One thing I would like is for it to be a clear and professional page that invites and excites people to learn more about Linux.
What I mean is this: Right now if you google "Linux", the first hit is linux.org. That site has some good info, and even has an explanatory paragraph about what Linux is... but (how to put this nicely?) it doesn't look professional. It doesn't scream "this is a sophisticated and powerful (yet user-friendly) system supported by (and supporting) billion-dollar industries." Instead the impression a first-time visitor will get is that Linux is arcane, old-fashioned, and disorganized.
The fact is that when any of us talk to others about Linux (whether as a home desktop or for business-use), the person will go and search "Linux" and end up being confused. So I would like "linux.com" to have a really carefully designed frontpage, that explains what Linux is, looks very professional (maybe with tie-ins to big-name companies to make the suits feel more comfortable), and helps people get what they need (links to downloads, FAQ, community sites, all that good stuff...).
The Ubuntu homepage is pretty good in this regard. I'm sure I'm not alone in having switched over the last few years from telling people to "read more about Linux" to telling them to "read up on Ubuntu". It's just easier to pick a distro for them (they can always change when they learn more), and Ubuntu has put a nice "face" on the Linux ecosystem. Their homepage doesn't overload you with info, and provides clear links to downloads, community, etc.
So while I hope linux.com becomes many things to many people (and has all the news and content that we geeks want), I hope they take this opportunity to make the mainpage a useful portal for people who want to learn more about Linux. (Since it will be an obvious place for a newbie to first look.)
The applications people dream about are things like: -Robustness. For field work a display that is inherently bendable is potentially less likely to break. -Displays that are more compact/portable, since they can be folded up or rolled-up. E.g. a PDA with a small screen for quick work but a larger roll-out display for reading a book. -Being able to read computer-text in a format roughly like a newspaper (thin, light, bendable, etc.). In principle not more useful that a rigid and flat e-book reader, but it is a format some people may prefer. -Large format displays. E.g. instead of having a projector and unrolling a white screen, you just unroll a bendable display screen (with all the usual advantages of monitor technology: e.g. you can't block the beam, brighter display with better contrast, etc.). Or being able to unfold a screen (like a map) and put it on a table for impromptu collaboration (or display data in the field). -Deformable displays for shifting surfaces. E.g. imagine a touchscreen that had a keyboard 'hidden' behind it. When required the keys press up (bending the display) so you can use it as a normal keyboard. With a switch the keys depress and lock, giving you a flat touchscreen. -The ability to put touchscreens onto non-planar surfaces. Like having a screen that follows the contour of the dash in your car. Or having screens plastered onto columns in malls (for a mall directory, and advertising, probably...). -The ability to put touchscreens anywhere: wallpapering a room, the inside surface of a tent, clothes (maybe just for novelty or maybe actually useful: e.g. a computer interface built into army uniforms), the surface of your desk, etc.
Those are just a few. If you can't think of any applications for a bendable touchscreen, you're not trying very hard!
it seems that most arguers of "Hey, that's not fair, you can't [insert action] to my internet connection!" offer no alternative, and really seem to be arguing that they want to have the right to download anything they want, regardless of any law, copyright, artistic license, or what have you.
Maybe there is no alternative. But that doesn't matter. It then becomes a question of what is more important: respecting people's privacy and due process; or enforcing copyright law.
You don't have to be in the pro "download anything you want" camp to believe that privacy, connectivity, and due process are more important than copyright. You simply have to value those things more highly. The fact that many of us don't value copyright very much (because we view it as a flawed and oft-abused law) further tips the balance, such that there isn't a justification for revoking privacy and due process simply for the marginal and inconsistent protection of copyright.
Here's the question - how can anyone prove it?
Again, it needs to be emphasized: there isn't necessarily a solution. There isn't necessarily a way to totally enforce copyright without infringing people's rights. But this is hardly unique. There isn't any way to totally enforce any law without infringing people's rights. So for each law we must weigh the importance of the law against the personal freedoms or rights that may be infringed. So for instance many of us view automobiles as somewhat dangerous, and decide that reducing car accidents is sufficiently important that we will allow our freedoms to be somewhat restricted (licensed required to operate a car), and our privacy to be somewhat reduced (license plates, driver's license, etc.) in order to save lives. But there is a limit (we could perhaps reduce deaths even further if every car were constantly tracked; but I personally would view that as overly encroaching on my freedoms), even for laws I support.
In the case of copyright, it seems there is no way for it to continue to exist (and be enforced) without sacrificing more important ideals. Thus we need to either accept that these laws will not be enforceable, or we need to change these laws.
So his counterpoint to the argument that copyright laws allows the Kindle text-to-speech feature is that blind people can't use the Kindle?
I think his point is that blind persons can only use the Kindle in text-to-speech mode. In other words, its okay for a blind person to use the audio mode, or for a non-blind person to use the text mode, but it is unacceptable for a single person to use both modes, since you would be getting something for nothing. He's horrified at the thought of new technology increase the value of a product without that creating a commensurate increase in revenue. In other words, the implication is that people should have to pay for everything.
The argument is BS on so many levels. As you note, there's a spectrum of users with various disabilities. Some may be able to read the text but nevertheless find it less strenuous to listen to the text. Where do you draw the line?
Beyond the fact that there is nothing illegal about using text-to-speech (transformation for personal use is not prohibited by copyright law), there is nothing immoral about it. If I buy a truck and then add a trailer hitch to it, I've increase the value/utility of the truck for myself. Does this mean that I owe the truck manufacturer more money? (Maybe the Authors Guild would argue that it's okay for me to use the truck for human transport, and it's okay for a company to use the truck to haul equipment... but anyone who uses it for both is nasty and owes someone money.)
