We can only wish. It's not something that happens often, and every EULA explicitly tells us, in plain black and white, that we completely forfeit our right to sue (as if a "right" can be signed away in a contract, let alone an agreement).
When Chrome first came out, I gave it a try. This was also the time SSDs were becoming popular, so I had a tool running to monitor how much data was being read/written to the SSD, so I could gauge the amount of "wear" on the drive.
I found out very quickly that every time Chrome did a cold start (after a PC reboot) that it would read 20GB and write ~4GB of data on startup. That was the first and last time I used Chrome.
Thank you for putting "open source" in double quotes. I wish more people were aware that Chrome is a closed source build of the open source Chromium project (and trying to get Chromium to work is a PITA, to say nothing about Google intentionally moving the download location all the time).
Even mandatory security updates are not understandable. I once had a machine where a firmware update was mandatory. After the update, it was impossible to do a factory reset, as the original copy of the OS was incompatible with the new firmware. Only the latest version of the OS could be installed after a wipe. Given the tendency of updates to remove features over time, this gave the vendor an excuse (and probably a legal loophole) to permanently remove features that you couldn't restore, even if you had an archived version of the OS. After a "regular" OS update removed a feature I needed, I was really pissed to find out I couldn't get that feature back.
I'd rather not state what machine this was, as the fanboys will eat me alive and accuse me of making shit up. Nonetheless, stuff like this is our future across ALL platforms.
The nice thing about Windows is that the community doesn't pretend that their platform is awesome. You need a 3rd-party tool to fix anything, but everyone still tries damn hard to fix things because they all agree it sucks.
ARM is actually quite old and suffers from a number of architectural shortcomings which can't be fixed for compatibility's sake. x86 gets a lot of flack for being complicated, but as ARM dates back to the 90's and has had a ton of extensions hacked in over the years, it isn't actually the minimalist, efficient powerhouse people think it is. You may ask well ask why the mobile market needed ARM when we had perfectly good x86 chips available.
I'm not a hardware guy, but since encountering the Visual 6502 project a few weeks ago, I've been looking into ISA design and how processors have evolved over the decades. I've currently designing my own 16-bit processor using SuperH and RISC-V as inspiration. Even to a newbie like me, it's very obvious how modern and clean the RISC-V design is, how compact the instruction set is, and how much potential it has for fast, power efficient cores.
Also note that embedded system developers don't really care about legacy support. If RISC-V is cheap, efficient, and fast, it could easily compete with ARM, at least in the 32-bit market segment.
The ability to block ads that use 3rd party scripting. Granted, that's pretty much all ads these days, but it's a step in the right direction.
Seriously, the ability to block scripts from 3rd party sources should have been a feature in browsers since day one. The ad companies would have been forced to cope whether they liked it or not.
To be fair, that's all the power the average person actually needs. For many years they were forced to use huge beige boxes that sucked 200 watts because that's what the average geek was using. It helped drive down the cost of our hardware, but ordinary people still hated using them.
Now that computers are mainstream and commodity items, the tides have turned. Geeks are being forced to use tablets and phones, and it's likely that out beloved desktops will shortly return to workstation price ranges due to lower sales volumes and encroaching walled gardens. Sucks, doesn't it?
If they get to the root cause of that they have a good chance of never having an accident like this again.
The root cause is the fact that blaming human error is always the easy way out. I get plenty of this crap when talking to other programmers about the design of their software.
I dread that I'll need to deal with stuff like this from my car manufacturer, too. I also wish more people were asking why the autopilot failed, rather than whether the driver was paying attention.
That price is before the insurance companies add on the penalties, too.
Sign up for our mandatory blood tests and "lifestyle counseling" in the form of long, probing questionnaires, or we'll charge you a $500 wellness tax... I mean, you won't qualify for our wellness credit!
Indeed. I nearly had a heart attack when I discovered my Gigabyte motherboard doesn't allow you to revert your BIOS after an update. So, does that mean if I installed the Meltdown patch and it screwed up, I couldn't fix it myself by downgrading? I didn't even take the chance!
I expect that crap from companies that build fully pre-built systems, but now even the aftermarket parts market is making choice difficult. Isn't choice the whole point of building your own PC? How long before firmware updates are mandatory, too?
F1 is the ultimate definition of diminishing returns. Personally, I think Formula Vee races, based on the ancient VW Beetle chassis, are just as entertaining and way more fun.
There's a reason why spec races are picking up in popularity (where all the cars are built by the same vendor and are identical), and I hope that trend continues. It more strongly emphasizes the efforts of the real, live team members who do the racing, rather than a pack of powerful companies with deep pockets.
Even 20 years ago when I was in college, it was mandatory that we buy Apple computers for the school offices. The school would not allow us to buy anything else. I hated being responsible for ordering new computers for the campus newspaper office, since everyone hated them, but school policy is still policy.
Speak for yourself. Every time a web site or app replaces a convenient, organized list with a search tool, I want to bang my head against a wall.
Replacing one paradigm with another is just marketing to make a new version look different, or a way to turn a document-centric system into an application-centric system (thus enforcing application lock-in). FYI, Apple has always been good at application-centric UIs, which is why I can't stand Apple products.
