I just switched back to Firefox from Chrome on Linux Mint, because Chrome has developed a nasty habit of blanking and refreshing pages (and scrolling you back to the top) that renders it unusable. This has persisted for months through several Chrome updates. And yes, I've tried disabling all my extensions and hardware acceleration. Of course, I used Firefox for years, but on Linux, it has the nasty habit of blocking during connects to a new page - during which time the whole app becomes unresponsive. Chrome, for a while, looked like the best 'same experience everywhere' browser, but it's not without its problems.
Is there really enough bandwidth for every TV in use to be streaming it's own custom hi-def video? Is there not some kind of 'broadcast over IP' protocol that would allow a single stream to service thousands of users - who would 'tune in' like they do to broadcast TV/Cable programming? If not, there should be...
I would've thought there'd at least be a market for Surface Pro clones running low-power chips. Apparently not.
I guess SP is really just a high-priced 'status' laptop for executives, and will never invade the true mobile market. Still, even cheap convertible laptops might do well with a processor that gives them decent battery life in 'tablet' mode. If even that market is not worth pursuing, then forget the strategy of 'free' Windows 10 in order to seed the Windows app store. Windows will be a long-lived WIN32 legacy platform for business desktops - and some home users who aren't ready to go full Chromebook (many of whom are probably using their Windows laptops as de-facto Chrombooks anyway).
I do see an opening for somebody to commercialize an ARM version of WINE, though - either as a porting tool, or configured to run.exe's via X86 emulation (with all the library calls native - that approach can be pretty fast anyway). Of course, Microsoft could always (and still could, I suppose) start supporting WIN32 on ARM...
Interestingly enough, now that Microsoft has effectively gotten the EU antitrust dogs to open cases against Google for all the areas where they compete with (and beat) Microsoft (i.e., mobile search), now they've signed a non-aggression pact with Google that would probably prevent Google from pursuing relief in the EU on the same basis for desktop search. Typical Microsoft handshake-followed-by-knife-in-back.
Well, stay pure brother! Of course, you may end up with one of the biggest liars ever in the White House (and I don't mean Clinton). But you know best.
The problem is that any number of politicians could just as easily be characterized as 'a habitual liar, a follower of the poll of the week, etc.'. But somehow, for Hillary Clinton, these things become evil personified.
And beyond that, there are lies and there are lies. In my book, "we've got to lower taxes to get this economy running" is a worse lie than "I've evolved on the issue of gay marriage". The first is an utter distortion to sell a policy that will drive up the national debt, make the rich ever richer, and leave the rest of us to foot the bill. The second is a bit of political positioning to, yes, be able to play both sides of an issue she obviously is on board with personally.
Likewise, "I had a personal email server, because I didn't want to carry 2 devices" is essentially "I don't want people poking through my email in order to cherry pick embarrassing statements to use out of context against me". That's hardly "I wanted to destroy the country and hide the evidence". But, on the other hand, "we know Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons and wants to use them"... Some lies have consequences - some are merely political positioning. They are wholly different classes of 'evil'.
Since they're already making you watch the first 6 seconds before the 'skip' button appears, it's more like they're accepting the fact that everyone hits the skip button at the first opportunity. At least this makes the advertisers attempt to be clever within the 6 second limit, and maybe could make for an interesting twitter-like ad experience. But if, once the skip button is gone, they start letting the ad length creep upward, that'll be the beginning of the end.
Way to conflate the sane ones with Trump - every aspect of whom is manufactured.
Clinton's focus on Women's rights isn't exactly outrage (manufactured or otherwise). It's a lifelong commitment to an issue - that occasionally gets used in opportunistic ways. But it's basically sincere. She doesn't race-bait white men - except in the sense, I suppose, that you may think women's advances have to come at their expense, which doesn't have to be true.
