That's odd. I also live in TX, Houston to be precise, and a three years ago purchased my mother a new 17" Toshiba. I installed GNU/Linux on it right out of the box (previously having verified that it would work with with the OS). I did have to compile the wireless driver, which was available from Toshiba's support website... While there I also noted that the fingerprint reader driver was available for my own Laptop (and it works neatly too, just swipe finger after "sudo"). While copying a lot of music files from an NTFS USB HDD (spinning disk w/ enclosure, not SSD), Linux would seize up. On Windows7 (it's dual boot you see), the file transfer would only use one core, and go slow as molasses, but Linux used multiple cores and thus the ETA was 1/4th the time to do the transfer -- Except it kept locking up mid transfer (a few gigs in). I thought maybe there was something wrong with the hardware -- bad CPU, or the chip was overheating, etc. I called for support, which cost me nothing, told them the issues, and they sent me a box to return the unit with for free. A few days after mailing the machine in a Tech called me and asked for the password to log into the Linux account. He had stress tested the chip, and since the HW wasn't at fault wanted to diagnose the real problem. Turns out the freeze-up was a kernel panic caused by a race condition flaw in the NTFS-3G filesystem module. The Laptop was mailed back, also free of charge, and to work around the issue I limited the file transfer process to a single core / single thread. (Of course I did a full wipe & re-install after getting the machine back, since the PW had been forked over).
I like that Toshiba contracts with companies to provide open source drivers for their hardware, and that they have techs that can actually diagnose problems, even ones not related directly to their hardware.
If you ask me, it's pretty fucking strange that our experiences would be so damn different. Have they changed so much in such a short time?
(But regarding your body text, I'm sure there will be some clueless parroting of "information wants to be free" too.)
[...]
I'm curious - could individuals host single pages, under the Fair Use doctrine?
Who is more clueless, the one parroting, "Information wants to be free", or the one calling those folks clueless while advocating the same?
"If patent litigation caused by the U.S. patent system stifled innovation, U.S. software companies would not be the most successful in the world."
This is not an argument at all. It's possible they stifle innovation as it is now, so they would be even better off without the patent system.
No, it's an argument, but it disproves their point, you see: If patent litigation caused by the U.S. patent system DIDN'T stifle innovation, U.S. software companies would not be among the most profitable companies in the world.
It's not that US software giants wouldn't be profitable without a patent system, it's just that guys like me would be able to create new OSs, Languages, Virtual Machine tech, etc. and release them to the public without fear of any patent concerns (all examples I have actually made from scratch and not released after the fact due to patent concerns -- I use them myself, because it's only illegal if you get caught -- Yes, some software I CREATE FROM SCRATCH is illegal for ME to even use). In short: The competition would be too fierce without patents to support the flawed software model of monetization via artificial scarcity.
Now, I make it a point not to read software patents, but I stumble across a few without even trying to be clever on any large-ish project. If you accidentally infringe a patent, doesn't that mean it's obvious? Well, yeah, but the PTO just issues patents, it's up to the expensive courts to decide if the patent is valid -- sadly, the courts sort of trust a patent to be valid if granted by the PTO, and invalidating them costs big BIG bucks.
Think about it. If you want something done, you shop around and see who's offering that service, then they do the job, you pay them for it, and that's that -- You don't pay the mechanic for fixing your radiator each time you drive the car afterwards... With software, the work is done once before anyone (besides the publisher) even asks for it to be done, and then once the work is done and paid for artificial scarcity is employed by the Publisher via copyright and patent law in order to recoup their losses. Only then do they discover if anyone wanted the software or not.
To me this is dumb. It's a worthless middle man inflating prices needlessly. If instead of the Publisher I worked for The Public (crowdsourcing, grants, etc), then as a developer I could do the same work for the same pay, but The Public could get the product for free afterwards (you already paid me to make it). The work is what's scare, not copies of bits -- they are in near infinite supply. I'd sell my work the same way a home builder does by saying: "I have the reputation and skill, so I'll do this work, for $PRICE, but not until we have an agreement will I do the work" -- Just like EVERY other sane market, like auto repair, etc.
The problem, you see, is that we're not getting fairly reimbursed for the price of these temporary monopolies the public grants. It costs so little to come up with a patentable idea and get it patented that companies have patent attorneys making rounds, asking if we've ALREADY CREATED anything this week that might be patentable (that's right, the innovation happens whether or not the attorney comes round, not because they do). For giving up the right to manipulate 1's and 0's any way we choose we get increased prices due to massive litigation, and less (if any) competition from smaller software shops.
