He's right, you can still get sound cards, though given the prevalence of the aforementioned embedded Realtek audio (that is, shit) its uncommon to use them. I'm not really sure what the exact use case for them is, since windows threw the hardware acellerated audio baby out with the Vista bathwater, the hardware is just a shitty DAC, a puny amp and some 3.5mm jacks. The rest is at the mercy of whatever crap drivers the vendor bothers to release.
Killing hardware accelerated audio was just fucking stupid. Sure, my fancy quad core can process that audio signal. But why the hell should it? As if there aren't other things it could be doing besides being a glorified DSP. It can process all those vertices too, but you don't hear anyone rushing off to kill hardware accelerated graphics for... reasons.
Hmm wonder is any ex-Microsoft execs work for Dice.
Nah, not especially likely. The Dice Beta crap is all pretty standard textbook plays. The users don't know what they want, so we'll give them something they don't yet know they want. And when they complain that it "sucks" or is "too different" we'll tell them, "Give it time, you're too stupid to know what you want. You'll get used to the new status quo soon enough."
Same for Unity, Gnome 3, and any other software project that is widely derided by users as crap, but the devs keep plodding on because the users are stupid to know how much they really want whatever crap they're peddling.
I think that the cookie popup has something to do with an EU disclosure rule. They basically have say "We're using cookies for X, Y, and Z. If you don't like it, well, go someplace else."
That's why there's always an Agree button, but nothing else. I've been seeing those pop ups quite a bit, and we know it certainly wasn't the US government making anyone do anything that might possibly get in the way of profit or have even the slightest veneer of consumer protection, so I'm assuming it's the EU requiring these notices.
Honestly, they're pretty stupid. The only cookies that matter are the tracking ones, and I've yet to see a single one of those cookie Opt-In things disclose the laundry list of trackers stuffed in the page. For instance, Ghostery is blocking 14 items on slashdot. 14. 70% advertisement, the rest "beacons', "analytics' and ironically enough, 'privacy'.
Re:VERY possibly (libeling me is common to you)
on
A New Car UI
·
· Score: 1
That's an interesting paranoid delusion you've got there, but the question you should really be asking yourself is "How do we always find you?"
Because in the end, we always do.
We always do...
Re:You didn't show us your PhD in psychiatry
on
A New Car UI
·
· Score: 1
Ooh, I'm a sock puppet now? But I thought I was a real boy... Jimminy, YOU LIED!!!!!
Relax, I wasn't defending Lumpy, don't even know who he is. Besides, don't we go way back?
I wonder what to make of the fact that none of the devices/software you mentioned are managing to make any meaningful headway into the market? It's pretty easy to write Surface Pro off as simply being too expensive, and anything with GNU in the title is a non-starter in the first place. I suppose the Ubuntu thing has a chance, given Valve's endorsement of the distro, but many in the traditional Linux community are abandoning Ubuntu due to things like the sponsored search bar kerfuffle and Unity.
I think I agree about the regulatory barriers, but I'm not convinced that the pat libertarian answer of "all regulation is bad" is much of a solution at all.
I'm sure I could look it up, but how exactly did they improve the multi-monitor support? I know at least for my usage with a dual-monitor setup I've never noticed any particular problems, even when using the TV as a third monitor that periodically comes and goes everything has been hunky-dory.
I'd like to see usage statistics for the Firehose, or whatever they call it now. I know the only times I've used it were a) when they introduced it, and b) during the Beta protests to vote up the anti-Beta stories. I'm rather afraid that we have a situation akin to the US primary elections where a small subset of the population choosing what the rest of us are going to read, where the rest of the population doesn't like the fact that this small group is doing so, but can't be bothered to participate in the process. Ah, our own little microcosm of the United States. All we need now is the Slashdot Army and world domination, here we come!
Nah, they're going to double down on the cloud thing. Expect more and more core OS functionality to drift away into the fluffy little cloud, with an optional, but expensive option to "run your own cloud" for those recalcitrant privacy advocates who don't want practically all their information stored "securely" in some huge corporate data center in Montana. Win 8 already has their stupid little Microsoft Account which you can use to "... get apps from the Windows Store, back up all your important data and files using free cloud storage, and keep all your favorite stuff—devices, photos, friends, games, settings, music, and so on—up to date and in sync." So Cloud (implied), Cloud (explicit), Cloud (implied). Don't worry though, just like a real cloud your files and information are just so many water droplets in a swirling mass, so it isn't likely you will be personally targeted! The crackers will just take ALL of it! No worries!
