Sorry I was thinking more of a acquisition type of scenario the RIM rumors were more of a software on RIM devices which I don't think is anywhere near as nice as an outright purchase for MS.
I agree. I think MS has finally realized that tablet/phone is where things are going (at least for large volume consumer stuff). Win 8 needs to be a success on things smaller than a PC to really win the "we have a common feel across the form factor" kind of argument. RIM actually would have been a great deal for them: both are already trusted/dominant in their respective areas for business customers. Canada and Waterloo in particular where RIM is based has always been a great source for MS to recruit, could suck techies into Canada much easier than they could get HB-1's for the US etc. All around I think it would have been the better deal for them.
How is that different from moving the directory entries for loads of files into the "I'm deleted" folder, as has been done on the Mac since 1991 and on Windows since 1995? None of the data gets moved; the inodes (or whatever FAT, HFS, and NTFS call them) stay in the same place.
Well if you don't move the file than you don't have to write stuff to the new folder (even if it is just a pointer in a table presumably something gets written to say "this file is here now") and remove the corresponding thing to the old folder as well as for any systems I've used store somewhere what the original folder was. Very expensive. I'm not sure why but I find for example on win 7 up to about 2k files being deleted everything is quick past that it is non-linear. I deleted 50k files once and it took probably 500X more than 1k. Not sure why and they were all similarly sized files (though as you say size shouldn't matter much). Perhaps past a certain size the OS does more work to free up the space since freeing up large space timely (or more cleanly like writing every block as free rather than just a flag on the first block of the file) might be more important than a small amount of space.
Moving files is not a good idea in my opinion because that seems to always be system specific, one calls it recycle bin, another.trash, another something else. It just seems inherently unclean to have to muck with things in two locations to complete one operation.
Yep and could be much faster. Scenario: download loads of files say pictures. Delete in the standard way and you have to move all those files around which is some function of size of individual files and how shotgunned across the filesystem they are. So they might be contiguous after they get written to one location all in a very short interval but not before. Versus something like a "I'm 'deleted'" bit on the file you lose a bit of space but don't have to move the file to "delete" it. Someone mounts the file system using NFS/samba/whatever and they can see both current and undeletable files (assuming access rights of course). None of this as you get on a windows system deleting files on a remote system being permanent and not making it to your recycle bin etc, it is just a bit that is being flipped. Heck the filesystem cache could make the operation extremely quick and process the transactions asynchronously. This is assuming people are willing to tolerate some deletions failing to happen in case of an interruption which I think would be the case for most people where I think failed writes of new data would be more critical to avoid.
Nope doesn't wash. Sometimes you don't know what is important to you until someone else tells you its important. Like studying for exams and someone tells you oh you should look at that file again the prof said there will be a question on it on the exam, a book you finished reading you find out 3 weeks later someone else wants to read etc. It seems pretty ridiculous to me to assume that everyone will always only delete things that they will end up never needing in the future when no one knows the future, no one has perfect manual or mental dexterity to make sure that they don't accidentally hit enter after a typo, select the wrong folder etc. Shit happens that is why there is an undo button in word processors and that is why there should be an undo in the filesystem (or at least at the "presentation" layer (command processor, GUI etc)).
And when your backup hasn't run yet what than? I've worked on 100+ TB of live data several PB of capacity systems. Sometimes users are dumping 10Gbps data to disk for days at a time. Than someone deletes something and woops the tape hasn't archived it yet. Admittedly a "recycle bin" probably wouldn't handle TBs of data but still scale the problem done and it is still a real issue. Downloaded a pdf and accidentally deleted it rather than the paper you just read. Oh crap and can't remember where it came from because you've clicked on 50 links between than and very useful links like http://something.com/alkshftfhY^asdlfkhalnlknlkrehwo aren't very helpful in finding out what the docs were. Seems trivial but anything that a user can see on a nearly daily basis isn't trivial it is a every day net positive feature to have.