As long as consumers allow the worthless middlemen Publishers to leach money out of the software economy (in order support the middlemen's very existence) we will need strong Patent and Copyright laws to enforce ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY. Without these strong restrictions upon them the people would be free from the oppressive and abusive market that the "US Software Companies" created, and NO, these companies wouldn't be nearly as profitable...THAT'S A GOOD THING. For the most part, it doesn't take a huge company to make the innovations in SOFTWARE that we're seeing. D/L a free compiler and away you go!
Anyone arguing that the patent system isn't broken in regards to software patents is LYING.
If we can raise children who are better, more agile thinkers & at the same time put a dent in the corporate America machine I say, "Go for it".
I would like to point out that raising children who are better, more agile thinkers, is directly in opposition to your goal. For example, they will simply enter a birthdate that is of "legal recording age" in order to both access and be tracked by corporate America. Meanwhile, folks like me who have a web forum where anyone can join and post anything have to jump through a few extra hoops for no real benefit.
Ultimately, if you wish to censor the children, the answer is to actually be a parent and watch what your damn kids do online. In otherwords: No, you can't raise children who are better, more agile thinkers & at the same time put a dent in the corporate America machine. Those bastdards already comply with COPPA, you twit.
Stay away from my children you greedy soul-less fucks.
Your child needs to stop clicking the "yes I am over 13" button on my game's web forums... You know, because unless we do some SERIOUS fucking data gathering by some "trusted" 3rd party, I won't be able to tell if your kid is lying or not.
If you ever actually hear what your kids say when you're not around, then you'd be calling them the soul-less fucks.
If I can run a browser, I can run a SSH client. Bonus: The stand alone terminal emulator / SSH client doesn't come with the attack surface of a web browser, or security vulnerability baggage of JavaScript's JITs (marking data as code, then running it).
I really want to like this, I'm just not finding any use cases for it that something like PUTTY wouldn't be better for. (Well, I did, but they were really freakin' out there edge cases.)
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win...
...Then they adopt you.
Then they abuse you.
Then they make you abuse others while they watch.
Then you become them.
Then you ignore them.
Then you laugh at them...
Apple's locked you into their ecosystem and you're paying double for the convenience. That was their plan.
One minor nitpick: You're not paying for convenience, you're paying to not be inconvenienced. "So, you don't want to be inconvenienced, eh? Well, then you buy our stuff, and you pay more... Or Else. That's a nice head of hair you have there, be terrible if we made you pull it all out..."
There is more to the price then the cost of parts.
Translation: We made some decisions that made it cost more to deliver a similar experience. We're not bad at making decisions, trust us. Buy our equivalent yet more expensive hardware product. You'll love the expensive software we force you to run on the device. No, you can not get an iOS refund if you install Android on your iDevice.
Here's an interesting idea: Stop Bundling Software and Hardware. These are General Purpose Computers, folks. If the OSs are so damn great, then give folks the option to purchase it separately. If the OS is such a differentiating factor then you'll clearly make tons more money because it can be purchased for many other systems. Ah, but if the OS is fucking irrelevant then you lose the ability to control customer choice after they purchase the hardware.
It's not that people misunderstand how businesses run. It's that they're bilking us, and we don't like it.
Now pick a fad that I am the wrong age for social reasons, that I intentionally skipped because I thought it was dumb, like SMS text messaging, or twitter,
I always thought it was funny how we went from expensive node to node BBS text chat, to text interfaces and multi-user hubs / Internet & email w/ mailing lists, to free instant digital voice enabled communication, back to expensive text messaging. Don't get me wrong, I use SMS occasionally, despite even IRC being superior (group chat, file transfer, etc), however the whippersnappers just can't keep up with me and my SMS enabled chat client, especially when I use a full blown mechanical keyboard.
I'd much rather click the "voice msg" button next to the person's name, record a short phrase and have it delivered instantly to the person's voicemail or chat client -- You know, like on Xbox Live... Phone calls require immediate attention, or explicit "away" mode setting. SMS's main advantage is that it's less persistent about notification because users assume the other person might not be available to reply in real time, freeing them from immediate action requirements (most of the time). Voicemail interfaces are so shitty that people would rather be limited to 140 characters per message than talk! Hah ha heh... oh, these people. Telephone "rings" are so persistent that horrid text interfaces seem superior!? If it's more than 10 characters I'd rather dial the damn phone number instead.
Protip: use a better voicemail app, and set your ring count to as few as possible, set the "ring tone" to one short noise followed by a very long silence, and use a short custom message ("This is Tim, leave a message [beep]"), and instantly voice communication has all the benefits of SMS: Non intrusive notification, no immediate response requirements, no wading through clunky voice message menus (for either end users).
