Oy. Words continue to lose all meaning. A factual report pointing out gaping holes in a study used to make a phony right-wing point ends up being called the conspiracy. And the guy calling it that doesn't even realize that's what he's doing...
What amazes me is that this shit shows up on Slashdot - the site that used to specialize in pointing out skewed sampling and 'tuned to the test' studies of, oh, Microsoft software vs the competition, etc. But make it a subject that can conceivably be categorized as on a 'liberal' vs 'conservative' axis, and all ability to see facts is lost. Liberals may see a study they don't like and attempt to refute it - and admit when they can't. But conservatives see a study they do like and support it in the face of contrary facts. That's just how it is - don't tell me both sides are the same. They aren't.
Yelp's in kind of a weird business in the first place. Who says they have a right to exist and show up in search results. They're kind of a middleman between search and what people are searching for. There was a market for that - until there wasn't. Yes, there are gray areas - like Google's use of Yelp reviews. Where would those reviews come from if not from Yelp? But Google paid to use them. Eventually Google would accumulate their own reviews, and Yelp would be gone. But is it Google's responsibility to keep Yelp alive? Gee - I sound like the kind of libertarian Slashdotter I hate...;-)
Seriously - how should Google handle Yelp in its search results? If you're searching for "comparison shopping sites", and Yelp is the most popular, it should show up on top. if you're shopping for "Samsung Phones", and Google sells banner space ads for various shopping sites - well, Yelp's got a problem. But is it Google's problem? Are they saying Google can't sell those kinds of ads - just because Yelp exists?
And the answer to 'mission critical apps' is probably to isolate them on a Citrix server somewhere - and give users Chromebooks with a Citrix client in order to access those apps. Then everything that's not those apps can be done in a secure environment, and those - presumably trusted - apps can run safely on their sandboxed Citrix servers with any unnecessary network access disabled.
Then start spending your go forward Windows upgrade budget on replacing those apps with web-based equivalents.
But the other 40% may well have changed the outcome. And those 60% spent months spreading the idea that the other 40% shouldn't vote for 'the lesser of 2 evils' and denying the obvious facts that that 'lesser evil' was essentially for most of the Sanders/Stein platform - and could've won and enacted at least some of it.
Look, a binary choice may not be the best form of Democracy, but in our system, that's essentially what we have. However it happened, 'the greater of 2 evils' got elected, a hard-right ideologue got onto the Supreme Court, and we may well lose a once in a lifetime chance to eliminate anti-democratic nonsense like gerrymandered districts. And Citizens United is now locked in for the next generation.
Stein voters had their reasons. Stupid, self-defeating ones, but hey...
The business model for Gmail ought to be outsourcing corporate email accounts - for a fee and with no spying whatsoever. Gmail for the rest of us could then continue as a loss leader to get corporations to sign up base on 'it's the email system we all use at home'. An interesting 180 flip from home users buying MS products because 'it's what I use at work'...
She would've accomplished at least gerrymandering reform - which could've been the start toward correcting the current gridlock in Congress.
We may get it anyway, since gerrymandering has become so egregious that even Justice Kennedy can't deny that it's depriving people of representation. But it would've been a much safer bet without Gorsuch as a reliable anti-reform vote.
I didn't say that there weren't some technological advantages to the Mac. Their app packaging is one of them - I've used 'wine skins' to generate a single.zip file that contains an entire runnable version of my WIN32 app and all the WINE stuff it takes to run it on a Mac - very nice.
But I find the Mac UI a struggle. Some of it is the 'dumbing down' of the UI. Some of it is stuff they came up with in 1983 and think it's just great as it is (the one-button mouse - the baffling 'switch between 2 window sizes' instead of a true Maximize).
I'll admit - I've rarely used a Mac. But I've hated it every time I did...
Yep, OnePlus's biggest selling point is their track record on updates. They're actually not all that great on updates, but they do use mostly stock Android, and they are good about letting you install 3rd party Android ROMs - which is the next best thing.
