more conservative like RHEL, CentOS or Debian. However for the desktop I feel Ubuntu is quite a bit ahead. And again, it's nothing that's easy to pinpoint, maybe even just the fact that when you have to look something up you will find the answer. I've been running Linux on the desktop (on and off) for close to 10 years, but Ubuntu is the first distro I've put on my workstation without having to remove it in a few months. I'm sure this is not only Ubuntu, rather a lot of advances have been made elsewhere too, but they are definitely doing something right too.
A lot of people mentioned Ubuntu being a good candidate for non-technical users. I agree, nothing beats good documentation and a huge community when you are not technical or familiar with what's going on under the hood.
I guess it's inevitable that something like this would pop up sooner or later, but still it just seems absurd. After reading through the document, they are trying to make a kind of an IDS system based on camera feeds... I guess if the camera's are already in place this could make them more useful (if I remember correctly the UK has not found their extensive camera network to be very useful as is?), but still this just feels so wrong.
The N900 does seem nice. I have a few colleagues who got one and seem to feel most of the irritating bugs have been ironed out (I tested one a few months before release and at the time it was still very buggy).
A future Meego device could well be my next phone. The early developer versions seem like they are going closer and closer to the iPhone regarding the gui (which I consider an improvement).
I would expect the first devices to be about as burly as the N8 (the N9?), but I'm sure Nokia will be releasing quite a few phones with that OS if the reception is as warm as it should be.
My guess is that the guy who wrote that pcworld article has not actually programmed for the iPhone. The article makes a big deal of the programmer having to do something about adding multitasking to their applications, but from what I've gathered from a few colleagues who have made some iPhone apps (some very popular) it actually requires an extremely small amount of work. By Wikipedias definition of multitasking the iPhone does multi-task, though I've noticed a lot of people trying to redefine the term lately. :D
I'm not a big fan of the way the iPhone multitasks, but then again I previously only missed multitasking for things like Skype or IRC which are next to useless without the ability to run them in the background, and GPS apps which would shut down when a phone call came. I can say that multitasking on the iPhone is much smoother then it used to be on my previous Nokia phone, because that would just keep silently killing the background apps due to lack of memory (for example opening email and a big web site in the browser would suffice for this effect).
At least Android users have the choice to install and view Flash content if they choose. iPhone users aren't allowed that choice.
Pretty much... flash support isn't just about being able to watch TV on your phone browser. Its about visiting a site like this on your mobile...
http://www.parkplacewhiterock.com/
Can someone with a droid report whether this site works fine... or is it also 'shockingly bad'? iphone users don't bother... thanks to Steve you can't actually see most of the site, because the top menu is.. gasp... flash.
I run 64bit ubuntu and the site does not work. It load fine and looks good, but mouse clicks do nothing. Really smart move to make a site like that...
The fact that this argument is still on-going shows that there is still much demand for Flash. Apple can choose to exclude those customers if it wants, you can buy into that if you want, but I for one am very very glad that Android is a viable alternative that gives me the choice of HTML5 and Flash.
A lot of the demand for flash stems from the sites that force you to use it. I'm not saying you are wrong for wanting it, but it feels like a vicious cycle. Before this iPhone / Flash debate it was not rare for sites to base their whole navigation on flash, and if you where using a mobile phone (one of the 99% that does not support flash) you where out of luck. Lately this has become rare, and while flash is probably used more then ever it seems people making sites are considering that everybody might not have it.
Now even sites such as Vimeo encode a lot of the videos to a format that will play even without flash. You talk about choice, but you don't really have the choice unless you have an alternative, and we are luckily getting there.
Is it out of beta already?
Maybe the company should then order a set without the patent numbers stamped at the same time. You'd still have to machine the extra one and do the finalising, but at least all the preparation will only be done once.
From what I've picked up working with "cyber crime units" in several countries I would say there are plenty of talented people there, but the departments are severely understaffed. It's a pretty ungrateful and badly payed job compared to what you could get elsewhere with the same level of know how... There's also the problem of what kind of loops they have to jump through to get information. Even if we as a company want them to look into a case (and they want to too) they might still have to go through a lot of legal work until we can provide any proof to base the investigation on. I've been surprised at how badly they are connected with other countries police forces, national CERT organizations seem to be good at connectivity though.
as someone once said: "50% of my advertising budget is wasted... only I don't know which 50%"
He probably did not try some datawarehousing and analyzing what goes on with your product / sales during different kinds of ad campaigns...