If I didn't know better, I'd think that voice messaging UI is purposefully being cluster fscked just so carriers can charge for SMS plans... Never attribute to malice, blah blah, yeah we know they're just ignorant.
Some young folks also seem just plain ignorant when they think I shy away from SMS & Twitter because I'm too old -- No, you silly kids, It's because we graduated from that mode of conversation in the 80s.
I think my ability to crank out awesome code leveled off when I was about 30
Same here. Once you've build your own Languages that compile to other languages and/or machine code, created your own operating systems, window managers, etc. designed chipsets, coded in everything from FORTH to Ruby on Rails, bolted "design patterns" together easily in all those languages (and memorized those new names for what you've been doing for decades), can estimate and manage time wisely, create cross platform applications natively (without VMs like Java), pick up new information as quickly as it's available.... There's really not much more to learn.
Occasionally something interesting pops up, like Homomorphic encryption, but by the time it's practical to use it's old hat. I'm not sure I can get any better or more efficient. Hell, even my people skills (read: leading dopes into thinking your suggestion was their idea) have plateaued.
I don't even have arguments anymore. I just make up coding koans on the spot that both enlighten and confuse. Eg. In response to making yet another pointless change to an already very scalable database architecture: One must adjust size vs speed tradeoffs each time one changes the size vs speed ratio.
We were all makers then. Except, we called it Electronics.
I remember creating an FM transmitter for my term project. I asked to go to the bathroom before my turn to show off our projects, and walked behind the out-building our lab was in, then tuned into the Oldies station my teacher always listened to in the background. I keyed in my transmitter and stated that my electronics teacher "has won the student's choice award for best teacher, call in within the next 10 minutes and mention the phrase 'Chicken Doughnuts' to claim your prize! We now return you to your regularly scheduled program--". Ten minutes later my teacher was still calling the oldies station yelling at the disk jockey, "I'm the Winner! I'm [teacher's name]. 'Chicken Doughnuts'! See?!" The DJ found it hilarious enough to air "The all request hour will continue in a moment, but first, 'Chicken Doughnut' Guy, [insert my teacher's frantic exclamations], Stop calling. You've got the wrong number buddy, but thanks for the laughs."
When my turn to show my project came around, my teacher gave me an A+, and a week of detention.
Where was Slashdot?! Wouldn't they have run my "maker" story? Maybe that would have helped me gain publicity for my crowd sourced "software defined radio" projects? (hooking parallel ports up to short-wave radios a decade before you could buy a 'WIFI' device). Oh, that's right... SLASHDOT DIDN'T EXIST. However, HAL-PC (Houston area league of PC users) did, and their SIG groups were excellent forums for meeting face to face with other like-minded folks, and their BBS was full of amazing shareware.
Slashdot has never been required for common folk to be "influencing the future of technology". It's just your opinion if you think Slashdot is the best, most influential, or only 'collaborative forum'. If influencing future technologists is your goal, then start a chain of Hackerspaces & Makerspaces for folks to get together and make stuff happen. Now that the Internet exists it IS hackerspace incarnate, and Slashdot is just one of many ports, not 'The' port by any measure.
This better be an euphemism for pageviews, if not, you're just trolling.
Thinking of Slashdot as some community driven thing is great until you realize that editors have to pick the stories on the home page. We do all the hard work of searching out stories that are interesting for them, so what gives? Why don't the users get to do that last bit too? Just grant "meta moderator" status to a select few, as they do moderators, and call it a day. Seems like all you ask and more would be possible if users actually ran the site instead of the editors...
Essentially, what you want is a purely crowd sourced Slashdot, the problem is that existing entrenched systems and stigmas against new systems keep such things from becoming a reality.
...oh, wait. Reddit exists. They have subreddits for the things you like. Is there some stigma that keeps you from them? It's like someone gave you exactly what you wanted, and you turned your nose up at it because it's not from the people you want it from...
Should the innane elitists and popularist tech-news jockeys at Slashdot direct the course of technology? FUCK NO. The people making technology should. It's like no one remembers 1984.
After reading the above posts it seems that What it Would Take For Developers To Start Their Own Union, is cooperation and agreement among tech-savvy nerds on economics and politics. Considering that most hackers hold the same views in both instances you'd think this possible, but under further examination the views they haver most in common are anti-authoritarian... That's the antithesis of a union.
