Precisely. In the past week, I have seen a lot of Apple hate on Internet forums, not just in those forums that have lots of tech-savvy geeks, and not just in such forums where the majority of users are US:ians. People are pissed off everywhere.
The lawsuit is biting Apple in the ass. The question is if this is going to be limited only to the short term, or if it will have long-term implications.
I think that you are thinking of "API": Application Programming Interface. I don't think that is what Christian Schaller is referring to programming interface compatibility but to binary compatibility of software packages between Linux distributions.
Let's say that you have a Fedora RPM for an app, and you wish to run that under Ubuntu. While you can convert the raw RPM to DEB format, you can not auto-convert the binary files within the package. The binary programs in the RPM have most likely been configured at compile time in a way that it has dependencies on libraries that are different on Ubuntu. On Windows and MacOS, respectively, there is only one distribution, and therefore they do not have this problem.
But yes, API compatibility between versions of a library is also a problem.
I thought the same way back in 2005. I used to be a Linux / Windows dual-booter. I bought a Mac because I wanted a modern OS that would have both commercial software, free software and a good user interface, including a proper command line.
However, I got fed up with the condescending nature of Apple and with the OS. I could not get things work the way I wanted it. For instance, such a simple thing as getting mouse acceleration right. The GUI also looked ridiculously blurred. After a month, I switched back to Linux and sold the Mac.
The size of the display and the distance to the viewer are also significant. I found this chart to be useful when comparing.
On my 32" 1080 TV at home, I can see the same channel in both SD and HD (1080), and I can just barely see the difference between them when sitting in the sofa, 6 feet away. When I saw this chart for the first time, I saw that I am just right between the green and the red line.
Very few movies these days are shot on 35 mm film these days. They are shot using digital cameras at 2K or 4K. Editing, compositing, colour timing and visual effects have been done digitally for more than a decade, but more importantly: the cinemas are going all digital. It costs less and is considered more secure to ship a hard drive and send time-limited decryption keys over email than to print and ship a crate containing several big rolls of film.
Also, while 35 mm film has a theoretical limit of 4K, the quality is degraded with each copy, so the copy that is projected in a 35 mm cinema is considered to be near that of 2K anyway.
There used to be a company called FingerWorks that made a touch keyboard called TouchStream that adapted to the user. You could shift your hand a little bit during typing and the keyboard would adapt to that shift and still interpret your relative finger taps even though they would occur outside the printed key rectangles. The touch surface was also a multitouch touchpad, which interpreted more types of gestures than any touchpad before or since.
In 2005, FingerWorks had financial problems and was acquired by Apple, supposedly for its patent portfolio.
I wouldn't dare do that to a precious Model M, or to any of the other mechanical keyboards in my collection. I have had rubber-dome membrane keyboards break because of just a tiny droplet of water in the wrong place on the membrane. Right now I am typing on a Japanese-made quality keyboard worth $250, that I think will outlive that Logitech by several decades as long as I do not put it in the dishwasher.
When I need to clean a (newly acquired second-hand) keyboard, I usually do this: * Remove the keys, using a key-cap puller tool. Put them into a washing bag (like what women use to clean push-up bras). Put the bag into a bowl with a few Denture Cleaning Tabs and pour warm water over it just to cover the bag. The tabs will start to fizz, and this will clean the keys. Let simmer for a few minutes, then rinse and hang to dry. Using a washing bag helps this process a great deal.
* Unscrew and clean between switches with a vacuum cleaner.
* Wash the plastic case with a dishwashing liquid under the shower. I may need to rub with a sponge if it is especially dirty.
* Clean electronics with q-tips dipped in isopropyl alcohol.
I suppose that plastic parts could be washed in the dishwasher, but then you must be sure that it does not get too hot. ABS plastic melts at around 110-150ÂC and could start warping at 75Â C. PBT keys, such as is used for Model M keys do withstand higher temperatures.
Instead of your domestic Army, how about the French Foreign Legion? When you arrive, they don't care about your background - they expect that you have a troubled past that you want to forget. They will also give you a new name. They could ship you out to any of France's colonies and allies countries or wherever they operate. Of course, one of the requirements for entry is that you speak French well.
No, you are wrong about your assumptions about mechanical keyboards. There are several switches and they are different.