I agree with you to some point about the outsourcing. I think IT is becoming an additional skill. For example my current job is as a physicist. However the fact that I have a software engineering and IT background helped me get the job. It wasn't in the formal job description but it probably helped put me at the top of the pile. Similarly for other science jobs, engineering, healthcare, heck to be a small office manager now you need to know how to set up the offices router.
There is a whole class of work with problems but no money to solve them having someone that has the knowledge to solve them and can do that on their spare time is invaluable and not easily outsourced. It is highly unlikely a kid in India is going to have the experience on multimillion dollar healthcare equipment and understand physics well enough to code things for the domain I work in. Nor can my work pay even $20/hr for that work as they'd have to have a financial reason for it where as it might just be a time savings reason (with salaried employees in small numbers you don't really care about there time in money sense just in quality of life).
One could add though that most teachers do not have a degree in psychology either. The fact that one or two courses in 200 level undergrad psych magically makes a teacher an expert in psychological issues is unproven, but if true perhaps we could add that to the lamaze classes. I agree with you though the beauty of elearning is its fairness. Everyone has the opportunity to interact with the device/lesson in exactly the same way, there isn't the teachers pet, there isn't the difficult student that distracts everyone, the kid can play the lesson back rather than having to rely on notes etc. That is the key lesson of the internet I think: if the access to information is leveled so will be the power/opportunities for advancement. That is what bugs us in the west we now have to compete with a kid in India, a grandmother in the Ukraine and guy in a wheelchair in China.
Hmm yep seems rare enough except: Bootcamp installs I think it is still optional but one of those annoying on the list of updates when you install the drivers for a Mac after installing windows. So... probably a disproportionate number of Macs running Windows are vulnerable. We leads my evil genius to be screaming in my head: "Its been years since MS and Apple have collaborated to bring users the vulnerablities they truly wanted: just in time for Christmas. Think Different (than you intended)."
Okay lets start with a good cross/. topic gripefest(tech and nerd columns): This is quicker hype than the next iDevice gets. One could say prematurely uploaded all over the place.
Not to mention the purists tend to focus on the book as published, ie after the editors of the book decided to chop out 100 pages for length, and change some words, change where chapters end etc. So they are being pure to what already is an interpretation of what the author originally intended. Perhaps the editor did a good job and made the book better, perhaps not but getting all cult like protective of an artist's vision when what was published usually isn't the artist's vision is kind of silly to me.
Faster than the current top 3. Hmm not really surprising since you are demoing something 6 months out. What does ARM, or Apple have coming up in 6 months? Still good to see Intel come out with a much stronger offering.
Hmm. Not sure but I think your timeline is off here. In the US/Canada at least everything has to be out by the US Black Friday. Which is in late November. But you need to press a copy, get it back to the person making the product, confirm it is right, mass produce, ship to stores, stock shelfs etc all before. I suspect to make that deadline your looking at more of a end of September cutoff for development work.
Good idea. Still I literally play PS3 for 20-30 min at a time every week. Running to my computer and diffing a legal document to make sure my rights aren't being taken away rather than spending my little free time actually enjoying games sucks:-)
Exactly. My thinking is: there should have to be a very good reason to amend an agreement, it shouldn't be a monthly thing. Heck they shouldn't have to have you accept another agreement every time they do a patch, they could just have "same terms as the last time" (Ok Cancel). The burying you in legalize on a regular basis and then calling it your fault if you don't send them a letter within 30 days to keep your original rights is ridiculous.
Funny thing, I'm Canadian. We've been pandering to the french in Canada since at least 1970's when they had a lot of turmoil about losing their culture to the anglophones even though we won the war against the french. So we got language laws in the rest of the provinces that Quebec doesn't have to follow, government spends ~50% of the time speaking in french even though only ~30% of the population understands it well (and of those the majority would understand english too) etc. The US since the Civil War has been pandering to the south: agricultural subsidizies for crops that serve little use (really how much soy/corn should be in your diet and how much is subsidized to be grown? crazy), slow as hell getting civil rights laws passed even though that was at least partially the issue for the war in the first place, resistance to moving away from coal and oil, etc. Got to love them spoils the victors get, eh?