Sometimes interfaces are supposed to coexist and work together. When companies dictate which interface you're allowed to use, it's probably in their interest, not yours.
Doesn't it take a certain amount of refinement and processing to make this possible, and doesn't the viability of making "stuff" from dirt depend on what material you're digging and where?
Doesn't seem as simple or straightforward as it sounds. Then again, people DID buy pet rocks, so...
Consider yourself lucky. When I evaluated Window10 on a test system and installed the free update, the installer outright DELETED any application that it deemed incompatible. It didn't tell me this would happen until the damage was done.
No warning... no asking for permission... no opportunity to update the application to a newer version. 11 applications just entirely wiped out. Ironically, while it was working the installer gave me regular assurances that "all my files would be exactly where I left them". I guess Microsoft doesn't consider any file on the drive to be mine.
My ex-boss used to get tons of robo faxes, which certainly used his property in the form of fax paper. I'm not familiar with FCC regulations or phone company rules with regards to fax machines, but I suppose there must have been some kind of BS that prevented him from doing something about it, because in the couple years I worked at that job, it just kept happening.
Product Activation is what did me in. I used to rebuild my PC every 6 months, just because I could. After XP changed the game and I had my Windows license deactivated twice after upgrades (both times requiring me to call Microsoft and beg to use my PC again), I just stopped upgrading my hardware and learned to live with what I have.
No, I'm not going to switch to Linux (which I've been trying to do for 15 years). Yes, these days I can just use a pirated Windows if necessary. However, the point is that upgrading became more trouble that it's worth, and so I just upgraded when I needed to, not when I wanted.
Virtually every image viewer on the web uses an in-page pop-up.
The alternative is to resort to "old fashioned" pop-up tactics, like drawing an element off-screen and moving into place on cue, using z-order tricks, making them 1-pixel wide and widening them, etc. There's no way to distinguish between ads and image viewers.
For now, the only way to detect ads is to weigh the amount of scripting from 3rd-party sources. Whether the element is presented as a pop-up or not is irrelevant.
Slashdot Mirror
You'll be publically skewered and sued.
We can only wish. It's not something that happens often, and every EULA explicitly tells us, in plain black and white, that we completely forfeit our right to sue (as if a "right" can be signed away in a contract, let alone an agreement).
When Chrome first came out, I gave it a try. This was also the time SSDs were becoming popular, so I had a tool running to monitor how much data was being read/written to the SSD, so I could gauge the amount of "wear" on the drive.
I found out very quickly that every time Chrome did a cold start (after a PC reboot) that it would read 20GB and write ~4GB of data on startup. That was the first and last time I used Chrome.
Thank you for putting "open source" in double quotes. I wish more people were aware that Chrome is a closed source build of the open source Chromium project (and trying to get Chromium to work is a PITA, to say nothing about Google intentionally moving the download location all the time).
Even mandatory security updates are not understandable. I once had a machine where a firmware update was mandatory. After the update, it was impossible to do a factory reset, as the original copy of the OS was incompatible with the new firmware. Only the latest version of the OS could be installed after a wipe. Given the tendency of updates to remove features over time, this gave the vendor an excuse (and probably a legal loophole) to permanently remove features that you couldn't restore, even if you had an archived version of the OS. After a "regular" OS update removed a feature I needed, I was really pissed to find out I couldn't get that feature back.
I'd rather not state what machine this was, as the fanboys will eat me alive and accuse me of making shit up. Nonetheless, stuff like this is our future across ALL platforms.
The nice thing about Windows is that the community doesn't pretend that their platform is awesome. You need a 3rd-party tool to fix anything, but everyone still tries damn hard to fix things because they all agree it sucks.
I see a continued rise with Linux taking over just about everything.
25+ years in, people are still trying to convince themselves this is true.
1-year AppleCare comes standard
Also known as a "warranty". How gracious of a company to fix a defective product while you're covered!
ARM is actually quite old and suffers from a number of architectural shortcomings which can't be fixed for compatibility's sake. x86 gets a lot of flack for being complicated, but as ARM dates back to the 90's and has had a ton of extensions hacked in over the years, it isn't actually the minimalist, efficient powerhouse people think it is. You may ask well ask why the mobile market needed ARM when we had perfectly good x86 chips available.
I'm not a hardware guy, but since encountering the Visual 6502 project a few weeks ago, I've been looking into ISA design and how processors have evolved over the decades. I've currently designing my own 16-bit processor using SuperH and RISC-V as inspiration. Even to a newbie like me, it's very obvious how modern and clean the RISC-V design is, how compact the instruction set is, and how much potential it has for fast, power efficient cores.
Also note that embedded system developers don't really care about legacy support. If RISC-V is cheap, efficient, and fast, it could easily compete with ARM, at least in the 32-bit market segment.
You may need to clarify whether you're talking about the user's security, or the security of the corporation.
The ability to block ads that use 3rd party scripting. Granted, that's pretty much all ads these days, but it's a step in the right direction.