My issue with this is, sure the OP5 is now the best $500 smartphone you can buy. But who wants a $500 smartphone? Last year saw a whole crop of $400 phones - led off by the OnePlus 3 and followed up by the ZTE Axon 7, the Huawei Honor 8 and others. All at roughly the same $400 price point. The OP3 was probably the best of the bunch - again, if only for their stock Android OS. But as they take their success as an invitation to move up the food chain toward 'true flagship' pricing, they're getting out of their depth. The best $400 phones are still OP's midrange category-mates from last year.
But at $500, you might consider stretching your budget and going for the next Pixel where you get actual OS upgrades from Google. Or sticking with the $400 phones and dealing with their dodgy OS's. I got an Axon 7 for $350 last November, and I'm pretty happy with it. ZTE has it on it's oddball version of Android 7.1.1, but it's still technically 'current'. And if they stop providing upgrades, it's still possible to load LineageOS on the thing. I hope OnePlus doesn't end up redefining midrange to be this new $500 price point and ruin what had become a real bargain point with lots of competition.
MacOS seems like it's designed for people that want to be taught how to use their computers. Stuff is easy enough to do once you've been shown how. But a lot is not easily discoverable by simply poking around. It's like they assume their users are computer phobic.
Android seems to be taking its lead from Apple in that respect. Interestingly, earlier versions of Android made much more use on long-pressing as a kind of 'right-click' to find out what options are available. I hate that they've moved away from that approach, but then again, the masses seem to love their Apple stuff, so maybe it works well for the target audience.
It's also a case where most of the cost savings are on the back end and haven't been realized yet. The transition to Linux was done carefully enough that it didn't start saving them money right away. Now that it's in place, they stand to save a fortune on the next upgrade cycle. So the time for bribes is now or never. Either they pay some sweetheart rate to go back to Windows now (while they're still used to costly upgrades every few years), or they never pay for upgrades again - and really start reaping the cost benefits of having switched.
Of course, they'll have to go back to paying normal rates for every subsequent upgrade cycle - but if they Act Now!!!, they'll never have gotten used to not paying for software. So if the Greens are stretching the point somewhat (after all, it is true that Windows remains the big target - and even if wanna cry has been fixed, there will be other exploits), they're only having to do it because the cost-savings argument has been muddied.
To some extent, the assumption that Clinton would win drove some of the effects that caused her to lose.
Comey pretty much up and said he factored that assumption into his decision to notify Congress about emails on the Wiener laptop. I still don't get the logic behind this, but it goes something like "if this comes out after the election, I'll be accused of having covered for her". Which leaves out the flip side of "if these 'new' emails turn up nothing new, I'll have damaged her for no good reason".
Likewise, Obama didn't want to be seen as politicizing info on Russian hacking prior to an election that he thought was pretty much in the bag anyway.
Yes, to some extent, this is a media story because an American presidential election might actually have been turned by this stuff. Which is not to say we shouldn't have heard about it had Clinton won. But that's more a function of media shallowness than of media bias. After all, most of us here would argue that the media should've been paying attention to insecurities in the voting system all along...
However much he tries to dress it up, this new OS is Android. And stock Android at that. Which is a good thing. He's essentially using hype to get the media to help him go after the same chunk of the market that Google was targeting with its Pixels. If he can deliver competitive devices at quantity and at a price that undercuts Samsung, maybe he can break in. And if he supports his phones with upgrades and patches for as long as Apple supports theirs, people might realize that they wanted that all along...
I'd argue that the iPhone was enough of a game changer to count as being 'first to market'. Not enough so that they can claim patentability of 'a rectangular device with a touch screen that combines a cellphone and a GPS'. But enough so that they defined 'smartphone' in the public imagination before anyone else did.
...and it works a lot better than the previous Mac 'solution' of telling them to just install Parallels - and pay for Windows to get the same crappy Win32 UI. Plus, Win32 apps under WINE launch almost immediately, whereas Parallels has to boot Windows first. Plus the app under WINE is configured to launch PDF and XLS output to native Mac apps (don't know whether Parallels can do that).
My only 'Mac' app is a Win32 app that I run on Mac's via Wineskins (a nice utility that bundles your app with WINE into a single 'executable'). I assume that requires 32 bit support, and in any case since the 32 bit Windows app in question works on all Windows versions - and Macs and Linux via WINE, it'd be a pain to have to start putting out a 64 bit version just for Macs - and have to ensure that the correct version gets released for a target system.
