A foreign substance, introduced into our precious bodily fluids, without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice... that's the way a hard-core commie WORKS!
I first became aware of it... during the physical act of love. A profound feeling of FATIGUE... a feeling of EMPTINESS followed... loss of ESSENCE! Women, women sense my power, and they seek the LIFE ESSENCE. I do not avoid women... but I DO DENY THEM MY ESSENCE!
The youtube link was not so much a review as a quick runthrough of the new Cinnamon's look, feel and features. And it's looks really, really good, like it strikes that weird balance between giving you all the control and features you want (that commercial desktops and some gnome-based desktops lack) without over-complicating the interface with a rabbit-hole of settings and interfaces (my biggest gripe with other linux desktops, esp. KDE).
Kudos to the Mint team for going the extra mile on this. It's not easy to get a desktop right, and everyone else it seems has given up on account of the mobile craze (looking at YOU, Microsoft). I think Mint just set the gold standard for a DE. and it's free.
The collaboration between IBM and Microsoft unravelled in 1990, between the releases of Windows 3.0 and OS/2 1.3. During this time, Windows 3.0 became a tremendous success, selling millions of copies in its first year. Much of its success was because Windows 3.0 (along with MS-DOS) was bundled with most new computers. OS/2, on the other hand, was only available as an expensive stand-alone software package.
Volumes have been written about this, but key was that Microsoft had more at interest than selling Windows - Microsoft was selling a platform for its Office products, and maybe a chance at file format lock-in for business applications. That meant they wanted as many copies out there as possible. IBM, on the other hand, wanted to sell overpriced PS/2 machines, and had no interest in cannibalizing this by bundling OS/2 with the likes of Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and Packard-Bell, whereas all of these companies desperately needed someone to supply an OS to complete a turn-key product. Microsoft did a simple business assessment, and concluded they could team up with the clones and blow the doors off the market if they weren't bound somehow to promoting IBM's hardware.
Even in academia, did the PC/RT even count? They sold minimal numbers of the things. The only place I've even ever seen them was in Austin... deep IBM-land.
We had 'em in Pittsburgh. IBM was doing a joint-venture with CMU, and there were so many around campus in public clusters they seemed ubiquitous. My first encounter with Unix (with a GUI and a large-screen display, great keyboards). Pretty sweet at the time, but hell to maintain and repair. Anyway, IBM dropped out of the project, one of the many "what the?" moments IBM would generate as they stumbled over cheap, semi-capable (but steadily improving) PCs.
That explains why in the mid '80s to mid 90's IBM was busy in a joint venture with Microsoft first and alone afterwards... to produce a PC system with networking, multi-tasking and file permissions and even 32 bits (OS/2).
Wasn't IBM forced into doing this by the roaring success of a company called Netware? Yeah, Netware. Remember them? The reason the PC succeeded was not because it was great out of the box... it was because of legions of 3d-parties hacking DOS with TSR add-ons that expanded the capabilities of the machine. Microsoft would play catch-up, incorporating the best of what was out there (e.g., memory managers), finally culminating in Windows, which was more than just a GUI... it was memory management, standardized device drivers, and networking packaged together.
IBM was always late to the game. The RS/6000 line came late after Sun, Apollo, and DEC had already proved a market for desktop workstations (except for academia, did the PC/RT even count?) Then, they realized that Microsoft and Netware were slowly hacking the PC into a multitasking, networked workstation for a fraction of workstation prices. Businesses could buy 5, 10 Windows PC's for the price of one workstation, and manage it themselves without a service contract. By the time OS/2 came along, the war was already over, because as lousy and crashy as Windows could be, it had become ubiquitous, and anyway, when you want to sell MILLIONS of PC's, it's never about the OS... it's about the killer app(s) that runs on it. Windows was a platform to sell copies of Word and Excel. Nobody had any reason to write any killer app for OS/2 when they could write it once for Windows and get rich.
That joint-venture? Too little, too late, again. IBM in the 80's and 90's was a string of awful decisions, and before it was over it was entirely feasible that the great IBM would disappear entirely (check out their stock price, rock-bottom in 92, 93).
And since Android app crash rates are actually lower than iOS ones (ie a platform with much lower 'fragmentation') then it clearly isn't the problem that you think it is...
Cite? Seriously, that's a hell of a thing to measure. Is there some kinda metric to back that up? Not being snarky, I truly wanna know.