You're right that the Authors Guild relies on members. Which is precisely why, if you disagree with the statements of the Guild, you should put pressure on authors, either by boycotting any author who is a member of the Guild, or writing to them and asking them to signal their disapproval.
When the Authors Guild says these kinds of ridiculous things (and uses logic which, incidentally, implies that people with disabilities should not be allowed to convert media to a form they can use), it makes all members look like greedy idiots. Authors should speak up and tell the Guild that they do not want to be represented as such.
I've often wondered why there isn't a mechanism by which a person/company can go to a court and get some kind of "advanced ruling" or "pre-judgment". Basically you file some kind of case that is asking the court/judge "if I go ahead and do this... will it be legal?" Then based on the ruling, you can decide whether or not to do it. I would imagine that such a ruling would not be 100% binding, in the sense that you could still be sued even with a supportive "pre-judgment"... but presumably having such a judgment would go some way towards building a defense case and a long way towards demonstrating no willful disregard for the law.
Presumably the party asking for a such an advanced ruling would have to pay for their lawyer (and maybe some court fee?), but I would guess that it would still be highly valuable to many companies. There are so many startups that try things that are legally questionable (e.g. Psystar), and probably thousands of other startups that never see the light of day because investors are unsure about the legality. Shouldn't there be a way for these new ideas to be ruled legal/illegal without the massive risk of just going out and doing it!?
Of course IANAL so for all I know something like this already exists. Please educate me if so.
According to Palm's website and some early development partners, webOS supports HTML5, enabling a local data store, so applications and data are available offline, and a file system.
Leverage the local storage capabilities of HTML5 so that data is available even when users are offline
I'm sure Palm intends WebOS to still work when there is no connectivity. Whether or not they implement this properly is another question, of course. Can anyone comment on how well the "local storage capabilities of HTML5" work?
I'd also like to emphasize something: while Wikipedia surely 'dropped the ball' on this one, serious blame must be placed on the various 'traditional media' outlets. They should they be verifying information from a few different sources before publishing. Moreover, they should be citing where they got their information from! If their article had citations, with Wikipedia listed as the source for the name/biographical information, then Wikipedia would have known that they couldn't use it as an independent source for their own citations.
There is frankly no good reason why mainstream media should not be more rigorously citing their sources for information (especially for Internet articles, where the extra space of a few footnotes doesn't matter). Of course one of the main reasons they might want to do so is that it would make painfully clear just how spurious and unfounded their reporting is.
In other words, if using Wikipedia as a source in serious research garners you an 'F'... then surely citing newspapers should do the same.
The reason I say this is that if you have to build one car per person and maintain the cars and the system for the cars, that's a huge environmental impact.
But in a shared-car system you don't need one car per person: you just need as many cars as are required at peak usage. For any given hour of the day, many cars are actually just sitting parked.
With fewer cars in total, it becomes more practical for those cars to be well-maintained, energy-efficient, and so on. (Convincing everyone to buy new energy-efficient cars is impossible. Migrating a communal fleet of vehicles to a new greener technology is more practical.) And if well-managed, there is no reason that such a fleet could not be just as convenient (in terms of getting a car as soon as you need one) as owning a car. (In fact there may be added conveniences like not having to worry about parking.)
In a sense it's not too different from mass-usage of taxis (as seems to happen quite a bit in New York City, for instance), of rental vehicles, or car-share services (e.g. zipcar).
(That's the theory, at least. I'm well-aware of the practical problems of any such system, such as people not keeping the communal vehicles clean, the dangers and inefficiencies of the added bureaucracy, being reliant on someone else's (mis)management, etc.)
In a busy airport like Heathrow regular trains would be more efficient than individual transporters surely.
Are you sure? Airports are often busy, to be sure, and there are lots of times where the intra-airport trains are packed full. But there are also times when those same trains are relatively empty (but still have to run). It is not fuel-efficient to move an entire train car for one or two people.
So maybe it actually is more energy-efficient, averaged over a year of typical usage, to use small 1-4 person vehicles rather than larger vehicles designed to move 15-50 people at a time.
Without doing a relatively detailed calculation, I can't say which one would actually be better. My only point is that it's not obvious (to me at least) which one would be more efficient.
A commandline isn't inherently user-unfriendly. A commandline confuses the average user for a variety of reasons, which Ubiquity is trying to address. So I would say the point is to make a glorified command prompt. So glorified, in fact, that the average person can benefit from it.
For instance one of the things that makes a command prompt difficult for novice users is that they don't know what commands are available. As you type in Ubiquity, it shows you a preview of commands that might match. So you type 'email' and it lists that there is an 'email this person' command and a 'get last email' command and so on. Another thing that is scary about command prompts is that people worry about making mistakes. Ubiquity fixes this in a couple of ways. First of all, you can't do that much damage in a web browser. Secondly, Ubiquity shows you a realtime result of your typing. So if you type 'map washington' it shows a map of Washington DC... if you keep typing 'map washington seattle' it switches to show seattle. Ubiquity also tries to use actual words or phrases for the command syntax. So rather than remembering what the command to translate text is... you just type 'translate.'
There are a bunch of things that the Ubiquity team is trying to do to make the commandline more accessible. The interesting thing is that many of these changes are also a huge advantage for those of us who are already familiar with commandlines.
So, yes, Ubiquity is a glorified command prompt. And it's about time that someone put honest effort into bringing the power of text-command UI to the masses.
As I said, it's not natural-language yet. That is a goal, not a current feature.
I think of it this way: on the one hand we have rigidly-structured input-output systems, like most programming languages and commandlines. On the other end we have human-to-human natural language: you speak naturally and they understand.