The Cherry MX switch actuates at 2 mm -- halfway to the bottom, and most variants (blue, brown, red) are very light compared to most conventional rubber dome-switch keyboards, such as those with low-profile scissor switches. The most ergonomic keyboards on the market, the Truly Ergonomic, the Kinesis and the Maltron all have Cherry MX switches. I suffered from RSI a few years ago, and switching from a crappy Dell keyboard to a keyboard with light Cherry MX switches helped me a lot.
I think that the buckling spring (IBM Model M, Unicomp) and Alps (Matias Tactile Pro) keyboards are worse, though. The buckling springs are heavy. The Alps have the tactile point too high up, so they feel a bit like rubber dome switches, even if they click. But that is of course just my opinion.
The Kinesis contoured keyboards are actually 1 1/2" less wide than a "full size" conventional keyboard.
I often place stuff that I am working on the middle of my Kinesis. It could be a notebook, a phone, etc. There are other users who place touchpads there and use that over a mouse. The space does not go to waste.
The Cherry MX Blue switches in the Rosewill keyboards is much lighter than the buckling spring in the IBM/Lexmark/Unicomp keyboards, while still providing tactile feedback and an audible click. They are much easier on the fingers than the Model M or most cheap rubber dome keyboards.
By the way, there are ways to dampen a buckling spring keyboard's sound. You can dampen the "clack" when bottoming out by installing O-rings around the shafts. You can also remove the ringing almost completely by installing a string of dental floss inside each spring. However, you can not remove the clicking sound without removing the tactile feel. The clicking sound of a buckling spring is actually produced by the spring itself as it reaches "catastrophic buckling" state, not by any mechanical contact.
No, there have been studies that have shown that the kind of radiation that is used by some cell phone standards do indeed have non-thermal effects on brain cells in humans and rats, respectively.
It is just that people tend to look only for thermal effects and ionizing effects (mutating DNA, which can cause cancer) and that is what safety guidelines in Europe and the USA have been based on, so far. That is what is not enough.
Should I skip seeing the three movies, and wait for the condensed fan-edit of the three movies after the BluRays have been released? Seeing how strong the community of fan-editors already is, and what good edits it produces, I think that we can count on there being someone out there who will cut them down into one movie that is telling the tale from Bilbo's perspective, as in the book. There have already been numerous edits of the Star Wars movies, Superman, Dune, etc. and some have been really good.
I am also afraid that seeing my own digital copy would also be the only way to see The Hobbit "trilogy" in a good theatre (my own) and avoid crappy, blurry, "3D". Too bad. I had been looking forward to seeing The Hobbit this December.
I live in several realms on the web: there is work email, private email, banking, and various accounts for my different interests.
I want to keep them separate. I don't want to be automatically logged in into my bank when I log into Youtube to comment on a vid. I want to be able to do that from a friend's computer and not be afraid.
Many years ago I worked with stereoscopic imaging and shutter glasses when it was not so common. What I learned then, is that approximately one fifth of all humans (~20%) can not see 3D using 3D glasses. It is not that they don't want to, it is that they can't, no matter how hard they try.
It is a physiological limitation due to a common natural variation within the human species.
Not showing a movie in 2D is barring 20% of potential movie-goers from seeing the movie in cinemas. It is madness.
Not just them. The biggest high-volume web sites have their performance-critical parts made in C or C++. As volume goes up, so does server load, and it starts to cost big money.
One example is Facebook. They started out using PHP, but now they auto-translate PHP scripts to C++ for performance. They even built their own servers to save energy and they still pay in excess of one million dollars each month for electricity.
In the past few weeks, I have been to several interviews for positions as a C++ backend web developer. I couldn't see many job ads for that five years ago.
I think that part of the underlying problem with GNOME and KDE is that they are vertical, and because they are vertical, they have grown to be too big and too bloated. Each environment (and now, each major version of each) has its own manager, handler or subsystem for this or that and they are all interconnected -- but only within the same desktop environment.
What I think that the Linux desktop world needs is to go back to what people used to call the Unix philosophy: more small programs where each program does less, but does it well. One of the best things with Open Source used to be that there was breadth: there were many different window managers, tools and utilities out there to choose from to use on your desktop, and if one did not work well for you, you could find another one on freecode.com to try.