If nothing else, targeting Win32 has made my life pretty easy up until now...
Well, if you want to equate tax avoidance schemes with 'working more to earn more because it's not taxed as much', be my guest. A bit disingenuous of you, but hey...
The Laffer Curve for taxation is mostly just a fraud used to justify low taxes on high earners. But that doesn't mean there's not a 'valid' thought experiment involved. Yes, a 100% total tax rate would probably provide 0 revenue. That doesn't say anything about a 90% marginal rate, and in fact, the 50's kind of demonstrate that a 90% marginal rate is still in the section of the curve where higher rates bring in more revenue.
But it sounds similar to the argument that once the robots get smart enough to do any job, they'll end up doing all the jobs - and then what will the humans do... And yeah, that's probably true - assuming the robots can actually ever get smart enough. And maybe, for specific industries (cab/bus/truck drivers) they will. In any case the 'what about the buggy whip factory workers?' argument doesn't really apply. You're not replacing taxis/buses/trucks with a whole new industry, after all. You're only replacing the drivers. And there's no new corresponding industry being created to replace them. Robot manufacturing? Well, okay, until the robots can do that.
How is this a perverted business model? You get something 'free' in exchange for giving them permission to sell advertising targeted to you - which you are free (depending on your willpower - or use of an adblocker) to ignore.
And it's only an invasion of your privacy if you care about an ad-placement robot looking at your info. 'Feels' like an invasion to the extent that the robot 'feels' like a person - i.e. produces results that make you think a person did it. Of course, Google could change their policy - in which case you could delete your Google identity and stop using their services. But yes, those services are addictive...
Would you prefer a different business model? And if so, what? I assume it would entail paying real money for the services. But if so, would you still want them to 'improve' your search results based on stored history? Or would it be enough to improve results based on aggregate history and not do stuff like prefilling the search dropdown with stuff you've searched for before...?
Could that possibly be because the mainframe-terminal architecture (which, after all, describes the web too) works better - and across more devices, and is much easier to support than distributed computing? Chrome - as the 'terminal' in your mainframe-terminal architecture, provides everything that your distributed 'computer on the desktop' does once you're running an application where the data is centralized anyway.
True enough. But then at least part of Microsoft's monetization push is to deprive their competitor of a revenue stream. So choose your 'evil', I guess.
Still, for the umpteenth time, Google *still* does not sell your information. They show you ads based on it - and while that can feel like a creepy invasion of your privacy, it's not as if anyone has actually looked at your info. Your point about Apple has some logic behind it - if you don't mind paying a ton for Apple's hardware. Then again, if you search on an Apple device, somebody's getting your queries - so what's the difference?
It's not just his cover stories about his various scandals. Trump lies about everything. And then he puts out a budget that blatantly double-counts stuff - and there's no point even lying about it, because nobody believes a word that comes out of this administration any more. Trump's budget guy even admits to double-counting the savings from their magical 'growth' machine - because it doesn't matter. The whole damn budget is a bunch of lies, and they know it, and the media know it, and the public knows it.
Some version of a budget will be passed with, say, 40% of the bullshit still there - and a cover story concocted to make it sound like it's real. And the original will be held up as "no, that's the fake budget, this one's responsible"...
There was no humor in that post - except what passes for 'humor' in Foxworld. i.e., 'another administration', which means Obama, which means 'funny', because we hate Obama, and besides, if Obama/Clinton did it then any complaint about Trump can be shunted off into a discussion of that, and besides... Seriously, there was nothing beyond that to this post.
And even on Android, you can set the default browser to be something other than Chrome. Unlike this Windows 10s thingy where Edge is the default browser, Bing is the default search engine - end of story. Yes you can use others, but can't set defaults.
I have my Android set to default Opera - not because Chrome is bad, but because some mobile websites are unusable without an ad blocker.
Slashdot Mirror
Oy. Words continue to lose all meaning. A factual report pointing out gaping holes in a study used to make a phony right-wing point ends up being called the conspiracy. And the guy calling it that doesn't even realize that's what he's doing...