The goal of Ubiquity (as far as I understand it) is to move towards that "natural" end of the spectrum. It is starting with simple things, like using command names that are easier to recognize (e.g. using the english word "translate" instead of shortened (and thus more obscure) command names), or allowing for multiple input syntax (to increase the chance that someone guessing will get what they want) and using input syntax more closely related to the person's language (e.g. using "weather X in C/F" to select the units, rather than "weather X --celcius" or whatever).
As I said: natural language is the goal; Ubiquity is trying things out along the way to that goal. You may argue that my proposed spectrum is rubbish; that a UI either allows for natural-language input or not. I happen to disagree. Using Ubiquity is qualitatively different from using a more rigid commandline. It is not natural-language yet, but it is decidedly more natural and forgiving than most other command languages (and thus, I would argue, closer to "natural language input"). If you can think of a better phrase to describe what's going on, please let me know.
To be clear: the end goal of Ubiquity is to have a natural-language command-entry system, so that you can say "Book me a trip from Washington DC to Seattle for next Tuesday" and it will figure out all the details (show you ticket prices, maps, etc.).
Obviously the current version of Ubiquity is a long way from achieving that goal. You must still enter your commands in a way that it will understand.
However, Ubiquity is making progress in that direction by having it recognize more natural command structures (e.g. you can say "weather Washington DC" to get the weather, or say "weather Washington DC in C" to get it in celcius (no it won't search for a location called "Washington DC in C")), and providing enough variants that the interface feels natural (e.g. you can type "weather Washington" or "weather 98941" etc.).
Another thing that it does is provide continual feedback, so the user can see what commands are available. The result of a command is also presented immediately and refreshed as they edit their query. This fast interaction makes it easier to compose the desired command.
Again, the system is far from perfect. It is not a natural-language system yet (and won't be perfectly so until we've perfected AI). But it doesn't have to be. As Google has shown us, you don't need the system to be perfect to be useful. Google recognizes calculations, addresses, fedex numbers, and a bunch of other things, and it tries to guess what you mean. If it can't figure it out, it defaults to a web-search. Overall this is very useful. Similarly the end-goal for Ubiquity is that you just type what you want and it will do a decent job of figuring it out. In the meantime the user will have to bend somewhat (and learn a few commands), but the cool part is that such a system is useful immediately, even as it is iterated towards being more robust and comprehensive.
Google is already pretty good at working out what you want. Why would I want Firefox to override this?
If you play with Ubiquity for a little bit, you'll see why it is not merely a duplication of Google's functionality. It is more than just a shortcut for web searches, it's meant to be a fast and efficient way to do things.
The example that Aza Raskin most often gives (Aza is the lead on the project and also happens to be the son of Jef Raskin, who started the Macintosh project at Apple) is something like: "You are writing an email and want to embed directions... rather than searching the web and then copy-and-pasting a map into your email, it would be preferable to simply type 'map Washington DC and paste here' and have the computer figure it out."
In addition to a bunch of search-like commands ('google', 'weather', 'map'...) and quick-reference commands ('define',...) there are lots of text-replace commands ('translate', 'calculate',...), and powerful action commands ('add-to-calendar', 'email',...) and browser-interaction commands ('close-tab', 'bookmark',...).
For anyone who is a keyboard-shortcut fanatic, this extension is awesome. You can control the browser largely without using the mouse, for instance. It's also so much faster to perform certain actions. And the framework is extensible: people are writing new commands all the time (and you can create your own commands if you know Java Script).
In short, Ubiquity is about a lot more than just providing a shortcut to searches. It's about providing a new (and very efficient/comfortable) way to access the functionality of your browser and the web. You may or may not actually like it... but I would recommend giving it a try.
They're used to just "clicking yes" with no regard to what they're committing themselves and their company to.
This is a very subjective question for you to answer (so feel free to say "I'd rather not speculate"), but my question is: When these companies disregard the license, is their primary reason for doing so stupidity or malice? Is it usually because someone mistakenly thinks "hey, this is available online so I can do whatever I want with it" or is it more along the lines of "no one will ever catch me, so I'm just going to grab this code."
In any case, thanks for all your hard work for the community!
I value having software that is open-source, vetted by a community I trust, and available for me (or others) to peruse, modify, and enhance. I value the ability to easily install, manage, and update all my software through a uniform interface to trusted repositories. I value having access to a staggering quantity of high-quality software. I value the supportive, friendly, and helpful community that responds with answers within minutes of asking, rather than asking me to pay them money.
I also appreciate a uniform commandline environment that allows me to mix-and-match and interface utilities, which Linux provides. It does what I ask it to and gives me power, simplicity, and extensibility as required. I appreciate efficient shortcuts like higlight-and-middle-click to copy text. I've also had, by far, less hassle installing Linux than Windows. Oh, I need a license for Windows? Where did I put that? Is there a phone number I have to call? How long do I have to wait on hold?
Value to me is reliability, choice and quality of software, and minimial fuss with configuring devices and hardware. With Ubuntu 8.04, Linux reached a level of functionality and stability that I can no longer do without. That is also happens to be free is a nice bonus, too.
Okay, so this reply has been a bit snide. But it was also serious. I see that you prefer Windows, and that's great. I much prefer Linux. In other words, different people have different priorities, and what's best for you may not be what's best for me (and nice versa). As you said, it absolutely depends on what you value.
the user's bias is coming out in defending Linux by saying it's always been slow to boot
That's not how I read it. The author didn't seem to be defending Linux with that statement. It was more of a "as we would have expected" statement. He was acknowledging that Linux lost on that metric.
measuring mouse clicks on an install process? What?
The authors seem to acknowledge that this metric was just for fun. The caption for that data says "A bit of a flippant one" and in the intro they say "We also, just for the heck of it, kept track of how many mouse clicks it took to install each OS."
comparing the amount if gigabytes and saying that less space used after a fresh install is necessarily better?