Personally, I can't wait for Cloud printing, where your document goes out to the internet, then back to your printer, unless your internet access is out for some reason, then you're hosed. Rah rah cloud!!
someone whose needs grow past what an iPad can do has to spend hundreds on a whole new computer.
Lol, you say that like it's a bad thing, at least from the industries prospective. Once most of the big PC players have their own crap Chinese Android tablet offerings we'll start seeing adverts similar to "Out grown your tablet? We can help! Buy our workstation PCs and get more done with less grease smears and cursing at Google/Apple for idiotic media consumption centered design decisions!"
I'm sure we'll see some kind of resurgence in PC sales when it finally becomes apparent to most people that their little tablet toys are woefully unsuited for, you know, getting stuff done, other than Angry Flappy Birds or Youtube or whatever. I love my tablet for quick surfing on the couch, playing Minecraft PE with the kids, or carrying it around to make myself look cool. But write code? Write emails longer than a paragraph or so? Edit an image? Forget about it, I'm sick of having an app for everything that used to be a website and having websites squished into a trite little mobile package which removes or makes difficult 60%-70% of any useful functionality of the site. I realize we can't simply pass tablets, and mobile devices et al as simple fads, but we certainly don't need to pretend that they're computing or usability panaceas that will finally bring computing to the unwashed masses. At least until some enterprising soul releases a non-media-consumption tablet/OS.
Well, to start, despite your assertion (which I agree with, BTW) that nobody gives a shit about the UI on a server, it's undeniable that MS changed it in the first place when they explicitly put their UI-Abortion A.K.A. Metro on the Server SKU. In other words, the Win 7 interface was "good enough to get done what needs to be done while logged in to the server," so why bother changing the Server interface to Metro? My theory? It's just a big F U to the world, "See, you'll eat whatever shit we put in front of you, despite any high flying rhetoric to the contrary."
At most shops? Ditch server core. Microsoft is more likely to make a completely POSIX compatible operating system than most of these shitty vendors are to update their enterprise crapware in any meaningful way. And even if they did, I'm sure most of the enlightened corporate leadership would scoff at the notion of paying extra for, you know, actual positive changes. "What do you mean it makes managing our mission critical servers far more efficient? We've always done it this way, and the rep from Microsoft assured me that Metro is the wave of the future. Besides, I have a golf game scheduled in a few hours so I don't have time for this right now. No upgrade!!"
FUCK BETA is like everything I hate about the mobile site brought to a desktop site.
You think the current mobile site is bad? Try the beta on your phone. Sweet raptor jesus, after the third nesting level or so the text is squeezed in a narrow little space and ends up being one or two words per line.
And there's no way to get it to show the "normal" layout on a mobile device, it seems to be based on window width somehow. For instance, if you take the beta site and shrink the window you can see it changing the layout to "suit" the smaller space, eventually ending up with this weird single column view that ends up being all you get on a phone. No, using "request desktop site" does nothing.
I suppose at the very least if they fixed the spacing issues the beta would be a worthwhile replacement for the current mobile site, which is, quite frankly, complete shit. I'll grant you that no matter what they do slashdotters are going to bitch, but the current outcry is far worse than for the current site, when it was a shitty beta.
Took the tour, laughed at gems like "A redesign 16 years in the making... you know it's going to be good." LOL.
"Intuitive menus" that feature prominently the desolate ghettos that are the new "Channels," SlashBI, SlashCloud, etc. The rest is just a randomly sorted list of "popular topics."
"Social media integration" Oh, they've got Facebook spy bugs now! Too bad those dumb little buttons are probably blocked by a fairly large contingent of the userbase has those sad little abominations blocked (bonus points for IPTables or HOSTS based solutions!) they seem to exist solely to provide free advertising for cheap, lazy entities and to vigorously ejaculate banal content around the internet, like a giant mug of frothy, steaming semen. For god's sake, the stopwatch on my phone has a share feature, so you can litter your facebook with "My time is 00:01:22."
To top it all off, the tour ends with the text "The New Slashdot. Newsier. Nerdier." What the hell is so nerdy about a rotten abortion of an update that, so far as I can tell, the community nearly unilaterally despises? Hey advertisers! Come pay to advertise on a site that just alienated it's user base!
Maybe Michael Cristopeit and his merry band of sock puppets will make their triumphant return. With the Slashdot population devastated by the loss of all the constructive posters all that will be left is a wasteland of GNAA posts, MyCleanPC spam and those bizarre posts about eating poop.