Even when I bought mine along with my TV a year and a half ago the sales guy said the Samsung bluray player I was looking at was the second fastest on the market... first was still the drive in the PS3. Not sure if he knew what he was talking about but yeah PS3 was and still is marketed as a media server. I don't know you probably can do it if you built it yourself, but I think it would be hard to be able to build a system even today with what a PS3 has: bluray, wireless N, HDMI, and a couple remotes for $200 let alone buy one you plug in and your done Good luck.
Hey I have this screwdriver, I'll give it to you if you'll hit these nails into my wall. There ya' go, problem solved.
PS3 is reasonably cheap now, especially since you get a bluray with it (always nice to have a spare in case your dedicated one goes to hell), and you have the option to play games if you have a visitor that wants to. In short: more options for about the same cost (and comes with a couple, albeit crappy for purpose remotes).
It's not just laziness, well I guess it is, but it is time. You are obviously willing to do something and have time (you're playing games) its just them jerking you around by changing the contract every couple weeks and expecting you to write a letter if you want to dispute a change every time is unreasonable. EULAs didn't change this frequently until we had the expectation of constantly connected devices. Some how them pushing changes is made really convenient but your responding to them has to rely on snail mail, likely to some bloody office in Japan that would cost you $5 every time you mailed a letter. Your "free" PSN doesn't seem so free anymore.
Not to mention it seems like my PS3 every other time I turn it on wants to either update its OS or update the game I'm currently running before letting me use it. It is like the Windows box from hell (KB 1010283 ready to install don't do anything and don't shut me off while I spin for 20min installing another.00.01 release of a feature you don't use). It isn't just a matter of reading the EULA, I think I did when I opened my box. It is the biweekly OS updates since this problem, each with an EULA warning, which may are may not be different from the original one (and if it is the same is a complete waste of time to read again) but which I'm not willing to spend the 20 minutes I was planning on spending playing a game reading it instead. I'm not sure couldn't they just have sort of a release note? Ie. "all previous rights and terms as before except... you can't sue us". Would save a heck of a lot of reading/might actually get read/might actually fit on one screen.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought slashdot lubricant was caffeinated Astro Glide.
Sorry I was thinking more of a acquisition type of scenario the RIM rumors were more of a software on RIM devices which I don't think is anywhere near as nice as an outright purchase for MS.
I agree. I think MS has finally realized that tablet/phone is where things are going (at least for large volume consumer stuff). Win 8 needs to be a success on things smaller than a PC to really win the "we have a common feel across the form factor" kind of argument. RIM actually would have been a great deal for them: both are already trusted/dominant in their respective areas for business customers. Canada and Waterloo in particular where RIM is based has always been a great source for MS to recruit, could suck techies into Canada much easier than they could get HB-1's for the US etc. All around I think it would have been the better deal for them.
How is that different from moving the directory entries for loads of files into the "I'm deleted" folder, as has been done on the Mac since 1991 and on Windows since 1995? None of the data gets moved; the inodes (or whatever FAT, HFS, and NTFS call them) stay in the same place.
Well if you don't move the file than you don't have to write stuff to the new folder (even if it is just a pointer in a table presumably something gets written to say "this file is here now") and remove the corresponding thing to the old folder as well as for any systems I've used store somewhere what the original folder was. Very expensive. I'm not sure why but I find for example on win 7 up to about 2k files being deleted everything is quick past that it is non-linear. I deleted 50k files once and it took probably 500X more than 1k. Not sure why and they were all similarly sized files (though as you say size shouldn't matter much). Perhaps past a certain size the OS does more work to free up the space since freeing up large space timely (or more cleanly like writing every block as free rather than just a flag on the first block of the file) might be more important than a small amount of space.
Moving files is not a good idea in my opinion because that seems to always be system specific, one calls it recycle bin, another .trash, another something else. It just seems inherently unclean to have to muck with things in two locations to complete one operation.