Yes. All other things being equal, a smaller install size is better (more space for other things). Whether or not this particular metric matters to you depends, of course. On a typical desktop machine it might not matter. On some other machines it might. The install size also affects other things people might care about (e.g. how long it takes to do a drive image or backup; how long it takes to scan or seek on the drive;...).
Our test machine packed an Intel Core i7 920, which in layman's terms has four cores running at 2.67GHz with hyperthreading and 8MB of L3 cache.
(Emphasis added.)
Not sure what kind of laymen the authors hang out with, but all the laymen I know couldn't tell you the difference between a CPU and a hard drive, or the difference between GHz and GB... much less figure out what "L3 cache" is!
In addition to the possibility of exploits in this kind of system, I really worry about what it will do with respect to the very user education issue you mention.
If Microsoft's official site trains people to trust (and click on) an agreeable-looking "Fit it!" icon, it won't be long before other sites use a surprisingly similar-looking "Fit it!" icon to induce people to click on malware (and click through the various warnings that appear--after all, I trust this thing to fix my computer!). There will always be some users who are easily fooled... but Microsoft should not exacerbate the situation by making people comfortable with the idea of launching system-altering utilities directly from the web browser.
To me this is no better than the IT department asking you for your password. Yes, you should trust the IT department (and they could no doubt determine your password if they really wanted to)... but it creates a bad habit, where users are accustomed to emailing their passwords to whoever asks and seems even slightly legitimate.
I don't think the submitter is complaining that what iTunes is doing is illegal (or that he should be subject to US law while abroad). I think he is complaining that what iTunes is doing is stupid.
He wants to be a customer. He wants to give them money. But they (iTunes, or whichever content providers require this rule) want to restrict things regionally. These regional restrictions are inconvenient, arbitrary, and illogical in an age of ubiquitous global network connectivity, and easy trans-national travel. Someone abroad can circumvent the restrictions easily with a proxy. Conversely a US citizen on a trip abroad is denied access (whereas it would have been fine if they had downloaded it while in the US and carried it on their computer on the plane). Thus it doesn't seem that the rule accomplishes its nominal goal. Actually for the most part the nominal goal isn't even clear. In short, the restrictions are silly.
Of course it is within iTune's ability (technical and legal) to impose such restrictions. But it just seems illogical, since anywhere that the content is not available through a legitimate source (or available but only after a substantial delay) will simply increase the amount of circumvention (proxy, file sharing, etc.). So why don't these companies want the money being offered to them?
I'm saddened by the fact that an Amateur Radio hobbyist making a simple FM transceiver is considered news-worthy by the masses.
A fair point. But on the other hand, what better way is there to ignite enthusiasm for amateur radio among the masses than by showing them what it can do?
What happened to the spirit of 'Experimentation and Advancement of The Radio Art'? Have we as a species lost our curiosity and drive to learn about and then do new things?
Evidently these students have curiosity aplenty, which is what drove them to build their system and try to call the ISS. If this is the behavior we want to see more of, then we need to encourage said behavior: by applauding it and publicizing it, which is what this news item is doing.
I understand your point, which is that this kind of experimentation should be so commonplace that we take it for granted (hence not newsworthy). On the other hand, if we want to encourage curiosity, experimentation, and a "hands-on" approach to using technology, then any news or publicity is a good thing.
Somewhat disappointingly, the students actually did have permission to make contact.
Yes, it is truly disappointing when youngsters act responsibly.
I understand how the story would be more romantic if they contacted the ISS out of the blue (imagine how surprised those aboard the station would be!). But the fact of the matter is that living in space is precarious at the best of times. Unexpected events, especially those that tie up communication channels, are unsafe and not welcome. Thus the students did the right thing by clearing permission first, and they should be applauded for that.
Also, the students probably wanted their signal to actually be answered, rather than ignored or (even more likely) simply not noticed!
fast-boot Linux is probably doing more to harm than help the cause.
Yeah, because I and everyone I know hates nothing more than being able to boot quickly.
I think what the author was trying to say was something like: "The fast-booting versions of Linux are all stripped-down toy systems, thereby giving people the impression that Linux is an immature and feature-limited OS. Thus even though fast-booting Linux is exposing people to Linux, it is doing more harm than good to the overall image/reputation of Linux."
The wording is confusing, and the point being made (if I understand it correctly) isn't much better.
Your knowledge of Labview and Igor seems limited and out of date. Labview is far more sophisticated now that the primitive description you use.
I don't know. I use LabVIEW pretty routinely and the GP's experiences reflect my own. There's no question that LabVIEW can make setting up a new data acquisition system very fast. The tie-in with DAQ cards and many instrument control systems is fantastic. But the actual programming paradigm is terrible (at least for anyone acquainted with the power and flexibility of traditional text-code programming). Even with the various enhancements they've put (like bundling wires and all that), it takes a long time to code comparatively simple things. You end up spending way too much time drawing wires and figuring out where they come from.
LabVIEW, in a sense, encourages all the "bad practices" of programming: it's not sufficiently easy to add comments: there should be more facilities for tagging, describing, and searching said info; almost everything ends up being global or having too large a scope; the wiring-diagram motif creates the equivalent of GOTOs, where you're trying to figure out where a value came from; overall code ends up tangled and difficult to maintain;...
Having said all that, LabVIEW's advantages (again, the rapid set-up of a decent hardware interface) make up for its disadvantages in many cases. (Although it would be awesome if they made a simple cross-language bridge so that I could create custom VIs written in a 'proper' programming language.)
Everything else you said about LabVIEW and Igor is spot-on.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you think should be on Linux.com?
One thing I would like is for it to be a clear and professional page that invites and excites people to learn more about Linux.