What amazes me is that this shit shows up on Slashdot - the site that used to specialize in pointing out skewed sampling and 'tuned to the test' studies of, oh, Microsoft software vs the competition, etc. But make it a subject that can conceivably be categorized as on a 'liberal' vs 'conservative' axis, and all ability to see facts is lost. Liberals may see a study they don't like and attempt to refute it - and admit when they can't. But conservatives see a study they do like and support it in the face of contrary facts. That's just how it is - don't tell me both sides are the same. They aren't.
Yelp's in kind of a weird business in the first place. Who says they have a right to exist and show up in search results. They're kind of a middleman between search and what people are searching for. There was a market for that - until there wasn't. Yes, there are gray areas - like Google's use of Yelp reviews. Where would those reviews come from if not from Yelp? But Google paid to use them. Eventually Google would accumulate their own reviews, and Yelp would be gone. But is it Google's responsibility to keep Yelp alive? Gee - I sound like the kind of libertarian Slashdotter I hate... ;-)
Seriously - how should Google handle Yelp in its search results? If you're searching for "comparison shopping sites", and Yelp is the most popular, it should show up on top. if you're shopping for "Samsung Phones", and Google sells banner space ads for various shopping sites - well, Yelp's got a problem. But is it Google's problem? Are they saying Google can't sell those kinds of ads - just because Yelp exists?
And the answer to 'mission critical apps' is probably to isolate them on a Citrix server somewhere - and give users Chromebooks with a Citrix client in order to access those apps. Then everything that's not those apps can be done in a secure environment, and those - presumably trusted - apps can run safely on their sandboxed Citrix servers with any unnecessary network access disabled.
Then start spending your go forward Windows upgrade budget on replacing those apps with web-based equivalents.
But the other 40% may well have changed the outcome. And those 60% spent months spreading the idea that the other 40% shouldn't vote for 'the lesser of 2 evils' and denying the obvious facts that that 'lesser evil' was essentially for most of the Sanders/Stein platform - and could've won and enacted at least some of it.
Look, a binary choice may not be the best form of Democracy, but in our system, that's essentially what we have. However it happened, 'the greater of 2 evils' got elected, a hard-right ideologue got onto the Supreme Court, and we may well lose a once in a lifetime chance to eliminate anti-democratic nonsense like gerrymandered districts. And Citizens United is now locked in for the next generation.
Stein voters had their reasons. Stupid, self-defeating ones, but hey...
The business model for Gmail ought to be outsourcing corporate email accounts - for a fee and with no spying whatsoever. Gmail for the rest of us could then continue as a loss leader to get corporations to sign up base on 'it's the email system we all use at home'. An interesting 180 flip from home users buying MS products because 'it's what I use at work'...
She would've accomplished at least gerrymandering reform - which could've been the start toward correcting the current gridlock in Congress.
We may get it anyway, since gerrymandering has become so egregious that even Justice Kennedy can't deny that it's depriving people of representation. But it would've been a much safer bet without Gorsuch as a reliable anti-reform vote.
I didn't say that there weren't some technological advantages to the Mac. Their app packaging is one of them - I've used 'wine skins' to generate a single .zip file that contains an entire runnable version of my WIN32 app and all the WINE stuff it takes to run it on a Mac - very nice.
But I find the Mac UI a struggle. Some of it is the 'dumbing down' of the UI. Some of it is stuff they came up with in 1983 and think it's just great as it is (the one-button mouse - the baffling 'switch between 2 window sizes' instead of a true Maximize).
I'll admit - I've rarely used a Mac. But I've hated it every time I did...
Yep, OnePlus's biggest selling point is their track record on updates. They're actually not all that great on updates, but they do use mostly stock Android, and they are good about letting you install 3rd party Android ROMs - which is the next best thing.