The insightful AC forgot to cite, but the title was enough for a Google search. First hit: No need for the pharmacy; just press print. When it comes out, let's call it Dial-A-Drug and plug it in right next to the fridge.
This thread is making me wonder, Is it feasible we will someday see a USB-like device for home organic synthesis, like a 3-D printer but for products of organic chemistry? Impossible? Waiting to happen?
I never met him, but I'll bet Sir E. and Bernie worked hours and days and weeks just to get one of their songs hitworthy.
Yes, with a computer and something like GarageBand, recording a passable song is doable. But writing a GREAT song is still really fucking hard and time-consuming as it always has been.
Firefox can also come without that "shit". From the article:
Mozilla also announced the launch of a separate Firefox download that won’t automatically install Adobe’s technology for playing back DRM-wrapped content in the browser.
As stated in TFA, the Mozilla foundation had to choose whether to support DRM in its own code according to HTML standards, or else accept that most users will resort to awful buggy plugins like Flash or simply switch to Chrome, Safari, or Edge to get the content they want so bad. I, myself, prefer Firefox not become a marginalized has-been project with single-digit adoption.
Choose your poison. There's a silver lining in DRM over browser: it encourages more content over Internet as opposed to cable TV, encouraging more people to dump their overpriced cable subscriptions and have a stake in the net-neutrality war.
It's not just porn and MMORGs. The Verge posted a story on slot machines where the industry puts a LOT of effort into figuring out what kind of bells and whistles best hit the reward-center of your brain to keep you playing. Now, designers of other kinds of games are getting in on it:
"I can’t tell you how often I’ve been approached since the publication of my book by Silicon Valley types who say things like, ‘Wow, the gambling industry really seems to have a handle on this attention retention problem that we’re all facing,'" Schüll told me. "'Will you come tell our designers how to do a better job?’"
Check out the thing they call the "zone", where players get so absorbed by the machine they pay no attention to their surroundings.
To understand the zone, you first have to understand "flow," the concept developed by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe a hyperfocused state of absorption. During "flow," time speeds up (hours feel like minutes) or slows down (reactions can be made instantly) and the mind reaches a state of almost euphoric equilibrium. Schüll, in her book, describes Csikszentmihaly’s four criteria of flow: "[F]irst, each moment of the activity must have a little goal; second, the rules for attaining that goal must be clear; third, the activity must give immediate feedback; fourth, the tasks of the activity must be matched with challenge." For most of their history, slots easily fulfilled the first two criteria; after lowering volatility, they fulfilled the third criterion, and with the introduction of multiple lines, endless bonus rounds, and the occasional mini-game, they finally fulfilled the four criteria.
If you've ever taking a stroll through a casino, you've seen this. No reason it can't go on in some kid's bedroom.
You're one of the luckier ones. Comcast used to be really, really unreliable where I live (and there's nobody else... Verizon has all but announced that FIOS will never come to my area). But now my experience is like yours... their Internet "just works", and I don't know and don't care about their TV service.
Keep an eye out for your bill, though... check it every month. I have my own cable modem, and every six months or so they sneak in a monthly charge for a rented modem I never had or asked for. I have to call them and wait on hold until they check a bunch of stuff, apologize, fix my bill, and offer a great TV/Phone package at an awesome introductory rate for 12 months. Which I turn down.
I have to es'plain to him each time that we have this thing called an An-Ten-Na that receives digital TV Foooorrrrrrr Frreeee-eeee-eee...
Gotta give a shout-out to trying an antenna. I cut the cord a year ago and have been surprised by how good TV can be the way our grandparents used to watch it. Of course, YMMV, but in my area, all the major networks come in great, full non-compressed HD. There are even some local channels broadcasting some cool stuff to catch. And who knew that a flat-screen TV actually has a built-in tuner?
The cabling that used to feed my cable box now connects my TV to one of those flat, indoor antennas, which I positioned in the attic. Antennas do better when they're up high, and a long length of repurposed coax doesn't seem to affect the signal one bit. Anyone who lives near a decent metro area should at least try out an antenna. Real eye-opening to realize you've been been paying for something that's been free all along.
Not exactly, but you're close. To use the ribbon, you have to freely license it from Microsoft...and promise that you won't use it in an Office clone. So...it's an IP shield as much as it's a UI paradigm.