Likewise Sanders' problems with Capitalism go way back. He's a bit more outraged, but his critique is basically on target - hardly 'manufactured', beyond perhaps the tone of voice in a political speech. But c'mon - what's a political speech at all if not a drumbeat to action. He does blame bankers - and I guess maybe the majority of them are white males, but really. Can nobody criticize anybody without it being some form of race/gender baiting?
Of course, you're probably just angling for 'funny' mod points, but on the (not so) off chance that you really believe this "manufactured outrage / race-gender baiting" metric is even remotely informative...
Newspapers used to be corporations, controlled by rich people who saw themselves as keepers of an important component of our democracy - with a responsibility to the ideals of journalism. Don't laugh - the old guard rich used to actually have a set of ethics they lived by - if only to burnish their names and atone for where their money came from.
Since Newspapers stopped being able to print money, though, they've been sold off one by one to rich people who either saw themselves as somehow brilliant enough to make these dinosaurs successful in an online world - or as business people with an agenda to promote (though sometimes that agenda is little more than their own self images). So, yes, you're largely right. But no, the New York times is not yet one of these vanity projects - and there are probably a few others.
So, obviously, the solution is Do Nothing. Except that's not a solution. When climate change deniers finally give up on denying, they go to phase 2: "Well, yes, it's a problem, but China's worse than we are, and besides it'd cost more to fix than to build enormous dykes around cities, etc".
And there may be some truth to some of that - but where's the logic behind doing absolutely nothing at all? Nobody needs a huge SUV to take the kids to school and pick up groceries. And yet there are a ton of them on the road - most added since 2000, when Dick Cheney famously told us that "conserving gasoline is a personal virtue - not something for public policy". Bull. Public policy can't do everything, but it can do something. And even with all this cheating, car efficiency has still gone up. Try punishing a few of the cheaters instead of making excuses for them, and it'd go up even more.
I kind of remember that the paid shills for Bernie were being paid by Karl Rove - back at the time when they thought Bernie was a non-entity, but could be useful in helping muddy Hillary. Not sure if Bernie has paid shills any more, but there sure is a lot of ugly vitriol on social media coming from Bernie 'supporters'. This may be the Tea Party effect - where shady backers got the ball rolling, but tapped into a reservoir of genuine ugliness that was waiting to be gathered into a 'movement'. You may not like HRC, but the mysogeny suffusing the over-the-top social media criticisms of her are reminiscent of the racism suffusing lots of criticism of Obama. That's not to say you can't criticize them without being racist or mysoginist - just that the genuinely racist and mysoginist critics tend to discredit all of the critics - including legitimate ones. Just like genuinely antisemitic critics of Israel can be easily used to discredit legitimate criticism there.
In any case, "Correct the Record" seems more like an attempt to counter a negative social media presence than to be one itself - if such differences matter...
The 'money doesn't always work' argument is a favorite excuse of Republicans - as part of a 'it's not really a problem", "democrats raise money too", and "in any case, what can we do about it" rationalization of a system that they know favors them. And it favors them if only because it pushes all non-money centric issues off of center stage. "Both parties are able to raise lots of money" is part of the problem - not a reason it's not a problem.
Yes, it doesn't always work in high profile contests like Presidential elections, where the media pay enough attention - and can be manipulated into getting your message out for you. And where bad politicians are on such constant display that they're unable to hide their unattractive sides.
But in lower-level elections, money can make a huge difference. Republicans don't control the majority of statehouses by accident - or by popularity. When the public (and the media) are not paying attention, money can easily put you over the top.
But they didn't use the mobile version either. That's where Oracle (or Sun) miscalculated. They figured they'd GPL big-iron Java to keep the language in widespread use - and make their money selling a non-GPL'd mobile version. But they didn't count on Google building their own. Perfectly legal, if not in keeping with Oracle's plans.
So now Oracle is trying to make an unprecedented argument that the API definitions for a language's core libraries is somehow separately copyright-able from the language itself - as if an API were able to be defined 'differently' without working differently, because, face it, an API is just a spec, and by definition, in order to work, a spec must be defined exactly once. To say this can be used the way Oracle wants is to say that all computer programming for the past 40 years is in violation of this new view.