Yep and could be much faster. Scenario: download loads of files say pictures. Delete in the standard way and you have to move all those files around which is some function of size of individual files and how shotgunned across the filesystem they are. So they might be contiguous after they get written to one location all in a very short interval but not before. Versus something like a "I'm 'deleted'" bit on the file you lose a bit of space but don't have to move the file to "delete" it. Someone mounts the file system using NFS/samba/whatever and they can see both current and undeletable files (assuming access rights of course). None of this as you get on a windows system deleting files on a remote system being permanent and not making it to your recycle bin etc, it is just a bit that is being flipped. Heck the filesystem cache could make the operation extremely quick and process the transactions asynchronously. This is assuming people are willing to tolerate some deletions failing to happen in case of an interruption which I think would be the case for most people where I think failed writes of new data would be more critical to avoid.
Nope doesn't wash. Sometimes you don't know what is important to you until someone else tells you its important. Like studying for exams and someone tells you oh you should look at that file again the prof said there will be a question on it on the exam, a book you finished reading you find out 3 weeks later someone else wants to read etc. It seems pretty ridiculous to me to assume that everyone will always only delete things that they will end up never needing in the future when no one knows the future, no one has perfect manual or mental dexterity to make sure that they don't accidentally hit enter after a typo, select the wrong folder etc. Shit happens that is why there is an undo button in word processors and that is why there should be an undo in the filesystem (or at least at the "presentation" layer (command processor, GUI etc)).
And when your backup hasn't run yet what than? I've worked on 100+ TB of live data several PB of capacity systems. Sometimes users are dumping 10Gbps data to disk for days at a time. Than someone deletes something and woops the tape hasn't archived it yet. Admittedly a "recycle bin" probably wouldn't handle TBs of data but still scale the problem done and it is still a real issue. Downloaded a pdf and accidentally deleted it rather than the paper you just read. Oh crap and can't remember where it came from because you've clicked on 50 links between than and very useful links like http://something.com/alkshftfhY^asdlfkhalnlknlkrehwo aren't very helpful in finding out what the docs were. Seems trivial but anything that a user can see on a nearly daily basis isn't trivial it is a every day net positive feature to have.
format /dev/null as BTRFS then?
There is a whole class of work with problems but no money to solve them having someone that has the knowledge to solve them and can do that on their spare time is invaluable and not easily outsourced. It is highly unlikely a kid in India is going to have the experience on multimillion dollar healthcare equipment and understand physics well enough to code things for the domain I work in. Nor can my work pay even $20/hr for that work as they'd have to have a financial reason for it where as it might just be a time savings reason (with salaried employees in small numbers you don't really care about there time in money sense just in quality of life).
One could add though that most teachers do not have a degree in psychology either. The fact that one or two courses in 200 level undergrad psych magically makes a teacher an expert in psychological issues is unproven, but if true perhaps we could add that to the lamaze classes. I agree with you though the beauty of elearning is its fairness. Everyone has the opportunity to interact with the device/lesson in exactly the same way, there isn't the teachers pet, there isn't the difficult student that distracts everyone, the kid can play the lesson back rather than having to rely on notes etc. That is the key lesson of the internet I think: if the access to information is leveled so will be the power/opportunities for advancement. That is what bugs us in the west we now have to compete with a kid in India, a grandmother in the Ukraine and guy in a wheelchair in China.
Hmm yep seems rare enough except: Bootcamp installs I think it is still optional but one of those annoying on the list of updates when you install the drivers for a Mac after installing windows. So ... probably a disproportionate number of Macs running Windows are vulnerable. We leads my evil genius to be screaming in my head: "Its been years since MS and Apple have collaborated to bring users the vulnerablities they truly wanted: just in time for Christmas. Think Different (than you intended)."
Okay lets start with a good cross /. topic gripefest(tech and nerd columns): This is quicker hype than the next iDevice gets. One could say prematurely uploaded all over the place.
Not to mention the purists tend to focus on the book as published, ie after the editors of the book decided to chop out 100 pages for length, and change some words, change where chapters end etc. So they are being pure to what already is an interpretation of what the author originally intended. Perhaps the editor did a good job and made the book better, perhaps not but getting all cult like protective of an artist's vision when what was published usually isn't the artist's vision is kind of silly to me.