Now that I think on it, some of the classic slashdot trolls are part of the sites charm and one of the reasons I kept coming back all these years. You just don't see Natalie Portman, naked and petrified, covered in hot grits anywhere else.
Speaking of trolls, I just realized I hadn't seen hide nor hair of everyone's good buddy APK. Another part of slashdot's weird charm, relegated to the ash heap of history. Slashdot, you will be missed!!
The other, more serious problem is that it is inevitable, barring Dice coming to their senses, that the Beta will eventually be released, and thus no more Classic mode at all, save for the shitty little "Classic Mode" they added which removes the pictures, leaving the rest of the god awful, butt-ugly, clusterfuck that is Slashdot Beta.
It won't. They're boiling the ACs first, then they plan in gradually increasing the number of users redirected to beta before finally cutting off their nose to spite their face.
If they were doing it following my simple suggestion, they'd piss off fewer people.
Right, because nobody hates the new format, they're just mad there isn't a Classic Mode button at the top. It isn't as though the new version is almost entirely garbage or anything.
It's no hardware keyboard, but the Hacker's Keyboard is quite useful for scripting/cli purposes. Unfortunately it only works well in landscape mode, which ends up severely restricting your vertical space, and some apps insist on using the stupid "full screen text box" input method in landscape orientation which is completely useless, but by and large it works as well as one can expect for an on screen keyboard.
If you've got a big, high res screen (Nexus 5, S4, etc) it's actually a pretty decent solution, especially considering that hardware keyboard phones are all but dead and gone nowadays.
The brain rarely lets the eyes stand still. Eyes are actually quite poor resolution anywhere except for the very centre of their visual space. The eyes will dart around often more than 3 times a second when you're not paying attention to anything specific and the brain puts the pictures together to build an image of what the surrounding environment looks like. The bigger the screen the worse the movement.
That's the first thing I thought of. Perhaps thats where the "... proprietary image processing algorithms, and... physiological 3D model of the eye..." comes in. This definately doesn't seem like the kind of thing that could be used for the mouse cursor, but rather to determine which part of the screen is being looked at, generally.
Why do I want this again?
You don't. But I'm sure they'll come up with some spurious use or another just to get at all that juicy eye tracking data for ad targeting data or what ever other nefarious purposes they have in mind.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems legit, must be actual game footage!
He's right, you can still get sound cards, though given the prevalence of the aforementioned embedded Realtek audio (that is, shit) its uncommon to use them. I'm not really sure what the exact use case for them is, since windows threw the hardware acellerated audio baby out with the Vista bathwater, the hardware is just a shitty DAC, a puny amp and some 3.5mm jacks. The rest is at the mercy of whatever crap drivers the vendor bothers to release.
Killing hardware accelerated audio was just fucking stupid. Sure, my fancy quad core can process that audio signal. But why the hell should it? As if there aren't other things it could be doing besides being a glorified DSP. It can process all those vertices too, but you don't hear anyone rushing off to kill hardware accelerated graphics for ... reasons.
Hmm wonder is any ex-Microsoft execs work for Dice.
Nah, not especially likely. The Dice Beta crap is all pretty standard textbook plays. The users don't know what they want, so we'll give them something they don't yet know they want. And when they complain that it "sucks" or is "too different" we'll tell them, "Give it time, you're too stupid to know what you want. You'll get used to the new status quo soon enough."
Same for Unity, Gnome 3, and any other software project that is widely derided by users as crap, but the devs keep plodding on because the users are stupid to know how much they really want whatever crap they're peddling.
I think that the cookie popup has something to do with an EU disclosure rule. They basically have say "We're using cookies for X, Y, and Z. If you don't like it, well, go someplace else."
That's why there's always an Agree button, but nothing else. I've been seeing those pop ups quite a bit, and we know it certainly wasn't the US government making anyone do anything that might possibly get in the way of profit or have even the slightest veneer of consumer protection, so I'm assuming it's the EU requiring these notices.
Honestly, they're pretty stupid. The only cookies that matter are the tracking ones, and I've yet to see a single one of those cookie Opt-In things disclose the laundry list of trackers stuffed in the page. For instance, Ghostery is blocking 14 items on slashdot. 14. 70% advertisement, the rest "beacons', "analytics' and ironically enough, 'privacy'.
That's an interesting paranoid delusion you've got there, but the question you should really be asking yourself is "How do we always find you?"
Because in the end, we always do.
We always do...
Ooh, I'm a sock puppet now? But I thought I was a real boy... Jimminy, YOU LIED!!!!!