And seriously, you can't build a free OS off of non-free code, so there was really no way for Android to have been based off the 'official' mobile Java - and still be Android. And a non-free Android would never have become the leader. Trying to collect royalties for an open source language after it has spawned a successful open source OS on a weird technicality after the fact is kind of having your free cake and charging for it too...
I was unemployed for 10 months last year, and I didn't file for unemployment - because, as a private 'consultant' (with exactly one client - you do the math), I wasn't eligible. My 'employer' didn't pay unemployment or medical premiums for me - nor did they pay the employer's share of social security taxes. The future of employment in the U.S.
You libertarians out there may tout my wonderful 'free agent' status, but I'm a free agent in name only - and I never wanted to be. After 34 years of good work put in on this company's products (which I was happy to work on, and felt a certain pride of authorship for), they've been killed off because, while nicely profitable, they weren't enough of a 'growth opportunity' to be of interest to the private equity guys that now own them. Easier to take the hit now and then show 'stellar growth' from a lower starting level next year (or the year after that), when they're hyping the company for yet another resale.
None of which speaks well of the Obama recovery - which is good enough, given the headwinds and the refusal of Congress to ante up for real stimulus that would've done a better job than what the Fed has been pumping in. But such is the state of our governance and our media coverage, that this is being seen as the best of all possible worlds - and Hillary's going to attempt to run on it as 'Obama's record of success'. Which is not to say that anything Trump, Cruz or Romney is or was offering would not be a lot worse...
You can point out that Linux is too complex and offers (requires?) too many choices without having to fall back on seriously outdated nonsense like 'soccer moms compiling their own drivers'. I don't think any normal end user has compiled anything for any mainstream Linux distro in years.
That said, yep. Too many choices, too many desktops. And it all adds up to no 3rd party software. That's pretty much the only downside these days - assuming the likes of Intel, AMD and nVidia keep providing support for their hardware. But even that - in a future world where soccer moms increasingly use Chromebooks - is less of an impediment than it used to be. A modern Linux desktop can do everything a Chromebook can - plus handle all the 'standard' stuff locally. Word processing and watching video and the like. Even playing Steam games.
So, sure. No linux desktop will ever have the range of software that's currently available for Windows. Hey, the Mac doesn't have that range of software either. But we're heading for a future where that matters less and less for more and more people. Personally, I never boot my Windows partition any more. I'm technical enough to compile a driver, but haven't had to in this century. And yeah, putting podcasts on my ancient iPod is a pain in the butt. But it works.
That's because I figured everybody knows the rest. Adleson, Schiafe. Murdoch. There are lots of them. Every Republican hopeful in the 2012 primary season had their very own billionaire benefactor. This time it hasn't gotten as much attention, because the Media is coming in it's pants over the Trump circus. But they're pulling the strings now too. And these guys not only fund candidates, they fund the think tanks that figure out how to put a middle-class friendly face on policies that, if anything, focus on favoring passive income over wage income, and hobbling government's ability to regulate environmental polluters and employers.
I don't doubt that some of these folks actually believe the Ayn Rand fantasies they read in high school. But it's a very convenient belief that paints inherited wealth as a form of nobility. And I suppose I'm not outraged that these guys think this way. I'm more outraged at how cynically they've been able to manipulate peoples' religious and, yes, racial beliefs to stay in control. The one plus about Trump is that it's laying all this bare to the extent that the media has begun to realize how well they've been manipulated over the years. Thinking and reporting that 'values voters' were a real thing, when they're just a bunch of disenfranchised sad sacks that figured they had nothing else to gain...
So clever of you to repeat the oft Fox-cited list of exactly 3 Democratic rich donors. It's a matter of degree, dontcha think? There are hundreds of Republican rich folks doing a lot more than paying for busses to get people to vote. The Koch's alone have pledged 900 million. And that's not to mention the various billionaires who have brought out their individual Republican candidates practically bearing their logos. And of course your 3 aren't angling for any direct personal benefits, either. Sure, they have pet causes that the Democrats they support favor - but those causes aren't their bottom lines.