What I hear (read) about new versions of GNOME and KDE is that new versions are broken in one way or another. A new menu system is not as easy to use, or a feature that used to work in the previous system is broken or not implemented. Well... it should be a simple matter of reverting to the previous version of that program and it should still work. People should be able to mix and match the best program launchers and managers from both Gnome and KDE.. But sadly, that is not the case. The developers are instead trying to make the next MacOS X, Windows Metro, or whatever from the ground up.
I don't begrudge the people who want to pay extra to see a blurry gimmicky image. That is their choice, and welcome to it.
I don't want to pay extra to see 3D.
The damned theatre company won't show the 2D version on opening night when I want to see it, and they show the it only in shoebox-sized theatres. Not much of a choice.
You can't just say that all cell phone radiation is harmless or not. The situation is not that simple. Different generations of cell phones emit radiation in different frequency bands, and human cells could react differently to radiation in each band.
What the scientific community does know is that 800 MHz radiation cause stress on brain cells. With long-term exposure, this radiation break down the blood-brain barrier, killing brain cells. However, most cell phones these days use other frequency bands, in the gigahertz range, and there has not been much work looking at the health effects of them. They could affect human cells in completely different ways, or not at all.
Therefore, new radiation standards for mobile phones need to be set individually for each frequency band. But more importantly, there needs to be more research!
I think that you are a bit naÃve. I live in Sweden, and am actively looking for new employment as a software developer. I go through many job ads every week, and I see that a significant amount of them are for jobs in the industries of online gambling or defense... (Yes, I categorize jobs as software consultants into those categories as well, because you often can not choose which company you are sent to)
I think that the biggest problem is that sites set too many cookies. It can get difficult to distinguish one type of cookie from another. Browsers have a cookie setting for "Ask me every time", which is practically useless as most of your time web browsing gets spent at clicking the popup dialogue.
One example where no cookie needs to be set at default, is on a web site's front page. The user should then be able to give implicit consent to a cookie by clicking on a link inside the site. Not setting a cookie by default on the front page does not imply that the site would not be able to read (and renew) a cookie on the front page that has previously been set.
Slashdot Mirror
The full name is "Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx". ;)
Precisely. In the past week, I have seen a lot of Apple hate on Internet forums, not just in those forums that have lots of tech-savvy geeks, and not just in such forums where the majority of users are US:ians. People are pissed off everywhere.
The lawsuit is biting Apple in the ass. The question is if this is going to be limited only to the short term, or if it will have long-term implications.
I think that you are thinking of "API": Application Programming Interface. I don't think that is what Christian Schaller is referring to programming interface compatibility but to binary compatibility of software packages between Linux distributions.
Let's say that you have a Fedora RPM for an app, and you wish to run that under Ubuntu.
While you can convert the raw RPM to DEB format, you can not auto-convert the binary files within the package.
The binary programs in the RPM have most likely been configured at compile time in a way that it has dependencies on libraries that are different on Ubuntu.
On Windows and MacOS, respectively, there is only one distribution, and therefore they do not have this problem.
But yes, API compatibility between versions of a library is also a problem.
I thought the same way back in 2005. I used to be a Linux / Windows dual-booter. I bought a Mac because I wanted a modern OS that would have both commercial software, free software and a good user interface, including a proper command line.
However, I got fed up with the condescending nature of Apple and with the OS. I could not get things work the way I wanted it. For instance, such a simple thing as getting mouse acceleration right. The GUI also looked ridiculously blurred.
After a month, I switched back to Linux and sold the Mac.
The size of the display and the distance to the viewer are also significant.
I found this chart to be useful when comparing.
On my 32" 1080 TV at home, I can see the same channel in both SD and HD (1080), and I can just barely see the difference between them when sitting in the sofa, 6 feet away. When I saw this chart for the first time, I saw that I am just right between the green and the red line.
Very few movies these days are shot on 35 mm film these days. They are shot using digital cameras at 2K or 4K.
Editing, compositing, colour timing and visual effects have been done digitally for more than a decade, but more importantly: the cinemas are going all digital. It costs less and is considered more secure to ship a hard drive and send time-limited decryption keys over email than to print and ship a crate containing several big rolls of film.
Also, while 35 mm film has a theoretical limit of 4K, the quality is degraded with each copy, so the copy that is projected in a 35 mm cinema is considered to be near that of 2K anyway.