Although I was raised on a farm and am now a coder in eight languages (nine if you count wiring electronics), My brother was born and raised in the 4th largest US city and is a CountryBoy... He works on the Railroad and is a member of their union. If someone his senior gets bumpped from their job they could bump him from his, and he'd end up taking someone else's job, based on seniority. Before I decided that it was a waste of my brainpower to do manual labor I was an Electrician, and a member of their union. My first encounter with Union work ethics was to install all the switches and outlets in a given room of an office building. I told my foreman, "What?! That'll take me 30 minues." He told me: "It better take you eight hours, or else we'll run out of work" So, I took eight hours -- I turned a screw 1/2 a turn, then took a break. Turned it another half spin, and took another break. At the end of the day I told my boss to sit on my middle finger and spin. Fuck That!
Life is too damn short to waste at all. I'd be willing to spend my time doing something -- ANYTHING -- constructive, even digging ditches, or picking up cigarette butts, but being in a union? HELL NO. I'd rather kill myself to save society the financial drain.
It would be pretty amazing to me if ours were the only life in the cosmos. On the otherhand, at night I just look upwards and gaze at all of the Space there is yet to Conquer.
It's an almost insurmountable task -- One that will take the peaceful cooperation on a planet-wide scale to do, but I do believe it's possible for our race survive the hostilities the Universe throws at us. I nearly shed a tear each time I hear of NASA funding getting cut while trillions are wasted on pointless war efforts. If our primary goal as a species isn't getting some of our eggs out of this one basket, then we're surely doomed...
However you look at it, we've been dealt an amazing hand. When I hear folks talk about fixing problems at home first before venturing into space I think, "What a waste it would be to fold so soon."
When have any of those things you mentioned other than nuclear war ever come close to happening outside of a sci-fi novel? Why don't you concentrate on real problems.
... Said the dinosaur to the Ministry of Genetic Aeronautics.
An Apple/Microsoft site? What fucking planet are you on?
You must be new here. If not, you'll recall how much less of an Apple/Microsoft site it was back in the day... Back when some people weren't seen as morons for remaining an AC instead of joining the UID gold-rush.
I put it to you that GPs viewpoint has some merit, even if it's not completely correct; Being on a different planet isn't a requirement for one to see things in such a way. Instead of employing extreme fight-or-flight lizard-brained logic, try to evaluate a person's views and see if there's any merit at all to their claims. Dismissing others' opinions out of hand is the mark of a fool.
I played Wing Commander all night last night on my Tandy 2500SX/20. [...] I also played it a few years ago on Dosbox. [...] I'm building a 486 for the rest of the series.
I'm building my own OS. The x86 bootloader starts in Real Mode - Just like "DOS". Right at boot on any of your x86 machines you can write text/attributes and/or graphics directly to video memory (@ B800h for EGA/VGA text). No drivers needed because modern BIOSs, and GPUs provide the old interrupt table and CGA/EGA/MCGA/VGA video modes for backwards compatibility. You can use int 13h to do your disk services. Play sounds to the PC speaker. It's just like writing assembly back in the good 'ol 286 days -- include an instruction override byte and you can access the 32 bit instructions too while in "16 bit" mode. Hell, I can even load some old games (that didn't rely on MS DOS supplied interrupts) directly into memory and run them just fine, hell, this even works on a quad core x64 I have because it doesn't require (U)EFI, and uses the 8086 (16bit) boot mode.
Intel, AMD, GPU, and BIOS makers have all gone through some serious fsck'n pains to provide complete backwards support in instruction set, DMA, and interrupt interfaces all the way back to 8086 / 8087. Hell even though CHS (Cylinder Head Sector) geometry is completely irrelevant on today's drives, the drives still support that addressing mode for compatibility....
And here you are running AN EMULATOR. Building A 486?!?! For Shame. If only SOMEONE would create an OS that didn't switch to protected mode right away so you could actually run your classic games on your current hardware...
The government is calling for a long, drawn-out process that would require individuals or small companies to travel to courts far away and engage in multiple hearings just to get their own property back.
Hey a mental red light went off again. It's a familiar one, so let's see.... Ah, here it is, in the Declaration of Independence:
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
Filed under the section under abuses that should not be tolerated, and a revolution fought instead... Interesting, especially because of this part prior to that:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
I'm not sure how long the people will be able to ignore their duty as USA citizens...