And don't start with Hillary's super-PAC. The Bernie bots may think it's equivalent to what the Republicans have, but it's nothing like it. Sure, it's good old fashioned influence peddling, no doubt. But it's not out and out candidate purchase like you see on the Republican side.
A vote for anyone besides HRC is NOT a vote for Drumpf
In the primary it's not. In the general, if Trump's the nominee it most definitely is. I'll grant you your analysis of HRC's pandering - though it sounds like just another, nastier way to say 'bends with the wind'. My point is that she bends in directions closer to Bernie than any Republican, so if you're planning on sitting out the general in the event that she wins the nomination, I'd like to ask... why?
I do take offense at the sheer misogyny of your language about her. You can fall back on saying 'whore' is a generic term for someone who takes money for services. But every candidate does that (even Bernie to a much more limited extent - but who knows in the general). Your use of it just for Hillary says more than anything else you've said, and while I won't tar all Slashdotters with your particular brand of sexism, it is disheartening to hear it here so frequently. The folks on this site do tend to be smart. Smart/stupid in that most cherished tradition of nerd/Aspergers' sufferer. Grow up, putz.
She was a Walmart exec 30 years ago when she lived in Arkansas and Walmart was a huge force there. I doubt Hillary is in the pocket of Walmart today. You could say that, because she isn't reflexively anti-business, she's a total corporate shill - and you'd be making a silly argument that sounds like it's based on something significant. What she is, at worst, is a well-meaning politician who thought (probably correctly) that she needed to be centrist and business-friendly to stand any chance of contributing at all. You can call that power hungry - or realist. But what it is not is 'worse than Trump'. Get a grip.
Because Trump will continue the counterproductive tax cutting and deregulation - which, face it, is all the Republican elites care about. The economy will be shit, income inequality will get worse - and oh yeah, he'll bomb the hell out of Isis (whatever that means). The only reason the Republican elites hate Trump is that he lays bare the ugliness they've been using for decades to get people to vote against their economic interests. Hillary will be at worst, status quo - and perhaps much better than that. Yes, she bends with the wind. But the wind is blowing in your direction these days...
The Skype client is not the product. They give it away on all platforms. So not supporting the Linux version is not about losing money in any direct sense. Presumably the Skype folks thought it was worth supporting Linux when they were independent, so I'm guessing this has something to do with Microsoft not wanting traditional desktop Linux to have decent Skype support. Android is supported, because it's the most popular mobile platform out there. Don't support Android, and you don't support mobile. Apple folks have their own facetime thingy.
Anyway, Skype is supposed to be an alternatove phone system. If it's not universal, it's not a phone system. So, even if the numbers aren't huge, desktop Linux makes sense. So, too, would Chromebooks. But yeah, they can't do everything. Still, they had Linux nailed down pretty well, so...
Okay. But 'share code' sounds like code written with Xamarin can be simply recompiled for multiple platforms to produce complete running apps from a single code base. I'm guessing that's not the case - and it would take some careful reading of Xamarin promotional materials to figure that out. It's not unreasonable to ask someone who presumably knows whether it is or is not.
Share code could mean little more than 'use the C# language to build your Android and iOS apps'. I guess that's not nothing. But of course, if you already have Android and iOS apps, what they're really offering is the chance to rewrite your code so you can share it with a Windows port - but of course, not the GUI bits, which will have to be maintained separately, and written from scratch for Windows for any of this to make sense. That's less of a winning proposition.
Okay. Lots of stuff. Now, can I really target all those platforms from a single code base, or is this all just TMI that makes me think I might be able to?