There used to be a company called FingerWorks that made a touch keyboard called TouchStream that adapted to the user. You could shift your hand a little bit during typing and the keyboard would adapt to that shift and still interpret your relative finger taps even though they would occur outside the printed key rectangles.
The touch surface was also a multitouch touchpad, which interpreted more types of gestures than any touchpad before or since.
In 2005, FingerWorks had financial problems and was acquired by Apple, supposedly for its patent portfolio.
I wouldn't dare do that to a precious Model M, or to any of the other mechanical keyboards in my collection.
I have had rubber-dome membrane keyboards break because of just a tiny droplet of water in the wrong place on the membrane.
Right now I am typing on a Japanese-made quality keyboard worth $250, that I think will outlive that Logitech by several decades as long as I do not put it in the dishwasher.
When I need to clean a (newly acquired second-hand) keyboard, I usually do this:
* Remove the keys, using a key-cap puller tool. Put them into a washing bag (like what women use to clean push-up bras). Put the bag into a bowl with a few Denture Cleaning Tabs and pour warm water over it just to cover the bag. The tabs will start to fizz, and this will clean the keys. Let simmer for a few minutes, then rinse and hang to dry. Using a washing bag helps this process a great deal.
* Unscrew and clean between switches with a vacuum cleaner.
* Wash the plastic case with a dishwashing liquid under the shower. I may need to rub with a sponge if it is especially dirty.
* Clean electronics with q-tips dipped in isopropyl alcohol.
I suppose that plastic parts could be washed in the dishwasher, but then you must be sure that it does not get too hot. ABS plastic melts at around 110-150ÂC and could start warping at 75Â C. PBT keys, such as is used for Model M keys do withstand higher temperatures.
Instead of your domestic Army, how about the French Foreign Legion? When you arrive, they don't care about your background - they expect that you have a troubled past that you want to forget. They will also give you a new name. They could ship you out to any of France's colonies and allies countries or wherever they operate. Of course, one of the requirements for entry is that you speak French well.
No, you are wrong about your assumptions about mechanical keyboards. There are several switches and they are different.
The Cherry MX switch actuates at 2 mm -- halfway to the bottom, and most variants (blue, brown, red) are very light compared to most conventional rubber dome-switch keyboards, such as those with low-profile scissor switches.
The most ergonomic keyboards on the market, the Truly Ergonomic, the Kinesis and the Maltron all have Cherry MX switches.
I suffered from RSI a few years ago, and switching from a crappy Dell keyboard to a keyboard with light Cherry MX switches helped me a lot.
I think that the buckling spring (IBM Model M, Unicomp) and Alps (Matias Tactile Pro) keyboards are worse, though. The buckling springs are heavy. The Alps have the tactile point too high up, so they feel a bit like rubber dome switches, even if they click.
But that is of course just my opinion.
The Kinesis contoured keyboards are actually 1 1/2" less wide than a "full size" conventional keyboard.
I often place stuff that I am working on the middle of my Kinesis. It could be a notebook, a phone, etc. There are other users who place touchpads there and use that over a mouse. The space does not go to waste.
The Cherry MX Blue switches in the Rosewill keyboards is much lighter than the buckling spring in the IBM/Lexmark/Unicomp keyboards, while still providing tactile feedback and an audible click. They are much easier on the fingers than the Model M or most cheap rubber dome keyboards.
By the way, there are ways to dampen a buckling spring keyboard's sound. You can dampen the "clack" when bottoming out by installing O-rings around the shafts. You can also remove the ringing almost completely by installing a string of dental floss inside each spring.
However, you can not remove the clicking sound without removing the tactile feel.
The clicking sound of a buckling spring is actually produced by the spring itself as it reaches "catastrophic buckling" state, not by any mechanical contact.
No, there have been studies that have shown that the kind of radiation that is used by some cell phone standards do indeed have non-thermal effects on brain cells in humans and rats, respectively.
It is just that people tend to look only for thermal effects and ionizing effects (mutating DNA, which can cause cancer) and that is what safety guidelines in Europe and the USA have been based on, so far. That is what is not enough.
Should I skip seeing the three movies, and wait for the condensed fan-edit of the three movies after the BluRays have been released?
Seeing how strong the community of fan-editors already is, and what good edits it produces, I think that we can count on there being someone out there who will cut them down into one movie that is telling the tale from Bilbo's perspective, as in the book.
