The internet facilitates reason, criticism, satire, and alternate points of view. And yeah porn, fun, shopping and irreverence. All things which an authoritarian theocracy has reason to fear.
But at the same time it is interesting how many shills leap out of the woodwork in any news article which is critical of Russia or Israel. Clearly these countries have teams of people who make concerted efforts to drown out, berate, brow beat or otherwise pooh pooh any story no matter how credible it is.
One person with perhaps enough battery / oxygen to go a few hours. No where to sleep or eat or go to the toilet. I think the cartels could do better than that for their money. And while I'm sure the inventors would love a continuous flow of orders for subs, I'm sure they wouldn't like the continuous police heat that comes with it.
The cartels already have been building their own subs. A luxury toy sub is probably not much use to the for the sorts of loads they want to transport. I expect with a little more time they'd be able to develop autonomous subs that navigate from one point to another completely submerged. Such things already exist in the oil industry so it's not hard to imagine one doing drug runs.
These things had already evolved to have lungs and strong fins, presumably for leaving the water for reasons advantageous to survival (e.g. escaping a drying up pond). So they have been exposed to land before and the evidence is there in physiology.
What the experiment mainly does is demonstrate the endurance of the creatures to stay on land for extended durations. Unsurprisingly these extended stays on land gives the fish get an upper body workout so they get better at moving around.
I find live tiles quite useful. They tell me if I have unused email, the weather, the time, the currency exchange rate, breaking news etc.
Besides, the springboard UI is for tablets where the expectation is someone runs one app at a time. If they switch away from an app it's to run another app. It is not comparable to a desktop where someone may have 20 windows open and therefore their mental processes and context are built around that. I have no major objection to the start screen in Windows for tablets but this isn't what the thread is about - it's for the desktop behaviour.
Anyone who thinks self driving cars are likely to be capable of driving on open roads in all circumstances by themselves in the forseeable future is living in cloud cuckoo land. There MUST be a conscious, unimpaired human being able to take over when the need arises because the need will arise.
Ah but you see they're disruptive innovators which makes it perfectly okay to ignore rules and regulations put in place to ensure cars are safe, and driven safely by knowledgeable non-rapists.
Not really. Just something like the old start menu but with some of the functionality and styling of metro. It doesn't have to be exactly analogous to the start menu because the start menu is not something which was immutable to begin with. But it should be familiar to someone who is used to the start menu and it could add useful stuff from metro such as live tiles.
Anyway I think it's remarkable how fucked up Microsoft managed to make it. I remember before Windows 8 came out being positive that they wouldn't walk all over mouse / keyboard users and yet that's what they did. Win 8.1 took off most of the rough edges and in general is an excellent desktop. It's just that disconnect between the desktop and the launcher still hasn't been solved.
Before starting let's be clear that the start menu has never been an immutable thing. Every release of Windows has changed it, often in very substantial ways. Go back to the days of Win95 / 98 and the thing is appalling.
Regarding your question, most recent versions of the start menu offered you multiple ways to access your apps. You could pin menus to start. You also saw a list of apps you used a lot. You could navigate all apps if you wanted. You could also start typing straight into the bar if you knew the name of the app. You also had links to control panel, to services, to devices, and run... command and power / log off options. And other stuff in a little semi transparent box which didn't stop you losing context of where you were.
Windows 8 offers much of that functionality but chose to smear it over multiple screens activated by swipes, hot corners, and other nonsense - is control panel in Start Menu? Haha no, it's that gesture on the right buried under settings and you won't even see it unless you are in the desktop at the time. How do I shut down? Haha we've hidden it! And so on. Windows 8.1 took some of the rough edges off (e.g. more discoverable shutdown) but its all over the place.
The only sop to the Old Way is Windows+X brings up a power menu, but it's basically its a hack that shouldn't exist if they just put something where the start menu used to be.
That's why I said metro apps should live on the desktop. Once you have a mini metro / start thing and the apps run alongside the "classic" apps, there is little reason to open the start screen ever again. Maybe it's a user setting somewhere that takes a sensible default - devices with touchscreens or multi screen displays enable the start menu, mouse and keyboard devices default to desktop and mini metro.
I don't think the apps are inferior or redundant to the desktop counterparts. The closest Microsoft got to an "app" in the past were gadgets and few people bothered with them and arguably all the apps in Windows 8 are better anyway. Even where there is a counterpart, e.g. Internet Explorer, the desktop version hasn't gone away. The metro one is obviously easier to use in tablet mode however.