Relax, I wasn't defending Lumpy, don't even know who he is. Besides, don't we go way back?
So how does it feel to be on APK's shit list? Lol, haven't seen him trolling about in many a day, it's kind of refreshing.
+1 sad but true :(
I wonder what to make of the fact that none of the devices/software you mentioned are managing to make any meaningful headway into the market? It's pretty easy to write Surface Pro off as simply being too expensive, and anything with GNU in the title is a non-starter in the first place. I suppose the Ubuntu thing has a chance, given Valve's endorsement of the distro, but many in the traditional Linux community are abandoning Ubuntu due to things like the sponsored search bar kerfuffle and Unity.
I think I agree about the regulatory barriers, but I'm not convinced that the pat libertarian answer of "all regulation is bad" is much of a solution at all.
I'm sure I could look it up, but how exactly did they improve the multi-monitor support? I know at least for my usage with a dual-monitor setup I've never noticed any particular problems, even when using the TV as a third monitor that periodically comes and goes everything has been hunky-dory.
I'd like to see usage statistics for the Firehose, or whatever they call it now. I know the only times I've used it were a) when they introduced it, and b) during the Beta protests to vote up the anti-Beta stories. I'm rather afraid that we have a situation akin to the US primary elections where a small subset of the population choosing what the rest of us are going to read, where the rest of the population doesn't like the fact that this small group is doing so, but can't be bothered to participate in the process. Ah, our own little microcosm of the United States. All we need now is the Slashdot Army and world domination, here we come!
Nah, they're going to double down on the cloud thing. Expect more and more core OS functionality to drift away into the fluffy little cloud, with an optional, but expensive option to "run your own cloud" for those recalcitrant privacy advocates who don't want practically all their information stored "securely" in some huge corporate data center in Montana. Win 8 already has their stupid little Microsoft Account which you can use to "... get apps from the Windows Store, back up all your important data and files using free cloud storage, and keep all your favorite stuff—devices, photos, friends, games, settings, music, and so on—up to date and in sync." So Cloud (implied), Cloud (explicit), Cloud (implied). Don't worry though, just like a real cloud your files and information are just so many water droplets in a swirling mass, so it isn't likely you will be personally targeted! The crackers will just take ALL of it! No worries!
Personally, I can't wait for Cloud printing, where your document goes out to the internet, then back to your printer, unless your internet access is out for some reason, then you're hosed. Rah rah cloud!!
someone whose needs grow past what an iPad can do has to spend hundreds on a whole new computer.
Lol, you say that like it's a bad thing, at least from the industries prospective. Once most of the big PC players have their own crap Chinese Android tablet offerings we'll start seeing adverts similar to "Out grown your tablet? We can help! Buy our workstation PCs and get more done with less grease smears and cursing at Google/Apple for idiotic media consumption centered design decisions!"
I'm sure we'll see some kind of resurgence in PC sales when it finally becomes apparent to most people that their little tablet toys are woefully unsuited for, you know, getting stuff done, other than Angry Flappy Birds or Youtube or whatever. I love my tablet for quick surfing on the couch, playing Minecraft PE with the kids, or carrying it around to make myself look cool. But write code? Write emails longer than a paragraph or so? Edit an image? Forget about it, I'm sick of having an app for everything that used to be a website and having websites squished into a trite little mobile package which removes or makes difficult 60%-70% of any useful functionality of the site. I realize we can't simply pass tablets, and mobile devices et al as simple fads, but we certainly don't need to pretend that they're computing or usability panaceas that will finally bring computing to the unwashed masses. At least until some enterprising soul releases a non-media-consumption tablet/OS.
Well, to start, despite your assertion (which I agree with, BTW) that nobody gives a shit about the UI on a server, it's undeniable that MS changed it in the first place when they explicitly put their UI-Abortion A.K.A. Metro on the Server SKU. In other words, the Win 7 interface was "good enough to get done what needs to be done while logged in to the server," so why bother changing the Server interface to Metro? My theory? It's just a big F U to the world, "See, you'll eat whatever shit we put in front of you, despite any high flying rhetoric to the contrary."
At most shops? Ditch server core. Microsoft is more likely to make a completely POSIX compatible operating system than most of these shitty vendors are to update their enterprise crapware in any meaningful way. And even if they did, I'm sure most of the enlightened corporate leadership would scoff at the notion of paying extra for, you know, actual positive changes. "What do you mean it makes managing our mission critical servers far more efficient? We've always done it this way, and the rep from Microsoft assured me that Metro is the wave of the future. Besides, I have a golf game scheduled in a few hours so I don't have time for this right now. No upgrade!!"