There have already been numerous edits of the Star Wars movies, Superman, Dune, etc. and some have been really good.
I am also afraid that seeing my own digital copy would also be the only way to see The Hobbit "trilogy" in a good theatre (my own) and avoid crappy, blurry, "3D".
Too bad. I had been looking forward to seeing The Hobbit this December.
I live in several realms on the web: there is work email, private email, banking, and various accounts for my different interests.
I want to keep them separate. I don't want to be automatically logged in into my bank when I log into Youtube to comment on a vid. I want to be able to do that from a friend's computer and not be afraid.
Many years ago I worked with stereoscopic imaging and shutter glasses when it was not so common.
What I learned then, is that approximately one fifth of all humans (~20%) can not see 3D using 3D glasses. It is not that they don't want to, it is that they can't, no matter how hard they try.
It is a physiological limitation due to a common natural variation within the human species.
Not showing a movie in 2D is barring 20% of potential movie-goers from seeing the movie in cinemas. It is madness.
Not just them. The biggest high-volume web sites have their performance-critical parts made in C or C++. As volume goes up, so does server load, and it starts to cost big money.
One example is Facebook. They started out using PHP, but now they auto-translate PHP scripts to C++ for performance. They even built their own servers to save energy and they still pay in excess of one million dollars each month for electricity.
In the past few weeks, I have been to several interviews for positions as a C++ backend web developer. I couldn't see many job ads for that five years ago.
I think that part of the underlying problem with GNOME and KDE is that they are vertical, and because they are vertical, they have grown to be too big and too bloated.
Each environment (and now, each major version of each) has its own manager, handler or subsystem for this or that and they are all interconnected -- but only within the same desktop environment.
What I think that the Linux desktop world needs is to go back to what people used to call the Unix philosophy: more small programs where each program does less, but does it well. One of the best things with Open Source used to be that there was breadth: there were many different window managers, tools and utilities out there to choose from to use on your desktop, and if one did not work well for you, you could find another one on freecode.com to try.
What I hear (read) about new versions of GNOME and KDE is that new versions are broken in one way or another. A new menu system is not as easy to use, or a feature that used to work in the previous system is broken or not implemented. Well ... it should be a simple matter of reverting to the previous version of that program and it should still work. People should be able to mix and match the best program launchers and managers from both Gnome and KDE.. But sadly, that is not the case. The developers are instead trying to make the next MacOS X, Windows Metro, or whatever from the ground up.
"Hey boys, there are hot girls in science!" ? ....
I don't want to pay extra to see 3D.
The damned theatre company won't show the 2D version on opening night when I want to see it, and they show the it only in shoebox-sized theatres. Not much of a choice.
You can't just say that all cell phone radiation is harmless or not. The situation is not that simple.
Different generations of cell phones emit radiation in different frequency bands, and human cells could react differently to radiation in each band.
What the scientific community does know is that 800 MHz radiation cause stress on brain cells. With long-term exposure, this radiation break down the blood-brain barrier, killing brain cells.
However, most cell phones these days use other frequency bands, in the gigahertz range, and there has not been much work looking at the health effects of them. They could affect human cells in completely different ways, or not at all.
Therefore, new radiation standards for mobile phones need to be set individually for each frequency band.
But more importantly, there needs to be more research!
Does that mean that you don't believe that microwave ovens are able to heat food?
I think that you are a bit naÃve. ... (Yes, I categorize jobs as software consultants into those categories as well, because you often can not choose which company you are sent to)
I live in Sweden, and am actively looking for new employment as a software developer. I go through many job ads every week, and I see that a significant amount of them are for jobs in the industries of online gambling or defense
Before I switch, I would like to know, is it now possible to open a bookmark menu while a page is loading ... or is that still broken?
I think that the biggest problem is that sites set too many cookies. It can get difficult to distinguish one type of cookie from another.
Browsers have a cookie setting for "Ask me every time", which is practically useless as most of your time web browsing gets spent at clicking the popup dialogue.
One example where no cookie needs to be set at default, is on a web site's front page. The user should then be able to give implicit consent to a cookie by clicking on a link inside the site. Not setting a cookie by default on the front page does not imply that the site would not be able to read (and renew) a cookie on the front page that has previously been set.