My issue with this is, sure the OP5 is now the best $500 smartphone you can buy. But who wants a $500 smartphone? Last year saw a whole crop of $400 phones - led off by the OnePlus 3 and followed up by the ZTE Axon 7, the Huawei Honor 8 and others. All at roughly the same $400 price point. The OP3 was probably the best of the bunch - again, if only for their stock Android OS. But as they take their success as an invitation to move up the food chain toward 'true flagship' pricing, they're getting out of their depth. The best $400 phones are still OP's midrange category-mates from last year.
But at $500, you might consider stretching your budget and going for the next Pixel where you get actual OS upgrades from Google. Or sticking with the $400 phones and dealing with their dodgy OS's. I got an Axon 7 for $350 last November, and I'm pretty happy with it. ZTE has it on it's oddball version of Android 7.1.1, but it's still technically 'current'. And if they stop providing upgrades, it's still possible to load LineageOS on the thing. I hope OnePlus doesn't end up redefining midrange to be this new $500 price point and ruin what had become a real bargain point with lots of competition.
MacOS seems like it's designed for people that want to be taught how to use their computers. Stuff is easy enough to do once you've been shown how. But a lot is not easily discoverable by simply poking around. It's like they assume their users are computer phobic.
Android seems to be taking its lead from Apple in that respect. Interestingly, earlier versions of Android made much more use on long-pressing as a kind of 'right-click' to find out what options are available. I hate that they've moved away from that approach, but then again, the masses seem to love their Apple stuff, so maybe it works well for the target audience.
It's also a case where most of the cost savings are on the back end and haven't been realized yet. The transition to Linux was done carefully enough that it didn't start saving them money right away. Now that it's in place, they stand to save a fortune on the next upgrade cycle. So the time for bribes is now or never. Either they pay some sweetheart rate to go back to Windows now (while they're still used to costly upgrades every few years), or they never pay for upgrades again - and really start reaping the cost benefits of having switched.
Of course, they'll have to go back to paying normal rates for every subsequent upgrade cycle - but if they Act Now!!!, they'll never have gotten used to not paying for software. So if the Greens are stretching the point somewhat (after all, it is true that Windows remains the big target - and even if wanna cry has been fixed, there will be other exploits), they're only having to do it because the cost-savings argument has been muddied.
To some extent, the assumption that Clinton would win drove some of the effects that caused her to lose.
Comey pretty much up and said he factored that assumption into his decision to notify Congress about emails on the Wiener laptop. I still don't get the logic behind this, but it goes something like "if this comes out after the election, I'll be accused of having covered for her". Which leaves out the flip side of "if these 'new' emails turn up nothing new, I'll have damaged her for no good reason".
Likewise, Obama didn't want to be seen as politicizing info on Russian hacking prior to an election that he thought was pretty much in the bag anyway.
Yes, to some extent, this is a media story because an American presidential election might actually have been turned by this stuff. Which is not to say we shouldn't have heard about it had Clinton won. But that's more a function of media shallowness than of media bias. After all, most of us here would argue that the media should've been paying attention to insecurities in the voting system all along...
Run all Android apps... And not be Microsoft.
However much he tries to dress it up, this new OS is Android. And stock Android at that. Which is a good thing. He's essentially using hype to get the media to help him go after the same chunk of the market that Google was targeting with its Pixels. If he can deliver competitive devices at quantity and at a price that undercuts Samsung, maybe he can break in. And if he supports his phones with upgrades and patches for as long as Apple supports theirs, people might realize that they wanted that all along...
I'd argue that the iPhone was enough of a game changer to count as being 'first to market'. Not enough so that they can claim patentability of 'a rectangular device with a touch screen that combines a cellphone and a GPS'. But enough so that they defined 'smartphone' in the public imagination before anyone else did.
...and it works a lot better than the previous Mac 'solution' of telling them to just install Parallels - and pay for Windows to get the same crappy Win32 UI. Plus, Win32 apps under WINE launch almost immediately, whereas Parallels has to boot Windows first. Plus the app under WINE is configured to launch PDF and XLS output to native Mac apps (don't know whether Parallels can do that).
Yep. And almost no one asks for Mac support at all. But at least it's 'available' when needed.