Those sneaky bastards. Thanks muchly for the clarification. Henceforth I'll be thinking how we benefit Microsoft's precious IP as we re-acclimate our organization around this wonderful ribbon.
I do see the need to stop polluting our water, air and land.
This whole thing reminds me of the entire "Lead in Gasoline" fight back in the 60's.
I wish liberals would abandon the "climate change" mantra and focus on air and water quality. It's fairly easy to prove that we are poisoning everything.
Why do "liberals" have to "abandon the climate change mantra" to do something about air and water quality? Can't "conservatives" do something about air and water for their own reasons? Howabout a clean air and water bill, bi-partisan, the "conservatives" support it because we are "poisoning everything" and "liberals" support it because of "climate change". There. Bill passed, clean air and water, and Richard Nixon smiles in his grave. Everybody wins.
Except, THAT WOULD SUCK, because if Republicans vote with Democrats, Republicans might jeopardize their precious "brand" of being against all things liberal, and then voters might get confused, not give as much of a shit at the next election from one party to the other, and those safe majorities might not be so safe anymore. Furthermore, the ultra-libertarians in the Tea Party wing will attack the incumbents in the Primaries, claiming that the new regulation for protecting clean air and water is evil, liberal, communist, twinkle-toed Kenyan-Muslim interference on one's God-given right to pour shit all over your own land if you damn-well want to. And, of course, who's going to PAY for your clean air and water? Regulators, agents, inspectors, prosecutors, none of them work for free! Our Lord Grover Norquist will not permit any new taxes for yet more wasteful government spending!
Nope, too risky. New election cycle coming up. Gotta keep up the pressure, and cooperation doesn't do any good for anybody. On the other hand, making friends with big industrial polluters yields nice election contributions, which pays for TV, radio, and print ads to whip up rage and FUD against the other Party, at least until election day.
Clean air and water? Not this year. Not next year either. In fact, never so long as it might validate those foul godless liberals and that *spit* asshat Al Gore with his "climate change" bullshit. But thanks for your vote.
That Ribbon was most likely introduced simply to distinguish the look and feel from free Office apps, particularly Open/LibreOffice. That's right, I think it's more marketing gimmick than UI innovation. It's not completely hideous - the Ribbon can be hidden, after all. What sucks about 2007 onward is what they TOOK AWAY from 2003. Yes, the toolbars could get messy under 2003, but that's because they were so customizable. Office 2003 even came with a little icon editor to make your own buttons and assign them to macros. That's gone in 2007 and onward; only the most rudimentary customizations are possible with the new Office, which you need if you use anything beyond the basics.
Office 2003 is at end-of-life, and our IT staff is forcing us to Office 2010. Our workflow depends on a lot of macros, however, which in the past we trivially assigned to custom buttons or pull-downs in 2003 toolbars. Very difficult, or simply not possible, to do in 2007 onward (requires, at least, custom tools, XML editing, and hooks in VB, just to put a custom icon on a ribbon). There's a lot of gnashing of teeth on the Internet from workplaces trying to regain the functionality that was so trivial under 2003.
Office became popular because they nearly gave it away with new PC's back in the Pentium/Windows NT days. It stayed popular because for all its security flaws, VB for Office made the software customizable enough to become essential to any office out there, be it your dentist or the Citibank trading floor. Microsoft lost sight of that with 2007 and the Ribbon Revolution, citing weird focus groups getting hung up on one thing or another to justify a complete UI overhaul, but until now companies like ours could just simply stick with 2003 and get our work done.
For all the faults of Microsoft's products, the saving grace was they were typically so customizable your could bend it into something you could tolerate, or even like. The "new" Microsoft that came along about the time of the Ribbon is going the opposite direction... Windows and Office are less user-customizable with each release, Windows 10 being no exception. This kinda sucks, and I don't see any end to it.
I use both, and find Firefox generally has superior performance and memory usage. The "hipster bullshit minimalist interface known as Australis" is unfortunate, but Classic Theme Restorer takes care of that.
Gotta give a shout-out to the Cree dimmable. Got one going for more than a year in awful conditions: outside, exposed to direct sun in the day, freezing weather at night, and (most impressive) connected to a really cheap photodiode for automatically switching on at night. The latter killed several CFLs because, at dusk and dawn, the lousy photodiode passes some flickering sub-voltage mess for a minute or two before finally switching off/on. The Cree has put up with this like a champ.