What I mean is this: Right now if you google "Linux", the first hit is linux.org. That site has some good info, and even has an explanatory paragraph about what Linux is... but (how to put this nicely?) it doesn't look professional. It doesn't scream "this is a sophisticated and powerful (yet user-friendly) system supported by (and supporting) billion-dollar industries." Instead the impression a first-time visitor will get is that Linux is arcane, old-fashioned, and disorganized.
The fact is that when any of us talk to others about Linux (whether as a home desktop or for business-use), the person will go and search "Linux" and end up being confused. So I would like "linux.com" to have a really carefully designed frontpage, that explains what Linux is, looks very professional (maybe with tie-ins to big-name companies to make the suits feel more comfortable), and helps people get what they need (links to downloads, FAQ, community sites, all that good stuff...).
The Ubuntu homepage is pretty good in this regard. I'm sure I'm not alone in having switched over the last few years from telling people to "read more about Linux" to telling them to "read up on Ubuntu". It's just easier to pick a distro for them (they can always change when they learn more), and Ubuntu has put a nice "face" on the Linux ecosystem. Their homepage doesn't overload you with info, and provides clear links to downloads, community, etc.
So while I hope linux.com becomes many things to many people (and has all the news and content that we geeks want), I hope they take this opportunity to make the mainpage a useful portal for people who want to learn more about Linux. (Since it will be an obvious place for a newbie to first look.)
The applications people dream about are things like:
-Robustness. For field work a display that is inherently bendable is potentially less likely to break.
-Displays that are more compact/portable, since they can be folded up or rolled-up. E.g. a PDA with a small screen for quick work but a larger roll-out display for reading a book.
-Being able to read computer-text in a format roughly like a newspaper (thin, light, bendable, etc.). In principle not more useful that a rigid and flat e-book reader, but it is a format some people may prefer.
-Large format displays. E.g. instead of having a projector and unrolling a white screen, you just unroll a bendable display screen (with all the usual advantages of monitor technology: e.g. you can't block the beam, brighter display with better contrast, etc.). Or being able to unfold a screen (like a map) and put it on a table for impromptu collaboration (or display data in the field).
-Deformable displays for shifting surfaces. E.g. imagine a touchscreen that had a keyboard 'hidden' behind it. When required the keys press up (bending the display) so you can use it as a normal keyboard. With a switch the keys depress and lock, giving you a flat touchscreen.
-The ability to put touchscreens onto non-planar surfaces. Like having a screen that follows the contour of the dash in your car. Or having screens plastered onto columns in malls (for a mall directory, and advertising, probably...).
-The ability to put touchscreens anywhere: wallpapering a room, the inside surface of a tent, clothes (maybe just for novelty or maybe actually useful: e.g. a computer interface built into army uniforms), the surface of your desk, etc.
Those are just a few. If you can't think of any applications for a bendable touchscreen, you're not trying very hard!
it seems that most arguers of "Hey, that's not fair, you can't [insert action] to my internet connection!" offer no alternative, and really seem to be arguing that they want to have the right to download anything they want, regardless of any law, copyright, artistic license, or what have you.
Maybe there is no alternative. But that doesn't matter. It then becomes a question of what is more important: respecting people's privacy and due process; or enforcing copyright law.
You don't have to be in the pro "download anything you want" camp to believe that privacy, connectivity, and due process are more important than copyright. You simply have to value those things more highly. The fact that many of us don't value copyright very much (because we view it as a flawed and oft-abused law) further tips the balance, such that there isn't a justification for revoking privacy and due process simply for the marginal and inconsistent protection of copyright.
Here's the question - how can anyone prove it?
Again, it needs to be emphasized: there isn't necessarily a solution. There isn't necessarily a way to totally enforce copyright without infringing people's rights. But this is hardly unique. There isn't any way to totally enforce any law without infringing people's rights. So for each law we must weigh the importance of the law against the personal freedoms or rights that may be infringed. So for instance many of us view automobiles as somewhat dangerous, and decide that reducing car accidents is sufficiently important that we will allow our freedoms to be somewhat restricted (licensed required to operate a car), and our privacy to be somewhat reduced (license plates, driver's license, etc.) in order to save lives. But there is a limit (we could perhaps reduce deaths even further if every car were constantly tracked; but I personally would view that as overly encroaching on my freedoms), even for laws I support.
In the case of copyright, it seems there is no way for it to continue to exist (and be enforced) without sacrificing more important ideals. Thus we need to either accept that these laws will not be enforceable, or we need to change these laws.
I think his point is that blind persons can only use the Kindle in text-to-speech mode. In other words, its okay for a blind person to use the audio mode, or for a non-blind person to use the text mode, but it is unacceptable for a single person to use both modes, since you would be getting something for nothing. He's horrified at the thought of new technology increase the value of a product without that creating a commensurate increase in revenue. In other words, the implication is that people should have to pay for everything.
The argument is BS on so many levels. As you note, there's a spectrum of users with various disabilities. Some may be able to read the text but nevertheless find it less strenuous to listen to the text. Where do you draw the line?
Beyond the fact that there is nothing illegal about using text-to-speech (transformation for personal use is not prohibited by copyright law), there is nothing immoral about it. If I buy a truck and then add a trailer hitch to it, I've increase the value/utility of the truck for myself. Does this mean that I owe the truck manufacturer more money? (Maybe the Authors Guild would argue that it's okay for me to use the truck for human transport, and it's okay for a company to use the truck to haul equipment... but anyone who uses it for both is nasty and owes someone money.)
You're right that the Authors Guild relies on members. Which is precisely why, if you disagree with the statements of the Guild, you should put pressure on authors, either by boycotting any author who is a member of the Guild, or writing to them and asking them to signal their disapproval.
When the Authors Guild says these kinds of ridiculous things (and uses logic which, incidentally, implies that people with disabilities should not be allowed to convert media to a form they can use), it makes all members look like greedy idiots. Authors should speak up and tell the Guild that they do not want to be represented as such.