Slashdot Mirror
I just switched back to Firefox from Chrome on Linux Mint, because Chrome has developed a nasty habit of blanking and refreshing pages (and scrolling you back to the top) that renders it unusable. This has persisted for months through several Chrome updates. And yes, I've tried disabling all my extensions and hardware acceleration. Of course, I used Firefox for years, but on Linux, it has the nasty habit of blocking during connects to a new page - during which time the whole app becomes unresponsive. Chrome, for a while, looked like the best 'same experience everywhere' browser, but it's not without its problems.
Is there really enough bandwidth for every TV in use to be streaming it's own custom hi-def video? Is there not some kind of 'broadcast over IP' protocol that would allow a single stream to service thousands of users - who would 'tune in' like they do to broadcast TV/Cable programming? If not, there should be...
I would've thought there'd at least be a market for Surface Pro clones running low-power chips. Apparently not.
I guess SP is really just a high-priced 'status' laptop for executives, and will never invade the true mobile market. Still, even cheap convertible laptops might do well with a processor that gives them decent battery life in 'tablet' mode. If even that market is not worth pursuing, then forget the strategy of 'free' Windows 10 in order to seed the Windows app store. Windows will be a long-lived WIN32 legacy platform for business desktops - and some home users who aren't ready to go full Chromebook (many of whom are probably using their Windows laptops as de-facto Chrombooks anyway).
I do see an opening for somebody to commercialize an ARM version of WINE, though - either as a porting tool, or configured to run .exe's via X86 emulation (with all the library calls native - that approach can be pretty fast anyway). Of course, Microsoft could always (and still could, I suppose) start supporting WIN32 on ARM...
Interestingly enough, now that Microsoft has effectively gotten the EU antitrust dogs to open cases against Google for all the areas where they compete with (and beat) Microsoft (i.e., mobile search), now they've signed a non-aggression pact with Google that would probably prevent Google from pursuing relief in the EU on the same basis for desktop search. Typical Microsoft handshake-followed-by-knife-in-back.
Well, stay pure brother! Of course, you may end up with one of the biggest liars ever in the White House (and I don't mean Clinton). But you know best.
The problem is that any number of politicians could just as easily be characterized as 'a habitual liar, a follower of the poll of the week, etc.'. But somehow, for Hillary Clinton, these things become evil personified.
And beyond that, there are lies and there are lies. In my book, "we've got to lower taxes to get this economy running" is a worse lie than "I've evolved on the issue of gay marriage". The first is an utter distortion to sell a policy that will drive up the national debt, make the rich ever richer, and leave the rest of us to foot the bill. The second is a bit of political positioning to, yes, be able to play both sides of an issue she obviously is on board with personally.
Likewise, "I had a personal email server, because I didn't want to carry 2 devices" is essentially "I don't want people poking through my email in order to cherry pick embarrassing statements to use out of context against me". That's hardly "I wanted to destroy the country and hide the evidence". But, on the other hand, "we know Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons and wants to use them"... Some lies have consequences - some are merely political positioning. They are wholly different classes of 'evil'.
Since they're already making you watch the first 6 seconds before the 'skip' button appears, it's more like they're accepting the fact that everyone hits the skip button at the first opportunity. At least this makes the advertisers attempt to be clever within the 6 second limit, and maybe could make for an interesting twitter-like ad experience. But if, once the skip button is gone, they start letting the ad length creep upward, that'll be the beginning of the end.
Way to conflate the sane ones with Trump - every aspect of whom is manufactured.
Clinton's focus on Women's rights isn't exactly outrage (manufactured or otherwise). It's a lifelong commitment to an issue - that occasionally gets used in opportunistic ways. But it's basically sincere. She doesn't race-bait white men - except in the sense, I suppose, that you may think women's advances have to come at their expense, which doesn't have to be true.
Likewise Sanders' problems with Capitalism go way back. He's a bit more outraged, but his critique is basically on target - hardly 'manufactured', beyond perhaps the tone of voice in a political speech. But c'mon - what's a political speech at all if not a drumbeat to action. He does blame bankers - and I guess maybe the majority of them are white males, but really. Can nobody criticize anybody without it being some form of race/gender baiting?