Here's a translation for the code savvy Slashdotters: 2012: IF ( Government + Control >= Depotism ) GOTO 1776;
Slashdot Mirror
That's odd. I also live in TX, Houston to be precise, and a three years ago purchased my mother a new 17" Toshiba. I installed GNU/Linux on it right out of the box (previously having verified that it would work with with the OS). I did have to compile the wireless driver, which was available from Toshiba's support website... While there I also noted that the fingerprint reader driver was available for my own Laptop (and it works neatly too, just swipe finger after "sudo"). While copying a lot of music files from an NTFS USB HDD (spinning disk w/ enclosure, not SSD), Linux would seize up. On Windows7 (it's dual boot you see), the file transfer would only use one core, and go slow as molasses, but Linux used multiple cores and thus the ETA was 1/4th the time to do the transfer -- Except it kept locking up mid transfer (a few gigs in). I thought maybe there was something wrong with the hardware -- bad CPU, or the chip was overheating, etc. I called for support, which cost me nothing, told them the issues, and they sent me a box to return the unit with for free. A few days after mailing the machine in a Tech called me and asked for the password to log into the Linux account. He had stress tested the chip, and since the HW wasn't at fault wanted to diagnose the real problem. Turns out the freeze-up was a kernel panic caused by a race condition flaw in the NTFS-3G filesystem module. The Laptop was mailed back, also free of charge, and to work around the issue I limited the file transfer process to a single core / single thread. (Of course I did a full wipe & re-install after getting the machine back, since the PW had been forked over).
I like that Toshiba contracts with companies to provide open source drivers for their hardware, and that they have techs that can actually diagnose problems, even ones not related directly to their hardware.
If you ask me, it's pretty fucking strange that our experiences would be so damn different. Have they changed so much in such a short time?
(But regarding your body text, I'm sure there will be some clueless parroting of "information wants to be free" too.)
[...]
I'm curious - could individuals host single pages, under the Fair Use doctrine?
Who is more clueless, the one parroting, "Information wants to be free", or the one calling those folks clueless while advocating the same?
"If patent litigation caused by the U.S. patent system stifled innovation, U.S. software companies would not be the most successful in the world."
This is not an argument at all. It's possible they stifle innovation as it is now, so they would be even better off without the patent system.
No, it's an argument, but it disproves their point, you see: If patent litigation caused by the U.S. patent system DIDN'T stifle innovation, U.S. software companies would not be among the most profitable companies in the world.
It's not that US software giants wouldn't be profitable without a patent system, it's just that guys like me would be able to create new OSs, Languages, Virtual Machine tech, etc. and release them to the public without fear of any patent concerns (all examples I have actually made from scratch and not released after the fact due to patent concerns -- I use them myself, because it's only illegal if you get caught -- Yes, some software I CREATE FROM SCRATCH is illegal for ME to even use). In short: The competition would be too fierce without patents to support the flawed software model of monetization via artificial scarcity.
Now, I make it a point not to read software patents, but I stumble across a few without even trying to be clever on any large-ish project. If you accidentally infringe a patent, doesn't that mean it's obvious? Well, yeah, but the PTO just issues patents, it's up to the expensive courts to decide if the patent is valid -- sadly, the courts sort of trust a patent to be valid if granted by the PTO, and invalidating them costs big BIG bucks.
Think about it. If you want something done, you shop around and see who's offering that service, then they do the job, you pay them for it, and that's that -- You don't pay the mechanic for fixing your radiator each time you drive the car afterwards... With software, the work is done once before anyone (besides the publisher) even asks for it to be done, and then once the work is done and paid for artificial scarcity is employed by the Publisher via copyright and patent law in order to recoup their losses. Only then do they discover if anyone wanted the software or not.
To me this is dumb. It's a worthless middle man inflating prices needlessly. If instead of the Publisher I worked for The Public (crowdsourcing, grants, etc), then as a developer I could do the same work for the same pay, but The Public could get the product for free afterwards (you already paid me to make it). The work is what's scare, not copies of bits -- they are in near infinite supply. I'd sell my work the same way a home builder does by saying: "I have the reputation and skill, so I'll do this work, for $PRICE, but not until we have an agreement will I do the work" -- Just like EVERY other sane market, like auto repair, etc.
The problem, you see, is that we're not getting fairly reimbursed for the price of these temporary monopolies the public grants. It costs so little to come up with a patentable idea and get it patented that companies have patent attorneys making rounds, asking if we've ALREADY CREATED anything this week that might be patentable (that's right, the innovation happens whether or not the attorney comes round, not because they do). For giving up the right to manipulate 1's and 0's any way we choose we get increased prices due to massive litigation, and less (if any) competition from smaller software shops.
As long as consumers allow the worthless middlemen Publishers to leach money out of the software economy (in order support the middlemen's very existence) we will need strong Patent and Copyright laws to enforce ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY. Without these strong restrictions upon them the people would be free from the oppressive and abusive market that the "US Software Companies" created, and NO, these companies wouldn't be nearly as profitable... THAT'S A GOOD THING. For the most part, it doesn't take a huge company to make the innovations in SOFTWARE that we're seeing. D/L a free compiler and away you go!