Armed passengers could dispatch any would-be terrorist to the magic land of seventy-two virgins.
Not if they're already in the cockpit (bullet-proof door). Any any stray shot by some trigger-happy gun nut would likely pierce the fuselage and start decompressurization, ala Goldfinger. Also, terrorist holds lady with knife to neck and tells you put down your weapon (while unseen terrorist sneaks up behind you with box-cutter). Besides, if you let "passengers" carry guns onto plane, then terrorists who are "passengers" also permitted to bring guns onto plane (they just have to get through our fine TSA screening).
And the flight crew should have an emergency switch to alert air traffic control of a non-normal situation.
This is a really good idea.
From the ground air traffic control should be able to regain control of the aircraft by remote control thereby locking out any manual control under the aircraft is safely on the tarmac.
I like this, too, but what's to stop the bad guys from faking the secret frequency and crashing the plane from the safety of their hideout? We can't even get HTTPS to be secure.
Bottom line, this problem sucks. Really sucks. And it won't be an easy solution.
You, sir, have ruined my day. There's no question why those locks were put in place after 9/11, but a new problem arises that once a bad guy gets the cockpit it's all over. I can imagine some weird manual override built in, crawling around the luggage compartment Passenger 57 style, but then that could be exploited by the bad guys. This problem just sets your head spinning round until you can't get on an airplane anymore.
It's a bit more than that. I'm no Windows hater. I just really like and work with Windows 7, and I don't like what Windows 8 and onward needlessly take away.
If the only PC I had to worry about was my own, than I'd be more ok with undo'ing all the stupid things that Windows 8+ did with the interface, ClassicShell, Window Blinds, whatever. But at work that's not an option. IT has a reasonable interest in keeping things supported and uniform, and adding and supporting tons of third-party interface stuff is something they just don't want to do. So the staff just have to live with this crappy interface stuff (ribbons, non-expected full-screen metro apps, charms popping up unexpectedly, buttons in the wrong places, colors that draw your attention to the wrong place) that, honest-to-god, slows down their productivity. Some staff don't love learning new PC stuff, they just want to get work done. Why the fuck did Microsoft change all this shit when there was no reason to?
I appreciate that Windows 8 is better under the hood, boots fast, and is mostly compatible (*cough* Adobe *cough*). But my staff and I spend our working lives on the desktop, and Microsoft just up and made things ugly and force everyone to drink it like Victory Gin. Particularly, they take away the means to customize the interface to something more 7-like. If they at least left the option to customize things up beyond what the lame "personalize" control can do so you don't have to rely on third-party hacks and unsigned system files, it wouldn't suck so bad.
That's why it doesn't take a Windows hater to hate Windows 8. I'm testing Windows 10 preview, and it's better 'cause there's no start screen or charms, but man the desktop and icons are getting more ugly with each new build, like they're time-warping back to the late 80's when 16 colors was all you had. WTF!
I've worked with one of these, and it is very sweet. Honest PC alternative to a Macbook. I'm no fanboi (I use both platforms), but PC laptops have been flimsy plastic throwaway junk for years, whereas apple builds reliable, solid, throw-it-in-the-bag and go with no McAfee crapware to deal with. The Dell comes with a little McAfee crapware to uninstall, but in every other respect it is the first decent PC laptop I've seen in a long while.
Quality costs. The XPS with 8.1 non-Pro, 8GB RAM, the lower-resolution, non-touch screen, and a decent-size 256 GB SSD (upgrade) will run you $1099 (the "retina" touch-capable screen costs another $300). By comparison, a 13" Air with the same storage, RAM, and non-retina screen (and a slightly faster processor) is $1299.
The XPS 13 feels solid, stupid lightweight, really fast, long battery life, and the non-retina screen looks great (can't vouch for the higher-res screen, but I've heard mixed reviews of Windows 8 scaling up). And it's an actual "lap" top - it don't need no kickstand to hold the screen up. Here's a good review. I would really like to see more PC's built like this.
Slashdot Mirror
Metric is NOTHING! Do you realize that fluoridation of water is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?
A foreign substance, introduced into our precious bodily fluids, without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice... that's the way a hard-core commie WORKS!
I first became aware of it... during the physical act of love. A profound feeling of FATIGUE... a feeling of EMPTINESS followed... loss of ESSENCE! Women, women sense my power, and they seek the LIFE ESSENCE. I do not avoid women... but I DO DENY THEM MY ESSENCE!