For a partial list of Guild members, see:
http://www.authorsguild.org/news/member_websites/a.html
Contacting the Guild and mentioning that you plan to boycott authors associated with them might also get the message across.
I've often wondered why there isn't a mechanism by which a person/company can go to a court and get some kind of "advanced ruling" or "pre-judgment". Basically you file some kind of case that is asking the court/judge "if I go ahead and do this... will it be legal?" Then based on the ruling, you can decide whether or not to do it. I would imagine that such a ruling would not be 100% binding, in the sense that you could still be sued even with a supportive "pre-judgment"... but presumably having such a judgment would go some way towards building a defense case and a long way towards demonstrating no willful disregard for the law.
Presumably the party asking for a such an advanced ruling would have to pay for their lawyer (and maybe some court fee?), but I would guess that it would still be highly valuable to many companies. There are so many startups that try things that are legally questionable (e.g. Psystar), and probably thousands of other startups that never see the light of day because investors are unsure about the legality. Shouldn't there be a way for these new ideas to be ruled legal/illegal without the massive risk of just going out and doing it!?
Of course IANAL so for all I know something like this already exists. Please educate me if so.
Am I going to be able to use the WebOS when there's no wireless data connectivity? I don't think so.
According to TFA:
According to Palm's website and some early development partners, webOS supports HTML5, enabling a local data store, so applications and data are available offline, and a file system.
And the palm developer site:
Leverage the local storage capabilities of HTML5 so that data is available even when users are offline
I'm sure Palm intends WebOS to still work when there is no connectivity. Whether or not they implement this properly is another question, of course. Can anyone comment on how well the "local storage capabilities of HTML5" work?
Good points.
I'd also like to emphasize something: while Wikipedia surely 'dropped the ball' on this one, serious blame must be placed on the various 'traditional media' outlets. They should they be verifying information from a few different sources before publishing. Moreover, they should be citing where they got their information from! If their article had citations, with Wikipedia listed as the source for the name/biographical information, then Wikipedia would have known that they couldn't use it as an independent source for their own citations.
There is frankly no good reason why mainstream media should not be more rigorously citing their sources for information (especially for Internet articles, where the extra space of a few footnotes doesn't matter). Of course one of the main reasons they might want to do so is that it would make painfully clear just how spurious and unfounded their reporting is.
In other words, if using Wikipedia as a source in serious research garners you an 'F'... then surely citing newspapers should do the same.
Problem is IT guys are whores. we give up our craft for free at the drop of a hat.
Whores don't give anything away for free. Sluts do.
Techies are sluts. Lawyers are whores. Personally I prefer sluts to whores, but YMMV.
The reason I say this is that if you have to build one car per person and maintain the cars and the system for the cars, that's a huge environmental impact.
But in a shared-car system you don't need one car per person: you just need as many cars as are required at peak usage. For any given hour of the day, many cars are actually just sitting parked.
With fewer cars in total, it becomes more practical for those cars to be well-maintained, energy-efficient, and so on. (Convincing everyone to buy new energy-efficient cars is impossible. Migrating a communal fleet of vehicles to a new greener technology is more practical.) And if well-managed, there is no reason that such a fleet could not be just as convenient (in terms of getting a car as soon as you need one) as owning a car. (In fact there may be added conveniences like not having to worry about parking.)
In a sense it's not too different from mass-usage of taxis (as seems to happen quite a bit in New York City, for instance), of rental vehicles, or car-share services (e.g. zipcar).
(That's the theory, at least. I'm well-aware of the practical problems of any such system, such as people not keeping the communal vehicles clean, the dangers and inefficiencies of the added bureaucracy, being reliant on someone else's (mis)management, etc.)
In a busy airport like Heathrow regular trains would be more efficient than individual transporters surely.
Are you sure? Airports are often busy, to be sure, and there are lots of times where the intra-airport trains are packed full. But there are also times when those same trains are relatively empty (but still have to run). It is not fuel-efficient to move an entire train car for one or two people.
So maybe it actually is more energy-efficient, averaged over a year of typical usage, to use small 1-4 person vehicles rather than larger vehicles designed to move 15-50 people at a time.
Without doing a relatively detailed calculation, I can't say which one would actually be better. My only point is that it's not obvious (to me at least) which one would be more efficient.
it's just a glorified command prompt
I think that's sorta the point.
A commandline isn't inherently user-unfriendly. A commandline confuses the average user for a variety of reasons, which Ubiquity is trying to address. So I would say the point is to make a glorified command prompt. So glorified, in fact, that the average person can benefit from it.
For instance one of the things that makes a command prompt difficult for novice users is that they don't know what commands are available. As you type in Ubiquity, it shows you a preview of commands that might match. So you type 'email' and it lists that there is an 'email this person' command and a 'get last email' command and so on. Another thing that is scary about command prompts is that people worry about making mistakes. Ubiquity fixes this in a couple of ways. First of all, you can't do that much damage in a web browser. Secondly, Ubiquity shows you a realtime result of your typing. So if you type 'map washington' it shows a map of Washington DC... if you keep typing 'map washington seattle' it switches to show seattle. Ubiquity also tries to use actual words or phrases for the command syntax. So rather than remembering what the command to translate text is... you just type 'translate.'
There are a bunch of things that the Ubiquity team is trying to do to make the commandline more accessible. The interesting thing is that many of these changes are also a huge advantage for those of us who are already familiar with commandlines.
So, yes, Ubiquity is a glorified command prompt. And it's about time that someone put honest effort into bringing the power of text-command UI to the masses.
As I said, it's not natural-language yet. That is a goal, not a current feature.
I think of it this way: on the one hand we have rigidly-structured input-output systems, like most programming languages and commandlines. On the other end we have human-to-human natural language: you speak naturally and they understand.