Of course, you're probably just angling for 'funny' mod points, but on the (not so) off chance that you really believe this "manufactured outrage / race-gender baiting" metric is even remotely informative...
Newspapers used to be corporations, controlled by rich people who saw themselves as keepers of an important component of our democracy - with a responsibility to the ideals of journalism. Don't laugh - the old guard rich used to actually have a set of ethics they lived by - if only to burnish their names and atone for where their money came from.
Since Newspapers stopped being able to print money, though, they've been sold off one by one to rich people who either saw themselves as somehow brilliant enough to make these dinosaurs successful in an online world - or as business people with an agenda to promote (though sometimes that agenda is little more than their own self images). So, yes, you're largely right. But no, the New York times is not yet one of these vanity projects - and there are probably a few others.
So, obviously, the solution is Do Nothing. Except that's not a solution. When climate change deniers finally give up on denying, they go to phase 2: "Well, yes, it's a problem, but China's worse than we are, and besides it'd cost more to fix than to build enormous dykes around cities, etc".
And there may be some truth to some of that - but where's the logic behind doing absolutely nothing at all? Nobody needs a huge SUV to take the kids to school and pick up groceries. And yet there are a ton of them on the road - most added since 2000, when Dick Cheney famously told us that "conserving gasoline is a personal virtue - not something for public policy". Bull. Public policy can't do everything, but it can do something. And even with all this cheating, car efficiency has still gone up. Try punishing a few of the cheaters instead of making excuses for them, and it'd go up even more.
I kind of remember that the paid shills for Bernie were being paid by Karl Rove - back at the time when they thought Bernie was a non-entity, but could be useful in helping muddy Hillary. Not sure if Bernie has paid shills any more, but there sure is a lot of ugly vitriol on social media coming from Bernie 'supporters'. This may be the Tea Party effect - where shady backers got the ball rolling, but tapped into a reservoir of genuine ugliness that was waiting to be gathered into a 'movement'. You may not like HRC, but the mysogeny suffusing the over-the-top social media criticisms of her are reminiscent of the racism suffusing lots of criticism of Obama. That's not to say you can't criticize them without being racist or mysoginist - just that the genuinely racist and mysoginist critics tend to discredit all of the critics - including legitimate ones. Just like genuinely antisemitic critics of Israel can be easily used to discredit legitimate criticism there.
In any case, "Correct the Record" seems more like an attempt to counter a negative social media presence than to be one itself - if such differences matter...
The 'money doesn't always work' argument is a favorite excuse of Republicans - as part of a 'it's not really a problem", "democrats raise money too", and "in any case, what can we do about it" rationalization of a system that they know favors them. And it favors them if only because it pushes all non-money centric issues off of center stage. "Both parties are able to raise lots of money" is part of the problem - not a reason it's not a problem.
Yes, it doesn't always work in high profile contests like Presidential elections, where the media pay enough attention - and can be manipulated into getting your message out for you. And where bad politicians are on such constant display that they're unable to hide their unattractive sides.
But in lower-level elections, money can make a huge difference. Republicans don't control the majority of statehouses by accident - or by popularity. When the public (and the media) are not paying attention, money can easily put you over the top.
But they didn't use the mobile version either. That's where Oracle (or Sun) miscalculated. They figured they'd GPL big-iron Java to keep the language in widespread use - and make their money selling a non-GPL'd mobile version. But they didn't count on Google building their own. Perfectly legal, if not in keeping with Oracle's plans.
So now Oracle is trying to make an unprecedented argument that the API definitions for a language's core libraries is somehow separately copyright-able from the language itself - as if an API were able to be defined 'differently' without working differently, because, face it, an API is just a spec, and by definition, in order to work, a spec must be defined exactly once. To say this can be used the way Oracle wants is to say that all computer programming for the past 40 years is in violation of this new view.