The biggest bug bear is apps are treated differently in the UI and how they're activated. Windows 8.1 at least sticks them in the task bar and fixed alt+tab so they're peers of each other. It also put close buttons on top of the apps. Now it needs to house them in windows with resizing capabilities. At that point people can take them or leave them. Perhaps they could even allow apps to be docked in some sensible way or pinned to the background.
Anyway it should have never come to this. Microsoft clearly made a beeline for tablet land. It's understandable that they did but they seriously botched the execution and failed to anticipate the backlash. Let's hope they make good.
Just a mini metro which launches from the start button and serves a similar role as the old start menus. i.e. something which doesn't cause the user to have a brain fart when their entire screen is hidden and replaced with a massive launcher. Let the user customize it and have access to all apps and control panel etc. That and remove the distinction between metro apps and classic apps on the desktop. Let them both live there. Outside of these issues Windows 8.1 is pretty stable and fast really.
If a customer says no thanks then that should mark the end of the sales pitch. There are occasions when good customer service means not selling shit to them AT ALL. For example if someone rings because of a fault and you fix it with profuse apologies then they are a happy customer and likely to be remain loyal. If someone rings and you badger them to switch packages instead of focussing on the problem then the next time you may hear from them is when they call to cancel.
And if you REALLY piss people off then sooner or later someone is going to recall that excrutiating call with customer retention and post it up on the internet. And then the reputational damage will far exceed any benefit of being incalcitrant with departing customers.
Unless they've changed from my McJob youth, the standard McDonalds policy was to upsell once according to what a customer didn't order or wasn't specific about. If you bought a burger you were asked if you wanted fries. If you asked for meal (without being specific) you were asked if that was a large meal. etc. You were only supposed to ask once and if a person said no that it was it.
If they took a page from the Comcast book they wouldn't take no for an answer and would methodically break down your objections until you relinquished and bought that large meal. Oh and you'd have a 12 month contract for large meal with a huge penalty fees if you tried to escape from it.
That's great for you. Doesn't that in a 10,000 seat deployment consisting mostly of administrative / clerical / managerial bods that these issues aren't annoying or frustrating to the extent that some people complain about them.
And many issues with LibreOffice are easy to identify just from using it. It needs to focus on fixing them and modernizing itself.
Or 3) People are genuinely bitching about the experience because it's unintuitive, unforgiving or lacking features.
I think if I had to use Open/LibreOffice day in day out that I'd be pretty pissed off with it too. It's fine for simple things, but start using it for complex documents, spreadsheets or presentations and lots of little annoyances become apparent - resizing that doesn't snap to things, text that wobbles around as you type, dialogs which aren't prefilled with useful defaults, clutter in the menus and toolbars, inscrutable icons and menu items, lack of outline mode (navigator doesn't count), lack of useful shapes etc.
This project would benefit enormously from devoting an entire major cycle to usability where the goal is to simplify the UI, make workflows more task centric and give the software a makeover.
I was in a cinema recently with Atmos sound and to be honest I didn't think there was a huge deal of difference to other systems which offer spatial sound. It was nice boomy sound but I wasn't thinking this is nothing like I've ever heard before. It was more or less the same.
I find it unsurprising that Atmos will fall on its ass in home cinema. Who is going to plaster their walls and ceilings with speakers?
1. In Germany, insurance that covers passengers is mandatory for anyone driving a car.
Insurance policies always have legalese which absolve them of paying out when the vehicle is used in an improper fashion. At best it might offer basic 3rd party insurance which might not include you as a paying passenger or limit your claim. And you assume someone has insurance to begin with.
2. All cars have pass inspection every two years.
Taxis are considered as small public vehicles and usually have additional standards they must meet with regard to cleanliness, luggage capacity, suitable vehicle models, safety equipment (fire extinguisher, first aid kit etc.), accessibility features like handholds, floor lighting etc. That's in addition to inspection to ensure the car is roadworthy. In some countries the schedule for testing is stricter for taxis too due to the additional wear and tear. And you assume someone has their car inspected to begin with.
3. The tests to get a drivers license are quite stringent and you have to take driving lessons at a licensed school.
Which doesn't test a person's geographic knowledge. Nor does it say if the person was caught drink driving and banned for a year, or if they previously raped someone. And you assume they have a licence to begin with.