The youtube link was not so much a review as a quick runthrough of the new Cinnamon's look, feel and features.
And it's looks really, really good, like it strikes that weird balance between giving you all the control and features you want (that commercial desktops and some gnome-based desktops lack) without over-complicating the interface with a rabbit-hole of settings and interfaces (my biggest gripe with other linux desktops, esp. KDE).
Kudos to the Mint team for going the extra mile on this. It's not easy to get a desktop right, and everyone else it seems has given up on account of the mobile craze (looking at YOU, Microsoft). I think Mint just set the gold standard for a DE. and it's free.
OS/2 preceded Windows, so I'm not really sure how your history makes sense. Windows was Microsoft stabbing IBM in the back and making a clone of OS/2.
Windows 1.0 was released 20 November 1985.
OS/2 version 1.0 was announced in April 1987 (about the time Windows had reached release 1.04), and released in December of that year.
Windows 2.0 was released December 9, 1987.
As to the whole backstabbing thing:
The collaboration between IBM and Microsoft unravelled in 1990, between the releases of Windows 3.0 and OS/2 1.3. During this time, Windows 3.0 became a tremendous success, selling millions of copies in its first year. Much of its success was because Windows 3.0 (along with MS-DOS) was bundled with most new computers. OS/2, on the other hand, was only available as an expensive stand-alone software package.
Volumes have been written about this, but key was that Microsoft had more at interest than selling Windows - Microsoft was selling a platform for its Office products, and maybe a chance at file format lock-in for business applications. That meant they wanted as many copies out there as possible. IBM, on the other hand, wanted to sell overpriced PS/2 machines, and had no interest in cannibalizing this by bundling OS/2 with the likes of Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and Packard-Bell, whereas all of these companies desperately needed someone to supply an OS to complete a turn-key product. Microsoft did a simple business assessment, and concluded they could team up with the clones and blow the doors off the market if they weren't bound somehow to promoting IBM's hardware.
except for academia, did the PC/RT even count?
Even in academia, did the PC/RT even count? They sold minimal numbers of the things. The only place I've even ever seen them was in Austin... deep IBM-land.
We had 'em in Pittsburgh. IBM was doing a joint-venture with CMU, and there were so many around campus in public clusters they seemed ubiquitous. My first encounter with Unix (with a GUI and a large-screen display, great keyboards). Pretty sweet at the time, but hell to maintain and repair. Anyway, IBM dropped out of the project, one of the many "what the?" moments IBM would generate as they stumbled over cheap, semi-capable (but steadily improving) PCs.
That explains why in the mid '80s to mid 90's IBM was busy in a joint venture with Microsoft first and alone afterwards... to produce a PC system with networking, multi-tasking and file permissions and even 32 bits (OS/2).
Wasn't IBM forced into doing this by the roaring success of a company called Netware? Yeah, Netware. Remember them?
The reason the PC succeeded was not because it was great out of the box... it was because of legions of 3d-parties hacking DOS with TSR add-ons that expanded the capabilities of the machine. Microsoft would play catch-up, incorporating the best of what was out there (e.g., memory managers), finally culminating in Windows, which was more than just a GUI... it was memory management, standardized device drivers, and networking packaged together.
IBM was always late to the game. The RS/6000 line came late after Sun, Apollo, and DEC had already proved a market for desktop workstations (except for academia, did the PC/RT even count?) Then, they realized that Microsoft and Netware were slowly hacking the PC into a multitasking, networked workstation for a fraction of workstation prices. Businesses could buy 5, 10 Windows PC's for the price of one workstation, and manage it themselves without a service contract. By the time OS/2 came along, the war was already over, because as lousy and crashy as Windows could be, it had become ubiquitous, and anyway, when you want to sell MILLIONS of PC's, it's never about the OS... it's about the killer app(s) that runs on it. Windows was a platform to sell copies of Word and Excel. Nobody had any reason to write any killer app for OS/2 when they could write it once for Windows and get rich.
That joint-venture? Too little, too late, again. IBM in the 80's and 90's was a string of awful decisions, and before it was over it was entirely feasible that the great IBM would disappear entirely (check out their stock price, rock-bottom in 92, 93).