The sad truth is that it probably isn't.
FUCK BETA is like everything I hate about the mobile site brought to a desktop site.
You think the current mobile site is bad? Try the beta on your phone. Sweet raptor jesus, after the third nesting level or so the text is squeezed in a narrow little space and ends up being one or two words per line.
And there's no way to get it to show the "normal" layout on a mobile device, it seems to be based on window width somehow. For instance, if you take the beta site and shrink the window you can see it changing the layout to "suit" the smaller space, eventually ending up with this weird single column view that ends up being all you get on a phone. No, using "request desktop site" does nothing.
I suppose at the very least if they fixed the spacing issues the beta would be a worthwhile replacement for the current mobile site, which is, quite frankly, complete shit. I'll grant you that no matter what they do slashdotters are going to bitch, but the current outcry is far worse than for the current site, when it was a shitty beta.
Has anyone seen this?
Took the tour, laughed at gems like "A redesign 16 years in the making ... you know it's going to be good." LOL.
"Intuitive menus" that feature prominently the desolate ghettos that are the new "Channels," SlashBI, SlashCloud, etc. The rest is just a randomly sorted list of "popular topics."
"Social media integration" Oh, they've got Facebook spy bugs now! Too bad those dumb little buttons are probably blocked by a fairly large contingent of the userbase has those sad little abominations blocked (bonus points for IPTables or HOSTS based solutions!) they seem to exist solely to provide free advertising for cheap, lazy entities and to vigorously ejaculate banal content around the internet, like a giant mug of frothy, steaming semen. For god's sake, the stopwatch on my phone has a share feature, so you can litter your facebook with "My time is 00:01:22."
To top it all off, the tour ends with the text "The New Slashdot. Newsier. Nerdier." What the hell is so nerdy about a rotten abortion of an update that, so far as I can tell, the community nearly unilaterally despises? Hey advertisers! Come pay to advertise on a site that just alienated it's user base!
Maybe Michael Cristopeit and his merry band of sock puppets will make their triumphant return. With the Slashdot population devastated by the loss of all the constructive posters all that will be left is a wasteland of GNAA posts, MyCleanPC spam and those bizarre posts about eating poop.
Now that I think on it, some of the classic slashdot trolls are part of the sites charm and one of the reasons I kept coming back all these years. You just don't see Natalie Portman, naked and petrified, covered in hot grits anywhere else.
Speaking of trolls, I just realized I hadn't seen hide nor hair of everyone's good buddy APK. Another part of slashdot's weird charm, relegated to the ash heap of history. Slashdot, you will be missed!!
Better that than actually using the beta site!!
The other, more serious problem is that it is inevitable, barring Dice coming to their senses, that the Beta will eventually be released, and thus no more Classic mode at all, save for the shitty little "Classic Mode" they added which removes the pictures, leaving the rest of the god awful, butt-ugly, clusterfuck that is Slashdot Beta.
It won't. They're boiling the ACs first, then they plan in gradually increasing the number of users redirected to beta before finally cutting off their nose to spite their face.
If they were doing it following my simple suggestion, they'd piss off fewer people.
Right, because nobody hates the new format, they're just mad there isn't a Classic Mode button at the top. It isn't as though the new version is almost entirely garbage or anything.
It's no hardware keyboard, but the Hacker's Keyboard is quite useful for scripting/cli purposes. Unfortunately it only works well in landscape mode, which ends up severely restricting your vertical space, and some apps insist on using the stupid "full screen text box" input method in landscape orientation which is completely useless, but by and large it works as well as one can expect for an on screen keyboard.
If you've got a big, high res screen (Nexus 5, S4, etc) it's actually a pretty decent solution, especially considering that hardware keyboard phones are all but dead and gone nowadays.
The brain rarely lets the eyes stand still. Eyes are actually quite poor resolution anywhere except for the very centre of their visual space. The eyes will dart around often more than 3 times a second when you're not paying attention to anything specific and the brain puts the pictures together to build an image of what the surrounding environment looks like. The bigger the screen the worse the movement.
That's the first thing I thought of. Perhaps thats where the "... proprietary image processing algorithms, and ... physiological 3D model of the eye..." comes in. This definately doesn't seem like the kind of thing that could be used for the mouse cursor, but rather to determine which part of the screen is being looked at, generally.
Why do I want this again?
You don't. But I'm sure they'll come up with some spurious use or another just to get at all that juicy eye tracking data for ad targeting data or what ever other nefarious purposes they have in mind.