And seriously, you can't build a free OS off of non-free code, so there was really no way for Android to have been based off the 'official' mobile Java - and still be Android. And a non-free Android would never have become the leader. Trying to collect royalties for an open source language after it has spawned a successful open source OS on a weird technicality after the fact is kind of having your free cake and charging for it too...
I was unemployed for 10 months last year, and I didn't file for unemployment - because, as a private 'consultant' (with exactly one client - you do the math), I wasn't eligible. My 'employer' didn't pay unemployment or medical premiums for me - nor did they pay the employer's share of social security taxes. The future of employment in the U.S.
You libertarians out there may tout my wonderful 'free agent' status, but I'm a free agent in name only - and I never wanted to be. After 34 years of good work put in on this company's products (which I was happy to work on, and felt a certain pride of authorship for), they've been killed off because, while nicely profitable, they weren't enough of a 'growth opportunity' to be of interest to the private equity guys that now own them. Easier to take the hit now and then show 'stellar growth' from a lower starting level next year (or the year after that), when they're hyping the company for yet another resale.
None of which speaks well of the Obama recovery - which is good enough, given the headwinds and the refusal of Congress to ante up for real stimulus that would've done a better job than what the Fed has been pumping in. But such is the state of our governance and our media coverage, that this is being seen as the best of all possible worlds - and Hillary's going to attempt to run on it as 'Obama's record of success'. Which is not to say that anything Trump, Cruz or Romney is or was offering would not be a lot worse...
You can point out that Linux is too complex and offers (requires?) too many choices without having to fall back on seriously outdated nonsense like 'soccer moms compiling their own drivers'. I don't think any normal end user has compiled anything for any mainstream Linux distro in years.
That said, yep. Too many choices, too many desktops. And it all adds up to no 3rd party software. That's pretty much the only downside these days - assuming the likes of Intel, AMD and nVidia keep providing support for their hardware. But even that - in a future world where soccer moms increasingly use Chromebooks - is less of an impediment than it used to be. A modern Linux desktop can do everything a Chromebook can - plus handle all the 'standard' stuff locally. Word processing and watching video and the like. Even playing Steam games.
So, sure. No linux desktop will ever have the range of software that's currently available for Windows. Hey, the Mac doesn't have that range of software either. But we're heading for a future where that matters less and less for more and more people. Personally, I never boot my Windows partition any more. I'm technical enough to compile a driver, but haven't had to in this century. And yeah, putting podcasts on my ancient iPod is a pain in the butt. But it works.
Actually, from the sound of it, Hillary's home server was about the only 'government' server that hasn't been hacked.
'Hitlery'? Really? At least it's not a play on the female anatomy. I commend your maturity.
That's because I figured everybody knows the rest. Adleson, Schiafe. Murdoch. There are lots of them. Every Republican hopeful in the 2012 primary season had their very own billionaire benefactor. This time it hasn't gotten as much attention, because the Media is coming in it's pants over the Trump circus. But they're pulling the strings now too. And these guys not only fund candidates, they fund the think tanks that figure out how to put a middle-class friendly face on policies that, if anything, focus on favoring passive income over wage income, and hobbling government's ability to regulate environmental polluters and employers.
I don't doubt that some of these folks actually believe the Ayn Rand fantasies they read in high school. But it's a very convenient belief that paints inherited wealth as a form of nobility. And I suppose I'm not outraged that these guys think this way. I'm more outraged at how cynically they've been able to manipulate peoples' religious and, yes, racial beliefs to stay in control. The one plus about Trump is that it's laying all this bare to the extent that the media has begun to realize how well they've been manipulated over the years. Thinking and reporting that 'values voters' were a real thing, when they're just a bunch of disenfranchised sad sacks that figured they had nothing else to gain...