And since Android app crash rates are actually lower than iOS ones (ie a platform with much lower 'fragmentation') then it clearly isn't the problem that you think it is...
Cite? Seriously, that's a hell of a thing to measure. Is there some kinda metric to back that up? Not being snarky, I truly wanna know.
The insightful AC forgot to cite, but the title was enough for a Google search. First hit: No need for the pharmacy; just press print. When it comes out, let's call it Dial-A-Drug and plug it in right next to the fridge.
This thread is making me wonder, Is it feasible we will someday see a USB-like device for home organic synthesis, like a 3-D printer but for products of organic chemistry?
Impossible? Waiting to happen?
Logic Supply ML100G-30. Pricier, but silent.
I never met him, but I'll bet Sir E. and Bernie worked hours and days and weeks just to get one of their songs hitworthy.
Yes, with a computer and something like GarageBand, recording a passable song is doable. But writing a GREAT song is still really fucking hard and time-consuming as it always has been.
Firefox can also come without that "shit". From the article:
Mozilla also announced the launch of a separate Firefox download that won’t automatically install Adobe’s technology for playing back DRM-wrapped content in the browser.
As stated in TFA, the Mozilla foundation had to choose whether to support DRM in its own code according to HTML standards, or else accept that most users will resort to awful buggy plugins like Flash or simply switch to Chrome, Safari, or Edge to get the content they want so bad. I, myself, prefer Firefox not become a marginalized has-been project with single-digit adoption.
Choose your poison. There's a silver lining in DRM over browser: it encourages more content over Internet as opposed to cable TV, encouraging more people to dump their overpriced cable subscriptions and have a stake in the net-neutrality war.
It's not just porn and MMORGs. The Verge posted a story on slot machines where the industry puts a LOT of effort into figuring out what kind of bells and whistles best hit the reward-center of your brain to keep you playing. Now, designers of other kinds of games are getting in on it:
"I can’t tell you how often I’ve been approached since the publication of my book by Silicon Valley types who say things like, ‘Wow, the gambling industry really seems to have a handle on this attention retention problem that we’re all facing,'" Schüll told me. "'Will you come tell our designers how to do a better job?’"
Check out the thing they call the "zone", where players get so absorbed by the machine they pay no attention to their surroundings.
To understand the zone, you first have to understand "flow," the concept developed by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe a hyperfocused state of absorption. During "flow," time speeds up (hours feel like minutes) or slows down (reactions can be made instantly) and the mind reaches a state of almost euphoric equilibrium. Schüll, in her book, describes Csikszentmihaly’s four criteria of flow: "[F]irst, each moment of the activity must have a little goal; second, the rules for attaining that goal must be clear; third, the activity must give immediate feedback; fourth, the tasks of the activity must be matched with challenge." For most of their history, slots easily fulfilled the first two criteria; after lowering volatility, they fulfilled the third criterion, and with the introduction of multiple lines, endless bonus rounds, and the occasional mini-game, they finally fulfilled the four criteria.
If you've ever taking a stroll through a casino, you've seen this. No reason it can't go on in some kid's bedroom.
You're one of the luckier ones. Comcast used to be really, really unreliable where I live (and there's nobody else... Verizon has all but announced that FIOS will never come to my area). But now my experience is like yours... their Internet "just works", and I don't know and don't care about their TV service.
Keep an eye out for your bill, though... check it every month. I have my own cable modem, and every six months or so they sneak in a monthly charge for a rented modem I never had or asked for. I have to call them and wait on hold until they check a bunch of stuff, apologize, fix my bill, and offer a great TV/Phone package at an awesome introductory rate for 12 months. Which I turn down.
I have to es'plain to him each time that we have this thing called an An-Ten-Na that receives digital TV Foooorrrrrrr Frreeee-eeee-eee. ..
Gotta give a shout-out to trying an antenna. I cut the cord a year ago and have been surprised by how good TV can be the way our grandparents used to watch it. Of course, YMMV, but in my area, all the major networks come in great, full non-compressed HD. There are even some local channels broadcasting some cool stuff to catch. And who knew that a flat-screen TV actually has a built-in tuner?
The cabling that used to feed my cable box now connects my TV to one of those flat, indoor antennas, which I positioned in the attic. Antennas do better when they're up high, and a long length of repurposed coax doesn't seem to affect the signal one bit. Anyone who lives near a decent metro area should at least try out an antenna. Real eye-opening to realize you've been been paying for something that's been free all along.