The goal of Ubiquity (as far as I understand it) is to move towards that "natural" end of the spectrum. It is starting with simple things, like using command names that are easier to recognize (e.g. using the english word "translate" instead of shortened (and thus more obscure) command names), or allowing for multiple input syntax (to increase the chance that someone guessing will get what they want) and using input syntax more closely related to the person's language (e.g. using "weather X in C/F" to select the units, rather than "weather X --celcius" or whatever).
As I said: natural language is the goal; Ubiquity is trying things out along the way to that goal. You may argue that my proposed spectrum is rubbish; that a UI either allows for natural-language input or not. I happen to disagree. Using Ubiquity is qualitatively different from using a more rigid commandline. It is not natural-language yet, but it is decidedly more natural and forgiving than most other command languages (and thus, I would argue, closer to "natural language input"). If you can think of a better phrase to describe what's going on, please let me know.
To be clear: the end goal of Ubiquity is to have a natural-language command-entry system, so that you can say "Book me a trip from Washington DC to Seattle for next Tuesday" and it will figure out all the details (show you ticket prices, maps, etc.).
Obviously the current version of Ubiquity is a long way from achieving that goal. You must still enter your commands in a way that it will understand.
However, Ubiquity is making progress in that direction by having it recognize more natural command structures (e.g. you can say "weather Washington DC" to get the weather, or say "weather Washington DC in C" to get it in celcius (no it won't search for a location called "Washington DC in C")), and providing enough variants that the interface feels natural (e.g. you can type "weather Washington" or "weather 98941" etc.).
Another thing that it does is provide continual feedback, so the user can see what commands are available. The result of a command is also presented immediately and refreshed as they edit their query. This fast interaction makes it easier to compose the desired command.
Again, the system is far from perfect. It is not a natural-language system yet (and won't be perfectly so until we've perfected AI). But it doesn't have to be. As Google has shown us, you don't need the system to be perfect to be useful. Google recognizes calculations, addresses, fedex numbers, and a bunch of other things, and it tries to guess what you mean. If it can't figure it out, it defaults to a web-search. Overall this is very useful. Similarly the end-goal for Ubiquity is that you just type what you want and it will do a decent job of figuring it out. In the meantime the user will have to bend somewhat (and learn a few commands), but the cool part is that such a system is useful immediately, even as it is iterated towards being more robust and comprehensive.
Google is already pretty good at working out what you want. Why would I want Firefox to override this?
If you play with Ubiquity for a little bit, you'll see why it is not merely a duplication of Google's functionality. It is more than just a shortcut for web searches, it's meant to be a fast and efficient way to do things.
The example that Aza Raskin most often gives (Aza is the lead on the project and also happens to be the son of Jef Raskin, who started the Macintosh project at Apple) is something like: "You are writing an email and want to embed directions... rather than searching the web and then copy-and-pasting a map into your email, it would be preferable to simply type 'map Washington DC and paste here' and have the computer figure it out."
In addition to a bunch of search-like commands ('google', 'weather', 'map'...) and quick-reference commands ('define', ...) there are lots of text-replace commands ('translate', 'calculate', ...), and powerful action commands ('add-to-calendar', 'email', ...) and browser-interaction commands ('close-tab', 'bookmark', ...).
For anyone who is a keyboard-shortcut fanatic, this extension is awesome. You can control the browser largely without using the mouse, for instance. It's also so much faster to perform certain actions. And the framework is extensible: people are writing new commands all the time (and you can create your own commands if you know Java Script).
In short, Ubiquity is about a lot more than just providing a shortcut to searches. It's about providing a new (and very efficient/comfortable) way to access the functionality of your browser and the web. You may or may not actually like it... but I would recommend giving it a try.
They're used to just "clicking yes" with no regard to what they're committing themselves and their company to.
This is a very subjective question for you to answer (so feel free to say "I'd rather not speculate"), but my question is: When these companies disregard the license, is their primary reason for doing so stupidity or malice? Is it usually because someone mistakenly thinks "hey, this is available online so I can do whatever I want with it" or is it more along the lines of "no one will ever catch me, so I'm just going to grab this code."
In any case, thanks for all your hard work for the community!
Depends on what you value.
Agreed.
I value having software that is open-source, vetted by a community I trust, and available for me (or others) to peruse, modify, and enhance. I value the ability to easily install, manage, and update all my software through a uniform interface to trusted repositories. I value having access to a staggering quantity of high-quality software. I value the supportive, friendly, and helpful community that responds with answers within minutes of asking, rather than asking me to pay them money.
I also appreciate a uniform commandline environment that allows me to mix-and-match and interface utilities, which Linux provides. It does what I ask it to and gives me power, simplicity, and extensibility as required. I appreciate efficient shortcuts like higlight-and-middle-click to copy text. I've also had, by far, less hassle installing Linux than Windows. Oh, I need a license for Windows? Where did I put that? Is there a phone number I have to call? How long do I have to wait on hold?
Value to me is reliability, choice and quality of software, and minimial fuss with configuring devices and hardware. With Ubuntu 8.04, Linux reached a level of functionality and stability that I can no longer do without. That is also happens to be free is a nice bonus, too.
Okay, so this reply has been a bit snide. But it was also serious. I see that you prefer Windows, and that's great. I much prefer Linux. In other words, different people have different priorities, and what's best for you may not be what's best for me (and nice versa). As you said, it absolutely depends on what you value.
the user's bias is coming out in defending Linux by saying it's always been slow to boot
That's not how I read it. The author didn't seem to be defending Linux with that statement. It was more of a "as we would have expected" statement. He was acknowledging that Linux lost on that metric.
measuring mouse clicks on an install process? What?