Anyone arguing that the patent system isn't broken in regards to software patents is LYING.
Have been code-named corona these last few years?
The only one I can think of involves me remotely managing a server from the beach with only a lime wedge and cold beer.
If we can raise children who are better, more agile thinkers & at the same time put a dent in the corporate America machine I say, "Go for it".
I would like to point out that raising children who are better, more agile thinkers, is directly in opposition to your goal. For example, they will simply enter a birthdate that is of "legal recording age" in order to both access and be tracked by corporate America. Meanwhile, folks like me who have a web forum where anyone can join and post anything have to jump through a few extra hoops for no real benefit.
Ultimately, if you wish to censor the children, the answer is to actually be a parent and watch what your damn kids do online. In otherwords: No, you can't raise children who are better, more agile thinkers & at the same time put a dent in the corporate America machine. Those bastdards already comply with COPPA, you twit.
Stay away from my children you greedy soul-less fucks.
Your child needs to stop clicking the "yes I am over 13" button on my game's web forums... You know, because unless we do some SERIOUS fucking data gathering by some "trusted" 3rd party, I won't be able to tell if your kid is lying or not.
If you ever actually hear what your kids say when you're not around, then you'd be calling them the soul-less fucks.
Maybe you should have mailed this comment to /. instead of posting it then.
What if they did? False dichotomy much?
If I can run a browser, I can run a SSH client. Bonus: The stand alone terminal emulator / SSH client doesn't come with the attack surface of a web browser, or security vulnerability baggage of JavaScript's JITs (marking data as code, then running it).
I really want to like this, I'm just not finding any use cases for it that something like PUTTY wouldn't be better for. (Well, I did, but they were really freakin' out there edge cases.)
Best to not allow proof of votes if we care about keeping them secret.
Then you better be rallying against the right to vote via mail.
OK, fuck. I'll play devils advocate. I put the gun to your head. I tell you to vote via mail so I can watch you fucking vote. Now what, dipshit?
Join em.
First they ignore you.
...Then they adopt you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win...
Then they abuse you.
Then they make you abuse others while they watch.
Then you become them.
Then you ignore them.
Then you laugh at them...
Apple's locked you into their ecosystem and you're paying double for the convenience. That was their plan.
One minor nitpick: You're not paying for convenience, you're paying to not be inconvenienced.
"So, you don't want to be inconvenienced, eh? Well, then you buy our stuff, and you pay more... Or Else. That's a nice head of hair you have there, be terrible if we made you pull it all out..."
There is more to the price then the cost of parts.
Translation: We made some decisions that made it cost more to deliver a similar experience. We're not bad at making decisions, trust us. Buy our equivalent yet more expensive hardware product. You'll love the expensive software we force you to run on the device. No, you can not get an iOS refund if you install Android on your iDevice.
Here's an interesting idea: Stop Bundling Software and Hardware. These are General Purpose Computers, folks. If the OSs are so damn great, then give folks the option to purchase it separately. If the OS is such a differentiating factor then you'll clearly make tons more money because it can be purchased for many other systems. Ah, but if the OS is fucking irrelevant then you lose the ability to control customer choice after they purchase the hardware.
It's not that people misunderstand how businesses run. It's that they're bilking us, and we don't like it.
would be good to think about how to mitigate this problem.
Simple: Use a different core / cache for different VM instances... Oh, wait.
Now pick a fad that I am the wrong age for social reasons, that I intentionally skipped because I thought it was dumb, like SMS text messaging, or twitter,
I always thought it was funny how we went from expensive node to node BBS text chat, to text interfaces and multi-user hubs / Internet & email w/ mailing lists, to free instant digital voice enabled communication, back to expensive text messaging. Don't get me wrong, I use SMS occasionally, despite even IRC being superior (group chat, file transfer, etc), however the whippersnappers just can't keep up with me and my SMS enabled chat client, especially when I use a full blown mechanical keyboard.
I'd much rather click the "voice msg" button next to the person's name, record a short phrase and have it delivered instantly to the person's voicemail or chat client -- You know, like on Xbox Live... Phone calls require immediate attention, or explicit "away" mode setting. SMS's main advantage is that it's less persistent about notification because users assume the other person might not be available to reply in real time, freeing them from immediate action requirements (most of the time). Voicemail interfaces are so shitty that people would rather be limited to 140 characters per message than talk! Hah ha heh... oh, these people. Telephone "rings" are so persistent that horrid text interfaces seem superior!? If it's more than 10 characters I'd rather dial the damn phone number instead.