Not exactly, but you're close. To use the ribbon, you have to freely license it from Microsoft...and promise that you won't use it in an Office clone. So...it's an IP shield as much as it's a UI paradigm.
Those sneaky bastards. Thanks muchly for the clarification. Henceforth I'll be thinking how we benefit Microsoft's precious IP as we re-acclimate our organization around this wonderful ribbon.
I do see the need to stop polluting our water, air and land.
This whole thing reminds me of the entire "Lead in Gasoline" fight back in the 60's.
I wish liberals would abandon the "climate change" mantra and focus on air and water quality. It's fairly easy to prove that we are poisoning everything.
Why do "liberals" have to "abandon the climate change mantra" to do something about air and water quality? Can't "conservatives" do something about air and water for their own reasons? Howabout a clean air and water bill, bi-partisan, the "conservatives" support it because we are "poisoning everything" and "liberals" support it because of "climate change". There. Bill passed, clean air and water, and Richard Nixon smiles in his grave. Everybody wins.
Except, THAT WOULD SUCK, because if Republicans vote with Democrats, Republicans might jeopardize their precious "brand" of being against all things liberal, and then voters might get confused, not give as much of a shit at the next election from one party to the other, and those safe majorities might not be so safe anymore. Furthermore, the ultra-libertarians in the Tea Party wing will attack the incumbents in the Primaries, claiming that the new regulation for protecting clean air and water is evil, liberal, communist, twinkle-toed Kenyan-Muslim interference on one's God-given right to pour shit all over your own land if you damn-well want to. And, of course, who's going to PAY for your clean air and water? Regulators, agents, inspectors, prosecutors, none of them work for free! Our Lord Grover Norquist will not permit any new taxes for yet more wasteful government spending!
Nope, too risky. New election cycle coming up. Gotta keep up the pressure, and cooperation doesn't do any good for anybody.
On the other hand, making friends with big industrial polluters yields nice election contributions, which pays for TV, radio, and print ads to whip up rage and FUD against the other Party, at least until election day.
Clean air and water? Not this year. Not next year either. In fact, never so long as it might validate those foul godless liberals and that *spit* asshat Al Gore with his "climate change" bullshit.
But thanks for your vote.
That Ribbon was most likely introduced simply to distinguish the look and feel from free Office apps, particularly Open/LibreOffice. That's right, I think it's more marketing gimmick than UI innovation. It's not completely hideous - the Ribbon can be hidden, after all. What sucks about 2007 onward is what they TOOK AWAY from 2003. Yes, the toolbars could get messy under 2003, but that's because they were so customizable. Office 2003 even came with a little icon editor to make your own buttons and assign them to macros. That's gone in 2007 and onward; only the most rudimentary customizations are possible with the new Office, which you need if you use anything beyond the basics.
Office 2003 is at end-of-life, and our IT staff is forcing us to Office 2010. Our workflow depends on a lot of macros, however, which in the past we trivially assigned to custom buttons or pull-downs in 2003 toolbars. Very difficult, or simply not possible, to do in 2007 onward (requires, at least, custom tools, XML editing, and hooks in VB, just to put a custom icon on a ribbon). There's a lot of gnashing of teeth on the Internet from workplaces trying to regain the functionality that was so trivial under 2003.
Office became popular because they nearly gave it away with new PC's back in the Pentium/Windows NT days. It stayed popular because for all its security flaws, VB for Office made the software customizable enough to become essential to any office out there, be it your dentist or the Citibank trading floor. Microsoft lost sight of that with 2007 and the Ribbon Revolution, citing weird focus groups getting hung up on one thing or another to justify a complete UI overhaul, but until now companies like ours could just simply stick with 2003 and get our work done.
For all the faults of Microsoft's products, the saving grace was they were typically so customizable your could bend it into something you could tolerate, or even like. The "new" Microsoft that came along about the time of the Ribbon is going the opposite direction... Windows and Office are less user-customizable with each release, Windows 10 being no exception. This kinda sucks, and I don't see any end to it.
I use both, and find Firefox generally has superior performance and memory usage.
The "hipster bullshit minimalist interface known as Australis" is unfortunate, but Classic Theme Restorer takes care of that.