My only 'Mac' app is a Win32 app that I run on Mac's via Wineskins (a nice utility that bundles your app with WINE into a single 'executable'). I assume that requires 32 bit support, and in any case since the 32 bit Windows app in question works on all Windows versions - and Macs and Linux via WINE, it'd be a pain to have to start putting out a 64 bit version just for Macs - and have to ensure that the correct version gets released for a target system.
If nothing else, targeting Win32 has made my life pretty easy up until now...
Do you have any reason to believe that Microsoft will continue to sign those shims?
Well, if you want to equate tax avoidance schemes with 'working more to earn more because it's not taxed as much', be my guest. A bit disingenuous of you, but hey...
The Laffer Curve for taxation is mostly just a fraud used to justify low taxes on high earners. But that doesn't mean there's not a 'valid' thought experiment involved. Yes, a 100% total tax rate would probably provide 0 revenue. That doesn't say anything about a 90% marginal rate, and in fact, the 50's kind of demonstrate that a 90% marginal rate is still in the section of the curve where higher rates bring in more revenue.
But it sounds similar to the argument that once the robots get smart enough to do any job, they'll end up doing all the jobs - and then what will the humans do... And yeah, that's probably true - assuming the robots can actually ever get smart enough. And maybe, for specific industries (cab/bus/truck drivers) they will. In any case the 'what about the buggy whip factory workers?' argument doesn't really apply. You're not replacing taxis/buses/trucks with a whole new industry, after all. You're only replacing the drivers. And there's no new corresponding industry being created to replace them. Robot manufacturing? Well, okay, until the robots can do that.
Of course, there used to be elevator operators...
How is this a perverted business model? You get something 'free' in exchange for giving them permission to sell advertising targeted to you - which you are free (depending on your willpower - or use of an adblocker) to ignore.
And it's only an invasion of your privacy if you care about an ad-placement robot looking at your info. 'Feels' like an invasion to the extent that the robot 'feels' like a person - i.e. produces results that make you think a person did it. Of course, Google could change their policy - in which case you could delete your Google identity and stop using their services. But yes, those services are addictive...
Would you prefer a different business model? And if so, what? I assume it would entail paying real money for the services. But if so, would you still want them to 'improve' your search results based on stored history? Or would it be enough to improve results based on aggregate history and not do stuff like prefilling the search dropdown with stuff you've searched for before...?
Could that possibly be because the mainframe-terminal architecture (which, after all, describes the web too) works better - and across more devices, and is much easier to support than distributed computing? Chrome - as the 'terminal' in your mainframe-terminal architecture, provides everything that your distributed 'computer on the desktop' does once you're running an application where the data is centralized anyway.
True enough. But then at least part of Microsoft's monetization push is to deprive their competitor of a revenue stream. So choose your 'evil', I guess.
Still, for the umpteenth time, Google *still* does not sell your information. They show you ads based on it - and while that can feel like a creepy invasion of your privacy, it's not as if anyone has actually looked at your info. Your point about Apple has some logic behind it - if you don't mind paying a ton for Apple's hardware. Then again, if you search on an Apple device, somebody's getting your queries - so what's the difference?
It's not just his cover stories about his various scandals. Trump lies about everything. And then he puts out a budget that blatantly double-counts stuff - and there's no point even lying about it, because nobody believes a word that comes out of this administration any more. Trump's budget guy even admits to double-counting the savings from their magical 'growth' machine - because it doesn't matter. The whole damn budget is a bunch of lies, and they know it, and the media know it, and the public knows it.
Some version of a budget will be passed with, say, 40% of the bullshit still there - and a cover story concocted to make it sound like it's real. And the original will be held up as "no, that's the fake budget, this one's responsible"...
There was no humor in that post - except what passes for 'humor' in Foxworld. i.e., 'another administration', which means Obama, which means 'funny', because we hate Obama, and besides, if Obama/Clinton did it then any complaint about Trump can be shunted off into a discussion of that, and besides... Seriously, there was nothing beyond that to this post.
And even on Android, you can set the default browser to be something other than Chrome. Unlike this Windows 10s thingy where Edge is the default browser, Bing is the default search engine - end of story. Yes you can use others, but can't set defaults.
I have my Android set to default Opera - not because Chrome is bad, but because some mobile websites are unusable without an ad blocker.