Protip: use a better voicemail app, and set your ring count to as few as possible, set the "ring tone" to one short noise followed by a very long silence, and use a short custom message ("This is Tim, leave a message [beep]"), and instantly voice communication has all the benefits of SMS: Non intrusive notification, no immediate response requirements, no wading through clunky voice message menus (for either end users).
If I didn't know better, I'd think that voice messaging UI is purposefully being cluster fscked just so carriers can charge for SMS plans... Never attribute to malice, blah blah, yeah we know they're just ignorant.
Some young folks also seem just plain ignorant when they think I shy away from SMS & Twitter because I'm too old -- No, you silly kids, It's because we graduated from that mode of conversation in the 80s.
I think my ability to crank out awesome code leveled off when I was about 30
Same here. Once you've build your own Languages that compile to other languages and/or machine code, created your own operating systems, window managers, etc. designed chipsets, coded in everything from FORTH to Ruby on Rails, bolted "design patterns" together easily in all those languages (and memorized those new names for what you've been doing for decades), can estimate and manage time wisely, create cross platform applications natively (without VMs like Java), pick up new information as quickly as it's available.... There's really not much more to learn.
Occasionally something interesting pops up, like Homomorphic encryption, but by the time it's practical to use it's old hat. I'm not sure I can get any better or more efficient. Hell, even my people skills (read: leading dopes into thinking your suggestion was their idea) have plateaued.
I don't even have arguments anymore. I just make up coding koans on the spot that both enlighten and confuse.
Eg. In response to making yet another pointless change to an already very scalable database architecture:
One must adjust size vs speed tradeoffs each time one changes the size vs speed ratio.
We were all makers then. Except, we called it Electronics.
I remember creating an FM transmitter for my term project. I asked to go to the bathroom before my turn to show off our projects, and walked behind the out-building our lab was in, then tuned into the Oldies station my teacher always listened to in the background. I keyed in my transmitter and stated that my electronics teacher "has won the student's choice award for best teacher, call in within the next 10 minutes and mention the phrase 'Chicken Doughnuts' to claim your prize! We now return you to your regularly scheduled program--". Ten minutes later my teacher was still calling the oldies station yelling at the disk jockey, "I'm the Winner! I'm [teacher's name]. 'Chicken Doughnuts'! See?!" The DJ found it hilarious enough to air "The all request hour will continue in a moment, but first, 'Chicken Doughnut' Guy, [insert my teacher's frantic exclamations], Stop calling. You've got the wrong number buddy, but thanks for the laughs."
When my turn to show my project came around, my teacher gave me an A+, and a week of detention.
Where was Slashdot?! Wouldn't they have run my "maker" story? Maybe that would have helped me gain publicity for my crowd sourced "software defined radio" projects? (hooking parallel ports up to short-wave radios a decade before you could buy a 'WIFI' device). Oh, that's right... SLASHDOT DIDN'T EXIST. However, HAL-PC (Houston area league of PC users) did, and their SIG groups were excellent forums for meeting face to face with other like-minded folks, and their BBS was full of amazing shareware.
Slashdot has never been required for common folk to be "influencing the future of technology". It's just your opinion if you think Slashdot is the best, most influential, or only 'collaborative forum'. If influencing future technologists is your goal, then start a chain of Hackerspaces & Makerspaces for folks to get together and make stuff happen. Now that the Internet exists it IS hackerspace incarnate, and Slashdot is just one of many ports, not 'The' port by any measure.
Slashdot is only interested in hunting elephants
This better be an euphemism for pageviews, if not, you're just trolling.
Thinking of Slashdot as some community driven thing is great until you realize that editors have to pick the stories on the home page. We do all the hard work of searching out stories that are interesting for them, so what gives? Why don't the users get to do that last bit too? Just grant "meta moderator" status to a select few, as they do moderators, and call it a day. Seems like all you ask and more would be possible if users actually ran the site instead of the editors...
Essentially, what you want is a purely crowd sourced Slashdot, the problem is that existing entrenched systems and stigmas against new systems keep such things from becoming a reality.
Should the innane elitists and popularist tech-news jockeys at Slashdot direct the course of technology? FUCK NO. The people making technology should. It's like no one remembers 1984.
After reading the above posts it seems that What it Would Take For Developers To Start Their Own Union, is cooperation and agreement among tech-savvy nerds on economics and politics. Considering that most hackers hold the same views in both instances you'd think this possible, but under further examination the views they haver most in common are anti-authoritarian... That's the antithesis of a union.