So clever of you to repeat the oft Fox-cited list of exactly 3 Democratic rich donors. It's a matter of degree, dontcha think? There are hundreds of Republican rich folks doing a lot more than paying for busses to get people to vote. The Koch's alone have pledged 900 million. And that's not to mention the various billionaires who have brought out their individual Republican candidates practically bearing their logos. And of course your 3 aren't angling for any direct personal benefits, either. Sure, they have pet causes that the Democrats they support favor - but those causes aren't their bottom lines.
And don't start with Hillary's super-PAC. The Bernie bots may think it's equivalent to what the Republicans have, but it's nothing like it. Sure, it's good old fashioned influence peddling, no doubt. But it's not out and out candidate purchase like you see on the Republican side.
A vote for anyone besides HRC is NOT a vote for Drumpf
In the primary it's not. In the general, if Trump's the nominee it most definitely is. I'll grant you your analysis of HRC's pandering - though it sounds like just another, nastier way to say 'bends with the wind'. My point is that she bends in directions closer to Bernie than any Republican, so if you're planning on sitting out the general in the event that she wins the nomination, I'd like to ask... why?
I do take offense at the sheer misogyny of your language about her. You can fall back on saying 'whore' is a generic term for someone who takes money for services. But every candidate does that (even Bernie to a much more limited extent - but who knows in the general). Your use of it just for Hillary says more than anything else you've said, and while I won't tar all Slashdotters with your particular brand of sexism, it is disheartening to hear it here so frequently. The folks on this site do tend to be smart. Smart/stupid in that most cherished tradition of nerd/Aspergers' sufferer. Grow up, putz.
She was a Walmart exec 30 years ago when she lived in Arkansas and Walmart was a huge force there. I doubt Hillary is in the pocket of Walmart today. You could say that, because she isn't reflexively anti-business, she's a total corporate shill - and you'd be making a silly argument that sounds like it's based on something significant. What she is, at worst, is a well-meaning politician who thought (probably correctly) that she needed to be centrist and business-friendly to stand any chance of contributing at all. You can call that power hungry - or realist. But what it is not is 'worse than Trump'. Get a grip.
Because Trump will continue the counterproductive tax cutting and deregulation - which, face it, is all the Republican elites care about. The economy will be shit, income inequality will get worse - and oh yeah, he'll bomb the hell out of Isis (whatever that means). The only reason the Republican elites hate Trump is that he lays bare the ugliness they've been using for decades to get people to vote against their economic interests. Hillary will be at worst, status quo - and perhaps much better than that. Yes, she bends with the wind. But the wind is blowing in your direction these days...
The Skype client is not the product. They give it away on all platforms. So not supporting the Linux version is not about losing money in any direct sense. Presumably the Skype folks thought it was worth supporting Linux when they were independent, so I'm guessing this has something to do with Microsoft not wanting traditional desktop Linux to have decent Skype support. Android is supported, because it's the most popular mobile platform out there. Don't support Android, and you don't support mobile. Apple folks have their own facetime thingy.
Anyway, Skype is supposed to be an alternatove phone system. If it's not universal, it's not a phone system. So, even if the numbers aren't huge, desktop Linux makes sense. So, too, would Chromebooks. But yeah, they can't do everything. Still, they had Linux nailed down pretty well, so...
I agree. But QT, I believe includes cross-platform UI components. Does Xamarin? Or (as several have mentioned here), are they just 'working on it'?
Okay. But 'share code' sounds like code written with Xamarin can be simply recompiled for multiple platforms to produce complete running apps from a single code base. I'm guessing that's not the case - and it would take some careful reading of Xamarin promotional materials to figure that out. It's not unreasonable to ask someone who presumably knows whether it is or is not.
Share code could mean little more than 'use the C# language to build your Android and iOS apps'. I guess that's not nothing. But of course, if you already have Android and iOS apps, what they're really offering is the chance to rewrite your code so you can share it with a Windows port - but of course, not the GUI bits, which will have to be maintained separately, and written from scratch for Windows for any of this to make sense. That's less of a winning proposition.
Okay. Lots of stuff. Now, can I really target all those platforms from a single code base, or is this all just TMI that makes me think I might be able to?