The authors seem to acknowledge that this metric was just for fun. The caption for that data says "A bit of a flippant one" and in the intro they say "We also, just for the heck of it, kept track of how many mouse clicks it took to install each OS."
comparing the amount if gigabytes and saying that less space used after a fresh install is necessarily better?
Yes. All other things being equal, a smaller install size is better (more space for other things). Whether or not this particular metric matters to you depends, of course. On a typical desktop machine it might not matter. On some other machines it might. The install size also affects other things people might care about (e.g. how long it takes to do a drive image or backup; how long it takes to scan or seek on the drive; ...).
From TFA:
Our test machine packed an Intel Core i7 920, which in layman's terms has four cores running at 2.67GHz with hyperthreading and 8MB of L3 cache.
(Emphasis added.)
Not sure what kind of laymen the authors hang out with, but all the laymen I know couldn't tell you the difference between a CPU and a hard drive, or the difference between GHz and GB ... much less figure out what "L3 cache" is!
In addition to the possibility of exploits in this kind of system, I really worry about what it will do with respect to the very user education issue you mention.
If Microsoft's official site trains people to trust (and click on) an agreeable-looking "Fit it!" icon, it won't be long before other sites use a surprisingly similar-looking "Fit it!" icon to induce people to click on malware (and click through the various warnings that appear--after all, I trust this thing to fix my computer!). There will always be some users who are easily fooled... but Microsoft should not exacerbate the situation by making people comfortable with the idea of launching system-altering utilities directly from the web browser.
To me this is no better than the IT department asking you for your password. Yes, you should trust the IT department (and they could no doubt determine your password if they really wanted to)... but it creates a bad habit, where users are accustomed to emailing their passwords to whoever asks and seems even slightly legitimate.
I don't think the submitter is complaining that what iTunes is doing is illegal (or that he should be subject to US law while abroad). I think he is complaining that what iTunes is doing is stupid.
He wants to be a customer. He wants to give them money. But they (iTunes, or whichever content providers require this rule) want to restrict things regionally. These regional restrictions are inconvenient, arbitrary, and illogical in an age of ubiquitous global network connectivity, and easy trans-national travel. Someone abroad can circumvent the restrictions easily with a proxy. Conversely a US citizen on a trip abroad is denied access (whereas it would have been fine if they had downloaded it while in the US and carried it on their computer on the plane). Thus it doesn't seem that the rule accomplishes its nominal goal. Actually for the most part the nominal goal isn't even clear. In short, the restrictions are silly.
Of course it is within iTune's ability (technical and legal) to impose such restrictions. But it just seems illogical, since anywhere that the content is not available through a legitimate source (or available but only after a substantial delay) will simply increase the amount of circumvention (proxy, file sharing, etc.). So why don't these companies want the money being offered to them?
I'm saddened by the fact that an Amateur Radio hobbyist making a simple FM transceiver is considered news-worthy by the masses.
A fair point. But on the other hand, what better way is there to ignite enthusiasm for amateur radio among the masses than by showing them what it can do?
What happened to the spirit of 'Experimentation and Advancement of The Radio Art'? Have we as a species lost our curiosity and drive to learn about and then do new things?
Evidently these students have curiosity aplenty, which is what drove them to build their system and try to call the ISS. If this is the behavior we want to see more of, then we need to encourage said behavior: by applauding it and publicizing it, which is what this news item is doing.
I understand your point, which is that this kind of experimentation should be so commonplace that we take it for granted (hence not newsworthy). On the other hand, if we want to encourage curiosity, experimentation, and a "hands-on" approach to using technology, then any news or publicity is a good thing.
Somewhat disappointingly, the students actually did have permission to make contact.
Yes, it is truly disappointing when youngsters act responsibly.
I understand how the story would be more romantic if they contacted the ISS out of the blue (imagine how surprised those aboard the station would be!). But the fact of the matter is that living in space is precarious at the best of times. Unexpected events, especially those that tie up communication channels, are unsafe and not welcome. Thus the students did the right thing by clearing permission first, and they should be applauded for that.
Also, the students probably wanted their signal to actually be answered, rather than ignored or (even more likely) simply not noticed!
fast-boot Linux is probably doing more to harm than help the cause.
Yeah, because I and everyone I know hates nothing more than being able to boot quickly.
I think what the author was trying to say was something like: "The fast-booting versions of Linux are all stripped-down toy systems, thereby giving people the impression that Linux is an immature and feature-limited OS. Thus even though fast-booting Linux is exposing people to Linux, it is doing more harm than good to the overall image/reputation of Linux."
The wording is confusing, and the point being made (if I understand it correctly) isn't much better.
Your knowledge of Labview and Igor seems limited and out of date. Labview is far more sophisticated now that the primitive description you use.
I don't know. I use LabVIEW pretty routinely and the GP's experiences reflect my own. There's no question that LabVIEW can make setting up a new data acquisition system very fast. The tie-in with DAQ cards and many instrument control systems is fantastic. But the actual programming paradigm is terrible (at least for anyone acquainted with the power and flexibility of traditional text-code programming). Even with the various enhancements they've put (like bundling wires and all that), it takes a long time to code comparatively simple things. You end up spending way too much time drawing wires and figuring out where they come from.
...
LabVIEW, in a sense, encourages all the "bad practices" of programming: it's not sufficiently easy to add comments: there should be more facilities for tagging, describing, and searching said info; almost everything ends up being global or having too large a scope; the wiring-diagram motif creates the equivalent of GOTOs, where you're trying to figure out where a value came from; overall code ends up tangled and difficult to maintain;
Having said all that, LabVIEW's advantages (again, the rapid set-up of a decent hardware interface) make up for its disadvantages in many cases. (Although it would be awesome if they made a simple cross-language bridge so that I could create custom VIs written in a 'proper' programming language.)
Everything else you said about LabVIEW and Igor is spot-on.