As a smart phone, yes, it's laughable how few apps are available for it
Apple claim something like 20k applications. Think about that for a second, and then... What exactly could they all possibly be?
So you've got what? 500 different fart applications? Or what? No really. How many different word processors (for example) can survive in a market? MS Word. Open Office, which is free, and then?
Clearly if you want your fart application in a specific shade of brown rather than green, Apple have got you covered. For the slightly less discerning among us, maybe fewer/better apps isn't so bad.
Over 200000 apps actually. The app store works pretty well, it seems fairly easy to find whatever you are looking for. Sure there are a lot of options, just pick the one that has a lot of good ratings. I don't know where this fart app comment comes from since I keep hearing it, but somehow it always takes the credibility away from any Apple appstore critic. There are plenty of good apps, and they cost surprisingly little (the most I payed for an app was about around 8€ (don't remember exactly) and it felt like a lot (Grand Theft Auto). The game is very nice, and works smoothly on my phone.
Copying is a right. Just one that is restricted by law.
Copyright law is a misnomer, it would be more appropriate to call it copy restriction law.
And in some languages it is actually named more appropriately. For example in Finnish the law is called "the right of the creator". In a sense copy restriction would be even more descriptive from a consumers point of view, but the law (at least here) also has a lot of points regarding (for example) transferring your rights and distribution.
If my 3GS wireless bar is anything to go by I find this fairly easy to believe. It shows anything between full to almost empty reception (not affecting speed) in my home. I've never quite figured out what was causing it.
That's great.
This is exactly the case. And what if you actually have to have one tab execute the shit that the grandparent is blocking (to make things work)? You end up with an unresponsive browser... I'm actually often in this situation, one tab processing something big and Firefox grinding to a halt until it's finished, and no plugins will help as I need to get it processed...
Somebody has a strange concept of trolls.
Talk about the death of meaningful search engines.
While I agree with most of what you said, I think the parties suing would rethink their position quite soon if all the meaningful search engines black listed (for example) all artists related to the companies suing them.
Its a scary new idea I guess, if Google does not index a link/site, it does not exist online to most people? If Google is the only realistic way of finding the material, they see Google as part of the chain between user and uploader. A very very chilling fishing trip.
Sounds a lot like the case that was filed against the pirate bay.
Add to this that you don't pay tax on the 20k (which could be almost 30% of it).
Yeah, they refused to agree to his timetable, because it's just him trying to hold them hostage.
Or maybe, based on their old track record he wanted to make sure they are committed? I understood he wanted to hear of a reasonable timetable, not force his own.
There are times when you need a fix in a given timeline, and then there are times when the person wanting things fixed is basically extorting you.
Are you saying these are exclusive? I work on a software project, and whatever I feel the motivation of somebody disclosing a critical vulnerability is, you can be sure I will work on getting a patch out first, and figuring out the rest later. What makes you feel this was not a time when you need a fix in a given timeline? For critical vulnerabilities there should be no problem committing to 60 days.
I've had cases where vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild and we've had to reverse engineer the problem out of the exploits. I've also had cases where somebody has just announced they will go public with a vulnerability in X days, you can be sure I prefer the later, and I'm actually grateful that they gave us a week or two in advance.
So let me get this straight ... what you're saying is ... handing out guns to every random passer-by is a good way to teach gun safety and prevent murder by shooting?
That has to qualify as one of the most ignorant statements I've ever seen.
I've found that if I report somebody with an illegal weapon it's generally taken care of very quickly, so maybe not the best analogy...
Also, worth noting, that these countries, despite their low populations and high standard of living, are not in the list of struggling economies, even during this "European crisis".
Absolutely brilliant. :-)
To be fair, Finland and Sweden have not been doing especially well during this crisis. Both countries are highly dependent on exports that have been doing badly. Finland had a huge drop in both exports and gdp (In Finland GDP was -7.8% last year, a drop of 9% since the previous year) during 2009, and the government took a huge loan just to keep things running. The good part is, that we don't have as much debt as more southern countries, so on the big picture things still look ok.
So what, you are seriously comparing kernel 2.6 (released December 2003), all versions of Os X (server released in 99, desktop 2001) with Windows 7? I guess that could be a fair comparison in some dimension.
The thing here is that most Apple users don't actually realize this.
I think you are quite mistaken. Most Apple users don't care about this, they are just happy it's called something they can pronounce. Most Apple users I know are not very informed about technological advances or acronyms, rather they are happy those are not used as it makes them feel they understand what they are using / buying.