5. The Uber app should be able to warn users if the driver takes a longer route than necessary.
A feat which can be accomplished with any other navigational app, e.g. Waze.
6. AFAIK, the Uber app provides ratings for drivers and customers and both drivers and customers can be rejected beforehand by the other party.
I should hope so too. I doubt those ratings have much to say about a driver's criminal background or compliance with public transport laws.
I thought that was hysterical. If their standard was the quart, it could have just said 1 cup.
And if their standard was the schmoo it could have said 12 sczars. I shan't explain how many sczars are in one schmoo because I find it hysterical that people use some other form of measurement and not know this.
If the Telegraph is using imperial, it's probably as some weak protest against Europe (and almost the entire world) and their fangle dangle standard system of weights and measures.
Slashdot Mirror
The internet facilitates reason, criticism, satire, and alternate points of view. And yeah porn, fun, shopping and irreverence. All things which an authoritarian theocracy has reason to fear.
But at the same time it is interesting how many shills leap out of the woodwork in any news article which is critical of Russia or Israel. Clearly these countries have teams of people who make concerted efforts to drown out, berate, brow beat or otherwise pooh pooh any story no matter how credible it is.
One person with perhaps enough battery / oxygen to go a few hours. No where to sleep or eat or go to the toilet. I think the cartels could do better than that for their money. And while I'm sure the inventors would love a continuous flow of orders for subs, I'm sure they wouldn't like the continuous police heat that comes with it.
The cartels already have been building their own subs. A luxury toy sub is probably not much use to the for the sorts of loads they want to transport. I expect with a little more time they'd be able to develop autonomous subs that navigate from one point to another completely submerged. Such things already exist in the oil industry so it's not hard to imagine one doing drug runs.
What the experiment mainly does is demonstrate the endurance of the creatures to stay on land for extended durations. Unsurprisingly these extended stays on land gives the fish get an upper body workout so they get better at moving around.
Besides, the springboard UI is for tablets where the expectation is someone runs one app at a time. If they switch away from an app it's to run another app. It is not comparable to a desktop where someone may have 20 windows open and therefore their mental processes and context are built around that. I have no major objection to the start screen in Windows for tablets but this isn't what the thread is about - it's for the desktop behaviour.
Anyone who thinks self driving cars are likely to be capable of driving on open roads in all circumstances by themselves in the forseeable future is living in cloud cuckoo land. There MUST be a conscious, unimpaired human being able to take over when the need arises because the need will arise.
Ah but you see they're disruptive innovators which makes it perfectly okay to ignore rules and regulations put in place to ensure cars are safe, and driven safely by knowledgeable non-rapists.
Anyway I think it's remarkable how fucked up Microsoft managed to make it. I remember before Windows 8 came out being positive that they wouldn't walk all over mouse / keyboard users and yet that's what they did. Win 8.1 took off most of the rough edges and in general is an excellent desktop. It's just that disconnect between the desktop and the launcher still hasn't been solved.
Regarding your question, most recent versions of the start menu offered you multiple ways to access your apps. You could pin menus to start. You also saw a list of apps you used a lot. You could navigate all apps if you wanted. You could also start typing straight into the bar if you knew the name of the app. You also had links to control panel, to services, to devices, and run... command and power / log off options. And other stuff in a little semi transparent box which didn't stop you losing context of where you were.
Windows 8 offers much of that functionality but chose to smear it over multiple screens activated by swipes, hot corners, and other nonsense - is control panel in Start Menu? Haha no, it's that gesture on the right buried under settings and you won't even see it unless you are in the desktop at the time. How do I shut down? Haha we've hidden it! And so on. Windows 8.1 took some of the rough edges off (e.g. more discoverable shutdown) but its all over the place.
The only sop to the Old Way is Windows+X brings up a power menu, but it's basically its a hack that shouldn't exist if they just put something where the start menu used to be.
I don't think the apps are inferior or redundant to the desktop counterparts. The closest Microsoft got to an "app" in the past were gadgets and few people bothered with them and arguably all the apps in Windows 8 are better anyway. Even where there is a counterpart, e.g. Internet Explorer, the desktop version hasn't gone away. The metro one is obviously easier to use in tablet mode however.