Gotta give a shout-out to the Cree dimmable. Got one going for more than a year in awful conditions: outside, exposed to direct sun in the day, freezing weather at night, and (most impressive) connected to a really cheap photodiode for automatically switching on at night. The latter killed several CFLs because, at dusk and dawn, the lousy photodiode passes some flickering sub-voltage mess for a minute or two before finally switching off/on. The Cree has put up with this like a champ.
The Amazon tycoon owns the Washington Post.
Armed passengers could dispatch any would-be terrorist to the magic land of seventy-two virgins.
Not if they're already in the cockpit (bullet-proof door). Any any stray shot by some trigger-happy gun nut would likely pierce the fuselage and start decompressurization, ala Goldfinger. Also, terrorist holds lady with knife to neck and tells you put down your weapon (while unseen terrorist sneaks up behind you with box-cutter). Besides, if you let "passengers" carry guns onto plane, then terrorists who are "passengers" also permitted to bring guns onto plane (they just have to get through our fine TSA screening).
And the flight crew should have an emergency switch to alert air traffic control of a non-normal situation.
This is a really good idea.
From the ground air traffic control should be able to regain control of the aircraft by remote control thereby locking out any manual control under the aircraft is safely on the tarmac.
I like this, too, but what's to stop the bad guys from faking the secret frequency and crashing the plane from the safety of their hideout? We can't even get HTTPS to be secure.
Bottom line, this problem sucks. Really sucks. And it won't be an easy solution.
You, sir, have ruined my day. There's no question why those locks were put in place after 9/11, but a new problem arises that once a bad guy gets the cockpit it's all over. I can imagine some weird manual override built in, crawling around the luggage compartment Passenger 57 style, but then that could be exploited by the bad guys. This problem just sets your head spinning round until you can't get on an airplane anymore.
It's a bit more than that. I'm no Windows hater. I just really like and work with Windows 7, and I don't like what Windows 8 and onward needlessly take away.
If the only PC I had to worry about was my own, than I'd be more ok with undo'ing all the stupid things that Windows 8+ did with the interface, ClassicShell, Window Blinds, whatever. But at work that's not an option. IT has a reasonable interest in keeping things supported and uniform, and adding and supporting tons of third-party interface stuff is something they just don't want to do. So the staff just have to live with this crappy interface stuff (ribbons, non-expected full-screen metro apps, charms popping up unexpectedly, buttons in the wrong places, colors that draw your attention to the wrong place) that, honest-to-god, slows down their productivity. Some staff don't love learning new PC stuff, they just want to get work done. Why the fuck did Microsoft change all this shit when there was no reason to?
I appreciate that Windows 8 is better under the hood, boots fast, and is mostly compatible (*cough* Adobe *cough*). But my staff and I spend our working lives on the desktop, and Microsoft just up and made things ugly and force everyone to drink it like Victory Gin. Particularly, they take away the means to customize the interface to something more 7-like. If they at least left the option to customize things up beyond what the lame "personalize" control can do so you don't have to rely on third-party hacks and unsigned system files, it wouldn't suck so bad.
That's why it doesn't take a Windows hater to hate Windows 8. I'm testing Windows 10 preview, and it's better 'cause there's no start screen or charms, but man the desktop and icons are getting more ugly with each new build, like they're time-warping back to the late 80's when 16 colors was all you had. WTF!
I've worked with one of these, and it is very sweet. Honest PC alternative to a Macbook. I'm no fanboi (I use both platforms), but PC laptops have been flimsy plastic throwaway junk for years, whereas apple builds reliable, solid, throw-it-in-the-bag and go with no McAfee crapware to deal with. The Dell comes with a little McAfee crapware to uninstall, but in every other respect it is the first decent PC laptop I've seen in a long while.
Quality costs. The XPS with 8.1 non-Pro, 8GB RAM, the lower-resolution, non-touch screen, and a decent-size 256 GB SSD (upgrade) will run you $1099 (the "retina" touch-capable screen costs another $300). By comparison, a 13" Air with the same storage, RAM, and non-retina screen (and a slightly faster processor) is $1299.
The XPS 13 feels solid, stupid lightweight, really fast, long battery life, and the non-retina screen looks great (can't vouch for the higher-res screen, but I've heard mixed reviews of Windows 8 scaling up). And it's an actual "lap" top - it don't need no kickstand to hold the screen up. Here's a good review. I would really like to see more PC's built like this.
IIRC, he still had his lucky penny.