But your still going to watch it right?
Faster than the current top 3. Hmm not really surprising since you are demoing something 6 months out. What does ARM, or Apple have coming up in 6 months? Still good to see Intel come out with a much stronger offering.
Hmm. Not sure but I think your timeline is off here. In the US/Canada at least everything has to be out by the US Black Friday. Which is in late November. But you need to press a copy, get it back to the person making the product, confirm it is right, mass produce, ship to stores, stock shelfs etc all before. I suspect to make that deadline your looking at more of a end of September cutoff for development work.
Good idea. Still I literally play PS3 for 20-30 min at a time every week. Running to my computer and diffing a legal document to make sure my rights aren't being taken away rather than spending my little free time actually enjoying games sucks :-)
Exactly. My thinking is: there should have to be a very good reason to amend an agreement, it shouldn't be a monthly thing. Heck they shouldn't have to have you accept another agreement every time they do a patch, they could just have "same terms as the last time" (Ok Cancel). The burying you in legalize on a regular basis and then calling it your fault if you don't send them a letter within 30 days to keep your original rights is ridiculous.
Funny thing, I'm Canadian. We've been pandering to the french in Canada since at least 1970's when they had a lot of turmoil about losing their culture to the anglophones even though we won the war against the french. So we got language laws in the rest of the provinces that Quebec doesn't have to follow, government spends ~50% of the time speaking in french even though only ~30% of the population understands it well (and of those the majority would understand english too) etc. The US since the Civil War has been pandering to the south: agricultural subsidizies for crops that serve little use (really how much soy/corn should be in your diet and how much is subsidized to be grown? crazy), slow as hell getting civil rights laws passed even though that was at least partially the issue for the war in the first place, resistance to moving away from coal and oil, etc. Got to love them spoils the victors get, eh?
So you were there and accepted the Constitution as it was originally written? Good for you.
Even when I bought mine along with my TV a year and a half ago the sales guy said the Samsung bluray player I was looking at was the second fastest on the market ... first was still the drive in the PS3. Not sure if he knew what he was talking about but yeah PS3 was and still is marketed as a media server. I don't know you probably can do it if you built it yourself, but I think it would be hard to be able to build a system even today with what a PS3 has: bluray, wireless N, HDMI, and a couple remotes for $200 let alone buy one you plug in and your done Good luck.
PS3 is reasonably cheap now, especially since you get a bluray with it (always nice to have a spare in case your dedicated one goes to hell), and you have the option to play games if you have a visitor that wants to. In short: more options for about the same cost (and comes with a couple, albeit crappy for purpose remotes).
It's not just laziness, well I guess it is, but it is time. You are obviously willing to do something and have time (you're playing games) its just them jerking you around by changing the contract every couple weeks and expecting you to write a letter if you want to dispute a change every time is unreasonable. EULAs didn't change this frequently until we had the expectation of constantly connected devices. Some how them pushing changes is made really convenient but your responding to them has to rely on snail mail, likely to some bloody office in Japan that would cost you $5 every time you mailed a letter. Your "free" PSN doesn't seem so free anymore.
Not to mention it seems like my PS3 every other time I turn it on wants to either update its OS or update the game I'm currently running before letting me use it. It is like the Windows box from hell (KB 1010283 ready to install don't do anything and don't shut me off while I spin for 20min installing another .00.01 release of a feature you don't use). It isn't just a matter of reading the EULA, I think I did when I opened my box. It is the biweekly OS updates since this problem, each with an EULA warning, which may are may not be different from the original one (and if it is the same is a complete waste of time to read again) but which I'm not willing to spend the 20 minutes I was planning on spending playing a game reading it instead. I'm not sure couldn't they just have sort of a release note? Ie. "all previous rights and terms as before except ... you can't sue us". Would save a heck of a lot of reading/might actually get read/might actually fit on one screen.
Can I return my 1.5 year old PS3 because the new version of the EULA has terms I don't like and I bought it specifically for the online component?