Seriously, the ability to block scripts from 3rd party sources should have been a feature in browsers since day one. The ad companies would have been forced to cope whether they liked it or not.
To be fair, that's all the power the average person actually needs. For many years they were forced to use huge beige boxes that sucked 200 watts because that's what the average geek was using. It helped drive down the cost of our hardware, but ordinary people still hated using them.
Now that computers are mainstream and commodity items, the tides have turned. Geeks are being forced to use tablets and phones, and it's likely that out beloved desktops will shortly return to workstation price ranges due to lower sales volumes and encroaching walled gardens. Sucks, doesn't it?
If they get to the root cause of that they have a good chance of never having an accident like this again.
The root cause is the fact that blaming human error is always the easy way out. I get plenty of this crap when talking to other programmers about the design of their software.
I dread that I'll need to deal with stuff like this from my car manufacturer, too. I also wish more people were asking why the autopilot failed, rather than whether the driver was paying attention.
That price is before the insurance companies add on the penalties, too.
Sign up for our mandatory blood tests and "lifestyle counseling" in the form of long, probing questionnaires, or we'll charge you a $500 wellness tax... I mean, you won't qualify for our wellness credit!
PLEASE MAKE FIXES OPTIONAL.
Indeed. I nearly had a heart attack when I discovered my Gigabyte motherboard doesn't allow you to revert your BIOS after an update. So, does that mean if I installed the Meltdown patch and it screwed up, I couldn't fix it myself by downgrading? I didn't even take the chance!
I expect that crap from companies that build fully pre-built systems, but now even the aftermarket parts market is making choice difficult. Isn't choice the whole point of building your own PC? How long before firmware updates are mandatory, too?
F1 is the ultimate definition of diminishing returns. Personally, I think Formula Vee races, based on the ancient VW Beetle chassis, are just as entertaining and way more fun.
There's a reason why spec races are picking up in popularity (where all the cars are built by the same vendor and are identical), and I hope that trend continues. It more strongly emphasizes the efforts of the real, live team members who do the racing, rather than a pack of powerful companies with deep pockets.
Once again, they ensure no one will use it.
Unless the school requires it.
Even 20 years ago when I was in college, it was mandatory that we buy Apple computers for the school offices. The school would not allow us to buy anything else. I hated being responsible for ordering new computers for the campus newspaper office, since everyone hated them, but school policy is still policy.
More like the guy who builds a potato gun and then tells his audience, "Hold my beer and watch this!"
Bonus points for the audience paying for the potato gun parts.
Speak for yourself. Every time a web site or app replaces a convenient, organized list with a search tool, I want to bang my head against a wall.
Replacing one paradigm with another is just marketing to make a new version look different, or a way to turn a document-centric system into an application-centric system (thus enforcing application lock-in). FYI, Apple has always been good at application-centric UIs, which is why I can't stand Apple products.
Sometimes interfaces are supposed to coexist and work together. When companies dictate which interface you're allowed to use, it's probably in their interest, not yours.
Doesn't it take a certain amount of refinement and processing to make this possible, and doesn't the viability of making "stuff" from dirt depend on what material you're digging and where?
Doesn't seem as simple or straightforward as it sounds. Then again, people DID buy pet rocks, so...
Consider yourself lucky. When I evaluated Window10 on a test system and installed the free update, the installer outright DELETED any application that it deemed incompatible. It didn't tell me this would happen until the damage was done.
No warning... no asking for permission... no opportunity to update the application to a newer version. 11 applications just entirely wiped out. Ironically, while it was working the installer gave me regular assurances that "all my files would be exactly where I left them". I guess Microsoft doesn't consider any file on the drive to be mine.
Needless to say, I'm still running Win7.
Could it be that they are attention whores and don't care if they're right or wrong as long as it's publicity?
My ex-boss used to get tons of robo faxes, which certainly used his property in the form of fax paper. I'm not familiar with FCC regulations or phone company rules with regards to fax machines, but I suppose there must have been some kind of BS that prevented him from doing something about it, because in the couple years I worked at that job, it just kept happening.
Which makes since, since games are the only thing that really push the full capabilities of a modern machine to the max.
...people just upgrade more rarely.
Product Activation is what did me in. I used to rebuild my PC every 6 months, just because I could. After XP changed the game and I had my Windows license deactivated twice after upgrades (both times requiring me to call Microsoft and beg to use my PC again), I just stopped upgrading my hardware and learned to live with what I have.
No, I'm not going to switch to Linux (which I've been trying to do for 15 years). Yes, these days I can just use a pirated Windows if necessary. However, the point is that upgrading became more trouble that it's worth, and so I just upgraded when I needed to, not when I wanted.
Toga! Toga! Toga!
Virtually every image viewer on the web uses an in-page pop-up.
The alternative is to resort to "old fashioned" pop-up tactics, like drawing an element off-screen and moving into place on cue, using z-order tricks, making them 1-pixel wide and widening them, etc. There's no way to distinguish between ads and image viewers.
For now, the only way to detect ads is to weigh the amount of scripting from 3rd-party sources. Whether the element is presented as a pop-up or not is irrelevant.