The biggest bug bear is apps are treated differently in the UI and how they're activated. Windows 8.1 at least sticks them in the task bar and fixed alt+tab so they're peers of each other. It also put close buttons on top of the apps. Now it needs to house them in windows with resizing capabilities. At that point people can take them or leave them. Perhaps they could even allow apps to be docked in some sensible way or pinned to the background.
Anyway it should have never come to this. Microsoft clearly made a beeline for tablet land. It's understandable that they did but they seriously botched the execution and failed to anticipate the backlash. Let's hope they make good.
Just a mini metro which launches from the start button and serves a similar role as the old start menus. i.e. something which doesn't cause the user to have a brain fart when their entire screen is hidden and replaced with a massive launcher. Let the user customize it and have access to all apps and control panel etc. That and remove the distinction between metro apps and classic apps on the desktop. Let them both live there. Outside of these issues Windows 8.1 is pretty stable and fast really.
For essentially the largest collection of vanity gaming shares in existence.
Someone will have to point me to the part of Austrian School of Economics and libertarianism which says it's okay to have competitors and rivals iced.
Buy up some cats from a shelter and roast them too to cancel out the birds.
And if you REALLY piss people off then sooner or later someone is going to recall that excrutiating call with customer retention and post it up on the internet. And then the reputational damage will far exceed any benefit of being incalcitrant with departing customers.
If they took a page from the Comcast book they wouldn't take no for an answer and would methodically break down your objections until you relinquished and bought that large meal. Oh and you'd have a 12 month contract for large meal with a huge penalty fees if you tried to escape from it.
I wish you'd learn to read. I didn't say it couldn't scale.
And many issues with LibreOffice are easy to identify just from using it. It needs to focus on fixing them and modernizing itself.
I think if I had to use Open/LibreOffice day in day out that I'd be pretty pissed off with it too. It's fine for simple things, but start using it for complex documents, spreadsheets or presentations and lots of little annoyances become apparent - resizing that doesn't snap to things, text that wobbles around as you type, dialogs which aren't prefilled with useful defaults, clutter in the menus and toolbars, inscrutable icons and menu items, lack of outline mode (navigator doesn't count), lack of useful shapes etc.
This project would benefit enormously from devoting an entire major cycle to usability where the goal is to simplify the UI, make workflows more task centric and give the software a makeover.
I find it unsurprising that Atmos will fall on its ass in home cinema. Who is going to plaster their walls and ceilings with speakers?
1. In Germany, insurance that covers passengers is mandatory for anyone driving a car.
Insurance policies always have legalese which absolve them of paying out when the vehicle is used in an improper fashion. At best it might offer basic 3rd party insurance which might not include you as a paying passenger or limit your claim. And you assume someone has insurance to begin with.
2. All cars have pass inspection every two years.
Taxis are considered as small public vehicles and usually have additional standards they must meet with regard to cleanliness, luggage capacity, suitable vehicle models, safety equipment (fire extinguisher, first aid kit etc.), accessibility features like handholds, floor lighting etc. That's in addition to inspection to ensure the car is roadworthy. In some countries the schedule for testing is stricter for taxis too due to the additional wear and tear. And you assume someone has their car inspected to begin with.
3. The tests to get a drivers license are quite stringent and you have to take driving lessons at a licensed school.
Which doesn't test a person's geographic knowledge. Nor does it say if the person was caught drink driving and banned for a year, or if they previously raped someone. And you assume they have a licence to begin with.
5. The Uber app should be able to warn users if the driver takes a longer route than necessary.
A feat which can be accomplished with any other navigational app, e.g. Waze.
6. AFAIK, the Uber app provides ratings for drivers and customers and both drivers and customers can be rejected beforehand by the other party.
I should hope so too. I doubt those ratings have much to say about a driver's criminal background or compliance with public transport laws.
So... I'm sure you can cite references that Uber is more dangerous or less competent than the established services, right?
So you're demanding that someone prove an unknown quantity is more dangerous or less competent than a known quantity?
I thought that was hysterical. If their standard was the quart, it could have just said 1 cup.
And if their standard was the schmoo it could have said 12 sczars. I shan't explain how many sczars are in one schmoo because I find it hysterical that people use some other form of measurement and not know this.
If the Telegraph is using imperial, it's probably as some weak protest against Europe (and almost the entire world) and their fangle dangle standard system of weights and measures.