Although I was raised on a farm and am now a coder in eight languages (nine if you count wiring electronics), My brother was born and raised in the 4th largest US city and is a CountryBoy... He works on the Railroad and is a member of their union. If someone his senior gets bumpped from their job they could bump him from his, and he'd end up taking someone else's job, based on seniority. Before I decided that it was a waste of my brainpower to do manual labor I was an Electrician, and a member of their union. My first encounter with Union work ethics was to install all the switches and outlets in a given room of an office building. I told my foreman, "What?! That'll take me 30 minues." He told me: "It better take you eight hours, or else we'll run out of work" So, I took eight hours -- I turned a screw 1/2 a turn, then took a break. Turned it another half spin, and took another break. At the end of the day I told my boss to sit on my middle finger and spin. Fuck That!
Life is too damn short to waste at all. I'd be willing to spend my time doing something -- ANYTHING -- constructive, even digging ditches, or picking up cigarette butts, but being in a union? HELL NO. I'd rather kill myself to save society the financial drain.
It would be pretty amazing to me if ours were the only life in the cosmos. On the otherhand, at night I just look upwards and gaze at all of the Space there is yet to Conquer.
It's an almost insurmountable task -- One that will take the peaceful cooperation on a planet-wide scale to do, but I do believe it's possible for our race survive the hostilities the Universe throws at us. I nearly shed a tear each time I hear of NASA funding getting cut while trillions are wasted on pointless war efforts. If our primary goal as a species isn't getting some of our eggs out of this one basket, then we're surely doomed...
However you look at it, we've been dealt an amazing hand. When I hear folks talk about fixing problems at home first before venturing into space I think, "What a waste it would be to fold so soon."
When have any of those things you mentioned other than nuclear war ever come close to happening outside of a sci-fi novel? Why don't you concentrate on real problems.
... Said the dinosaur to the Ministry of Genetic Aeronautics.
Chickens Survive.
An Apple/Microsoft site? What fucking planet are you on?
You must be new here. If not, you'll recall how much less of an Apple/Microsoft site it was back in the day... Back when some people weren't seen as morons for remaining an AC instead of joining the UID gold-rush.
I put it to you that GPs viewpoint has some merit, even if it's not completely correct; Being on a different planet isn't a requirement for one to see things in such a way. Instead of employing extreme fight-or-flight lizard-brained logic, try to evaluate a person's views and see if there's any merit at all to their claims. Dismissing others' opinions out of hand is the mark of a fool.
I played Wing Commander all night last night on my Tandy 2500SX/20. [...] I also played it a few years ago on Dosbox. [...] I'm building a 486 for the rest of the series.
I'm building my own OS. The x86 bootloader starts in Real Mode - Just like "DOS". Right at boot on any of your x86 machines you can write text/attributes and/or graphics directly to video memory (@ B800h for EGA/VGA text). No drivers needed because modern BIOSs, and GPUs provide the old interrupt table and CGA/EGA/MCGA/VGA video modes for backwards compatibility. You can use int 13h to do your disk services. Play sounds to the PC speaker. It's just like writing assembly back in the good 'ol 286 days -- include an instruction override byte and you can access the 32 bit instructions too while in "16 bit" mode. Hell, I can even load some old games (that didn't rely on MS DOS supplied interrupts) directly into memory and run them just fine, hell, this even works on a quad core x64 I have because it doesn't require (U)EFI, and uses the 8086 (16bit) boot mode.
Intel, AMD, GPU, and BIOS makers have all gone through some serious fsck'n pains to provide complete backwards support in instruction set, DMA, and interrupt interfaces all the way back to 8086 / 8087. Hell even though CHS (Cylinder Head Sector) geometry is completely irrelevant on today's drives, the drives still support that addressing mode for compatibility....
And here you are running AN EMULATOR. Building A 486?!?! For Shame. If only SOMEONE would create an OS that didn't switch to protected mode right away so you could actually run your classic games on your current hardware...
Were you born this retarded or did your dad beat you repeatedly over the head with a hammer when you were a child?
It was a Trout not a Hammer you insensitive clod!
The government is calling for a long, drawn-out process that would require individuals or small companies to travel to courts far away and engage in multiple hearings just to get their own property back.
Hey a mental red light went off again. It's a familiar one, so let's see.... Ah, here it is, in the Declaration of Independence:
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
Filed under the section under abuses that should not be tolerated, and a revolution fought instead... Interesting, especially because of this part prior to that:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
I'm not sure how long the people will be able to ignore their duty as USA citizens...
Here's a translation for the code savvy Slashdotters:
2012: IF ( Government + Control >= Depotism ) GOTO 1776;